been the necessity of faith in him. Both these aspects of truth are indeed presented in the other Gospels, but not with the same clearness, nor with the same prominence, as in the Fourth Gospel. Hence the latter is assailed with peculiar vigor by the opponents of evangelical Christianity, and is, for the same reason, maintained with equal vigor by evangelical believers. It does not come within the province of this work to enter into the details of this controversy. To give the arguments, pro and con, would require a treatise, and for a consideration of them the reader is of necessity referred to the various works which have been written on this subject. The student will find the most vigorous assault on the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel in the second volume of “Supernatural Religion,” which, however, must be read with considerable allowance for a scholarship evidently warped by determined prejudices, and which is certainly one-sided, if not absolutely false in many particulars. Among the many defences of the authenticity of the Gospel, I have found nothing more comprehensive or satisfactory than that contained in the first volume of Godet’s Commentary on John. With this, however, may be advantageously compared Luthardt’s “St. John, the Author of the Fourth Gospel,” Prof. Fisher’s “Supernatural Origin of Christianity,” and the introductions to the commentaries, especially those of Luthardt, Lange, Alford, Meyer and Tholuck. Here I propose merely to set before the reader briefly a compact statement of the more important facts in the case, confining myself mainly to those that are undisputed--facts which led the world for fifteen centuries to attribute the Fourth Gospel to John without a doubt, and which on a more careful examination have led the great majority of scholars to adhere to that conclusion.