Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/285

238 general resurrection and judgment take place, and the world be destroyed within a very few years, during the lifetime of the Apostles. This is a very strongly marked feature in their teaching. From the doubtful epistle ascribed to Peter, it seems that as times went by and the world continued, scoffers very naturally doubted the truth of this opinion, but were assured it would hold good.

Here we have, apparently, though I think not really, the works of Matthew and John, two of the immediate disciples of Jesus, and of Mark and Luke, the companions of Peter and Paul. The first question is, have we really the works of these four writers? It is a question which can by no means be readily and satisfactorily answered in the affirmative. However, it cannot be entered upon in this place; but admitting, in argument, the works are genuine, at the first view, there seems no need of miraculous inspiration in the case of honest men wishing to relate what they had seen, heard, or felt. It is not easy to see why miraculous and infallible inspiration was needed to write the memoirs of Jesus and the Acts of the Apostles more than the memoirs of Socrates, or the Acts of the Martyrs. The writers never claim such an inspiration. Matthew and Mark never speak of themselves as writers; Luke refers to certain “eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word” as his authority for the facts of the Gospel. John claims it as little as the others, though an unknown writer, at the end of his Gospels, testifies to the truth of the narrative.

But even if they made this claim, so often made for them,