The best evidence of which the subject admits, is all that is required in courts; and it is sufficient in matters of the highest concern, even in cases of life and death, that a fact be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The best evidence to Christ’s disciples of his resurrection, was that of their own senses. This evidence we cannot have. We are in the position, in some respects, of jurors, who must decide not from their own knowledge, but upon the testimony of others. We have not, however, the witnesses upon the stand, but only what may be regarded as their depositions, and it is made a question whether the writings produced are their depositions. The question, then, in this stage is, who were the writers of the Four Gospels and the book of Acts? As to the latter, the writer claims to have written a former treatise, and it seems to be taken by both parties to the controversy, that the same person (whoever he was) wrote both books, so that any evidence of Luke’s authorship of the third Gospel, is evidence of his authorship of Acts, and _vice versa_. And the same is true in respect to the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John. The best evidence as to the authorship of any of these books which the nature of the subject admits of, is from history and tradition, including in these terms quotations, citations, harmonies, commentaries, translations, and manuscripts. There are two modes of presenting this evidence. One is to begin with their present acknowledged acceptance, and ascend the stream; the other is to strike tributaries, as near their source as we are able, and descend to the river. The latter will be adopted here in the first instance, and ultimately both modes of proof. LOST TRIBUTARIES. One hundred years from the crucifixion, churches had been established in all the cities and in many of the villages of the Roman Empire, from Cappadocia and Pontus on the east, to Gaul on the west, and Christians were very numerous. Tacitus describes those at Rome at the time of Nero’s barbarity, as “a great multitude,” and Pliny, in his letter to Trajan, _cir._ A.D. 110, affirms that the heathen temples were almost deserted, so that the sacred victims scarcely found any purchasers, and that the “superstition,” as he termed it, not only infected the cities, but had even spread into the villages, of Pontus and Bithynia (Gibbon, p. 576). Hence persons unacquainted with the subject might suppose that it would be easy to adduce abundant proof from writers of the first century, as to what memoirs of our Lord, if any, were in the churches at the time Pliny wrote his celebrated letter. Such, however, is not the fact.