In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth is, to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that they shall constitute a logical, probable narrative, harmonious throughout.  The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic products, of the melting of minute distinctions, ought to be consulted at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify, but the very soul of history; what must be sought is not the petty certainty about trifles, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the truthfulness of the coloring.  Each trait which departs from the rules of classic narration ought to warn us to be careful; for the fact which has to be related has been living, natural, and harmonious.  If we do not succeed in rendering it such by the recital, it is surely because we have not succeeded in seeing it aright.  Suppose that, in restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced a dry, jarring, artificial whole; what must we conclude?  Simply that the texts want an appreciative interpretation; that we must study them quietly until they dovetail and furnish a whole in which all the parts are happily blended.  Should we then be sure of having a perfect reproduction of the Greek statue?  No; but at least we should not have the caricature of it; we should have the general spirit of the work—­one of the forms in which it could have existed.

This idea of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our guide in the general arrangement of the narrative.  The perusal of the Gospels would suffice to prove that the compilers, although having a very true plan of the Life of Jesus in their minds, have not been guided by very exact chronological data; Papias, besides, expressly teaches this.[1] The expressions:  “At this time ... after that ... then ... and it came to pass ...,” etc., are the simple transitions intended to connect different narratives with each other.  To leave all the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as the history of a celebrated man would be written, by giving pell-mell the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity.  The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner, fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has yielded its secret to an ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which the fragments were composed has been discovered so as to leave little room for doubt.  Such a rearrangement is much more difficult in the case of the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and less eventful than the life of the founder of Islamism.  Meanwhile, the attempt to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to be taxed with gratuitous subtlety.  There is no great abuse of hypothesis in supposing that a founder of a new