Expositor's Bible: The Gospel of St Luke

EDITED BY THE REV.
Editor of The Expositor, etc.
BY THE REV.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON PUBLISHERS LONDON

The four walls and the twelve gates of the Seer looked in different directions, but together they guarded, and opened into, one City of God. So the four Gospels look in different directions; each has its own peculiar aspect and inscription; but together they lead towards, and unveil, one Christ, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. They are the successive quarterings of the one Light. We call them four Gospels, though in reality they form but one, just as the seven arches of colour weave one bow; and that there should be four, and not three or five, was the purpose and design of the Mind which is above all minds. There are diversities of operations even in making Testaments, New or Old; but it is one Spirit who is over all, and in all; and back of all diversity is a heavenly unity—a unity that is not broken, but rather beautified, by the variety of its component parts.
Turning to the third Gospel, its opening sentences strike a key-note unlike the tone of the other three. Matthew, the Levite Apostle, schooled in the receipt of custom—where parleying and preambling were not allowed—goes to his subject with sharp abruptness, beginning his story with a genesis, the book of the generation of Jesus Christ. Mark, too, and John, without staying for any prelude, proceed at once to their portrayals of the Divine Life, each starting with the same word beginning —though between the beginning of St. Mark and that of St. John there is room for an eternity. St. Luke, on the other hand, stays to give to his Gospel a somewhat lengthy preface, a kind of vestibule, where we become acquainted with the presence and personality of the verger, before passing within the temple proper.
It is true the Evangelist does not here inscribe his name; it is true that after inserting these lines of explanation, he loses sight of himself completely, with a sublime repressing of himself such as John did not know; but that he here throws the shadow of himself upon the page of Scripture, calling the attention of all people and ages to the me also, shows clearly that the personal element cannot be eliminated from the question of inspiration. Light is the same in its nature; it moves only in straight lines; it is governed by fixed laws; but in its reflections it is infinitely varied, turning to purple, blue, or gold, according to the nature of the medium and reflecting substance. And what, indeed, is beauty, what the harmony of colours, but the visible music as the same light plays upon the diverse keys? Exactly the same law rules in inspiration. As the Divine Love needed an incarnation, an enshrining in human flesh, that the Divine Word might be vocal, so the Divine Light needs its incarnation too. Indeed, we can scarcely conceive of any revelation of the Divine Mind but as coming through a human mind. It needs the human element to analyze and to throw it forward, just as the electric spark needs the dull carbon-point to make it visible. Heaven and earth are here, as elsewhere, threads of the same loom, and if we take out one, even the earthly woof of the humanities, we leave only a tangle; and if it is true of works of art that to know them we must know the man who produced them, it is equally important, if we would know the Scripture, that we have some knowledge of the scribe. And especially important is it here, for there are few books of Scripture on which the writer's own personality is more deeply impressed than on the Gospel of St. Luke. The me also is only legible in the third verse, but we may read it, between the lines, through the whole Gospel.