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17, Marcion: "Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him, and he laid his hands on 366 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES every one of them and healed them." Luke, ch. 4, v. 40, is here identical with Marcion. Chapter 3, Mar- cion, V. 17, is identical with Luke, ch. 6, v. 17. One is certainly copied from the other. Chapter 4, Mar- cion, 4 130 : "A sinful woman standing near, before his feet, washed his feet with her tears, and anointed them and kissed them." Read Luke, ch. 7, v. 37 and 38. The only difference is that Luke says the woman had "an alabaster box of ointment." Marcion, ch. 4, v. 36 : "And he turned to the wo- man, and said unto Simon, 'See'st thou this woman? I entered into thy house, thou gavest me no water for my feet ; she has washed my feet with her tears, and has anointed them, and kissed them.' " Luke, ch. 7, V. 44 and 45, is the same as Marcion, except that Luke says, "she wiped the feet with the hair of her head." (5) Chapter 5 of Marcion, v. i to 18, is identical with ch. 8, Luke. v. i to 18. Marcion, ch. 5, v. 22, and Luke, ch. 8, v. 23 and 24, both mention the incident of Jesus rebuking the wind and the raging waters. Chapter 6, Marcion, v. 30 : "And behold two men talked with" him, Elias and Moses in glory." The same words are in Luke, ch. 9, v. 30 and 31. Chapter 7, Marcion, v. i to 19, wherein Jesus ap- pointed seventy and sent them "two and tw^o, into every city," are found in Luke, ch. 10, v. i to 20. (5) Mark 14, v. 3, says: "The woman poured the ointment on Jesus' head." Luke 7, v. 38, says she "anointed his feet," and Marcion and Luke here agree. Mark seems to have been in- spired differently. A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 367 Section 3, The incident of a certain lawyer stand- ing up and tempting Jesus, is told by Luke in ch. 10, V. 5, and Marcion in ch. 7, v. 25. Chapter 8, v. 2, Marcion : "And he said unto them, When ye pray, say 'Father, may thy holy spirit come to us, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.' " This same prayer, a little im- proved in phraseology, is found in Luke, ch. 11, v. 2, 3 and 4. "Who of you, being a father, if a son ask a fish," etc., is identical in Marcion, ch. 8, with Luke, ch. 11, V. II and 12. In ch. 9 of Marcion are many verses identical with ch. 12 of Luke. Chapter 10, Marcion, v. I to 6: "Behold there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bound together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, 'Woman, thou art loosed from thy infirm- ity' ; and he laid his hand on her, and immediately she was made straight and glorified God." Luke has these identical words in ch. 13, v. 11 to 14. Marcion, ch, 10, v. 18, says: "There shall be weep- ing and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see all the righteous in the Kingdom of God, and yourselves, cast out and held back." Luke, ch. 13, v. 28, changes this somewhat, and says : "There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out," 368 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES If tlie reader will turn to chapter i6 of Luke and read the first ten verses thereof, he will have read the first ten verses of chapter 13 of Marcion. In short, these two men seem to have been inspired to utter, all along, the same identical thoughts. Sometimes, it is true, the inspiration seems to wab- ble a little, as witness chapter 13, Marcion, verse 17, when he says: "Heaven and earth may pass, but not one tittle of my words shall fail." Luke, chapter 16, verse 17: "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the lazu to fail." Again, Luke is inspired in the first seventeen verses of his chapter 18 exactly word for word as Marcion is inspired in his first eighteen verses of chapter 15. (6) But Marcion in chapter 19, and Luke in chapter 22, utterly disagree on a very important matter. Luke V. 28 to 31, says: "Jesus appoints kingdoms unto his disciples, and that they shall sit on thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel." Moreover, they can eat and drink in the kingdom at Jesus' table. Marcion thought that the body at death goes back to dust and utterly perishes; that therefore it would need "no food and drink," that the soul only sur- vives (7) ; that there would be no violations of law; (6) The reader should remember that instead of finding only a few lines in each chapter of Luke and Marcion which are ex- actly alike, word for word, there is not a single chapter of Mar- cion from which Luke did not draw his inspiration — or Marcion drew his inspiration from Luke. Kemarkable, is it not? (7) Luke, it would seem, is a materialist (ch. 22, v. 25 to 31.) Marcion believed that the spirit only survives at death. Matthew also was a materialist (Matt. 8, v. 11; and Matt. 24, t. 47.) A QUESTION OF MIRACLES 369 consequently neither the twelve tribes, nor any of their members, would require judges sitting on thrones to judge them as Luke tells us. This open clash between these two gospel writers led probably to Marcion's condemnation as a heretic. For in nearly everything else their gospels, as we have seen, are almost exactly alike. The incidents of the journey of the two men to Emmaus, and Jesus joining them on the way; how he sat at meat with them, and his vanishing out of sight; their return to Jerusalem, and meeting the eleven; and Jesus' sudden appearance to the eleven, and his telling them he is not a spirit, but has iiesh and bones, are all set forth by Marcion in his chapter 21, verses i to 40, and Luke has the same in chapter 24, verses 13 to 39. In fact the last chapter of Marcion and the last chapter of Luke are the same, except that verses 45, 52 and 53 of Luke are not found in Marcion. We have seen who Marcion was, we know where and when he was born, and much of his life work, but of Luke we know nothing to a certainty. His name would indicate that he was an Italian. (Luca- nus.) It is not certain that Colossians, ch. 4, v. 14, has reference to him ; yet, if so, then Luke was a phy- sician. But it is even questioned whether Colossians was written by Paul. Philemon 24, may and may not have reference to Luke, the gospel writer. Second 370 A QUESTION OF MIRACLES Timotliy (8) inciilions a "Luke" who was with Paul, but did that man write Luke's gospel? Here now is one of the revenges of time. Mar- cion's bitter, implacable foes, their pens dipped in gall, give him a certain unquestioned place in history. He is known because he established churches, and under- took to rescue Christendom from its old false Jewish superstitions. Luke's name is attached to the third gospel, and so it will go down, no doubt, to the last day. The question whether Marcion wrote before Luke, or Luke before Marcion, has been disputed back and forth, for now nearly seventeen hundred years, and, like Banquo's ghost, "it will not down." I will only add that Luke's gospel is much longer than Marcion's ; in fact, not a verse in the first three chapters of Luke is found in Marcion. Otherwise they are as we have seen, almost identical in doctrines, in historical state- ment, in phraseology, and verse for verse. Which one of these men is the plagiarist, Marcion or Luke? An easy solution is that they both copied from the same old manuscripts. They state so many things probable and improbable, so exactly alike, that one must have copied from the other, or both from some older writer. Yet Marcion's story is said to be apocryphal — that is, uninspired — even when he agrees with Luke, word for word and verse for verse. (8) Ch. 4, V. 11. CHAPTER XXXIV In Conclusion. Section i. As to creation, I hold that there was a time, milHons and millions of years ago, when this earth, as we know it now, did not exist. But I cannot conceive of a time when the elements which compose it were not in existence. Nor can I imagine how something can, or ever could be, created out of nothing. In short, matter was here when God was here. This earth, and all the stars in our system (not to mention millions of other worlds about us), perform their revolutions in obedience to a law; and law al- ways presupposes a law maker. 1 call that law maker the "Eternal One," "The Creator," "God.