of the teaching of these Gospels, especially that of the first; and as it requires a Jesus to invent a Jesus, superiority here becomes a proof of authenticity.

Exception may, it is true, be taken to some of the teaching of the Synoptic Gospels, but take away such portions, and you do not injure the remainder; whereas the objectionable passages of the fourth Gospel are of the very essence of the teaching of that Gospel, being part of a system which may be termed incipient Calvinism.

The style of Jesus' alleged teachings in the fourth Gospel, and its similarity to that of the Epistles that bear the name of John, and to that of the author of the Gospel, has often been the subject of comment. The fact is plain enough, though viewed through the medium of a translation, to attract the attention of the average reader, and is alone sufficient to discredit the genuineness of the teachings of this Gospel, especially the long discourses therein ascribed to Jesus.

There are, however, those to whom this similarity presents no difficulty. Dr. McCosh, of New Jersey, for example, thus easily dismisses it :-" As to the apostle's own style in the Gospel and in his three Epistles being so like that of our Lord, we are to account for it as we explain the sameness of style in prose, poetry, and painting, on the part of pupils and the masters whom they admire." *

He is not the only one who thus "accounts for it."

* 66 'Christianity and Positivism," p. 271.

But the fact is ignored that Jesus himself is thus made to have two distinct styles-one in the Synoptical Gospels, and one in the fourth; and, on the other hand, these superficial observers do not notice that all the speakers in the fourth Gospel have the precise style of the author of it. "But, finally," observes Keim, "when not only the author, not only the selfreliant prophet, the Baptist, but also the man who was born blind speaks with the language and the irony of Jesus, is it more credible that Jesus should have spoken in John and in the blind man, or that the evangelist used one speech for himself and for Jesus, for John as well as for the blind man-his speech and sphere of thought as an author?"

"It is one of the notes and peculiarities of the fourth Gospel," remarks Dr. Fairbairn,* “that the reflections of the historian often so blend with the discourses of Christ, that it is hardly possible to tell where the latter end and the former begin."

M. Renan, who pleaded for the Johannine origin of the fourth Gospel, unhesitatingly condemned the discourses as unhistorical. "If Jesus spoke as Matthew represents, he could not have spoken as John relates. Between these two authorities no critic has ever hesitated, or can ever hesitate. It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work."

Yet M. Renan thought this Gospel "represents to * "Studies in the Life of Christ," p. 123.

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us a version of the life of the Master, worthy of high esteem, and often to be preferred," and such an impression he deemed a perusal of the work calculated to give. But any of us can judge whether, as M. Renan said, "The author always speaks as an eye-witness," an author who writes an anonymous work, and who never speaks in the first person. One cause of the impression alluded to is the minute detail with which the narrative abounds: "it was the sixth hour"; "it was night"; "the servant's name was Malchus"; "they had made a fire with coals, for it was cold"; "the coat was without seam."

Dr. Fairbairn, too, pleads for the historical character of this document on somewhat similar grounds. For instance, alluding to the raising of Lazarus, he says : "And when we analyze the narrative, we find it too full of tender and moving humanity to be a creation of the idea. Now, Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.' The dropping out of Mary's name is a most significant touch, as if the stronger had absorbed the softer sister, or been to her a sort of mother or head." *

It was too much for M. Renan to ask us to believe on such slender grounds, that the son of Zebedee could so have misrepresented the teaching of his Master; but for Dr. Fairbairn to suppose that modern inquirers will, on evidence similar to that with which he supplies us in the above quotation, admit that a man four days dead, or four hours, was positively * "Studies in the Life of Christ," p. 206.

restored to life, is to suppose that they have an irresistible predisposition towards belief in whatever transcends experience.

But to all reasoning based on the trivial, it is enough to reply that a few grains do not outweigh as many pounds; and besides, we have, as before observed, left unnoticed many points which tell on one side with greater weight than do those "graphic touches" on the other-touches which, possibly, can also be matched in the fictions of Swift or Defoe.

We have now given quite enough time and space to this comparison, and must express our undoubting conviction that the fourth Gospel was not written by a witness of the acts and words of Jesus, and that it is, as a whole, unworthy of being regarded as history; and, moreover, that though it may contain a few sayings of Jesus not recorded in the other Gospels, yet so much uncertainty hangs around it that nothing therein can be depended on which has not the support of the better authorities.

The fourth Gospel thus rejected, any evidence that it might have supplied of the preternatural in Christianity is gone with it. The united testimony of the Gospels we before found far from sufficient to establish the actuality of the most marvellous of the narratives, but now the evidence is become for us practically nothing. We will not, however, even yet reject the idea of miracles, but reserve our judgment till after a full consideration of the life of Jesus, and of the events which succeeded it, giving particular

attention to Paul and his testimony. Although the Gospels afford no trustworthy evidence that any events such as are commonly termed miraculous occurred in the case of Christianity, still the possibility may remain that they did occur; and if there are no incongruities in the narratives, nothing, that is to say, that makes it improbable that miracles did actually take place, we should endeavour to suspend our judgment till the whole case is before us.

What have we, then, in the life of Jesus according to the two first Gospels? We have, as before remarked, the highest teaching-mostly derived, it is true, but, then, only a genius of a high order could have seen, as Jesus did, the relative values of the various precepts and injunctions of his country's sacred literature. To the ordinary mind of that age, there was one dead level of divinely ordained rites and modes of living. Or, if one command was deemed of more importance than another, it was because it had been more emphatically enunciated—was believed to have come more directly from heaven, or to have been given under more impressive circumstances. But Jesus classifies the ancient precepts according to their intrinsic worth. He singles out two as an epitome of the whole; in effect, as a standard by which the rest might be measured. He has obtained general principles, applicable to every action of life. The whole course of a new life spreads itself out before him-a life deduced from, and therefore permeated by the influence of, these principles.