“This was written on the day before his death. Another postscript, added on the following day, contained nothing but a hope or prayer that he might meet me in the City of Truth. I should add that I searched at the time in vain for Domitilla’s copy of Paul’s letters. It was not till three years afterwards that I read them, having procured a copy from another source. Sometimes I regret this and ask myself whether Hermas might have been right in thinking that Paul would have led me to understand the gospels better. But I cannot think that the Gods have decreed that those alone shall find the way to the City of Truth who may happen to have studied four Christian papyri in a particular order. Now I must pass from all this prattle about regrets, hopes, prayers, and preconceptions, to describe my exploration of the gospels and my search for historical fact.” CHAPTER XX SCAURUS ON FORGIVENESS At this point, Scaurus had drawn two lines, thus: [Illustration] Then the letter continued, “These two lines, my dear Silanus, represent two portions of Mark’s ‘_gospel_’—which word you know, I presume, that the Christians use, as the Greeks do, to mean ‘_good news_.’ Well, the short thin line represents the portion given by Mark to the moral precepts or sayings of Christ. The long thick line represents the portion given to framework—for example, to describing a certain John, called the Baptist, who, so to speak, introduces Christ to the people; to casting out devils; to healing specified diseases, fever, leprosy, paralysis, blindness, deafness, dumbness, lameness; to the raising up of a child apparently dead; to the destruction of a herd of swine by suffering devils to enter into them; to walking on water; to calming a tempest; to a feeding (or rather two feedings) of thousands of men with a few loaves and fishes; to blasting a fig-tree (but that comes later on); to the character of Herod the tetrarch, and his birth-day feasting, ending in the beheading of the above-mentioned John; to the finding of an ass by the disciples in exact accordance with Christ’s predictions and precepts; lastly, to very minute details of Christ’s trial and crucifixion. There are also a few fables, called parables, likening the good news, or gospel, to seed, which will not grow if sown in wrong places but will grow without man’s interference if sown rightly. But, all this while, about the good news itself, and about its nature, and about the persons to whom the good news is to be brought, and about the good that it will do people—hardly one word! Do not take my word for this. Take your own copy of Mark and look at the first words of Jesus, ‘Repent and believe the gospel.’ But what gospel? Jesus has not mentioned the word before. This is a specimen of the whole work. It is not a gospel at all. It leaves out essential things. It is only the frame of a gospel.”