180 EEV. P. P. FLOURNOY^ D.D.^ ON BEARING OF ARCH^OLOGICAL 



their journeyings visited such churches, they would be asked to 

 verify the writings, and that this might account for slight variations 

 in the different records. 



The Rev. Dr. Irving said that he desired to express his high 

 appreciation of Dr. Flournoy's masterly essay, and to congratulate 

 both the author of it and the Victoria Institute. He thought he 

 might lay special stress upon the importance and value of the results 

 arrived at in the matter of the Diatessaron, as bearing upon the 

 genuineness and date of the Four Gospels. He had come up to the 

 meeting hoping to hear what some of the Higher Critics might have 

 to say in their own defence ; but they appeared to prefer to " let 

 judgment go by default." He thanked the last speaker for the line 

 of thought suggested as to the methods and work of St. Luke as an 

 author; since it tended to show that the phrase, — "the brother, 

 whose praise (eTroLtvos, fame) is in the Gospel, was not unhistorical. 

 He had himself contended that it was highly probable that consider- 

 able portions of St. Luke's erangelium were in existence and known 

 in the Pauline Churches (and, perhaps, copies deposited) some years 

 before the third Gospel was cast in its present form. That, he 

 submitted, might have been done during the two years of the 

 detention of St. Paul at Csesarea, and under the Apostle's own 

 supervision ; while the Evangelist made use of the opportunity 

 afforded him for visiting places and jjersons of first-hand aiithoiity, as 

 he himself hints in the Introduction to his Gospel. 



The Rev. E. Seeley said : St. Luke (Chap, i, 1-4) distinctly 

 tells us that many others had arranged Gospel narratives before he 

 wrote his. 



When in later times persecutors endeavoured to destroy the 

 Christian Books, those early narratives were probably among the 

 writings that were given up to save the more precious Gospels that 

 we now have as well as to save life. 



The complete disappearance of those earlier narratives (except so 

 far as they may have been incorporated in our Gospels) is for us a 

 loss, but, on the other hand, it seems to indicate the general accept- 

 ance by the various Christian Churches of our Four Gospels as 

 superseding other narratives of inferior authority. 



Mr. Joseph Graham wrote supporting what Mr. Bishop and Mr. 

 Seeley had said, and adding : If there is truth in this theory, then 

 we gain the important point that the Gospels, more or less in the 



