, Light of Light," have strained every nerve to prove
that the fourth Gospel was not written by St. John. It is, of course,
almost impossible that they should admit that the writer was an apostle
and an honest man and continue to deny that the Christ whom he depicts
claimed to be the Lord and Maker of all things. During the controversy
{83} which has been waged during the last three generations with regard
to St. John's Gospel, it has been evident throughout that the Gospel
has been rejected for this very reason. The book has driven a wedge
into the whole band of New Testament students. The critics who deny
that Jesus was God, but are willing to grant that He was the most holy
and the most divine of men, have been forced to side with those who are
openly Atheists or Agnostics. The clue to their theories was
unguardedly exposed by Weizsaecker, who said, with regard to St. John's
Gospel, "It is impossible to imagine any power of faith and philosophy
so great as thus to obliterate the recollection of the real life, and
to substitute for it this marvellous picture of a Divine Being." [1]
This remark shows us that the critic approached the Gospel with a
prejudice against the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity, and rejected the
Gospel mainly because it would not agree with his own prejudice. But
the determination to fight to the uttermost against the converging
lines of Christian evidence has now driven such critics into a corner.
Many have already abandoned the position that the book is a
semi-Gnostic forgery written in the middle of the 2nd century, and they
are now endeavouring to maintain that it was written about A.D. 100 by
a certain John the Presbyter, whom they assert to have been afterwards
confounded with the Apostle John.

Of John the Presbyter very little indeed is known. Papias, about A.D.
130, says that he was, like Aristion, "a disciple" of the Lord, and
that he had himself made oral inquiries as to his teaching. He seems
to have been an elder contemporary of Papias. Dionysius of Alexandria,
about A.D. 250, mentions that there were two monuments in Ephesus
bearing the name of John, and we may reasonably suppose that one of
these was in memory of the presbyter mentioned by Papias. But a little
reflection will soon convince us that nothing has been gained by the
conjecture that this John wrote the Gospel. If John {84} the Presbyter
was personally acquainted with our Lord, as some writers understand
Papias