_Logos_, Lamb of God, propitiation for sin, are never placed by John in the mouth of Jesus, we have strong negative evidence that the discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are not the free composition of the author himself. After all, the question of the style of the Fourth Gospel is not so important as that of its contents. Does it draw an essentially different picture of Jesus from that of the Synoptic writers, or does it help us to fill out and to interpret the Synoptic portrait? Two considerations of a general nature should be kept in mind. Ordinary readers of the Gospels in all ages have seen no lack of unity in the composite portrait of the four Gospels; and recent criticism has shown that even to the sharp sighted modern critic the harmony is so great that one who rejects the historical character of John's Gospel will also reject the Second Gospel, which was written from the standpoint that Jesus is the Son of God (so Bousset), and is to be distinguished from the Fourth Gospel in degree (_graduel_) rather than in essence. The aim of Mark, and there is no reason to doubt that he reaches his aim, is in fact the same as that of John, so far as concerns his desire that his readers may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John xx. 31). If what the Synoptic Gospels say is true as to the words and the works and the claims and the consciousness of Jesus, then we should expect some such supplement as we find in John. We should expect either more or less than we find in the Synoptic Gospels. When we read of the Divine Voice at the baptism and the transfiguration, we ask, What did Jesus Himself conceive His relation to God to be? The full answer is in John. When we read, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. xviii. 20), we should expect fuller teaching on the relation of Jesus to the disciples. This we have in the last discourses in John. When we read in the Synoptists accounts of the teaching and the mighty works, we turn to John for the full description of the Teacher and Lord, and of the mighty Worker manifesting His glory. The Synoptic Gospels tell us of the authority of Jesus and of His office of judgment and of His founding a Church. In John we see the ground of His authority in His relation to God and in His mystical relation to the disciples. In the Synoptists we have the Last Supper and general prophecies of the future and commands for the guidance of the Church. We should expect some more intimate and personal revelation of His relation to the disciples, such as is furnished by the Johannine picture of the disciple whom Jesus loved, and in the words, "Woman, behold thy son" (John xix. 26, 27); and in the intimate discourse of John xiv.-xvi. When we read, once more, that Jesus often retired for prayer, but in the Synoptic Gospels have the record of only one or two of His petitions: "Remove this cup from me.... Thy will be done" (see Luke xxii. 42 and compare xxii.