We come now to the Gospels; and in what follows, and throughout the book, we shall confine ourselves the first three Gospels.  Great as has been, and must be, the influence of the Fourth Gospel, in the present stage of historical criticism it will serve our purpose best to postpone the use of a source which we do not fully understand.  The exact relations of history and interpretation in the Fourth Gospel—­the methods and historical outlook of the writer—­cannot yet be said to be determined.  “Only those who have merely trifled with the problems it suggests are likely to speak dogmatically upon the subject."[3] This is not to abandon the Fourth Gospel; for it is a document which we could not do without in early Church History, and which has vindicated its place in the devotional life in every Christian generation.  But, for the present, the first Three Gospels will be our chief sources.

The Gospels have, of course, been attacked again and again.  Sober criticism has raised the question as to whether here and there traces may be found of the touch of a later hand—­for example, were there two asses or one, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem? has the baptismal formula at the end of Matthew been adjusted to the creed of Nicaea?  In the following pages the attempt will be made to base what is said not on isolated texts, which may—­and of course may not—­have been touched, but on the general tenor of the books.  A single episode or phrase may suffer change from a copyist’s hand, from inadvertence or from theological predilection.  The character of the Personality set forth in the Gospels is less susceptible of alteration.

This point is at once of importance, for the suggestion has been made that we cannot be sure of any particular statement, episode, incident or saying in the Gospels—­taken by itself.  Let us for the moment imagine a more sweeping theory still—­that no single episode incident or saying of Jesus in the Gospels is authentic at all.  What follows?  The great historian, E. A. Freeman of Oxford, once said that a false anecdote may be good history; it may be sound evidence for character, for, to obtain currency, a false anecdote has also to true; it must be, in our proverbial phrase, “if not true, well invented.”  Even if exaggeration and humour contribute to give it a twist, the essence of parody is that it parodies—­it must conform to the original even where it leaves it.  A good story-teller will hardly tell the same story of Mr. Roosevelt and the Archbishop of Canterbury—­unless it happens to be true, and then he will be cautious.  “Truth,” to quote another proverb, “is stranger than fiction”; because fiction has to go warily to be probable, and must be, more or less, conventional.  The story a man invents about another has to be true in some recognizable way to character—­as a little experiment in this direction will show.  The inventor of a story must have the gift of the caricaturist and of the bestower of nicknames; he