For these reasons I do not wish it to be supposed that I regard all difficulties as removed and every question as closed, if I insist upon the conclusion that has so far seemed to be emerging from our study—the conclusion that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness of the events, who is describing for us what he had himself actually seen. I do not want to use any kind of argumentative coercion. I fully believe that the author of the Gospel occupied this position; and yet I do not mean, by asserting this, to impose upon others the necessary consequence that everything happened (i. e. that we can realize it to ourselves as having happened) exactly as it is described. For my own part I abstain from attempting to re-write the narrative. I know that any such attempt is foredoomed to failure. Still more do I refuse to follow those who peremptorily dismiss all that they cannot understand. I cherish and value very highly the assurance that we have to do with the work of an eye-witness. And yet, as I have said, I accept the result with a certain reserve, with the consciousness that there is something unexplained and which I perhaps myself shall never be able to explain. This does not prevent me from making what I can of the easier incidents, in which one seems to see one’s way more clearly. I will give an example. One of the great passages discussed at the outset of our inquiries is typical and significant in the light which it throws on the mental attitude of the writer. We are told how, as he stood at the foot of the Cross, he saw the side pierced, and blood and water flow from the wound. It is in connexion with this that we have one of those solemn asseverations (whether made by the writer for himself or by some one else for him) of the truth, resting upon his own ocular testimony, of the fact that he is recording. The whole incident evidently made a deep impression upon him, for he goes on to quote it as a direct fulfilment of two distinct passages of Scripture. And again, in his First Epistle, he refers to the peculiar phenomenon which he had seen as one that was fraught with mystical meaning.