The remaining hypothesis is that of oral tradition emanating from the apostles themselves, and maintained in its purity during their lives by their personal presence and teaching.  That the gospel existed in this form alone for some years after the beginning of Christianity is admitted by all.  The apostles were Christ’s chosen witnesses of his life and teachings.  From their lips proceeded the tradition which now constitutes our written gospels.  The necessity of embodying this tradition in the form of permanent records was not felt at the beginning.  But, as the churches were multiplied, oral tradition became liable to corruption in many ways through the multiplicity of the organs employed in its transmission.  Then the need of written gospels began to manifest itself, and it was natural that the apostles should look to the supply of this need either by their own direct agency, or by that of men writing with their knowledge and approbation.  How many years elapsed before the appearance of the earliest of our canonical gospels, which is commonly supposed to have been that of Matthew, we have no means of ascertaining with accuracy.  But we may reasonably suppose that the period was long enough to allow the apostolic tradition of our Lord’s life and teachings to assume a somewhat definite shape in respect to both matter and outward form. First, in respect to matter.  As their public instructions could not cover the whole of our Saviour’s history (John 20:30; 21:  25), they naturally selected, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, those parts of it which embodied the spirit and meaning of the whole.  Since, moreover, the apostles remained together at Jerusalem for some time after our Lord’s ascension (Acts 8:1; 15:6), it is highly reasonable to suppose that in a matter of such moment they had a mutual understanding—­an understanding which, while it interfered with the freedom of no one, secured a general agreement as to the points in our Lord’s history and teachings which should be especially insisted on. Secondly in respect to outward form.  While the apostles were preserved by the illumination of the Holy Spirit from any superstitious regard to the letter of our Lord’s teachings, their reverence for him as a perfect teacher, whose words were truth unmixed with error, must have made them anxious to put the oral tradition of his sayings into as perfect a form as possible; whence the tradition of our Saviour’s words would assume from the first a more fixed form than that of his life generally.

It is supposed by many that the writers of the first three gospels drew each from this common body of oral tradition such materials as suited his general plan; no one of them proposing to give the whole of our Lord’s history, or even to observe a strict chronological order in the events recorded by him, any farther than such order was rendered necessary by their nature and essential connection.  In the case of Matthew,