Dr. Robinson admits that the authorship of all four Gospels is doubtful, but thinks that, regarding the second Gospel, we may accept the second-century tradition that it was written by St. Mark, and that St. Mark was the "interpreter" of St. Peter and wrote the Gospel in Rome from information derived from that Apostle. Very good; let us accept this conclusion. We have it, then, that one of the Gospels is from the mouth of an eye-witness. This eye-witness, however, was, after all, an eye-witness of only one year (or, according to conservative criticism, three years) of Christ's life; he was an illiterate person, and the information he imparted after thirty or forty years had to be written down by another person in another language, and there is no telling how faithful or unfaithful the translation may have been. Besides, as Dr. Robinson points out in his chapters on "The Great Sermon" and "The Non-Marcan Document," there are very important omissions in St. Mark's Gospel. Referring to a supposed source for the information furnished by other evangelists, but omitted by St. Mark, he says: "You may gain some general idea of the scope of this document (the Non-Marcan [73]) by underlining in St. Luke's Gospel all those portions which are to be found in St. Matthew, but are not to be found in St. Mark." Now, what are these omissions in St. Mark? Are they trivial? Let us judge for ourselves by taking a few selections. There is no mention whatever of the story of Christ's miraculous birth, nor of the other incidents of His childhood which are said to be in fulfilment of prophecy, and there is no mention of the great Sermon on the Mount. The story of the Resurrection is told in a few sentences, and the Ascension in one sentence. Unfortunately, too, these very sentences are admittedly interpolations, and St. Mark really ends at xvi. 8. [74] So there is no account of either the Incarnation, Resurrection, or Ascension, and we are left with oral traditions, "lost" documents, and unknown copyists, as the only source from which to obtain any detailed information concerning the very groundwork of our Creed! Could anything be more unsatisfactory, more calculated to arouse suspicion of the "Christian Verities"--the Gospel truths? I am completely at a loss to understand how the Bishop of Gloucester [75] can say that the "Higher Criticism" has been a "gain to the Church," or the Bishop of London1 that "the New Testament stands ten times as strong as it did fifty years ago." It would seem to be a case of "where ignorance is bliss," etc., or else of the wish being father to the thought. There is much more that I should wish to call attention to, did space permit, but I have now, I think, given some insight into modern Bible criticism, and the extent to which it is accepted by Christians. It only remains, in conclusion, to ask for earnest thought on this new aspect of "the Word of God." In doing so the following additional considerations may be borne in mind.