THE LOST GOSPEL.
 
 THE LOST GOSPEL AND ITS 
 CONTENTS; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF "SUPERNATURAL RELIGION" 
 REFUTED BY HIMSELF. 
 
 BY THE REV. M. F. SADLER, M.A., 
 
 RECTOR OF HONITON. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1876.
 
 CHISWICK 1'RESS : PRINTED BV WHITTINGHAM AND W1LK1NS, 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book is entitled " The Lost Gospel/' because 
 the book to which it is an answer is an attempt to 
 discredit the Supernatural element of Christianity by 
 undermining the authority of our present Gospels in 
 favour of an earlier form of the narrative which has 
 perished. 
 
 It seemed to me that, if the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion " proved his point, and demonstrated that the 
 Fathers of the Second Century quoted Gospels earlier 
 than those which we now possess, then the evidence for 
 the Supernatural itself, considered as apart from the par- 
 ticular books in which the records of it are contained, 
 would be strengthened ; if, that is, it could be .shown 
 that this earlier form of the narrative contained the same 
 Supernatural Story. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion," whilst he has 
 utterly failed to show that the Fathers in question have 
 used earlier Gospels, has, to my mind, proved to demon- 
 stration that, if they have quoted earlier narratives, those 
 accounts contain, not only substantially, but in detail, 
 the same Gospel which we now possess, and in a form 
 rather more suggestive of the Supernatural. So that, if 
 he has been successful, the author has only succeeded in 
 proving that the Gospel narrative itself, in a written 
 
 2098778
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 form, is at least fifty or sixty years older than the books 
 which he attempts to discredit. 
 
 With respect to Justin Martyr, to the bearing of 
 whose writings on this subject I have devoted the greater 
 part of my book, I can only say that, in my examination 
 of his works, my bias was with the author of " Super- 
 natural Keligion." I had hitherto believed that this 
 Father, being a native of Palestine, and living so near to 
 the time of the Apostles, was acquainted with views of 
 certain great truths which he had derived from traditions 
 of the oral teaching of the Apostles, and the possession of 
 which made him in some measure an independent wit- 
 ness for the views in question ; but I confess that, on a 
 closer examination of his writings, I was somewhat dis- 
 appointed, for I found that he had no knowledge of our 
 Lord and of His teaching worth speaking of, except what 
 he might be fairly assumed to have derived from our 
 present New Testament. 
 
 I have to acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. 
 Clark, of Edinburgh, for allowing me to make somewhat 
 copious extracts from the writings of Justin in their ante- 
 Nicene Library. This has saved a Parish Priest like 
 myself much time and trouble. I believe that in all 
 cases of importance in which I have altered the trans- 
 lation, or felt that there was a doubt, I have given the 
 original from Otto's edition (Jena, 1842).
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SECTION I. Introductory . .- ' , ; ' . . 1 
 SECTION II. The Way Cleared . ' . . ,\ 5 
 
 SECTION III. The Principal Witness His Religious 
 
 Views ........ 9 
 
 SECTION IV. The Principal Witness The Sources of 
 
 his Knowledge respecting the Birth of Christ . 19 
 
 SECTION V. The Principal Witness His Testimony 
 
 respecting the Baptism of Christ ... 29 
 
 SECTION VI. The Principal Witness His Testimony 
 
 respecting the Death of Christ .... 33 
 
 SECTION VII. The Principal Witness His Testimony 
 
 respecting the Moral Teaching of our Lord . 40 
 
 SECTION VIII. The Principal Witness His Testi- 
 mony to St. John . . . . .45 
 
 SECTION IX. The Principal Witness His Further 
 
 Testimony to St. John . . . , 53 
 
 SECTION X. The Principal Witness His Testimony 
 
 summed up ... . . . ... 60 
 
 SECTION XI. The Principal Witness on our Lord's 
 
 Godhead . . . , . . . .65 
 
 SECTION XII. The Principal Witness on the Doctrine 
 
 of the Logos . . . . . .73 
 
 SECTION XIII. The Principal Witness on our Lord as 
 
 King, Priest, and Angel .... 80
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SECTION XIV. The Principal Witness on the Doctrine 
 
 of the Trinity 85 
 
 SECTION XV. Justin and St. John on the Incarna- 
 tion . . . . i . . . .88 
 
 SECTION XVI. Justin and St. John on the Subordina- 
 tion of the Son 93 
 
 SECTION XVII. Justin and Philo . ... 98 
 
 SECTION XVIII. Discrepancies between St. John and 
 
 the Synoptics . . . . . . .104 
 
 SECTION XIX. External Proofs of the Authenticity 
 
 of our Four Gospels . . . . . .118 
 
 Note on Section XIX. Testimonies of Irenseus, Cle- 
 ment of Alexandria, and Tertullian to the use of 
 the Four Gospels in their day . . . .136 
 
 SECTION XX. The Evidence for Miracles . . . 149 
 
 SECTION XXI. Objections to Miracles . . .162 
 
 SECTION XXII. Jewish Credulity . . . .167 
 
 SECTION XXIII. Demoniacal Possession . . . 173 
 
 SECIION XXIV. Competent Witnesses . . .179 
 
 SECTION XXV. Date of Testimony . . . .185
 
 THE LOST GOSPEL. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 IN the following pages I have examined the conclu- 
 sions at which the author of a book entitled " Super- 
 natural Religion " has assumed to have arrived. 
 
 The method and contents of the work in question may 
 be thus described. 
 
 The work is entitled " Supernatural Religion, an 
 Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation." Its 
 contents occupy two volumes of about 500 pages each, 
 so that we have in it an elaborate attack upon Chris- 
 tianity of very considerable length. The first 200 pages 
 of the first volume are filled with arguments to prove 
 that a Revelation, such as the one we profess to believe 
 in, supernatural in its origin and nature and attested by 
 miracles, is simply incredible, and so, on no account, no 
 matter how evidenced, to be received. 
 
 But, inasmuch as the author has to face the fact, that 
 the Christian Religion professes to be attested by mira- 
 cles performed at a very late period in the history of the
 
 2 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 world, and said to have been witnessed by very large 
 numbers of persons, and related very fully in certain 
 books called the Canonical Gospels, which the whole 
 body of Christians have, from a very early period indeed, 
 received as written by eye-witnesses, or by the com- 
 panions of eye-witnesses, the remaining 800 pages are 
 occupied with attempts at disparaging the testimony 
 of these writings. In order to this, the Christian 
 Fathers and heretical writers of a certain period are 
 examined, to ascertain whether they quoted the four 
 Evangelists. The period from which the writer chooses 
 his witnesses to the use of the four Evangelists, is most 
 unwarrantably and arbitrarily restricted to the first ninety 
 years of the second century (100 185 or so) . We shall 
 have ample means for showing that this limitation was 
 for a purpose. 
 
 The array of witnesses examined runs thus : Clement 
 of Rome, Barnabas, Hennas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin 
 Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias of Hierapolis, the Clemen- 
 tines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides, Valentinus, 
 Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis, 
 Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and 
 Lyons, Ptolemasus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon 
 of Muratori. 
 
 The examination of references, or supposed references, 
 in these books to the first three Gospels fills above 500 
 pages, and the remainder (about 220) is occupied with 
 an examination of the claims of the fourth Gospel to be 
 considered as canonical. 
 
 The writer conducts this examination with an avowed 
 dogmatical bias ; and this, as the reader will soon see, 
 influences the manner of his examination throughout the
 
 Introduction. 3 
 
 whole book. For instance, he never fails to give to the 
 anti- Christian side the benefit of every doubt, or even 
 suspicion. This leads him to make the most of the 
 smallest discrepancy between the words of any supposed 
 quotation in any early writer from one of our Canonical 
 Gospels, and the words as contained in our present Gos- 
 pels. If the writer quotes the Evangelist freely, with 
 some differences, however slight, in the words, he ia 
 assumed to quote from a lost Apocryphal Gospel. If the 
 writer gives the words as we find them in our Gospels, 
 he attempts to show that the father or heretic need not 
 have even seen our present Gospels ; for, inasmuch as our 
 present Gospels have many things in common which are 
 derived from an earlier source, the quoter may have 
 derived the words he quotes from the earlier source. If 
 the quoter actually mentions the name of the Evangelist 
 whose Gospel he refers to (say St. Mark), it is roundly 
 asserted that his St. Mark is not the same as ours. 1 
 
 The reader may ask, " How is it possible, against such 
 a mode of argument, to prove the genuineness or authen- 
 ticity of any book, sacred or profane ? " And, of course, 
 it is not. Such a way of conducting a controversy seems 
 absurd, but on the author's premises it is a necessity. 
 He asserts the dogma that the Governor of the world 
 cannot interfere by way of miracle. He has to meet the 
 fact that the foremost religion of the world appeals to 
 miracles, especially the miracle of the Resurrection of 
 
 1 Papias, for instance, actually mentions St. Mark by name as 
 writing a gospel under the influence of St. Peter. The author of 
 " Supernatural Keligion" devotes ten pages to an attempt to prove 
 that this St. Mark's Gospel could not be ours. (Vol. i. pp. 448- 
 459.)
 
 4 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 the Founder. For the truth of this miraculous Resur- 
 rection there is at least a thousand times more evidence 
 than there is for any historical fact which is recorded to 
 have occurred 1,800 years ago. Of course, if the super- 
 natural in Christianity is impossible, and so incredible, 
 all the witnesses to it must be discredited ; and their 
 number, their age, and their unanimity upon the principal 
 points are such that the mere attempt must tax the 
 powers of human labour and ingenuity to the uttermost. 
 
 How, then, is such a book to be met ? It would take a 
 work of twice the size to rebut all the assertions of the 
 author, for, naturally, an answer to any assertion must 
 take up more space than the assertion. Fortunately, in 
 this case, we are not driven to any such course ; for, as 
 I shall show over and over again, the author has fur- 
 nished us with the most ample means for his own refuta- 
 tion. No book that I have ever read or heard of con- 
 tains so much which can be met by implication frpm the 
 pages of the author himself, nor can I imagine any book 
 of such pretensions pervaded with so entire a miscon- 
 ception of the conditions of the problem on which he is 
 writing. 
 
 These assertions I shall now, God helping, proceed to 
 make good.
 
 SECTION II. 
 THE WAY CLEARED. 
 
 THE writers, whose testimonies to the existence or 
 use of our present Gospels are examined by the 
 author, are twenty- three in number. Five of these, 
 namely, Hegesippus, Papias, Melito, Claudius Apollinaris, 
 and Dionysius of Corinth are only known to us through 
 fragments preserved as quotations in Eusebius and others. 
 Six others Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Ptolemgeus, 
 Heracleon, and Celsus are heretical or infidel writers, 
 whom we only know through notices or scraps of their 
 works in the writings of the Christian Fathers who refuted 
 them. The Epistle of the Martyrs of Vienne and Lyons 
 is only in part preserved in the pages of Eusebius. The 
 Canon of Muratori is a mutilated fragment of uncertain 
 date. Athenagoras and Tatian are only known through 
 Apologies written for the Heathen, the last of all Christian 
 books in which to look for definite references to canonical 
 writings. The Epistle to Diognetus is a small tract of 
 uncertain date and authorship. The Clementine Homi- 
 lies is an apocryphal work of very little value in the 
 present discussion. 
 
 These are all the writings placed by the author as 
 subsequent to Justin Martyr. The writers previous to
 
 6 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Justin, of whom the author of " Supernatural Religion" 
 makes use, are Clement of Rome (to whom we shall 
 afterwards refer), the Epistle of Barnabas, the Pastor of 
 Hermas, the Epistles of Ignatius, and that of Polycarp. 
 
 As I desire to take the author on his own ground 
 whenever it is possible to do so, I shall, for argument's 
 sake, take the author's account of the age and authority 
 of these documents. I shall consequently assume with 
 him that 
 
 " None of the epistles [of Ignatius] have any value as evi- 
 dence for an earlier period than the end of the second or 
 beginning of the third century [from about 190 to 210 or so], 
 if indeed they possess any value at all." 1 (Vol. i. p. 274.) 
 
 With respect to the short Epistle of Polycarp, I shall 
 be patient of his assumption that 
 
 " Instead of proving the existence of the epistles of Igna- 
 tius, with which it is intimately associated, it is itself discre- 
 dited in proportion as they are shown to be inauthentic." 
 (Vol. i. p. 274.) 
 
 1 I need hardly say that I myself hold the genuineness of the 
 Greek recension. The reader who desires to see the false reasonings 
 and groundless assumptions of the author of " Supernatural Religion" 
 respecting the Ignatian epistles thoroughly exposed should read 
 Professor Lightfoot's article in the " Contemporary Review " of Feb- 
 ruary, 1875. In pages 341-345 of this article there is an examination 
 of the nature and trustworthiness of the learning displayed in the foot- 
 notes of this pretentious book, which is particularly valuable. I am 
 glad to see that the professor has modified, in this article, the expres- 
 sion of his former opinion that the excerpta called the Curetonian 
 recension is to be regarded as the only genuine one. " Elsewhere," the 
 professor writes (referring to an essay in his commentary on the 
 Philippians), " I had acquiesced in the earlier opinion of Lipsius, 
 who ascribed them (i. e., the Greek or Vossian recension) to an 
 interpolator writing about A.D. 140. Now, however, I am obliged 
 to confess that I have grave and increasing doubts whether, after 
 all, they are not the genuine utterances of Ignatius himself."
 
 The Way cleared. 1 
 
 and so he 
 
 " assigns it to the latter half of the second century, in so far 
 as any genuine part of it is concerned." (P. 275.) 
 
 Similarly, I shall assume that the Pastor of Hermas 
 ' f may have been written about the middle of the second 
 century" (p. 256), and, with respect to the Epistle of 
 Barnabas, I shall take the latest date mentioned by the 
 author of " Supernatural Religion/'' where he writes re- 
 specting the epistle : 
 
 " There is little or no certainty how far into the second 
 century its composition may not reasonably be advanced. 
 Critics are divided upon the point ; a few are disposed to 
 date the epistle about the end of the first century ; others at 
 the beginning of the second century; while a still greater 
 number assign it to the reign of Adrian (A.D. 117-130) ; and 
 others, not without reason, consider that it exhibits marks 
 of a still later period." (Vol. i. p. 235.) 
 
 The way, then, is so far cleared that I can confine my 
 remarks to the investigation of the supposed citations 
 from the Canonical Gospels, to be found in the works of 
 Justin Martyr. Before beginning this, it may be well to 
 direct the reader's attention to the real point at issue ; 
 and this I shall have to do continually throughout my 
 examination. The work is entitled " Supernatural Re- 
 ligion," and is an attack upon what the author calls 
 "Ecclesiastical Christianity," because such Christianity 
 sets forth the Founder of our Religion as conceived 
 and born in a supernatural way; as doing throughout His 
 life supernatural acts ; as dying for a supernatural pur- 
 pose ; and as raised from the dead by a miracle, which 
 was the sign and seal of the truth of all His supernatural 
 claims. The attack in the book in question takes the
 
 8 The Lost Gospel 
 
 form of a continuous effort to show that all our four 
 Gospels are unauthentic, by showing, or attempting to 
 show, that they were never quoted before the latter part 
 of the second century : but the real point of attack is 
 the supernatural in the records of Christ's Birth, Life, 
 Death, and Resurrection.
 
 SECTION III. 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS RELIGIOUS VIEWS. 
 
 THE examination of the quotations in Justin Martyr 
 of the Synoptic Gospels occupies nearly one hun- 
 dred and fifty pages ; and deservedly so, for the acknow- 
 ledged writings of this Father are, if we except the 
 Clementine forgeries and the wild vision of Hermas, 
 more in length than those of all the other twenty- three 
 witnesses put together. They are also valuable because 
 no doubts can be thrown upon their date, and because 
 they take up, or advert to, so many subjects of interest 
 to Christians in all ages. 
 
 The universally acknowledged writings of Justin 
 Martyr are three : Two Apologies addressed to the 
 Heathen, and a Dialogue with Trypho a Jew. 
 
 The first Apology is addressed to the Emperor Anto- 
 ninus Pius, and was written before the year 150 A. D. 
 The second Apology is by some supposed to be the first 
 in point of publication, and is addressed to the Eoman 
 people. 
 
 The contents of the two Apologies are remarkable in 
 this respect, that Justin scruples not to bring before the 
 heathen the very arcana of Christianity. No apologist 
 shows so little " reserve " in stating to the heathen the 
 mysteries of the faith. At the very outset he enunciates 
 the doctrine of the Incarnate Logos :
 
 10 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " For not only among the Greeks did Logos (or Reason) 
 prevail to condemn these things by Socrates, but also among 
 the barbarians were they condemned by the Logos himself 
 who took shape and became man, and was called Jesus 
 Christ." 1 (Apol. i. 5.) 
 
 In the next chapter he seta forth the doctrine and 
 worship of the Trinity : 
 
 " But both Him [the Father] and the Son, Who came forth 
 from Him and taught these things to ns and the host of 
 heaven, the other good angels who follow and are made like 
 to Him, and the Prophetic Spirit, we worship and adore, 
 knowing them in reason and truth." 2 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who was 
 also born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius 
 Pilate, procurator of Judeea, in the time of Tiberius Caesar ; 
 and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that 
 He is the Son of the True God Himself, and holding Him in 
 the second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the third." 
 (Apol. i. ch. x. 3.) 
 
 Again, a little further on, he claims for Christians a 
 higher belief in the supernatural than the heathen had, 
 for, whereas the heathen went no further than believing 
 that souls after death are in a state of sensation, Chris- 
 tians believed in the resurrection of the body : 
 
 1 Ou yap p.6vov fj/"EXXTj<rt Sia. Swjcparovc VTTO \6yov J/ 
 riivra, dXXa KOI iv fiapfiapotg VTT avrov TOV Aoyov ^t 
 *rai avdpuTTov yf.vop.ivov KOI 'Irjaov Xptorov K\r)QivTOQ. 
 
 2 Such is a perfectly allowable translation of KOI rov Trap avrou 
 viov iXOnvTO. teal 3t<$davra r//nac ravra, icai TOV TUIV aXXwi/ tiroutvutv 
 KU} k^,op.oiov^iv(>>v dyadwv dyyi\uv trrparov, irvivfjia rt TO 7rpo6rjri- 
 KOV atfiofJitQa. icat irpooKvvo\>ntv. As there is nothing approaching to 
 angel worship in Justin, such a rendering seems absolutely necessary.
 
 The principal Witness. 1 1 
 
 "Such favour as you grant to these, grant also unto us, 
 who not less but more firmly than they believe in God ; 
 since we expect to receive again our own bodies, though they 
 be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with 
 God nothing is impossible." (Apol. I. ch. xviii.) 
 
 In the next chapter (xix.) he proceeds to prove the 
 Eesurrection possible. This he does from the analogy 
 of human generation, and he concludes thus : 
 
 " So also judge ye that it is not impossible that the bodies 
 of men after they have been dissolved, and like seeds resolved 
 into earth, should in God's appointed time rise again and put 
 on incorruption." 
 
 In another place in the same Apology he asserts the 
 personality of Satan : 
 
 " For among us the prince of the wicked spirits is called 
 the serpent, and Satan, and the devil, as you can learn by 
 looking into our writings, and that he would be sent into 
 the fire with his host, and the men who followed him, and 
 would be punished for an endless duration, Christ foretold." 
 (Apol. I. ch. xxviii.) 
 
 In the same short chapter he asserts in very weighty 
 words his belief in the ever-watchful providence of 
 God:- 
 
 " And if any one disbelieves that God cares for these things 
 (the welfare of the human race), he will thereby either in- 
 sinuate that God does not exist, or he will assert that though 
 He exists He delights in vice, or exists like a stone, and that 
 neither virtue nor vice are anything, but only in the opinion 
 of men these things are reckoned good or evil, and this is the 
 greatest profanity and wickedness." (Apol. i. ch. xxviii.) 
 
 Shortly after this he tells the heathen Emperor that the 
 mission and work of Jesus Christ had been predicted:
 
 12 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " There were amongst the Jews certain men who were pro- 
 phets of God, through whom the Prophetic Spirit published 
 beforehand things that were to come to pass, ere ever they 
 happened. And their prophecies, as they were spoken and 
 when they were uttered, the kings who happened to be 
 reigning among the Jews at the several times carefully pre- 
 served in their possession, when they had been arranged 
 in books by the prophets themselves in their own Hebrew 
 
 language In these books, then, of the prophets, we 
 
 found Jesus Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, grow- 
 ing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every 
 sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unre- 
 cognized, and crucified, and dying and rising again, and ascend- 
 ing into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God. 
 We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent 
 by Him into every nation to publish these things, and that 
 rather among the Gentiles (than among the Jews) men should 
 believe on Him. And He was predicted before He appeared, 
 first 5,000 years before, and again 3,000, then 2,000, then 
 ],000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations 
 prophets after prophets arose." (Apol. i. ch. xxxi.) 
 
 Then he proceeds to show how certain particular pro- 
 phecies which he cites were fulfilled in the Jews having 
 a lawgiver till the time of Christ, and not after; in 
 Christ's entry into Jerusalem ; in His Birth of a Virgin ; 
 in the place of His Birth ; in His having His hands and 
 feet pierced with the nails. (Ch. xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxv.) 
 
 Again, immediately afterwards, lie endeavours to 
 classify certain prophecies as peculiarly those of God the 
 Father, certain others as peculiarly those of God the 
 Son, and others as the special utterance of the Spirit. 
 (Ch. xxxvi.-xl.) 
 
 Then he proceeds to specify certain particular pro- 
 phecies as fulfilled in our Lord's Advent (ch. xl.) ;
 
 The principal Witness. 13 
 
 certain others in His Crucifixion (xli.) ; in His Session in 
 heaven (xlv.) ; in the desolation of Judaea (xlvii.) ; in 
 the miracles and Death of Christ (xlviii.); in His re- 
 jection by the Jews (xlix.) ; in His Humiliation (1.) 
 He concludes with asserting the extreme importance of 
 prophecy, as without it we should not be warranted in 
 believing such things of any one of the human race : 
 
 "For with what reason should we believe of a crucified 
 Man that He is the first-born of the nnbegotten God, and 
 Himself will pass judgment on the whole human race, unless 
 we have found testimonies concerning Him published before 
 He came, and was born as man, and unless we saw that 
 things had happened accordingly, the devastation of the 
 land of the Jews, and men of every race persuaded by His 
 teaching through the Apostles, and rejecting their old habits, 
 in which, beingt deceived, they had had their conversation." 
 (Ch. liii.) 
 
 After this he speaks (ch. Ixi.) of Christian Baptism, 
 as being in some sense a conveyance of Kegeneration, and 
 of the Eucharist (ch. Ixvi.), as being a mysterious com- 
 munication of the Flesh and Blood of Christ, and at the 
 conclusion he describes the worship of Christians, and 
 tells the Emperor that in their assemblies the memoirs of 
 the Apostles (by which name he designates the accounts 
 of the Birth, Life, and Death of Christ), or the writings of 
 the Prophets were read, as long as time permits, putting 
 the former on a par with the latter, as equally necessary 
 for the instruction of Christians. 
 
 Besides this, we find that Justin holds all these views 
 of Scripture truths which are now called Evangelical. 
 He speaks of men now being 
 
 " Purified no longer by the blood of goats and sheep, or by
 
 14 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 the ashes of an heifer, or by the offerings of fine flour, but 
 by faith through the Blood of Christ, and through His Death, 
 Who died for this very reason." (Dial.) 
 
 And again : 
 
 " So that it becomes you to eradicate this hope (i.e. of salva- 
 tion by Jewish ordinances) from your souls, and hasten to 
 know in what way forgiveness of sins, and a hope of inherit- 
 ing the promised good things, shall be yours. But there is 
 no other way than this to become acquainted with this Christ, 
 to be washed in the fountain spoken of by Isaiah for the remis- 
 sion of sins, and for the rest to lead sinless lives." (Dial, xliv.) 
 
 So that from this Apology alone, though addressed to 
 the heathen, we learn that Justin cordially accepted 
 every supernatural element in Christianity. He tho- 
 roughly believed in the Trinity, the Incarnation of the 
 Logos, the miraculous Conception, Birth, Life, Miracles, 
 Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ. He firmly 
 believed in the predictive element in prophecy, in the 
 atoning virtue of the Death of Christ, in the mysterious 
 inward grace or inward part in each Sacrament, in the 
 heart-cleansing power of the Spirit of God, in the par- 
 ticular providence of God, in the resurrection of the 
 body, in eternal reward and eternal punishment. 
 
 Whatever, then, was the source of his knowledge, that 
 knowledge made him intensely dogmatic in his creed, 
 and a firm believer in the supernatural nature of every- 
 thing in his religion. 
 
 The Second Apology is of the same nature as the first. 
 A single short extract or two from it will show how 
 firmly the author held the supernatural : 
 
 " Our doctrines, then, appear to be greater than all human 
 teaching; because Christ, who appeared for our sakes, became
 
 The principal Witness. 15 
 
 the whole rational being, both body, and reason, and soul. 
 w. . . These things our Christ did through His own 
 power. For no one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this 
 doctrine ; but in Christ, who was partially known even by 
 Socrates (for He was and is the Word Who is in every man, 
 and Who foretold the things that were to come to pass both 
 through the prophets and in His own Person when He was 
 made of like passions, and taught these things) ; not only 
 philosophers and scholars believed, but also artizans and 
 people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, 
 and death ; since He is a Power of the ineffable Father, and 
 not the mere instrument of human reason." (Apol. II. ch. x.) 
 
 The dialogue with Trypho is the record of a lengthy 
 discussion with, a Jew for the purpose of converting him 
 to the Christian faith. The assertion of the super- 
 natural is here, if possible, more unreserved than in the 
 First Apology. In order to convert Trypho, Justin 
 cites every prophecy of the Old Testament that can, with 
 the smallest show of reason, be referred to Christ. 
 
 Having, first of all, vindicated the Christians from 
 the charge of setting aside the Jewish law or covenant, 
 by an argument evidently derived from the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, 1 and vindicated for Christians the title of 
 the true spiritual Israel, 2 he proceeds to the prophetical 
 
 1 " For the law promulgated in Horeb is now old, and belongs 
 to you alone ; but this is for all universally. Now law placed 
 against law has abrogated that which is before it, and a covenant 
 which comes after in like manner has put an end to the previous 
 one ; and an eternal and final law namely, Christ has been given to 
 us." (Heb. viii. 6-13 ; Dial. ch. xi.) 
 
 2 "For the true spiritual Israel and descendants of Judah, Jacob, 
 Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and 
 blessed by God on account of his faith, and called the father of 
 many nations) are we who have been led to God through this 
 crucified Christ, as shall be demonstrated while we proceed." (Phil, 
 iii. 3, compared with Romans, iv. 12-18 ; Dial. ch. xi.)
 
 16 The Lost Gospel 
 
 Scriptures, and transcribes the whole of the prophecy of 
 Isaiah from the fifty- second chapter to the fifty-fourth, 
 and applies it to Christ and His Kingdom. (Dial.ch.xiii.) 
 Shortly after, he applies to the second Advent of Christ 
 the prophecy of Daniel respecting the Son of Man, 
 brought before the Ancient of Days. (Ch. xxxi.) Then 
 he notices and refutes certain destructive interpretations 
 of prophecies which have been derived from the un- 
 believing Jews by our modern rationalists, as that Psalm 
 ex. is spoken of Hezekiah, and Psalm Ixxii. of Solomon. 
 
 Then he proceeds to prove that Christ is both God 
 and Lord of Hosts ; and he first cites Psalm xxiv., and 
 then Psalms xlvi., xcviii., and xlv. (Ch. xxxvi., xxxvii., 
 xxxviii.) 
 
 Then, after returning to the Mosaic law, and proving 
 that certain points in its ritual were fulfilled in the Chris- 
 tian system (as the oblation of fine flour in the Eucha- 
 rist ch. xli.), he concludes this part of his argument 
 with the assertion that the Mosaic law had an end in 
 Christ : 
 
 "In short, sirs," said I, "by enumerating all the other 
 appointments of Moses, I can demonstrate that they were 
 types, and symbols, and declarations of those things which 
 would happen to Christ, of those who, it was foreknown, were 
 to believe in Him, and of those things which would also be 
 done by Christ Himself." (Ch. xlii.) 
 
 Then he again proves that this Christ was to be, and 
 was, born of a virgin ; and takes occasion to show that 
 the virgin mentioned in Isaiah vii. was not a young 
 married woman, as rationalists in Germany and among 
 ourselves have learnt from the unbelieving Jews. (Ch. 
 xliii.)
 
 The principal Witness. 17 
 
 To go over more of Justin's argument would be beside 
 my purpose, which is at present simply to show how 
 very firmly his faith embraced the supernatural. 
 
 I shall mention one more application of prophecy. 
 When Trypho asks that Justin should resume the dis- 
 course, and show that the Spirit of prophecy admits 
 another God besides the Maker of all things, 1 Justin 
 accepts his challenge, and commences with the appear- 
 ance of the three angels to Abraham, and devotes much 
 space and labour to a sifting discussion of the meaning 
 of this place. The conclusion is thus expressed : 
 
 " And now have you not perceived, my friends, that one of 
 the three, Who is both God and Lord, and ministers to Him 
 Who is [remains] in the heavens, is Lord of the two angels ? 
 For when [the angels] proceeded to Sodom He remained 
 behind, and communed with Abraham in the words recorded 
 by Moses ; and when He departed after the conversation 
 Abraham went back to his place. And when He came [to 
 Sodom] the two angels no longer converse with Lot, but 
 Himself, as the Scripture makes evident ; and He is the Lord 
 Who received commission from the Lord Who [remains] in 
 the heavens, i. e. the Maker of all things, to inflict upon 
 Sodom and Gomorrah the [judgments] which the Scripture 
 describes in these terms : * The Lord rained upon Sodom 
 sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.' " (Oh. Ivi.) 
 
 It is clear from all this that Justin Martyr looked 
 upon prophecy as a supernatural gift, bestowed upon men 
 in order to prepare them to receive that Christ whom 
 God would send. Instead of regarding it as the natural 
 surmising of far-seeing men who, from their experience 
 
 1 This, of course, was a Jewish adversary's view of the Christian 
 doctrine of the Godhead of Christ, which Justin elsewhere modifies 
 by showing the subordination of the Son to the Father in all things. 
 
 C
 
 18 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 of the past, and from their knowledge of human nature, 
 could in some sort guess what course events are likely to 
 take, he regarded it as a Divine influence emanating from 
 Him Who knows the future as perfectly as He knows 
 the past, and for His own purposes revealing events, and 
 in many cases what we should call trifling events, which 
 would be wholly out of the power of man to guess or 
 even to imagine. 
 
 I am not, of course, concerned to show that Justin was 
 right in his views of prophecy; all I am concerned to 
 show is, that Justin regarded prophecy as the highest of 
 supernatural gifts. 
 
 Such, then, was the view of Justin respecting Christ 
 and the Religion He established. Christ, the highest of 
 supernatural beings, His Advent foretold by men with 
 supernatural gifts to make known the future, coming to 
 us in the highest of supernatural ways, and establishing 
 a supernatural kingdom for bringing about such super- 
 natural ends as the reconciliation of all men to God by 
 His Sacrifice, the Resurrection of the body, and the sub- 
 jugation of the wills of all men to the Will of God.
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. THE SOURCES OF HIS 
 
 KNOWLEDGE RESPECTING THE 
 
 BIRTH OF CHRIST. 
 
 THE question now arises, and I beg the reader to 
 remember that it is the question on which the 
 author of "Supernatural Religion" stakes all, From 
 what source did Justin derive this supernatural view of 
 Christianity ? 
 
 With respect to the Incarnation, Birth, Life, Death, 
 and Resurrection of Christ, he evidently derives it from 
 certain documents which he repeatedly cites, as " The 
 Memoirs of the Apostles" ('Airo/nvr]/j,ovev/j.aTa TU>V 'Airoaro- 
 Ao>v) . These are the documents which he mentions as 
 being read, along with the Prophets, at the meetings 
 of Christians. 
 
 On one occasion, when he is seemingly referring to the 
 [bloody] sweat of our Lord, which is mentioned only in 
 St. Luke, who is not an Apostle, he designates these 
 writings as the " Memoirs which were drawn up by the 
 Apostles and those who followed them.' 3 J Again, on an- 
 other occasion, he seems to indicate specially the Gospel 
 of St. Mark as being the " Memoirs of Peter " It is a 
 
 1 'Ev yap rote aTrojuvr/ynoveu/iafft, a (ftrj/^i VTTO T&V 
 avrov KCti r&v EiceiJ'Ote TrapaKoXovBrjacLVTbiv avvTETa\Qai, OTI i 
 WEI 0po'/u/3oi KaTE\e~iTO avTOv Evyopivov. (Dial. ch. ciii.)
 
 20 The Lost Gospel 
 
 well-known fact that all ecclesiastical tradition, almost 
 with one voice, has handed down that St. Mark wrote 
 his Gospel under the superintendence, if not at the dic- 
 tation, of St. Peter ; and when Justin has occasion to 
 mention that our Lord gave the name of Boanerges to 
 the sons of Zebedee, an incident mentioned only by 
 St. Mark, he seems at least to indicate the Gospel of 
 St. Mark as being specially connected with St. Peter as 
 his Memoirs when he writes t 1 
 
 " And when it is said that he changed the name of one of 
 the Apostles to Peter ; and when it is written in his Memoirs 
 that this so happened, as well as that He changed the names 
 of two other brothers, the sons of Zebedee, to Boanerges, 
 which means ' sons of thunder ; ' this was an announcement," 
 &c. (Ch. cvi.) 
 
 With the exception of these two apparent cases, Justin 
 never distinguishes one Memoir from another. He never 
 mentions the author or authors of the Memoirs by name, 
 and for this reason that the three undoubted treatises of 
 his which have come down to us are all written for those 
 outside the pale of the Christian Church. It would 
 have been worse than useless, in writing for such persons, 
 to distinguish between Evangelist and Evangelist. So 
 far as " those without" were concerned, the Evangelists 
 
 1 Kai TO (9Tn f^frwvofjiaKefai avrov Tltrpov tva T&V aT 
 ecu ytyphtyQat iv rote dirop.vT)/j.ovtv/jiaffiv avrov ytytvr\y.ivov KUI 
 TOVTO, K. t. A. 
 
 On this quotation the author of " Supernatural Religion " remarks, 
 " According to the usual language of Justin, and upon strictly 
 critical grounds, the avrov in this passage must be ascribed to 
 Peter ; and Justin therefore seems to ascribe the Memoirs to that 
 Apostle, and to speak consequently of a Gospel of Peter." (Vol. i. 
 p. 417.)
 
 The principal Witness. 21 
 
 gave the same view of Christ and His work; and to have 
 quoted first one and then another by name would have 
 been mischievous, as indicating differences when the 
 testimony of all that could be called memoirs was, in 
 point of fact, one and the same. 
 
 According to the author of " Supernatural Religion" 
 Justin ten times designates the source of his quotations 
 as the " Memoirs of the Apostles," and five times as 
 simply the " Memoirs." 
 
 Now the issue which the writer of " Supernatural 
 Religion " raises is this : " Were these Memoirs our 
 present four Gospels, or were they some older Gospel or 
 Gospels ?" to which we may add another : " Did Justin 
 quote any other lost Gospel besides our four ? " 
 
 I shall now give some instances of the use which 
 Justin makes of the writings which he calls " Memoirs," 
 and this will enable the reader in great measure to judge 
 for himself. 
 
 First of all, then, I give one or two extracts from 
 Justin's account of our Lord's Nativity. Let the reader 
 remember that, with respect to the first of these, the 
 account is not introduced in order to give Trypho an 
 account of our Lord's Birth, but to assure him that a 
 certain prophecy, as it is worded in the Septuagint 
 translation of Isaiah viz., " He shall take the powers of 
 Damascus and the spoil of Samaria," was fulfilled in 
 Christ. And indeed almost every incident which Justin 
 takes notice of he relates as a fulfilment of some pro- 
 phecy or other. Trifling or comparatively trifling in- 
 cidents in our Lord's Life are noticed at great length, 
 because they are supposed to be the fulfilment of some
 
 22 The Lost Gospel 
 
 prophecy; and what we should consider more important 
 events are passed over in silence, because they do not 
 seem to fulfil any prediction. 
 
 The first extract from Justin, then, shall be the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 " Now this King Herod, at the time when the Magi came 
 to him from Arabia, and said they knew from a star which 
 appeared in the heavens that a King had been born in your 
 country, and that they had come to worship Him, learned 
 from the Elders of your people, that it was thus written re- 
 garding Bethlehem in the Prophet: 'And thou, Bethlehem, 
 in the land of Judah, art by no means least among the princes 
 of Judah ; for out of thee shall go forth the leader, who shall 
 feed my people.' Accordingly, the Magi from Arabia came to 
 Bethlehem, and worshipped the child, and presented him with 
 gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh ; but returned not 
 to Herod, being warned in a revelation after worshipping the 
 child in Bethlehem. And Joseph, the spouse of Mary, who 
 wished at first to put away his betrothed Mary, supposing her 
 to be pregnant by intercourse with a man, i. e. from fornica- 
 tion, was commanded in a vision not to put away his wife ; 
 and the angel who appeared to him told him that what is in 
 her womb is of the Holy Ghost. Then he was afraid and 
 did not put her away, but on the occasion of the first census 
 which was taken in Judea under Cyrenius, he went up from 
 Nazareth, where he lived, to Bethlehem, to which he belonged, 
 to be enrolled ; for his family was of the tribe of Judah, 
 which then inhabited that region. Then, along with Mary, 
 he is ordered to proceed into Egypt, and remain there with 
 the Child, until another revelation warn them to return to 
 Judoa. But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since 
 Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up 
 his quarters in a certain cave near the village ; and while 
 they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed 
 Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia 
 found Him. 'I have repeated to you,' I continued, 'what
 
 The principal Witness. 23 
 
 Isaiah foretold about the sign which foreshadowed the cave ; 
 but, for the sake of those which have come with us to-day, I 
 shall again remind you of the passage.' Then I repeated the 
 passage from Isaiah which I have already written, adding 
 that, by means of those words, those who presided over the 
 mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that 
 in a place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by 
 him. ' So Herod, when the Magi from Arabia did not return 
 to him, as he had asked them to do, but had departed by 
 another way to their own country, according to the commands 
 laid upon them ; and when Joseph, with Mary and the Child, 
 had now gone into Egypt, as it was revealed to them to do ; 
 as he did not know the Child whom the Magi had gone to 
 worship, ordered simply the whole of the children then in 
 Bethlehem to be massacred. And Jeremiah prophesied that 
 this would happen, speaking by the Holy Ghost thus : 'A 
 voice was heard in Raman, lamentation and much wailing, 
 Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be com- 
 forted, because they are not.' " (Dial. ch. Ixxviii.) 
 
 Now any unprejudiced reader, on examining this 
 account, would instantly say that Justin had derived 
 every word of it from the Gospels of St. Matthew and 
 St. Luke, but that, instead of quoting the exact words 
 of either Evangelist, he would say that he (Justin) 
 " reproduced" them. He reproduced the narrative of the 
 Nativity as it is found in each of these two Gospels. 
 He first reproduces the narrative in St. Matthew in 
 somewhat more colloquial phrase than the Evangelist 
 used, interspersing with it remarks of his own ; and in 
 order to account for the Birth of Christ in Bethlehem 
 he brings in from St. Luke the matter of the census, 
 (not with historical accuracy but) sufficiently to show 
 that he was acquainted with the beginning of Luke ii. ; 
 and in order to account for the fact that Christ was not
 
 24 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 born in the inn, but in a more sordid place (whether 
 stable or cave matters not, for if it was a cave it was a 
 cave used as a stable, for there was a "manger" in it), 
 he reproduces Luke ii. 6-7. 
 
 Justin then, in a single consecutive narrative, ex- 
 pressed much in his own words, gives the whole account, 
 so far as it was a fulfilment of prophecy, made up from 
 two narratives which have come down to us in the 
 Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in these 
 only. It would have been absurd for him to have done 
 otherwise, as he might have done if he had anticipated 
 the carpings of nineteenth century critics, and assumed 
 that Trypho, an unconverted Jew, had a New Testament 
 in his hand with which he was so familiar that he could 
 be referred to first one narrative and then the other, in 
 order to test the correctness of Justin's quotations. 
 
 Against all this the author of" Supernatural Religion" 
 brings forward a number of trifling disagreements as 
 proofs that Justin need not have quoted one of the 
 Evangelists probably did not indeed, may not have 
 ever seen our synoptics, or heard of their existence. 
 But the reader will observe that he has given the same 
 history as we find in the two synoptics which have 
 given an account of the Nativity, and he apparently 
 knew of no other account of the matter. 
 
 We are reminded that there were numerous apo- 
 cryphal Gospels then in use in the Church, and that 
 Justin might have derived his matter from these ; but, if 
 so, how is it that he discards all the lying legends with 
 which those Gospels team, and, with the solitary ex- 
 ception of the mention of the cave, confines himself to 
 the circumstances of the synoptic narrative.
 
 The principal Witness. 25 
 
 The next place respecting the Nativity shall be one 
 from ch. c. : 
 
 " But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the 
 angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the 
 Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of 
 the Highest would overshadow her ; wherefore also the Holy 
 Thing begotten of her is the Son of God : and she replied, 
 'Be it unto me according to Thy word.' " 
 
 Here both the words of the angel and the answer of 
 the virgin are almost identical with the words in St. 
 Luke's Gospel; Justin, however, putting his account 
 into the oblique narrative. 
 
 We will put the two side by side that the reader may 
 compare them. 
 
 ri 
 
 vou avry TafytYiK ayy&ov, on veviut ayiov 
 
 ' 
 
 mat, KM tiinaw l^icrrov km- aoi > *<*' r ^vvo^vov ayiov 
 maw avryv, 
 
 vov e| yr>7f ayi 
 
 < r-' ' \ \ svoiTO uoi Kara, TO or,ua <rou, 
 
 aTTEKgivaTo, i EVOITO (toi Kara ro 
 
 pijfia <7ou. 
 
 Now of these words, as existing in St. Lulce, the 
 author of " Supernatural Religion " takes no notice. 
 Was he, then, acquainted with the fact that Justin's 
 words in this place so closely correspond with St. Luke's ? 
 We cannot say. We only know that he calls his readers' 
 particular attention to a supposed citation of the previous 
 words of the angel Gabriel, cited in another place : 
 
 " Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Ghost, and shalt 
 bear a Son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest,
 
 26 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His 
 people from their sins." (Apol. 1, ch. xxxiii.) 
 
 The ordinary unprejudiced reader would say that 
 Justin here reproduces St. Matthew and St. Luke, weaving 
 into St. Luke's narrative the words of the angel to St. 
 Joseph ; but our author will not allow this for a moment. 
 He insists that Justin knew nothing, or need have known 
 nothing, of St. Luke. He shows that the words of the 
 angel, " He shall save his people," &c., which seem to be 
 introduced from St. Matthew, " are not accidentally in- 
 serted in this place, for we find that they are joined in 
 the same manner to the address of the angel to Mary in 
 the Protevangelium of St. James." 
 
 But how about those words which succeed them in 
 answer to the question of the Virgin, (< How shall 
 these things be ? " I mean those quoted in the " Dia- 
 logue " beginning " The Holy Ghost shall come upon 
 thee," &c. If ever one author quotes another, Justin 
 in this place quotes St. Luke. They cannot be taken 
 from the Protevangelium, because the corresponding 
 words in the Protevangelium are very different from 
 those in St. Luke; and the only real difference be- 
 tween Justin's quotation and St. Luke is that St. Luke 
 reads, " shall be called the Son of God ;" whereas 
 Justin has "is the Son of God." Now in this Justin 
 differs from the Protevangelium, which reads, " Shall be 
 called the Son of the Highest;" so the probability is 
 still more increased that in the quotation from the 
 " Dialogue " he did not quote the Protevangelium, and 
 did quote St. Luke. However, we will make the author 
 a present of these words, because we want to assume for 
 a moment the truth of his conclusion, which he thus 
 expresses :
 
 The principal Witness. 27 
 
 " Justin's divergencies from the Protevangelium prevent 
 our supposing that, in its present form, it could have been 
 the actual source of his quotations ; but the wide differences 
 which exist between the extant MSS. of the Protevangelium 
 show that even the most ancient does not present it in its 
 original form. It is much more probable that Justin had 
 before him a still older work, to which both the Protevan- 
 gelium and the third Gospel were indebted. (" Supernatural 
 Religion," vol. i. p. 306.) 
 
 Assuming, then, the correctness of this, Justin had a 
 still older Gospel than that of St. Luke; and we shall 
 hereafter show that St. Luke's Gospel was used in all 
 parts of the world in Justin's day, and long before 
 it. Now Justin himself lived only 100 years after the 
 Resurrection; and this is no very great age for the copy 
 of a book, still less for the book itself, of which any one 
 may convince himself by a glance around his library. 
 We may depend upon it that Justin would have used 
 the oldest sources of information. A book so old in 
 Justin's days may have been published at the outset of 
 Christianity. The author himself surmises that it may 
 have been the work of one of St. Luke's TroXXot. Any- 
 how it is an older, and therefore, according to the 
 writer's own line of argument all through his book, a 
 more reliable witness to the things of Christ, and its 
 witness is to the supernatural in His Birth. Are we, 
 then, able to form any conjecture as to the name of this 
 most ancient Gospel ? Yes. The author of " Super- 
 natural Religion" identifies it with the lost Gospel to the 
 Hebrews, in the words : 
 
 " Much more probably, however, Justin quotes from the 
 more ancient source from which the Protevangelium and
 
 28 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 perhaps St. Luke drew their narrative. There can be little 
 doubt that the Gospel according to the Hebrews contained an 
 account of the birth in Bethelehem, and as it is, at least, 
 certain that Justin quotes other particulars from it, there is 
 fair reason to believe that he likewise found this fact J in that 
 work." (Vol. ii. p. 313.) 
 
 If, then, this be the Gospel from which Justin derived 
 his account of the Nativity, it seems to have contained 
 all the facts for which we have now to look into St. 
 Matthew and St. Luke. It combined the testimonies of 
 both Evangelists to the supernatural Birth of Jesus. 
 
 1 That of our Lord beiny boi*n in a cave.
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS TESTIMONY 
 RESPECTING THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST. 
 
 ^HE next extract from Justin which I shall give is 
 JL. one describing our Lord's Baptism. This account, 
 like almost every other given in the dialogue with 
 Tripho, is mentioned by him, not so much for its own 
 sake, but because it gave him opportunity to show the ful- 
 filment, or supposed fulfilment, of a prophecy in this 
 case the prophecy of Isaiah that the " Spirit of the Lord 
 should rest upon Him." 
 
 " Even at His birth He was in possession of His power ; 
 and as He grew up like all other men, by using the fitting 
 means, He assigned its own [requirements] to each develop- 
 ment, and was sustained by all kinds of nourishment, and 
 waited for thirty years, more or less, until John appeared 
 before Him as the herald of His approach, and preceded Him 
 in the way of baptism, as I have already shown. And then, 
 when Jesus had gone to the river Jordan, where John was 
 baptizing, and when He had stepped into the water, a fire was 
 kindled in the Jordan ; and when He came out of the water, 
 the Holy Ghost lighted on Him like a dove [as] the Apostles 
 of this very Christ of ours wrote. ..... For when 
 
 John remained (literally sat) 1 by the Jordan, and preached 
 
 yap
 
 30 The Lost Gospel 
 
 the baptism of repentance, wearing only a leathern girdle 
 and a vesture made of camel's hair, eating nothing but locusts 
 and wild honey, men supposed him to be Christ ; but he cried 
 to them ' I am not the Christ, but the voice of one crying ; 
 for He that is stronger than I shall come, whose shoes I am 
 not worthy to bear . . . .' The Holy Ghost, and for man's sake, 
 as I formerly stated, lighted on Him in the form of a dove, 
 and there came at the same instant from the heavens a voice, 
 which was uttered also by David when he spoke, personating 
 Christ, what the Father would say to Him, ' Thou art my 
 Son, this day have I begotten Thee ;' [the Father] saying that 
 His generation would take place for men, at the time when 
 they would become acquainted with Him. ' Thou art my 
 Son ; this day have I begotten Thee.' " (Ch. Ixxxviii.) 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion " lays very 
 great stress upon this passage, as indicating through- 
 out sources of information different from our Gospels. 
 He makes the most of the fact that John is said to have 
 " sat " by the Jordan, not apparently remembering that 
 sitting was the normal posture for preaching and teach- 
 ing (Matthew v. 1 ; Luke iv. 20) . He, of course, dwells 
 much upon the circumstance that a fire was kindled in 
 the Jordan at the time of our Lord's baptism, which 
 additional instance of the supernatural Justin may have 
 derived either from tradition or from the Gospel to the 
 Hebrews. Above all, he dwells upon the fact and a 
 remarkable fact it is that Justin supposes that the words 
 of the Father were not " Thou art my beloved Son, in 
 Thee I am well pleased/' but " Thou art my Son, this 
 day have I begotten Thee." 
 
 Now I do not for a moment desire to lessen the im- 
 portance of the difficulty involved in a man, living in the 
 age of Justin, giving the words of the Father so differently
 
 The principal Witness. 31 
 
 to what they appear in our Gospels. But what is the 
 import of the discrepancy ? It is simply a theological 
 difficulty, the same in all respects with that which is 
 involved in the application of these very words to the 
 Eesurrection of Christ by St. Paul, in Acts xiii. 33. It 
 is in no sense a difficulty having the smallest bearing on 
 the supernatural ; for it is equally as supernatural for the 
 Father to have said, with a voice audible to mortal ears, 
 " This day have I begotten Thee," as it is for Him to 
 have said, " In Thee I am well pleased." 
 
 What, then, is the inference which the author of 
 " Supernatural Eeligion " draws from these discrepancies ? 
 This, that Justin derived his information from the lost 
 Gospel to the Hebrews. 
 
 " In the scanty fragments of the ' Gospel according to the 
 Hebrews,' which have been preserved, we find both the in- 
 cident of the fire kindled in Jordan, and the words of the 
 heavenly voice, as quoted by Justin : ' And as He went out 
 of the water, the heavens opened, and He saw the Holy Spirit 
 of God in the form of a dove descend and enter into Him. 
 And a voice was heard from heaven, saying, ' Thou art 
 my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased ; ' and again, 
 'This day have I begotten Thee.' And immediately a great 
 light shone in that place.' Epiphanius extracts this pas- 
 sage from the version in use among the Ebionites, but it is 
 well known that there were many other varying forms of the 
 same Gospel ; and Hilgenfeld, with all probability, con- 
 jectures that the version known to Epiphanius was no longer 
 in the same purity as that used by Justin, but represents the 
 transition stage to the Canonical Gospels, adopting the words 
 of the voice which they give without yet discarding the older 
 form." (" Supernatural Religion," vol. i. p. 320.) 
 
 Here, then, are the remains of an older Gospel used 
 by Justin, taken from copies which rationalists assert to
 
 32 The Lost Gospel 
 
 have been, when used by him, in a state of greater 
 purity than a subsequent recension ; which subsequent 
 recension was anterior to our present Gospels, and being 
 older was purer, because nearer to the fountain-head of 
 knowledge : but this older and purer form is charac- 
 terized by a more pronounced supernatural element to 
 wit, the ' fire ' in Jordan and the ( light ' so that, the 
 older and purer the tradition, the more supernatural is its 
 teaching.
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS TESTIMONY 
 RESPECTING THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 WE have now to consider the various notices in 
 Justin respecting our Lord's Crucifixion, and the 
 events immediately preceding and following it. Justin 
 notices our Lord's entry into Jerusalem : 
 
 " And the prophecy, ' binding His foal to the vine and 
 washing His robe in the blood of the grape,' was a significant 
 symbol of the things which were to happen to Christ, and of 
 what He was to do. For the foal of an ass stood bound to a 
 vine at the entrance of a village, and He ordered His ac- 
 quaintances to bring it to Him then ; and when it was brought 
 He mounted and sat upon it, and entered Jerusalem." (Apok i. 
 ch. xxxii.) 
 
 Justin in a subsequent place (Dial. ch. liii.) notices 
 the fact only mentioned in St. Matthew, that Jesus 
 commanded the disciples to bring both an ass and its 
 foal : 
 
 " And truly our Lord Jesus Christ, when He intended to 
 go into Jerusalem, requested His disciples to bring Him a 
 certain ass, along with its foal, which was bound in an 
 entrance of a village called Bethphage ; and, having seated 
 Himself on it, He entered into Jerusalem." 
 
 D
 
 34 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Justin thus describes the institution of the Eucharist : 
 
 "For the Apostles, in the Memoirs composed by them, 
 which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what 
 was enjoined upon them ; that Jesus took bread, and, when 
 He had given thanks, said, ' This do ye in remembrance of 
 me, this is My body ; ' and that after the same manner, 
 having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, ' This is My 
 blood;' and gave it to them alone." (Apol. I. ch. Ixvi.) 
 
 He thus adverts to the dispersion of the Apostles : 
 
 " Moreover, the prophet Zechariah foretold that this same 
 Christ would be smitten and His disciples scattered : which 
 also took place. For after His Crucifixion the disciples that 
 accompanied Him were dispersed." (Dial. ch. liii.) 
 
 He mentions our Lord's agony as the completion of a 
 prophecy in Psalm xxii. : 
 
 " For on the day on which He was to be crucified, having 
 taken three of His disciples to the hill called Olivet, situated 
 opposite to the temple at Jerusalem, He prayed in these 
 words : ' Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me.' 
 And again He prayed, ' Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.' " 
 (Dial, xcix.) 
 
 His sweating great drops of blood (mentioned only in 
 St. Luke) y also in fulfilment of Psalm xxii. : 
 
 " For in the memoirs which I say were drawn up by His 
 Apostles, and those who followed them [it is recorded] that 
 His sweat fell down like drops of blood while He was pray- 
 ing, and saying, ' If it be possible, let this cup pass.' " 1 
 (Ch. ciii.) 
 
 1 Justin has toyo&c uoil 0poyu/3oi ; St. Luke, 6 idpwQ avrov wtrti 
 0po/n/3ot a'tfiarof. The author of "Supernatural Religion" lays 
 great stress upon the omission of cr'//wiroc, as indicating that Justin
 
 The principal Witness. 35 
 
 His being sent to Herod (mentioned only in St. 
 Luke) : 
 
 " And when Herod succeeded Archelaus, having received 
 the authority which had been allotted to him, Pilate sent to 
 him by way of compliment Jesus bound; and God, fore- 
 knowing that this would happen, had thus spoken, 'And 
 they brought Him to the Assyrian a present to the king.' " 
 (Ch. ciii.) 
 
 His silence before Pilate, also quoted by Justin, in 
 fulfilment of Psalm xxii. : 
 
 " And the statement, ' My strength is become dry like a 
 potsherd, and my tongue has cleaved to my throat,' was also 
 a prophecy of what would be done by Him according to the 
 Father's will. For the power of His strong word, by which 
 He always confuted the Pharisees and Scribes, and, in short, 
 all your nation's teachers that questioned Him, had a cessa- 
 tion like a plentiful and strong spring, the waters of which 
 have been turned off, when He kept silence, and chose to 
 return no answer to any one in the presence of Pilate ; as 
 has been declared in the Memoirs of His Apostles." (Dial, 
 ch. cii.) 
 
 His crucifixion : 
 
 "And again, in other words, David in the twenty-first 
 Psalm thus refers to the suffering and to the cross in a parable 
 
 did not know anything about St. Luke ; but we have to remember, 
 first, that St. Luke alone mentions any sweat of our Lord in His 
 agony ; secondly, that the account in Justin is said to be taken 
 from " Memoirs drawn up by Apostles and those who followed them" 
 St. Luke being only one of those who followed] thirdly, Justin and 
 St. Luke both use a very scarce word, dpo/btflot ; fourthly, Justin 
 and St. Luke both qualify this word by wi. If we add to this the 
 fact that dpopfloi seems naturally associated with blood in several 
 authors, the probability seems almost to reach certainty, that 
 Justin had St. Luke's account in his mind. The single omission is 
 far more easy to be accounted for than the four coincidences.
 
 36 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 of mystery : ' They pierced my hands and my feet ; they 
 counted all my bones ; they considered and gazed upon me ; 
 they parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my 
 vesture.' For when they crucified Him, driving in the nails, 
 they pierced His hands and feet ; and those who crucified 
 Him parted His garments among themselves, each casting lots 
 for what he chose to have, and receiving according to the de- 
 cision of the lot." (Ch. xcvii.) 
 
 The mocking of Him by His enemies : 
 
 " And the following : ' All they that see Me laughed Me 
 to scorn ; they spake with the lips ; they shook the head : He 
 trusted in the Lord, let Him deliver Him since He desires 
 Him ; ' this likewise He foretold should happen to Him. For 
 they that saw Him crucified shook their heads each one of 
 them, and distorted their lips, and, twisting their noses to 
 each other, they spake in mockery the words which are re- 
 corded in the Memoirs of His Apostles, ' He said He was the 
 Son of God: let Him come down; let God save Him.'" 
 (Ch. ci.) 
 
 His saying, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken 
 Me ? " (reported only in SS. Matthew and Mark): 
 
 " For, when crucified, He spake, * God, my God, why 
 hast Thou forsaken me ? '" (Ch. xcix.) 
 
 His saying, ' ( Father, into Thy hands I commend My 
 Spirit/* reported only in St. Luke : 
 
 " For, when Christ was giving up His spirit on the cross, 
 He said, * Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,' as 
 I have learned also from the Memoirs." (Ch. cv.) 
 
 His Resurrection and appearance to His Apostles 
 gathered together (found only in SS. Luke and John), 
 and His reminding the same Apostles that before His 
 Death He had foretold it (found only in St. Luke) :
 
 The principal Witness. 37 
 
 " And that He stood in the midst of His brethren, the 
 Apostles (who repented of their flight from Him when He 
 was crucified, after He rose from the dead, and after they 
 were persuaded by Him that before His Passion He had men- 
 tioned to them that He must suffer these things, and that 
 they were announced beforehand by the prophets)." l (Ch. 
 cvi.) 
 
 The Jews spreading the report that His disciples had 
 stolen away His Body by night (recorded only by St. 
 Matthew) : 
 
 " Yet you not only have not repented, after you learned 
 that He rose from the dead, but, as I said before, you have 
 sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to 
 proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from 
 one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver, whom we crucified, but His 
 disciples stole Him by night from the tomb, where He was 
 laid when unfastened from the cross." (Ch. cviii.) 
 
 The Apostles seeing the Ascension, and afterwards re- 
 ceiving power from Him in person, and going to every 
 race of men : 
 
 " And when they had seen Him ascending into heaven, and 
 had believed, and had received power sent thence by Him upon 
 them, and went to every race of men, they taught these things, 
 and were called Apostles. " (Apol. I. ch. 1.) 
 
 From all this the reader will see at a glance that 
 Justin's view of the Crucifixion and the events attending 
 it was exactly the same as ours. He will notice that all 
 the events related in Justin are the same as those re- 
 corded in the Evangelists Matthew and Luke ; and 
 
 1 And He said unto them, " These are the words which I spake 
 unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled 
 which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and 
 in the Psalms concerning me." (Luke xxiii. 44.)
 
 38 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 that the circumstances related by Justin, and not to 
 be found in the Synoptics, are of the most trifling 
 character, as, for instance, that the blaspheming by- 
 standers at the cross " screwed up their noses." I 
 think this is the only additional circumstance to which 
 the writer of " Supernatural Religion " draws attention. 
 He will notice that Justin records some events only to 
 be found in St. Matthew and some only in St. Luke. 
 He will notice also how frequently Justin reproduces the 
 narrative rather than quotes it. 
 
 The ordinary reader would account for all this by sup- 
 posing that Justin had our Synoptics (at least the first 
 and third) before him, and reproduced incidents first 
 from one and then from the other as they suited his 
 purpose, and his purpose was not to give an account of 
 the Crucifixion, but to elucidate the prophecies respecting 
 the Crucifixion. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion," however, goes 
 through these citations, or supposed citations, seriatim, 
 and attempts to show that each one must have been 
 taken from some lost Gospel, most probably the Gospel 
 of the Hebrews. 
 
 Be it so. Here, then, was a Gospel which contained 
 all the separate incidents recorded in SS. Matthew and 
 Luke, and, of course, combined them in one narrative. 
 How is it that so inestimably valuable a Christian docu- 
 ment was irretrievably lost, and its place supplied by 
 three others, each far its inferior, each picking and 
 choosing separate parts from the original; and that, 
 about 120 years after the original promulgation of the 
 Gospel, these three forged narratives superseded a Gospel 
 which would have been, in the matter of our Lord's
 
 The principal Witness. 39 
 
 Birth, Death, and Resurrection, a complete and perfect 
 harmony ? I leave the author of " Supernatural Religion" 
 to explain so unlikely a fact. One explanation is, how- 
 ever, on our author's own showing, inadmissible, which 
 is, that our present Synoptics were adopted because they 
 pandered more than the superseded one to the growing 
 taste for the supernatural, for the earlier Gospel or 
 Gospels contained supernatural incidents which are 
 wanting in our present Synoptics.
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS TESTIMONY 
 RESPECTING THE MORAL TEACHING OF OUR LORD. 
 
 ONE more class of apparent quotations from our 
 Synoptic Gospels must now be considered, viz., 
 the citations in Justin of the moral teaching or precepts 
 of Christ. These are mostly to be found in one place, in 
 one part of the First Apology (chapters xv.-xviii.), and 
 they are introduced for the express purpose of convincing 
 the Emperor of the high standard of Christ's moral 
 teaching. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion " gives very 
 considerable extracts from these chapters, which I shall 
 give in his own translation : 
 
 " He (Jesus) spoke thus of chastity : ' Whosoever may have 
 gazed on a woman, to lust after her, hath committed adultery 
 already in the heart before God.' And, ' If thy right eye offend 
 thee cut it out, for it is profitable for thee to enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven with one eye (rather) than having two to 
 be thrust into the everlasting fire.' And, ' Whosoever mar- 
 rieth a woman, divorced from another man, committeth 
 adultery.' " 
 
 ******* 
 
 "And regarding our affection for all He thus taught: 
 ' If ye love them which love you what new thing do ye ? for 
 eveii the fornicators do this ; but I say unto you, pray for
 
 The principal Witness. 41 
 
 jour enemies, and love them which hate you, and bless them 
 which curse you, and offer prayer for them which despitefully 
 use you.' And that we should communicate to the needy, 
 and do nothing for praise, He said thus : ' Give ye to every 
 one that asketh, and from him that desireth to borrow turn 
 not ye away, for, if ye lend to them from whom ye hope to 
 receive, what new thing do ye? for even the publicans do 
 this. But ye, lay not up for yourselves upon the earth, where 
 moth and rust doth corrupt, and robbers break through, but 
 lay up for yourselves in the heavens, where neither moth nor 
 rust doth corrupt. For what is a man profited if he shall 
 gain the whole world but destroy his soul ? or what shall 
 he give in exchange for it ? Lay up, therefore, in the heavens, 
 where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt.' And, 'Be ye 
 kind and merciful as your Father also is kind and merciful, 
 and maketh His sun to rise on sinners, and just and evil. 
 But be not careful what ye shall eat and what ye shall put on. 
 Are ye not better than the birds and the beasts ? and God 
 feedeth them. Therefore be not careful what ye shall eat or 
 what ye shall put on, for your heavenly Father knoweth that 
 ye have need of these things ; but seek ye the kingdom of 
 the heavens, and all these things shall be added unto you, for 
 where the treasure is there is also the mind of the man." 
 And 'Do not these things to be seen of men, otherwise ye have 
 no reward of your Father which is in heaven.' And regard- 
 ing our being patient under injuries, and ready to help all, 
 and free from anger, this is what He said : ' Unto him striking 
 thy cheek offer the other also ; and him who carrieth off 
 thy cloak, or thy coat, do not thou prevent. But whosoever 
 shall be angry is in danger of the fire. But every one who 
 compelleth thee to go a mile, follow twain. And let your 
 good works shine before men, so that, perceiving, they may 
 adore your Father, which is in heaven.' .... And regarding 
 our not swearing at all, but ever speaking the truth, He thus 
 taught : ' Te may not swear at all, but let your yea be yea, 
 and your nay nay, for what is more than these is of the evil 
 
 one.' " 
 
 *******
 
 42 The Lost Gospel 
 
 " ' For not those who merely make profession, but those 
 who do the work,' as He said, ' shall be saved.' For He spake 
 thus : ' Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
 (enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will 
 of my Father, which is in heaven). For whosoever heareth 
 me, and doeth what I say, heareth Him that seut me. But 
 many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten and 
 drunk in Thy name, and done wonders ? And then will I 
 say unto them, ' Depart from me, workers of iniquity.' There 
 shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when indeed the 
 righteous shall shine as the sun, but the wicked are sent into 
 everlasting fire. For many shall arrive in My name, out- 
 wardly, indeed, clothed in sheep-skins, but inwardly being 
 ravening wolves. Ye shall know them from their works, and 
 every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down 
 and cast into the fire." 
 
 ***** 
 
 " As Christ declared, saying, ' To whom God has given 
 more, of him shall more also be demanded again.' " 
 
 The ordinary reader, remembering that Justin was 
 writing for the heathen, would suppose, after reading 
 the above, that Justin reproduced from SS. Matthew 
 and Luke the moral precepts of Christ, or rather those 
 which suited his purpose, and his purpose was to show 
 to the heathen Emperor that Christianity would make 
 the best members of a community. 
 
 To this end he reproduces the precepts respecting 
 chastity, respecting love to all, and communicating to 
 the needy being kind and merciful not caring much 
 for material things being patient and truthful and, 
 above all, being sincere. 
 
 He did not reproduce the precepts respecting prayer, 
 simply because immoral men among the heathen wor- 
 shipped their gods as devoutly as moral men did. He
 
 The principal Witness. 43 
 
 did not reproduce the Lord's prayer, because he would not 
 consider that it belonged to the heathen, or the promises 
 that God would hear prayer, simply because these would 
 belong to Christians only. 
 
 Again, he evidently altered and curtailed what the 
 heathen would not understand, as for instance, in quoting 
 our Lord's saying respecting " anger," he quoted it very 
 shortly, because to have quoted at length the gradations 
 of punishment for being " angry without a cause," for 
 " calling a brother Raca " and " fool," would have been 
 almost unintelligible to those unacquainted with Jewish 
 customs. 
 
 The author of ' l Supernatural Religion " repudiates the 
 idea that Justin, in any of these quotations, makes use of 
 our present Gospels. He examines these [so-called] 
 quotations seriatim at considerable length, for the pur- 
 pose of showing that Justin's variations from our present 
 Gospels imply another source of information. He con- 
 siders (and in this I cannot agree with him, though I 
 shall, for argument's sake, yield the point) that 
 
 " The hypothesis that these quotations are from the canonical 
 gospels requires the acceptance of the fact that Justin, with 
 singular care, collected from distant and scattered portions of 
 these gospels a series of passages in close sequence to each 
 other, forming a whole unknown to them, but complete in 
 itself." (" Supernatural Religion," vol. i. p. 359.) 
 
 I say I cannot agree with this, because I think that 
 the extracts I have given have all the signs of a piece of 
 patchwork by no means well put together, but I will 
 assume that he is right in his view. 
 
 Here, then, we have, according to his hypothesis, 
 another sermon of Christ's, which, owing to the " close
 
 44 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 sequence" of its various passages, and its completeness as 
 a whole, must take its place alongside of the Sermon on 
 the Mount. Where does it come from ? 
 
 "The simple and natural conclusion, supported by many 
 strong reasons, is that Justin derived his quotations from a 
 Gospel which was different from ours, though naturally by 
 subject and design it must have been related to them." 
 (Vol. i. p. 384.) 
 
 And in page 378 our author traces one of the passages 
 of this " consecutive " discourse through an epistle as- 
 cribed to Clement of Rome to the " Gospel according to 
 the Egyptians/' which was in all probability a version of 
 the " Gospel according to the Hebrews." 
 
 Here, then, is a Gospel, the Gospel to the Hebrews, 
 which not only contained, as the author has shown, a 
 harmony of the histories in SS. Matthew and Luke, so 
 far, at least, as the Birth and Death of Christ are con- 
 cerned, but also such a full and consecutive report of the 
 moral teaching of Christ, that it may not unfitly be 
 described as " a series of passages in close sequence to 
 each other," collected " with singular care " " from dis- 
 tant and scattered portions of these Gospels." How, 
 we ask, could such a Gospel have perished utterly ? A 
 Gospel, which, besides containing records of the historical 
 and supernatural much fuller than any one of the surviv- 
 ing Gospels, contained also a sort of Sermon on the 
 Mount, amalgamating in one whole the moral teaching 
 of our Lord, ought surely (if it ever was in existence) 
 to have won its place in the canon.
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS TESTIMONY TO 
 ST. JOHN. 
 
 WE have now to consider the citations (or supposed 
 citations) of Justin from the fourth Gospel. 
 These, as I have mentioned, are treated by the author 
 of " Supernatural Religion " separately at the conclusion 
 of his work. 
 
 Whatever internal coincidences there are between the 
 contents of St. John and those of the Synoptics, the 
 external differences are exceedingly striking, and it is 
 not at all to my present purpose to keep this fact out of 
 sight. The plan of St. John's Gospel is different, the 
 style is different, the subjects of the discourses, the 
 scene of action, the incidents, and (with one exception) 
 the miracles, all are different. 
 
 Now this will greatly facilitate the investigation of 
 the question as to whether any author had St. John 
 before him when he wrote. There may be some uncer- 
 tainty with respect to the quotations from the Synoptics, 
 as to whether an early writer quotes one or other, or 
 derives what he cites from some earlier source, as for 
 instance from one of St. Luke's TroXXot. 
 
 But it cannot be so with St. John. A quotation of,
 
 46 The Lost Gospel 
 
 or reference to, any words of any discourse of our Lord, 
 or an account of any transaction as reported by St. John, 
 can be discerned in an instant. At least it can be at 
 once seen that it cannot have been derived from the 
 Synoptics, or from any supposed apocryphal or tradi- 
 tional sources from which the Synoptics derived their 
 information. 
 
 The special object of this Gospel is the identification 
 of the pre-existent nature of our Lord with the eternal 
 Word, and following upon this, His relation to His 
 Father on the one side, and to mankind on the other. 
 
 He is the only begotten of the Father, God being 
 His own proper Father (i&oe), and so He is equal to 
 the Father in nature (John v. 18), and yet, as being a 
 Son, He is subordinate, so that He represents Himself 
 throughout as sent by the Father to do His will and 
 speak His words. 
 
 With reference to mankind He is, before His Incarna- 
 tion, the "Light that lighteth every man." After and 
 through His Incarnation He is to man all in all. He is 
 even in death the object of their Faith. He is the 
 Mediator through whose very person God sends the 
 Spirit. He is the Life, the Light, the Living Water, 
 the Spiritual Food. 
 
 Justin Martyr repeatedly reproduces in various forms 
 of expression the truth that Christ is the eternal " Word 
 made flesh " and revealed as the " Only-begotten Son of 
 God/' thus : 
 
 " The first power after God the Father and Lord of all is 
 the Word, Who is also the Son, and of Him we will, in what 
 follows, relate how He took flesh and became man." (Apol. 
 I. ch. xxxii.)
 
 The principal Witness. 47 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I have already proved that He was the only-begotten of 
 the Father of all things, being begotten in a peculiar manner 
 (/3Y<af) Word an d Power by Him, and having afterwards 
 become man through the Virgin." (Dial. ch. cv.) 
 
 Now, we have in these two passages four or five 
 characteristic expressions of St. John relating to our 
 Lord, not to be found in any other Scripture writer. 
 I say " in any other, " for I believe that not only the 
 Epistles of St. John, but also the Apocalypse, notwith- 
 standing certain differences in style, are to be ascribed to 
 St. John. 
 
 We have the term " Word " united with " the Son," 
 and with " Only begotten/' and said to be " properly 
 (proprie, tSfwe) begotten;" a reminiscence of John v. 18, 
 the only place in the New Testament where the adjective 
 tStoe or its adverb iSt'wc is applied to the relations of the 
 Father and the Son, and we have this Word becoming 
 flesh and man. 
 
 Now Justin, in one of the places, writes to convince 
 an heathen emperor; and, in the other, an unbelieving 
 Jew; and so in each case he reproduces the sense of 
 John i. 1 and 14, and not the exact words. It would 
 have been an absurdity for him to have quoted St. John 
 exactly, for, in such a case, he must have retained the 
 words " we beheld his glory, the glory as/' which would 
 have simply detracted from the force of the passage, 
 being unintelligible without some explanation. 
 
 Again, we have in the Dialogue (ch. Ixi.) the words 
 "The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God Begotten 
 of the Father of all things." Now here there seems to
 
 48 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 be a reproduction of the old and very probably original 
 reading of John i. 18, 1 " The only begotten God who is 
 in the bosom of the Father." Certainly this reading of 
 John i. 18 is the only place where the idea of being 
 begotten is associated with the term " God." 
 
 We next have to notice that Justin repeatedly uses 
 the words "God" and "Lord" in collocation as applied 
 to Jesus Christ ; not " the Lord God," the usual Old 
 Testament collocation, but God and Lord, thus : 
 
 "For Christ is King and Priest and God and Lord," &c. 
 (Dial. ch. xxxiv.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " There is, and there is said to be, another God and Lord 
 snbject to the Maker of all things." (Dial. Ivi.) 
 
 JSTow the only Gospel in which these words are to be 
 found together and applied to Christ is that according to 
 St. John, where he records the confession of St. Thomas, 
 " My Lord and my God " (John xx. 28). 
 
 Again : St. John alone of the Evangelists speaks of 
 our Lord as He that cometh from above (o avwOtv tp\o- 
 fjievot;} , as coming from heaven, as " leaving the world 
 and going to the Father" (John iii. 31; xvi. 28), and 
 Justin reproduces this in the words : 
 
 " It is declared [by David in Prophecy,] that He would 
 come forth from the highest heavens, and again return to the 
 same places, in order that you may recognize Him as God 
 coming forth from above and man living among men." (Dial, 
 ch. Ixiv.) 
 
 1 It is the reading of Codices B and C of the Codex Sinaiticus of 
 the Syriac, and of a number of Fathers and Versions.
 
 The principal Witness. '49 
 
 Again: though St. John asserts by implication the 
 equality in point of nature of the Father and the Son 
 (John v. 18), yet he also very repeatedly records words 
 of Christ which assert His subordination to the Father. 
 Nowhere in the Synoptics do we read such words as 
 " I can of mine own self do nothing :" " I seek not mine 
 own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent 
 me " (John v. 30) : " My meat is to do the will of Him 
 that sent me, and to finish His work" (iv. 34; also John 
 vi. 38) : "I have not spoken of myself; but the Father 
 which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I 
 should say, and what I should speak/' (xii. 49.) 
 
 Now Justin Martyr reproduces these intimations of 
 the subordination of the Son : 
 
 " Who is also called an Angel, because He announces to 
 men whatsoever the Maker of all things, above Whom there 
 is no other God, wishes to announce to them." (Dial. ch. 
 Ivi.) 
 
 " I affirm that He has never at any time done anything 
 which He Who made the world, above Whom there is no 
 other God, has not wished Him both to do and to engage 
 Himself with." (Dial. Ivi) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Boasts not in accomplishing anything through His own 
 will or might." (Ch. ci.) 
 
 Let the reader clearly understand that I do not lay 
 any stress whatsoever on these passages taken by them- 
 selves or together; but taken in connection with the 
 intimation of the Word and Sonship asserted in St. John, 
 and reproduced by Justin, they are very significant indeed.
 
 50 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 St. John asserts that Jesus is the Word and the Only 
 Begotten that He is " Lord " and " God," and equal 
 with the Father as being His Son (v. 18) ; but, lest men 
 conceive of the Word as an independent God, he asserts 
 the subordination of the Son as consisting, not in in- 
 feriority of nature, but in submission of will. 
 
 Justin reproduces in the same terms the teaching of 
 St. John respecting the Logos that the Logos was the 
 Only Begotten, God-begotten, Lord and God. And 
 then, lest his adversaries should assume from this that 
 Christ was an independent God, he guards it by the 
 assertion of the same doctrine of subordination of will; 
 neither the doctrine nor the safeguard being expressly 
 stated in the Synoptics, but contained in them by that 
 wondrous implication by which one part of Divine truth 
 really presupposes and involves all truth. 
 
 We have now to consider St. John's teaching respect- 
 ing the relation of the Logos to man. One aspect of 
 this doctrine is peculiar to St. John, and is as mysterious 
 and striking a truth as we have in the whole range of 
 Christian dogma. 
 
 It is contained in certain words in the exordium of the 
 Fourth Gospel : " That [Word] was the true light which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
 
 This passage embodies a truth which is unique in 
 Scripture : that in the Word was Life, that the Life was 
 the Light of men, and that that Light was (even before 
 the Incarnation) the true Light which lighteth every 
 man. 
 
 This, I say, is a truth which is not, that I am aware 
 of, to be found, except by very remote implication, in 
 the rest of Scripture. And yet it is continually repro-
 
 The principal Witness. 51 
 
 duced by Justin in a way which shows that he had 
 drunk it in, as it were, and he used it continually as the 
 principle on which to explain the vestiges of truth which 
 existed among the heathen. Thus : ' .. - 
 
 " We have beeij taught that Christ is the first-born of God, 
 and we have declared above that He is the Word of Whom 
 every race of men were partakers ; and those who lived 
 reasonably (or with the Logos, ol ^tTa Xoyov QiutravTss) are 
 Christians, even though they have been thought Atheists ; as 
 among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like 
 them." (Apol. I. ch. xlvi.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " JN"o one trusted in Socrates so as to die for this doctrine, 
 but in Christ, Who was partially known even by Socrates (for 
 He was and is the Word Who is in every man)," &c. (Apol. 
 II. ch. x.) 
 
 Again, in a noble passage : 
 
 " For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he 
 had of the spermatic Divine Word, 1 seeing what was related 
 to it. But they who contradict themselves in the more im- 
 portant points appear not to have possessed the heavenly 
 wisdom, and the knowledge which cannot be spoken against. 
 Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the 
 property of us Christians." (Apol. n. xiii.) 
 
 There cannot, then, be the smallest doubt but that 
 Justin's mind was permeated by a doctrine of the Logos 
 exactly such as he would have derived from the diligent 
 study of the fourth Gospel. But may he not have de- 
 rived all this from Philo ? No ; because, if so, he would 
 have referred Trypho, a Jew, to Philo, his brother Jew, 
 
 yap rie OTTO ptpow rov (nrep/LiaTiKOv dtiov \6yov 
 opwv KaX&G e<f>6ty^aTo.
 
 52 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 which he never does. The speciality of St. John's teach- 
 ing is not that he, like Plato or Philo, elaborates a Logos 
 doctrine, but that once for all, with the authority of God, 
 he identifies the Logos with the Divine Nature of our 
 Lord. No other Evangelist or sacred writer does this, 
 and he does.
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS FURTHER TESTIMONY 
 TO ST. JOHN. 
 
 WE now come to Justin's account of Christian 
 Baptism, which runs thus : 
 
 "I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated 
 ourselves to God when we had been made new through 
 Christ, lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the 
 explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded 
 and believe that what we teach and say is true, and under- 
 take to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray 
 and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their 
 sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then 
 they are brought by us where there is water, and are 
 regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves 
 regenerated. For in the name of God, the Father and 
 Lord of the Universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and 
 of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with 
 water. For Christ also said, ' Except ye be born again, 
 ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.' Now, that 
 it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter 
 into their mothers' wombs, is manifest to all." (Apol. I. 
 ch. Ixi.) 
 
 Now, taking into consideration the fact that St. John 
 is the only writer who sets forth our Lord as connecting 
 a birth with water [except a man be born of water and of 
 the Spirit] ; that when our Lord does this it is (according
 
 54 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 to St. John, and St. John only) following upon the 
 assertion that he must be born again, and that St. John 
 alone puts into the mouth of the objector the impossi- 
 bility of a natural birth taking place twice, which Justin 
 notices; taking these things into account, it does seein 
 to me the most monstrous hardihood to deny that Justin 
 was reproducing St. John's account. 
 
 To urge trifling differences is absurd, for Justin, if he 
 desired to make himself understood, could not have 
 quoted the passage verbatim, or anything like it. For, 
 if he had, he must have prefaced it with some account of 
 the interview with Nicodemus, and he would have to 
 have referred to another Gospel to show that our Lord 
 alluded to baptism; for, though our Lord mentions 
 water, He does not here categorically mention baptism. 
 So, consequently, Justin would have to have said, " If 
 you refer to one of our Memoirs you will find certain 
 words which lay down the necessity of being born again, 
 and seem to connect this birth in some way with water, 
 and if you look into another Memoir you will see how 
 this can be, for you will find a direction to baptize with 
 water in the name of the Godhead, and if you put these 
 two passages together you will be able to understand 
 something of the nature of our dedication, and of the 
 way in which it is to be performed, and of the blessing 
 which we have reason to expect in it if we repent of 
 our sins." 
 
 Well, instead of such an absurd and indirect way of pro- 
 ceeding, which presupposes that Antoninus Pius was well 
 acquainted with the Diatessaron, he simply reproduces 
 the substance of the doctrine of St. John, and inter- 
 weaves with it the words of institution as found in
 
 The principal Witness. 55 
 
 St. Matthew. I shall afterwards advert to the hypo- 
 thesis that thia account was taken from an apocryphal 
 Gospel. 
 
 Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who, in appa- 
 rent allusion to the devout and spiritual reception of the 
 Inward Part of the Lord's Supper, speaks of it as eating 
 the Flesh of Christ, and drinking His Blood ; the 
 Synoptics and St. Paul in 1 Cor. x. 11, always speak- 
 ing of it as His Body and Blood. Now Justin, in de- 
 scribing the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, uses the 
 language peculiar to St. John as well as that of the 
 Synoptics : 
 
 " So likewise have wo been taught that the food which 
 is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which 
 our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the 
 flesh and blood of that Jesus Who was made flesh. For the 
 Apostles, in the Memoirs composed by them, which are called 
 Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon 
 them ; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, 
 said, ' This do ye in remembrance of me. This is my body,' " 
 &c. (Apol. I. ch. Ixvi.) 
 
 This, of course, would be a small matter itself, but, 
 taken in connection with the adoption of St. John's 
 language in regard of the other sacrament a very short 
 time before, it is exceedingly significant. 
 
 Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who records 
 our Lord's reference to the brazen serpent as typical of 
 Himself lifted up upon the Cross. Justin cites the same 
 incident as typical of Christ's Death, and, moreover, 
 cites our Lord's language as it is recorded in St. John, 
 respecting His being lifted up that men might believe 
 in Him and be saved :
 
 56 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " For by this, as I previously remarked, He proclaimed 
 the mystery, by which He declared that He would break the 
 power of the serpent which occasioned the transgression of 
 Adam, and [would bring] to them that believe on Him by 
 this sign, i. e., Him Who was to be crucified, salvation from 
 the fangs of the serpent, which are wicked deeds, idolatries, 
 and other unrighteous acts. Unless the matter be so under- 
 stood, give me a reason why Moses set up the brazen serpent 
 for a sign, and bade those that were bitten gaze at it, and the 
 wounded were healed." (Dial. ch. xciv.) 
 
 Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who records 
 that the Baptist "confessed, and denied not, but con- 
 fessed, ' I am not the Christ/ '' Justin cites these very 
 words as said by the Baptist : 
 
 " For when John remained (or sat) by the Jordan .... 
 men supposed him to be Christ, but he cried to them, ' I am 
 not the Christ, but the voice of one crying,' " <fec. (Dial. ch. 
 Ixxxviii.) 
 
 Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who puts into 
 the mouth of our Blessed Lord, when He was accused of 
 breaking the Sabbath, the retort that the Jews on the 
 Sabbath Day circumcise a man .... that the law of 
 Moses should not be broken. (John vii. 22.) And 
 Justin also reproduces this in his Dialogue : 
 
 " For, tell me, did God wish the priests to sin when they 
 offer the sacrifices on the Sabbaths ? or those to sin who are 
 circumcised, or do circumcise, on the Sabbaths ; since He 
 commands that on the eighth day even though it happen 
 to be a Sabbath those who are born shall be always circum- 
 cised?" (Dial. ch. xx vii.) 
 
 Again, St. John represents our Lord, when similarly 
 harassed by the Jews, as appealing to the upholding of 
 all things by God on the Sabbath as well as on any other
 
 The principal Witness . 57 
 
 day, in the words, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
 work." (John v. 17.) And Justin very shortly after 
 uses the same argument : 
 
 " Think it not strange that we drink hot water on the 
 Sabbath, since God directs the government of the universe on 
 this day, equally as on all others ; and the priests on other 
 days, so on this, are ordered to offer sacrifices." (Dial. ch. 
 xxix.) 
 
 It is very singular that Justin, whilst knowing nothing 
 of St. John, should, on a subject like this, use two argu^ 
 ments peculiar to St. John, and not to be found in 
 disputes on the very same subject in the Synoptics. 
 
 Again, St. John alone records that Jesus healed a 
 man " blind from his birth," and notices that the Jews 
 themselves were impressed with the greatness of the 
 miracle. (John ix. 16, 32.) Justin remarks, " In that 
 we say that He made whole the lame, the paralytic, and 
 those born blind." (Apol. i. ch. xxii.) 
 
 Again, St. John is the only Evangelist who makes 
 our Lord to say, " Now I tell you before it come, that 
 when it is come to pass ye may believe." (John xiii. 
 19 ; xiv. 29 ; xvi. 4.) And Justin adopts and amplifies 
 this very sentiment with reference to the use of pro- 
 phecy : 
 
 " For things which were incredible, and seemed impossible 
 with men, these God predicted by the Spirit of prophecy as 
 about to come to pass, in order that, when they came to pass, 
 there might be no unbelief, but faith, because of their predic- 
 tion." (Apol. i. ch. xxxiii.) 
 
 Again, St. John alone of the Evangelists records that 
 our Lord used with the unbelieving Jews the argument
 
 58 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 that they believed not Moses, for, had they believed 
 Moses, they would have believed Him, for Moses wrote 
 of Him. (John, v. 46, 47.) And Justin reproduces in 
 substance the same argument : 
 
 "For though ye have the means of understanding that 
 this man is Christ from the signs giveii by Moses, yet you 
 will not." (Dial, xciii.) 
 
 Again, St. John is the only sacred writer who speaks 
 of our Lord " giving the living water," and causing that 
 water to flow from men's hearts, and Justin (somewhat 
 inaccurately) reproduces the figure : 
 
 " And our hearts are thus circumcised from evil, so that 
 we are happy to die for the name of the Good Bock, which 
 causes living water to burst forth for the hearts of those 
 who by Him have loved the Father of all, and which gives 
 those who are willing to drink of the water of life." (Dial, 
 ch. cxiv.) 
 
 Again, St. John alone records that Christ spake of 
 Himself as the Light, and Justin speaks of Him as <( the 
 only blameless and righteous Light sent by God." (Dial, 
 ch. xvii.) 
 
 Again, St. John alone speaks of our Lord, as repre- 
 senting Himself to be the true vine, and His people as 
 the branches. Justin uses the same figure with respect 
 to the people or Church of God : 
 
 "Just as if one should cut away the fruit-bearing parts 
 of a vine, it grows up again, and yields other branches flourish- 
 ing and fruitful ; even so the same thing happens to us. For 
 the vine planted by God and Christ the Saviour is His 
 People." (Dial. ch. ex.) 
 
 Again, St. John alone represents our Saviour as 
 saying, " I have power to lay [my life] down, and
 
 The principal Witness. 59 
 
 I have power to take it again. This commandment 
 have I received of my Father." (John x. 18.) And 
 Justin says of Christ that, in fulfilment of a certain 
 prophecy, 
 
 " He is to do something worthy of praise and wonderment, 
 being about to rise again from the dead on the third day 
 after the Crucifixion, and this He has obtained from the 
 Father." (Dial.ch. c.) 
 
 Some of these last instances which I have given are 
 reminiscences rather than reproductions; but like all 
 other reminiscences they imply things remembered, 
 sometimes not perfectly correctly, and so not applied as 
 applied in the original; but they are all real reminis- 
 cences of words and things to be found only in our 
 fourth Gospel.
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS. HIS TESTIMONY 
 SUMMED UP. 
 
 FROM all this it is clear that Justin had not only 
 seen and reverenced St. John's Gospel, but that 
 his mind was permeated with its peculiar teaching. 
 
 I hesitate not to say that, if a man rejects the evidence 
 above adduced, he rejects it because on other grounds 
 he is determined, cost what it may, to discredit the Fourth 
 Gospel. 
 
 Let us briefly recapitulate. 
 
 Justin reproduced the doctrine of the Logos, using the 
 words of St. John. He asserted the Divine and human 
 natures of the Son of God in the words of St. John, or in 
 exactly similar words. He reproduced that peculiar 
 teaching of our Lord, to be found only in St. John, 
 whereby we are enabled to hold the true and essential 
 Godhead of Christ without for a moment holding that 
 He is an independent God. He reproduced the doctrine 
 of the Logos being, even before His Incarnation, in 
 every man as the " true light " to enlighten him. 
 
 He reproduces the doctrine of the Sacraments in terms 
 to be found only in the Fourth Gospel. He reproduces,
 
 The principal Witness. 61 
 
 or alludes to, arguments and types and prophecies and 
 historical events, only to be found in St. John's Gospel. 
 
 It seems certain, then, that if Justin was acquainted 
 with any one of our four Gospels, that Gospel was the 
 one according to St. John. 
 
 What answer, the reader will ask, does the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion " give to all this ? Why, he 
 simply ignores the greater part of these references (we 
 trust through ignorance of their existence), and takes 
 notice of some three or four, in which, to use the vulgar 
 expression, he picks holes, by drawing attention to dis- 
 crepancies of language or application, and dogmatically 
 pronounces that Justin could not have known the fourth 
 Gospel. 
 
 Well, then, the reader will ask, from whom did Justin 
 derive the knowledge of doctrines and facts so closely 
 resembling those contained in St. John ? 
 
 Again, wo have reference to supposed older sources of 
 information which have perished. With respect to the 
 Logos doctrine, the author of " Supernatural Religion " 
 asserts : 
 
 " His [Justin's] doctrine of the Logos is precisely that of 
 Philo, and of writings long antecedent to the fourth Gospel, 
 and there can be no doubt, we think, that it was derived 
 from them." (" Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 297.) 
 
 It may be well here to remark that, strictly speaking, 
 there is no Logos doctrine in St. John's Gospel, by doc- 
 trine meaning " scientifically expressed doctrine/' drawn 
 out, and expounded at length, as in Philo. The Gospel 
 commences with the assertion that the Logos, Whoever 
 He be, is God, and is the pre-existent Divine nature of
 
 62 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Jesus; he does this once and once only, and never 
 recurs to it afterwards. 
 
 The next passage referred to is the assertion of the 
 Baptist, "I am not the Christ/' and the conclusion of 
 the author is that " there is every reason to believe that 
 he derived it from a particular Gospel, in all probability 
 the Gospel according to the Hebrews, different from 
 ours." (Vol. ii. p. 302.) 
 
 The last place noticed is Justin's reproduction of 
 John iii. 3-5, in connection with the institution of bap- 
 tism. After discussing this at some length, for the 
 purpose of magnifying the differences and minimizing 
 the resemblances, his conclusion is :* 
 
 " As both the Clementines and Justin made use of the 
 Gospel according to the Hebrews, the most competent critics 
 have, with reason, adopted the conclusion that the passage 
 we are discussing was derived from that Gospel ; at any rate 
 it cannot for a moment be maintained as a quotation from 
 our fourth Gospel, and it is of no value as evidence for its 
 existence." (" Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. p. 313.) 
 
 We have now tolerably full means of judging what a 
 wonderful Gospel this Gospel to the Hebrews must have 
 been, and what a loss the Church has sustained by its 
 extinction. 
 
 Here was a Gospel which contained a harmony of the 
 history, moral teaching, and doctrine of all the four. As 
 we have seen, it contained an account of the miraculous 
 Birth and Infancy, embodying in one narrative the facts 
 contained in the first and third Gospels. It contained a 
 narrative of the events preceding and attending our 
 Lord's Death, far fuller and more complete than that of 
 any single Gospel in the Canon.. It contained a record
 
 The principal Witness. 63 
 
 of the teaching of Christ, similar to our present Sermon 
 on the Mount, embodying the teaching scattered up and 
 down in all parts of SS. Matthew and Luke, and in addi- 
 tion to all this it embodied the very peculiar tradition, 
 both in respect of doctrine and of history, of the fourth 
 Gospel. 
 
 How could it possibly have happened that a record of the 
 highest value, on account both of its fulness and extreme 
 antiquity, should have perished, and have been super- 
 seded by four later and utterly unauthentic productions, 
 one its junior by at least 120 years, and each one of 
 these deriving from it only a part of its teaching ; the 
 first three, for no conceivable reason, rejecting all that 
 peculiar doctrine now called Johannean, and the fourth 
 confining itself to reproducing this so-called Johannean 
 element and this alone ? It is only necessary to state 
 this to show the utter absurdity of the author's hypo- 
 thesis. 
 
 But the marvel is that a person assuming such airs of 
 penetration and research * should not have perceived that, 
 
 1 For instance, in vol. ii. p. 42, &c., he speaks of one of Tischenclorf s 
 assertions as " a conclusion the audacity of which can scarcely be 
 exceeded." Then, " This is, however, almost surpassed by the treat- 
 ment of Canon Westcott." Then, " The unwarranted inference of 
 Tischendorf." " There is no ground for Tischendorf's assumption." 
 " Tischendorf, the self-constituted modern Defensor Fidei, asserts 
 with an assurance which can scarcely be characterized otherwise 
 than as an unpardonable calculation upon the ignorance of his 
 readers." " Canon Westcott says, with an assurance which, con- 
 sidering the nature of the evidence, is singular." " Even Dr. 
 Westcott states," &c. For Tertullian his contempt seems un- 
 bounded : indeed we may say the same of all the Fathers. Num- 
 berless times does he speak of their " uncritical spirit." The only 
 person for whom he seems to have a respect is the heretic Marcion. 
 Even rationalists, such as Credner and Ewald, are handled severely 
 when they differ from him. The above are culled from a few pages.
 
 64 The Lost Gospel 
 
 if he has proved his point, he has simply strengthened the 
 evidence for the supernatural, for he has proved the 
 existence of a fifth Gospel, far older and fuller than any 
 we now possess, witnessing to the supernatural Birth, 
 Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. 
 
 The author strives to undermine the evidence for the 
 authenticity of our present Gospels for an avowedly 
 dogmatic purpose. He believes in the dogma of the 
 impossibility of the supernatural ; he must, for this 
 purpose, discredit the witness of the four, and he would 
 fain do this by conjuring up the ghost of a defunct 
 Gospel, a Gospel which turns out to be far more em- 
 phatic in its testimony to the supernatural and the 
 dogmatic than any of the four existing ones, and so the 
 author of this pretentious book seems to have answered 
 himself. His own witnesses prove that from the first 
 there has been but one account of Jesus of Nazareth.
 
 SECTION XL 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON OUR LORD'S 
 GODHEAD. 
 
 THE author of " Supernatural Religion" has directed 
 his attacks more particularly against the authenti- 
 city of the Gospel according to St. John. His desire to 
 discredit this Gospel seems at times to arise out of a 
 deep personal dislike to the character of the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved. (Yol. ii. pp. 403-407, 427, 428, &c.) 
 On the author's principles, it is difficult to understand 
 the reason for such an attack on this particular Gospel. 
 He is not an Arian or Socinian (as the terms are com- 
 monly understood), who might desire to disparage the 
 testimony of this Gospel to the Pre-existence and God- 
 head of our Lord. His attack is on the Supernatural 
 generally, as witnessed to by any one of the four Gos- 
 pels ; and it is allowed on all hands that the three 
 Synoptics were written long before the Johannean ; and, 
 besides this, he has proved to his own satisfaction, and 
 to the satisfaction of the Reviewers who so loudly ap- 
 plauded his work, that there existed a Gospel long 
 anterior to the Synoptics, which is more explicit in 
 its declarations of the Supernatural than all of them put 
 together.
 
 66 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 However, as he has made a lengthened and vigorous 
 attempt to discredit this Gospel especially, it may be 
 well to show his extraordinary misconceptions respecting 
 the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel, and the opinions 
 of the Fathers (notably Justin Martyr) who seem to 
 quote from it, or to derive their doctrine from it. 
 
 The first question and by far the most important one 
 which we shall have to meet is this : Is the doctrine 
 respecting the Person of Jesus more fully developed in 
 the pages of Justin Martyr, or in the Fourth Gospel ? 
 We mean by the doctrine respecting the Person of 
 Jesus, that He is, with reference to His pre-existent 
 state, the Logos and Only-begotten Son of God; and 
 that, as being such, He is to be worshipped and 
 honoured as Lord and God ; and that, in order to be 
 our Mediator, and the Sacrifice for our sin, He took 
 upon Him our nature. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion " endeavours 
 to trace the doctrine of the Logos, as contained in 
 Justin, to older sources than our present Fourth Gos- 
 pel, particularly to Philo and the Gospel according to 
 the Hebrews. The latter is much too impalpable to 
 enable us to verify his statements by it; but we shall 
 have to show his misconceptions respecting the connec- 
 tion of Justin's doctrine with the former. What we 
 have now to consider is the following statement : 
 
 " It is certain, however, that both Justin and Philo, unlike 
 the prelude to the Fourth Gospel (i. 1), place the Logos in a 
 secondary position to God the Father, another point indicating 
 a less advanced stage of the doctrine." 
 
 From this we must, of course, infer that the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion " considers that Justin does not
 
 The principal Witness . 67 
 
 state the essential Godhead of the Second Person as dis- 
 tinctly and categorically as it is stated in the Fourth 
 Gospel. And as it is assumed by Eationalists that there 
 was in the early Church a constantly increasing develop- 
 ment of the doctrine of the true Godhead of our Lord, 
 gradually superseding some earlier doctrine of an Arian, 
 or Humanitarian, or Sadducean type; therefore, the 
 more fully developed doctrine of the Godhead of our 
 Lord in any book proves that book to be of later 
 origin than another book in which it is not so fully 
 developed. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion ^ cannot deny 
 that Justin ascribes the names " Lord " and " God " and 
 Pre-existence before all worlds to Jesus as the Logos, but 
 he fastens upon certain statements or inferences respecting 
 the subordination of the Son to the Father, and His acting 
 for His Father, or under Him, in the works of Creation 
 and Eedemption, which Justin, as an orthodox believer 
 who would abhor Tritheism, was bound to make, and 
 most ignorantly asserts that such statements are contrary 
 to the spirit of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 I shall now set before the reader the statements of 
 both St. John and Justin respecting the Divine Nature 
 of our Lord, so that he may judge for himself which is 
 the germ and which the development. 
 
 The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, sets forth the 
 Godhead and Pre-existence of the Logos, and this is in 
 the exordium or prelude : 
 
 " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God." 
 
 The Fourth Gospel once, and once only, identifies this
 
 68 The Lost Gospel 
 
 Word with the pre-exiatent nature of Jesus, in the con- 
 cluding words of the same exordium : 
 
 " The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we 
 beheld His Glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the 
 Father, full of grace and truth." 
 
 Except in these two places (and, of course, I need not 
 say that they are all-important as containing by implica- 
 tion the whole truth of God respecting Christ), there is 
 no mention whatsoever of the " Word " in this Gospel. 
 
 The Fourth Gospel gives to Jesus the name of God 
 only in two places, i. e. in the narrative of the second 
 appearance of our Lord to His apostles assembled toge- 
 ther after His Resurrection, where Thomas is related to 
 have said to Him the words, " My Lord and my God ; " 
 and in the words " The Word was God " taken in con- 
 nection with " the Word was made flesh." The indirect, 
 but certain, proofs by implication that Jesus fully shared 
 with His Father the Divine Nature are numerous, as, for 
 instance, that He wields all the power of Godhead, in 
 that " whatsoever things [the Father] doeth these doeth 
 the Son likewise " that He is equal in point of nature 
 with the Father, because God is His own proper Father 
 (tScog) that He raises from the dead whom He wills 
 that He and the Father are One that when Esaias saw 
 the glory of God in the temple he saw Christ's glory; 
 and, because of all this, He is the object of faith, even of 
 the faith which saves. 
 
 But, as my purpose is not to show that either Justin 
 or St. John hold the Godhead of our Lord, but rather to 
 compare the statements of the one with the other ; and 
 inasmuch as to cite the passages in which Justin Martyr
 
 The principal Witness. 69 
 
 assumes that our Blessed Lord possesses all Divine 
 attributes would far exceed the limits which I have 
 proposed to myself, I shall not further cite the passages 
 in St. John, which only imply our Lord's Godhead, but 
 proceed to cite the direct statements of Justin (or rather 
 some of them) on this head. 
 
 Whereas, then, St. John categorically asserts the 
 Godhead of our Lord in one, or, at the most, two places, 
 Justin directly asserts it nearly forty times. 
 
 The following are noticeable : 
 
 " And Trypho said, You endeavour to prove an incredible 
 and well-nigh impossible thing ; [namely] that God endured 
 to be born and become man. 1 If I undertook, said I, [Justin] 
 to prove this by doctrines or arguments of men, you should 
 not bear with me. But if I quote frequently Scriptures, and 
 so many of them, referring to this point, and ask you to com- 
 prehend them, you are hard-hearted in the recognition of the 
 mind and will of God." (Dial. ch. Ixviii.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " This very Man Who was crucified is proved to have been 
 set forth expressly as God and Man, and as being crucified 
 and as dying." 2 (Dial. ch. Ixxi.) 
 
 Again, Justin accuses the Jews of having mutilated 
 the Prophetical Scriptures, by having cut out of them 
 the following prophecy respecting our Lord's descent 
 into hell : 
 
 " The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel 
 who lay in the graves ; and He descended to preach to 
 them His own Salvation." (Dial. ch. Ixxii.) 
 
 1 "On e vTTt/utire ytwriBrivat KCU ayOpwTroc ycvtffdat. 
 
 2 'E MV diappifyv ovToqavroQ o aTavptofah 6Yi0foe Kal avdpui- 
 TTOC, KOI oravpovjUEvoe KCU airodvriffKuV KtKtjnvyfilvos airo
 
 70 The Lost Gospel 
 
 " For Christ is King, and Priest, and God, and Lord, and 
 Angel, and Man, and Captain, and Stone, and a Son born, 
 and first made subject to suffering, then returning to heaven, 
 and again coming with glory." (Dial, xxxiv.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, 
 which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called 
 both God, and Lord of Hosts, and Jacob in parable, by the 
 Holy Spirit." (Dial. ch. xxxvi.) 
 
 Again, Justin makes Trypho to say : 
 
 " When you [Justin] say that this Christ existed as God 
 before the ages, then that He submitted to be born, and be- 
 come man, yet that He is not man of man, this [assertion] 
 appears to me to be not merely paradoxical, but also foolish. 
 And I replied to this, I know that the statement does appear 
 to be paradoxical, especially to those of your race, who are 
 ever unwilling to understand or to perform the [requirements] 
 of God." (Dial. ch. xlviii.) 
 
 Again, Justin makes Trypho demand : 
 
 "Answer me then, first, how you can show that there is 
 another God besides the Maker of all things ; l and then you 
 will show [further], that He submitted to be born of the 
 Virgin. 
 
 " I replied, Give me permission first of all to quote 
 certain passages from the Prophecy of Isaiah which refer to 
 the office of forerunner discharged by John the Baptist." 
 (Dial. 1.) 
 
 1 The reader must remember that Justin puts this expression, 
 which seems to imply a duality of Godhead, into the mouth of an 
 adversary. In other places, as I shall show, he very distinctly 
 guards against such a notion, by asserting the true and proper Son- 
 ship of the Word and His perfect subordination to His Father. There 
 is a passage precisely similar in ch. Iv.
 
 The principal Witness. 71 
 
 Lastly : 
 
 " Now, assuredly, Trypho, I shall show that, in the vision 
 of Moses, this same One alone, Who is called an Angel, and 
 
 Who is God, appeared to and communed with Moses 
 
 Even so here, the Scriptures, in announcing that the angel of 
 the Lord appeared unto Moses, and in afterwards declaring 
 Him to be Lord and God, speaks of the same One, Whom it 
 declares by the many testimonies already quoted to be minister 
 to God, Who is above the world, above Whom there is no 
 other." (Dial. ch. Ix.) 
 
 In order not to weary the reader, I give the remainder 
 in a note. 1 
 
 1 " I continued : Moreover, I consider it necessary to repeat to 
 you the words which narrate how He is both Angel and God and 
 Lord, and Who appeared as a Man to Abraham." (Dial. ch. Iviii.) 
 
 " Permit me, further, to show you from the Book of Exodus, how 
 this same One, Who is both Angel, and God, and Lord, and Man." 
 (Dial. ch. lix.) 
 
 " God begat before all creatures, a Beginning, a certain rational 
 Power from Himself, Who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the 
 Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, 
 then God, and then Lord and Logos." (Dial. ch. Ixi.) 
 
 " The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God, begotten of 
 the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and 
 the Glory of the Begetter, will bear evidence to me," &c. (Dial. 
 Ixi.) 
 
 " Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is witnessed to 
 by Him Who established these things [i.e. the Father] as deserving 
 to be worshipped, as God and as Christ." (Dial. Ixiii.) 
 
 The reader will find other declarations, most of which are equally 
 explicit, in Dial. ch. Ivi. (at the end), ch. Ivii. (at the end), Ixii. 
 (middle), Ixviii. (at middle and end), Ixxiv. (middle), Ixxv., Ixxvi. 
 (made Him known, being Christ, as God strong and to be wor- 
 shipped), Ixxxv. (twice called the Lord of Hosts), Ixxxvii. (where 
 Christ is declared to be pre-existent God), cxiii. (he [Joshua] was 
 neither Christ, Who is God, nor the Son of God), cxv. (our Priest, 
 Who is God, and Christ, the Son of God, the Father of all), cxxiv. 
 (Now I have proved at length that Christ is called God), cxxv. 
 (He ministered to the will of the Father, yet nevertheless is God), 
 cxxvi. (thrice in this chapter), cxxvii., cxxviii., cxxix.
 
 72 The Lost Gospel 
 
 The reader will observe that the assertions of Justin, 
 which I have given, are the strongest that could be 
 made by any one who holds the Godhead of Christ, and 
 yet holds that that Godhead is not an independent 
 Divine Existence, but derived from the Father Who 
 begat Him, and, by begetting, fully communicated to 
 His Son or Offspring His own Godhead. 
 
 From these extracts the reader will be able to judge 
 for himself whether the doctrine of St. John is the 
 expansion or development of that of Justin, or the 
 doctrine of Justin the development of that of St. John. 
 
 He will also be able to judge of the absurdity of 
 supposing that after the time of Justin the cause of 
 Orthodoxy demanded the forgery of a Gospel, in order 
 to set forth more fully the Divine Glory of the Re- 
 deemer.
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON THE DOCTRINE OF 
 THE LOGOS. 
 
 WE have now to compare Justin's doctrine of the 
 Logos with that of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 The doctrine or dogma of the Logos is declared in 
 the Fourth Gospel in a short paragraph of fourteen 
 verses, a part of which is occupied with the mission of 
 the Baptist. 
 
 The doctrine, as I have said before, is rather oracular 
 enunciation than doctrine ; i. e. it is not doctrine elabo- 
 rately drawn out and explained and guarded, but simply 
 laid down as by the authority of Almighty God. 
 
 It is contained in four or five direct statements : 
 
 " In the beginning was the Logos." 
 
 In the beginning that is, before all created things 
 when there was no finite existence by which time could 
 be measured ; in that fathomless abyss of duration when 
 there was God only : 
 
 " The Logos was with God." 
 
 Though numerically distinct from Him, 1 He was so 
 " by " or with " Him as to be His fellow: 
 
 1 I adopt this phrase because it is used by Justin. His words 
 are apifyuw ovra trcpov. (Dial. ch. Ixii.)
 
 74 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " The Logos was God." 
 
 That is, though numerically distinct, He partook of the 
 same Divine Nature : 
 
 " All Things were made by Him." 
 
 Because, partaking fully of the nature, He partook 
 fully of the power of God, and so of His creating 
 power. 
 
 " That was the true light which lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world." 
 
 "The Logos was made flesh." 
 
 He was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin 
 Mary, and was made man. 
 
 The first enunciation, then, of St. John is that 
 
 " IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WOKD." 
 
 In Justin we read : 
 
 " His Son, Who alone is properly called Son, the Word, Who 
 also was with Him, and was begotten before the works." 
 Apol. n. ch. vi.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " When you [Justin] say that this Christ existed as God 
 before the ages." (Dial. ch. xlviii.) 
 
 Again: 
 
 " God begat before all creatures a Beginning, 1 [who was] a 
 certain rational Power from Himself, Who is called by the 
 Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again 
 Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and 
 Logos." (Dial. ch. Ixi.) 
 
 Now it is to be here remarked, that though the Logos 
 is continually declared to be " begotten of/' " derived 
 
 "On dpxhv irpb VO.VTWV Ttav KTifffjiaruy 6 Qtoc ytytvyrjKe %vvap.iv 
 K.T.\.
 
 The principal Witness. 75 
 
 from/' " an offspring of" the Father, yet in no case is 
 He declared to be " created " or ' ' made/' anticipating 
 the declaration which we confess in our Creed, " The 
 Son is of the Father alone, not made, nor created, but 
 begotten." 
 
 St. John proceeds : 
 
 " THE WORD WAS WITH GOD." 
 
 In Justin we read : 
 
 " This Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the 
 Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the 
 Father communed with Him." (Dial. ch. Ixii.) 
 
 Again, a little before, in the same chapter : 
 
 "From which we can indisputably learn that God con- 
 versed with some One who was numerically distinct from 
 Himself." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " The Word, Who also was with Him." (Apol. n. ch. vi.) 
 
 Again, Trypho says : 
 
 " You maintain Him to be pre-existent God." (Ch. 
 Ixxxvii.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I asserted that this Power was begotten from the Father, 
 by His Power and Will, but not by abscission, as if the essence 
 of the Father were divided ; as all other things partitioned 
 and divided are not the same after as before they were 
 divided ; and for the sake of example I took the case of fires 
 kindled from a fire, which we see to be distinct from it," &c. 
 (Dial, cxxviii.) 
 
 " THE WORD WAS GOD." 
 
 Justin writes : 
 
 " The Word of Wisdom, Who is Himself this God be- 
 gotten of the Father of all things" (Dial. ch. Ixi.) (See 
 previous page.)
 
 76 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " They who affirm that the Son is the Father are proved 
 neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to 
 know that the Father of the Universe has a Son ; Who also, 
 being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God." (Apol. i. 
 ch. Ixiii.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " It must be admitted absolutely that some other One is 
 called Lord by the Holy Spirit besides Him Who is con- 
 sidered Maker of all things." (Dial. ch. Ivi.) 
 
 * But it is useless to multiply quotations, seeing that all 
 those in pages 69-71 are the echoes of this declaration of 
 the Fourth Evangelist. 
 St. John writes : 
 
 " ALL THINGS WEEE MADE BY HlM." 
 
 And Justin writes : 
 
 " Knowing that God conceived and made the world by the 
 Word." (Apol. i. ch. Ixiv.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 "When at first He created and arranged all things by 
 Him." (Apol. n. ch. vi.) 
 Again St. John writes: 
 
 " THAT (i. e. THE WORD) WAS THE TRUE LIGHT THAT LIGHTETH 
 
 EVERT MAN THAT COMETH INTO THE WORLD." 
 
 I have given above (p. 51) sufficient illustrations 
 from Justin of this truth. I again draw attention to : 
 
 " He is the Word of Whom every race of men were par- 
 takers." (Apol. i. ch. xlvi.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " He was and is the Word Who is in every man." (Apol. n. 
 ch. x.)
 
 The principal Witness. 77 
 
 "For whatever either lawgivers or philosophers tittered 
 well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part 
 of the Word. But since they did not know the whole of the 
 Word which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves." * 
 (Apol. n. ch. x.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 "These men who believe in Him, in whom (tv oti) abideth 
 the seed of God, the Word." (Apol. I. ch. xxxii.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " I confess that I both boast and with all my strength 
 strive to be found a Christian ; not because the teachings of 
 Plato are different from those of Christ, but because they are 
 not in all respects similar, as neither are those of the others, 
 Stoics, and poets, and historians. For each man spoke well 
 in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic Word." 2 
 (Apol. n. ch. xiii.) 
 
 Lastly, St. John writes : 
 " THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH." 
 And Justin writes : 
 
 " The Logos Himself, Who took shape and became man and 
 was called Jesus Christ." (Apol. n. ch. v.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " The Word, Who is also the Son ; and of Him we will in 
 what follows relate how He took flesh, and became Man." 
 (Apol. n. ch. xxxii.) 
 
 " Jesus Christ is the only proper Son Who has been be- 
 gotten by God, being His Word, and First-begotten, and 
 
 1 Dr. Pusey translates this passage thus: "For all that the 
 philosophers and legislators at any time declared or discovered 
 aright, they accomplished according to their portion of discovery 
 and contemplation of the Word ; but as they did not know all the 
 properties of the Word which is Christ, " &c. 
 
 2 Translated by Dr. Pusey, " Seminal Divine Word."
 
 78 The Lost Gospel 
 
 Power, and becoming man according to His Will He taught 
 us these things," &c. (Apol. I. ch. xxiii.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " In order that you may recognize Him as God coming 
 forth from above, and Man living among men." (Dial. 
 Ixiv.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " He was the Only-begotten of the Father of all things, 
 being begotten in a peculiar manner Word and Power by 
 Him, and having afterwards become Man through the Virgin." 
 (Dial. ch. cv.) 
 
 After considering the above extracts, the reader will 
 be able to judge of the truth of some assertions of the 
 author of " Supernatural Keligion," as, for instance : 
 
 " We are, in fact, constantly directed by the remarks of 
 Justin to other sources of the Logos doctrine, and never to 
 the Fourth Gospel, with which his tone and terminology in 
 no way agree." (Vol. ii. p. 293.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " We must see that Justin's terminology, as well as his 
 views of the Word become Man, is thoroughly different from 
 that Gospel." (Vol. ii. p. 296.) 
 
 Also : 
 
 " It must be apparent to every one who seriously examines 
 the subject, that Justin's terminology is thoroughly different 
 from, and in spirit opposed to, that of the Fourth Gospel, and 
 in fact that the peculiarities of the Gospel are not found in 
 Justin's writings at all." (! !) (P. 297.) 
 
 1 A few pages further on I shall show that the mode of reasoning 
 adopted by the author of " Supernatural Religion," in drawing 
 inferences from the ways in which Justin expresses the idea of St. 
 John's 6 Xdyoc <mp iyivtro would, if we adopted it, lead us to 
 some very startling conclusions.
 
 The principal Witness. 79 
 
 On the contrary, we assert that every Divine Truth 
 respecting the Logos, which appears in the germ in St. 
 John, is expanded in Justin. St. John's short and 
 pithy sentences are the text, and Justin's remarks are 
 the exposition of that text, and of nothing less or more. 
 
 So far from Justin's doctrine being contrary to the 
 spirit of St. John's, Justin, whilst deviating somewhat 
 from the strict letter, seizes and reproduces the very 
 spirit. I will give in the next section two or three 
 remarkable instances of this ; which instances, strange to 
 say, the author of " Supernatural Religion " quotes for 
 the purpose of showing the absolute divergence and 
 opposition between the two writers.
 
 SECTION XIII. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON OUR LORD AS KING, 
 PRIEST, AND ANGEL. 
 
 T 
 
 HE author of " Supernatural Religion " quotes the 
 passage in Dial, xxxiv. : 
 
 " For Christ is King, and Priest, and God, and Lord, and 
 Angel, and Man, and Captain, and Stone, and a Son born," 
 &c. 
 
 And he remarks, with what I cannot but characterize 
 as astonishing effrontery, or (to use his own language 
 with respect to Tischendorf) " an assurance which can 
 scarcely be characterized otherwise than an unpardon- 
 able calculation upon the ignorance of his readers/' 
 (Vol. ii. p. 56.) 
 
 " Now these representations, which are constantly repeated 
 throughout Justin's writings, are quite opposed to the spirit 
 of the Fourth Gospel." (Vol. ii. p. 288.) 
 
 He first of all takes the title " King/' and arbitrarily 
 and unwarrantably restricts Justin's derivation of it to 
 the seventy- second Psalrn, apparently being ignorant of 
 the fact that St. John, in his very first chapter, records 
 that Christ was addressed by Nathanael as " King of 
 Israel " that the Fourth Gospel alone describes how the 
 crowd on His entry into Jerusalem cried, " Osanna,
 
 The principal Witness. 81 
 
 Blessed be the King of Israel, Who cometh in the name 
 of the Lord " (xii. 13) that this Gospel more fully than 
 any other records how Pilate questioned our Lord re- 
 specting His Kingship, and recognized Him as King, 
 " Behold your King ; " and that those who mocked our 
 Lord are recorded by St. John to have mocked Him as 
 the " King of Israel/' 
 
 So that this term King, so far from being contrary to 
 the spirit of the Fourth Gospel, is not even contrary to its 
 letter. 
 
 But this, gross though it seems, is to my mind as 
 nothing to two other assertions founded on this passage 
 of Justin : 
 
 " If we take the second epithet, the Logos as Priest, 
 which is quite foreign to the Fourth Gospel, we find it re- 
 peated by Justin." 
 
 Now, it is quite true that the title " priest " is not 
 given to our Lord in St. John, just as it is not given to 
 Him in any one of the three Synoptics, or indeed in 
 any book of the New Testament, except the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews : yet, notwithstanding this, of all the books 
 of the New Testament, this Gospel is the one which sets 
 forth the reality of Christ's Priesthood. For what is the 
 distinguishing function of the Priesthood ? Is it not 
 Mediation and Intercession, and the Fourth Gospel more 
 than all sets forth Christ as Mediator and Intercessor ? 
 As Mediator when He says so absolutely: "No man 
 cometh unto the Father but by me ; " " As my Father 
 sent me so send I you ; whosesoever sins ye remit, they 
 are remitted unto them." 
 
 Again, the idea of Priesthood ia actually inherent in 
 the figure of the good Shepherd "Who giveth His Life for
 
 82 The Lost Gospel 
 
 the sheep '," for how does He give His life? not in the 
 way of physical defence against enemies, as an earthly 
 " good shepherd " might do, but in the way of atoning 
 Sacrifice, as the author of " Supernatural Religion " 
 truly asserts, where he writes (vol. ii. p. 352) : 
 
 " The representation of Jesus as the Lamb of God taking 
 away the sins of the world is the very basis of the Fourth 
 Gospel." 
 
 Again, in the same page : 
 
 " He died for the sin of the world, and is the object of 
 faith, by which alone forgiveness and justification before God 
 can be secured." 
 
 Again, with reference to His Intercession, we have not 
 only the truth set forth in such expressions as " I will 
 pray the Father," but we have the actual exercise of the 
 great act of priestly Intercession, as recorded in the 
 seventeenth chapter of the Fourth Gospel. If we look 
 to words only (which the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion" too often does), then, of course, we allow 
 that the epithet " priest " is quite foreign not only to the 
 Fourth Gospel, but to every other book of the New Testa- 
 ment, except the Epistle to the Hebrews ; but if we look 
 to the things implied in the idea of Priesthood, such as 
 Mediation and Intercession, in fact Intervention between 
 God and Man, then we find that the whole New Testa- 
 ment is pervaded with the idea, and it culminates in the 
 Fourth Gospel. 
 
 The next assertion of the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion" on the same passage betrays still more 
 ignorance of the contents of St. John's Gospel, and a far 
 greater eagerness to fasten on a seeming omission of the
 
 The principal Witness. 83 
 
 letter, and to ignore a pervadence of the spirit. He 
 
 asserts : 
 
 " It is scarcely necessary to point out that this representa- 
 tion of the Logos as Angel, is not only foreign to, but op- 
 posed to, the spirit of the Fourth Gospel." (Vol. ii. p. 293.) 
 
 Now just as in the former case we had to ask, " What 
 is the characteristic of the priest ? " so in order to answer 
 this we have only to ask, " What is the characteristic of 
 the angel ? " 
 
 An angel is simply "one sent." Such is the meaning of 
 the word both in the Old and New Testament. The He- 
 brew word *Jtf ^O is applied indifferently to a messenger 
 sent by man (see Job i. 14 ; 1 Sam. xi. 3 ; 2 'Sam. 
 xi. 19-20), and to God's messengers the Holy Angels, 
 that is, the Holy Messengers, the Holy ones sent. And 
 similarly, in the New Testament, the word ayyeXoc is 
 applied to human messengers in Luke vii. 24, aTreXdovTwv 
 Se T(i>v ayj\d)v 'Iweiwou, also in Luke ix. 52, and James ii. 
 25. That the characteristic of the angel is to be " sent" 
 is implied in such common phrases as, ' ' The Lord sent 
 His Angel/' "I will send mine angel/' "Are they 
 not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister ?" &c. 
 
 Now one of the characteristic expressions of the 
 Fourth Gospel we might almost have said the charac- 
 teristic expression respecting Jesus, is that He is "sent." 
 To use the noun instead of the verb, He is God's special 
 messenger, His ayyeAog, sent by Him to declare and to 
 do His will : but this does not imply that He has, or has 
 assumed, the nature of an angel ; just as the application 
 of the same word ctyytXoc to mere human messengers in 
 no way implies that they have any other nature than
 
 84 The Lost Gospel 
 
 human nature. Just as men sent their fellow-men as 
 their a-yytAoi, so God sends One Who, according to 
 Justin, fully partakes of His Nature, to be His ay-ysXof. 
 
 This sending of our Lord on the part of His Father is 
 one of the chief characteristics of the Fourth Gospel, and 
 the reader, if he cannot examine this Gospel for himself, 
 comparing it with the others, has only to turn to any 
 concordance, Greek or English, to satisfy himself re- 
 specting this matter. 
 
 Jesus Christ is said to be " sent of God," i. e. to be 
 His ayyE\oc, only once in St. Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 
 x. 40 : " He that receiveth me receiveth Him that sent 
 me"), only once in St. Mark (ix. 37), only twice in St. 
 Luke (ix. 48 ; xx. 13), but in the Fourth Gospel He is 
 said to be sent of God about forty times. 1 In one dis- 
 course alone, that in John vi., Jesus asserts no less than 
 six times that He is sent of God, or that God sent 
 Him ; so that the dictum, " This representation of the 
 Logos as angel is not only foreign to, but opposed to, 
 the spirit of the Fourth Gospel," is absolutely contrary to 
 the truth. 
 
 1 The following are some instances : " God sent not His Son 
 into the world to condemn the world." " He Whom God sent." 
 John iii. 17, 23. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me." 
 " Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent." " As my Father sent me, 
 so send I you," &c.
 
 SECTION XIV. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL WITNESS ON THE DOCTRINE OF 
 THE TRINITY. 
 
 ^HE author of " Supernatural Religion " asserts : 
 
 -*- " The Fourth Gospel proclaims the doctrine of an 
 
 hypostatic Trinity in a more advanced form than any other 
 writing of the New Testament." l 
 
 This is hardly true if we consider what is meant by 
 the proclamation of the doctrine of a Trinity. 
 
 Such a doctrine can be set forth by inference, or it 
 can be distinctly and broadly stated, as it is, for instance, 
 in the First Article of the Church of England, or in 
 the Creed of St. Athanasius. 
 
 The doctrine of the Trinity is set forth by implication 
 in every place in Scripture where the attributes or works 
 of God are ascribed to two other Persons besides The 
 Father. But it is still more directly set forth in those 
 places where the Three Persons are mentioned together 
 as acting conjointly in some Divine Work, or receiving 
 
 1 This passage does not o.ccur among the remarks upon Justin 
 Martyr's quotations, but among those on the Clementine Homilies. 
 However, it seems to be used to prove that the Gospel of St. John 
 was published after the writing of the Clementines, which the author 
 seems to think were themselves posterior to Justin.
 
 86 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 conjointly some divine honour. In this sense the most 
 explicit declarations of the doctrine of the Trinity are the 
 Baptismal formula at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, 
 and the " grace/' as it is called, at the end of St. Paul's 
 Second Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 
 St. John, by asserting in different places the Godhead 
 of the Word, and the Divine Works of the Holy Ghost, 
 implicitly proves the doctrine of the Trinity, but, as far 
 as I can remember, he but twice mentions the Three 
 adorable Persons together : Once in the words, " I will 
 pray the Father and He shall give you another Com- 
 forter." And again, " But the Paraclete, which is the 
 Holy Ghost, whom the Father shall send in My name, He 
 shall teach you all things." 
 
 Now, in respect of the explicit declaration of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, the statements of Justin are the 
 necessary 1 developments not only of St. John's state- 
 ments, but of those of the rest of the New Testament 
 writers. 
 
 I have given two passages in page 10. 
 
 One of these is in the First Apology, and reads thus : 
 
 "Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, Who also 
 was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius 
 
 1 I say the " necessary " developments, because Holy Scripture 
 is given to the Church to be expounded and applied, and in order 
 to this its doctrine must be collected out of many scattered state- 
 ments, and stated and guarded, and this is its being developed. 
 The Persons, the attributes, and the works of the three Persons of 
 the Godhead are so described in Holy Scripture as Divine, and They 
 are so conjoined in the works of Creation, Providence, and Grace, 
 that we cannot but contemplate Them as associated together, and 
 cannot but draw an impassable gulf between Their existence and that 
 of all creatures, and we cannot but adoringly contemplate Their rela- 
 tions one to another, and hence the necessary development of the 
 Christian dogma as contained in the Creeds.
 
 The principal Witness. 87 
 
 Pilate, Procurator of Judea in the times of Tiberius Caesar ; 
 and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He 
 is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the 
 Second place, and the Prophetic Spirit in the Third, we will 
 prove." (Apol. I. ch. xiii.) 
 
 Again, he endeavours to show that Plato held the 
 doctrine of a Trinity. He is proving that Plato had read 
 the books of Moses : 
 
 " And, as to his speaking of a third, he did this because he 
 read, as we said above, that which was spoken by Moses, 
 1 that the Spirit of God moved over the waters.' For he 
 gives the second place to the Logos which is with God, who 
 he (Plato) said, was placed crosswise in the universe ; and 
 the third place to the Spirit who was said to be borne upon 
 the water, saying, 'and the third around the third.' " (Apol. I. 
 ch. Ix.) 
 
 ]STow unquestionably, so far as expression of doctrine 
 is concerned, these passages from Justin are the develop- 
 ments of the Johannean statements. The statements in 
 St. John contain, in germ, the whole of what Justin de- 
 velops ; but it is absurd to assert that, after Justin had 
 written the above, it was necessary, in order to bolster 
 up a later, and consequently, in the eyes of Rationalists, a 
 mere human development, to forge a new Gospel, con- 
 taining nothing like so explicit a declaration of the 
 Trinity as we find in writings which are supposed to pre- 
 cede it, and weighting its doctrinal statements with a 
 large amount of historical matter very difficult, in many 
 cases, to reconcile perfectly with the history in the older 
 Synoptics.
 
 SECTION XV. 
 JUSTIN AND ST. JOHN ON THE INCARNATION. 
 
 TWO further matters, bearing upon the relations of 
 the doctrine of Justin to that of St. John, must 
 now be considered. The Author of " Supernatural Reli- 
 gion " asserts that the doctrine of Justin respecting the 
 Incarnation of the Word is essentially different from that 
 of St. John : 
 
 " It must be borne in mind that the terminology of John i. 
 14, ' And the Word became flesh ' (ova^f E-yeve-rd) is different 
 from that of Justin, who uses the word o-apno7row6ii$" (Vol. 
 il p. 276.) 
 
 Again, with reference to the word juovoycvTje, he 
 
 writes : 
 
 " The phrase in Justin is quite different from that in the 
 Fourth Gospel, i. 14, ' And the Word became flesh ' (cra$ | kys- 
 VETO) 'and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, 
 glory as of the Only -begotten from the Father ' (cog povoytvous 
 Trapa TraTfoj, &c.). In Justin He is 'the Only-begotten of the 
 Father of all' (/novoyevrK TU Tlcnqi ^uv cAwf), 'and He became 
 man ' (avfif u'jrof yevonevog) * through the Virgin,' and Justin 
 never once employs the peculiar terminology of the Fourth 
 Gospel, a-apZ Eyevero, in any part of his writings." (Vol. ii. p. 
 280.) 
 
 Again:
 
 On the Incarnation. 89 
 
 " He [Justin] is, in fact, thoroughly acquainted with the 
 history of the Logos doctrine and its earlier enunciation 
 under the symbol of Wisdom, and his knowledge of it is 
 clearly independent of, and antecedent to, the statements of 
 the Fourth Gospel." (Vol. ii. p. 284.) 
 
 This passage is important. I think we cannot be 
 wrong in deducing from it that the Author of " Super- 
 natural Keligion" considers that the Gospel of St. John 
 was published subsequently to the time of Justin Martyr, 
 that is, some time after A.D. 160 or 165. 
 
 Again : 
 
 " The peculiarity of his terminology in all these passages 
 [all which I have given above in pages 73-78], so markedly 
 different, and even opposed to that of the Fourth Gospel, will 
 naturally strike the reader." (Yol. ii. p. 286.) 
 
 Again, and lastly : 
 
 "We must see that Justin's terminology, as well as his 
 views of the Word become man, is thoroughly different from 
 that Gospel. We have remarked that, although the passages 
 are innumerable in which Justin speaks of the Word having 
 become man through the Virgin, he never once throughout 
 his writings makes use of the peculiar expression of the Fourth 
 Gospel : ' The word became flesh' (o Xo'yoj <ra% | sysvsTo). On the 
 few occasions on which he speaks of the Word having been 
 made flesh, he uses the term, crcxfxoTroniQiii;. In one instance 
 he has vati KO. %EJV, and speaking of the Eucharist, Justin once 
 explains that it is in memory of Christ being made body, 
 (ru/u.ctT07row<Ta<rd(xi. Justin's most common phrase, however, 
 and he repeats it in numberless instances, is that the Logos 
 submitted to be born, and become man (ytvvnOvvai avfyuTrov 
 ysvoftEvov vTTEftEivEv), by a Virgin, or he uses variously the ex- 
 pressions : txvOfUTTos yeyove, avfyowos ysvopevos , yEvs<r6<xi av 
 (Vol. ii. p. 296.)
 
 90 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Here, then, we have the differences specified by which 
 the Author of " Supernatural Religion" thinks that he is 
 justified in describing the terminology and views of Justin 
 respecting the Incarnation as " markedly different and 
 even opposed to," and as " thoroughly different from," 
 those of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 So that, because Justin, instead of embodying the 
 sentence, o Ao-yoc <rap eyfvfro, substitutes for it the par- 
 ticiple, (TapKOTToiTjfltic, or the phrase, aao/co t^etv, or the 
 infinitive, crw/iaT07roti7<ra(r0at, or the expression, avBowTroc; 
 ysyove, he holds views thoroughly different from those of 
 St. John respecting the most momentous of Christian 
 truths. 
 
 This is a fair specimen of the utterly reckless assertions 
 in which this author indulges respecting the foundation 
 truth of Christianity. 
 
 If such terms, implying such divergences, can be applied 
 to these statements of Justin's belief in the Incarnation, 
 what words of human language could be got to express 
 his flat denial of the truth held in common by him and 
 by St. John, if he had been an unbeliever? If Justin, 
 with most other persons, considers that being "in the 
 flesh" is the characteristic difference between men and 
 spirits such as the angels, and expresses himself accord- 
 ingly by saying that the Word " became man," what 
 sense is there in saying that he is " opposed to the spirit 
 of the Fourth Gospel," in which we have the Word not 
 only as the " Son of Man," but possessing all the sinless 
 weaknesses of human nature, so that He is weary, and 
 weeps, and groans, and is troubled in spirit ? 
 
 And now we will make, if the reader will allow, a sup- 
 position analogous to some which the author of " Super-
 
 On the Incarnation. 91 
 
 natural Religion" has made in pages 360 and following 
 of his first volume. We will suppose that all the eccle- 
 siastical literature, inspired and uninspired, previous to 
 the Council of Nice, had been blotted out utterly, and 
 the Four Gospels alone preserved. And we will'suppose 
 some critic taking upon himself to argue that the Gospel 
 of St. John was written after the Nicene Creed. On the 
 principles and mode of argument of the author of " Super- 
 natural Religion," he would actually be able to prove his 
 absurdity, for he would be able to allege that the doctrine 
 and terminology of the Fathers of the first General 
 Council was " opposed to " that of the Fourth Gospel ; 
 and so they could not possibly have acknowledged its 
 authority if they had even " seen" it. For he (the 
 critic) would allege that the words of St. John respect- 
 ing the Incarnation are not adopted by the Creed which 
 the Nicene Fathers put forth ; instead of inserting into 
 the Creed the words 6 Aoyoc (rap E-ycvero, which, the critic 
 would urge, they must have done if they would success- 
 fully oppose foes who appealed to the letter of Scripture, 
 they used other terms, as the participles aapKuQevra and 
 ivavOpuTrvaavra. 1 Again, the supposed critic would 
 urge, they applied to our Lord the phrase yevvTiQevra 
 Trpo Travrwv rwv aiwW>v, a phrase " so markedly different 
 and indeed opposed to that of the Fourth Gospel," as the 
 author of " Supernatural Religion" urges with respect to 
 vfvvrtyua TTOO TTOVTWV TWV Troirj/uartov, and OTTO TOV Tlarpoc; 
 TWV oXwv yj^vTj&JC. Again, the critic would urge that 
 
 1 Tov t' fjpag rove avQpwirovs Kal <5ia TT\V fi/ntrlpav ownjptav 
 Kar\66vra EK TWV ovpav&v, Kal aapKuQivra tK UfevfiaTO^ 'Ayiov 
 KIU Ma/jtac r^c trapdlvov, Kal f.vavQpuirrioa.VTa, ic.r.X.
 
 92 The Lost Gospel 
 
 instead of calling the Son " God " absolutely, as in the 
 sentence " the Word was God/' they confess Him only 
 as 0oc fK Qeov, and this because He is "ytw^Qiiq, and 
 so he would say, with the author of " Supernatural Reli- 
 gion/' " This is a totally different view from that of the 
 Fourth Gospel, which in so emphatic a manner enunciates 
 the doctrine, c In the beginning was the Word, and 
 the Word was with God, and God was the Wordj'" 
 and so our supposed critic will exclaim, " See what 
 abundant proof that these Fathers had ' never even seen ' 
 the Fourth Gospel ;" and according to all rules of Rational- 
 istic criticism they had not, or, at least, they thought 
 nothing of its authenticity ; whilst all the time this same 
 Gospel was open before them, and they devoutly reve- 
 renced every word as the word of the Holy Ghost, and 
 would have summarily anathematized any one who had 
 expressed the smallest doubt respecting its plenary In- 
 spiration.
 
 SECTION XVI. 
 
 JUSTIN AND ST. JOHN ON THE SUBORDINATION 
 OF THE SON. 
 
 THE second matter connected with the relations of 
 the doctrine of Justin Martyr to that of St. John, 
 is the subordination of the Son to the Father. 
 
 I have already noticed this truth (page 49), but, owing 
 to its importance it may be well to devote to it a few 
 further remarks. The author of " Supernatural Religion " 
 does not seem to realize that in perfect Sonship two 
 things are inherent, viz., absolute sameness (and there- 
 fore equality) of nature with the Father, and perfect 
 subordination in the submission of His will to that of 
 the Father. 
 
 He consequently asserts : 
 
 " It is certain, however, that both Justin and Philo, unlike 
 the prelude to the Fourth Gospel, place the Logos in a 
 secondary position to God the Father, another point indicat- 
 ing a less advanced stage of the doctrine. Both Justin and 
 Philo apply the term Qsog to the Logos without the article. 
 Justin distinctly says, that Christians worship Jesus Christ 
 as the Son of the True God, holding Him in the Second 
 Place (EV feuTSf/x %<u'fa %OVTEJ), and this secondary position is 
 systematically denned through Justin's writings in a very 
 decided way, as it is in the works of Philo, by the contrast 
 of the begotten Logos with the unbegotten God. Justin 
 speaks of the Word as the 'first born of the unbegotten God'
 
 94 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 TO! ayEvv>jTa) a>), and the distinctive appellation 
 of the ' unbegotten God,' applied to the Father, is most com- 
 mon in all his writings." (Vol. ii. p. 291.) 
 
 Now, when Justin speaks of holding Christ " in the 
 Second Place," he does no more nor less than any Trini- 
 tarian Christian of the present day, when such an one 
 speaks of the Son as the Second Person of the Trinity, 
 and as the only begotten Son and the Word of the 
 Father. 
 
 When we speak of Him as being the Second Person, 
 we necessarily rank Him in the second place in point of 
 numerical order. When we speak of Him as being the 
 Son, we naturally place Him as, in the order of concep- 
 tion, second to, or after, Him that begat Him ; 1 and, when 
 we speak of Him as the Word, we also place Him in 
 order of conception as after Him Who utters or gives 
 forth the Word. 
 
 Justin says no more than this in any expression which 
 he uses. 
 
 When he speaks of the Father as the unbegotten God, 
 and the Son as the Begotten God, he does no more than 
 the most uncompromising believer in the doctrine of the 
 ever-blessed Trinity in the present day does, when, in the 
 words of the Creed of St. Athanasius, that believer con- 
 fesses that 
 
 " The Father is made of none, neither created nor be- 
 gotten. 
 
 1 Though of course not as regards time, for all Catholics hold the 
 Eternal Generation, that there never was a time in which the Father 
 was not a Father ; nor as regards power or extension, for whatever 
 the Father does that the Son does also, and wherever the Father is 
 there is the Son also.
 
 Subordination. 95 
 
 " The Son is of the Father alone, neither made, nor cre- 
 ated, but begotten." 
 
 But we have not now so much to do with the ortho- 
 doxy of Justin as with the question as to whether his 
 doctrine is anterior to St. John's, as being less decided 
 in its assertions of our Lord's equality. 
 
 Now there are no words in Justin on the side of our 
 Lord's subordination at all equal to the words of Christ 
 as given in St. John, " My Father is greater than I." 
 
 The Gospel of St. John is pervaded by two great 
 truths which underlie every part, and are the necessary 
 complements of one another ; these are, the perfect 
 equality or identity of the nature of the Son with that of 
 the Father, because He is the true begotten Son of His 
 Father; and the perfect submission of the Will of the 
 Son to that of the Father because He is His Father. 
 
 The former appears in such assertions as " The Word 
 was with God," " The Word was God," " My Lord and 
 My God," " I and the Father are one/' " He that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father," " The glory which I had 
 with Thee before the world was," " All things that the 
 Father hath are mine," &c. 
 
 The latter is inherent in the idea of perfect Sonship, 
 and is asserted in such statements as 
 
 God "gave His only begotten Son" (iii. 16). 
 
 " The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all 
 things into His hands" (iii. 35). 
 
 " The Son can do nothing of Himself" (v. 19) . 
 
 " The Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all 
 things that Himself doeth " (v. 20) . 
 
 The Father hath " given to the Son to have life in 
 Himself" (v. 26).
 
 96 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 The Father " hath given Him authority to execute 
 judgment also " (v. 27). 
 
 " I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father" 
 (v. 30) . 
 
 " The works which the Father hath given me to finish " 
 (v.36). 
 
 " I am come in my Father's name " (v. 43) . 
 
 " Him [the Son of Man] hath God the Father sealed " 
 (vi. 27). 
 
 " I live by the Father " (v. 57) . 
 
 " My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me " 
 (vii. 16). 
 
 " He that seeketh His glory that sent Him, the same 
 is true " (vii. 18) . 
 
 " I am from Him, and He hath sent me " (vii. 29). 
 
 " I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught 
 me, I speak these things" (viii. 28). 
 
 " Neither came I of myself, but He sent me " (viii. 42). 
 
 " I have power to take it [my life] again ; this com- 
 mandment have I received of my Father" (x. 18). 
 
 "My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all" 
 (x. 29). 
 
 " I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide 
 in His love " (xv. 10) . 
 
 I have read Justin carefully for the purpose of marking 
 every expression in his writings bearing upon the rela- 
 tions of the Son to the Father, and I find none so strongly 
 expressing subordination as these, and the declarations 
 of this kind in the works of Justin are nothing like so 
 numerous as they are in the short Gospel of St. John. 
 
 The reader who knows anything about the history of 
 Christian doctrine will see at a glance how impossible it
 
 Subordination . 9 7 
 
 would have been for a Gospel ascribing these expressions 
 to Jesus to have been received by the Christian Church 
 long before Justin's time, except that Gospel had been 
 fully authenticated as the work of the last surviving 
 Apostle.
 
 SECTION XVII. 
 JUSTIN AND PHILO. 
 
 THE writer of " Supernatural Eeligion " asserts 
 that Justin derived his Logos doctrine from 
 Philo, and also that his doctrine was identical with that 
 of Philo and opposed to that of St. John. 
 
 But respecting this assertion two questions may be 
 asked. 
 
 From whom did Philo derive his doctrine of the 
 Logos ? and 
 
 From whom did Justin derive his identification of the 
 Logos with Jesus ? 
 
 The Christian, all whose conceptions of salvation rest 
 ultimately upon the truth that " The Word was God," 
 believes (if, that is, he has any knowledge of the history 
 of human thought), that God prepared men for the re- 
 ception of so momentous a truth long before that truth 
 was fully revealed. He believes that God prepared the 
 Gentiles for the reception of this truth by familiarizing 
 them with some idea of the Logos through the specula- 
 tions of Plato ; and he also believes that God prepared 
 His chosen people for receiving the same truth by such 
 means as the personification of Wisdom in the book of 
 Proverbs, and in the Apocryphal moral books, and, above 
 all, by the identification of the active presence and power
 
 Justin and Philo. 99 
 
 of God with the Meymera or Word, as set forth in the 
 Chaldee paraphrases. 
 
 Both these lines of thought seem to have coalesced 
 and to have reached their full development (so far as 
 they could, at least, apart from Christianity) in Alexan- 
 drian Judaism, which is principally known to us in the 
 pages of Philo ; but how much of Philo's own specula- 
 tion is contained in the extracts from his writings given 
 by the author of " Supernatural Religion " it is impos- 
 sible to say, as we know very little of the Alexandrian 
 Jewish literature except from him. He seems, how- 
 ever, to write as if what he enunciated was commonly 
 known and accepted by those for whom he wrote. 
 
 There are two reasons which make me think that 
 Justin, if he derived any part of his Logos doctrines 
 from Alexandrian sources (which I much doubt), derived 
 them from writings or traditions to which Philo, equally 
 with himself, was indebted. 
 
 One is that, in his Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, he 
 never mentions Philo, whose name would have been a 
 tower of strength to him in disputing with a Jew, and 
 convincing him that there might be another Person Who 
 might be rightly called God besides the Father. 
 
 Surely if Justin had known that Philo had spoken of 
 God 
 
 " Appointing His true Logos, Ms first begotten Son, to 
 have the care of this sacred flock as the substitute of the 
 great King " (quoted in p. 274) ; 
 
 and that 
 
 " The most ancient Word is the image of God " (p. 274) ; 
 and that
 
 100 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " The Word is the image of God by which the whole world 
 was created " (p. 275) ; 
 
 surely, I say, lie would have used the name of one who 
 had been in his day such a champion of the Jewish 
 people, and had suffered such insults from Caligula on 
 their account. 1 
 
 Nothing seems more appropriate for the conversion of 
 Trypho than many of the extracts from Philo given by 
 the author of " Supernatural Religion." Herein, too, 
 in this matter of Philo and Justin, the author of " Super- 
 natural Religion" betrays his surprising inconsistency 
 and refutes himself. He desires it to be inferred that 
 Justin need not have seen probably had not seen, even 
 one of our present Gospels, because he does not name 
 the authors, though there is abundant reason why the 
 names of four authors of the Memoirs should not be 
 paraded before unbelievers as suggesting differences in 
 the testimony ; whereas it would have been the greatest 
 assistance to him in his argument with Trypho to have 
 named Philo ; and he does not. We would not infer 
 from this, as the author of " Supernatural Religion " does 
 most absurdly in parallel cases, that Justin " knew 
 nothing " of Philo ; had not even seen his books, and 
 need not have heard of him ; but we must gather from 
 it that Justin did not associate the name of Philo with 
 the Logos doctrine in its most advanced stage of de- 
 velopment. Many other facts tend to show that 
 Justin made little or no use of Philo. In the extracts 
 given by the author of " Supernatural Religion " from 
 
 1 Eusebius, B. ii. ch. v.
 
 Justin and Philo. 101 
 
 Philo, all culled out to serve his purpose, the reader will 
 notice many words and phrases " foreign " to Justin ; for 
 instance, Stvrtpoq Q>c, opyavov Se Aoyov Qeov, 81' ou 
 ov^-rraQ o Koa/j.oq ESij/iiov/o-yetro. More particularly the 
 reader will notice that such adjectives as opOog, 'upog 
 (t'tjOforaToc) and trptafivq (irpefffivTarog) are applied to the 
 Word in the short extracts from Philo given by the author 
 of" Supernatural Beligion," which are never applied to the 
 Second Person of the Trinity in Justin. In fact, though 
 there are some slight resemblances, the terminology of 
 Philo is, to use the words of " Supernatural Religion," 
 "totally different from " and " opposed to" that of Justin, 
 and the more closely it is examined, the more clearly it 
 will be seen that Justin cannot have derived his Logos 
 doctrine from Philo. 
 
 The other question is, " from whom did Justin derive 
 his identification of the Logos with Jesus ? " 
 
 Not from Philo, certainly. We have shown above 
 how St. John lays down with authority the identity of 
 the Logos with the pre-existent Divine Nature of Jesus, 
 not in long, elaborate, carefully reasoned philosophical 
 dissertation, but in four short, clear, decisive enuncia- 
 tions. "In the beginning was the Word" "The 
 Word was with God " " The Word was God " " The 
 Word was made flesh." 
 
 We have seen how these were the manifest germs of 
 Justin's teaching. Now, if at the time when Justin 
 wrote, the Fourth Gospel, as we shall shortly prove, must 
 have been in use in the Church in every part of the 
 world, why should Justin be supposed to derive from 
 Philo a truth which he, being a Jew, would repudiate ? 
 Justin himself most certainly was not the first to identify
 
 102 The Lost Gospel 
 
 the Logos with Jesus. The identification was asserted 
 long before in the Apocalypse, which the author of " Su- 
 pernatural Religion" shows to have been written about 
 A. D. 70, or so. In fact, he ascertains its date to " a few 
 weeks." Supposing, then, that the Apocalypse was 
 anterior to St. John, on whose lines, so to speak, does 
 Justin develope the Logos doctrine ? Most assuredly 
 not on Philo's lines (for his whole terminology essentially 
 differs from that of the Alexandrian) , but on the lines of 
 the fourth Gospel, and on no other. 
 
 Let the reader turn to some extracts which the author 
 of " Supernatural Religion " gives out of Philo. In 
 p. 265, he gives some very striking passages indeed, in 
 which Philo speaks of the Logos as the Bread from 
 heaven : 
 
 " He is ' the substitute (yTcapxoc,} of God,' ' the heavenly in- 
 corruptible food of the soul,' ' the bread from heaven.' In 
 one place he says, ' and they who inquire what nourishes the 
 soul .... learnt at last that it is the Word of God, and the 
 Divine Reason ' . . . . This is the heavenly nourishment to 
 which the Holy Scripture refers .... saying, 'Lo I rain 
 upon you bread (aproi) from heaven ' (Exod. xvi. 4). ' This 
 is the bread (afno$) which the Lord has given them to eat.' " 
 (Exod. xvi. 15.) 
 
 And again : 
 
 " For the one indeed raises his eyes to the sky, perceiving 
 the Manna, the Divine Word, the heavenly incorruptible food 
 of the longing soul." Elsewhere . . . . " but it is taught by 
 the initiating priest and prophet Moses/who declares, ' This is 
 the bread (apros), the nourishment which God has given to the 
 soul.' His own Reason and His own Word which He has 
 offered ; for this bread (aproj) which He has given us to eat 
 is Reason." (Vol. ii. p. 265.)
 
 Justin and Philo. 103 
 
 Now the Fourth Gospel also makes Jesus speak of 
 Himself as the "Bread of Life/' and "given by the 
 Father ; " but what is the bread denned by Jesus Him- 
 self to be ? Not a mere intellectual apprehension, i.e. 
 Keason, as Philo asserts ; but the very opposite, no other 
 than "His Flesh ;" the product of His Incarnation. 
 " The bread that I will give is My Flesh/' and He adds 
 to it His Blood. "Except ye eat the Flesh of the 
 Son of Man and drink His Blood, ye have no life in 
 you." 
 
 Now this also Justin reproduces, not after the con- 
 ception of Philo, which is but a natural conception, but 
 after the conception of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, which 
 is an infinitely mysterious and supernatural one. 
 
 " In like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been 
 made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for 
 our Salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food 
 which is blessed by the prayer of His Word, and from which 
 our blood and flesh are by transmutation nourished is the 
 Flesh and Blood of that Jesus Who was made flesh." ( Apol. I. 
 ch. Ixvi.) 
 
 I trust the reader will acquit me, in making this 
 quotation, of any desire to enunciate any Eucharistic 
 theory of the presence of Christ's Flesh in the Eucha- 
 rist. All I have to do with is the simple fact that 
 both Philo and St. John speak of the Word as the Bread 
 of Life; but Philo explains that bread to be " reason," 
 and St. John makes our Lord to set it forth as His 
 Flesh, and Justin takes no notice of the idea of Philo, 
 and reproduces the idea of the fourth Gospel. 
 
 And yet we are to be told that Justin " knew 
 nothing" of the Fourth Gospel, and that his Logos 
 doctrine was "identical" with that of Philo.
 
 SECTION XVIII. 
 
 DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND THE 
 SYNOPTICS. 
 
 * I A HB author of f< Supernatural Religion" devotes a 
 _L large portion of his second volume to setting forth 
 the discrepancies, real or alleged, between the Synoptics 
 and the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 In many of these remarks he seems to me to betray 
 extraordinary ignorance of the mere contents of the 
 Fourth Gospel. I shall notice two or three remarkable 
 misconceptions; but, before doing this, I desire to call 
 the reader's attention to the only inference respecting the 
 authorship of this Gospel which can be drawn from these 
 discrepancies. 
 
 St. John's Gospel is undoubtedly the last Gospel pub- 
 lished ; in fact, the last work of the sacred canon. The 
 more patent, then, the differences between St. John and 
 the Synoptics, the more difficult it is to believe that a 
 Gospel, containing subject-matter so different from the 
 works already accepted as giving a true account of Christ, 
 should have been accepted by the whole Church at so 
 comparatively recent a date, unless that Church had every 
 reason for believing that it was the work of the last sur- 
 viving Apostle. 
 
 Take, for instance, the [apparent] differences between
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. 105 
 
 St. John and the Synoptics respecting the scene of our 
 Lord's ministry, the character of His discourses, the 
 miracles ascribed to Him, and the day of His Crucifixion, 
 or rather of His partaking of the Paschal feast. The 
 most ignorant and unobservant would notice these dif- 
 ferences ; and the more labour required to reconcile the 
 statements or representations of the last Gospel with the 
 three preceding ones, the more certain it is that none 
 would have ventured to put forth a document containing 
 such differences except an Apostle who, being the last 
 surviving one, might be said to inherit the prestige and 
 authority of the whole college. 
 
 It would far exceed the limits which I have prescribed 
 to myself to examine the Fourth Gospel with the view of 
 reconciling the discrepancies between it and the Synoptics, 
 and also of bringing out the numberless undesigned co- 
 incidences between the earlier and the later account, of 
 which the writer of " Supernatural Religion," led away 
 by his usual dogmatic prejudices, has taken not the 
 smallest notice. 
 
 The reader will find this very ably treated in Mr. San- 
 day's " Authorship of the Fourth Gospel" (Macmillan). 
 
 My object at present is of a far humbler nature, simply 
 to show the utter untrustworthiness of some of the most 
 confidently asserted statements of the writer of " Super- 
 natural Religion." 
 
 I shall take two : 
 
 1. The difference between Christ's mode of teaching 
 and the structure of His discourses, as represented by 
 St. John and the Synoptics respectively. 
 
 2. The intellectual impossibility that St. John should 
 have written the Fourth Gospel.
 
 106 The Lost Gospel 
 
 1 . Respecting the difference of Christ's mode of teach- 
 ing as recorded in St. John and in the Synoptics, he 
 remarks : 
 
 "It is impossible that Jesus can have had two such 
 diametrically opposed systems of teaching ; one purely moral, 
 the other wholly dogmatic; one expressed in wonderfully 
 terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, 
 involved, and diffuse discourses; one clothed in the great 
 language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure, philo- 
 sophic terminology ; and that these should have been kept so 
 distinct as they are in the Synoptics, on the one hand, and the 
 Fourth Gospel on the other. The tradition of Justin Martyr 
 applies solely to the system of the Synoptics, ' Brief and con- 
 cise were the sentences uttered by Him : for He was no 
 Sophist, but His word was the power of God.'" 1 (Vol. ii. 
 p. 468.) 
 
 To take the first of these assertions. So far from its 
 being "impossible " that Jesus " can have had two such 
 diametrically opposite modes of teaching/' it is not only 
 possible, but we have undeniable proof of the fact in 
 that remarkable saying of Christ recorded by both St. 
 Matthew and St. Luke : " All things are delivered unto 
 Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the 
 Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 
 Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him " 
 (Matth. xi. 27). The author of " Supernatural Religion" 
 has studied the letter of this passage very carefully, for 
 he devotes no less than ten pages to a minute examina- 
 tion of the supposed quotations of it in Justin and other 
 Fathers (vol. i. pp. 402-412) ; but he does not draw at- 
 tention to the fact that it is conceived in the spirit and 
 
 1 Apol. i. 14.
 
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. 107 
 
 expressed in the terms of the Fourth Gospel, and totally 
 unlike the general style of the discourses in the Synoptics. 1 
 The Fourth Gospel shows us that such words as these, 
 almost unique in the Synoptics, are not the only words 
 uttered in a style so different from the usual teaching of 
 our Lord that at times, when He was on the theme of 
 His relations to His Father, He adopted other diction 
 more suited to the nature of the deeper truths He was 
 enunciating. 
 
 Then take the second assertion : 
 
 " One [system] expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief 
 sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse 
 discourses." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " The description which Justin gives of the manner of 
 teaching of Jesus excludes the idea that he knew the Fourth 
 Gospel. 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by 
 Him, for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of 
 God.' (Apol. I. 14.) No one could for a moment assert 
 that this description applies to the long and artificial dis- 
 courses of the Fourth Gospel, whilst, on the other hand, it 
 eminently describes the style of teaching with which we are 
 acquainted in the Synoptics, with which the Gospel according 
 to the Hebrews, in all its forms, was so closely allied." (Yol. ii. 
 p. 315.) 
 
 Now I assert, and the reader can with very little 
 trouble verify the truth of the assertion, that the mode 
 of our Lord's teaching, as set forth in St. John, is more 
 terse, axiomatic, and sententious more in accordance 
 
 1 The spirit of this verse, and its form of expression, are quite 
 those of the Gospel of St. John ; and it serves to form a link of 
 union between the three Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth, and to 
 point to the vast and weighty mass of discourses of the Lord which 
 are not related except by St. John. Alford in loco.
 
 108 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 with these words of Justin, "brief and concise were 
 the sentences uttered by Him/' than it appears in the 
 Synoptics. 
 
 To advert for a moment to the mere length of the dis- 
 courses. The Sermon on the Mount is considerably 
 longer than the longest discourse in St. John's Gospel 
 (viz., that occupying chapters xiv., xv., xvi.). This is 
 the only unbroken discourse of any length in this Gospel. 
 The others, viz., those with Nicodemus, with the woman at 
 Sychem, with the Jews in the Temple, and the one in the 
 Synagogue at Capernaum, are much shorter than many 
 in the Synoptics, and none of them are continuous dis- 
 courses, but rather conversations. And, with respect to 
 the composition, those in St. John are mainly made up 
 of short, terse, axiomatic deliverances just such as Justin 
 describes. 
 
 Take, for instance, the sentences in the sixth chapter: 
 
 " I am the bread of life." 
 
 " He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." 
 
 " I am that bread of life." 
 
 "This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, 
 that a man should eat thereof and not die." 
 
 " My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink in- 
 deed." 
 
 " It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth 
 nothing." 
 And those in the tenth : 
 
 " I am the door of the sheep." 
 
 " I am the good shepherd : the good shepherd giveth 
 his life for the sheep." 
 
 " I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and 
 am known of mine."
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. 109 
 
 Then, if we compare parables, the passage in the 
 Fourth Gospel most resembling a parable, viz., the 
 similitude of the Vine and the branches, is made up of 
 detached sentences more " terse" and " concise" than 
 those of most parables in the Synoptics. 
 
 The discourses in St. John are upon subjects very dis- 
 tasteful to the author of " Supernatural Religion," and 
 he loses no opportunity of expressing his dislike to 
 them ; but it is a gross misrepresentation to say that the 
 instruction, whatever it be, is conveyed in other than 
 sentences as simple, terse, and concise as those of the 
 Synoptics, though the subject-matter is different. 
 
 We will now proceed to the last assertion : 
 
 " One [system of teaching] clothed in the great language 
 of humanity, the other concealed in obscure philosophic ter- 
 minology." 
 
 What can this writer mean by the " philosophic termi- 
 nology " of our Lord's sayings as reported in the Fourth 
 Gospel ? If the use of the term " Logos " be " philoso- 
 phic terminology," it is confined to four sentences ; and 
 these not the words of Jesus Himself, but of the Evange- 
 list. I do not remember throughout the rest of the 
 Gospel a single sentence which can be properly called 
 " philosophical." 
 
 The author must confound " philosophical " with 
 " mysterious." Each and every discourse in the fourth 
 Gospel is upon, or leads to, some deep mystery; but 
 that mystery is in no case set forth in philosophical, but 
 in what the author of ' ' Supernatural Religion " calls the 
 "great language of humanity." Take the most mysteri- 
 ous by far of all the enunciations in St. John's Gospel,
 
 110 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink 
 Hia Blood, ye have no life in you." What are the 
 words of which this sentence is composed ? " Eat/' 
 "flesh," "blood," "Son of man," "life." Are not 
 these the commonest words of daily life ? but, then, their 
 use and association here is the very thing which consti- 
 tutes the mystery. 
 
 Again, take the salient words of each discourse 
 " Except a man be born again " " be born of water 
 and of the Spirit." " Whosoever drinketh of the water 
 that I shall give him shall never thirst." "As the 
 Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the 
 Son to have life in Himself." "All that are in the 
 graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth." " The 
 bread that I will give is My flesh." " If ye believe not 
 that I am He, ye shall die in your sins." "As the 
 Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father." " I 
 am the Resurrection and the Life." "Whatsoever ye 
 shall ask in My name, that will I do." "If I go not 
 away, the Comforter will not come unto you : but, if I 
 depart, I will send Him unto you." 
 
 It is the deepest of all mysteries that one in flesh and 
 blood can say such things of Himself; but it is a perver- 
 sion of language to speak of these sayings as " philoso- 
 phical terminology." They are in a different sphere 
 from all mere human philosophy, and, indeed, are op- 
 posed to every form of it. Philosophy herself requires 
 a new birth before she can so much as see them. 
 
 I must recur, however, to the author's first remark, in 
 which he characterizes the discourses of the Synoptics as 
 " purely moral," and those of St. John as " wholly dog- 
 matic." This is by no means true. The discourses in
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. Ill 
 
 the Synoptics are on moral subjects, but they continually 
 make dogmatic assertions or implications as pronounced 
 as those in the Fourth Gospel. In the Sermon on the 
 Mount, for instance, the preacher authoritatively adds to 
 and modifies the teaching of the very Decalogue itself. 
 " Ye have heard that it was said TO them of old 
 time " (for so epptOrj rolq apyaioiQ must properly be 
 translated) " but I say unto you." Again, Jesus assumes 
 in the same discourse to be the Object of worship and 
 the Judge of quick and dead, and that His recogni- 
 tion is salvation itself, when He says, " Not every one 
 that saith unto Me Lord, Lord, shall enter," &c. " Many 
 shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord," &c., "then will 
 I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me 
 all ye that work iniquity." 
 
 Take the following expressions out of a number of 
 similar ones in St. Matthew : 
 
 " I will make you (ignorant fishermen) fishers of men " 
 (implying, I will give you power over souls such as no 
 philosopher or leader of men has had before you) . (iv. 21.) 
 
 " Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you for My 
 sake." (v. 11.) 
 
 " If they have called the master of the house (i. e. 
 Jesus) Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of 
 His household." (x. 25.) 
 
 " He that loveth father or mother more than Me is 
 not worthy of me " (so that the holiest of human ties 
 are to give way to His personal demands on the human 
 heart), (x. 37.) 
 
 " He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it." 
 
 (x. 39.) 
 
 "No man knoweth the Son, but the Father." (xi. 27.)
 
 112 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " In this place is One greater than the temple." 
 (xii. 6.) 
 
 " The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath Day." 
 (xii. 8.) 
 
 "In His (Christ's) Name shall the Gentiles trust." 
 (xii. 21.) 
 
 " In the time of harvest I will say to the reapers," i. e. 
 the angels, (xiii. 30.) 
 
 " The Son of man shall send forth his angels." (xiii. 
 41.) 
 
 " I will give unto Thee the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven." (xvi. 19.) 
 
 "Where two or three are gathered together in My 
 Name there am I in the midst of them." (xviii. 21.) 
 
 "He, [God], sent His servants He sent other ser- 
 vants Last of all He sent unto them His Son, saying, 
 they will reverence My Son." (xxi. 37.) 
 
 These places assert, by implication, the highest 
 dogma respecting the Person of Christ. Who is He 
 Who has such power in heaven and earth that He com- 
 mands the angels in heaven, and gives the keys of the 
 kingdom of God to His servant on earth ? What Son is 
 this Whom none but the Father knoweth, and Who alone 
 knoweth the Father, and Who reveals the Father to 
 whomsoever He will ? What Son is this compared with 
 Whom such saints as Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah, and 
 Daniel are " servants ? " These dogmatic assertions of 
 the first Gospel suggest the question; and the Fourth 
 Gospel gives the full and perfect answer that He is the 
 Word with God, that He is God, and the Only-begotten 
 of the Father. The Epistles assume the answer where 
 one speaks of " Jesus, who, being in the form of God,
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. 113 
 
 thought it not a thing to be tenaciously grasped to be 
 equal with God," and another speaks of God's own Son. 
 and another compares Moses the servant with Christ the 
 Son ; but the fullest revelation is reserved to the last 
 Gospel. And herein the order of God's dealings is 
 observed, Who gives the lesser revelation to prepare for 
 the fuller and more perfect. The design of the Gospel 
 is to restore men to the image of God by revealing to 
 them God Himself. But, before this can be done, they must 
 be taught what goodness is, their very moral sense must 
 be renewed. Hence the moral discourses of the Synoptics. 
 Till this foundation is laid, 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 boyond 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 " Super- 
 natural Keligion," 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 
 Eesurrection of Life/' 
 
 i
 
 114 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " 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 com- 
 mences, 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, con- 
 tinued 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 clear than the fact that the 
 writer of the Fourth Gospel was well acquainted with the 
 teaching of the Alexandrian school, from which he derived 
 his philosophy, and its elaborate and systematic application 
 to Jesus alone indicates a late development of Christian 
 doctrine, which, we maintain, could not have been attained 
 by the Judaistic son of Zebedee." (Vol. ii. p. 415.)
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. 115 
 
 Again, in the preceding page : 
 
 " Now, although there is no certain information as to the 
 time when, if ever, the Apostle removed into Asia Minor, it 
 is pretty certain that he did not leave Palestine before A.D. 60. 
 .... If we consider the Apocalypse to be his work, we find 
 positive evidence of such markedly different thought and 
 language actually existing when the Apostle must have been 
 at least sixty or seventy years of age, that it is quite impos- 
 sible to conceive that he could have subsequently acquired the 
 language and mental characteristics of the Fourth Gospel." 
 
 This, though written principally with reference to the 
 diction, applies still more to the philosophy of the author 
 of the Fourth Gospel. And, indeed, from his using the 
 words " mental characteristics," we have no doubt that 
 he desires such an application. 
 
 Now, what are the facts ? We must assume that 
 St. John, though " unlearned and ignorant," compared 
 with the leaders of the Jewish commonwealth, at the com- 
 mencement of his thirty years' sojourn in the Jewish 
 capital, was a man of average intellect. Here, then, we 
 have a member of a sect more aggressive than any before 
 known in the promulgation of its opinions, taking the 
 lead in the teaching and defence of th^ese opinions in a 
 city to which the Jews of all nationalities resorted 
 periodically to keep the great feasts. If the holding of 
 any position would sharpen a man's natural intellect and 
 give him a power over words, and a mental grasp of 
 ideas to which in youth he had been a stranger, that 
 position would be the leading one he held in the Church 
 of such a city as Jerusalem. 
 
 In the course of the thirty years which, according to 
 the author of " Supernatural Religion," he lived there,
 
 116 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 he must have constantly had intercourse with Alexandrian 
 Jews and Christians. It is as probable as not that 
 during this period he had had converse with Philo him- 
 self, for the distance between Jerusalem and Alexandria 
 was comparatively trifling. At Pentecost there were 
 present Jews and proselytes from Egypt and the parts of 
 Libya about Cyrene. There was also a Synagogue of the 
 Alexandrians. Now I assert that a few hours' conversa- 
 tion with any Alexandrian Jew, or with any Christian 
 convert from Alexandrian Judaism, would have, humanly 
 speaking, enabled the Apostle, even if he knew not a 
 word of the doctrine before, to write the four sentences 
 in which are contained the whole Logos expression of 
 the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 St. John must have been familiar with the teaching of 
 traditional interpretation respecting the Meymera as con- 
 tained in the Chaldee paraphrases ; indeed, the more 
 " unlearned " and " ignorant " he was, the more he must 
 have relied upon the Chaldee paraphrases for the know- 
 ledge of the Old Testament, the Hebrew having been 
 for centuries a dead language. We have a Chaldee 
 paraphrase of great antiquity on so early and familiar a 
 chapter as the third of Genesis, explaining the voice of 
 the Lord God by the voice of the Meymera, or Word of 
 the Lord God (Genesis iii.). 
 
 The natural rendering of this word into Greek would 
 be Logos. I repeat, then, that, humanly speaking, if 
 he had never entertained the idea before, a very short 
 conversation with an Alexandrian Jew would have fur- 
 nished him with all the " philosophy " required to make 
 the four statements in which he simply identifies the 
 Logos with the Divine Nature of his Lord.
 
 St. John and the Synoptics. 117 
 
 Of course, I do not for a moment believe that the 
 Apostle was enabled to write the exordium of his Gospel 
 by any such inspiration. There is not a more direct 
 utterance of the Holy Spirit in all Scripture than that 
 which we have in the prelude to the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 But in the eyes of a Christian the grace of the Holy 
 Spirit is shown in the power and explicitness, and above 
 all in the simplicity of the assertions which identify the 
 human conception, if such it can be called, of Platonism, 
 or Judaism, with the highest divine truth. 
 
 I believe that if the Apostle wrote these sentences at 
 the time handed down by the Church's tradition, that is, 
 when Cerinthian and other heresies respecting our Lord's 
 nature were beginning to be felt, the power of the Holy 
 Spirit was put forth to restrict him to these few simple 
 utterances, and to restrain his human intellect from 
 overloading them with philosophical or controversial 
 applications of them, which would have marred their 
 simplicity and diminished their power. 1 
 
 1 If the reader desires to see Logos doctrine expressed in philo- 
 sophic terminology, he can find it in some of the extracts from 
 Philo given in the notes of " Supernatural Religion," vol. ii. pp. 
 272-298. Can there be a greater contrast than that between St. 
 John's terse, concise, simple enunciations and the following : Ktit 
 
 OV p.6l'OV (f>HJC, ttXXct Kttl TTCLVTOQ ETtflOV (f>li)TOC ap%lTV1TOV ft&XXotf ? 
 
 ap\TvTrov Trpfffftvre/oof (cat avutrtpov, \6yov 'i\ov 7rapa&<y/iaroc 
 TO fJLtv yap irapaStiyfAa 6 TT\rjpiaraTO<; i)v avrov Aoyof, ic. T. X. 
 De Somniis, i. 15, Mang. i. 634. There is no particularly advanced 
 philosophic terminology here, and yet there is a profound difference 
 between both the thought and wording of this sentence of Philo and 
 St. John's four enunciations of the Logos. Again, ArjXov c^ on 
 Kai 7i dpxtVvTroc fftypa-yts, ov Qaptv fivat Koopov votjTov, awroc 
 av e'irj TO apx^rvirov 7rapdc)iy/wi, tSla TUV l$tftv, o eov Aoyoc-- 
 De Hundi Opificio Mang. vol. i. p. 8. " It is manifest also that 
 the archetypal seal, which we call that world which is perceptible 
 only to the intellect, must itself be the archetypal model, the idea 
 of ideas, the word of God." (Yonge's Translation.)
 
 SECTION XIX. 
 
 EXTERNAL PROOFS OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF 
 OUR FOUR GOSPELS. 
 
 WE have now shown that Justin Martyr, the prin- 
 cipal witness brought forward by the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion " to discredit the Four Evan- 
 gelists, either made use of the very books which we now 
 possess, or books which contain exactly the same inform- 
 ation respecting our Lord's miraculous [Birth, Death, 
 Resurrection, and moral teaching. We have seen, also, 
 that Justin gives us, along with the teaching of the 
 Synoptics, that peculiar teaching respecting the pre- 
 existent Divine nature of Jesus which, as far as can be 
 ascertained, was to be found only in the Fourth Gospel, 
 and which is consequently called Johannean; and that, 
 besides thig, he refers to the history, and adopts the lan- 
 guage, and urges the arguments which are to be found 
 only in St. John. 
 
 We have also shown that there are no internal con- 
 siderations whatsoever for supposing that Justin did not 
 make use of the Fourth Gospel. Instead, for instance, 
 of the doctrine of St. John being a development of that 
 held by Justin Martyr, the facts of the case all point to 
 the contrary.
 
 External Proofs. 119 
 
 We must now see whether there is external evidence 
 which makes it not only probable, but as certain as any 
 fact in literary history can be, that Justin must have 
 known and made use of our present Evangelists ; that if 
 he was a teacher in such an acknowledged centre of 
 ecclesiastical information or tradition as Rome, and 
 appears to quote our Gospels (with no matter what minor 
 variations and inaccuracies), he did actually quote the 
 same and no other ; and if his inaccuracies, and dis- 
 crepancies, and omissions of what we suppose he ought 
 to have mentioned, were doubled or trebled, it would 
 still be as certain as any fact of such a nature can be, 
 that he quoted the Four Evangelists, because they must 
 have been read and commented on in his day and in his 
 church as the Memoirs of the Apostles, which took their 
 place by the side of the prophets of the Old Testament 
 in the public instruction of the Church. In order to this 
 I shall have to examine the external evidence for the 
 Canon of the New Testament so far, that is, as the Four 
 Gospels are concerned. 
 
 In doing this I shall not take the usual method of 
 tracing the evidence for the various books in question 
 downwards from the Apostolic time the reader will find 
 this treated exhaustively in "Dr. Westcott on the 
 Canon " but I shall trace it upwards, beginning at a 
 time at which there cannot be the smallest doubt that 
 the New Testament was exactly the same as that which 
 we now possess. 
 
 For this purpose I shall take the Ecclesiastical History 
 of Eusebius as the starting-point. The reader is, of 
 course, aware that he is the earliest ecclesiastical writer 
 whose history has come down to us, the historians who
 
 120 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 wrote before his time being principally known to us 
 through fragments preserved in his book. He was born 
 of Christian parents about the year A.D. 270, and died 
 about 340. He probably wrote his history about or 
 before the year 325. 
 
 The reader, though he may not have read his history, 
 will be aware, from the quotations from it in " Super- 
 natural Religion/' that Eusebius carefully investigated the 
 history of the Canon of Scripture, and also the succession 
 of ecclesiastical writers. His history is, in fact, to a 
 great extent, a sketch of early Church literature. In 
 dealing with the history of the Canon, he particularly 
 notices whether a large number of writers have quoted 
 certain books of Scripture, of whose acceptance by the 
 whole Church doubts were entertained. This is im- 
 portant, as it shows that not only himself, but the Church, 
 during the three ages whose history he has recorded, did 
 not receive books of Scripture except upon what they 
 deemed to be sufficient evidence, and that evidence was 
 the reception of each book from Apostolic times by the 
 whole Church. I will now give the testimony of Euse- 
 bius to the authenticity of the Four Gospels. 
 
 First of all he describes the origin of the Gospel of 
 St. Mark in the following words : 
 
 " So greatly, however, did the splendour of piety enlighten 
 the minds of Peter's hearers, that it was not sufficient to hear 
 but once, nor to receive the unwritten doctrine of the Gospel 
 of God, but they persevered, in every variety of entreaties, to 
 solicit Mark as the companion of Peter, and whose Gospel 
 we have, that he should leave them a monument of the doc- 
 trine thus orally communicated, in writing. Nor did they 
 cease with their solicitations until they had prevailed with 
 the man, and thus become the means of that history which is
 
 External Proofs. 121 
 
 called the Gospel according to Mark. They say also, that 
 the Apostle (Peter), having ascertained what was done by 
 the revelation of the Spirit, was delighted with the zealous 
 ardour expressed by these men, and that the history obtained 
 his authority for the purpose of being read in the Churches. 
 This account is given by Clement in the Sixth Book of his 
 Institutions, whose testimony also is corroborated by that of 
 Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis." (Bk. ii. chap. xv. Crush's 
 translation.) 
 
 This is narrated as having taken place in the reign of 
 Claudius, i.e., between A.D. 41 and A.D. 54. 
 
 The next Gospel whose origin he describes is that of 
 St. Luke, in the following words : 
 
 " But Luke, who was born at Antioch, and by profession 
 a physician, being for the most part connected with Paul, and 
 familiarly acquainted with the rest of the Apostles, has left 
 us two inspired books, the institutes of that spiritual healing 
 art which he obtained from them. One of these is his Gospel, 
 in which he testifies that he has recorded, ' as those who 
 were from the beginning eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
 word,' delivered to him, whom also, he says, he has in all 
 things followed. The other is his Acts of the Apostles, which 
 he composed, not from what he had heard from others, but 
 from what he had seen himself. It is also said that Paul 
 usually referred to his Gospel, whenever in his Epistles he 
 spoke of some particular Gospel of his own, saying, ' accord- 
 ing to my Gospel.' " (Bk. iii. ch. iv. Cruse's translation.) 
 
 Further on, he describes the publication of the First 
 and Fourth Gospels, thus : 
 
 " Of all the disciples, Matthew and John are the only ones 
 that have left us recorded comments, and even they, tradi- 
 tion says, undertook it from necessity. Matthew also, having 
 first proclaimed the Gospel in Hebrew, when on the point of 
 going also to other nations, committed it to writing in his
 
 122 The Lost Gospel 
 
 native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence to 
 them by his writings. But after Mark and Luke had already 
 published their Gospels they say that John, who, during all 
 this time, was proclaiming the Gospel without writing, at 
 length proceeded to write it on the following occasion. The 
 three Gospels previously written had been distributed among 
 all, and also handed to him ; they say that he admitted them, 
 giving his testimony to their truth ; but that there was only 
 wanting in the narrative the account of the things done by 
 Christ among the first of His deeds, and at the commence- 
 ment of the Gospel. And this was the truth. For it is 
 evident that the other three Evangelists only wrote the deeds 
 of our Lord for one year after the imprisonment of John the 
 Baptist, and intimated this in the very beginning of their 
 history. For after the fasting of forty days, and the conse- 
 quent temptation, Matthew indeed specifies the time of his 
 history in these words, ' But, hearing that John was delivered 
 up, he returned from Judea into Galilee.' Mark in like 
 manner writes : ' But, after John was delivered up, Jesus 
 came into Galilee.' And Luke, before he commenced the 
 deeds of Jesus, in much the same way designates the time, 
 saying, ' Herod thus added this wickedness above all he had 
 committed, and that he shut up John in prison.' For these 
 reasons the Apostle John, it is said, being entreated to under- 
 take it, wrote the account of the time not recorded by the 
 former Evangelists, and the deeds done by our Saviour, which 
 they have passed by (for these were the events that occurred 
 before the imprisonment of John), and this very fact is 
 intimated by him when he says, ' This beginning of miracles 
 Jesus made,' and then proceeds to make mention of the 
 Baptist, in the midst of our Lord's deeds, as John was at 
 that time 'baptizing at ^Enon, near to Salim.' He plainly 
 also shows this in the words, ' John was not yet cast into 
 prison.' The Apostle, therefore, in his Gospel, gives the 
 deeds of Jesus before the Baptist was cast into prison, but 
 the other three Evangelists mention the circumstances after 
 that event," &c. (Bk. iii. c. xxiv.)
 
 External Proofs. 123 
 
 The last extract which I shall give is from the next 
 chapter, when he mentions "The sacred Scriptures 
 which are acknowledged as genuine, and those that are 
 not :" 
 
 "This appears also to be the proper place to give a 
 summary statement of the books of the New Testament 
 already mentioned. And here among the first must be 
 placed the Holy Quaternion of the Gospels; these are followed 
 by the Book of the Acts of the Apostles; after this must 
 be mentioned the Epistles of Paul, which are followed by the 
 acknowledged First Epistle of John, also the First of Peter 
 to be admitted in like manner. After these are to be placed, 
 if proper, the Revelation of John, concerning which we shall 
 offer the different opinions in due time. These, then, are 
 acknowledged as genuine. Among the disputed books, although 
 they are well known and approved by many, is reputed that 
 called the Epistle of James and [that] of Jude. Also the 
 Second Epistle of Peter, and those called the Second and 
 Third of John, whether they are of the Evangelist, or of 
 some other of the same name. Among the spurious must 
 be numbered both the books called the Acts of Paul, and 
 that called Pastor, and the Revelation of Peter. Besides 
 these, the books called the Epistle of Barnabas, and 
 what are called the Institutions of the Apostles. Moreover, 
 as I said before, if it should appear right, the Revelation of 
 John, which some, as before said, reject, but others rank 
 among the genuine. But there are also some who number 
 among these the Gospel according to the Hebrews, with 
 which those of the Hebrews that have received Christ are 
 particularly delighted." (Bk. iii. ch. xxv.) 
 
 Such are the statements of the oldest ecclesiastical 
 historian whose work has come down to us. 
 
 With respect to the Gospels, he knows but four as 
 canonical, and has never heard of any other as accepted
 
 124 The Lost Gospel 
 
 by the Church. He mentions Apocryphal and disputed 
 books. Amongst the latter he mentions the Gospel to 
 the Hebrews as acceptable to a local church ; but he is 
 wholly ignorant of any doubt having ever been cast upon 
 the authority of the four in any branch of the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Now let the reader remember, that however Eusebius, 
 like all other writers, might be liable to be mistaken 
 through carelessness, or prejudice, or any other cause of 
 inaccuracy ; yet that each of these statements respecting 
 the authorship of the various Gospels is, on all principles 
 of common sense, worth all the conjectural criticisms of 
 the German and other writers, so copiously cited in 
 " Supernatural Religion," put together. 
 
 For, in the first place, Eusebius flourished about 1500 
 years nearer to the original source of the truth than 
 these critics, and had come to man's estate within 200 
 years of the publication of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 Now, at a time when tradition was far more relied 
 upon, and so much more perfectly preserved and trans- 
 mitted than in such an age of printed books and public 
 journals as the present, this alone would make an enor- 
 mous difference between a direct statement of Eusebius 
 and the conjecture of a modern theorist. But far more 
 than this, Eusebius had access to, and was well acquainted 
 with, a vast mass of ecclesiastical literature which has 
 altogether perished ; and the greater part of which is 
 only known to have existed through notices or extracts 
 to be found in his work. For instance, in a few pages 
 he gives accounts of writings which have perished of 
 Papias (iii. c. 39), Quadratus and Aristides (iv. ch. 3), 
 Hegesippus (iv. ch. 8 and 22), Tatian (iv. ch. 16), Diony-
 
 External Proofs. 125 
 
 sius of Corinth (iv. ch. 23), Pinytus (iv. ch. 23), Philip 
 and Modestus (ch. 25), Melito (ch. 26), Apollinaris (ch. 
 27), Bardesanes (ch. 30). 
 
 These are all writers who nourished in the first three 
 quarters of the second century, and I have only men- 
 tioned those whose writings, from the wording of his 
 notices, Eusebius appears to have seen himself. 
 
 It is clear, I repeat, that the evidence of such an one 
 on the authorship of the Gospels is worth all the con- 
 jectures and theories of modern critics of all classes put 
 together. 
 
 We shall pass over very briefly the first sixty years 
 of the third century, i.e. between A.D. 200 and the time of 
 Eusebius. During these years flourished Cyprian, mar- 
 tyred A.D. 257 ; Hippolytus, martyred about A.D. 240 ; 
 and Origen, died A.D. 254. 
 
 Respecting the latter, it appears from Eusebius that 
 he published commentaries on the Gospels of St. Mat- 
 thew and St. John. Of the latter Eusebius says the 
 first five books were composed at Alexandria, but of the 
 whole work on St. John only twenty-two books have 
 come down to us. (Bk. vi. ch. 24.) Now Origen was 
 born a few years (at the most twenty) after the death of 
 Justin; and we have seen how the author of "Super- 
 natural Religion" evidently considers the works of 
 Justin to be anterior to the Fourth Gospel. Is it credible, 
 or even conceivable, that a man of Origen's intellect, 
 learning, and research should write twenty or thirty 
 books of commentaries on a false Gospel which was 
 forged shortly before his own time ? 
 
 He expressly states that the Church knew of but four 
 Gospels :
 
 126 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " As I have understood from tradition respecting the four 
 Gospels, which are the only undisputed ones in the whole 
 Church of God throughout the world. The first is written 
 according to Matthew, the same that was once a publican, 
 but afterwards an Apostle of Jesus Christ, who, having 
 published it for the Jewish converts, wrote it in Hebrew. 
 The second is according to Mark, who composed it as Peter 
 explained to him, whom he [Peter] also acknowledged as 
 his son in his general epistle, saying, ' The elect Church in 
 Babylon salutes you, as also Mark, my son.' And the third 
 according to Luke, the Gospel commended by Paul, which 
 was written for the converts from the Gentiles ; and, last of 
 all, the Gospel according to John." Extract from Origen's 
 first book of his commentaries on St. Matthew, quoted by 
 Eusebius (vi. 25.) 
 
 As regards Cyprian, the following quotation will 
 suffice : 
 
 " The Church, setting forth the likeness of Paradise, includes 
 within her walls fruit-bearing trees, whereof that which does 
 not bring forth good fruit is cut off and is cast into the fire. 
 These trees she waters with four rivers, that is, with the 
 four Gospels, wherewith, by a celestial inundation, she bestows 
 the grace of saving baptism." Cyprian, Letter Ixxii. to 
 Jubaianus. 
 
 As regards Hippolytus I have counted above fifty 
 references to St. Matthew and forty to St. John, in his 
 work on the " Refutation of Heresies," and " Fragments." 
 I append in a note a passage taken from his comment on 
 the Second Psalm, preserved to us by Theodoret. The 
 reader will be able to judge from it from what sources he 
 derived his knowledge of Christ. I give it rather for its 
 devotional spirit than its evidence for the four. 1 
 
 1 " When He came into the world He was manifested as God and 
 man. And it is easy to perceive the man in Him when He hungers
 
 External Proofs. 127 
 
 We now come to the conclusion of the second cen- 
 tury. Between the years 180 and 200 or 210 A.D., there 
 flourished three writers of whom we possess somewhat 
 voluminous remains. Irenams, who was born about 
 140 at the latest, who was in youth the disciple of Poly- 
 carp, who was himself the disciple of St. John. Irenseus 
 wrote his work against heresies about the'year 180, a little 
 after he had succeeded Pothinus as Bishop of Lyons, 
 and was martyred at the beginning of the next century 
 (202) . 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, the date of whose birth or 
 death is uncertain, flourished long before the end of the 
 second century, for he became head of the catechetical 
 school of Alexandria about the year 190. 
 
 Tertullian was born about 150, was converted to 
 Christianity about 185, was admitted to the priesthood 
 in 192, and adopted the opinions of Montanus about the 
 end of the century. 
 
 and shows exhaustion, and is weary and athirst, and withdraws in 
 fear, and is in prayer and in grief, and sleeps on a boat's pillow, and 
 entreats the removal of the cup of suffering, and sweats in an agony, 
 and is strengthened by an angel, and betrayed by a Judas, and 
 mocked by Caiaphas, and set at nought by Herod, and scourged by 
 Pilate, and derided by the soldiers, and nailed to the tree by the 
 Jews, and with a cry commits His spirit to His Father, and drops 
 His head and gives up the ghost, and has His side pierced by a 
 spear, and is wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb, and is raised by 
 the Father from the dead. And the Divine in Him, on the other 
 hand, is equally manifest when He is worshipped by angels, and seen 
 by shepherds, and waited for by Simeon, and testified of by Anna, 
 and inquired after by wise men, and pointed out by a star, and at a 
 marriage makes wine of water, and chides the sea when tossed by 
 the violence of winds, and walks upon the deep, and makes one 
 see who was blind from birth, and raises Lazarus when dead for 
 four days, and works many wonders, and forgives sins, and grants 
 power to His disciples."
 
 128 The Lost Gospel 
 
 I shall first of all give the testimony of these three 
 writers to the universal reception of the Four Gospels 
 by the Church, and consider to what time previous to 
 their own day their testimony upon such a subject must, 
 of necessity, reach. 
 
 First of all, Irenaeus, in a well-known passage, asserts 
 that 
 
 " It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or 
 fewer in number than they are." 
 
 He then refers to the four zones of the earth, and the 
 four principal winds, and remarks that, in accordance 
 with this, 
 
 " He Who was manifest to men has given us the Gospel 
 under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit." 
 
 Then he refers to the four living creatures of the 
 vision in the Revelation, and proceeds, 
 
 "And, therefore, the Gospels are in accord with these 
 things, among which Christ is seated. For that according 
 to John relates His original effectual and glorious generation 
 from the Father, thus declaring, ' In the beginning was the 
 word,' &c. . , . But that according to Luke, taking up His 
 priestly character, commences with Zacharias the priest 
 offering sacrifice to God. For now was made ready the 
 fatted calf, about to be immolated for the finding again of 
 the younger son. Matthew again relates His generation as 
 a man, saying, ' The Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, 
 the Son of David, the Son of Abraham;' and also, The birth 
 of Jesus Christ was on this wise.' This, then, is the Gospel 
 of His humanity, for which reason it is, too, that the charac- 
 ter of an humble and meek man is kept up through the 
 whole Gospel. Mark, on the other hand, commences with a 
 reference to the prophetical spirit coming down from on 
 high to men, saying, ' The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
 
 The Four Gospels Authentic. 129 
 
 Christ, as it is written in Esaias the prophet,' pointing to the 
 winged aspect of tho Gospel : and on this account he made 
 a compendious and cursory narrative, for such is the pro- 
 phetical character." (Iren., Bk. iii. ch. xi.) 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, speaking of a saying ascribed 
 to our Lord, writes : 
 
 " In the first place, then, in the four Gospels handed down 
 amongst us, we have not this saying ; but in that which ia 
 according to the Egyptians." (Miscellanies, iii ch. xiii) 
 
 Tertullian writes thus : 
 
 " Of the Apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first 
 instil faith into us ; whilst, of Apostolic men, Luke and 
 Mark renew it afterwards. These all start with the same 
 principles of the faith, so far as relates to the one only God the 
 Creator, and His Christ, how that He was born of the Virgin, 
 and came to fulfil the law and the prophets. Never mind if 
 there does occur some variation in the order of their narra- 
 tives, provided that there be agreement in the essential matter 
 of the faith in which there is disagreement with Marcion." 
 (Tertullian against Marcion, iv. c. ii.) 
 
 Such are the explicit declarations of these three 
 writers respecting the number and authorship of the 
 Four. I shall give at the conclusion of this section 
 some of the references to be found in these writers to 
 the first two or three chapters in each Gospel. 
 
 It is but very little to say that they quote the Four as 
 frequently, and with as firm a belief in their being the 
 Scriptures of God, as any modern divine. They quote 
 them far more copiously, and reproduce the history con- 
 tained in them far more fully than any modern divine 
 whom I have ever read, who is not writing specifically
 
 130 The Lost Gospel 
 
 on the Life of our Lord, or on some part of His teach- 
 ing contained in the Gospels. 
 
 But I have now to consider the question, " To what 
 time, previous to their own day, or rather to the time at 
 which they wrote, does their testimony to such a matter 
 as the general reception of the Four Gospels of necessity 
 reach back ?" 
 
 Clement wrote in Alexandria, Tertullian in Rome or 
 Africa, Irenseus in Gaul. They all flourished about A.D. 
 190. They all speak of the Gospels, not only as well 
 known and received, but as being the only Gospels ac- 
 knowledged and received by the Church. One of them 
 uses very " uncritical " arguments to prove that the 
 Gospels could only be four in number ; but the very ab- 
 surdity of his analogies is a witness to the universal tra- 
 dition of his day. To what date before their time must 
 this tradition reach, so that it must be relied upon as 
 exhibiting the true state of things ? 
 
 Now this tradition is not respecting a matter of opi- 
 nion, but a matter of fact the fact being no other than 
 the reading of the Gospels or Memoirs of our Lord in 
 the public service of the Church. The " Memoirs of our 
 Lord/' with other books, formed the Lectionary of the 
 Church. So that every Christian, who attended the 
 public assemblies for worship, must know whether he 
 heard the Gospels read there or not. 
 
 Now any two men who lived successively to the age 
 of sixty-five would be able to transmit irrefragable testi- 
 mony, which would cover a hundred years, to the use of 
 the Gospels in the lectionary of the Church. 
 
 During the last five years we have had a change in 
 our Lectionary, which change only affects the rearrange-
 
 The Four Gospels Authentic. 131 
 
 ment of the portions read each day out of the same 
 Gospels, and every boy and girl of fifteen years old at 
 the time would recognize the alteration when it took 
 place. If it had occurred fifty years ago, any man or 
 woman of sixty-five would perfectly remember the 
 change. If it had occurred within the last hundred 
 years, any person of sixty-five could bear testimony to 
 the fact that, when he first began to be instructed in the 
 nature of the Church Services, he was told by his elders 
 that up to a time which they could perfectly recollect 
 certain selections from Scripture had been read in 
 Church, but that at such a period during their lifetime 
 a change had been brought about after certain public 
 debates, and that it received such or such opposition 
 and was not at once universally adopted, which change 
 was the reading in public of the present selection. It is 
 clear then, that if all public documents were destroyed, 
 yet any two men, who could scarcely be called old men, 
 would be able to transmit with perfect certainty the re- 
 cord of any change in the public reading of Scripture 
 during the last one hundred years. 
 
 But, supposing that instead of a change in the mere 
 selections from the Gospels, the very Gospels themselves 
 had been changed, could such a thing have occurred 
 unnoticed, and the memory of it be so absolutely forgotten 
 that neither history nor tradition preserved the smallest 
 hint of it at the end of a short century ? 
 
 Now this, and far more than this, is what the author 
 of " Supernatural Keligion" asks his readers to believe 
 throughout his whole work. 
 
 We have seen how, before the end of this century, no 
 other authoritative memoirs of Christ were known by the
 
 132 The Lost Gospel 
 
 Church, and these were known and recognized as so 
 essential a part of the Christian system, that their very 
 number as four, and only four, was supposed to be pre- 
 figured from the very beginning of the world. 
 
 Now Justin lived till the year 165 in this century. 
 He was martyred when Irenaeus must have been twenty- 
 five years old. Both Clement and Tertullian must have 
 been born before his martyrdom, perhaps several years, 
 and yet the author of " Supernatural Eeligion " would 
 have us believe that the books of Christians which were 
 accounted most sacred in the year 190, and used in that 
 year as frequently, and with as firm a belief in their 
 authenticity as they are by any Christians now, were un- 
 used by Justin Martyr, and that one of the four was abso- 
 lutely unknown to him in all probability forged after 
 his time. 
 
 We are persistently told all this, too, in spite of the 
 fact that he reproduces the account of the Birth, Teaching, 
 Death, and Resurrection of Christ exactly as they are 
 contained in the Four, without a single additional cir- 
 cumstance worth speaking of, making only such altera- 
 tions as would be natural in the reproduction of such 
 an account for those who were without the pale of the 
 Church. 
 
 But even this is not the climax of the absurdity which 
 we are told that, if we are reasonable persons, we must 
 accept. It appears that the "Memoirs" which, we are told, 
 Justin heard read every Sunday in the place of assembly 
 in Rome or Ephesus which he frequented, was a Pales- 
 tinian Gospel, which combined, in one narrative, the 
 accounts of the Birth, Life, Death, and moral Teaching of 
 Jesus, together with the peculiar doctrine and history
 
 The Four Gospels Authentic. 133 
 
 now only to be found in the Fourth Gospel. Conse- 
 quently this Gospel was not only far more valuable than 
 any one of our present Evangelists, but, we might almost 
 say, more worthy of preservation than all put together, 
 for it combined the teaching of the four, and no 
 doubt reconciled their seeming discrepancies, thus ob- 
 viating one of the greatest difficulties connected with 
 their authority and inspiration ; a difficulty which, we 
 learn from history, was felt from the first. And yet, 
 within less than twenty years, this Gospel had been sup- 
 planted by four others so effectually that it was all but 
 forgotten at the end of the century, and is referred to by 
 the first ecclesiastical historian as one of many apocrypha 
 valued only by a local Church, and has now perished so 
 utterly that not one fragment of it can be proved to be 
 authentic. 
 
 But enough of this absurdity. 
 
 Taking with us the patent fact, that before the end of 
 the second century, and during the first half of the 
 third, the Four Gospels were accepted by the Church 
 generally, and quoted by every Christian writer as fully 
 as they are at this moment, can there be the shadow of a 
 doubt that when Justin wrote the account of our Lord's 
 Birth, which I have given in page 22, he had before 
 him the first and third Evangelists, and combined these 
 two accounts in one narrative ? Whether he does this 
 consciously and of set purpose I leave to the author of 
 " Supernatural Religion/' but combine the two accounts 
 he certainly does. 
 
 Again, when, in the accounts of the events preceding 
 our Lord's Death, Justin notices that Jesus commanded 
 the disciples to bring forth an ass and its foal (page 33),
 
 134 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 can any reasonable man doubt but that he owed this to 
 St. Matthew, in whose Gospel alone it appears ? 
 
 Or when, in the extract I have given in page 20, he 
 notices that our Lord called the sons of Zebedee Boa- 
 nerges, can there be any reasonable doubt that he derived 
 this from St. Mark, the only Evangelist who records it, 
 whose Gospel (in accordance with universal tradition), 
 he there designates as the " Memoirs of Peter ? " 
 
 Or again, when, in the extract I have given in page 
 34, he records that our Lord in His Agony sweat great 
 drops [of blood], can there be a doubt but that he made 
 use of St. Luke, especially since he mentions two or 
 three other matters connected with our Lord's Death, 
 only to be found in St. Luke ? Or, again, why should 
 we assume the extreme improbability of a defunct Gospel 
 to account for all the references to, and reminiscences 
 of, St. John's Gospel, which I have given in Sections VIII. 
 and IX. of this work ? 
 
 So far for Justin Martyr. 
 
 We will now turn to references in three or four other 
 writers. 
 
 In the Epistle of Yienne and Lyons we find the follow- 
 ing : 
 
 " And thus was fulfilled the saving of our Lord : The 
 time shall come in which every one that killeth you shall 
 think that he oflereth a service to God.' " 
 
 This seems like a reference to John xvi. 2. The 
 words, with some very slight variation, are to be found 
 there and not to be found elsewhere. The letter of the 
 Churches was written about A.D. 178 " at the earliest," 
 we are told by the author of " Supernatural Keligion."
 
 The Four Gospels Authentic. 135 
 
 Well, we will make him a present of a few years, and 
 suppose that it was written ten or twelve years later, 
 i.e. about A.D. 190. Now we find that Irenaeus had written 
 his great work, " Against Heresies/' before this date. 
 Surely, then, the notion of the writer of " Supernatural 
 Religion," that we are to suppose that this was taken 
 from some lost Apocryphal Gospel when Irenaeus, Bishop 
 of Lyons, had actually used a written Gospel which con- 
 tains it, refutes itself. 
 
 We turn to Athenagoras. 
 
 We find in his work, " Plea (or Embassy) for the 
 Christians " (ch. x.) , the following : 
 
 " But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father in idea 
 and in operation, for after the pattern of Him and by Him 
 were all things made, the Father and the Son being oue [I 
 and My Father are one], and the Son being in the Father, 
 and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit," 
 &c. (John xiv. 10.) 
 
 Again (ch. xii.) : 
 
 "Men who reckon the present life of very small worth 
 indeed, and who are conducted to the future life by this one 
 thing alone, that they know God and His Logos." [This is 
 life eternal, that they may know Thee the only true God, and 
 Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.] 
 
 Can the writer of " Supernatural Religion" be serious 
 when he writes, " He nowhere identifies the Logos with 
 Jesus ? " Does the writer of " Supernatural Religion " 
 seriously think that a Christian writer, living in 177, and 
 presenting to the emperor a plea for Christians, would 
 have any difficulty about identifying Jesus with 1 
 Son of God Whom he expressly states to be the Logo* 
 God?
 
 136' The Lost Gospel. 
 
 The following also are seeming quotations from the 
 Synoptics in Athenagoras. 
 
 " What, then, are those precepts in which we are instructed ? 
 4 1 say unto yon, love your enemies, bless them that curse, 
 pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of 
 your Father which is in the heavens, who maketh his sun 
 to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the 
 just and on the unjust.' 
 
 " ' For if ye love them which love you, and lend to them 
 which lend to you, what reward shall ye have ? ' 
 
 " ' For whosoever, He says, looketh on a woman to lust 
 after her, hath committed adultery already in his heart.' 
 
 " ' For whosoever, says He, putteth away his wife and 
 marrieth another, committeth adultery.' " 
 
 When we consider that in the time of Athenagoras, 
 or very soon after, there were three authors living who 
 spoke of the Gospels in the way we have shown, and 
 quoted them in the way we shall now show, why 
 assign these quotations to defunct Gospels of whose 
 contents we are perfectly ignorant, when we have them 
 substantially in Gospels which occupied the same place 
 in the Church then as now ? 
 
 NOTE ON SECTION XIX. 
 
 I HAVE asserted that the three authors, Tertullian, 
 Clement of Alexandria, and Irenaaus, all nourishing 
 before the close of the second century, quote the four 
 Gospels, if anything, more frequently than most modern 
 Christian authors do. I append, in proof of this, some
 
 Note. 137 
 
 of the references in these authors to the first two or throe 
 chapters of our present Gospels. 
 
 IREN^US. 
 Matthew, i. 
 
 " And Matthew, too, recognizing one and the same Jesus 
 Christ, exhibiting his generation as a man from the Virgin 
 
 says, ' The book of the generation of Jesus Christ 
 
 the son of David, the son of Abraham.' Then, that he might 
 free our mind from suspicion regarding Joseph, he says, ' But 
 the birth of Christ was on this wise : when His mother was 
 espoused,' " &c. (iii. xvi.) 
 
 Then he proceeds to quote and remark upon the whole 
 of the remainder of the chapter. 
 
 " Matthew again relates His generation as a man." For 
 remainder, see page 128. 
 
 " For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jeco- 
 niah, as also Matthew sets forth in his pedigree." (iii. 
 
 21, 9.) 
 
 " Born Emmanuel of the Virgin. To this effect they testify 
 that before Joseph had come together with Mary, while she 
 therefore remained in virginity, she was found with child of 
 the Holy Ghost." (iii. 21, 4.) 
 
 " Then again Matthew, when speaking of the angel, says, 
 'The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in sleep.' 
 
 (iii. 9, 2. ) 
 
 The angel said to him in sleep, ' Fear not to take t 
 Mary, thy wife' " (and proceeding with several other verses 
 of the same chapter), (iv. 23, 1.) 
 
 Matthew, ii. 
 
 But Matthew says that the Magi, coming from the East, 
 exclaimed, 'For we have seen His star in the East, and 
 come to worship Him.'" (iii. 9, 2.) 
 
 And that having been led by the star unto the house o 
 Jacob to Emmanuel, they showed, by those gifts which tl 
 offered, who it was that was worshipped; myrrh, because i
 
 138 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 was He who should die and be buried for the human race ; 
 gold, because He was a king," &c., &c. (iii. 9, 2.) 
 
 " He, since He was Himself an infant, so arranging it that 
 human infants should be martyrs, slain, according to the 
 Scriptures, for the sake of Christ." (iii. 16, 4.) 
 
 Matthew, iii. 
 
 " For Matthew the apostle .... declares that John, 
 when preparing the way for Christ, said to them who were 
 boasting of their relationship according to the flesh, &c., 
 ' generation of vipers, who hath shown you to flee from 
 raise up children unto Abraham.' (iii. 9, 1.) 
 
 " As John the Baptist says, ' For God is able from these 
 stones to raise up children unto Abraham.' " (iv. 7, 2.) 
 
 There are no less than six quotations or references to 
 the ninth and tenth verses of this chapter, viz., iv. 24, 2 ; 
 v. 34, 1 ; iv. 8, 3; iv. 36, 4; v. 17, 4. 
 
 " Now who this Lord is that brings such a day about, 
 John the Baptist points out when he says of Christ, ' He 
 shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire, having 
 His fan in His hand,'" &c. (iv. 4, 3.) 
 
 " Having a fan in His hands, and cleansing His floor, and 
 gathering the wheat,'" <fec. (iv. 33, 1.) 
 
 " Who gathers the wheat into His barn, but will burn up 
 the chaff with fire unquenchable." (iv. 33, 11.) 
 
 " Then, speaking of His baptism, Matthew says, ' The 
 heavens were opened, and He saw the Spirit of God,' " &c. 
 (iii. 9, 3.) 
 
 Mark, i. 
 
 " Wherefore Mark also says, ' The beginning of the Gospel 
 of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as it is written in the pro- 
 phets.' " (iii. 16, 3.) 
 
 " Yea, even the demons exclaimed, on beholding the Son, 
 ' We know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.' " 
 (iv. 6, 6.)
 
 Note. 139 
 
 Mark iy. 28. 
 
 " His Word, through whom the wood fructifies, and the 
 fountains gush forth, and the earth gives ' first the blade, 
 then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.' " (iv. 18, 4.) 
 
 Luke, i. 
 
 " Thus also does Luke, without respect of persons, deliver 
 to us what he had learned from them, as he has himself testified, 
 saying, ' Even as they delivered them unto us, who from the 
 beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word.' " 
 (iii. 14, 2.) 
 
 Another reference to same in preface to Book iv. 
 
 "Luke, also, the follower and disciple of the Apostles, 
 referring to Zacharias and Elizabeth, from whom, according 
 to promise, John was born, says, * And they were both 
 righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and 
 ordinances of the Lord blameless,' " &c. (iii. 10, 1.) 
 
 " And again, speaking of Zacharias, ' And it came to pass, 
 that while he executed the priest's office,' " &c. (Ibid.) 
 
 " And then, speaking of John, he (the angel) says : ' For 
 he shall be great in the sight of the Lord,' " &c. (Ibid.) 
 
 " In the spirit and power of Elias." (iii. 10, 6.) 
 
 " Truly it was by Him of whom Gabriel was the angel who 
 also announced the glad tidings of His birth .... in the 
 spirit and power of Elias." (iii. 11, 4.) 
 
 " But at that time the angel Gabriel was sent from God, 
 who did also say to the Virgin, ' Fear not, Mary, for thou 
 hast found favour with God.' " (iii. 10, 2.) 
 
 " He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the 
 Highest," &c. (iii. 10, 2.) 
 
 " And Mary, exulting because of this, cried out ; prophesy- 
 ing on behalf of the Church, My soul doth magnify the 
 Lord.' " (iii. 10, 2.) 
 
 " And that the angel Gabriel said unto her, ' The Holy 
 Ghost shall come upon thee,' " &c. (iii. 21, 4.) 
 
 " In accordance with this design Mary the Virgin is found
 
 140 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 obedient, saying, ' Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it 
 unto me according to Thy word.' " (iii. 22, 4.) 
 
 " As Elizabeth testified when filled with the Holy Ghost, 
 saying to Mary, ' Blessed art thou among women,' " &c. 
 (iii. 21, 5.) 
 
 "Wherefore the prophets . . . announced His Advent . . . 
 in freeing us from the hands of all that hate us, that is, from 
 every spirit of wickedness, and causing us to serve Him in 
 holiness and righteousness all our days.' " (iv. 20, 4.) 
 
 Luke, ii. 
 
 " Wherefore Simeon also, one of his descendants, carried 
 fully out the rejoicing of the patriarch, and said, ' Lord, now 
 lettest Thou Thy servant,' " &c. (iv. 7, 1.) 
 
 " And the angel in like manner announced tidings of great 
 joy to the shepherds who were keeping watch by night." 
 (iv. 7, 1.) 
 
 " Wherefore he adds, ' The shepherds returned, glorifying 
 and praising God for all which they had seen and heard.' " 
 (iii. 10, 4.) 
 
 " And still further does Luke say in reference to the Lord, 
 * When the days of purification were accomplished they 
 brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him before the 
 Lord.' " (iii. 10, 5.) 
 
 " They say also that Simeon, ' Who took Christ into his 
 arms and gave thanks to God,' " &c. (i. 8, 4.) 
 
 " They assert also that by Anna, who is spoken of in the 
 Gospel as a prophetess, and who after living seven years with 
 her husband, passed all the rest of her life in widowhood till 
 she saw the Saviour." (i. 8, 4.) 
 
 " The production, again, of the Duodecad of the -^Bons is in- 
 dicated by the fact that the Lord was twelve years of age 
 when He disputed with the teachers of the law," &c. (i. 3, 2.) 
 
 " Some passages, also, which occur in the Gospels receive 
 from them a colouring of the same kind, as the answer which 
 He gave His mother when He was twelve years old, ' Wist ye 
 not that I must be about My Father's business ?' " (i. 20, 2.)
 
 Note. 
 
 Luke, iii. 
 
 " For because He knew that we should make a good use of 
 our substance which we should possess by receiving it from 
 another, He says, ' He that hath two coats let him impart to 
 him that hath none, and he that hath meat let him do like- 
 wise.' " (iv. 30, 3.) 
 
 " For when He came to be baptized He had not yet com- 
 pleted His thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about 
 thirty years of age ; for thus Luke, who has mentioned His 
 years, has expressed it." (ii. 22, 5.) 
 
 John, i. 
 
 " [John] thus commenced his teaching in the Gospel, ' In 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God> 
 and the Word was God,' " &c. (iii. 11, 1.) 
 
 " He (St. John) expresses himself thus : ' In the beginning 
 was the Word,' " &c. (i. 8, 5.) 
 
 " Thus saith the Scripture, ' By the word of the Lord were 
 the heavens made,' &c. And again, ' All things were made 
 by Him, and without Him was nothing made that was 
 made.' " (i. 22, 1.) 
 
 " For he styles Him ' A light which shineth in darkness, 
 and which was not comprehended by it.' " (i. 8, 5.) 
 
 '" And that we may not have to ask ' Of what God was the 
 Word made flesh?' He does Himself previously teach us, 
 saying, ' There was a man sent from God whose name was 
 John. The same came as a witness that he might bear 
 witness of that Light. He was not that Light, but that ho 
 might testify of the Light.' " (iii. 11, 4.) 
 
 " While the Gospel affirms plainly that by the Word, which 
 was in the beginning with God, all things were made, which 
 Word, he says, was made flesh and dwelt among us." 
 (iii. 11, 2.) 
 
 To John i. 14, " The Word was made flesh," the re- 
 ferences are absolutely innumerable. Those I have given 
 already will suffice. 
 
 " For this is the knowledge of salvation which was wanting
 
 1 42 The Lost Gospel 
 
 to them, that of the Son of God, which John made known, 
 saying, * Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the 
 sin of the world. This is He of whom I said, After me 
 cometh a Man Who was made before me, because He was 
 prior to me.' " (iii. 10, 2.) 
 
 " By whom also Nathaniel, being taught, recognized Him ; 
 he to whom also the Lord bare witness that he was an 
 Israelite indeed, in whom was no guile. The Israelite re- 
 cognized his King, therefore did he cry out to Him, ' Rabbi, 
 Thou art the Son of God. Thou art the King of Israel.' " 
 (iii. 11, 6.) 
 
 John, ii. 
 
 " But that wine was better which the Word made from 
 water, on the moment, and simply for the use of those who 
 had been called to the marriage." (iii. 11, 5.) 
 
 " As also the Lord speaks in reference to Himself, * Destroy 
 this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' He spake 
 this, however, it is said, of the temple of His body." (v. 6, 2.) 
 
 CLEMENT OP ALEXANDRIA. 
 
 Matthew, i. 
 
 " And in the gospel according to Matthew the genealogy 
 which begins with Abraham is continued down to Mary, the 
 mother of the Lord. * For,' it is said, ' from Abraham to 
 David are fourteen generations, and from David to the 
 carrying away into Babylon,' " &c. (Miscellanies, i 21.) 
 
 Matthew, iii. 
 
 " For the fan is in the Lord's hand, by which the chaff due 
 to the fire is separated from the wheat.'* (Instructor, i. 9.) 
 
 Matthew, iv. 
 
 " Therefore He Himself, urging them on to salvation, 
 cries, * The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.' " (Exhortation 
 to Heathen, ch. ix.) 
 
 Matthew, v. 
 
 " And because He brought all things to bear on the dis-
 
 Note. 143 
 
 cipline of the soul, He said, ' Blessed are the meek, for they 
 shall inherit the earth.' " (Miscellanies, iv. 6.) 
 
 Mark, i. 
 
 " For he also ' ate locusts and wild honey.' " [In St. Mat- 
 thew the corresponding expression being ' His food was locusts 
 and wild honey.'] (Instructor, ii. 11.) 
 
 Luke, iii. 
 
 " And to prove that this is true it is written in the Gospel 
 by Luke as follows : ' And in the fifteenth year, in the reign 
 of Tiberius Csesar, the word of the Lord came to John, the 
 son of Zacharias.' And again, 'Jesus was coming to His 
 baptism, being about thirty years old,' and so on." (Miscel- 
 lanies, i. 21.) 
 
 There are at least twenty more references to the accounts 
 of the preaching of St. John in the third of St. Matthew, 
 first of St. Mark, and third of St. Luke, in Clement's 
 writings, which I have not given simply because it is 
 difficult to assign the quotation to a particular Evangelist, 
 as the account is substantially the same in the three. 
 
 Luke xii. 16-20. 
 
 " Of this man's field (the rich fool) the Lord, in the Gospel, 
 says that it was fertile, and afterwards, when he wished to 
 lay by his fruits and was about to build greater barns," &c. 
 (Miscellanies, iii. 6.) 
 
 Luke xiii. 32. 
 
 " Thus also in reference to Herod, ' Go tell that fox, Behold, 
 I cast out devils,'" <fcc. (Miscellanies, iv. 6.) 
 
 Luke xiv. 12, 13. 
 
 " He says accordingly, somewhere, ' When thou art called 
 to a wedding recline not on the highest couch.' .... And 
 elsewhere, 'When thou makest a dinner or a supper,' and 
 again, 'But, when thou makest an entertainment, call the 
 poor.' " (Instructor, ii. 1.)
 
 144 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Luke, xv. Parable of Prodigal Son. 
 
 " For it were not seemly that we, after the fashion of the 
 rich man's son in the Gospel, should, as prodigals, abuse the 
 Father's gifts." (Instructor, ii. ch. i.) 
 
 John, i. 
 
 " You have then God's promise ; you have His love : become 
 partakers of His grace. And do not suppose the song of 
 salvation to be new, as a vessel or a house is new ; for . . . 
 in the beginning was the "Word, and the Word was with God, 
 and the Word was God." (Exhortation to Heathen, ch. i.) 
 
 " For He has said, ' In the beginning the Word was in 
 God, and the Word was God." (Instructor, viii.) 
 
 " Wherefore it (the law) was only temporary ; but eternal 
 grace and truth were by Jesus Christ. Mark the expressions 
 of Scripture ; of the law only is it said ' was given ; ' but truth, 
 being the grace of the Father, is the eternal work of the 
 Word, and it is not said to be given, but to be by Jesus, with- 
 out wJiom nothing was." (Instructor, i. 7.) 
 
 " The divine Instructor is trustworthy, adorned as He is 
 with three of the fairest ornaments .... with authority of 
 utterance, for He is God and Creator ; for all things were 
 made by Him, and without Him was not anything made: 
 and with benevolence, for He alone gave Himself a sacrifice 
 for us, ' For the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.' " 
 (John x. 11.) (Instructor, i. 11.) 
 
 "For the darkness, it is said, comprehendeth it not." 
 (Instructor, ii. 10.) 
 
 " Having through righteousness attained to adoption, and 
 therefore ' have received power to become the sons of God.' " 
 (Miscellanies, iv. 6.) 
 
 " For of the prophets it is said, ' We have all received of 
 His fulness,' that is, of Christ's." (Miscellanies, i. 17.) 
 
 " And John the apostle says, ' No man hath scon God at 
 any time. The only begotten God,' [oldest reading,] ' who 
 is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.' " (Mis- 
 cellanies, v. 12.)
 
 Note. 145 
 
 John, iii. 
 
 " He that believeth not is, according to the utterance of 
 the Saviour, condemned already." (Miscellanies, iv. 16.) 
 
 " Enslaved as you are to evil custom, and clinging to it 
 voluntarily till your last breath, you are hurried to destruc- 
 tion ; because light has come into the world, and men have 
 loved the darkness rather than the light." (Exhortation to 
 Heathen, 10.) 
 
 " ' I must decrease,' said the prophet John." (Miscellanies 
 vi. 11.) 
 
 TERTULLIAN. 
 Matthew, i. 
 
 " There is, first of all, Matthew, that most faithful chro- 
 nicler of the Gospel, because the companion of the Lord ; for 
 no other reason in the world than to show us clearly the 
 fleshy original of Christ, he thus begins, 'The book of the 
 generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David the son of 
 Abraham.' " (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. xxii.) 
 
 " It is, however, a fortunate circumstance that Matthew 
 also, when tracing down the Lord's descent from Abraham 
 to Mary, says, ' Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary, of 
 whom was born Jesus.' " (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. xx.) 
 
 " You [the heretic] say that He was born through a virgin, 
 not of a virgin, and in a womb, not of a womb ; because the 
 angel in the dream said to Joseph, ' That which is born in 
 her is of the Holy Ghost.'" (Ibid. ch. xx.) 
 
 Matthew, ii. 
 
 " For they therefore offered to the then infant Lord that 
 frankincense, and myrrh, and gold, to be, as it were, the close 
 of worldly sacrifice and glory, which Christ was about to do 
 away." (On Idolatry, ch. ix.) 
 
 Mark i. 4. 
 
 " For, in that John used to preach ' baptism for the remis- 
 sion of sins,' the declaration was made with reference to a 
 future remission. (On Baptism, x.) 
 
 L
 
 146 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 Mark i. 24. 
 
 " This accordingly the devils also acknowledge Him to be : 
 We know Thee Who Thou art, the Son of God.' " (Against 
 Praxeas, ch. xxvi.) 
 
 Let the reader particularly remark this phrase. Ter- 
 tullian quotes the last clauses differently from the reading 
 in our present copies, "The Holy One of God." If 
 such a quotation had occurred in Justin, the author 
 of " Supernatural Religion " would have cited the phrase 
 as a quotation from a lost Gospel, and asserted that the 
 author had not even seen St. Mark. 
 
 Luke, i. 
 
 " Blias was nothing else than John, who came ' in the 
 power and spirit of Elias.' " (On Monogamy, ch. viii.) 
 
 " I recognize, too, the angel Gabriel as having been sent to 
 a virgin ; but when he is blessing her, it is ' among women.'" 
 (On the Veiling of Virgins, ch. vi.) 
 
 " Will not the angel's announcement be subverted, that the 
 Virgin should ' conceive in her womb and bring forth a son ? ' 
 
 Therefore even Elizabeth must be silent, although 
 
 she is carrying in her womb the prophetic babe, which was 
 already conscious of his Lord, and is, moreover, filled with the 
 Holy Ghost. For without reason does she say, ' And whence 
 is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?' 
 If it was not as her son, but only as a stranger, that Mary 
 carried Jesus in her womb, how is it she says, ' Blessed is 
 the fruit of thy womb ?' " (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. xxi.) 
 
 " Away, says he [he is now putting words into the mouth of 
 the heretic], with that eternal plaguy taxing of Csesar, and 
 the scanty inn, and the squalid swaddling clothes, and the 
 hard stable. We do not care a jot for that multitude of the 
 heavenly host which praised their Lord at night. Let the 
 
 shepherds take better care of their flock Spare also 
 
 the babe from circumcision, that He may escape the pains
 
 Note. 147 
 
 thereof; nor let Him be brought into the temple, lest He 
 burden His parents with the expense of the offering ; nor let 
 Him be handed to Simeon, lest the old man be saddened at 
 the point of death." (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. ii.) 
 
 " This He Himself, in those other gospels also, testifies 
 Himself to have been from His very boyhood, saying, ' Wist 
 ye not, says He, that I mnst be about my Father's business ?' " 
 (Against Praxeas, xxvi.) 
 
 John, i. 
 
 " In conclusion, I will apply the Gospel as a supplementary 
 testimony to the Old Testament .... it is therein plainly 
 revealed by Whom He made all things. ' In the beginning 
 was the Word,' that is, the same beginning, of course, in 
 which God made the heaven and the earth ' and the Word 
 was with God, and the Word was God,'" &c. (Against 
 Hermogenes, ch. xx.) 
 
 I give only one reference to the first few verses, as the 
 number in Tertullian's writings is enormous. 
 
 " It is written, ' To them that believed on Him, gave He 
 power to be called Sons of God.'" (On Prayer, ch. ii.) 
 
 " But by saying ' made,' he [St. Paul] not only confirmed 
 the statement ' the Word was made flesh,' but he also asserted 
 the reality," Ac. (On the Flesh of Christ, ch. xx.) 
 
 John, ii. 
 
 " [He Jesus] inaugurates in water the first rudimentary 
 displays of His power, when invited to the nuptials." (On 
 Baptism, ch. ix.) 
 
 The twenty-first chapter of the " Discourse against 
 Praxeas " is filled with citations from St. John. I will 
 give a small part. 
 
 He declared what was in the bosom of the Father alone ; 
 the Father did not divulge the secrets of His own boson, 
 this is preceded by another statement: 'No man hath .
 
 148 The Lost Gospel 
 
 God at any time.' Then again, when He is designated by 
 John as ' the Lamb of God.' .... This [divine relationship] 
 Nathanael at once recognized in Him, even as Peter did on 
 another occasion: 'Thou art the Son of God.' And He 
 affirmed Himself that they were quite right in their convic- 
 tions, for He answered Nathanael, ' Because I said I saw 
 thee under the fig-tree, dost thou believe?' .... When He 
 entered the temple He called it ' His Father's house,' [speak- 
 ing] as the Son. In His address to Nicodenms He says, ' So 
 
 God loved the world,' &c Moreover, when John the 
 
 Baptist was asked what he happened [to know] of Jesus, 
 he said, 'The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all 
 things into His Hands. He that believeth,' &c. Whom, 
 indeed, did He reveal to the woman of Samaria ? Was it not 
 ' the Messias which is called Christ ? ' . . . He says, therefore, 
 ' My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish 
 His work,' " &c. &c. (Against Praxeas, ch. xxi.)
 
 SECTION XX. 
 THE EVIDENCE FOR MIRACLES. 
 
 IT does not come within the scope of this work to ex- 
 amine at any length the general subject of miracles. 
 
 The assertion that miracles, such as those recorded in 
 Scripture, are absolutely impossible, and so have never 
 taken place, must be met by the counter assertion that 
 they are possible, and have taken place. They are 
 possible to the Supreme Being, and have taken place by 
 His will or sufferance at certain perfectly historical 
 periods ; especially during the first century after the 
 birth of Christ. When to this it is replied that miracles 
 are violations of natural law or order, and that it is 
 contrary to our highest idea of the Supreme Being to 
 suppose that He should alter the existing order of things, 
 we can only reply that it is in accordance with our 
 highest idea of Him that He should do so ; and we say 
 that in making these assertions we are not unreasonable, 
 but speak in accordance with natural science, philosophy, 
 and history. 
 
 And, in order to prove this, we have only to draw 
 attention to the inaccuracy which underlies the use of 
 the term " law " by the author of " Supernatural Re- 
 ligion," and those who think as he does. The author
 
 150 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 of " Supernatural Religion " strives to bring odium on 
 the miracles of the Gospel by calling them " violations 
 of law," and by asserting that it is a false conception of 
 the Supreme Being to suppose that He should have made 
 an Universe with such elements of disorder within it that 
 it should require such things as the violation, or even 
 suspension, of laws to restore it to order, and that our 
 highest and truest idea of God is that of One Who 
 never can even so much as make Himself known except 
 through the action of the immutable laws by which this 
 visible state of things is governed. 
 
 Now what is a law ? The laws with which in this 
 discussion we are given to understand we have to do, 
 are strictly speaking limitations the limitations of forces 
 or powers which, in conception at least, must them- 
 selves be prior to the limitations. 
 
 Take the most universal of all so-called "laws," the 
 law of gravitation. The law of gravitation is the limi- 
 tation imposed upon that mysterious force which appears 
 to reside in all matter, that it should attract all other 
 matter. This power of attraction is called gravitation ; 
 but instead of acting at random, as it were, it acts ac- 
 cording to certain well-known rules which only are 
 properly the " laws " of gravitation. . 
 
 Now the very existence of our world depends upon the 
 force of attraction being counteracted. If, from a, certain 
 moment, gravitation were to become the only force in the 
 solar system, the earth would fall upon the surface of 
 the sun, and be annihilated ; but the earth continues in 
 existence because of the action of another force the 
 projectile force which so far counteracts the force of 
 the sun's attraction, that the earth revolves round the
 
 The Evidence for Miracles. 151 
 
 sun instead of falling upon its surface. In this case the 
 law of gravitation is not violated, or even suspended, 
 but the force of gravitation is counteracted or modified 
 by another force. 
 
 Again, the blood circulates through our bodies by 
 means of another power or force counteracting the force 
 of gravitation, and this is the vital power or force. 
 
 But why do we lift up our feet from the ground to go 
 about some daily duty ? Here comes another force 
 the force of will, which directs the action of some of the 
 vital forces, but not that of others. 
 
 But, again, two courses of action are open to us, and 
 we deliberately choose the one because we think that it 
 is our duty, though it may entail danger or pain, or even 
 death. Here is a still deeper force or power, the force 
 of conscience the moral power which is clearly the 
 highest power within us, for it governs the very will, 
 and sits in judgment upon the whole man, and acquits 
 or condemns him according to its rule of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 Here, then, are several gradations of power or force 
 
 any one of them as real as the others ; each one 
 
 making itself felt by counteracting and modifying the 
 action of the one below it. 
 
 Now the question arises, is there any power or force 
 clearly above the highest controlling power within us, i.e. 
 above our conscience? We say that there is. There 
 are some who on this point can reverently take up the 
 words of our Great Master, "We speak that we do 
 know." We believe, as firmly as we believe in our own 
 existence, that this our conscience the highest power 
 within us-has been itself acted upon by a Higher Power
 
 152 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 still, a moral and spiritual Power, which has enlightened 
 it, purified it, strengthened it, in fact renewed it. 
 
 Now, this purifying or enlightening of our moral 
 powers has one remarkable effect. It makes those who 
 have been acted upon by it to look up out of this present 
 state of things for a more direct revelation of the cha- 
 racter and designs of the Supreme Being. Minds who 
 have experienced this action of a Superior Power upon 
 them cannot possibly look upon the Supreme Being as 
 revealing Himself merely by the laws of gravitation, or 
 electricity, or natural selection. We look for, we desire 
 a further and fuller Revelation of God, even though the 
 Revelation may condemn us. We cannot rest without 
 it. It is intolerable to those who have a sense of justice, 
 for instance, to think that, whilst led by their sense of 
 what is good and right, men execute imperfect justice, 
 there is, after all, no Supreme Moral Governor Who 
 will render to each individual in another life that just 
 retribution which is assuredly not accorded to all in this 
 life. 1 
 
 Now this, I say, makes us desire a revelation of the 
 Supreme Moral Governor which is assuredly not to be 
 
 1 History affords multitudes of instances, but an example may be 
 selected from one of the most critical periods of modern history. 
 Let it be granted that Louis the Sixteenth of France and his Queen 
 had all the defects attributed to them by the most hostile of serious 
 historians ; let all the excuses possible be made for his predecessor, 
 Louis the Fifteenth, and also for Madame de Pompadour, can it be 
 pretended that there are grounds for affirming that the vices of the 
 two former so far exceeded those of the latter, that their respective 
 fates were plainly and evidently just ? That whilst the two former 
 died in their beds, after a life of the most extreme luxury, the 
 others merited to stand forth through coming time, as examples of 
 the most appalling and calamitous tragedy. (Mivart's " Genesis of 
 Species," ch. ix.)
 
 The Evidence for Miracles. 153 
 
 found in the laws which control mere physical forces. As 
 Dr. Newman has somewhere said, men believe what they 
 wish to believe, and assuredly we desire to believe that 
 there is a supreme Moral Governor, and that He has not 
 left us wholly in the dark respecting such things as the 
 laws and sanctions of His moral government. But has 
 He really revealed these ? We look back through the 
 ages, and our eyes are arrested by the figure of One 
 Who, according to the author of " Supernatural Re- 
 ligion/' taught a " sublime religion/' His teaching 
 " carried morality to the sublimest point attained, or 
 even attainable, by humanity. The influence of His 
 Spiritual Religion has been rendered doubly great by 
 the unparalleled purity and elevation of His own cha- 
 racter. He presented the rare spectacle of a life, so far 
 as we can estimate it, uniformly noble and consistent 
 with His own lofty principles, so that the " imitation of 
 Christ" has become almost the final word in the preaching 
 of His Religion, and must continue to be one of the 
 most powerful elements of its permanence." (VoL ii. p. 
 487.) 
 
 It is quite clear from this testimony of an enemy to 
 the Christian religion, as it appears in the Scriptures, 
 that if the Supreme Moral Governor had desired to give 
 to man a revelation of the principles and sanctions of 
 His moral government, He could not have chosen a more 
 fitting instrument. Such a character seems to have 
 been made for the purpose. If He has not revealed God, 
 
 no one has. 
 
 Now, who is this Man Whose figure stands thus pro- 
 minent above His fellows ? 
 
 We believe Him to be our Redeemer; but before He
 
 154 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 redeemed, He laid down the necessity of Redemption by 
 making known to men the true nature of sin and right- 
 eousness, and the most just and inevitable Judgment of 
 God. He revealed to us that there is One above us Who 
 is to the whole race, and to every individual of the race, 
 what our consciences are to ourselves a Judge pro- 
 nouncing a perfect judgment, because He perfectly knows 
 the character of each man, perfectly observes and re- 
 members his conduct, and, moreover, will mete out to 
 each one a just and perfect retribution. 
 
 But still, how are we to know that He has authority 
 to reveal to us such a thing as that God will judge the 
 race and each member of it by a just judgment ? Natural 
 laws reveal to us no such judgment. Nature teaches us 
 that if we transgress certain natural laws we shall be 
 punished. But it teaches no certain judgment either in 
 this life or in any future life which will overtake 
 the transgression of moral laws. A man may defraud, 
 oppress, and seduce, and yet live a prosperous life, and 
 die a quiet, painless death. 
 
 How, then, are we to know that Jesus of Nazareth 
 had authority to reveal that God will set all this right in 
 a future state, and that He Himself will be the direct 
 Agent in bringing the rectification about ? How are we 
 to know that what He says is true respecting a matter of 
 such deep concern to ourselves, and yet so utterly un- 
 known to mere physical nature, and so out of the reach 
 of its powers ? What proof have we of His Revelation, 
 or that it is a Revelation ? The answer is, that as what 
 He revealed is above mere physical nature, so He attested 
 it by the exhibition of power above physical nature 
 the exhibition of the direct power of God. He used
 
 The Evidence for Miracles. 155 
 
 miracles for this purpose ; more particularly He staked 
 the truth of His whole message on the miracle of His own 
 Resurrection. 1 The Eesurrection was to be the assurance 
 of the perfection of both His Redemption and His Judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Now, against all this it is persistently alleged that 
 even if He had the power He could not have performed 
 miracles, because miracles are violations of law, and the 
 Lawgiver cannot violate even mere physical laws ; but 
 this specious fallacy is refuted by the simple assertion 
 that He introduced a new power or force to counteract 
 or modify others, which counteraction or modification of 
 forces is no more than what is taking place in every part 
 of the world at every moment. 
 
 Before proceeding further we will illustrate the fore- 
 going by testing some assertions of the author of " Super- 
 natural Religion." 
 
 " Man," he asserts, " is as much under the influence 
 of gravitation as a stone is " (vol. i. p. 40) . Well, a 
 marble statue is a stone. Can a marble statue, after it is 
 thrown down, rise up again of itself, and stand upon its 
 feet? 
 
 Again 
 
 " The law of gravitation suffers no alteration, whether 
 
 ' '-What sign showest Thou us? Destroy this temple, and in 
 three days I will raise it up : but He spake of the temple of ] 
 Body (John ii. 19-21.) An evil and adulterous generation seeketh 
 after 'a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it but the t 
 the Prophet Jonas, for as Jonas was three days and three night, 
 the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three 
 nlhls L the tart of the earth. (Matt. xii. 39 40) God con,- 
 n^ndeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath appom 
 Tday on which He will judge the world in righteousness by that 
 
 Lnwhom He ^f^^^^^^^^ 
 all inen in that He raised Him from the dead. (Acts xvii. 8(
 
 156 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 it cause the fall of an apple or shape the orbit of a 
 planet" (p. 40). 
 
 Of course the "law" suffers no alteration, but the 
 force of gravitation suffers considerable modification if 
 you catch the apple in your hand, or if the planet has 
 an impulse given to it which compels it to career round 
 the sun instead of falling upon his surface. 
 
 Again (page 40) : 
 
 " The harmonious action of physical laws, and their adapta- 
 bility to an infinite variety of forms, constitutes the perfection 
 of that code which produces the order of nature. The mere 
 superiority of man over lower forms of organic and inor- 
 ganic matter does not lift him above physical laws, and the 
 analogy of every grade in nature forbids the presumption 
 that higher forms may exist which are exempt from their 
 control." 
 
 The number of fallacies in this short passage is re- 
 markable. In the first place laws never act, i.e. of 
 themselves. They have to be administered. Forces or 
 powers act under the restraint of laws. I think I am 
 right in saying that all physical laws, as distinguished 
 from forces, are limitations of force. No man can con- 
 ceive of a law acting by itself. There is no such thing, 
 for instance, as a " Reign of Law." A power acts or, 
 if you please, reigns, according to a law, but laws of 
 themselves can do nothing. 
 
 Again, the author says, "The mere superiority of 
 man over lower forms of organic and inorganic matter 
 does not lift him above physical laws." 
 
 Yes, it does, partially at least, for it enables him, in 
 his sphere, to control the very forces whose action is 
 limited by laws. The superiority of man is shown in his
 
 The Evidence for Miracles. 157 
 
 control of the powers of nature, and making them obey 
 his will. All such inventions as the steam engine or the 
 electric telegraph lift man above certain physical laws, 
 by enabling him to control the forces with which those 
 laws have to do. 
 
 Again, he writes : " The analogy of every grade in 
 nature forbids the presumption that higher forms may 
 exist which are exempt from their control " On the 
 contrary, we assert that the analogy of every grade in 
 nature encourages the presumption that higher forma 
 may exist which can control these forces of nature far 
 more directly and perfectly than we can. 
 
 To proceed. In page 41 we read : 
 
 " If in animated beings we have the solitary instance of an 
 efficient cause acting among the forces of nature, and possess- 
 ing the power of initiation, this efficient cause produces no 
 disturbance of physical law." 
 
 I cite this place, in order to draw attention to what I 
 
 suppose must have struck the careful reader, which is 
 
 the application of the term "solitary instance" to the 
 
 action of animated beings amongst the forces of nature. 
 
 If there had been but one animated being in existence, 
 
 such an epithet might not have been out of place ; but 
 
 when one considers that the world teems with such 
 
 beings, and that by their every movement they modify or 
 
 counteract, in their own case at least, the mightiest of 
 
 all nature's forces, and that no inconsiderable portion of 
 
 the earth's surface owes its conformation to their action, 
 
 we are astonished at finding all this characterized as the 
 
 solitary instance of an efficient cause. But by a sen. 
 
 tence at the bottom of this page we are enlighten* 
 
 to the real reason for so strange a view of the place of
 
 158 The Lost Gospel 
 
 vital powers in the universe. In the eyes of those who 
 persist in, as far as possible, ignoring all laws except 
 physical laws, even to the extent of endeavouring to 
 prove that moral forces themselves are but mere de- 
 veloped forms of physical ones, all manifestations of 
 powers other than those of electricity, gravitation, mag- 
 netism, and so forth, are anomalous, and we have the 
 very word " anomaly" applied to them. "The only 
 anomaly," he writes, " is our ignorance of the nature of 
 vital force. 1 But do we know much more of the physical ?" 
 
 Men who thus concentrate their attention upon mere 
 physical laws or phenomena, get to believe in no others. 
 They are impatient of any things in the universe except 
 what they can number, or measure, or weigh. They are 
 in danger of regarding the Supreme Being Himself as 
 an " anomaly." They certainly seem to do so, when they 
 take every pains to show that the universe can get on 
 perfectly well without His superintending presence and 
 control. 
 
 Whatever odium, then, may be attached to the vio- 
 lation of a natural law, cannot be attached to the action 
 of a superior force, making itself felt amongst lower 
 grades of natural forces. 
 
 If it be rejoined that this superior force must act 
 
 1 This sentence seems extremely carelessly worded. The author 
 cannot possibly mean that our ignorance is the anomaly, for through- 
 out his whole work he assumes that ignorance is the rule in all 
 matters, moral, physical, historical. The Fathers of the second 
 century knew nothing of the Evangelists. St. John knows nothing 
 of the writings of his brother Evangelists. They are all assumed to be 
 ignorant of what they have not actually recorded. We know nothing 
 of vital force, or physical force, or of a revelation. In fact, God 
 Himself is the Unknowable.
 
 The Evidence for Miracles. 159 
 
 according to law, we answer, certainly, but according 
 to what law? Not, of course, according to the law of the 
 force which it counteracts, but according to the law under 
 which itself acts. 
 
 The question of miracles, then, is a matter of evidence; 
 but we all know what a power human beings have of 
 accepting or rejecting evidence according as they look 
 for it or are prejudiced against it. 
 
 If men concentrate their thought upon the lower 
 forces of the universe, and explain the functions of life, 
 and even such powers as affection, will, reason, and con- 
 science, as if they were modifications of mere physical 
 powers, and ignore a higher Will, and an all-controlling 
 Mind, and a personal superintending Providence, what 
 wonder if they are indisposed to receive any such direct 
 manifestation of God as the Resurrection of Jesus, for 
 the Eesurrection of Jesus is the pledge of a righteous 
 Judgment and Retribution which, however it takes place, 
 will be the most astounding " anomaly " amidst the mere 
 physical phenomena of the universe, whilst it will be the 
 necessary completion of its moral order. 
 
 The proof of miracles is then, as I said, a matter of 
 evidence. When Hume asserts that "a miracle is a 
 violation of the laws of nature/' we meet him with the 
 counter-assertion that it is rather the new manifestation 
 in this order of things of the oldest of powers, that 
 which originally introduced life into a lifeless world. 
 
 When he says that " a firm and unalterable experience 
 has established these laws," we say that science teaches 
 us that there must have been epochs in the history of the 
 world when new forces made their appearance on the 
 scene, for it teaches us that the world was once incan-
 
 160 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 descent, and so incapable of supporting any conceivable 
 form of animal life, but that at a certain geological 
 period life made its appearance. 
 
 Now, we believe that it is just as wonderful, and con- 
 trary to the experience of a lifeless world, that life should 
 appear on that world, as that it is contrary to the ex- 
 perience of the -present state of things, that a dead body 
 should be raised. 
 
 When he asserts that a miraculous event is contrary 
 to uniform experience, we can only reply that it is not 
 contrary to the experience of the Evangelists, of St. 
 Peter and St. Paul, and of the other Apostles and com- 
 panions of the Lord ; that it was not contrary to the ex- 
 perience of the multitudes who were miraculously fed, 
 and of the multitudes who were miraculously healed. 
 When it is replied to this, that we have insufficient evi- 
 dence of the fact that these persons witnessed miracles, 
 we rejoin that there is far greater evidence, both in 
 quality and amount, for these miracles, especially for the 
 crowning one, than there is for any fact of profane 
 history ; but, if there was twice the evidence that there 
 is, its reception must depend upon the state of mind of 
 the recipient himself. 
 
 If a man, whilst professing to believe in " a God 
 under whose beneficent government we know that all 
 that is consistent with wise and omnipotent law is pros- 
 pered and brought to perfection," yet has got himself 
 to believe that such a God cannot introduce into any part 
 of the universe a new power or force, as for instance that 
 He is bound not to introduce vital force into a lifeless 
 world, or mental power into a reasonless world, or moral 
 power into a world of free agents, but must leave these
 
 The Evidence for Miracles . 161 
 
 forces to work themselves out of non-existence ; if a 
 man, I say, has got himself to believe in such a Being, 
 he will not, of course, believe in any testimony to 
 miracles as accrediting a Revelation from Him, and so 
 he will do his best to get rid of them after the fashion 
 in which we have seen the author of " Supernatural 
 Eeligion " attempt to get rid of the testimony of Justin 
 Martyr to the use of the Four Gospels in his day.
 
 SECTION XXI. 
 OBJECTIONS TO MIRACLES. 
 
 I WILL now briefly dispose of two or three of the 
 collateral objections against miracles. 
 1 . The author of " Supernatural Religion " makes 
 much of the fact that the Scripture writers recognize 
 that there may be, and have been, Satanic as well as 
 Divine Miracles, and he argues that this destroys all the 
 evidential value of a miracle. He writes : 
 
 " Even taking the representation of miracles, therefore, 
 which Divines themselves give, they are utterly incompetent 
 to perform their contemplated functions. If they are super- 
 human, they are not super-Satanic, and there is no sense in 
 which they can be considered miraculously evidential of any- 
 thing." (Vol. i. p. 25.) 
 
 Now, this difficulty is the merest theoretical one, a 
 difficulty, as the saying is, on paper ; and never can be 
 a practical one to any sincere believer in the holiness of 
 God and the reality of goodness. Take the miracle of 
 miracles, the seal of all that is supernatural in our re- 
 ligion, the Resurrection of Christ. If there be a con- 
 flict now going on between God and Satan, can there be 
 a doubt as to the side to which this miracle is to be 
 assigned ? It is given to prove the reality of a Redemp- 
 tion which all those who accept it know to be a Redemp-
 
 Objections to Miracles. 153 
 
 tion from the power of Satan. It is given to confirm 
 the sanctions of morality by the assurance of a judgment 
 to come. If Satan had performed it, he would have 
 been simply casting out himself. If this miracle of the 
 Resurrection be granted, all else goes along with it, and 
 the children of God are fortified against the influence, 
 real or counterfeit, of any diabolical miracle whatsoever. 
 
 The miracles of the New Testament are not performed, 
 as far as I can remember, in any single instance, to prove 
 the truth of any one view of doctrinal Christianity as 
 against another, but to evidence the reality of the Mission 
 of the Divine Founder as the Son of God, and " the 
 Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the 
 works of the devil." 
 
 2. With respect to what are called ecclesiastical 
 miracles, i. e. miracles performed after the Apostolic age, 
 the author of " Supernatural Religion " recounts the 
 notices of a considerable number, assumes that they are 
 all false, and uses this assumed falsehood as a means of 
 bringing odium on the accounts of the miracles of Christ. 
 
 More particularly he draws attention to certain miracles 
 recorded in the works of St. Augustine, of one at least 
 of which he (Augustine) declares he was an eye-witness. 
 
 Now, the difficulty raised upon these and similar ac- 
 counts appears to me to be as purely theoretical as the 
 one respecting Satanic miracles. If there be truth in 
 the New Testament, it is evident that the Founder of 
 Christianity not only worked miracles Himself, but gave 
 power to His followers to do the same. When was this 
 power of performing miracles withdrawn from the Church ? 
 Our Lord, when He gave the power, gave no intimation 
 that it would ever be withdrawn, rather the contrary.
 
 164 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 However, even in Apostolic times, the performance of 
 them seems to have become less frequent as the Church 
 became a recognized power in the world. For instance, 
 in the earlier Epistles of St. Paul the exercise of miraculous 
 gifts seems to have been a recognized part of the Church's 
 system, and in the later ones (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) 
 they are scarcely noticed. ' If we are to place any cre- 
 dence whatsoever in ecclesiastical history, the perform- 
 ance of miracles seems never to have ceased, though 
 in later times very rare in comparison with what they 
 must have been in the first age. 
 
 Now, if the miracles recorded by Augustine, or any 
 of them, were true and real, the only inference is that 
 the action of miraculous power continued in the Church 
 to a far later date than some modern writers allow. If, 
 on the contrary, they are false, then they take their place 
 among hosts of other counterfeits of what is good and 
 true. They no more go to prove the non-existence of 
 the real miracles which they caricature, than any other 
 counterfeit proves the non-existence of the thing of 
 which it is the counterfeit. Nay, rather, the very fact 
 that they are counterfeits proves the existence of that of 
 which they are counterfeits. The Ecclesiastical miracles 
 are clearly not independent miracles ; true or false, they 
 depend upon the miraculous powers of the early Church. 
 If any of them are true, then these powers continued in 
 the Church to a late date; if they are false accounts 
 (whether wilfully or through mistake, makes no dif- 
 
 1 Perhaps 1 Tim. i. 20, iv. 14; 2 Tim i. 6, may refer to such 
 gifts ; but the contrast between such slight intimations and the full 
 recognition in 1 Cor. xii. and xiv. is very great.
 
 Objections to Miracles. 1(J5 
 
 ference), their falsehood is one testimony out of many to 
 the miraculous origin of the dispensation. 
 
 Those recorded by Augustine are in no sense evi- 
 dential. Nothing came of them except the relief, real 
 or supposed, granted to the sufferers. No message from 
 God was supposed to be accredited by them. No attempt 
 was made to spread the knowledge of them ; indeed, so 
 far from this, in one case at least, Augustine is " indig- 
 nant at the apathy of the friends of one who had been 
 miraculously cured of a cancer, that they allowed so 
 great a miracle to be so little known." (Vol. ii. p. 171.) 
 In every conceivable respect they stand in the greatest 
 contrast to the Resurrection of Christ. 
 
 Each case of an Ecclesiastical miracle must be examined 
 (if one cares to do so) apart, on its own merits. I can 
 firmly believe in the reality of some, whilst the greater 
 part are doubtful, and many are wicked impostures. 
 These last, of course, give occasion to the enemy to dis- 
 parage the whole system of which they are assumed to 
 be a part, but they tell against Christianity only in the 
 same sense in which all tolerated falsehood or evil in the 
 Church obscures its witness to those eternal truths of 
 which it is " the pillar and the ground." 
 
 Now, all this is equally applicable to Superstition 
 generally in relation to the supernatural. As the coun- 
 terfeit miracles of the later ages witness that there 
 must have been true ones to account for the very ex- 
 istence of the counterfeit, so the universal existence of 
 Superstition witnesses to the reality of those supernatural 
 interpositions of which it is the distorted image. If 
 Hume's doctrine be true, that a miracle, t. e. a super- 
 natural interposition, is contrary to universal experience
 
 166 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 and so incredible if from the first beginning of things 
 there has been one continuous sequence of natural cause 
 and effect, unbroken by the interposition of any superior 
 power, how is it that mankind have ever formed a con- 
 ception of a supernatural power? And yet the concep- 
 tion, in the shape of superstition at least, is absolutely 
 universal. Tribes who have no idea of the existence of 
 God, use charms and incantations to propitiate unseen 
 powers. 
 
 Now, the distortion witnesses to the reality of that of 
 which it is the distortion ; the caricature to the existence 
 of the feature caricatured. And so the universality of 
 the existence of Superstition witnesses to the reality 
 of these supernatural revelations and interpositions to 
 which alone such a thing can be referred as its origin.
 
 SECTION XXII. 
 JEWISH CREDULITY. 
 
 A NOTHER argument which the author of " Super- 
 JT\ natural Religion" uses to discredit miracles, is the 
 superstition of the Jews, especially in our Lord's time, 
 and their readiness to believe any miraculous story. He 
 seems to suppose that this superstition reached its ex- 
 treme point in the age in which Christ lived, which he 
 calls " the age of miracles/' He also assumes that it 
 was an age of strong religious feeling and excitement. 
 He says : 
 
 " During the whole life of Christ, and the early propaga- 
 tion of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took 
 place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had 
 made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural 
 events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily 
 superseded by some new demand on the ever ready belief." 
 (Vol. i. p. 98.) 
 
 He proceeds to devote above twenty pages to instances 
 of the superstition and credulity of the Jews about the 
 time of Christ. The contents of these pages would be 
 amusing if they did not reveal such deep mental de- 
 gradation in a race which Christians regard as sacred, 
 because of God's dealings with their fathers. 
 
 Most readers, however, of these pages on the Demon-
 
 168 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 ology and Angelology of the Jews will, I think, be 
 affected by them in a totally different way, and will 
 draw a very different inference, from what the writer in- 
 tends. The thoughtful reader will ask, " How could 
 the Evangelical narratives be the outcome of such a 
 hotbed of superstition as the author describes that time 
 to have been ? " It is quite impossible, it is incredible 
 that the same natural cause, i. e. the prevalence of super- 
 stition, should have produced about the same time the 
 Book of Enoch and the Gospel according to St. Matthew. 
 And this is the more remarkable from the fact that the 
 Gospels are in no sense more Sadducean than the Book 
 of Enoch. The being and agency of good and evil 
 spirits is as fully recognized in the inspired writings as 
 in the Apocryphal, but with what a difference ! I append 
 in a note a part of the author's reproduction of the Book 
 of Enoch, that the reader may see how necessary it is, 
 on all principles of common sense, to look for some very 
 different explanation of the origin of the Evangelical 
 narratives than that given by the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion." l 
 
 1 " The author [of the book of Enoch] not only relates the fall of 
 the angels through love for the daughters of men, but gives the 
 names of twenty-one of them, and their leaders, of whom Jequn was 
 he who seduced the Holy Angels, and Ashbeel it was who gave 
 them evil counsel and corrupted them. A third, Gadreel, was he 
 who seduced Eve. He also taught to the children of men the use 
 and manufacture of all murderous weapons, of coats of mail, shields, 
 swords, and of all the implements of war. Another evil angel, named 
 Penemue, taught them many mysteries of wisdom. He instructed 
 men in the art of writing with paper and ink, by means of which, 
 the author remarks, many fall into sin, even to the present day. 
 Kaodeja, another evil angel, taught the human race all the wicked 
 practices of spirits and demons, and also magic and exorcism. The 
 offspring of the fallen angels and of the daughters of men, were giants
 
 Jewish Credulity. 169 
 
 In the Evangelical narratives I need hardly say the 
 angels are simply messengers, as their name imports, 
 and absolutely nothing more. When one describes 
 himself it is in the words, " I am Gabriel that stand in 
 the presence of God, and am sent to speak unto thee and 
 to show thee these glad tidings." 
 
 On the credulity of the Jews in our Lord's time, I 
 repeat the author's remarks : 
 
 " During the whole life of Christ, and the early propaga- 
 tion of the religion, it must be borne in mind that they took 
 place in an age, and among a people, which superstition had 
 made so familiar with what were supposed to be preternatural 
 events, that wonders awakened no emotion, or were speedily 
 
 whose height was 3,000 ells, of these are the demons working evil 
 upon earth. Azayel taught men various arts, the making of bracelets 
 and ornaments, the use of cosmetics, the way to beautify the eye- 
 brows, precious stones and all dye-stuffs and metals, &c. The stars are 
 represented as animated beings. Enoch sees seven stars bound to- 
 gether in space like great mountains, and flaming with fire, and he 
 enquires of the angel who leads him on account of what sin they 
 are so bound. Uriel informs him that they are stars which have 
 transgressed the commands of the Most High, and they are thus 
 bound until ten thousand worlds, the number of the days of their 
 transgression, shall be accomplished." So far for the " Angelology." 
 As to the demons, " Their number is infinite .... they are about 
 as close as the earth thrown up out of a newly made grave. It is 
 stated that each man has 10,000 demons at his right hand, and 1,000 
 on his left. The crush in the synagogue on the Sabbath arises from 
 them, also the dresses of the Rabbins become so old and torn through 
 their rubbing ; in like manner also they cause the tottering of the 
 feet. He who wishes to discover these spirits must take sifted ashes 
 and strew them about his bed, and in the morning he will perceive 
 their footprints upon them like a cock's tread. If any one wish to 
 see them, he must take the after-birth of a black cat, which has been 
 littered by a first-born black cat, and whose mother was also a first- 
 birth, burn and reduce it to powder, and put some of it on his eyes, 
 and he will see them." (Vol. i. pp. 104 and 111). And this is the 
 stuff which the author would have us believe was the real origin of 
 the supernatural in the life of Jesus !
 
 170 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 superseded by some new demand on the ever-ready belief." 
 (Vol. i. p. 98.) 
 
 Now, if the records of our Lord's life in the Gospels 
 are not a tissue of falsehoods from beginning to end, 
 this account of things is absolutely untrue. The miracles 
 of Jesus awakened the greatest astonishment, betokening 
 a time as unfamiliar with the actual performance of 
 such things as our own. 
 
 For instance, after the first casting out of a devil re- 
 corded in St. Mark, it is said : 
 
 "They were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned 
 among themselves,- saying, What thing is this ? What new 
 doctrine is this ? For with authority commandeth He even 
 the unclean spirits, and they do obey Him." (Mark i. 29.) 
 
 In the next chapter, after the account of the healing 
 of the sick of the palsy, it is said : 
 
 "They were all amazed and glorified God, saying, We 
 never saw it on this fashion." (ii. 12.) 
 
 Again (St. Luke v. 26), after the casting out of a 
 devil : "They were all amazed/' Again, Luke ix. 43 
 (also after the casting out of a devil), " They were all 
 amazed at the mighty power of God." 1 
 
 From the account in St. John, the miracle of the 
 opening of the eyes of the man born blind seems to 
 have excited unbounded astonishment : 
 
 " Since the world began was it not heard that any man 
 
 1 See also Mark v. 42 (healing of Jairus' daughter), " They were 
 astonished with a great astonishment." Mark vii. 37 (healing of 
 deaf man with impediment in his speech), " They were beyond 
 measure astonished." Luke v. 9, " He was astonished at the draught 
 of fishes;" viii. 56, " Her parents were astonished."
 
 Jewish Credulity. 171 
 
 opened the eyes of one that was born blind." " Can a devil 
 open the eyes of the blind ? " (John ix. 32, x. 21.) 
 
 But more than this. If there be any truth whatso- 
 ever in the Gospel narrative, the disciples themselves, 
 instead of exhibiting anything approaching to the cre- 
 dulity with which the author of " Supernatural Re- 
 ligion " taxes the contemporaries of Christ, exhibited 
 rather a spirit of unbelief. If they had transmitted to 
 us " cunningly devised fables/' they never would have re- 
 corded such instances of their own slowness of belief as 
 is evinced by their conduct respecting the feeding of the 
 four thousand following upon the feeding of the five 
 thousand, when they ask the same question in the face 
 of the same difficulty respecting the supply of food. 
 
 Above all, their slowness of belief in the Resurrection 
 of Christ after their Master's direct assertion that He 
 would rise again, is directly opposed to the idea sug- 
 gested by the author of " Supernatural Religion," that 
 they were ready to believe anything which seemed to 
 favour His pretensions. 
 
 Now, it may be alleged that these instances of the 
 slowness of belief on the part of our Lord's immediate 
 followers, and the conduct of the multitudes who ex- 
 pressed such wonder at His miracles, are contrary to one 
 another, but they are not ; for the astonishment of the 
 multitudes did not arise from credulity in the least, but 
 was the expression of that state of mind which must 
 exist (no matter how carefully it is concealed), when 
 some unlooked-for occurrence, totally inexplicable on any 
 natural principles, presents itself. I cite it to show how 
 utterly unfamiliar that age was with even the pretence of 
 the exhibition of miraculous powers. If there be any
 
 172 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 substratum of truth whatsoever in the accounts of the 
 slowness of belief on the part of the Apostles, it is a 
 proof that our Lord's most familiar friends were any- 
 thing but the superstitious persons which certain writers 
 assume them to have been.
 
 SECTION XXIII. 
 DEMONIACAL POSSESSION. 
 
 THE question of Demoniacal Possession now de- 
 mands a passing notice. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion " ascribes all 
 such phenomena to imposture or delusion; and, inas- 
 much as these supposed miracles of casting out of evil 
 spirits are associated with other miracles of Christ in 
 the same narrative, he uses the odium with which this 
 class of miracles is in this day regarded, for the purpose 
 of discrediting the miracles of healing and the Eesur- 
 rection of Jesus. 
 
 I cannot help expressing my surprise at the difficulty 
 which some writers, who desire fully and faithfully to 
 uphold the supernatural, seem to have respecting De- 
 moniacal Possession. The difficulty seems to me to be 
 not in the action of evil spirits in this or in that way, 
 but in their existence. And yet the whole analogy of 
 nature, and the state of man in this world, would lead 
 us to believe, not only in the objective existence of a 
 world of spirits, but in the separation of their characters 
 into good and evil. 
 
 Those who deny the fact of an actually existing 
 spiritual world of angels, if they are Atheists, must 
 believe that man is the highest rational existence in the 
 universe ; but this is absurd, for the intellect of man is 
 plainly very circumscribed, and he is slowly discovering
 
 174 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 laws which account for the phenomena which he sees, 
 which laws were operative for ages before he discovered 
 them, and imply infinitely more intellect in their in- 
 vention, so to speak, and imposition and nice adjustment 
 with one another, than he shows in their mere discovery. 
 A student, for instance, has a problem put before him, 
 say upon the adjustments of the forces of the heavenly 
 bodies. The solution, if it evinces intelligence in him, 
 must evince more and older intelligence in the man 
 who sets him the problem; but if the conditions of the 
 problem truly represent the acts of certain forces and 
 their compensations, can we possibly deny that there is 
 an intellect infinitely above ours who calculated before- 
 hand their compensations and adjustments. All the 
 laws of the universe must be assumed to be, even if they 
 are not believed to be, the work of a personal intellect 
 absolutely infinite, whose operations cannot be confined 
 to this world, for it gives laws to all bodies, no matter 
 how distant. The same reasoning, then, which shows 
 that there is an intelligent will, because it can solve a 
 problem, necessitates an infinitely higher Intelligence 
 which can order the motions of distant worlds by laws 
 of which our highest calculative processes are perhaps 
 very clumsy representations. 
 
 Those who, like the author of " Supernatural Religion," 
 are good enough to admit (with limitations) the ex- 
 istence of a Supreme Being, and yet deny the existence 
 of a spiritual world above ours, seem to me to act still 
 more absurdly. For the whole analogy of the world of 
 nature would lead us to infer that, as there is a descend- 
 ing scale of animated beings below man reaching down 
 to the lowest forms of life, so there is an ascending scale
 
 Demoniacal Possession. 175 
 
 above him, between him and God. The deniers of the 
 existence of such beings as angels undertake to assert 
 that there are no beings between ourselves and the 
 Supreme Being, because nature (meaning by nature 
 certain lower brute forces, such as gravitation and elec- 
 tricity) , " knows nothing " of them. 
 
 The Scriptures, on the contrary, would lead us to 
 believe that just as in the natural world there are grada- 
 tions of beings between ourselves and the lowest forms 
 of life, so in the spiritual world (and we belong to both 
 worlds) there are gradations of beings between ourselves 
 and God Who created all things. 
 
 The Scriptures would lead us to believe that these 
 beings are intelligent free agents, and, as such, have had 
 their time of probation that some fell under their trial, 
 and are now the enemies of God as wicked men are, and 
 that others stood in the time of trial and continue the 
 willing servants of God. 
 
 The Scriptures reveal that good angels act as good 
 men do ; they endeavour, as far as lies in their power, 
 to confirm others in goodness and in the service of God ; 
 and that evil angels act as evil men act, they endeavour 
 to seduce others and to involve them in their own con- 
 demnation. 
 
 The Scriptures say nothing to satisfy our curiosity 
 about these beings, as Apocryphal books do. They 
 simply describe the one as sent on errands of mercy, and 
 the other as delighting in tempting men and inflicting 
 pain. The mystery of the fall of some of these angels, 
 and their consequent opposition to God, is no difficulty in 
 itself. It is simply the oldest form of that which is to 
 those who believe in the reality of the holiness and good-
 
 1 76 The Lost Gospel 
 
 ness of God the great problem of the universe the 
 origin and continuance of evil. It is simply the counter- 
 part amongst a world of free agents above us of what 
 takes place according to the [so-called] natural order of 
 things amongst ourselves. 
 
 That evil angels can tempt the souls of men, and in 
 some cases injure their bodies, is not a whit more difficult 
 than that evil men can do the same under the govern- 
 ment of a God who exerts so universal a providence as is 
 described in the Bible, and allowed to some extent by the 
 author of (( Supernatural Religion." 
 
 I confess that I cannot understand the difficulty which 
 some Christian writers evidently feel respecting the 
 existence of such a thing as Demoniacal possession, 
 whilst they seem to feel, or at least they express no 
 difficulty, respecting Demoniacal temptation. Demo- 
 niacal possession is the infliction of a physical evil for 
 which the man is not accountable, but demoniacal temp- 
 tation is an attempt to deprive a man of that for the 
 keeping of which he is accountable, viz. his own in- 
 nocence. Demoniacal possession is a temporal evil. 
 The yielding to demoniacal temptation may cast a 
 man for ever out of the favour of God. And yet de- 
 moniacal temptation is perfectly analogous to human 
 temptation. A human seducer has it in his power, if 
 his suggestions are received, to corrupt innocence, render 
 life miserable, undermine faith in God and in Christ, and 
 destroy the hopes of eternity and a diabolical seducer 
 can do no more. 
 
 Again, the Scriptures seem to teach us that these 
 wicked spirits are the authors of certain temporal evils, 
 and I do not see that there is anything unreasonable in
 
 Demoniacal Possession. 177 
 
 the fact, if it be granted, that there are spirits who 
 exist independent of bodily frames that these spirits 
 are free agents, and have different characters, and act 
 according to their characters, and also that, according to 
 the laws (i.e. within the limitations) of their nature, 
 they have power to act upon those below them in the 
 scale of being, just as we can act upon creatures below 
 us according to the limitations, i. e. the laws, of our 
 nature. We are in our way able to inflict evil or to 
 ward off evil from our fellow creatures, under the limi- 
 tations, or laws which a higher Power has set over 
 us; and the Scriptures teach us that there are other 
 beings in the great spiritual kingdom of God who are 
 able to do us good or mischief under the conditions 
 which the same Supreme Power has imposed on their 
 action. So that the one thing which the Scriptures reveal 
 to us is, that there is a far vaster spiritual kingdom of 
 God than the human race. 
 
 With respect to demoniacal possession, our difficulties 
 arise from two things from our utter ignorance of the 
 nature and real causes of mental diseases, and from our 
 ignorance of the way in which purely spiritual beings 
 can act upon beings such as ourselves, who ordinarily 
 receive impressions only through our bodily organs. 
 We know not, for instance, how God Himself acts upon 
 our spirits, and yet, if He cannot, He has less power over 
 us than we have over one another. 
 
 Eespecting the fact of God permitting such a thing 
 as possession, there is no more real difficulty than is in- 
 volved in His permitting such a thing as madness. The 
 symptoms of possession seem generally to have resembled 
 mania, and ascribing certain sorts of mania to evil 
 
 N
 
 178 The Lost Gospel 
 
 spirits is only assigning one cause rather than another to 
 a disease of whose nature we are profoundly ignorant. 1 
 
 Again, if we take into consideration the fact that in 
 not a few cases madness is produced by moral causes, 
 by yielding to certain temptations, as, for instance, to 
 drunkenness, there will be still less difficulty in believing 
 that madness, arising from the action of an evil being, 
 may be the punishment of yielding to the seductions of 
 that evil being. 
 
 The miraculous cure of demoniacal possession presents, 
 I need hardly say, less physical difficulty than any other 
 cure performed by our Lord. Assuming the presence 
 of an evil spiritual existence in the possessed person 
 coming face to face with the most exalted spiritual Power 
 and Goodness, the natural result is that the one quails 
 before the other. 
 
 But, in truth, all the difficulties respecting possession 
 arise not so much from our ignorance, as from our dog- 
 matism. We assert the dogma, or at least we quietly 
 assume the dogma, that there are no spiritual or in- 
 tellectual beings between ourselves and God ; or, if we 
 shrink from an assertion which so nearly implies our own 
 omniscience, we lay down that these superior beings, of 
 whose laws we know nothing, can only act upon us in 
 ways precisely similar to those on which we act upon one 
 another. 
 
 1 There cannot be the slightest doubt but that certain cases of 
 madness or mania present all the appearances of possession as it is 
 described in Scripture. Another personality, generally intensely 
 evil, has possession of the mind, speaks instead of the afflicted person, 
 throws the patient into convulsions, in fact, exhibits all the 
 symptoms of the ancient demoniacs. I have now before me the 
 record of five or six such cases attested by German physicians.
 
 SECTION XXIV. 
 COMPETENT WITNESSES. 
 
 A NOTHER objection which the author of " Super- 
 lT\ natural Religion" urges against the credibility of 
 our Lord's miracles, is that they were not performed be- 
 fore what he considers competent witnesses. 
 
 " Their occurrence [he writes] is limited to ages which 
 were totally ignorant of physical laws." (Vol. i. p. 201.) 
 
 Again, he speaks of the age as one 
 
 " in which not only the grossest superstition and credulity 
 prevailed, but in which there was such total ignorance of 
 natural laws that men were incapable of judging of that 
 reality \i. e. of miracles]." (P. 204.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " The discussion of miracles, then, is not one regarding 
 miracles actually performed within our own knowledge, but 
 merely regarding miracles said to have been performed 
 eighteen hundred years ago, the reality of which was not 
 verified at the time by any scientific examination." (P. 208.) 
 
 From this we gather that the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion" considers that the miracles of Christ should 
 have been tested by scientific men; but we ask, By what 
 scientific men ? It is clear that if the testing was to 
 have been satisfactory to those who think like the author
 
 180 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 of " Supernatural Religion/' they must have been scien- 
 tific men who approached the whole matter in a spirit of 
 scepticism. Our Blessed Lord (I speak it with all re- 
 verence) , if He cared to satisfy such men, should have 
 delayed His coming to the present time, or should have 
 called up out of the future, or created for this purpose, 
 men who had doubts respecting the personality of God, 
 who held Him to be fitly described as the Unknown and 
 the Unknowable ; who, to say the least, were in a state of 
 suspense as to whether, if there be a Supreme Being, He 
 can reveal Himself or make His will known. In fact, He 
 must have called up, or created for the purpose, some in- 
 dividuals of a school of physicists which had no existence 
 till 1,800 years after His time. For, if He had called 
 into existence such witnesses as Sir Isaac Newton, or 
 Sir Humphrey Davy, or Cuvier, or Faraday, they would 
 have fallen down and worshipped. 
 
 But, in truth, such witnesses, whether believing or 
 sceptical, would have found no place for their science, 
 for the miracles of Christ were of such a kind that the 
 most scientific doubter could have no more accounted for 
 them than the most ignorant. The miracle of which, 
 next to our Lord's own Resurrection, we have the fullest 
 evidence, is that of the feeding of the 5,000 ; for it is 
 recorded by each one of the four Evangelists.. Now, if 
 this miracle had been performed in the presence of the 
 members of all the scientific societies now in existence, 
 their knowledge of natural laws could have contributed 
 nothing ta its detection or explanation. They could 
 have merely laid it down to trick or deception, just as 
 any of the unscientific persons present could have done, 
 and perhaps did. The miracle was performed in the
 
 Competent Witnesses. 181 
 
 open. Our Lord must have been on some elevated 
 ground where His voice could have reached some con- 
 siderable part of the multitude, and on which every act 
 of His could be observed. More than a thousand loaves 
 would have been necessary, requiring the assistance of, 
 say a hundred men, to collect them and bring them from 
 a distance. This, too, is not one of those miracles which 
 can be explained by the convenient hypothesis of a "sub- 
 stratum of truth. " It is either a direct exhibition of the 
 creative power of God, or a fiction as unworthy of a mo- 
 ment's serious consideration as a story in the "Arabian 
 Nights/' 
 
 It is folly to imagine that such an act required scien- 
 tific men to verify it. If the matter was either a reality, 
 or presented that appearance of reality which the nar- 
 rative implies, then the scientific person would have been 
 stupefied, or in trembling and astonishment he would 
 have fallen on his face like another opponent of the 
 truth; or, may be, his very reason would have been 
 shattered at the discovery that here before him was that 
 very supernatural and divine Working in Whose existence 
 he had been doing his best to persuade his fellow crea- 
 tures to disbelieve. 
 
 The Scripture narratives, if they are not altogether 
 devoid of truth, lead us to believe that our Lord per- 
 formed His miracles in the face of three sects or parties 
 of enemies, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodiansj each 
 one rejecting His claims on grounds of its own. 
 were also performed in a populous city, of which al 
 rulers and the mass of the inhabitants were hosb 
 His pretensions. Such a place could never have bee, 
 chosen as the scene of a miraculous event, known by
 
 182 The Lost Gospel 
 
 those who promulgated it to have had no foundation in 
 truth, and withal assumed to have been known through- 
 out the city at the time, and to have been productive of 
 a series of results, miraculous and ordinary, which were 
 asserted to have commenced at the moment of its oc- 
 currence. 
 
 The writer of " Supernatural Religion" would dis- 
 parage the accounts of our Lord's supernatural works 
 and Resurrection, because such accounts are to be found 
 only in the writings of " enthusiastic followers," not in 
 those of indifferent persons ; but the nature of the case 
 almost excludes all other testimony : for the miracles of 
 our Lord were wrought for an evidential purpose, to 
 convince the Jews especially that He was the Christ, the 
 hope of their fathers, and, as such, was not only to be 
 believed in, but to be obeyed and followed. The only 
 sign of real true belief was that the man who professed 
 to believe joined that society which was instituted for 
 the purpose of propagating and keeping alive the truth 
 of His Messiahship. If any one who professed to be- 
 lieve stopped short of joining this society, his testimony 
 to miracles would have been valueless, for the miracles 
 were wrought to convince him of the truth of a matter in 
 which, if he believed, he was bound to profess his belief, 
 and, if he did not, he laid himself open to the charge of 
 not really believing the testimony. 
 
 Now, of course, the reader is aware that we have a 
 signal proof of the validity of this argument in the well- 
 known passage in Josephus which relates to our Lord. 
 Josephus was the historian, and the only historian, of the 
 period in which our Lord flourished. The eighteenth 
 book of his " Antiquities of the Jews" covers the whole
 
 Competent Witnesses. 183 
 
 period of our Lord's life. If our Lord had merely 
 attracted attention as a teacher of righteousness, which 
 it is allowed on all hands that He did, it was likely that 
 He would have been mentioned in this book along with 
 others whose teaching produced far less results. Men- 
 tion appears to be made of Him in the following words : 
 
 " Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be 
 lawful to call him a man, for He was a doer of wonderful 
 works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with plea- 
 sure. He drew over to Him both many of the Jews and many 
 of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, 
 at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had con- 
 demned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first 
 did not forsake Him; for He appeared to them alive again 
 the third day ; as the Divine prophets had foretold these and 
 ten thousand other wonderful things concerning Him. And 
 the tribe of Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct at 
 this day." 
 
 Now, on external grounds there seems little doubt of 
 the genuineness of this passage. It is in all copies of 
 the historian's work, and is quoted in full by Eusebius, 
 though not alluded to by fathers previous to his day. 1 
 If it is an interpolation, it must have been by the 
 hand of a Christian; and yet it is absolutely incon- 
 ceivable that any Christian should have noticed the 
 Christian Church in such words as " the tribe of Chris- 
 tians, so named from Him, are not extinct at this day." 
 It would have been absurd beyond measure to have de- 
 scribed the Christians, so early as Justin's time even, as 
 
 1 The reader will find the references to it discussed in a disserta- 
 tion at the end of Whiston's " Josephus." Lardner utterly denies 
 its authenticity. Daubuz, however, has, I think, clearly pro. 
 style and phraseology to be those of Josephus.
 
 184 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 "not extinct/' when they were filling the world with 
 their doctrine, and their increase was a source of great 
 perplexity and trouble to the Roman Government. It is 
 just what a Jew of Josephus' time would have written 
 who really believed that Jesus wrought miracles, but 
 expected that nothing permanent would result from 
 them. 
 
 And yet there can be no doubt but that the passage is 
 open to this insurmountable objection, that if Josephus 
 had written it he would have professed himself a Chris- 
 tian, or a man of incredible inconsistency. Setting aside 
 the difficulty connected with the acknowledgment of 
 Jesus as the Christ, inasmuch as this name was frequently 
 given to Him by those who did not believe in Him, yet 
 how could Josephus state that His Resurrection was 
 predicted by the prophets of his nation, and continue in 
 appearance an unbeliever ? 
 
 But, whether genuine or not, this passage is decisive 
 as to the impossibility of what is styled an independent 
 testimony to our Lord : " He that is not with Me is 
 against Me." The facts of our Lord's chief miracles and 
 Resurrection were such, that the nearer men lived to the 
 time the more impossible it would have been for them 
 to have suspended their judgment. 
 
 So that, instead of having the witness of men who, by 
 their prudent suspension of judgment, betrayed their 
 lurking unbelief, we have the testimony of men who, by 
 their surrender of themselves, soul and body, evinced 
 their undoubting faith in a matter in which there could 
 be really no middle opinion.
 
 SECTION XXV. 
 DATE OF TESTIMONY. 
 
 ONE point remains the time to which the testi- 
 mony to our Lord's miracles reaches back. Can 
 it be reasonably said to reach to within fifty years of His 
 Death, or to within twenty, or even nearer ? 
 
 The author of Supernatural Religion" asserts that 
 it was not contemporaneous or anything like it. In 
 fact, one might infer from his book that the miracles of 
 Christ were not heard of till say a century, or three 
 quarters of a century, after His time, for he says, " they 
 were never heard of out of Palestine until long after the 
 events are said to have occurred/' 1 (P. 192.) 
 
 In such a case, " long after " is very indefinite. It 
 may be a century, or three quarters of a century, or 
 perhaps half a century. It cannot be less, for every 
 generation contains a considerable number of persons 
 whose memories reach back for forty or fifty years. In 
 a place of 3,000 inhabitants, in which I am now writing, 
 there are above fifty persons who can perfectly remember 
 
 1 Singular that he should say " out of Palestine," for if they were 
 false they would be first heard of at a distance from the scene of 
 their supposed occurrence. Jerusalem, so full of bitter enemies of 
 Christ, was the last place in which His Resurrection was likely to be 
 promulgated.
 
 186 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 all that took place in 1830. There are some whose 
 memories reach to twenty years earlier. Now let the 
 reader try and imagine, if he can, the possibility of as- 
 cribing a number of remarkable acts we will not say 
 miraculous ones to some one who died in 1830, and 
 assuming also that these events were the basis of a 
 society which had commenced with his death, and was 
 now making way, and that the chief design of the 
 society was to make known or keep up the memory 
 of these events, and that there had been a literature 
 written between the present time and the time of the 
 said man's death, every line of which had been written 
 on the assumption that the events in question were true, 
 and yet these events had never really taken place. We 
 must also suppose that the person upon whom these 
 acts are attempted to be fastened was regarded with in- 
 tense dislike by the great majority of his contemporaries, 
 who did all they could to ruin him when alive, and 
 blacken his memory after he had died, and who looked 
 with especial dislike on the idea that he was supposed to 
 have done the acts in question. Let the reader, I say, 
 try and imagine all this, and he will see that, in the case 
 of our Lord, the author's " long after " must be sixty or 
 seventy years at the least ; more likely a hundred. 
 
 Let us now summon another witness to the super- 
 natural, whose testimony we promised to consider, and 
 this shall be Clement of Rome the earliest author to 
 whom it has suited the purpose of the author of " Super- 
 natural Religion " to refer. 
 
 If we are to rely upon the almost universal consent of 
 ancient authors rather than the mere conjectures of modern 
 critics, he is the person alluded to by St. Paul in the
 
 Date of Testimony. 187 
 
 words, "With Clement also, and with other my fellow 
 labourers, whose names are written in the book of life." 
 (Phil. iv. 3.) 
 
 Of this man Eusebius writes : 
 
 " In the twelfth year of the same reign (Domitian's), after 
 Anencletus had been bishop of Rome twelve years, he was 
 succeeded by Clement, whom the Apostle, in his Epistle to the 
 Philippians, shows had been his fellow-labourer m these 
 words : ' With Clement also and the rest of my fellow- 
 labourers, whose names are in the book of life.' Of this 
 Clement there is one Epistle extant, acknowledged as genu- 
 ine, of considerable length and of great merit, which he wrote 
 in the name of the Church at Rome, to that of Corinth, at 
 the time when there was a dissension in the latter. This 
 we know to have been publicly read for common benefit, in 
 most of the Churches both in former times and in our own." 
 (Eccles. Hist. B. III. xv. xvi.) 
 
 Origen confirms this. Clement of Alexandria repro- 
 duces several pages from his Epistle, calling him " The 
 Apostle Clement/' l and Irenaeus speaks of him as the 
 companion of the Apostles : 
 
 " This man, as he had seen the blessed Apostles and been 
 conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching 
 of the Apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions 
 before his eyes." (Bk. III. ch. iii. 3.) 
 
 Irenseus, it is to be remembered, died at the end of 
 the second century, and his birth is placed within the 
 first quarter of it, so that, in all probability, he had 
 known numbers of Christians who had conversed with 
 
 Clement. 
 
 According to the author of" Supernatural Religion,' 
 
 1 Miscellanies, IV. ch. xvii.
 
 188 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 the great mass of critics assign the Epistle of Clement to 
 between the years A.D. 95-100. 
 
 In dealing with this Epistle I shall, for argument's sake, 
 assume that Clement quoted from an earlier Gospel than 
 any one of our present ones, and that the one he quoted 
 might be the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and I 
 shall ask the same question that I asked respecting 
 Justin Martyr What views of Christ's Person and work 
 and doctrine did he derive from this Gospel of his ? 
 
 The Epistle of Clement is one in which we should 
 scarcely expect to find much reference to the Super- 
 natural, for it is written throughout for the one practical 
 purpose of healing the divisions in the Church of Corinth. 
 These the writer ascribes to envy, and cites a number of 
 Scripture examples of the evil effects of this disposition 
 and the good effects of the contrary one. He adheres 
 to this purpose throughout, and every word he writes 
 bears more or less directly on his subject. Yet in this 
 document, from which, by its design, the subject of the 
 supernatural seems excluded, we have all the leading 
 features of supernatural Christianity. We have the 
 Father sending the Son (ch. xlii.) \ we have the Son 
 coming of the seed of Jacob according to the Flesh 
 (ch. xxxii.); we have the words, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 the sceptre of the Majesty of God, did not come in the 
 pomp of pride and arrogance, although He might have 
 done so, but in a lowly condition, as the Holy Spirit 
 had declared regarding Him" (ch. xvi.); and at the end 
 of the same we have : 
 
 " If the Lord thus humbled Himself, what shall we do who 
 have through Him come under the yoke of His grace ? "
 
 Date of Testimony. 189 
 
 Clement describes Him in the words of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews as One 
 
 " Who, being the brightness of His [God's] Majesty, is by 
 so much greater than the angels as He hath by inheritance 
 obtained a more excellent name than they." (Ch. xxxvi.) 
 
 We have Clement speaking continually of the Death of 
 Jesus as taking place for the highest of supernatural 
 purposes, the reconciliation of all men to God. " Let 
 us look/' he writes, " steadfastly to the Blood of Christ, 
 and see how precious that Blood is to God, which, having 
 been shed for our salvation, has set the grace of repent- 
 ance before the whole world." (Ch. vii.) Again, " And 
 thus they made it manifest that Redemption should flow 
 through the Blood of the Lord to all them that believe 
 and hope in God." (Ch. xii.) Again, " On account of the 
 love He bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His Blood 
 for us by the will of God, His Flesh for our flesh, and His 
 Soul for our souls." (Ch. xlix.) His sufferings are ap- 
 parently said by Clement to be the sufferings of God. 
 (Ch. ii.) But, above all, the statement of the truth of 
 our Lord's Resurrection, and of ours through His, is as 
 explicit as possible : 
 
 "Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually 
 proves to us that there shall be a future resurrection, of 
 which He has rendered the Lord Jesus the first fruits by 
 raising Him from the dead." (Ch. xxiv.) 
 
 [The Apostles] having therefore received their orders, 
 and being fully assured by the Resurrection of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and established in the Word of God, with full 
 assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming 
 that the Kingdom of God was at hand." (Ch. xlii.)
 
 190 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 When we look to Clement's theology, we find it to 
 have been what would now be called, in the truest and 
 best sense of the word, " Evangelical/' thus : 
 
 " We too, being called by His Will in Christ Jesus, are 
 not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or under- 
 standing, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in 
 holiness of heart ; but by that faith through which from the 
 beginning Almighty God has justified all men." (Ch. xxxii.) 
 
 Again : 
 
 " All these the Great Creator and Lord of all has appointed 
 to exist in peace and harmony ; while He does good to all, 
 but most abundantly to us who have fled for refuge to His 
 compassion through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 And he ends his Epistle with the following prayer : 
 
 " May God, who seeth all things, and Who is the Kuler of 
 all Spirits and the Lord of all Flesh Who chose our Lord 
 Jesus, and us through Him to be a peculiar people grant 
 to every soul that calleth upon His glorious and holy Name, 
 faith, fear, peace, patience, long suffering, self-control, purity 
 and sobriety, to the well pleasing of His Name through our 
 High Priest and Protector Jesus Christ." (Ch. Iviii.) 
 
 But with all this his Christianity seems to have been 
 Ecclesiastical, in the technical sense of the word. He 
 seems to have had a much clearer and firmer hold than 
 Justin had of the truth that Christ instituted, not merely 
 a philosophy or system of teaching, but a mystical body 
 or visible Church, having its gradations of officers corre- 
 sponding to the officers of the Jewish Ecclesiastical system, 
 and its orderly arrangements of worship. (Ch. xl-xlii.) 
 
 Now this is the Christianity of a man who lived at 
 least sixty or seventy years nearer to the fountain head of 
 Christian truth than did Justin Martyr, whose witness to
 
 Date of Testimony. 
 
 dogmatical or supernatural Christianity we have shown 
 at some length. 
 
 It is also gathered out of a comparatively short book, 
 not one sixth of the length of the writings of Justin, and 
 composed solely for an undogmatic purpose. 
 
 His views of Christ and His work are precisely the 
 same as those of Justin. By all rule of rationalistic 
 analogy they ought to have been less "ecclesiastical/* 
 but in some respects they are more so. 
 
 Clement certainly seems to bring out more fully our 
 Lord's Resurrection (taking into consideration, that is, 
 the scope of his one remaining book and its brevity) , and 
 the Resurrection of Christ is the crowning miracle which 
 stamps the whole dispensation as supernatural. 
 
 So far, then, as the Supernatural is concerned, it 
 makes no difference whatsoever whether Clement used 
 the Gospel according to St. Matthew or the Gospel 
 according to the Hebrews. His Gospel, whatever it was, 
 not only filled his heart with an intense and absorbing 
 love of Christ, and a desire that all men should imitate 
 Him, but it filled his mind with that view of the religion 
 of Christ which we call supernatural and evangelical, but 
 which the author of" Supernatural Religion" calls eccle- 
 siastical. 
 
 The question now arises, not so much from whom, but 
 when, did he receive this view of Christ and His system. 
 I do not mean, of course, the more minute features, but 
 the substance. To what period must his reminiscences 
 as a Christian extend ? What time must his experiences 
 cover ? Irenseus, in the place I have quoted, speaks of 
 him as the companion of Apostles, Clement of Alexandria 
 as an Apostle, Eusebius and Origen as the fellow-labourer
 
 192 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 of St. Paul. Now, I will not at present insist upon the 
 more than likelihood that such was the fact. I will, for 
 argument's sake, assume that he was some other Clement ; 
 but, whoever he was, one thing respecting him is certain 
 that the knowledge of Christianity was not poured 
 into him at the moment when he wrote his Epistle, nor 
 did he receive it ten twenty thirty years before. St. 
 Peter and St. Paul were martyred in A.D. 68 ; the rest 
 of the Apostolic College were dispersed long before. 
 This Epistle shows little or no trace of the peculiar 
 Johannean teaching or tradition of the Apostle who sur- 
 vived all the others ; so, unless he had received his 
 Christian teaching some years before the Martyrdom of 
 the two Apostles Peter and Paul, that is, some time be- 
 fore A.D. 68, probably many years, I do not see that there 
 can have been the smallest ground even for the tradition 
 of the very next generation after his own that he knew 
 the Apostles. Such a tradition could not possibly have 
 been connected with the name of a man who became a 
 Christian late in the century. 
 
 Now, supposing that he was sixty-five years old when 
 he wrote his Epistle, he was born about the time of our 
 Lord's Death : he was consequently a contemporary of 
 the generation that had witnessed the Death and Eesur- 
 rection of Christ and the founding of the Church. If he 
 had ever been in Jerusalem before its destruction, he must 
 have fallen in with multitudes of surviving Christians of 
 the 5,000 who were converted on and just after the day 
 of Pentecost. 
 
 His Christian reminiscences, then, must have extended 
 far into the age of the contemporaries of Christ. A man 
 who was twenty-five years old at the time of the Resur-
 
 Date of Testimony. |,, :; 
 
 reetion of. Christ would scarcely be reckoned an old man 
 
 at the fame of the destruction of Jerusalem. Clement 
 
 consequently might have spent twenty of the best yea^ 
 
 his hfe m the company of persons who were old 
 
 3ugh to have seen the Lord in the Flesh. 1 
 
 So that his knowledge of the Death and Resurrection 
 
 Christ, and the founding of the Church, even if he 
 
 had never seen St. Paul or any other Apostle, must have 
 
 been derived from a generation of men, all the older 
 
 members of which were Christians of the Pentecostal 
 
 period. 
 
 Now when we come to compare the Epistle of Clement 
 with the only remaining Christian literature of the 
 earliest period, i. e. the earlier Epistles of St. Paul, we 
 find both the account of Christ and the Theology built 
 upon that account, to be the same in the one and in the 
 other. 
 
 The supernatural fact respecting Christ to which the 
 earliest Epistles of St. Paul most prominently refer, was 
 His Eesurrection as the pledge of ours, and this is the 
 fact respecting Christ which is put most prominently 
 forward by Clement, and for the same purpose. The 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians is referred to by Clement 
 in the words : 
 
 1 Let the reader remember tbat, if this be an assumption, the con- 
 trary assumption is infinitely the more unlikely. Our assumption 
 is founded on the direct assertion of two writers of the second cen- 
 tury, one of whom asserts that Clement was a close companion of 
 Apostles, another that he was an Apostle : meaning, of course, such 
 an one as Barnabas. A writer of the early part of the next cen- 
 tury, Origen, asserts that he was the person mentioned in St. Paul's 
 Epistle, and the principal Ecclesiastical Historian who lived within 
 two hundred years of his time corroborates this. 
 
 O
 
 194 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 " Take up the Epistle of the Blessed Apostle Paul. What 
 did he write to you at the time when the Gospel first began 
 to be preached? Truly, under the inspiration of the Spirit 
 (Trvsu/uiaTixui) he wrote to you concerning himself and Cephas 
 and Apollos, because even then parties had been formed 
 among you.". (Ch. xlvii.) 
 
 The other reproductions of the language of St. Paul's 
 Epistles are numerous, and I give them in a note. 1 The 
 reader will see at a glance that the Theology or Christ- 
 
 1 " Ye .... were more willing to give than to receive " (ch. ii.). 
 A reminiscence of St. Paul's quotation of Christ's words to be found 
 in Acts xx. 35. 
 
 "Ready to every good work" (ch. ii.). Titus iii. 1. "Every 
 kind of honour and happiness was bestowed upon you" (ch. iii.). 
 Reminiscence of 1 Corinth, iv. 8. 
 
 " Let us be imitators of them who in goat skins and sheep skins 
 went about proclaiming the coming of Christ " (ch. xvii ). Heb. 
 xi. 37. 
 
 "To us who have fled for refuge to his compassions" (ch. xx.). 
 Reminiscence of Heb. vii. 
 
 " Let us esteem those who have the rule over us." 1 Thess. v. 
 12, 13; Heb. xiii. 17. 
 
 "Not by preferring one to another." 1 Tim. v. 21. 
 
 " A future Resurrection, of which He has rendered the Lord Jesus 
 the first fruits by raising Him from the dead " (ch. xxiv.). 1 Cor. 
 xv. 20; Col. i. 18. 
 
 " Nothing is impossible with God except to lie " (ch. xxvii.)- Tit. 
 i. 2 ; Heb. vi. 18. 
 
 " From whom [Jacob] was descended our Lord Jesus Christ ac- 
 cording to the flesh" (ch. xxxii.). Rom. ix. 5. 
 
 "For [Scripture] saith, 'eye hath not seen,'" &c. (ch. xxxiv.). 
 1 Cor. ii. 9. 
 
 " Not only they that do them, but also those that take pleasure 
 in them that do them" (ch. xxxv.). Rom. i. 32. Ch. xxxvi. con- 
 tains distinct reference to Heb. i. I gave an extract above. 
 
 " Let us take our body for an example. The head is nothing 
 without the feet .... yea, the very smallest members of our body 
 are necessary and useful " (ch. xxxvii.), 1 Corinth, xii. 12, &c. 
 
 "Let every one be subject to his neighbour according to the 
 special gift bestowed upon him" (xaduxj KOI Iridr) iv ry ^ 
 avrov) (ch. xxxviii.). Rom. xii. 1-4; Ephes. iv. 8-12.
 
 Date of Testimony. 195 
 
 ology of Clement was that of the earliest writings of the 
 Church of which we have any remains, and to these he 
 himself frequently and unmistakably refers. 
 
 The earlier Epistles of St. Paul, as those to the Thes- 
 salonians, Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans, are ac- 
 knowledged on all hands, even by advanced German 
 Rationalists, to be the genuine works of the Apostle 
 Paul ; indeed one might as well deny that such a man 
 ever existed as question their authenticity. The First 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, which is the longest and most 
 dogmatic of the earlier ones, cannot have been written 
 after the year 58. In a considerable number of chro- 
 nological tables to which I have referred, the earliest 
 date is the year 52, and the latest 58. 
 
 To the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, which is 
 undoubtedly the earliest of all, the earliest date assigned 
 is 47, and the latest 53. 
 
 Now it is ever to be remembered that in each of these 
 the First to the Thessalonians and the First to the 
 Corinthians we have enunciations of the great crown- 
 ing supernatural event of Scripture the Resurrection 
 of Christ and our Resurrection as depending upon it, 
 which are unsurpassed in the rest of Scripture. 
 
 So that in the first Christian writing which has come 
 
 " The blessed Moses, also, ' a faithful servant in all his house 
 (ch. xliii.). Heb. iii. 5. 
 
 " Have we not all one God and one Christ ? Is there not one 
 Spirit of grace poured upon us ? Have we not one calling in Christ ? " 
 (ch. xlvi.). Ephes. iv. 4-6. 
 
 " And have reached such a height of madness as to forget that 
 we are members one of another" (ch. xlvi.). Rom. xii. 5. 
 
 " Love beareth all things ... is long suffering in all things " (ch. 
 xlix.). 1 Cor. xiii. 4.
 
 196 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 down to us, we have the great fact of Supernatural Reli- 
 gion, which carries with it all the rest. 
 
 The fullest enunciation of the evidences of the Resur- 
 rection is in a writing whose date cannot be later than 
 58, and runs thus : 
 
 " Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which 
 I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and where- 
 in ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory 
 what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 
 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also re- 
 ceived, how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures ; and that He was buried, and that He rose again 
 the third day according to the Scriptures. And that He was 
 seen of Cephas, then of the twelve. After that l He was seen 
 of above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater 
 part remain unto this present [twenty-five years after the 
 event] but some are fallen asleep. After that He was seen 
 of James, then of all the Apostles, and last of all He was 
 seen of me also." (1 Cor. xv. 1.) 
 
 If the reader compares this with the accounts in any 
 one of the Four, he will find that it gives the fullest list 
 of our Lord's appearances which has come down to us, 
 and this, be it remembered, forming part of the most 
 categorical declaration of what the Gospel is, to be found 
 in the New Testament. 1 
 
 1 One is in amazement when one reads, in the work of a man who 
 professes to have such a love of truth, the words, " The fact is, that 
 we have absolutely no contemporaneous history at all as to what the 
 first promulgators of Christianity actually asserted" (vol. i. p. 193). 
 This writer, as far as I remember, gives us no reason to believe 
 that he doubts the authenticity of St. Paul's earlier Epistles. Again, 
 what is "contemporary history?" Surely, if a man was now to 
 write the history of the Crimean war in 1854-5, it would be a con- 
 temporary history.
 
 Date of Testimony. Ij7 
 
 A man, then, writes in A.D. 57 or earlier, that another 
 Who had died in A.D. 32 had been seen by a number of 
 persons, and among these, by 500 persons at once, of 
 whom the greater part were alive when he wrote, and 
 implying that the story had been believed ever since, 
 and received by him (the writer) from those who had 
 seen this Jesus, and that the fact was so essential to 
 the religion that it was itself called "the Gospel/' a name 
 continually given to the whole system of Christianity, 
 and moreover that he himself, when in company with 
 others, had seen this Jesus at noon-day, and, the history 
 asserts, had been blinded by the sight. Now let the 
 reader recall to his mind any public man who died 
 twenty-five years ago, that is, in 1850, and imagine this 
 man appearing, not as a disembodied spirit, but in his 
 resuscitated body to first one of his friends, then to eleven 
 or twelve, then to another, then to five hundred persons 
 at one time, and a flourishing and aggressive institution 
 founded upon this his appearance, and numbers of persons 
 giving up their property, and breaking with all their 
 friends, and adopting a new religion, and a new course 
 of life of great self-denial, and even encountering bitter 
 persecution and death, simply because they believed this 
 man to be alive from the dead, and moreover some pro- 
 fessing to do miracles, and to confer the power of doing 
 miracles in the name and by the power of this risen man. 
 
 Let the reader, I say, try to imagine all this, and then 
 he will be able to judge of the credulity with which the 
 author credits his readers when he writes : 
 
 " All history shows how rapidly pious memory exaggera** 
 and idealizes the traditions of the past, and simple actions 
 might readily be transformed into miracles as the narrative
 
 198 The Lost Gospel. 
 
 circulated, in a period so prone to superstition, and so charac- 
 terized by love of the marvellous." (Vol. ii. p. 209.) 
 
 " All history," the author says; but why does he not 
 give us a few instances out of " all history," that we 
 might compare them with this Gospel account, and see 
 if there was anything like it ? 
 
 Such a story, if false, is not a myth. A myth is the 
 slow growth of falsehood through long ages, and this 
 story of the Resurrection was written circumstantially 
 within twenty years of its promulgation, by one who had 
 been an unbeliever, and who had conferred with those 
 who must have been the original promoters of the false- 
 hood, if it be one. 
 
 To call such a story a myth, is simply to shirk the 
 odium of calling it by its right name, or more probably 
 to avoid having to meet the astounding historical diffi- 
 culty of supposing that men endured what the Apostles 
 endured for what they must have known to have been a 
 falsehood, and the still more astounding difficulty that 
 One Whom the author of " Supernatural Religion" allows 
 to have been a Teacher Who " carried morality to the sub- 
 limest point attained or even attainable by humanity," 
 and Whose " life, as far as we can estimate it, was uni- 
 formly noble and consistent with his lofty principles," 
 should have impressed a character of such deep-rooted 
 fraud and falsehood on His most intimate friends. 
 
 The author of " Supernatural Religion" has, however, 
 added another to the many proofs of the truth of the 
 Gospel. In his elaborate book of 1,000 pages of attack on 
 the authenticity of the Evangelists he has shown, with a 
 clearness which, I think, has never been before realized, 
 the great fact that from the first there has been but one
 
 Date of Testimony. 
 
 L99 
 
 account of Jesus Christ. In the writings of heathens, 
 of Jews, of heretics/ in lost gospels, in contemporary 
 accounts, in the earliest traditions of the Church, there 
 appears but one account, the account called by its first 
 proclaimers the Gospel ; and the only explanation of the 
 existence of this Gospel is its truth. 
 
 1 Celsus, for instance, who had been some time dead when Origen 
 refuted him, knew no other account than the one which he calum- 
 niated ; Josephus the Jew knew no other, Trypho suggests no 
 counter story. The wild exaggerations of the heretics refuted by 
 Irenseus all presupposed the one narrative, and can have had no 
 other basis. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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