details his ignorance of the scenery and circumstances amid which the event is described as taking place. Unless the writer studiously avoids details, and confines himself to names and generalities, he is certain to commit numerous errors. Even the most laborious and minute study of the circumstances of the country, in which he is to lay his scene, will not preserve him from such errors. He must live long, and observe carefully in the country, if he wishes to invent a tale which will not betray his ignorance in numberless details. Allusions of French or German authors to English life supply the readiest illustration of this principle.” Now the author of the Fourth Gospel betrays that intimate acquaintance with the localities of Palestine, which could only be possessed by a resident. He de- scribes Bethany as “nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off’. Who, but one who had often walked it, would be likely to let that exact indication drop from his pen? Itis the unconscious gratuitousness of full knowledge. In chap. vi. he has before his mind’s eye the movements round the Sea of Galilee, which he de- scribes. He is familiar with the Temple, with its porches and cloisters, and he knows the side of the building which people chose in cold weather. He passes from Jerusalem to the villages around, crossing brooks, and visiting gardens without once stumbling in his topographical details. This sure sign of a resident he constantly betrays, he adds to the name of a town the additional specification by which it might be distinguished from others of the same name: “ Bethany beyond Jordan,” “ Aenon near to Salim,” “ Bethsaida the city of Andrew and Peter,” and so forth.
In a matter of this kind few are more qualified to judge than Bishop Lightfoot, who spent so much of his own life in archzological research. Here is his judgment: ‘Let us place ourselves in the position of one who wrote at the middle of the second century, after the later Roman invasion had swept off the scanty gleanings of the past which had been spared from the earlier. Let us ask how a romancer so situated is to make himself acquainted with the inci- dents, the localities, the buildings, the institutions, the modes of thought and feeling which belonged to this past age, and (as we may almost say) this bygone people. Let it be granted that here and there he must stumble upon a historical fact, that in one or two particulars he might reproduce a national characteristic. More than this would be beyond his reach. For, it will be borne in mind, he would be placed at a great disadvantage, compared with a modern writer; he would have to reconstruct history without these various appliances, maps and plates, chronological tables, books of travel,