must have a shrewd eye for the real features of his victim.  Jesus, then, was a historical person; and about him we have a mass of stories in the Gospels, which our theory for the moment asks us to say are all false; but they have a certain unity of tone, and they agree in pointing to a character of a certain type, and the general aspects and broad outlines of that character they make abundantly clear.  Even on such a hypothesis we can know something of the character of Jesus.  But the hypothesis is gratuitous, and absurd, as the paragraphs that follow may help to show.  The Gospels are essentially true and reliable records of a historical person.

A survey of some of the outstanding features of the Gospels should do something to assure their reader of their historical value.  But there is a necessary caution to be given at this moment.  When Aristotle discusses happiness, he adds a curious limitation—­“as the man of sense would define.”  He postulates a certain intelligence of the matter in hand.  Similarly Longinus, the greatest of ancient critics, says that in literature sure judgement is the outcome of long experience.  In matters of historical and literary criticism, a certain instinct is needed, conscious or unconscious, perhaps more often the latter, which without a serious interest and a long experience no man is likely to have.

The Gospels are not properly biographies; they consist of collections of reminiscences—­memories and fragments that have survived for years, and sometimes the fragment is little more than a phrase.  Such and such were the circumstances, and Jesus spoke—­a story that may occupy four or five verses, or less.  Something happened, Jesus said or did something that impressed his friends, and they could never forget it.  The story, as such impressions do, keeps its sharp edges.  Date and perhaps even place may be forgotten, but the look and the tone of the speaker are indelible memories.  In the experience of every man there are such moments, and the reminiscences can be trusted.  The Gospels are almost avowedly not first-hand.  Peter is said to be behind Mark; Mark and at least one other are behind Matthew and Luke.  Luke in his preface explains his methods.  They are collectors and transmitters; and the indications—­are that they did their work very faithfully.  There is a simplicity and a plainness about the stories in the Gospels, which further guarantees them.  It is remarkable how little of the adjective there is—­no compliment, no eulogy, no heroic touches, no sympathetic turn of phrase, no great passages of encomium or commendation.  It is often said about the Greek historian, Thucydides, that, among his many intellectual judgements, he never offers a criticism of any act that implies moral approbation or disapprobation; that he says nothing to show that he had feelings or that he cared about questions of right and wrong.  Page after page of Thucydides will make the reader tingle with pity or indignation; there is hardly in