Studies in the Gospels: Luke the Gospel for the Greeks [pp. 448-475]

1875.] STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. 461
(3.) The structure of the third Gospel accords with our hypothesis. Says Da Costa: "If the Gospel of St. Matthew
suggests to us the idea of a perpetual comparing of the person
of Jesus Christ with the predictions of the prophets; if we
found in Mark the mighty deeds of the Lord related in the
form of a compressed but consistent and likely report-we recognize in St. Luke that one among the four Evangelists who
was more peculiarly M~ /ii)stor?~n. His Gospel announces itself
as such from its very introduction.'`~ This structure was
suited to meet the wants of the ~sthetic and literary Greek.
The philosophy of the origin, development and mission of
Jesus must be made to pass before his mind in its order and
reasonableness. This is found in Luke, together with the
greatest definiteness in dates-and events, with the clearest and
most accurate knowledge ~f ~ewish and Gentile contemporaneous history, and with the widest and firmest grasp of the
workings of the human soul and of the condition and wants
of mankind.
The third Gospel accords with our hypothesis in its selection
of materials. Matthew and Mark bring their facts chiefly
from Christ's ministry in Galilee among a people of Jewish
ideas; the former giving both the events and discourses of the
Jew, and the latter omitting the discourses and picturing the
events for the matter-of-fact Roman. John records chiefly the
ministry in Judea to the true Israel and to the Apostles, the
enlightened founders of the new dispensation; he therefore
gives those spiritual discourses and communings of Christ which
are fitted to elevate the Christian or spiritual man, and bring
him to higher knowledge of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, and into closer sympathy with them. Luke alone gives
the Gospel of the infancy of Jesus, and then, after gathering
some facts of power from the ministry in Galilee, in order to
show the divine power of the perfect man, Jesus, confines himself chiefly (ch. ix:5 I; xix: 27) to what is now generally acknowledged to be Christ's ministry in Per~a, or on his last journey to Jerusalem-a ministry to a Gentile race, and so suited
to the Greek and to all the world.
2. In particular, it may be shown that the Gospel according
* Da Costa, Four Witnesses, p. iSo.