As to us, evermore children, doomed to impotence, who labour without reaping, and who will never witness the fruit of that which we have sown, let us bow before these divine men. They could do that which we cannot do, create, affirm, act. Will great originality be born again, or will the world henceforth be content to follow the paths opened by the bold originators of ancient time? We do not know. But, whatever unlooked-for events the future may have in store, Jesus will never be surpassed. His worship will unceasingly renew its youth; his story will call forth endless tears; his sufferings will subdue the noblest hearts; all ages will proclaim that among the sons of men no one has been born who is greater than he.

APPENDIX.

VALUE OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL AS AN
HISTORICAL DOCUMENT.

THE chief difficulty that meets the historian of the life of Jesus is to estimate rightly the authenticity of the sources on which he must rely. On the one hand, what is the value of the Gospels called "Synoptics;" on the other hand, what use is to be made of the Fourth Gospel? As to the former, all those who follow the critical method in dealing with these topics are substantially agreed. The Synoptics represent the tradition (often legendary) of the first two or three Christian generations regarding the person of Jesus. This leaves much uncertainty in the detail of the narrative, and compels the constant use of such phrases as, "It was said," "Some have related that," etc. Still, it is enough to inform us of the general character of the Founder, the method and main features of his teaching, and the most essential incidents of his life. Those writers of his biography who do not go outside the circle of the Synoptics differ from one another no more than the narrators of Mahomet's life, who make use of the hadith. The biographers of the Arabian prophet may have various opinions as to the authenticity of this or that anecdote; but in the main everybody is agreed as to the value of the hadith everybody classes them as legendary or traditional material, true in their way, but not as accurate documents of history properly so called.

But there is no such agreement among scholars as to the use we are justified in making of the Fourth Gospel. I have

made use of this document with no end of reserves and precautions. In the opinion of excellent judges, I ought not to have made any use of it at all, with the possible exception of the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters, which contain the story of the Crucifixion. Almost all the intelligent criticisms I have received upon my work agree on that point. I am not surprised at this; for I could not be ignorant of the unfavourable opinion as to the historic value of the Fourth Gospel which prevails in the liberal schools of theology.1 Objections coming from men so competent made it my duty to submit my opinion to a new examination. Disregarding for the present the question of authorship, I will now follow that Gospel through, paragraph by paragraph, as if it had but just appeared, without any author's name, as a manuscript newly discovered. Let us put aside every preconceived idea, and endeavour to make clear to ourselves the impressions produced on us by this unique composition.

1. The Proem.-The opening verses (i. 1-14) at first glance force upon us the gravest suspicions. They carry us into the very heart of Apostolic theology, show no likeness to the Synoptics, and put forth ideas assuredly very different from those of Jesus and of his true disciples. At the outset, this prologue warns us that the work in hand cannot be a simple history, transparent and impersonal, like the narrative of Mark, for example; that the author has a theology; that he wishes to prove a thesis, namely, that Jesus is the Divine Word (Logos). Hence extreme caution is enjoined upon us. Must we, however, on the strength of this first page, reject the book throughout, and find an imposture in the fourteenth verse, where the author declares that he has been a witness of the events which make up the life of Jesus?

This would be, I think, a very hasty conclusion. A work

1 The arguments urged by the masters of these schools against [the authenticity of] the Fourth Gospel are ably set forth in Scholten's work, translated by Albert Réville (Revue de Théologie, 3d ser. vols. 2, 3, 4). 2 Compare the first verse of the first Epistle of John.

full of theological motive may yet embrace valuable historical information. Do not the Synoptics write with the constant aim to demonstrate that Jesus realised all the messianic prophecies? Because of this, are we to give up searching for some kernel of history in their accounts? The theory of the Logos, so fully developed in the document before us, is not a reason for throwing it forward to the middle or close of the second century. The belief that Jesus was the Logos of the Alexandrian theology would no doubt suggest itself very early, and that in a strictly logical way. Happily, the founder of Christianity had no idea of that kind. But in the year 68 he is already called "the Word of God."1 Apollos, who was from Alexandria, and who appears to have resembled Philo, passes already (about the year 57) for a new preacher, holding peculiar doctrines. These ideas are in perfect accord with the state of mind in which the Christian community found itself when it lost the hope of seeing Jesus appear soon in the clouds as the Son of Man. A change of the same kind seems to have been wrought in the opinions of Saint Paul. We know the difference there is between his earlier epistles and the last. The hope, for example, of the near coming of Christ, which pervades the two epistles to the Thessalonians, disappears toward the end of his life, and he then turns to another order of imagination. The doctrine of the Epistle to the Colossians is much like that of the Fourth Gospel: Jesus is represented in that epistle as the "image of the invisible God," the "first-born of every creature," through whom "everything has been created," who was "before all things," by whom "all things consist," in whom "dwells the fulness of the godhead bodily." 2 Is not this the very "Word" of Philo? I know there are those who reject the genuineness of "Colossians," but for reasons, in my opinion, altogether insufficient. These changes of theory, or rather of style, among the men of those times - times full of ardent passion - may well, within certain limits, be admitted. 1 Rev. xix. 13. See, however, post, footnote, p. 426. 2 Col. i. 15-20; ii. 9.