fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the
truth.

[Footnote 1: It was thus that Napoleon became a liberal in the
remembrances of his companions in exile, when these, after their
return, found themselves thrown in the midst of the political society
of the time.]

If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had
little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than
by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes,
coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very
different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. In fact, certain
portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the
entire twenty-first chapter,[1] in which the author seems to wish to
render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to
the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from
the death of John himself, (ver. 21-23.) Many other places bear the
trace of erasures and corrections.[2] It is impossible at this
distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many
surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate
the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than
once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a
decisive test. Every one who sets himself to write the Life of Jesus
without any predetermined theory as to the relative value of the
Gospels, letting himself be guided solely by the sentiment of the
subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narration of
John to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus
especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of
the passion, unintelligible in the synoptics,[3] resume both
probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On
the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of Jesus with any
meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner
of incessantly preaching and demonstrating himself, this perpetual
argumentation, this stage-effect devoid of simplicity, these long
arguments after each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the
tone of which is so often false and unequal,[4] would not be tolerated
by a man of taste compared with the delightful sentences of the
synoptics. There are here evidently artificial portions,[5] which
represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render
u