This is the greatest problem of literary and historical criticism to-day. All sorts of objections have been raised against the credibility of the gospels from the time of Celsus--they were raised even earlier; for Celsus quotes them from previous controversialists--and they are raised still. We are sometimes told that we cannot be absolutely certain of the authenticity of any single saying of Jesus, or perhaps of any recorded episode in his life. A hypertrophied conscience might admit this to be true in the case of any word or deed of Jesus that might be quoted, and yet maintain that we have not lost much. For, it is a commonplace of historians that an anecdote, even if false in itself, may contain historical truth; it {115} may be evidence, that is, to the character of the person of whom it is told; for a false anecdote depends, even more than a true story, upon keeping the colour of its subject. It may be added that, as a rule, false anecdotes are apt to be more highly coloured than true stories, just as a piece of colour printing is generally a good deal brighter than nature. The reader, who, by familiarity with books, and with the ways of their writers, has developed any degree of literary instinct, will not be inclined to pronounce the colours in the first three gospels at least to be anything but natural and true. However, even if one were to concede that all the recorded sayings and doings of Jesus are fabrications (a wildly absurd hypothesis), there remains a common element in them, a unity of tone and character, which points to a well-known and clearly marked personality behind them, whose actual existence is further implied by the Christian movement. In other words, whether true or false in detail, the statements of the gospels, if we know how to use them aright, establish for us the historicity of Jesus, and leave no sort of doubt as to his personality and the impression he made upon those who came into contact with him.