The Veil Partly Lifted and Jesus Becoming Visible (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1864 Excerpt: ... VIII THE GENESIS OF THE GOSPELS1 fESUS himself never wrote a word. Nor, in such provision as he is recorded to have made2 for the dissemination of truth, did he make any allusion to the necessity or propriety of preparing written statements of his acts and sayings. This method of publication he never took into account. He thought of communicating truth only by word of mouth, by living Gospels and living Epistles. This indifference to written methods of publication is characteristic of the genius of his Great Movement, and shows how little it was in his purpose to organize a formal religion. It strikingly marks the beginnings of the literary history of Christianity. The truth that dwelt in Jesus appears to have descended unwillingly into a habitation made with hands. It passed slowly into an authoritative literary form, and only at the last, incidentally, and as it was necessitated in the course of things. It would seem as if the living spirit shrank with prophetic instinct from the corruption of the dead letter, and relucted at the unequal companionship. It must be considered, moreover, in explanation of the little concern shown by the first teachers of Christianity for the letter as a vehicle for the diffusion of truth, that the letter was not in those days the rapid and powerful instrument which it has since become. It was a rude agency then, but poorly suited to the purposes of earnest men. 1 This chapter, here revised and enlarged, first appeared in the Christian Examiner, January, 1861. 2 Matth. x. and xxviii. 19, 20. First came Letters, Epistles, --twenty-one in number. Of these twenty-one only seven are ascribed to immediate disciples of Jesus. And of these seven, the Second of Peter, the Second and Third of John, and the Epistle of Jude, are of dispu..