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Readers are asked to n- (^mntW I K^mMi.- „^ _™ ^:i^oriz^.'r^ Do not deface books b; marks and mitiiii^ Theifearly Revisers of the Gospel A Lecture by £. S. BUCHANAN, M.A., B.Sc., Editor of OXFORD OLD-LATIN BIBLICAL TEXTS, Noi. V and VI; SACRED LATIN TEXTS, Noa. I, II and III; THE RECORDS UNROLLED; AN ENGLISH VERSION OF THE IRISH GOSPELS: HE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINAL WORDS OF THE GOSPEL; A NEW TEXT OF THE APOCALYPSE FROM SPAIN, etc. Delivered at DREW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Madison, New Jersey December 1, 1915 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029304346 f - S. Z^< The Early Revisers of the Gospel i-Y _,,t' a Lecture by E. S. BUCHANAN, M.A., B.Sc, Editor of OXFORD OLD-LATIN BIBLICAL TEXTS, Nos. V and VI; SACRED LATIN TEXTS, Nos. I, II and III: THE RECORDS UNROLLED: AN ENGLISH VERSION OF THE IRISH GOSPELS; THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGINAL WORDS OF THE GOSPEL; A NEW TEXT OF THE APOCALYPSE FROM SPAIN, etc. Delivered at DREW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Madison, New Jersey December 1, 1915 Copyright 1915 E. S. BUCHANAN A.s(jb?>vf4, Copies of this The Early Rictiiera of the Gospel may be obtained from the Paget Literary Agency, 25 W. 45th St., New York. Price, 25 cents post paid. Remittance to be sent with order. By the same writer. The Search for the Original Words of the Gospeb A lecture delivered at Union Theological Seminary, New York, Decem- ber 3d, 1914. Paget Literary Agency. Price, 25 cents post paid. A New Text of the Apocalypse from Spain: A translation from the Latin Text of the J. P. Morgan MS. of the eighth century Commentary of the Spanish Presbyter Beatus. Paget Literary Agency. Price, 50 cents post paid. Christ's Teaching on Divorce According to the Earliest MSS. Paget Literary Agency. Price, 25 cents post pziid. The Early Revisers of the Gospel A Lecture by E. S. Buchanan, M.A., B.Sc, at DREW THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Madison, New Jersey December 1, 1915. De. H. a. Buttz, Emeritus President, took the chair at 4 p.m. Dr. F. Watson Hannan opened with prayer. Db. H. A. Buttz : The President is unable to be here to present in person the lecturer of the afternoon, and has assigned that privilege to me. It is a great priv- ilege to welcome those who do so much to advance the interests of the Kingdom of God. The subject on which the lecturer today is to speak is one of the utmost importance, and has taxed the skill and wis- dom of scholars throughout the centuries, namely, the attempt to get back to the first words, the original documents, the words spoken by Christ and His Apos- tles, so that we may know exactly what has been 8 written — may know that they are, indeed, the words of sacred truth. Mr. Buchanan comes to us after a thorough study of these important subjects. He is a specialist in this great department; and it affords me pleasure to welcome Mr. E. S. Buchanan, Master of Arts, and Editor of the Oxford Old-Latin Biblical Texts: Nos. V and VI, who will address you now. Me. Buchanan: Dr. Buttz, Ladies — I am glad to see some ladies here — and Gentlemen : it is with great pleasure that I speak to you this afternoon about a subject which — as has been said — is of vital import- ance to each one of us, and not only to each one of us, but also to those whom we know and those whom we love, to those who live in this great country as well as to those who live in the Old World, whose past records I have had a better opportunity of studying than most of you here. The subject I wish to speak about this afternoon is the Early Revisers of the Gospel. We have all of us the printed Bible. I hope that you use the King James' Version rather than the Revised Version, be- cause, after eighteen years' research among manu- scripts, I have come to the conclusion that the King James' Version is a much more trustworthy Version, both in its original text, and in its translation, than the Revised Version, which was put out in 1881 from the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster. The text of our King James' Version is practically that of the first printed Greek Testament of Erasmus, issued in the year 1516. Erasmus used a Greek manu- script of the 12th century, he tells us, but he believed that that manuscript took him back to apostolic times. He thought that in that manuscript he had practically the words as they left the lips of the inspired evan- gelists. The Received text so called was in all important particulars the text issued by Erasmus in 1516; and the Received text continued to be in vogue and con- tinued to be accepted until the text of Lachmann in 1831, when its supremacy was first really challenged. Tischendorf followed up the work of Lachmann, and he was fortunate enough to discover an ancient Greek manuscript at Mount Sinai, which is now known to scholars as the Codex Sinaiticus. He said that he would rather have discovered that manuscript than the Koh-i-noor diamond, and he proceeded to bring out a very beautiful edition of his discovery. This he was able to do because he succeeded in ob- taining the Tsar of Russia as his patron, and the manu- script is now lodged in the royal library at St. Peters- burg. Tischendorf almost worshipped this one single manuscript. He was inclined to believe that even its eccentricities were excellencies; and even where it opposed all other existing authorities he often followed its reading. Doctors Westcott and Hort, in England, drank deeply of the subjective spirit of Tischendorf, with the result that they likewise — and like foolishly — 5 established a single manuscript, the Codex Vaticanus, which I have seen in Rome in the Vatican Library — a sister manuscript to the Codex Sinaiticus — as their practically infallible guide. Dr. Hort believed that a text which had the sup- port of the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus was the same text as the apostolic autographs. He tells us that the text of Aleph and B (that is, of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus), when they agree, gives us "a true approximate reproduction of the text of the autographs" — let me repeat his very words, a true approximate reproduction of the text of the autographs. The majority of the Revisers of our English Bible believed in the words of Drs. Westcott and Hort, and they were each furnished beforehand with a copy of the new text as edited by the two Eng- lish University of Cambridge Professors, and hence our Revised Version follows in the main this new text of Drs. Westcott and Hort, which has been sent forth to all the English-speaking countries of the world as the last result of scientific Bible criticism. Now, what is the character of these two manu- scripts, the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus, and what is their age? I have seen the Codex Vat- icanus, and I have seen a photographic edition of the Codex Sinaiticus, and after having personally viewed and personally handled 48 out of 50 of the oldest manu- scripts of the Bible in the world, of the New Testa- ment in the world, I should place the date of the copy- 6 ing of those two manuscripts — Tischendorf tells us they were both in part copied by the same scribe — between the years 360 A.D. and 420 A.D. That is the date when they were copied. They show a sinister agreement with the text which St. Jerome issued, the Roman Vulgate, in the year 382 ; and, therefore, I am compelled to place their production close to the year 382. The Lord's Prayer in the Vulgate in St. Luke exactly agrees with the Lord's prayer in Codex B (that is the Codex Vaticanus) in St. Luke: Father, hallowed be thy name; Thy kingdom come; Give us today our daily bread; And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one indebted to us; And lead us not into temptation. The rest is omitted, and entirely omitted only by Codex B among Greek manuscripts. The Sinaitic manuscript omits also part of what is omitted by Codex B, but it does not omit the whole. The only complete agreement is on the part of Codex B and the Vulgate. We thus reach the year 382, when the great revi- sion took place at Rome of the current text of the Gospels. Fortunately we have an account of this revision by the reviser himself, who was a single individual, not a company of men but a single indiv- idual, St. Jerome. We are thus on sure ground, and are not building a theory of revision on an imaginary foundation. We have St. Jerome's own account of the conditions under which he began his work, and the end which he set before him. He tells us there was a sad chaos in the text of all Latin manuscripts. There were as many texts as manuscripts; and, therefore, to end this diversity he had appealed, he said, to "the Greek truth." Now, we find that "the Greek truth" he appealed to was the text of the New Testament as edited by Origen; for St. Jerome was a slavish follower of the great Alexandrian teacher Origen, and what Jerome did was to make a Latin edition of the Gospels that agreed with the third century Greek edition of the New Tes- tament which had the support and the prestige of Origen. Origen was born in the year 185 and died in the year 253. He was the glory of the catechetical school of Alexandria. He lectured for forty years on The- ology and Philosophy. It is said that he was the author of 6,000 books, which far exceeds the output of the most prolific of our modem Professors. He never wore any shoes or boots. I have not yet found out for what reason. He was a vegetarian, and his belief in celibacy led him to practise the most extreme ascetiscism. Origen, who was deeply versed in the writing of Plato, believed with Plato in the pre-existence of the soul. 8 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness and not in utter naked- ness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, Who is our home. Wordsworth has expressed this belief of Plato in these imperishable words ; and this belief among others was adopted as part of his theology as well as philos- ophy by the great Origen. Origen also investigated the depths of the mystery of the Trinity, and was inclined to believe that the Son of God was subordinate to the Father, and, further, that the Holy Spirit was subordinate to the Son. Alexandria encouraged speculation, and all the Gnostic errors and Arian heresies which troubled the early Church found a fertile soil for their growth in Alexandria. We must remember that the Christian Gospel came into the world to meet hostile forces. As long as men looked upon Christianity as a new philosophy, they were ready to give it a place in their system and their speculations. As long as they looked upon Jesus Christ as merely adding another to their al- ready long list of deities they were quite willing to receive the Christian teaching with complacency, if not with actual favor. But when St. Paul and St. a John and those who followed their teaching, preached Jesus Christ as "the true God," when they preached that He was "God over all, blessed for ever," that was a teaching which encountered then, as it encounters today, from philosophers and scientists as well as from Jewish catechists, a strong and often bitter hostility. The conditions of the modem world, in which we live, are reproducing in many essentials the conditions of the first ages. We have allowed philosophy, and we have allowed science, to take the supreme place in our programme of instruction both in our schools and in our colleges. When I was a boy I was taught by my father the three R's, Latin and Greek, the Bible, and I think that was all that was regarded as of any great value. Nowadays instead of this we are taught science and philosophy and psychology and other ologies, which it would take me too long to enumerate one by one. The result is that there is in the world a paralyzing confusion of thought. In England, our scientists, like Sir Oliver Lodge, have set themselves up as teachers of divinity. I cannot say it is very good divinity, but it imposes on a great many people who have not had an opportunity to study the true and historic divinity ; whilst our theologians have more or less gone over to the camp of the rationalists and the scientists; and there is a strong current running in England today, which depreciates, and not only depreciates, but endeavors to change and deface the record of the supernatural and miraculous acts of the Son of God. 10 Christianity is meeting again, as it did in the early centuries, the full force of philosophy and the full force of rationalism, both of which it has always re- sisted by the power of God's Holy Spirit and by the help He gave to the early Christian teachers; and we can still only meet the opposition that every one of us has to face, by a renewed study of Scripture itself, and by the help of that same Holy Spirit of God, Who, first of all, enlightens our own hearts, and then in- structs us what we ought to believe and what we ought to teach. Those of you who are students of Textual Criticism know that we have set before us today really three forms of the Gospel text, each form claiming to be the true and authentic one: (1) The Received text, consecrated by long usage. (2) The Alexandrian text, which Doctors Westcott and Hort begged the question by calling the "Neutral" text. (3) The Western Text, whose readings Dr. Hort thought to be no readings at all, but mere fabrications of ingenious copyists. I am a believer in the Western text. It is a text, which in the second century was dominant not only in the west, but in the east, and in every clime or country where Christianity was taught. In the third and fourth centuries it was largely, though not en- tirely, dispossessed in Egypt by the Alexandrian text. Later it was ousted everywhere by the Received text, which is practically the Vulgate text in a Greek dress. 11 Drs. Westcott and Hort by reviving the Alexandrian text of Origen, revived also, sad to say, the Alex- andrian heresies. A great many Arianized readings first crept into the text at Alexandria, and thence found their way into the Vulgate; for the Greek text used by St. Jerome took in a long series of previous revisions of the Greek Gospels. The chief merit of St. Jerome, to be set over against his fondness for the novelties of Origen, was that he fixed the Gospel text as he found it for fifteen hundred years. It is true that our Gospels, as far as we have them at present, can be traced back to a form of text ap- proved in Alexandria and in Rome as long ago as 382 A.D. ; but there were, as we now know, very important changes made in their text between 82 A.D. and 382 A.D. ; that is in the 300 years between their first copying and their being stereotyped by St. Jerome. What was the nature of this early revision? It was a continued depravation of the pureness of the primitive records. It was very largely directed against the teaching of the Deity of Jesus Christ and the teaching of the Personality of the Holy Spirit, which we find clearly stated in the earliest Western manu- scripts, but which largely disappear from the man- scripts of Origen and of the Vulgate, and from all Greek MSS. from the fourth century onwards. That momentous 300 years saw many wounds in- flicted upon the sacred body of Holy Scripture; and I have found at least twenty verses in the New Testa- 12 ment in Western manuscripts, which refer to the Holy Spirit, and which have been altogether expunged by the early Egyptian revisers. Again, with regard to the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ the earliest West- ern manuscripts show that this was once taught with much clearness in the Gospels and in the Epistles of St. Paul and in the Revelation of St. John. This clarity of teaching, however, was, darkened in these three hundred years, when men treated the Scriptures with a more or less free hand ; when men like Marcion in the second century accepted only the Gospel of St. Luke and mutilated it to suit their own doctrinal prepossessions ; when Cerinthus, an Egyptian, even in the first century declared that Jesus was bom by human generation, and so shocked the Apostle St. John that he rushed from a public bath at Ephesus, which he had entered, on being told that the heretic Cerinthus was also in the room. It is not a new teaching to deny the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. It is not a new teaching to declare that the Holy Spirit is merely an influence and not a Per- sonality. These declarations were made in the first century by Cerinthus, and in the second century by Celsus, the Epicurean philosopher; and in the second century, too, by Marcion, the Scripture mutilator, who was a native of Pontus in Asia Minor, but who found his way later to Rome. So therefore, when we think that we have formu- lated something new in our modern denials of the 13 essentials of the Christian faith, we are really turning back to what was put forth in the first and second and third centuries by the philosophers and pseudo- scientists of the day, who sought to overturn and over- throw what was distinctive in the Christian teaching. We have clearly in our Gospel texts the marks of the Church's battles in the past. In the Gospel of St. Mark the first verse begins, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." In one ancient Latin manuscript, fourteen hundred years old, in the British Museum Harley Collection, that verse reads, "The beginning of the Gospel of the Son of God," omitting the words, "Jesus Christ." In the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered by Dr. Tischendorf in 1859, that verse reads, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," omitting the words, "Son of Gk)d." Dr. Tischendorf declared that this omission showed the extreme value of the Codex Sinaiticus. He pointed out that Origen five times quoted the text in the way that it was found in the Codex Sinaiticus. He pointed out further that St. Jerome, who follows Origen, quoted it twice as Origen did. And there- fore, says Dr. Tischendorf, "Supported by the testi- mony of the Fathers, there can be no doubt that the Codex Sinaiticus contains the primitive text, although even by the time of Irenaeus [A.D. 180] men already read the text with the noble addition put in, but the added words, 'The Son of God,' seem to me in this connection out of place. It would be very foolish, 14 and opposed to the whole history of the sacred text, to argue that the words were removed by non-believ- ers rather than inserted by an officious and mistaken piety." "It would be," says Dr. Tischendorf, "opposed to the whole history of the sacred text to argue that the words were removed by non-believers rather than inserted by an officious and mistaken piety." But in this controversy my study of Western manuscripts for the last eighteen years has shown me more than one hundred cases in which letters and words in Western manuscripts as first written have been al- tered — always altered in one direction, to take away from the Deity of Christ, and never in one single instance altered so as to bring out more clearly the witness of the Apostles to the Deity of Christ; and, therefore, I am convinced that the omission by the Codex Sinaiticus is only another evidence of the early work of the unbeliever and the heretic in depraving the true copies of Holy Scripture. I have recently published as Sacred Latin Texts: No. Ill, a manuscript copied at Armagh in Ireland, of the Four Gospels, and this manuscript gives us in many of its readings the Western text, or Old-Latin text; and I wish to give you from the Gospel of St. John a few verses from this ancient Western manu- script. Instead of "In Him was life" — a colourless saying — which is found in our Bibles, this manu- script has "In Him was the life of God which is 15 the light of men." "In Him was life and the life was the light of men" is our Bible. "In Him was the life of God which is the light of men" is the Western reading. Again, in the eighth chapter of St. John, the Jews asked our Lord, "If Thou art Christ tell us plainly"; and He answers, "I have told you already and ye believe not." But the Armagh manuscript has a re- markable reading and tells us that the question was, "If Thou art God ["God" instead of "Christ"! tell us plainly" ; to which our Lord answers, "I have told you already and ye believe not." It is impossible that DEUS could have been miscopied for CHRISTUS. There is here a deliberate alteration. DEUS is under, is the lower reading. It has been erased and CHRIS- TUS has been placed on the top. Now, it is with this science of textual criticism as with geology, the lower strata are the more ancient strata, and the upper strata are those of later formation. The Codex Bezae has in the main a second century text with many Western readings, and I wish to give you just one or two of the confirmations of my thesis to be found in the Codex Bezae. In the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel our Bible reads, "Make straight His path" or "His paths." The Codex Bezae reads, "Make straight the paths of our God." And the Codex Bezae is supported by at least eight Old-Latin manuscripts, which I myself have seen and copied. Again, in the Book of the Acts, where St. Paul 16 heals the cripple at Lystra, the Greek manuscripts tell us that St. Paul said, "Rise up and walk," but Codex Bezae with the Old-Latin and Western manu- scripts tells us that St. Paul said, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I bid thee rise up and walk." In the story of the baptism of the Ethiopian by St. Philip, the Western text tells us that the Ethi- opian made a confession, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God," and thereupon was baptized. The Greek text, which comes from Alexandria, omits this confession altogether, but the confession stands untampered with in many non-Alexandrian Greek manuscripts and in the Western text. Codex Bezae is unfortunately mutilated in this chapter. I hope that you are gathering from this what I wish you to, gather, that there was from the begin/- ning revision of the Gospels. That revision, always operant, detracted one by one vital elements from the teaching of the Apostles, and from the teaching of the primitive Christians. The revision sought to bring down the Christian revelation to the level of the non-supernatural philosophical culture of the day ; and one of the most powerful means that these non-believers had — and many non-believers were then as now in high positions in the Church — one of the most powerful means that these non-believers had was the falsification of the records of the evangelists. Scriptioni Christum Deum neganti praestat adnunt- ians is thus a valuable canon in our search for the primitive text. 17 For Tertullian again and again tells us that the heretics falsified the Scriptures. Irenaeus, too, at the end of one of his works, puts in a solemn adjuration that the man who copied his manuscript was to copy it faithfully, or else he would be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ at His coming. And all the early Fa- thers constantly tell us how unbelievers like Marcion to establish their own doctrines resorted to depraving and mutilating the sacred text. Thus it has come about, that, in many texts where we should expect a clear utterance concerning such an important question as to the nature of Jesus Christ, we find a cloudy and an ambiguous utterance that is not the work of the original evangelists, but of which we can only say, "An enemy hath done this." I do not wish you to conclude that my manuscript researches have brought the great cardinal facts of the Gospel into any doubt. The miracles all stand. Not one has been added; and not one has, to the best of my knowledge, been altered. The parables stand. A few of them have been here and there changed; but their number has not been lessened nor added to. It is the doctrinal statements ; it is the statements which concern the divinity of Christ, the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the office of the Church, eternal pun- ishment, and the everlasting mercy of God — it is on these vital issues that we find there has been an almost uniform rehandling of the primitive words of the Apostles. 18 And so we are brought to this point, that whereas we have the facts, the great facts, which are pro- nounced in the Apostles' creed, the great facts which are so amply attested in the MSS., unshaken, and, thank God, unshakable — ^the virgin birth of Christ, the miracles that He wrought. His resurrection and the sending forth of the Holy Spirit — whereas those facts are established, doubt has been thrown, very serious doubt has been thrown, upon the validity of certain verses which have been used as foundation texts on which to build vast ecclesiastical structures that have overtopped and finally hidden from view the original Gospel, which was proclaimed to be and is, "Good tidings of great joy for all people." One verse, in conclusion to illustrate this. Our Lord once wistfully and earnestly asked His disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" One of them replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Christ replied, "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father Which is in heaven"; and He continued according to our Bible, "And I say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." In this connection I was happy enough only six months ago to make in this country a dis- covery, which I shall narrate in some detail owing to its great interest. I was working all alone last June in the library of the University of Michigan, 19 at Ann Arbor, where I spent the summer in decipher- ing a Spanish manuscript, loaned to me by the heirs of the late J. P. Morgan of New York. This Spanish manuscript contains the work of a Spanish presbyter called Beatus, who lived in the eighth century. It was acquired in October, 1910, in London by the librarian of the late J. P. Morgan for the Morgan library. The vendor, a Spaniard, said he had pur- chased it from the convent of San Clemente, Toledo, where tradition said it was given to the convent by King Alfonzo VI (1030-1109). A very large sum was asked and paid for the manuscript, owing to its richly colored miniatures (numbering an hundred and ten) being in an almost perfect state of preservation. It is a large folio containing 184 leaves of thick vellum, each leaf measuring 21 inches by 14 inches. The bind- ing is elaborate Spanish work of the seventeenth cen- tury. Besides the Apocalypse, the manuscript con- tains the Book of Daniel with a commentary. The manuscript is complete except for the loss of three leaves. It has two perfect postscripts, one by the scribe Emeterius, written 970 A.D., and one by the chief of the Vulgate correctors in 1220 A.D. By reason of its two postscripts the manuscript is an exact landmark of the highest value, not only to the textual student, but also the student of early Spanish art. Although copied in the tenth century, it has in the main a second century Western text, antedating both Origen and the Vulgate. 20 While at work on this manuscript, I saw that the I'emarkable words to St. Peter as we know them, had been written over some other erased words ; and after patient search I discovered what those erased words were, and they were these : "I say unto thee upon this rock" — omitting "Thou art Peter" — "Upon this rock shall be built by the Holy Spirit His disciples." There is no mention accordingly in this Spanish text of St. Peter, or of the Church, or of Hell. I say that such a discovery as this is an eye-opener. It makes one feel, it makes one believe, that if it was possible to get into the New Testament such a strong blast as this on behalf of the doctrine of the Church of Rome, and possible to get it accepted textually so widely, then we have not yet come to the end of the revisions that may have found their way into our Gospels, nor have we come to the day when we can say that further search for the original words of Jesus Christ is not necessary. Dk, Buttz: I am sure I express the gratitude of us all to Dr. Buchanan for his very instructive and inspiring lecture. It will certainly awaken a new interest among all of us in this Seminary in this sub- ject, which is so important. It is a great privilege we have enjoyed today, that of having an expert in the great department of textual criticism present to us the results of his investigations. It shows us on how strong a foundation our Christian faith is built. I would ask Dr. Sitterly to bestow the benediction. 21 Dr. Charles F. Sitterly : The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessing of God, our Heavenly Father, and the comfort of the Holy Ghost be with us all for ever. Amen. 22 The Search for the Original Words of the Gospel Lecture delivered Iqr E. S. BUCHANAN, M. A., B. Sc, Editor of OXFORD OLD LATIN BIBLICAL TEXTS, Nos. V mnd VI; SACRED LATIIii TEXTS. Nos. I. II and III; THE RECORDiS. UNROLLED; AN ENGLISH V&RSION OF THE IRISH GOSPELS; etc. AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY New York on Thursday, December 3d, .1914 f-r. The Search for the Original Words of the Gospel Lecture delivered by E. S. BUCHANAN, M. A., B. Sc, "^ Editor of OXFORD OLD LATIN BIBLICAL TEXTS, Nos. V and VI; SACRED LATIN TEXTS, Nos. I, II and III; THE RECORDS UNROLLED; AN ENGLISH VERSION OE THE IRISH GOSPELS; etc. AT UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY New York on Thursday, December 3d, 1914 ■^ Copyrlftht, 1914 by E. S. BUCHANAN Extra copies of this Lecture may be obtained from the Paget Literary Agency, S5 West 45th Street, New York. PRICE 8Sc PER COPY POSTPAID i^nclose reinittance with order "The Search for the Original Words of the Gospel' ' by E. S. Buchanan, M.A., B.Sc, At the Union Theological Seminary, Broadway and 120th Street, New York City, at 5 p. m., December 3d, 1914 President Brown in the Chair. THE CHAIRMAN : There is no subject more inter- esting to intelligent Christian people than that of the endeavor to get behind our earliest manuscripts of the Bible, and especially the New Testament, and recon- struct, as far as possible, the originals, as they were first written down. We have with us this afternoon one of the experts in this pursuit, in this country for a time, and able therefore to our great satisfaction to give us to-day, and report from his own original obser- vations and work what results, as to the Gospels, it seems to him possible to announce at the present time. I have much pleasure in introducing the Rev. E. S. Buchanan of Oxford. REV. E. S. BUCHANAN: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I do not propose this afternoon to be at all formal. As far as I can I wish to speak in a simple, humble and direct manner, and I wish to give, as far as possible, not other men's discoveries, but what I have myself seen, what I have myself been so fortunate as to discover, and what I think this audience will be the first public audience in the world to hear. I may be pardoned as a visitor to this great country if I say a few words about myself, not that I wish to make myself in any way the object of this talk, but I think the experience of my own mind under the his- torical discoveries, and especially the textual discov- eries which came to me, may be of interest. I had the very great privilege of being associated with Bishop John Wordsworth of Salisbury. It was owing to him that I entered the ministry of the Church of England, and as long as he was living I had a friend and a patron, and one who encouraged me, and who was al- ways kindly, and placed his knowledge and his friend- ship, and in some cases his money, at my service. When in the summer of 1911, he died quite suddenly, so suddenly that one afternoon after saying he felt a little tired, he laid down on the sofa in his palace at Salisbury, and died, it was a great shock to many be- side myself. I felt that I had lost the one man in Europe who had really started me on this work, and had helped me and supported me. I turned to some of the other Bishops in the English Church, and I found them — I was going to say like ice-bergs — per- haps that would be the most vivid description. They thought that the work was a specialist's work, and had no direct bearing or value upon church questions. Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to say that it is my profound conviction that before we can arrive at any estimate of the teaching of Jesus Christ, we must have the exact words, as far as we can, that He spoke. Now, there have been a great many very conflicting views as to the state of the Gospels or the state of our New Testament. I am going to speak on the New Testa- ment only. We know that if we look into the past history of the world, there was a tremendous struggle in the Middle Ages for liberty. The human spirit was gradually entangled in a net work of ecclesiastical traps, stratagems, teachings and systems which squeezed all the spiritual heart-blood out of it. That state of things continued, we might say, in England from the time of the Norman Conquest until the time of Wycliffe. John Wycliffe began to see that if ever his countrymen were to be set free from a cruel dom- ination he would have to translate the Scripture into his mother tongue. Wycliffe was the first and perhaps the greatest of our English reformers; and he translated in 1380 from the Latin Vulgate the whole New Testament. Of course, printing had not yet come in. We today can- not imagine the world without printing. It is very hard for us to reconstruct those centuries of the Mid- dle Ages when men lived without the printing press, and when they lived very much at the mercy of the few people who had privileges, and especially the ecclesiastics. Ecclesiastics ruled the world; they ex- empted themselves from all penalties, and they im- posed fines and penalties ad libitum upon the other people whom they called the laity. Of all the tyrannies that we have ever read of, the ecclesiastical tyranny of the Dark Ages has been the worst. It was not until the Scriptures came to be put in the hands of the people, that they saw that this ecclesiastical tyranny, which was chained upon them or riveted upon them in the name of God and of Christ, was really a misrepresentation of the teach- ing of Christ. Following Wycliffe, the great name, the name that shook all Europe, and that still shakes Europe to-day, to those who earnestly read him, was Martin Luther. I may say that spiritually I owe more to Martin Luther than to any of my own countrymen, and am under a greater debt to him for his bravery, for his courage, for his truth, for his humanity, and for his total absence of all hypocrisy. If you ask me what was the grand thing about Martin Luther, it was that the man had not a line, not a trace of hypocrisy in his whole composition. I think that can scarcely be said truly of any other great ecclesiastic, but Martin Luther was a Christian and a man — a very great man, who brought Europe face to face with this question, "Are we to follow this ecclesiastical system, this man-made system, of which the Pope is the head, or are we boldly and resolutely to throw ourselves upon God? Are we still to crave these human mediators, or are we to say, "God has given me enought light by His Word and by His Spirit, and, therefore, I can dispense with this system." Martin Luther's work crossed over to England, and was powerful in such men as William Tyndale. I do not know whether you know it or not, but it is a fact that our English Bible, King James' Bible, which was issued in 1611, is practically the translation of Wil- liam Tyndale, five-sixths of its renderings are those of William Tyndale. William Tyndale produced his first New Testament in 1525, and in 1536 he was strangled and burnt for having dared to do such a monstrous act. But although they burnt him, they could not burn his books ; and it is owing to him, more than to any man, that our English Bible which has been such a power in the English speaking race, has its poetry and pathos and spiritual charm. Tyndale completed the work of Wycliffe, and he did it by the aid of the printing press, for whereas Wy- cliffe could only produce some thirty copies altogether, Tyndale in his first edition struck off 4,000, but his enemies succeeded in destroying 3,999 out of those 4,000, and only one solitary copy has survived; then he struck off another 4,000, and of those I have seen in the British Museum several copies that survive, and there are two in New York and more elsewhere. As long as men could only write books, all manu- script books could only be limited in number, and the ecclesiastical powers could hunt those down ; but when the printing press threw out thousands, it was im- possible to stop them and impossible to burn them. William Tjmdale's work was completed by the preach- ing of the Reformers, and the weapon of the Reforma- tion was an appeal to the Word of God, an appeal from the teaching of man to the teaching of God's Word. That appeal may seem to us the final step in the eman- cipation of the human spirit, and we may think that all we have to do to-day is to carry forward the work of the Reformation. But we are face to face today with another problem, which does not seem to have ever entered the heads of the Reformers. This Word of God has been made into a dead legal code. Men's souls have been put under it; and their own aspira- tions, and their own instincts, and their own power of love and hope have been crushed by this unalter- able code into which the Bible has been made. I was brought up by my father to believe that every word in the English Bible was inspired by the Spirit of the living God. There was not one word in it but had the power and authority of God behind it. I dared not question one of tJie Bible texts lest I should go into "everlasting torture." I heard my father say with his knowledge of Greek that the word translated "punishment" was really, "torture" ; and he taught his family, he taught his neighbors, that God had pre- pared for those who were reprobate an eternal tor- ture. Whatever seemed to crush his spirit when he thought it, he always escaped from by saying that God was greater than we were, that we must not measure the mind and the love of God by our own imperfect and fallen and corrupt nature's. And yet I used as a boy to be dissatisfied with this teaching which made God so stem and so terrible, which made him so vindictive, and it seemed to me that to paint God as having prepared an eternal torture for mil- lions of his creatures, was to make him a God from whom men must shrink. This Calvinistic code continued, and my father be- lieved it up to his death, held through everything to the belief that God was all, God's Word was all; our life here nothing; our human intellect benighted; our human nature corrupt; and that our only hope was an acquiescence, a complete acquiescence in the eternal will of God. "Jacob have I loved" — I have often heard him say — "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated." God's ways were that some people He loved and elected to eternal life; but others for some inscrutable reason God hated and chose to reprobate and condemn to eternal loss. And the conclusion of it was this. If I did not believe this system, then I should go into eternal torment, because my non-believing it would prove that I was a reprobate. That was the teaching whicji followed in the wake of the Reformation, and erected the Bible, or the Word of God as it defined it, into a hard and terrible system, and then brought that system with all the force of the 8 laAvyer and logician to bear upon the human mind and the human understanding. When I met the Bishop of Salisbury and told him that the Calvinistic faith was such that I could not accept it, and that rather than believe it I would have no outward religion at all, he -said to me that he him- self was just as much opposed to all such teaching, and that Calvinism had by its interpreters inflicted a deep wound on the Church, of England; and he as- sured me that it was folly to speak of every word of the Scripture as being fixed. He added, "In my edi- tion which I am bringing out of the Vulgate, I have already collected thousands of variant readings, and this very reading which you tell me about, 'These shall go into the eternal torture,' you will find it in the oldest Latin manuscripts, as 'These shall go into the eternal fire.' " Im;mediately I saw that there was an escape. He said to me, "Here is the facsimile of Codex Sinaiticus, edited by Tischendorf, which be- longed to my father. Here is the Codex Bzae, a copy of the Graeco-Latin Gospels." And he placed them in my hands. You can imagine the enthusiasm kindled in me as a young inan eighteen years ago. I went back to my college room and thought to myself, "Here is a man of God who can deliver me from this death-" For I had been brought up very seriously, and my nature had been so stamped by the personality of piy father and his religion, that I felt myself unable to deliver myself from it. I believe it is possible to take a child and ,to impress such a sombre coloring upon that child's nature, to make hell so viyid to that child, and God so terrible, that it .will tal^e years to erase the impressioji that you will make on that child's mind. Therefore I say, let us be careful how we teach children. I owe a great debt to Bishop Wordsworth. It was through him that I joined the number of young men associated with him in textual study, and since that time I have pursued, always with supreme interest, this one quest, to find out what was really written; that I might thereby find an escape from some of these dogmas, from some of these teachings, which had weighed so heavily upon me; that I might dis- cover for myself whether Christ ever said some of the words attributed to Him or not. I say the prob- lem now before us is this. Here I will anticipate a little and confess that I have come now to believe myself, and to know myself, that the text of the New Testament has been more or less revised since it left the hands of the original writers. I do not mean that new miracles have been added or new parables have been added, I do not mean that ; but I believe and am sure that eyes behind which was an ecclesiastical brain — if you know what an ecclesiastical brain is — went over the Gospel manu- scripts in the 2d century, and altered a good many verses to bring them into conformity with the schemes and ideals of the hierarchy which had al- ready begun to develop. For example, when I was taught at Salisbury Theological College, I was taught the necessity (for salvation) of baptism by water; and the text was, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." When the Sinai Syriac Palimpsest was discovered in 1892, to our astonishment we saw that in that man- uscript the words were, "Except a man be born of the Spirit and of water — " the cart had been put be- fore the horse, or vice versa — ." That made some of us think; and now there is a Latin manuscript which I have just edited in the British Museum, that was 10 copied in Armagh in Ireland, and that has got this reading first-hand: "Except a man be bom of the Spirit" (leaving out water) "he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." Bishop Wordsworth, although a great man, allowed the practice of confession. The doctrine of confes- sion is based on our Lord's words, "Tell it to the Church, if thou has aught against thy brother." And also there is that verse in St. James' Epistle where we have to confess our sins one to another. I was taught that, as it would be very inconvenient for us to confess to the general public, the wisdom of the Church had appointed certain men (to wit, priests) to hear confession. Now, I am bound to tell you that the words "Tell it to the Church" are not found in the Corbey Gospels in Paris which is one of the earli- est Latin manuscripts. The Corbey Gospels know nothing about this "Tell it to the Church"; and the question is, Wheii our Lord was speaking where was the Church? It is really an anachronism to repre- sent Jesus Christ as saying to St. Peter and St. John, "Go and tell it to the Church." Furthermore St. James in a Spanish manuscript of his Epistle, which I have copied at Oxford and which is now in the press, tells us, "Confess your sins to the Lord," instead of "Confess your sins to one another," — which, as you will agree, is a vastly different proposition. Again, I was taught a very high sacramental view of the Holy Communion, and the authority for this was the work by Dr. Pusey on the Real Presence. Dr. Pusey summed up his position as that of St. Paul who (so he declared) regarded the Sacrament as "the Lord's body." When I came to examine the oldest Latin manuscripts I found out that instead of "not discerning the Lord's body," the words were "not 11 differentiating the substance," and nothing at all said in the text about "The Lord's body." Another illustration, and this will be my last illus- tration, although I could give you many more, is from the Latin copy of the Gospels I have mentioned, the work of Irish scribes. In the beginning of St. Mark we read that St. John the Baptist was in the wilderness "preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins." This little book gives us this wonderful statement, "John was in the wilder- ness preaching Repentance for the Forgiveness of Sin." And I suggest to you that "preaching Repent- ance for the Forgiveness of Sin" is considerably diff- erent from preaching Baptism for the Forgiveness of Sin. You will say to me, "Now that you have discovered textual changes made in one direction, tell us if there is anything else, tell us if there are other lines of recen- sion where you can see the subjective mind at work upon the primitive records." The personality of the Holy Spirit is clearly shown in the earliest form of the Gospels known to us, the Old-Latin form, and while I am speaking now about this earliest form I may just say that I know there are some here, I have met some people already, who say to me "Were not the Gospels written originally in Greek?" St. Mark I believe was written originally in Latin. I cannot set forth here the evidence, but I have convinced myself that St. Mark originally ap- peared in Latin, although I dare say it came out almost at the same time in Greek. We know it was written in Rome, in Italy, and we know from the early cata- combs that the Latin and Greek characters were in- extricably intertwined. In the second century we get Latin words spelled with Greek characters and Greek words spelled with Latin characters, which in 12 Rome I have seen with my own eyes; and I believe myself that the Roman Legionaries, the men who served under Caesar and the men who served under Augustus, did not speak Greek, I believe they spoke in Latin, and I believe that St. Mark — Marcus is a downright Latin name — I believe that St. Mark wrote in the Latin tongue for these ordinary people of Roman Italy. In the days of the Apostles there was frequent com- merce between Rome and Britain. You remember how in the early centuries Roman soldiers constantly crossed from Gaul and Spain into Britain, when Spain, Gaul and Britain — Hispania, Gallia, Britannia, all Roman names — were occupied by the Roman legions. Now, these Roman soldiers were the means, or the routes which they took were the means, by which the Gospel very early got into the west of Europe in the Latin form. It got into Spain; it got into France; it got into Britain; it got north into Scotland, and finally it crossed over the Irish Sea, sixty miles of rough sea, to Ireland. This Irish text differs in thousands of places from the Greek form and the so-called Vulgate form of the Latin New Testament which we know was stereotyped in the year 382, the Vulgate of Jerome. But the year 382 is far too late. The horse was out of the stable-door by that time, and had gone some way, had galloped "some" by that time, as you would say in this country. At any rate it is idle to attempt to make us believe 1 that the form of Gospels stereotyped in 382 A. D., can be a final resting place for any thinking man. It cannot. We are able to go back, to go behind 382, and are able to ask ourselves what was the form of Gospels which was used by these Roman Legionaries, and which came into Spain and into Gaul in the second century. ,13 Can we reconstruct that Gospel? Well, it is very marvellous, but I believe that we can. I believe that we have enough Spanish and Irish manuscripts ex- tant in different fragments, to enable us to recon- struct in the main this form of Gospels which was used in Britain, in Gaul and in Spain, shall I say be- tween the years 122 when the Emperor Hadrian came in and the year 180 or 170 when Tatian the harmon- izer consolidated the four gospels under one head? This Irish Text is in Latin, and this text I have now for the last six or seven years been spending my time trying to recover ; and I say that this Latin-Irish text or Spanish text or British text — I do not care what you call it, has very distinctive elements in it; and one of these elements is that it has a great many verses which speak definitely of the work of the Holy Spirit. Some eight or ten I have collected already, which are suppressed in all the Greek manuscripts and suppressed in the Roman Catholic Vulgate. For example, "No man can come unto Me except the Father draw him," as seen in the Irish text is, "No man can come unto Me except the Father and the Holy Spirit draw him," which is a very remarkable verse. "AVhose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted, and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained." Very well, if that is so there is the end of it. But what does the Irish text say, "Whose soever sins ye shall re- mit, it is the Holy Spirit that shall remit them, and whose soever sins ye shall retain, it is the Holy Spirit that shall retain them" — which I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, puts that verse in rather a new light; and we are not quite sure now that we have got the original form of it. Then again you will remember there is a remark- able passage, or saying of the Lord Jesus, in St. John's Gospel, where He says: "I am one that bear witness 14 of Myself and the Father that hath sent Me beareth witness of Me." Now the Irish text reads, "I bear wit- ness of Myself, and the Father that has sent Me beareth witness of Me, and the Holy Spirit" — where you have once more very definitely a claim for the work of the Holy Spirit. Again in our English Bible it says, "If a man love Me he will keep My word and My father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him," which in this form is a stupendous say- ing. According to that, Jesus Christ says that God the Father and God the Son will come to a man and make their abode with this one man. What does the Irish text say? — "If a man love Me he will keep My word and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and the Holy Spirit will make with him a dwell- ing place." "Oh, make our hearts thy dwelling place," has been the age-long Christian prayer tb the Holy Spirit. I can illustrate my thesis further from the Epistles of St. Paul in the Irish text, and show you there that St. Paul says, "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me that the Holy Spirit might preach Him among the nations," whereas the Greek text and the Ebman Vul- gate text say : "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among the nations." Instead of "I" (the apostle), the Irish text has "the Holy Spirit." Again St. Paul says to the Corinthians, "When ye are met together and my spirit." The Irish text says, "When ye are met together and the sanctifying Spirit Himself," which is a very different thing. Now, I have just mentioned these texts which come to my memory, and there are others, to show you that there was a definite purpose in the minds of these re- visers to suppress the Holy Spirit, and therefore they 15 just took their knife, or whatever it was, and cut the words out of the original documents — quite easily done in those early days when men like Marcion lived ! Then again we think, for example, that such a won- derful teaching as the Lord's Prayer has come down to us absolutely in the original words in which it was given. So we have always believed. But alas, for hu- man beliefs! When I was in the British Museum last April, in looking at the copy of the Lord's Prayer in this Latin Irish manuscript, I saw that the words "Give us this day our daily bread" were written over some other words — I saw that a knife had been taken, something had been written down and then the knife of the copy- ist had cancelled the words written and put something else on the top of them. I have now been for seven- teen years at this textual work, and a great deal of what I have discovered has been through these first readings cancelled, and my interest was at once awakened. I thought to myself, Now I am on the verge of some extraordinary discovery probably; I must wait for a bright day, and I must read, at all cost, what is written underneath. I knew that I could do it by photography if not by my unaided eyes. So I came to the Museum after a day's rest on one of our brightest April days in England and was happy enough to read what was originally written. What was originally written was this in Latin : "Panem ver- bum Dei celestem da nobis hodie." Give us today for bread — Verbum Dei — ^the Word of God. Give us to- day for bread the Word of God, and then it goes on, "Forgive us our sins . . . " — ^Well, I looked at the M^. in utter astonishment. I thought. Can I be dream- ing? So I went home. I thought of the text a great deial, and I said to myself, "I must go back and look at the Ms. again; perhaps I have made some mistake." 16 So I went back, and I looked at it again, and there I saw quite plainly what was written before the era- sure; and I have not a shadow of a doubt of it; and I tell you what the scribe put on the vellum first was, "Give us today for bread the Word of God from Heaven," which makes the Lord's Prayer from begin- ning to end a prayer for spiritual blessings. Our Lord's promise is: "Seek the Kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added unto you." I hope in your own minds you are gathering up what I might call an induction from all these separate in- stances which I have given you as illustrations. I hope you are piecing them all together, and are reaching what I reached in my mind after discoveries extend- ing over a period of thirteen or fourteen years. I reached the conclusion, I was forced to it, that not even the Lord's Prayer had been handed down in such a fixed form that we could be absolutely certain that we had the words as they left the lips of the Master. I am going to give you two little parables, two of our Lord's parables. One is the parable of the Prod- igal Son; the other is a little parable added to the Lord's Prayer about the friend who came to his friend's house at midnight, and asked him for some bread. Now the parable of the Prodigal Son, which has been called the Parable of Parables, begins: "A cer- tain man had two sons ; and the younger of them said to his father, Father give me the portion of the goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his liv- ing. And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living." The Latin is "Vivendo luxuriose" — "luxurious living." "And when he had spent all, there arose a 17 mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want." The word "mighty" is not found in the oldest man- uscripts. The scribe probably thought that "a mighty famine" was a little more impressive than a mere famine. "He began to be in want" we have got, but the Old-Latin gives us a very sweet variation, "he be- gan to be hungry and to be in want." It is really the hunger which is the great thing. "And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country." Now, I have always had a suspicion that that word "citizen," being a non-Jewish word and strictly a Roman word, somehow got in there through Jerome, or about his time, and so we find in the Verona Gospels: — "He went and flung himself before a man of that country." He went and flung himself before a man of that country in abject despair and misery. He flung himself down at his feet, and implored mercy — a very different thing from joining himself to a cit- izen. "And he sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat." Some of our revisers have changed that into what is not the oldest text, but is found in Westcott and Hort's text — "And he would fain have been filled with the husks that the swine did eat" — ^which is a little change for the sake of supposed refinement. "And no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said. How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger ! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." That is what our English Bible says he did say to his father, but you will see that what he did say according to the Irish text was some- 18 thing rather different. I will tell you presently what he did say. Meanwhile, "And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off his father saw him," and the Vulgate adds "and had com- passion." But the Old-Latin omits the words "And had compassion." The old scribe forgot that the father had compassion all the time, and therefore by adding that when he saw him he had compassion he virtually denied that he had it before, or im- plied that having lost it, he must needs find it again, "He saw him and ran," — this is I believe the orig- inal. "The father saw him and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him; and the son said to his father. Sir, I have sinned against heaven and be- fore thee and am not now fit to be thy slave." That is what the Irish text tells us he said. What our Eng- lish Bible states he said is: "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and iri thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son," according to his first in- tention. Can we not see how, in the presence of his father's love, without a word said, how being received with his father's kiss, he feels there is a gulf between them ; he had forfeited his filial relationship, and he says, "Sir — (Domine) I am now not fit to be thy slave." Notice how wonderful is the reply. In our English Bible it says: "But the father said to his servants. Bring forth the best robe." But the narrative is heightened again in the Irish form of text, where it says, "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth quickly for my son" — ^these are the words given the emphasis — "Bring forth quickly for my son that best robe and put it on him." The son says, "I am not fit to be thy slave." But the father says: "Bring forth quickly for my son 19 the best robe and put it on him." You see how im- measurable the love of the father is here pictured, and how the whole of the love proceeds from the father, and it is the love of the Father which strikes us with its power and might in this parable. The rest of it goes on as in our Bible until we come to the elder brother. Now his elder brother called a servant and wanted to know why the music and danc- ing were proceeding. I suppose he thought penance ought first to have been exacted. And the servant said, "Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed a fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound." And he was angry, and would not go in ; there- fore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, "Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment ; and yet thou never gavest me a kid," — which is much smaller, we all know, than a calf — "that I might make merry with my friends; but as soon as this filius diaboli, as soon as this son of the devil came, thou hast killed for him a fatted calf." Now, I ask you if it is not truer to human nature, that this self-righteous man should have called his brother the son of the devil than that he should have said, "as soon as this thy son" — our Bible says "as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots," — ^but the Irish text says, and what I believe our Lord Jesus Christ said was, "as soon as this son of the devil came, who has wasted thy sub- stance with fornicators, thou hast killed for him a fatted calf." "My friends," the elder brother implies, "are highly respectable men; his friends, this son of the devil's, are all men of utterly immoral life." The time is gone. I must pass over the other parable to-night because I want to sum up for two or three minutes the conclusions I have reached. I wish to 20 say in these two or three minutes what I think the re- sult is. New light has shaken us forever out of our complacency that we have got absolutely every word of the Gospels fixed. We have still a search to make. There are thousands of documents which are lying in our libraries unpublished. You say to me, Cannot they be published? Yes, they can be published if people take the matter to heart. But you know that I have found it the hardest thing to interest people in England in this subject. Textual criticism is caviare to the general. People say, "I have got the Bible, what more do I want? You cannot teach me anything I do not know." And so they forget, "The little more and how much it is, and the little less and what worlds away." In conclusion, I want to impress upon you who are strangers to me as I am a stranger to you, I want to impress upon you that what has come to me after years of unsparing work, during which I have felt this quest simply absorbing, is this conviction — If there is any new light to be got, in God's Name let us get it. To satisfy our own mind, to satisfy the minds of other men, we must have the ultimate truth. A man said to me recently in London. "Sir, you are unsettling people's faith." I said, "We must have the truth, no matter whose faith is unsettles." It is no good building upon untruth however authoritative ; it is no good building upon foundations which will not bear the strictest scrutiny and examination. It is no good reposing blindly and passively upon the authority of the Church. Who is the Church, and what author- ity does she possess unless she is in line with the Truth? We must have truth at all costs, even if we should discover that in the ultimate Gospel were a good many things which give no support to certain long-accepted forms of worship. Cost what it may, let 21 us have the truth; let us have the primitive Gospel which will unite us all together in one faith, a simpler faith, a faith which lays the stress upon the inward life, a faith which sweeps away these foolish outward things which men have fought for, and unites us in a common hope, in a common endeavor, in a common as- piration for the universal good. Men are becoming too enlightened to quarrel over narrow ecclesiastical dis- tinctions ; and as we have studied more deeply we find that these ecclesiastical distinctions have for the most part been based upon texts which, modren investiga- tion shows us not to have been spoken by Christ or written by His Apostles. THE CHAIRMAN: We have been led into a large subject by an unaccustomed path. We are grateful to Mr. Buchanan for all new facts which he has brought us, and we hope that some time he and the rest of us will know more fully all the facts and all the opinions to be drawn from them, and in the mean- time be able to live in simple confidence by the thuth we have. 22 BS2385 .891*" """""^ "^""^ ^lM!mm'm^A,^?Xil a lecture olin 3 1924 029 304 346 j»v->/»- --\-^^^w'; VD^. ^^^^ii^rmm VWA'^W 'VUs4v