The style is marked by great delicacy and power. It is in better Greek than the other Synoptic Gospels, and the evangelist seems to deliberately avoid some of the racy, popular words which are employed by St. Mark. But the beginner should be warned that this Gospel is not very easy to translate, for it contains a good {69} many words with which he is not likely to be familiar. The language of St. Luke contains many proofs that he is writing as a Gentile for Gentiles. Thus he calls the Apostle Simon, who belonged to the fanatically devout party known as the "Cananaeans," by the corresponding Greek name "Zealot" (vi. 15); he seldom uses the Hebrew word "Amen," and he never uses the word "Rabbi" as a form of address. He adds the word "unclean" before the word "devil" (iv. 33), as the Greeks believed that some devils were good and kind, while the Jews believed all devils to be evil. He also substitutes the word "lawyer" for "scribe." But while the preface is written in what is perhaps the best Greek in the New Testament, the evangelist allows his language to be penetrated by his visions of Jewish scenes. Partly from his study of the Old Testament, partly from his knowledge of the books and the lives in which he found a testimony to Jesus, he acquired the art of breathing into his Greek the simple manner and the sweet tone of a Hebrew story. There is nothing in all literature more perfectly told than the story of the walk to Emmaus. Nothing can be better than the delineation of character which is suggested to us in the story of Zacharias, or of Anna, or of Zacchaeus. There is always a freshness to remind us that the Gospel is "good tidings of great joy" (ii. 10), and the Magnificat (i. 46-55), the Benedictus (i. 68-79), the Gloria in Excelsis (ii. 14), and the Nunc Dimittis (ii. 29-32), have become for ever part of the praises of the Christian Church. More often than in any other Gospel we find such expressions as "glorifying God," "praising God," "blessing God." Again, St. Luke, in choosing incidents from the life of home, and more especially in choosing incidents in which women are prominent, gives a new solemnity to a life which men had hitherto despised. We always think of the Blessed Virgin as "highly favoured," of Martha "cumbered about much serving" (x. 40), of the widow with the two mites, of the daughters of Jerusalem weeping on the way of the cross (xxiii. 28), of the double joy of Elisabeth {70} to bear a son in her old age and to be visited by the mother of her Lord (i. 43); and we think all this because St. Luke has told us their story. These passages with their smiles and tears, their simplicity and their depth, are a divine contrast to the grotesque passage in the Jewish liturgy, where the men thank God that they are not women.