Dr. Wace (_Nineteenth Century_, March, p. 363) states that he derives the above citation from the preface to the 15th edition of the _Vie de Jésus_. My copy of _Les Évangiles_, dated 1877, contains a list of Renan's _Oeuvres Complètes_, at the head of which I find _Vie de Jésus_, 15^e édition. It is, therefore, a later work than the edition of the _Vie de Jésus_ which Dr. Wace quotes. Now _Les Évangiles_, as its name implies, treats fully of the questions respecting the date and authorship of the Gospels; and any one who desired, not merely to use M. Renan's expressions for controversial purposes, but to give a fair account of his views in their full significance, would, I think, refer to the later source. If this course had been taken, Dr. Wace might have found some as decided expressions of opinion in favour of Luke's authorship of the third Gospel as he has discovered in _The Apostles_. I mention this circumstance because I desire to point out that, taking even the strongest of Renan's statements, I am still at a loss to see how it justifies that large-sounding phrase, "practical surrender of the adverse case." For, on p. 438 of _Les Évangiles_, Renan speaks of the way in {492} which Luke's "excellent intentions" have led him to torture history in the Acts; he declares Luke to be the founder of that "eternal fiction which is called ecclesiastical history"; and, on the preceding page, he talks of the "myth" of the Ascension--with its "_mise en scène voulue_." At p. 435, I find "Luc, ou l'auteur quel qu'il soit du troisième Évangile"; at p. 280, the accounts of the Passion, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, are said to be "peu historiques"; at p. 283, "La valeur historique du troisième Évangile est sûrement moindre que celles des deux premiers." A Pyrrhic sort of victory for orthodoxy this "surrender!" And, all the while, the scientific student of theology knows that the more reason there may be to believe that Luke was the companion of Paul, the more doubtful becomes his credibility, if he really wrote the Acts. For, in that case, he could not fail to have been acquainted with Paul's account of the Jerusalem conference, and he must have consciously misrepresented it. We may next turn to the essential part of Dr. Wace's citation (_Nineteenth Century_, p. 365) touching the first Gospel:-- St. Matthew evidently deserves peculiar confidence for the discourses. Here are the "oracles"--the very notes taken while the memory of the instruction of Jesus was living and definite.