LIGHT SHINING OUT OF DARKNESS. THE FIDELITY OF THE FOUR EVANGELISTS EVINCED BY THEIR APPARENT IMPERFECTIONS. BY THE REV. ALFRED ROBERTS, M LATE OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO., BERNERS STREET. MDCCCXXXIX. PREFACE. THE following work originated in a few loose papers, upon some peculiarities in the Gospel Narratives, which occasionally appeared in the pages of "The Christian Observer." It has no pretensions to disclose any new branch of Internal Evidence; but rather to carry into fuller detail, and to hold forth in more varied lights, one which has hitherto (as it appears to me) been slightly and generally treated. The Author does not undertake to address himself directly to any of those who march under the banners of unbelief-to the Atheist, who anxious to throw off the re straint of religion altogether, would secretly undermine its foundations-to the Deist, who instead of receiving his religion from above, and allowing his Maker to be the Expounder of His own Will, is determined to fabricate a creed for himself to the Neologist, who professedly embraces Revelation, but will cut and shape it in accordance to his speculative fancy; he would rather wish to devote his labours to the service of the serious and sober inquirer into Truth. If he shall be enabled to soften one doubt of a candid mind; to render one passage of the Word of God more clear, more interesting, or more consolatory to the weakest Christian; or to throw the faintest light upon one link of the mighty, but " sometimes dimly seen" chain of Christian Evidences, he will consider that his en deavours, however imperfect, have not PREFACE. been altogether in vain. But whatever may be his doubts as to the success of his work, he has none of the ultimate triumph of that Cause to which it is designed to be a slender contribution-a Cause, which, when all the works and reasonings of man shall have passed away, can never fail, for it is founded upon a rock-the Rock of Ages.' An indifferent state of health and spirits, which can offer no apology for any unsoundness in the writer's principles, or even incorrectness in his arguments, may yet, he trusts, form some extenuation of those superficial inaccuracies, and that want of clear arrangement which may be too often apparent. Upon the whole he would wish, humbly, yet tranquilly, to commit this his first publication, to the Divine blessing, and the deliberate judgment of the Church. |