Turning now to the Fourth Gospel, we have not only an entirely different character, but an entirely different philosophy as to his life and mission. Not a word is said or anywhere hinted about a divine birth. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.... and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." To state it in the simplest words I can command, the theory of the Fourth Gospel is that of the old Alexandrian philosophy of the incarnation of the Divine Logos, or Word, or message from God, in human flesh, applied to Jesus of Nazareth. His pure and simple manhood is recognized, into which, in some mystical manner, nowhere explained, the Divine Logos, or Word, or Life, or God Himself, entered into _the man_ Jesus, whereby he became the Son of God and the Messiah,--and not by the process of miraculous generation in the flesh. The old Ebionite doctrine was that this Divine Logos, or Word, or Spirit of God entered Jesus at his baptism, and that he thereby became the Messiah, distinctively "the Son of God" by divine selection, and not by supernatural generation. There is no evidence that his disciples during his lifetime ever had the slightest conception that he had a supernatural birth. When Philip tells Nathaniel that he has found the Messiah of whom Moses and the prophets wrote, he also tells him that this Messiah is "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Even after the death of Jesus the disciples seem to have had no knowledge of any supernatural birth. The two on their way to Emmaus, after the crucifixion, express their disappointment: "We hoped that it was he who should redeem Israel." No such expression of disappointment can possibly be reconciled with any thought that this Jesus who had so recently been crucified was the "eternal Son of God" incarnated in human flesh. On the day of Pentecost Peter speaks of him in no higher terms than "A man approved of God." If Jesus was supernaturally born, as a matter of course his mother knew it all the time; yet during the whole life of Jesus she is nowhere mentioned as giving the slightest intimation of it; but on the contrary all the record we have of anything she did do or say would naturally lead to just the opposite conclusion. Of course no one else knew anything about it. Taking it naturally for granted, that at least at the beginning, his disciples knew nothing of it, if they ever learned it afterwards, there must have been some special time, condition or circumstance under which they came into possession of these remarkable facts. Yet, there is not a hint in the New Testament about any such time, place, circumstance or incident.