r than that which is to be found in the case of the
other Gospels. Thus the Christian may recognize with gratitude that
his Divine Master has especially added the witness of the Church to the
work of His beloved disciple. All through the 2nd century we have the
links of a chain of evidence, and after A.D. 200 the canon of the
Gospels is known to have been so fixed that no defender of the faith is
called upon to show what that canon was. The earliest traces of the
phraseology of St. John are to be discovered in the _Didache_, which
was probably written in Eastern Palestine or Syria about A.D. 100. The
prayers which are provided in this book for use at the Eucharist are
plainly of a Johannine type, and are probably derived from oral
teaching given by the apostle himself before he lived at Ephesus. In
any case, the _Didache_ seems sufficient to disprove the sceptical
assertion that theological language of a Johannine character was
unknown in the Christian Church about A.D. 100. The letters attributed
to St. Ignatius, the martyr bishop of Antioch, are now universally
admitted to be genuine by competent scholars. They may most reasonably
be dated about A.D. 110, and they are deeply imbued with thought of a
Johannine type. It has been lately suggested that this tendency of
thought does not prove an actual acquaintance with the Gospel of St.
John. But when we find Christ {86} called "the Word," and the devil
called "the prince of this world," and read such a phrase as "the bread
of God which is the flesh of Christ," it is almost impossible to deny
that the letters of Ignatius contain actual reminiscences of St. John's
language. Nor is there the least reason why Ignatius should not have
been acquainted with this Gospel. His younger contemporary St.
Polycarp, whose letter to the Philippians was also written about A.D.
110, quotes from the First Epistle of St. John. And Papias, who
probably wrote about A.D. 130, and collected his materials many years
earlier, also quoted that Epistle, as we learn from Eusebius. Now, the
connection between the Gospel and the Epistle is, as has been cleverly
remarked, like the connection between a star and its satellite. They
are obviously the work of the same author. If Polycarp, who had
himself seen St. John, knew that the Epistle was genuine, he must have
known that the Gospel was genuine.

The evidence which can definitely be dated between A.D. 120 and A.D.
170 is of extreme inte