the life is given and certain aspects of the character are exclusively depicted, there is a want of perspective and so. far a misleading element. But this gives us no ground for affirming that the actual statements of the book are erroneous or unhistorical.
The circumstance that John wrote a Gospel with the express purpose of proving that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, implies that he considered that this truth needed confirmation ; that in the Christian circle in which he moved there was some more or less pronounced tendency towards a denial of the Messiahship or Divinity of Jesus. Whether the teaching of Cerinthus was or was not the immediate occasion of the publication of the Gospel, it is a happy circumstance that the author did not confine himself to what was controversial, or throw his work into a polemic and doctrinal form, but built up a positive exhibition of the Person and claims of our Lord as stated by Himself.
The object in view, therefore, reflects light on the historicity of the contents of the Gospel. The writer professes to produce certain facts which have powerfully influenced the minds of men and have produced faith. If these pretended facts were fictions, then the writer is dishonest and beneath contempt. He wishes to produce the conviction that Jesus is the Messiah, and to accomplish his purpose invents incidents and manipulates utterances of Jesus. A writer of romance who merely wishes to please, even a preacher whose aim is edification, might claim a certain latitude or negligence of accuracy, but a writer whose object it is to prove a certain pro- position stands on a very different platform, and can only be pro- nounced fraudulent if he invents his evidence.
Method and Plan of the Gospel. The method adopted by the writer to convince men that Jesus is the Christ 1s the simplest possible. He does not expect that men will believe this on his mere word. He sets himself to reproduce those salient features in the life of Jesus which chiefly manifested His Messianic dignity and function. He believes that what convinced himself will convince others. One by one he cites his witnesses, never garbling their testimony nor concealing the adverse testimony, but showing with as exact truthfulness how unbelief grew and hardened into opposition, as he tells how faith grew till it culminated in the supreme con- fession of Thomas, “ My Lord and my God”, The plan of the Gospel is therefore also the simplest. Apart from the Prologue (i. 1-18), and the Epilogue (chap. xxi.), the work falls into two nearly equal parts, 1. 19-xii. and xiii.-xx. In the former part the evangelist relates with a singular felicity of selection the scenes in which