exactly the same as ours. He will notice that all the events related in Justin are the same as those recorded in the Evangelists Matthew and Luke; and that the circumstances related by Justin, and not to be found in the Synoptics, are of the most trifling character, as, for instance, that the blaspheming bystanders at the cross "screwed up their noses." I think this is the only additional circumstance to which the writer of "Supernatural Religion" draws attention. He will notice that Justin records some events only to be found in St. Matthew and some only in St. Luke. He will notice also how frequently Justin reproduces the narrative rather than quotes it.

The ordinary reader would account for all this by supposing that Justin had our Synoptics (at least the first and third) before him, and reproduced incidents first from one and then from the other as they suited his purpose, and his purpose was not to give an account of the Crucifixion, but to elucidate the prophecies respecting the Crucifixion.

The author of "Supernatural Religion," however, goes through those citations, or supposed citations, seriatim, and attempts to show that each one must have been taken from some lost Gospel, most probably the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Be it so. Here, then, was a Gospel which contained all the separate incidents recorded in SS. Matthew and Luke, and, of course, combined them in one narrative. How is it that so inestimably valuable a Christian document was irretrievably lost, and its place supplied by three others, each far its inferior, each picking and choosing separate parts from the original; and that, about 120 years after the original promulgation of the Gospel, these three forged narratives superseded a Gospel which would have been, in the matter of our Lord's Birth, Death, and Resurrection, a complete and perfect harmony? I leave the author of "Supernatural Religion" to explain so unlikely a fact. One explanation is, however, on our author's own showing, inadmissible, which is, that our present Synoptics were adopted because they pandered more than the superseded one to the growing taste for the supernatural, for the earlier Gospel or Gospels contained supernatural incidents which are wanting in our present Synoptics.