Gospel

• 1. a. ‘The glad tidings (of the kingdom of God)’ announced to the world by Jesus Christ. Hence, the body of religious doctrine taught by Christ and His apostles; the Christian revelation, religion or dispensation. Often contrasted with the Law, i.e. the Old Testament dispensation. Phrase, to preach, minister the gospel.

b. Identified by Protestants with their own system of belief, as opposed to the perversions of Christianity imputed by them to their adversaries; also applied by Puritans and modern Evangelicals to the doctrine of salvation solely through trust in the merit of Christ's sacrifice.

c. to talk gospel: to ‘talk religion’.

d. gen. Any revelation from heaven.

¶the Gospel Perdurable: a book produced in 1255 under the title of Euangelium Eternum, siue Euangelium Spiritus Sancti. (See note in Skeat Chaucer (1894) I. 447.)

e. Short for gospel music.

To read the Canonical Gospels, follow this link.

• 2. a. The record of Christ's life and teaching, contained in the books written by the ‘four evangelists’.

b. One of the books written by the four Evangelists; sometimes pl. in sing. sense. Also applied to certain ancient lives of Christ of a legendary character (apocryphal gospels), as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Gospel of the Infancy, etc.

c. In extended sense: The Holy Scriptures.

• 3. Eccl. the gospel (for or of the day): the portion from one of the four gospels read at the Communion Service. (Cf. EPISTLE 3.) allusively (cf.4).

• 4. Something as ‘true as the gospel’; a statement to be implicitly received. Also {dag}with a, no, and to take for ({dag}a, the) gospel.

• 5. a. Something that serves as a guide to human action; something that men swear by.

b. A doctrine ‘preached’ with fervour as a means of political or social ‘salvation’.

• 6. = Gospel-oath. Obs.{em}1

• 7. jocularly. wooden gospels: the four divisions of a board for the game of tables. Obs.

• 8. attrib. and Comb. a. simple attrib., as (sense 1: often = such as accords with, or is enjoined by, the gospel) gospel-artillery, -blessing, -champion, -church, -crew, -day, -dispensation, -duty, -freedom, -liberty, -light, -minister, ministry, -morality, music, -news, -peace, -phrase, -purity, -righteousness, -sabbath, shout, -sufferer, -times, -trump, -union, -unity, -way, -word, (sense 2) gospel-record, (sense 3) gospel-lectern. b. objective, as gospel-monger, -preacher, -preaching, singer, -teacher, -writer.

• 9. Special comb.: gospel-gossip, one who is always talking of sermons, texts, etc.; gospel-hardened a., rendered incapable of being moved by the gospel, through constant hearing of it; {dag}gospel-lad, a COVENANTER; {dag}gospel-mass-monger nonce-wd., ? a professed Protestant who favours Romish doctrine; gospel-oak (see quot. 1862); gospel-oath, an oath sworn upon the gospels, or an oath of an equally binding character; gospel-place, a place where the ‘gospel’ was recited at the perambulation of boundaries; gospel-right, a right expressly sanctioned or prescribed in the Gospel; gospel-sharp, a Western U.S. term for a Christian minister of religion; gospel-shop, a derisive name for a Methodist chapel; gospel-side, the side of the altar at which the gospel is read, the north side; gospel-sin, sin against the light of the gospel; so gospel-sinner; gospel song, a song characterized by its fervour or evangelistic message; gospel-title, an indisputable title (cf. 4 and gospel-right); gospel-tree = gospel-oak; gospel-true a., as true as the gospel (cf. next); gospel-truth, (a) the truth or truths contained in the gospel; (b) something as true as the gospel (cf. sense 4); gospelwards adv., in the direction of the gospel; {dag}gospelwright, a composer of a gospel = EVANGELIST