CONCLUSION.

But enough. A book in which Jesus gives the explanation of the Supper a year before its celebration; in which 139500, if not 1000, soldiers, when he whom they are sent to take prisoner says “I am he,” recoil and fall to the ground (xviii. 3-6); in which one hundred pounds of spices are used to embalm his body (xix. 39), ought, at the outset, to be safe from the misunderstanding that it recounts real events. These three points are enough to show that it is dominated by complete indifference as to the faithfulness of a record; that importance is attached only to giving as impressive a representation as possible of certain ideas; and that the whole is sustained by a reverence of Jesus which has lost every standard for measuring what can really happen.