Perhaps it is the gentleness of the evangelist, and his preference for all that is tender and gracious, which causes his account of the twelve apostles to differ considerably from that in Mark. Their slowness, their weakness of faith, their rivalries, are set in a subdued light. He does not tell us that Christ once called St. Peter "Satan," or that Peter cursed and swore when he denied Christ. He omits the rebuke administered to the disciples in the conversation concerning the leaven (Mark viii. 17), the ambitious request of the two sons of Zebedee, and the indignation of the disciples at Mary's costly gift of ointment (Matt xxvi. 8). When St. Mark speaks of the failure of the disciples to keep awake while their Master was in Gethsemane, he says that they were asleep, "for their eyes were heavy" (xiv. 40). When St. Luke speaks of it, he says that they were "sleeping for _sorrow_" (xxii. 45). Doubtless both accounts are true, and we can reverently wonder both at the rugged honesty with which St. Peter must have told St. Mark about the faults of himself and his friends, and at the consideration shown by St. Luke towards the twelve in spite of the fact that he was more closely connected with St. Paul than with them. About one-third of this Gospel is peculiar to itself, consisting mainly of the large section, ix. 51-xviii. 14. St. Luke here seems to have used an Aramaic document; the beginning of the section is full of Aramaic idioms. In places where St. Luke records the same facts as the other Synoptists, he sometimes adds slight but significant touches. The withered hand restored on the sabbath is the _right_ hand (vi. 6); the centurion's servant is one _dear_ to him (vii. 2); and the daughter of Jairus an _only_ daughter (viii. 42; cf. the son of the widow at Nain, an _only_ son, vii. 12). Among the remarkable omissions in this Gospel we may notice two sayings which are found in Matt. and Mark, and which seem to us to have been peculiarly appropriate for St. Luke's general purpose. The first is the saying of Christ that He had come "not to be ministered unto, {74} but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Matt. xx. 28; Mark x. 45). The second is the statement that the Gospel "shall be preached in the whole world" (Matt. xxvi. 13; Mark xiv. 9). With the omission of these sayings we may compare the omission of any record of the visit of the Gentile wise men to the cradle of the infant Saviour of the world--an incident which would probably have appealed most strongly to the heart of St. Luke, if he had known it. Its absence from this Gospel is one of the many proofs that St. Luke was not familiar with the Gospel according to St. Matthew.