Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/65

 4. John takes no notice whatever of this scene by the lake of Galilee, but gives us, what is not found in the first three gospels, an interesting account, already quoted, of the first introduction of Peter to Christ, not choosing to incumber his pages with a new repetition or variation of the story of his direct call.

The office of an apostolic historian becomes at once most arduous and most important, and the usefulness of his labors is most fully shown in such passages as this, where the task of weaving the various threads and scraps of sacred history in one even and uniform text, is one to which few readers, taking the parts detailed in the ordinary way, are competent, and which requires for its satisfactory achievement, more aids from the long accumulated labors of the learned of past ages, than are within the reach of any but a favored few. To pass back and forth from gospel to gospel, in the search after order and consistency,—to bring the lights of other history to clear up the obscurities, and show that which fills up the deficiencies of the gospel story,—to add the helps of ancient and modern travelers in tracing the topography of the Bible,—to find in lexicons, commentaries, criticisms and interpretations, the true and full force of every word of those passages in which an important fact is expressed,—these are a few of the writer's duties in giving to common readers the results of the mental efforts of the theologians of this and past ages, whose humble copyist and translator he is. Often aiming, however, at an effort somewhat higher than that of giving the opinions and thoughts of others, he offers his own account and arrangement of the subject, in preference to those of the learned, as being free from such considerations as are involved in technicalities above the appreciation of ordinary readers, and as standing in a connected narrative form, while the information on these points, found in the works of eminent biblical scholars, is mostly in detached fragments, which, however complete to the student, require much explanation and illustration, to make them useful or interesting to the majority of readers. Thus in this case, having given the three different accounts above, he next proceeds to arrange them into such a narrative as will be consistent with each, and contain all the facts. In the discussion of particular points, reference can be properly made to the authority of others, where necessary to explain or support.

Taking up the apostolic history, then, where it is left by John, as referred to above, and taking the facts from each gospel in what