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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III THE STANDPOINT OF THE AUTHOR I. The Gospel is put forward as the Work of an Eye witness. There are a number of passages in the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John which go to show that the author either was, or at least intended to give the impression that he was, an eye witness of the Life of Christ. We will leave it an open question for the present which of these two alternatives we are to choose. And we will begin by collecting the passages, and justifying the description that has just been given of them. The passages fall into groups; the first small but important, the others larger but, except in a few cases, more indefinite. On the principles of criticism on which we are going, we shall assume that the Gospel and First Epistle that bear the name of St. John are by the same author, and that, so far as the authorship is concerned, what holds good for the one will hold good also for the other. The proof is not absolutely stringent. Identity of style, and close resemblance of ideas, are compatible with duality of authorship, because one writer may imitate another. But in practice, unless the reasons for laying stress upon it are strong and clear, a refinement like this may beleft out of account. Of course there is the distinction which Bacon noted between the minds that are quick to observe resemblances and those that are quick to observe differences. This question of the relation of the Gospel of St. John to the First Epistle is a touchstone by which such minds may be distinguished. I allow that the two works may be assigned to different authors. I allow it in the way in which on most questions, if we attempt a nice enumeration of conditions, there is usually some remote possibility to be allowed for. The quotation from Dr. Drummond on the De Vita C...
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