I have long had the conviction that the results
of that fuller and more exact interpretation of the books of the New Testament
to which biblical scholars have been conducted, might be made available for
framing such a continuous and expanded narrative of the leading incidents in
our Redeemer’s life as would be profitable for practical and devotional, rather
than for doctrinal or controversial purposes. It was chiefly to try whether I
could succeed in realizing the conception I had formed of what such a narrative
might be made, that the volume on the Last
Day of Our Lord’s Passion was published. The favourable reception which it
met has induced me to issue a companion volume on the succeeding and closing
period of our Lord’s life on earth. Should this meet with anything like equal
favour, I will be encouraged to prosecute the task of completing the narrative
in a similar form.
To one who previously had doubts of the historic truth of the entire
Gospel narrative, a personal inspection of the localities in which the events
are represented as having occurred, must have a peculiar interest and value. It
was in such a state of mind, half inclined to believe that the whole story of
the Gospel was legendary, that M. Renan visited the Holy Land three years ago.
He has told us the result. “All that history,” he says, “which at a distance
seemed to float in the clouds of an unreal world took instantly a body, a
solidity, which astonished me. The striking accord between the texts and the
places, the marvellous harmony of the evangelical picture with the country
which served as its frame, were to me as a revelation. I had before my eyes a
fifth gospel, mutilated but still legible, and ever afterwards in the recitals
of Matthew and Mark, instead of an abstract Being that one would say had never
existed, I saw a wonderful human figure live and move.” In listening to this
striking testimony as to the effect of his visit to the East, we have deeply to
regret that with M. Renan the movement from incredulity towards belief stopped
at its first stage.
