1). The amanuensis may be supposed to have asked, “How long did he stay there?" and been answered, "Not many days" (ii. 12). The whole impression given, in reading the Gospel, is as if the aged apostle had been surrounded by a group of younger Christians, who asked him questions about his recollections of Jesus, and wrote down his answers. “Tell us," they would say, " about Nicodemus;" or, "Tell us of the Christ's conversation at the Last Supper;" or, "Tell us all you can remember of his conversations with the Jews at the feasts." So, when he told them about Jesus washing his disciples' feet, they probably asked, "When was this?" and he answered, "Before the feast of the Passover." But, in arranging the different papers on which were written down. these conversations and incidents, they may have sometimes misplaced them.

Let us suppose the Gospel to be printed as a collection of separate reminiscences, and not a continuous whole; and, instead of being divided into chapters and verses, to be numbered, Recollection 1st, 2d, 3d, which the reader is at liberty to arrange as he pleases, what will be the result as to the supper?

First, it would appear that the whole passage contained in John xiii. and John xiv. (with an exception to be noticed presently), is an account, not of the Paschal feast at which the supper was instituted, but, as Lightfoot and others have supposed, of a supper which Jesus and his apostles took in company a day or two before. This would account for the introductory phrase, "Before the feast of the Passover," and for the closing summons, otherwise inexplicable, "Arise; let hence."

us go

All readers have doubtless been struck with this last sentence. Why did Jesus say, "Arise; let us go hence," and then go on with a long series of remarks extending through sixty verses, and closing with the prayer in chap. xvii.? If he arose to go, and then changed his mind, why did John record at all the proposal to leave the room at that moment, which thus became insignificant? The simple and natural explanation is, that they did leave the room, and close the con

versation then; and what follows in the next three chapters is the recollection of another conversation, at another time, not sufficiently distinguished by the compiler of these Johannine fragments. This second conversation (chaps. xv., xvi., xvii.) probably belongs to the institution of the supper, and is a supplement to the account of that transaction as told by the Synoptics. Its opening words, "I am the true vine," connect themselves naturally with the words (recorded by Matthew and Mark), "I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, till the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." For "I am the true vine," &c. The "new wine" is there explained to be the new communion, inward, and not outward, by which Jesus was to be no longer with them as a companion and friend, but in them as a life and inspiration. The connection is thus complete. The principal subject of the first conversation, introduced by the washing of the feet, was their duty to serve and help each other after he was gone. The chief topic of the second conversation, introduced by the Lord's Supper, was their communion with him, and common life in him.

The only difficulty in this explanation is the passage, John xiii. 21-38, containing the account of the sop given to Judas, and the prediction of Peter's fall and the cock-crow. These, according to the Synoptics, belong to the second conversation at the Paschal Supper, on Thursday evening; and, if so, have been misplaced, and inserted by mistake here. This mistake was probably occasioned by verse 18th, in which Jesus alluded to his betrayer on the first evening, but less distinctly than on the second. On the other hand, the passage in Luke (xxii. 24– 30) seems evidently to belong to the first conversation, and to the washing of feet. With this alteration, the chief difficulty is removed.

We may say, in fact, that, by this change, the whole difficulty of the chronology of Passion Week is removed. For the passage in John (xviii. 28) about the Jews not going into the judgment-hall lest they should be defiled, "but that they might eat the passover," is explained by John. xix. 14, which calls this day the "preparation for the Passover"

(compared with verse 31, which makes it the preparation for the Paschal sabbath, which was the great day of the feast; and also compared with Matt. xv. 42, and Luke xxiii. 54, "because it was the preparation, that is, the day before the sabbath"). The Jews would not go into Pilate's hall, but not because that would prevent them from eating the Paschal Supper that evening; for it would not have done so. If the Paschal Supper was still to be eaten that evening, then the feast had not begun; and going into Pilate's hall would not have defiled them. So Lightfoot declares, and there can be no higher authority for Hebrew usages. "To eat the Passover" (John xviii. 28), he understands to refer to the feast on the second evening of the Paschal season, when, as the festival was actually in progress, the Jews would have become ceremonially defiled by entering the Roman prætorium.

The difference between the fourth Gospel and the Revelation is so great, say Mr. Tayler and others, that, if John the Apostle wrote the one, he could not have written the other. To this we reply, –

1. The differences are more superficial than essential,rather those which touch the form, than such as affect the substance. Suppose the Apocalypse to have been written in the first overflowing ardor of the first persecution, when the writer was comparatively young, and all the passionate fire of his heart and imagination were thrown into this ecstatic vision; and that the Gospel was written long years after, when he had meditated deeply, and when a long Christian experience had purified his soul, then there need not be any such difficulty in supposing one man the author of both. The difference between them is not so great as between Swedenborg's "Algebra,” and his "Heaven and Hell;" his treatise on "Docks, Sluices, and Salt-works," and the "Arcana Coelestia;" his large folio volumes on "Mines and Mining," and his "Apocalypse Revealed." Baur himself finds points of contact between the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, though he thinks that the writer of the Gospel purposely imitated the latter book.*

* Baur, Das Christenthum, &c. Tübingen, 1860.

"It cannot be denied," says Baur, "that the evangelist wished to give his book the authority of the apostle who wrote the Apocalypse, and so assumed the same intellectual position. There is not merely an outward support in the name of the highly revered apostle, but there are not wanting many internal resemblances between the Gospel and the Apocalypse. In fact, one must admire the deep genial sympathy and the delicate skill, which the writer has shown in finding in the Apocalypse elements which could be developed into the loftier and larger views of the evangelist. He has thus spiritualized the Book of Revelation into a Gospel." The amount of which is, that Baur does not find the Gospel so essentially different from the Apocalypse as Mr. Tayler does.

2. But if we must choose between the Apocalypse and the Gospel as apostolic writings, every thing should lead us to surrender the first. The authorship of the Gospel was never doubted by antiquity; that of the Apocalypse was. At the end of the second century, when the Christian Scriptures were distributed into those which were unquestioned, those which were doubtful, and those which were spurious, the Gospel was placed in the first division, and the Book of Revelation in the second.

One objection urged against the fourth Gospel is its antiJewish tone of thought. Granting this in the main, we yet find such expressions as that used to the Samaritan woman, "We know what we worship; for salvation is from the Jews." But it is thought, that if the apostle wrote the Apocalypse, which is strongly Jewish, he could not so soon after have changed his tone so entirely. But is the writer of the Apocalypse so Jewish, when a part of his object is to announce judgments on Jerusalem? And, again, why may not John have risen above his Jewish tendencies into a universal Christianity, since Paul passed through the same change? It is said, that, if Jesus had really taught as anti-Jewish a gospel as is represented by John, the struggle between Paul and his opponents could never have taken place. But this is to ignore the universal tendency in men and sects to notice only that which is in accord with their own prejudices.

IV.

The history of opinion in regard to this Gospel is as follows. It is supposed to be referred to by Luke and Mark (De Wette). The apostolic fathers do not refer to it directly, but Eusebius tells us that Papias made use of testimonies from the first Epistle of John. Papias had been a hearer of John in his youth, and was an Asiatic bishop in the middle of the second century. Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century, Tatian, and the "Clementine Homilies," contain passages so strikingly like those in the Gospel, that they appear to have been taken from it. Johannic formulas are found in the Gnostic writings, about A.D. 140. The first distinct declaration, however, that the Apostle John was the author of the fourth Gospel, comes from Theophilus of Antioch, about A.D. 180, who quotes the passage, "In the beginning was the Word." After this, it is continually quoted and referred to by all the great writers at the end of the second and beginning of the third century, as Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian of Carthage, and Origen. None of these scholars express any doubt concerning the authorship of the Gospel; and their quotations from it are so numerous, that, if it were lost, it might almost be reconstructed from their writings.

The first doubts of the authenticity of the Gospel (unless we consider its rejection by the Alogi to be based on critical reasons) come in the seventeenth century, and in England, by some unknown writer, refuted by the great scholar Le Clerc. After this there followed a silence of a hundred years, when the attack was renewed in 1792, by another Englishman, Evanson. Nothing more was heard on the subject, and the replies to these doubts seemed to have satisfied all minds, when Bretschneider, in 1820, renewed the assault in the "Probabilia." He was replied to by a multitude of critics, and afterward retracted his opinion, and admitted that his objections had been fully answered.* No other foe to the authenticity

* Handbuch der Dogmatik, § 34, note.