It is not the case that the speeches in the Fourth Gospel are systematically longer than those in the Synoptics. We perhaps have an impression that they are; but, if so, it is not borne out by the facts. For the proof of this I may refer to the statistics carefully worked out by Dr. Drummond on p. 24. There is no doubt that the speeches of our Lord were, as Justin said, ‘short and concise.’ They had nothing in common with the elaborate compositions and rounded periods of Greek rhetoric. The type on which they were modelled was wholly different. We find the nearest parallel to it in the so-called ‘Sayings of the Jewish Fathers’ (_Pirke Aboth_). Each saying is a sort of aphorism; and a longer discourse is only a string of aphorisms, unless it takes the form of a simple narrative or description, like the parables in the Synoptic Gospels or allegories, like those of the Good Shepherd and the Vine and its Branches, in the Fourth Gospel. One form of discourse, that we may be sure must have been common, is more fully represented in the Fourth Gospel than in the other three; I mean the dialogue, and in particular the controversial dialogue, growing out of some natural occasion, such as those of which I spoke in the last lecture, the woman of Samaria’s appeal to the patriarch Jacob, the Jews’ demand for a sign like a gift of manna, the practice of circumcising on the sabbath day, the charge of demoniacal possession and the claim of the Jews to be Abraham’s children. Instances like these must be set down to the credit of the Gospel and not against it. The longer discourses appear to grow out of the aphoristic sayings of which I have spoken. Of these again Dr. Drummond has made an ample collection (pp. 18-20). But it is true that the Evangelist permits himself to dwell on such sayings, to repeat and enforce them by expansions of his own, which keep coming back to the same point. It has often been remarked that we are constantly left in doubt where the words of our Lord end and those of the Evangelist begin. Probably the Evangelist himself did not discriminate, or even try to discriminate. A modern writer, in similar circumstances, would feel obliged to ask himself whether the words which he was setting down were really spoken or not; but there is no reason to suppose that the author of the Gospel would be conscious of any such obligation. He would not pause to put to himself questions, or to exercise conscious self-criticism. He would just go on writing as the spirit moved him. And the consequence is that historical recollections and interpretative reflection, the fruit of thought and experience, have come down to us inextricably blended.