Twenty years after Matthew's Gospel was written, God called a Greek scholar, named Luke, to write what was to be a most important part of our Bible. The Jews of old hated and despised the Gentiles; we have seen how bitterly they persecuted Paul because he declared that God had sent him to preach to the heathen nations; think, therefore, how impossible it would have seemed to a Jew of this time, that a Gentile could, at God's bidding, write two Books which should become even more precious and sacred than the Books of the Law, which the Jews rightly prized as the greatest treasure of their nation!
Those who work in heathen lands to-day tell us that the Gospel of St. Luke is always the favourite book of the converts, and that if they can only afford to buy one Gospel they always ask for that of Luke. This is because the whole work is written from the Gentile point of view—it is the world's history of Christ.
St. Luke wrote his Gospel as an historian, and in dedicating his work to Theophilus[[2]] in a kind of preface, he followed the Greek custom. 'Many,' he says, 'have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us' (Luke i. 1), but their records have disappeared, while that of Luke remains.
He was a physician, as we know (Colossians iv. 14), and besides being highly educated and gifted, he took infinite pains with his work. He collected all the information he could both from books and eye-witnesses—either from the Saviour's Mother herself, or from some of her relations—and to him we owe many of the most beautiful and touching facts of our Lord's life on earth.
Written last of all, we have the good news—that is, Gospel, told by St. John.
When the Saviour ascended into Heaven, John was still a young man, but he lived to be older than all the other Apostles. By the time that St. John wrote his Gospel, Jerusalem had been destroyed and her inhabitants slain or scattered. He was able, therefore, to mention details, and give the actual names of people and places, which, if told earlier, might have endangered the lives of those of whom he wrote.
Many instances of this will be found by those who read carefully. He alone mentions the name of the Apostle who struck off the ear of the High Priest's servant, and the story of the raising of Lazarus is given only by St. John as though it would have been dangerous to record it earlier.
So filled with love was the Apostle John that before he died his spirit became altogether one with Christ's spirit, and the sayings of Jesus, which he had only half understood whilst his Master had walked this earth, grew quite clear to him, so that he remembered them distinctly.
Therefore, that others might understand also, God's Spirit called John, when he was an old man, to write out those precious words of Jesus Christ's which were always echoing in his heart, and which the other writers had not known, or had forgotten. It is in John's Gospel that we learn most about the love of Christ.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—let us thank God for them all.