For those who claim infallibility, as well as inspiration, for the Evangelists, the problem is at an end: Lk. and Mt. teach the Virgin Birth; the doctrine is therefore true! But for most people to‐day that short and easy path is impossible. The Gospels do not claim infallibility, and their contents do not bespeak it. There can be no question that a trained observer of to‐day would have described many incidents in the life of Jesus very differently. There are parables which have been unconsciously hardened into miracles, sayings of Jesus which have been misunderstood, stories which have grown amidst the exigencies of controversy and in the process of evangelization. These things are no more than we might expect. They were inevitable; unless we credit the Evangelists with a mechanical preservation from error which finds no justification beyond our own preconceived notions of what a Gospel ought to be. Nor do such admissions rob the Gospels of real worth. On the contrary, they throw their historical value into strong relief. For to perceive that the natural infirmities of the human mind have left their trace upon the Evangelic Records is only to prepare the way for us to recognize how close in the main the Evangelists have kept to the real facts of history. The significant fact is not that they have made mistakes, but that they have made so few that are of real importance. We have only to compare their work with the Apocryphal Gospels to see, in the case of the Evangelists, what restraint the solid facts of history exercised upon the natural tendencies of their minds. Jülicher, who does not hesitate to say that what the Evangelists relate is “a mixture of truth and poetry” (INT., Eng. Tr., p. 368), nevertheless declares that “the Synoptic Gospels are of priceless value, not only as books of religious edification, but also as authorities for the history of Jesus” (ib., p. 371). “The true merit of the Synoptists”, he says, “is that, in spite of the poetic touches they employ, they did not repaint, but only handed on, the Christ of history”’