18. Another decisive argument lies in the _character of the Greek_ employed by the evangelists, in common with the other writers of the New Testament. It is the Greek language employed by Jews, (or, in the case of Luke, if his Jewish origin be doubted--see Col. 4:11, 16--by one who had received a Jewish training under the influence of the Greek version of the Old Testament,) and therefore pervaded and colored by Hebrew idioms. This peculiar form of the Greek language belongs to the apostolic age, when the teachers and writers of the church were Jews. After the overthrow of Jerusalem, the dispersion of the Jewish nation, and the death of the apostles and their associates, it rapidly disappeared. Thenceforward the writers of the church were of Gentile origin and training, in accordance with the Saviour's memorable words: "The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." These internal proofs, coinciding as they do with a mass of external evidences so great and varied, place the genuineness of the four canonical gospels on a foundation that cannot be shaken. CHAPTER III. UNCORRUPT PRESERVATION OF THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES. 1. It is necessary, first of all, to define what is meant in the present connection by the uncorrupt preservation of the gospel narratives. When a man, whose business it is to examine and compare manuscripts or editions of a work, speaks of a given text as corrupt, he means one thing; in a question concerning the truth of the Christian system as given in the writings of the New Testament, a corrupt text means something very different. The collator of manuscripts understands by a corrupt text one that has been marred by the carelessness or bad judgment of transcribers, whence have arisen so many "various readings," though these do not change, or essentially obscure the facts and doctrines of Christianity, as has been most conclusively shown by the results of modern textual criticism; but in an inquiry whether we have in our canonical gospels the account of our Lord's life and teachings as it was originally written by the evangelists in all essential particulars, we have to do with the question, not of various readings, such as are incident to all manuscripts, but of essential additions, alterations, or mutilations--like those, for example, which Marcion attempted--by which the facts and doctrines themselves are changed or obscured. It is against the charge of such essential corruptions that we maintain the integrity of the text in the gospels, as in the other books of the New Testament.