Then Scaurus came to that cardinal doctrine of Epictetus which had caused Glaucus and me so many searchings of heart. “You know,” he said, “that Epictetus teaches that no good man is ever troubled. It is not John’s custom to contradict what he deems errors in a formal and direct way. But if he had resorted for once to direct methods, he could hardly have contradicted this Epictetian doctrine more effectively than he does in his indirect dramatic fashion. He represents Christ as thrice ‘troubled.’ First—on the same occasion on which he lets fall tears in sympathy with the woman above mentioned—he is said to have ‘troubled himself.’ Secondly, on an occasion when he is (as I take it) preparing for some act of self-sacrifice, he says, ‘Now is my soul troubled.’ On a third occasion, when announcing that he is to be betrayed by one of the Twelve, he is said to have been ‘troubled in spirit.’ I cannot doubt that this description of threefold ‘trouble’ is intended to attack the Stoic doctrine that the wise and good man is to shrink from ‘trouble’.” This convinced me, and it convinces me still. Scaurus proceeded to say, “Some innocent readers of this gospel might say, ‘Well at all events John agrees with Epictetus in his use of the term Logos.’ And (no doubt) the first three lines of the gospel might suggest this. But read on, and you will find the two are in absolute opposition. The Logos, in John, instead of being the philosophic Logos or reason, is really an unreasonable and hyperbolical sort of love, regarded by him as born from God, and as part of God’s personality, and as constituting unity in God’s nature. This Logos he regards as incarnate as a man for the purpose of uniting mankind to God! This doctrine Epictetus would absolutely reject. “Later on, in this gospel, you will find Christ saying to the disciples, ‘Ye are clean on account of the Logos that I have spoken to you.’ Now Epictetus also connects cleanness with the Logos. ‘It is impossible,’ he says, ‘that man’s nature should be altogether clean, but the Logos being received into it, as far as possible attempts to make it cleanly.’ Verbally, there is an appearance of agreement. Read the two contexts, however, and you will find that, whereas Epictetus makes ‘cleanness’ consist in right convictions, John makes it consist in a mystical doctrine of sacrifice, or service, typified by the Master’s washing the feet of the disciples.