down, and even as introducing references of his own; as, for instance, in the passage to which he refers, where, in regard to the statement that at the Crucifixion a soldier pierced the side of the already dead Jesus and that forthwith there came out blood and water (xix. 35), it is said: "And he that saw it hath borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye may believe."(1) It is perfectly clear that the writer refers to the testimony of another person(2)--the friend who is writing down the narrative, says Herr Ewald, refers to the Apostle who is actually dictating it. Again, in the last chapter, as elsewhere throughout the work, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," who is the author, is spoken of in the third person, and also in verse 24: "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things" [------]. This, according to Ewald, is the same secretary, now writing in his own person. The similarity between this declaration and the appeal to the testimony of another person in xix. 35, is certainly complete, and there can be no doubt that both proceed from the same pen; but beyond the assertion of Herr Ewald there is not the slightest evidence that a secretary wrote the Gospel from the dictation of another, and ventured to interrupt the narrative by such a reference to testimony, which, upon the supposition that the {440} Apostle John was known as the actual author, is singularly out of place. If John wrote the Gospel, why should he appeal in utterly vague terms to his own testimony, and upon such a point, when the mere fact that he himself wrote the statement was the most direct testimony in itself? An author who composed a work which he desired to ascribe to a "disciple whom Jesus loved" might have made such a reference as xix. 35, in his anxiety to support such an affirmation, without supposing that he had really compromised his design, and might have naturally added such a statement as that in the last two verses, but nothing but the foregone conclusion that the Apostle John was the real author could have suggested such an explanation of these passages. It is throughout assumed by Ewald and others, that John wrote in the first instance, at least, specially for a narrow circle of friends, and the proof of this is considered to be the statement of the object with which it was written: "that ye may believe,"(l) &c., a phrase, we may remark, which is identical with that of the very verse (xix. 35) with which the secretary is supposed to have had so much to do. It is very remarkable, upon this hypothesis, that in xix. 35, it is considered necessary even for this narrow circle, who knew the Apostle so well, to make such an appeal, as well as to attach at its close (xxi. 24), for the benefit of the world in general as Ewald will have it, a certificate of the trustworthiness of the GospeL