sense must be accepted; the correct text of each Gospel must be determined, independently of verbal variations; the truthfulness of each evangelist must be assumed, until positive error is proven; the more definite statements are to be used in explaining the less definite; the characteristics of each evangelist must be given their proper weight in determining the probabilities of greater or less accuracy of detail. 68 But the necessary limitations of harmonistic methods should be fully recognised. Abso- lute certainty is often impossible: there will always be room for difference of judgment. For example, there is to-day as little agreement as ever in regard to the length of our Lord’s ministry; i.e., whether the Evangelist John refers to three or four passovers. The Tripaschal and Quadripaschal theories still divide scholars, as in past ages of the Church. Still, the progress made in textual criticism has, by indicating more positively the exact words of all four accounts, laid the foundation for better results in harmonistic labours. One great advantage of a Harmony, as now constructed, with the text of the evangelists in parallel columns, or in independent sections when the matter is peculiar to one of them, is the emphasis it gives to the historical sequence. The movement of the evangelical narrative is made more apparent; the relations of the events shed light upon the entire story; the purpose of discourses and journeys appears; the training of the Twelve can be better studied; the emphasis placed upon the closing events of our Lord’s life on earth is made more obvious. A comparison of the several accounts gives to the events new significance, often reveals minute and undesigned coincidences which attest the truthfulness of all the narrators. Now that the attempt to secure mechanical uniformity in the narratives has been universally re- jected by scholars, another advantage of a Harmony is seen to be this: that it sets forth most strikingly the verbal differences and correspondences of the parallel passages. Only by a minute comparison of these can we discover the data for a settlement of the problem respect- ing the origin and relation of the Synoptic Gospels.493 The dangers attending harmonistic methods are obvious enough, and appeared very early. The tendency has been to create a rigid verbal uniformity. Hence the peculiarities of the several evangelists are obscured; the text of one is, consciously or unconsciously, con- formed to that of another. The Gospel of Mark, the most individual and striking of the Synoptics, probably the oldest, has been repeatedly altered to correspond with that of Mat- thew. When uniformity could not be secured by this process, false exegesis was often resorted to, and hermeneutical principles avowed which injured the cause of truth. Evangelical truth 493 The writer may be pardoned for alluding to his own experience in connection with this point. In the exegetical labours of some years, he found himself accepting the theory that the three Synoptists wrote independ- ently of each other. Afterwards, when the task of editing Dr. Robinson’s Greek Harmony compelled him to compare again and again every word of each account, the evidences of independence seemed to him to be overwhelming. 155 Introductory Essay.