...the mere fact of the size and plain purpose of the Gospels makes nonsense of the whole of Mr. Roberts's laments about things being absent from them. One might as well complain of some subjects being left out of a telegram or a triolet. Mr. Roberts's complaint that Jesus does not mention debtors and creditors or the slave system, is utterly absurd when taken in connection with the nature of the books. He might as well object that the Lord's Prayer is entirely silent on the subject of a Second Chamber, the duty of doctors in time of plague, the art of Botticelli, the advisability of reading novels, and the use of tobacco. The Lord's Prayer is, in shape and purpose, a short prayer. The Gospel of St. Luke is, in shape and purpose, a short account of such sayings and doings of Jesus as a particular person happened to remember. As I have already said, I agree that this leaves the Gospel Jesus too shadowy to be all-sufficient; that is the argument for a Church. But the same brevity and obscurity which make it a little difficult to define His doctrines make it mere impudent nonsense to talk of His limitations.

 But Mr. Roberts does something worse than complain of the omissions of Jesus: he supplies them. It is borne in upon me that he has pursued a course not uncommon among cultivated modern persons—a course which I pursued myself for many years of my life; I mean that he has read all the books about the New Testament and forgotten to read the book itself. His memories of it, at any rate, are singularly hazy and exaggerative.

-Hibbert Journal, April 1910