living at the Court of Mary, Queen of Scots, does not, I learn, mention John Knox—­“whom he could not have failed to mention if Knox had really existed and played the part assigned to him by his partisans,” and so forth.  It might be as possible and as reasonable to prove that the Brahmo Samaj never existed, by demonstrating four hundred years hence—­or two thousand—­that it is not mentioned in In Memoriam, nor in The Ring and the Book, nor in George Meredith’s, novels, nor (more strangely) in any of Mr. Kipling’s surviving works, which definitely deal with India.  None of these writers, it may be replied, had any concern to mention the Brahmo Samaj.  And when one surveys the Greek and Roman writers of the first century A.D. which of them had any concern to refer to Jesus and his disciples, beyond the historians who do?  Indeed, the difficulty is to understand why some of these men should have written at all; harder still, why others should have wanted to read their poems and orations and commonplace books.  One argument, advanced in India a few years ago, against the historical value of the Gospels may be revived by way of illustration.  Would not Virgil and Horace, it was asked, have taken notice of the massacre at Bethlehem, if it was historical?  Would they not? it was replied, when they both had died years before its traditional date.

But the distinction between Christian and secular writers is not one that will weigh much with a serious historian.  Until we have reason to distinguish between book and book, the evidence must be treated on exactly the same principles.  To say abruptly that, because Luke was a Christian and Suetonius a pagan, Luke is not worthy of the credence given to Suetonius, is a line of approach that will most commend itself to those who have read neither author.  To gain a real knowledge of historical truth, the historian’s methods must be slower and more cautious, he must know his author intimately—­his habits of mind, his turns of style, his preferences, his gifts for seeing the real issue—­and always the background, and the ways of thinking that prevail in the background.  An ancient writer is not necessarily negligible because he records, and perhaps believes, miracles or marvels or omens which a modern would never notice.  It is bad criticism that has made a popular legend of the unreliable character of Herodotus.  As our knowledge of antiquity grows, and we become able to correct our early impressions, the credit of Herodotus rises steadily, and to-day those who study him most closely have the highest opinion of him.

We may, then, without prejudice, take the evidence of Paul of Tarsus on the historicity of Jesus, and examine it.  If we are challenged as to the genuineness of Paul’s epistles, let us tell our questioner to read them.  Novels have been written in the form of correspondence; but Paul’s letters do not tell us all that a novelist or a forger would—­there are endless gaps, needless references to unknown persons