244 LT.-COL. G. MACKINLAT, ON THE EMPHASIS OF ST. LUKE. 



more important result it will be demonstrated (it is trusted) 

 that this inspired evangelist lavs greater stress upon the glorious 

 spiritual truths which he proclaims, than has previously been 

 supposed to be the case. 



St. Luke's two books are linked together in many ways ; at 

 the end of his Gospel he quotes the words of our Eisen Lord: 

 " Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again 

 from the dead the third day ; and that repentance and remission 

 of sins should be preached in His Xame unto all the nations, 

 beginning from Jerusalem" (xxiv, 46-47). The first half of 

 this paragraph epitomises the climax to which all the Gospel of 

 Luke lends up — the Death and Eesarrection of our Lord; the 

 second half of the paragraph sums up the purport of the Acts, in 

 which Christ Crucified and Eisen is the constant theme preached 

 far and wide to the nations of the earth. Luke has thus happily 

 chosen the subjects for his two books, which our Lord Himself 

 had joined together in one sentence. 



Luke uses many skilful devices to secure the attention of his 

 reader. One of his chief methods is to employ triple iteration 

 in order to give great emphasis to some important subject. We 

 shall confine ourselves in this paper to the consideration of some 

 examples of this habit. 



Threefold repetition is occasionally employed in Scripture for 

 this purpose ; for instance, the three denials of Peter, told by all 

 the Evangelists, emphasize the greatness of his fall; the three 

 questions of our risen Lord to that Apostle, asking hiiu if he 

 loved his Master, shew a depth of faithful, yet gracious rebuke 

 (John xxi, 15-17) ; and the thrice-repeated prayer of Paul for 

 the removal of the thorn in the llesh (2 Corinthians, xii, 8), 

 demonstrates the earnestness of his pleading. But it is in the 

 writings of St. Luke that we find the greatest use of this method 

 of giving emphasis. Each triplication is generally easy to 

 recognize, and its object is generally evident at once ; but in one 

 case, at least, its existence is not apparent without some little 

 study ; we must not be astonished that it is so, because cryptic 

 methods and omissions, without explanation or remark, 

 were not uncommon among the ancients. For instance, 

 hidden anagiams were at times embedded in the poems of 

 antiquity, giving the name of the writer, and other information. 

 They were probably employed in order to provide proof of the 

 true authorship, in case it were disputed at some subsequent 

 date, or to please a patron, to whom alone the secret may have 

 been entrusted. A most striking example of such cryptic 

 writing has recently been discovered by the patient skill of 



