=The internal evidence.= The facts indicated above are not questioned by any critic. But though from the beginning of the third century to the close of the eighteenth, the Fourth Gospel was unanimously attributed to the Apostle John, it is maintained by those critics who deny the Johannine authorship that a fair consideration of the external evidence now extant, leaves it uncertain whether the unanimous opinion of the Church in the first century was correct, and that the internal evidence, _i. e._, the character of the Gospel itself, when contrasted (1) with the other Gospels, (2) with the known character of John, (3) with the other writings attributed to him, makes it certain that he was not the author. Unquestionably the Fourth Gospel presents very different matter and a very different aspect of Christ’s life and character from that presented by the other three Gospels. The three Gospels give an impression almost exclusively Galilean; the Fourth Gospel narrates almost exclusively a ministry in Judea; the three Gospels indicate one which might have been completed in a single year; the fourth indicates three years as the duration of Christ’s ministry; the three Gospels report chiefly Christ’s ethical discourses; the fourth reports chiefly his doctrinal discourses; love to men’s neighbor is the predominate theme in the three Gospels; faith in a divine Saviour is the predominate theme in the fourth; the three Gospels portray the work of Jesus Christ; the fourth portrays his person and character; the three Gospels repeat the same incidents and instructions in slightly different language; the fourth repeats scarcely anything found in the other three; and when, as in its account of the feeding of the five thousand, it does repeat, the manifest object of the repetition is to introduce a report of a discourse of Jesus omitted in the other narratives.