Teacher at once as the Logos who from the beginning was with God and was himself God. The key-note is struck from the first, and in the philosophical prelude to the Gospel we have the announcement to those who have ears to hear, that here we need expect no simple history, but an artistic demonstration of the philosophical postulate. According to the Synoptics, Jesus is baptized by John, and as he goes out of the water the Holy Ghost descends upon him like a dove. The fourth Gospel says nothing of the baptism, and makes John the Baptist narrate vaguely that he saw the Holy Ghost descend like a dove and rest upon Jesus, as a sign previously indicated to him by God by which to recognize the Lamb of God.(1) From the very first, John the Baptist, in the fourth Gospel, recognizes and declares Jesus to be "the Christ,"(2) "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world."(3) According to the Synoptics, John comes preaching the baptism of repentance, and so far is he from making such declarations, or forming such distinct opinions concerning Jesus, that even after he has been cast into prison and just before his death,--when in fact his preaching was at an end,--he is represented as sending disciples to Jesus, on hearing in prison of his works, to ask him: "Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?" (4) Jesus carries on his ministry and baptizes simultaneously with John, according to the fourth Gospel, but his public career, according to the Synoptics, does not begin until after the Baptist's has concluded, and John is cast into prison.(5) The Synoptics clearly {453} represent the ministry of Jesus as having been limited to a single year,(1) and his preaching is confined to Galilee and Jerusalem, where his career culminates at the fatal Passover. The fourth Gospel distributes the teaching of Jesus-between Galilee, Samaria, and Jerusalem, makes it extend at least over three years, and refers to three Passovers spent by Jesus at Jerusalem.(2) The Fathers felt this difficulty and expended a good deal of apologetic ingenuity upon it; but no one is now content with the explanation of Eusebius, that the Synoptics merely intended to write the history of Jesus during the one year after the imprisonment of the Baptist, whilst the fourth Evangelist recounted the events of the time not recorded by the others, a theory which is totally contradicted by the four Gospels themselves.(3)