Balak to cast a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols,"(1) &c., as well as elsewhere.(2) Without dwelling on this point, however, we think it must be apparent to every unprejudiced person that the Apocalypse singularly corresponds in every respect--language, construction, and thought--with what we are told of the character of the Apostle John by the Synoptic Gospels and by tradition, and that the internal evidence, therefore, accords with the external in attributing the composition of the Apocalypse to that Apostle.3 407} We may without hesitation affirm, at least, that with the exception of one or two of the Epistles of Paul there is {408} no work of the New Testament which is supported by such close evidence. We need not discuss the tradition as to the residence of the Apostle John in Asia Minor, regarding which much might be said. Those who accept the authenticity of the Apocalypse of course admit its composition in the neighbourhood of Ephesus,(1) and see in this the confirmation of the wide-spread tradition that the Apostle spent a considerable period of the latter part of his life in that city. We may merely mention, in passing, that a historical basis for the tradition has occasionally been disputed, and has latterly again been denied by some able critics.(2) The evidence for this, as for everything else connected with the early ages of Christianity, is extremely unsatisfactory. Nor need we trouble ourselves with the dispute as to the Presbyter John, to whom many ascribe the composition, on the one hand, of the Apocalypse and, on the other, of the Gospel, according as they finally accept the one or the other alternative of the critical dilemma which we have explained. We have only to do with the Apostle John and his connection with either of the two writings. If we proceed to compare the character of the Apostle John, as we have it depicted in the Synoptics and other writings to which we have referred, with that of the author of the fourth Gospel, and to contrast the peculiarities of both, we have a very different result. Instead of the Hebraistic Greek and harsh diction which might {409}