aid, first in the world, and then in the soul, the Gospel has nothing
to lay hold of and to work upon; so it was laid first in the Sermon on
the Mount, which, far beyond all other teaching, stops every mouth and
brings in all the world guilty before God; and then the way is prepared
for fuller revelations, such as that of the Atonement by the Death of
Christ as set forth in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the
revelation culminates in the knowledge of the Father and the Son in the
Fourth Gospel.

With respect to the assertion of the author of "Supernatural Religion,"
that the discourses in this Gospel are, as compared with those in the
Synoptics, _wholly_ dogmatic, as opposed to moral, the reader may judge
of the truth of this by the following sayings of the Fourth Gospel:--

"Every one that doeth evil hateth the light."

"He that doeth truth cometh to the light."

"God is a Spirit, and they who worship Him must worship Him in
spirit and in truth."

"They that have done good [shall come forth] to the Resurrection of
Life."

"How can ye believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not
the honour that cometh of God only?"

"If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether
it be of God."

"The truth shall make you free," coupled with

"Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin."

"If I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, ye ought also to
wash one another's feet."

"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I
have loved you."

"He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth
Me."

These sayings, the reader will perceive, embody the deepest and highest
moral teaching conceivable.

One more point remains to be considered--the impossibility that St.
John, taking into account his education and intellect, should have been
the author of the Fourth Gospel. This is stated in the following
passage:--

"The philosophical statements with which the Gospel commences, it
will be admitted, are anything but characteristic of the son of
thunder, the ignorant and unlearned fisherman of Galilee, who, to a
comparatively late period of life, continued preaching in his native
country to his brethren of the circumcision.... In the Alexandrian
philosophy, everything was prepared for the final application of the
doctrine, and nothing is more