29.  The third gospel is ascribed, by a probably trustworthy tradition, to Luke, the companion of Paul.  The author himself says that he made use of such earlier records as were accessible, among which the chief seem to have been the writings of Mark and the apostle Matthew.  To Luke’s industry, however, we owe our knowledge of many incidents and teachings from the life of Jesus which were not contained in these two records, and with which we could ill afford to part.  Some of these he doubtless found in written form, and some he gathered from oral testimony.  His close agreement with Mark in the arrangement of his narrative suggests that he found no clear evidence of a ministry of wider extent in time and place.  He therefore used Mark as his narrative framework, and of the rich materials which he had gathered made a gospel, the completest of any written up to his time.

30.  Such in the main is the conclusion of modern study of our first three gospels; it explains the general identity of their picture of Jesus and of their report of his teaching; it leaves room for those individual characteristics which give them so much of their charm; and it traces the materials of the gospels far back of the writings as we have them, bringing us nearer to the events which they describe.  The dates of these documents can be only approximately known.  It is probable that the “logia” collected by the apostle Matthew were written not later than 60 to 65 A.D., while the Gospel of Mark dates from before the fall of Jerusalem in 70.  Our first gospel must have been made between 70 and 100, and the Gospel of Luke may be dated about the year 80,—­all within sixty or seventy years after the death of Jesus.

31.  The fourth gospel gives us a picture of Jesus in striking contrast to that of the other three.  These present chiefly the works of the Master and his teachings concerning the kingdom of God and human conduct, leaving the truth concerning the teacher himself to be inferred.  John opens the heart of Jesus and makes him disclose his thought about himself in a remarkable series of teachings of which he is the prime topic.  This gospel is avowedly an argument (xx. 30, 31); its selection of material is confessedly partial; its aim is to confirm the faith of Christians in the heavenly nature and saving power of their Lord; and its method is that of appeal to testimony, to signs, and to his own self-disclosures.  The opening verses of the gospel have a somewhat abstract theological character; the body of the book, however, consists of a succession of incidents and teachings which follow each other in unstudied fashion like a collection of annals.  This impression is not compromised by the recognition, at some points, of accidental displacements, like that which has placed xiv. 30, 31 before xv. and xvi., or that which has left a long gap between vii. 23 and the incident of v. 1-9, to which it refers.  The theme of the gospel is the self-disclosure of Jesus.  This seems to have