[5] Origin, etc., p. 35; Wright, p. 189.
CHAPTER XI.
STILL ASCENDING THE STREAM.
The evidence thus far has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that at the writing of Justin’s First Apology, the Canonical Gospels were read with the Prophets in city and country, on “the day called Sunday,” as authentic Memoirs of our Lord. Assuming the date[1] of this Apology to have been A.D. 138 or 139, the time was a little over one hundred years from the Crucifixion, and less than eighty years from the death of Mark and Luke, and all the Apostles other than John, and only forty years from his death. How long were these periods as they affect the argument from the universal reception of the Gospels in Justin’s time, and from the universal tradition in their favor which accompanied such reception? The writer has within two days (in April, 1881) met with three persons who saw Lafayette on his visit to New England in 1824. One of them distinctly remembers the sentiment[2] which Lafayette gave at Concord, and another shook hands with him. There were hundreds of Revolutionary soldiers present, some of whom the General recognized and called by name, although he had not seen their faces for more than forty years. This was in 1824. Whittier’s poem describes one of these soldiers, as he now remembers him, at the time of Monroe’s tour in 1817, sixty-four years ago:
“Once a soldier, blame him not,
That the Quaker he forgot,
When to think of battles won,
And the red coats on the run,
Laughed aloud Friend Morrison.”
And throughout the country there are thousands now living[A] who well knew men who were in active life during the War of the Revolution. In the Granite Monthly for December, 1880, was published the Diary of Rev. Timothy Walker of Concord, for the year 1780, and there were earlier Diaries kept by him which have been preserved by his descendants. The Diary of Matthew Patten of Bedford, from 1750 to 1790, is in the custody of Charles H. Woodbury, Esq., of New York. The Congregational church at Concord, of which Timothy Walker was the first pastor, November, 1880, celebrated its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary. There are several towns in New Hampshire, as Londonderry, Dover, Exeter and Portsmouth, that were settled earlier than Concord; and some of them as early as 1623. The landing of the Pilgrims was two hundred and sixty years ago. It seems but as yesterday. A century from the Crucifixion was no longer than a century now; and as an event, to be remembered, the Crucifixion was as much greater than the Landing of the Pilgrims as the glory of the noonday sun is above that of the feeblest star in the most distant heavens. The time that has elapsed since Timothy Walker wrote Diaries which are now in existence is as long as from the Crucifixion to Justin’s Apology; more than thirty years longer than from the martyrdom of Peter and Paul to Justin’s Apology; and sixty years longer than from John’s death to Justin’s Apology. The churches in Justin’s time were not dealing with writings from a dim and misty past, or of limited or infrequent use. None were as ancient as Walker’s Diary; the last had not seen half its years; they were in all the churches, and read every Sabbath day. The argument which proves that there was no substitution between 140 and 180 is as much more forcible to prove that there was no substitution between the years 100 and 140, or between the years 60 and 100, as those times were nearer the great events which the Gospels recorded. If, for example, there were accepted Memoirs of our Lord in the churches in the year 100, from the presumed continuance of a state of things the existence of which has been proved,[3] it should be presumed that they remained in the churches till Justin’s time, there being no evidence to the contrary. And so there would be the same (or greater) difficulties in the way of displacement and substitution, between the year 100 and the year 140, as between the year 140 and the year 180. Justin and his contemporaries had from their own recollection,[4] or from others, whether parents, teachers, presbyters or bishops, as great facilities for knowing what Memoirs were accepted in the churches forty years before, as had Irenæus and his contemporaries in respect to the period of forty years before one hundred and eighty. And there was a succession and continued life in the churches from 100 to 140, the same as from 140 to 180. This reasoning is applicable to Clement and his contemporaries, and shows that Memoirs which were in the churches in the year 100 could not have displaced accepted and generally received Memoirs of any previous period. We know from the Epistle of Clement, as clearly as from Justin’s Apology, how Christians loved and adored their Divine Lord and Master, and how strongly attached they must have been to any Memoirs of him, which they accepted as authentic. And the testimony of Pliny is, that Christians in his day were accustomed to meet before daybreak and sing a responsive hymn to Christ as God. It is utterly incredible that accepted Memoirs of Christ, thus worshipped, should have been thrown aside by presbyters or bishops, and hundreds of churches, throughout the Roman Empire, without a shock that would have left unmistakable evidences of it in history. There being an entire absence of any evidence of displacement and substitution, it is morally certain there was none. John’s Gospel, however, stands upon a different footing, since it came in not to displace, but to supplement. John lived to the close of the first century. Who dared to forge a spurious Gospel in his name, so soon after his death that it had obtained such a footing in the churches, at the end of forty years, as to be quoted as his production? Who, during that period, was capable of composing it? And how were hundreds of presbyters or bishops, and churches, from Syria to Gaul, persuaded to receive a spurious Gospel, as the genuine work of the beloved disciple who was in life within the personal[4] recollections of many? It is a fact to be emphasized, that neither this Gospel, nor the others, can be assailed on historical or traditional grounds. There is but one history or tradition concerning them. The objections to them are either negative or speculative, mere assumptions, not supported by any history or tradition.