Chapter 6

"Produce Your Witnesses


I.   We KNOW that Jesus Christ lived upon this earth, not because we have seen Him with our eyes or heard Him with our ears, but because the holy Gospels relate the story of His life, because those who saw and heard Him tell us about Him.
   In the first place, it is of the utmost importance to perceive in a clear and convincing manner that everything we are told concerning the life of Our Lord is the truth, and nothing but the truth. This life of Christ, as contained in the Gospel, forms a portion of Holy Scripture, and is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God; it rests, therefore, upon divine authority, and is worthy of absolute belief. But even apart from its divine character, this history is as worthy of belief as the most trustworthy of the earliest records. And why is this? When do you, dear reader believe that any history which you read is true? Only when you are quite convinced as to its in particular, when you are able to persuade yourself that the writer knew the truth, and desired to tell it. Well, then, the four evangelists, who related the life of Christ, can come forward and bear witness to its truth.
II.   In the first place, there is no disputing the fact that the authorship of the Gospels has not only been ascribed to these four men, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but that they, and they alone, did write them in very deed. And to this fact the Fathers of the Church who lived and wrote in the time immediately succeeding the apostolic ages, and numerous Christian theologians who shed their blood for the Faith, bear unhesitating witness; heretics, moreover, do the same, inasmuch as they endeavor to prove their false religious opinions by quotations from the Gospel; the Talmud also, the modern legal code of the Jews, acknowledges the gospel miracles as facts; finally the heathen sages, Celsus and Porphyrius, and even the apostate emperor, Julian, who poured scorn and contempt upon the religion he had so basely abandoned, did not attempt to deny that the life of Christ was written by the four evangelists.
III.   Furthermore, these writers of the Gospel, these witnesses for the truth of it, are entirely trustworthy; their testimony is absolutely reliable. In the first place, they were in a position to tell the truth, since they were well acquainted with the facts. Who indeed could better know the truth than St. Matthew and St. John, who received their vocation as apostles from the divine Redeemer Himself, and who were privileged to be His constant companions, to hear His words and behold His wonderful works? And the two other evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke, were fully acquainted with the life of Christ, because they wrote their gospels at the suggestion and under the direction of two apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul.
IV.   No reasonable man can doubt that the holy evangelists spoke the truth if he attentively considers the manner in which they wrote. Any one who wishes to deceive the reader, to misrepresent circumstances or facts, would certainly not write in so straightforward, frank, and honest a manner as we find that the sacred historians invariably do. He who desires to distort or conceal the truth would assuredly not relate his own faults and failings and those of his dearest friends as the evangelists do. For this reason Rousseau, one of the bitterest enemies of Christ, is fain to confess: "A history like that of the Gospel is not invented." The Gospel possesses such touching, such utterly inimitable marks of truthfulness, that if the author were an inventor and impostor, he would be more worthy of admiration than the one who is the subject of the gospel narrative. It would be, indeed, a shameless proceeding to reproach an apostle with deceit, unless some further proof were forthcoming. What reasonable motive could they have had to lie? Persecution, chains, imprisonment, death --- no one deceives for such gain as this; no one would get himself hung for a lie!
V.   And yet more! The evangelists wrote amid circumstances and in times which rendered it well-nigh impossible for them to deceive.
   In the days when Jesus lived and labored, people had sharp eyes and ears, just as in our day, and the enemies of Christianity were not less cunning and malicious than they are at present. Can you imagine that these people would have been good-natured enough to hold their tongues if the disciples of Jesus had related in the Gospel facts concerning Him which were either falsehoods, or, to say the least, gross misrepresentations? And when, about thirty years after Christ, St. Matthew wrote his gospel, there were still living a great number of those who had formerly been among the bitter enemies of Christ. How would they have attacked the apostle, had he taken upon himself to invent either facts or miracles concerning the life of Christ!
VI.   Thus the evangelists stand before us as absolutely reliable witnesses to the truth. And herein consists the secret of the beauty, simplicity, sanctity, and indestructible power of the holy Gospel. It is not the soul, the mind, the gifts of the writers that we find in them, but the soul, the mind, the thoughts, the maxims of Him who forms the subjects of their writings. Jesus lives in the gospels; He acts, He speaks, He touches the heart, He enlightens and sanctifies. Venerate, therefore, these wondrous pages! Read them in a spirit of faith and with a heart overflowing with the love of God; For

In Hole Scripture God His truth displays,
  And yet its pages, read in various ways,
Bring faith to some; cause doubt in other minds:
  That one sucks honey, this one poison finds."