being and facts before him, he should give to his Gospel the peculiar tone and coloring by which it is distinguished from the rest. Still, it is the same Jesus that we see in the other Gospels, only there seen through the perfect transparency of a fine day, and here as through the softening haze of our Indian summer. In the fourth place, the historical reasons given for assigning so late a date as A. D. 170 or 180 to the fourth Gospel are without foundation in fact. The chief reason for this late date is, that the doctrine of the Logos, as set forth in this Gospel, implies, previous to its composition, the existence of philosophical and metaphysical speculations which could not have arisen at so early a period as during the lifetime of St. John. In Gieseler's Ecclesiastical History (First Period, 36) we have the brief but decisive statement of that exact historian, that the doctrine of the Logos, borrowed from the Alexandrine Jewish philosophy, had entered into the speculations of Christians during the first century. In the elaborate fourth section of Neander's Church History, it is shown how very early those speculations, half Jewish in their origin, began to effect the views of Christians, the age of Paul being not without indications of their influence, while in the time of John they had become fully developed, Cerinthus, his contemporary, being "the intermediate link between the Judaizing and Gnostic sects." These conclusions of Gieseler and Neander are more than confirmed by the writings recently found at Mount Athos, which, whether the veritable works of Hippolytus or not, certainly belong to the early part of the second century, and show that different sects under the general name of Ophites before the end of the first century were pursuing precisely the sort of inquiries which might suggest the opening words of the fourth Gospel. Chevalier Bunsen, in his analysis of "The Refutation of all Heresies," the principal work in the newly found writings, says: .... "The Ophites all know the Logos. They refer, however, not to the Logos of Philo, but to the Logos personified in man, and identified with Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary. The only admissible alternative, therefore, seems to me to be this. When St. John, towards the end of the first century, wrote down his evidence respecting Jesus the Christ, and placed at the head of his exposition those simple and grand words on the Logos, he either referred to sects who had abused the speculations about the Logos as God's thought of himself, or he did not. If he did, as it seems to me impossible to doubt, he cannot have had in mind so much the philosophical followers of Philo, who abhorred the very idea of the personal union of the Logos with man, as the Christian heretics who perverted this idea in one way or another. This being the case, I maintain that he had before him the very sects which we have now become acquainted with from their own writings, the very titles of which we did not know hitherto. At all events, then, what the Apostle says is not the Christian and popular expression of a speculative system of Valentinianism, but the simple statement of the fact, that the Logos is neither an abstract notion, nor an angel, nor an æon (if that word existed as a term), but that he is one with the Man Jesus, the Christ. That this reasoning is sound, the progress of our researches will easily prove. For even in the second stage of Gnosticism, the Gentile one, we find the very words of St. John evidently alluded to, long before the last quarter or third of the second century, when, according to the most unhappy of all philological conjectures, and the most untrue of all historical views, the system of Strauss and Baur, that Gospel made its appearance as the fag-end of Gnosticism."- Vol. I. pp. 41, 42. This strikes at the root of one important class of reasonings by which the Tübingen critics would prove the late origin of the Gospel of John. But the evidence against their hypothesis does not end here. In another part of the same work, namely, in the account given of Basilides, there is a union of direct testimony and of indirect statement, which furnishes a perfect confutation of the argument resting on so unsubstantial a basis of general reasoning and historical fact. For Basilides, in extracts from his writings preserved in the work on "All Heresies," "not only," as Bunsen says,* "quotes (besides Luke's second chapter) the Gospel of St. John; it is also evident that his whole metaphysical development is an attempt to connect a cosmogonic system with St. John's prologue, and with the person of Christ. Now these extracts are undoubtedly older than Heracleon's commentary on St. John (which itself is already incompatible with Strauss's and Baur's hypothesis about the origin of the fourth Gospel), and belong to the time between 120 and 130." † * Vol. I. pp. 87, 88. We attach no great value to the quotation alleged to be made by Basilides from the fourth Gospel; for we do not think it is needed in this part of the discussion. This branch of the argument for the late origin of the The theory which we now have under consideration is sustained by the hypothesis that the Gospels grew out of the controversies, speculations, and prevalent sentiments among Christians during the first two centuries. Now we believe that precisely the opposite of all this is the fact; that with the exception of the Logos of St. John, which refers to speculations that began earlier than Christianity and which had a great influence on certain classes of Christians before the close of the first century, these writings are remarkably free from the theological and ecclesiastical bias of the times. They come down through the excited and turbulent controversies of those ages, as if utterly unconscious of what was going on around them, lending their support neither to this Gospel is wholly overthrown without any such explicit testimony. The argument rests on the fact of the non-existence of certain speculations till after the middle of the second century, which speculations, it is proved both by extracts from Hippolytus and from sources of information before accessible to historians, did prevail among Christian sects before the close of the first century. As a matter of some curiosity, however, we would spend a little time in examining the quotation alleged to be made by BasiliWe give the passage as we find it in the Westminster Review for April, 1853, American ed., p. 298. des. “ καὶ δέδοικε τὰς κατὰ προβολὴν τῶν γεγονότων οὐσίας ὁ Βασιλείδης ἀλλὰ εἶπε, φησὶ, καὶ ἐγένετο, καὶ τοῦτό ἐστιν ὁ λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνδρες οὗτοι, τὸ λεχθὲν ὑπὸ Μωσέως, Γενηθήτω φῶς, καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς. Πόθεν, φησὶ, γέγονε τὸ φῶς; . . . . Γέγονε, φησὶν, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων τὸ σπέρμα τοῦ κόσμου, ὁ λόγος ὁ λεχθεὶς γενηθήτω φῶς, καὶ τοῦτο, φησὶν, ἔστι τὸ λεγόμενον ἐν τοῖς Εὐαγγελίοις· “ Ην τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν, ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον. — p. 232. .... The Westminster Review denies that the singular verb here, which grammatically agrees with Basilides and with nothing else, is any evidence that Basilides is really the subject of the verb noi, because, says, the writer (Hippolytus) sometimes uses a singular verb with plural subject expressed, and sometimes a plural verb with singular subject expressed. As an example of the former, the following passage is given: σιἼδωμεν οὖν πῶς καταφανῶς Βασιλείδης ὁμοῦ καὶ Ἰσίδωρος καὶ πᾶς ὁ τούτων χορὸς, οὐχ ἁπλῶς καταψεύδεται μόνου Ματθαίου, ἀλλὰ γὰρ καὶ τοῦ Σωτῆρος αὐτοῦ. Ἦν, φησὶν, ὅτε ἦν οὐδὲν, κ. τ. λ. - p. 230.” This, instead of being an instance of bad grammar, is perfectly in accordance with what we find in classical Greek, and is not, in the grammatical sense, an instance of a singular verb with a plural subject. When there are two or more subjects connected together, and each subject is considered separately and by itself, or when one of the subjects is to be represented as more prominent than the others, the predicate is confined to one of the subjects, and agrees with it. “· οἱ πένητες καὶ ὁ δῆμος πλέον ἔχει. Xen" Kühner, 242, b. Grammatically, therefore, so far as this example is concerned, there can be no doubt that the quotation from John is here attributed to Basilides. It is possible, however, that the leader of a sect may have been named for the sect itself, though the connection does not favor that supposition. party nor to that, borrowing nothing from them; and in their simplicity, the calmness of their tone, the depth of their wisdom, the unruffled spirit which runs through them and marks all their words, they are just what we should expect them to be, if they had been prepared, as we suppose they were, by the primitive disciples of a being such as they describe, or their companions. We have just been turning over the pages of a book, not yet published, and which therefore we have no right to mention by name, a book evidently prepared with the most scrupulous thoroughness and exactness, taken mostly from the original authorities, in regard to a doctrine which, the author says, is found to pervade all the Christian writings that we have subsequent to the books of the New Testament; and yet this doctrine respecting "Christ's mission to the under-world," which powerfully affected the earliest Christian literature that we have, and which so early found its way into the formulas of the Church, has, he says, left no trace of itself on any one of the Gospels, as it inevitably must have done, if they had been, as our modern critics represent them to be, not veritable historical documents of the first generation, but the speculative and ideal writings of a later period. The argument on this point, as stated in the work before us, is a striking one, and might, as the author intimates, with equal force be drawn, by the same method of treatment, from other speculations which at that time greatly interested the Christian mind, but of which no trace is left in the Gospels. This train of argument, not only in its bearing on the unsubstantial theories now under examination, but in its relation to the whole subject before us, is one entitled to great consideration. The Gospels, as we now have them, could not have been the growth of any age since the first century, for they are not marked by any one of the characteristics of any subsequent age. An attempt, indeed, has been made to show in the fourth Gospel marks of the Docetic doctrines of the second century. "The Logos," it is said, (Christian Examiner for January, 1852, pp. 24, 25,) "assumes a body as the historical Jesus. But this body makes no essential part of the person..... This is nowhere asserted, but it is many times implied. There are singular apparitions and hidings, which can be accounted for on no other supposition. The histori cal vanishes into the Docetic." Then, as instances, are given John vii. 10, 15, 20, viii. 59, x. 39, and xii. 36. We quote each of these passages in as literal a translation as we can give. Ch. vii. 10: "Then Jesus went up to the feast, not openly, but as in secret." The meaning plainly enough is, that he did not go with the caravan, but by himself, privately. Ch. vii. 15-20 is adduced to show that, when Jesus appeared at Jerusalem, those who had seen him repeatedly did not know him. The very reverse is the obvious inference from the language used: "About the middle of the feast, Jesus came up to the temple and taught. And the Jews wondered, saying, How doth this man know letters, not having learned?" If they did not know who he was, how could they say that he had "never learned"? Ch. viii. 59: "They took up stones to cast at him. But Jesus was concealed, and went out of the temple." In the midst of the excited tumultuous crowd he was hid (not hid himself) from them, and went out of the temple. The passage is not so strong as in Luke iv. 28, 29, where, as his enemies were about to throw him from the brow of the hill at Nazareth, "he, passing through the midst of them, went away"; or where he appeared, without being recognized, to two disciples going to Emmaus; but Luke is not suspected of any tendency to such a doctrine. Ch. x. 39 must be a misquotation. It is, "And she had a sister named Martha, who also sat at Jesus's feet and heard his word." Ch. xii. 36: "These things spake Jesus, and, going away, he was hid from them." There is nothing here like the coming and vanishing of an apparition. We have quoted every one of these passages to show on how slender a basis of fact these new theories are made to rest. That the fourth Gospel represents Jesus with an apparent and not a real body of flesh and blood, is not proved by a single passage, but it is inconsistent with the whole scope of the Gospel, and flatly contradicted more than once. In talking with the woman of Samaria in the heat of noon, Jesus sat by the well, "being wearied with his journey." If the writer would represent him without a real body, how could he say that he was "wearied with his journey"? But a more decisive passage still is xx. 27, where he tells Thomas to thrust his hand into his side and examine for himself. could this be, if he had not a real body? How |