But this assumption, (that a work which has been held to be a complete work for seventeen centuries and upwards was originally incomplete,) of course requires _proof_. The foregoing improbable theories, based on a gratuitous assumption, are confronted _in limine_ with a formidable obstacle which must be absolutely got rid of before they can be thought entitled to a serious hearing. It is a familiar and a fatal circumstance that the Gospel of S. Mark has been furnished with its present termination ever since the second century of the Christian æra.(24) In default, therefore, of distinct historical evidence or definite documentary proof that _at some earlier period than that_ it terminated abruptly, nothing short of the utter unfitness of the verses which at present conclude S. Mark’s Gospel to be regarded as the work of the Evangelist, would warrant us in assuming that they are the spurious accretion of the post-apostolic age: and as such, at the end of eighteen centuries, to be deliberately rejected. We must absolutely be furnished, I say, with internal evidence of the most unequivocal character; or else with external testimony of a direct and definite kind, if we are to admit that the actual conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel is an unauthorized substitute for something quite different that has been lost. I can only imagine one other thing which could induce us to entertain such an opinion; and that would be the _general_ consent of MSS., Fathers, and Versions in leaving these verses out. Else, it is evident that we are logically _forced_ to adopt the far easier supposition that (_not_ S. Mark, but) _some copyist of the third century_ left a copy of S. Mark’s Gospel unfinished; which unfinished copy became the fontal source of the mutilated copies which have come down to our own times.(25) I have thought it right to explain the matter thus fully at the outset; not in order to prejudge the question, (for _that_ could answer no good purpose,) but only in order that the reader may have clearly set before him the real nature of the issue. “Is it reasonable to suspect that the concluding verses of S. Mark are a spurious accretion and unauthorized supplement to his Gospel, or not?” _That_ is the question which we have to consider,—the _one_ question. And while I proceed to pass under careful review all the evidence on this subject with which I am acquainted, I shall be again and again obliged to direct the attention of my reader to its bearing on the real point at issue. In other words, we shall have again and again to ask ourselves, how far it is rendered probable by each fresh article of evidence that S. Mark’s Gospel, when it left the hands of its inspired Author, was an unfinished work; the last chapter ending abruptly at ver. 8?