As a preliminary to any detailed observations on the Gospels, allow me briefly to notice the wisdom of the Spirit in the choice of each workman for his work.
" Matthew, the publican," was not one whom man would have selected as the apostle and biographer of the Messiah. At first sight he might seem the least eligible for presenting the Lord to the Jews, for, as a class, none were in such disrepute as those Jews who consented to gather the taxes which the Romans imposed on their nation. But, regarded more closely, nothing could have been in more admirable keeping with the line of things which the Holy Ghost traces in his Gospel, for Jesus there is not the Messiah only, but the rejected Messiah. His rejection, with its grave and fruitful results, is just as much the theme as His intrinsic claims, with, all God's external attestations. And who so fit a witness or the grace which would seek the least worthy, if those " that were bidden" would not come, as he who was called from the odious receipt of customs?
In the second Gospel the Spirit is evidently developing the perfectness of the Lord's ministry in word and deed. Now John, whose surname was Mark," was just the right person for such a task, always bearing in mind that none was fit unless immediately inspired to write. But, among those who were so empowered of God, John Mark was precisely the one fitted by personal experience to appreciate, when the Spirit gave him to indite that Divine account of the gospel-service of Jesus; for he had bitterly known what it was to put his hand to the plow and look back, with its painful consequences on all sides (Acts 13-15) But he had also learned, to his joy, and the blessing of others, that the Lord can restore and strengthen, giving us, through His grace, to overcome wherein we have most broken down. This very Mark subsequently became a fellow-worker of St. Paul, and a comfort to him, as much as earlier he had been a sorrow
(Col. 4) " Take Mark," says he, in his last letter to Timothy, " and bring him with thee; for he is profitable to me for the ministry."
For the writing of the third Gospel, again, Luke was manifestly the most appropriate instrument. From Col. 4 it would seem that he was a Gentile, and by profession a physician, both which particulars, as well as its dedication to Theophilus, wonderfully harmonize with the way in which our Lord is there depicted; not so much the Messiah, nor the Servant, but "the Man, Christ Jesus," the Son of God born of the Virgin, in His largest human relations, in His obedience and prayerfulness, in His social sympathies, in miracles of healing and cleansing, in parables of special tenderness towards the lost. It is this prominence of our Lord's manhood, as brought out in Luke, which to me accounts for the emphatic statements of grace to Gentiles, as it falls in with the special form of his preface, which has been so frightfully abused by rationalists in general, English or foreign. He lets us know his motives, and seeks to draw Theophilus by the cords of a man; but if there be thus a human side of the picture, there is another as divine as in the other Gospels, where the thoughts and feelings of the heart are not so laid bare. The notion that such an opening, touchingly suited as it is to the way in which our Lord is throughout presented in this Gospel, should induce us to regard the writer as a mere faithful and honest compiler, without supernatural guidance in the arrangement of his subject-matter, etc., is worthy only of an infidel. And it is only to cheat oneself or others with vain words to affirm that the occurrence of demonstrable mistakes in the Gospels does not in any way affect the inspiration of the Evangelists. The profanity of these statements scarcely exceeds their folly, nor should 1 have taken this opportunity to denounce them if they were not at this moment finding extensive acceptance, especially among young students, not, alas! without the sanction of those who ought to know better.
Lastly, that St. John was eminently the right instrument for his task is most apparent. Who could so fitly, if so it pleased the Holy Ghost, set before us " the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father," as he who leaned on Jesus' bosom, -the disciple whom Jesus loved?