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for doubting,* and for which even those who deny their genuineness assign a date earlier than that which we would claim for the fourth Gospel. Cerinthus was undoubtedly a Gnostic, and ecclesiastical tradition that bears all the marks of authenticity represents him to have been contemporary with St. John, and to have been regarded by the venerable apostle as an atrocious perverter of the truth. Irenæus expressly says that John had the doctrines of the Gnostics in view in the composition of his Gospel.

The Gnostics represented the Logos, the Monogenes or Only-begotten, Life, and Light as æons distinct from the Supreme Being; they regarded the Creator of the world and Author of the Jewish dispensation as an inferior, imperfect, and according to some of their teachers malignant being; and maintained that Christ was sent by the Supreme God to deliver men from his tyranny and from the yoke of Judaism. Ephesus, where St. John is believed to have passed the last years of his life and to have written his Gospel, was the metropolis of Gnosticism. If the author of the fourth Gospel lived where these opinions were taking root, it was incumbent on him to show that Life, Light, and the Logos were not distinct from, but identical with, the Supreme God; that the Supreme God created the world and gave the Jewish law; and that the same God sent the Monogenes Jesus Christ not to destroy, but to complete the law; not to deliver men from its tyranny, but to consummate for and in them the blessedness of which it

* Renan admits their genuineness.

was the pledge and promise. I need not say how thoroughly this work is accomplished in the first eighteen verses of the fourth Gospel, in which the author, as with a prophet's wand, waves back to their native nothingness the chimeras of an arrogant and presumptuous philosophy.

An anti-Gnostic purpose is, then, perfectly evident in this introduction of the fourth Gospel. But it deals with Gnosticism only in its first stages, in its rudiments. Had it been written, as it is said to have been, in the second century, there would have been a heavier and a more complex task devolved upon the author. The system which he opposed grew rapidly. The Valentinians, whose founder flourished about A.D. 140, numbered no less than thirty æons, in pairs, male and female. Basilides, who lived about fifteen years earlier, promulgated a system not less complicated, and even more grotesque and absurd. Still earlier in the century, there sprang up in the East the Ophitic form of Gnosticism, in which the serpent in Eden, the serpents that bit the Israelites in the wilderness, the rod which became a serpent in the hand of Moses, and the brazen serpent, all represented spiritual agencies, - the former two malignant, the latter two beneficent. Had the fourth Gospel been written after this heresy grew rife, it is impossible that the reference to the brazen serpent in the conversation with Nicodemus should have passed without comment. In fine, there are in this Gospel no traces whatever of several forms which we know that Gnosticism assumed in the second century; while there are evident references to opinions which

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must have been held by Cerinthus and his Gnostic contemporaries, and with which St. John must have been conversant in the latter years of his life.

I have shown you that the fourth Gospel must have been written in the first century, that John could have written it, that it is too remarkable a book to have passed into circulation anonymously, and that of all the early Christians whose names have come down to us there is none but John who could have written it. These reasons for believing in the genuineness of the fourth Gospel as the work of John, stand by their own validity and need no corroboration. Yet they are confirmed by the critical consciousness of the sincere and loving follower of Jesus, who, the more intimate his kindred with his Lord, feels only the fuller assurance that this record can have come from none other than the nearest and best beloved of the disciples.*

* For an eminently able treatment of the points at issue among critics concerning the fourth Gospel, the reader is referred to "The Fourth Gospel the Heart of Christ," by Rev. Edmund H. Sears, D.D., -a work remarkable equally for its acute reasoning and its truly Johannine spirit of devotion.

LECTURE V.

MIRACLES

TIONS.

OBJECTIONS FROM THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW.

OBJECTIONS FROM EXPERIENCE.

CLES.

NEED AND USE OF MIRA

MIRACLES CONSONANT WITH THE PERSON AND MISSION OF CHRIST. VERIFIED BY HUMAN HISTORY. CONSISTENT WITH THE KNOWN METHODS OF THE DIVINE

ADMINISTRATION.

THE arguments urged in the preceding Lectures

would have been multiplied to waste in any other cause than that in which they are employed. The genuineness of most ancient books, and the authenticity of many universally admitted facts of earlier times, rest on much weaker evidence than sustains the genuineness and authenticity of the Gospels. Testimony as clear, strong, and manifold as we have to the leading facts in the life of Jesus would completely rehabilitate ancient history. Why is this testimony denied or doubted? There was a time when a repugnancy to Christianity on moral grounds accounted to a large extent for such unbelief as prevailed, and when that very unbelief itself had almost the weight of affirmative evidence; for such men as Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, could hardly have been found on the right side, on the divine side, of any question involving principle and character. The

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PRESENT PHASIS OF SCEPTICISM.

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objections of that school were plausible, but superficial, sneers oftener than arguments, and levelled rather at the antecedents and accessories of Christianity than at Christ and his Gospel.

Very different is the case now. Infidelity seldom appears in scurrilous forms, associated with banter. and ribaldry. It is frank, honest, earnest, respectful and often even reverent toward the faith it repudiates; and among its expositors are not a few men of pure character, of high scientific attainments, and evidently sincere and zealous in the search for truth. They have no disrelish for the morality of the Gospel, no disesteem for Jesus as an exemplar and a preacher of righteousness, no hostility to Christian institutions. They reject Christianity solely on account of its miraculous element. At the same time, there are others, who with evident sincerity claim to be called Christians, profess to receive Jesus Christ as an unparalleled model of spiritual excellence, and as the wisest teacher of religion and morals that the world has yet seen, who nevertheless repudiate the record of his miracles, and maintain that he was no more or other than any man is capable of becoming. These persons profess to receive the teachings of Christ, not on his authority, but on their own, on account of the accordance of his words with their own intuitions and experience. Yet, in order to be consistent with themselves, they can receive only a limited portion of his teachings; for the paternal providence of God over individual beings and events, the spiritual help granted to aspirants after goodness,