the earlier and the later account, of
which the writer of "Supernatural Religion," led away by his usual
dogmatic prejudices, has taken not the smallest notice.

The reader will find this very ably treated in Mr. Sanday's "Authorship
of the Fourth Gospel" (Macmillan).

My object at present is of a far humbler nature, simply to show the
utter untrustworthiness of some of the most confidently asserted
statements of the writer of "Supernatural Religion."

I shall take two:

1. The difference between Christ's mode of teaching and the structure
of His discourses, as represented by St. John and the Synoptics
respectively.

2. The intellectual impossibility that St. John should have written the
Fourth Gospel.

1. Respecting the difference of Christ's mode of teaching as recorded in
St. John and in the Synoptics, he remarks:--

"It is impossible that Jesus can have had two such diametrically
opposed systems of teaching; one purely moral, the other wholly
dogmatic; one expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings
and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses;
one clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed
in obscure, philosophic terminology; and that these should have been
kept so distinct as they are in the Synoptics, on the one hand, and
the Fourth Gospel on the other. The tradition of Justin Martyr
applies solely to the system of the Synoptics, 'Brief and concise
were the sentences uttered by Him: for He was no Sophist, but His
word was the power of God.'" [106:1] (Vol. ii. p. 468)

To take the first of those assertions. So far from its being
"impossible" that Jesus "can have had two such diametrically opposite
modes of teaching," it is not only possible, but we have undeniable
proof of the fact in that remarkable saying of Christ recorded by both
St. Matthew and St. Luke: "All things are delivered unto Me of My
Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any
man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal
Him." (Matth. xi. 27). The author of "Supernatural Religion" has studied
the letter of this passage very carefully, for he devotes no less than
ten pages to a minute examination of the supposed quotations of it in
Justin and other Fathers (vol. i. pp. 402-412); but he does not draw
attention to the fact that it is conceived in the spirit and expressed
in the terms of the Fourth