AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 471 



he derives the above citation from the preface of the fifteenth 

 edition of the " Vie de Je'sus." My copy of " Les Evangiles," dated 

 1877, contains a list of Kenan's " CEuvres Completes/' at the head 

 of which I find " Vie de Je'sus/' 15 e Edition. It is, therefore, a 

 later work than the edition of the " Vie de Je'sus " which Dr. 

 Wace quotes. Now " Les Evangiles," as its name implies, treats 

 fully of the questions respecting the date and authorship of the 

 Gospels ; and any one who desired, not merely to use M. Kenan's 

 expressions for controversial purposes, but to give a fair account 

 of his views in their full significance, would, I think, refer to the 

 later source. 



If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might have found 

 some as decided expressions of opinion in favor of Luke's author- 

 ship of the third Gospel as he has discovered in " The Apostles." 

 I mention this circumstance because I desire to point out that, 

 taking even the strongest of Kenan's statements, I am still at a 

 loss to see how it justifies that large-sounding phrase " practical 

 surrender of the adverse case." For, on p. 438 of "Les Evan- 

 giles," Kenan speaks of the way in which Luke's " excellent inten- 

 tions " have led him to torture history in the Acts ; he declares 

 Luke to be the founder of that " eternal fiction which is called 

 ecclesiastical history " ; and, on the preceding page, he talks of 

 the " myth " of the Ascension — with its mise en scene voulue. At 

 p. 435, I find "Luc, ou l'auteur quel qu'il soit du troisieme 

 Evangile" [Luke, or whoever may be the author of the third 

 Gospel] ; at p. 280, the accounts of the Passion, the death and the 

 resurrection of Jesus are said to be "peu historiques" [little his- 

 torical] ; at p. 283, " La valeur historique du troisieme Evangile est 

 surement moindre que celles des deux premiers " [the historical 

 value of the third Gospel is surely less than that of the first two]. 



A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy this " surrender " ! 

 And, all the while, the scientific student of theology knows that 

 the more reason there may be to believe that Luke was the com- 

 panion of Paul, the more doubtful becomes his credibility, if he 

 really wrote the Acts. For, in that case, he could not fail to have 

 been acquainted with Paul's account of the Jerusalem conference, 

 and he must have consciously misrepresented it. "We may next 

 turn to the essential part of Dr. Wace's citation ( " Nineteenth 

 Century," p. 365)* touching the first Gospel: 



St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for the discourses. Here 

 are " the oracles " — the very notes taken while the memory of the instruction of 

 Jesus was living and definite. 



M. Kenan here expresses the very general opinion as to the 

 existence of a collection of " logia," having a different origin from 



* « 



Popular Science Monthly," May, 1889, p. 79. 



