Now physicians tell us that what the Evangelist actually saw was not, strictly and literally, what he has described. The efflux from the side was not exactly blood and water, though it might quite well have had an appearance like that of blood and water, and the Evangelist no doubt supposed it to be what he says. The blood was real blood, but that which looked like water was a sort of lymph or serum. This would serve equally well to suggest the train of thought which the Evangelist attached to it. It is easy to understand how what was for him a strange phenomenon at first struck the eye and then dwelt in his mind, and as he often returned to it and pondered over it, at last took definite shape, as a visible emblem, divinely produced, of a principle deeply rooted in the Christian religion, the principle that found expression in its two leading Sacraments. Clearly here it is permissible to distinguish between the fact itself for which we have this explicit testimony, and the train of speculation to which it gave rise. The speculations are such as in all ages have naturally commended themselves to devout minds. There have always been those who have had so strong a sense of the unity of things, of the ‘pre-established harmony’ between the material and the spiritual, that the ‘outward shows’ of external nature ‘the earth and every common sight,’ have seemed to reflect and symbolize that which is unseen. We may well believe that there is broad fundamental truth underlying these dim intuitions, though it may be another thing to say that in any particular case the harmony that is guessed is precisely that which the Divine Artificer intended. But the point on which I should wish to lay stress is, that the order of thought is from the observed fact to the idea, and not backwards from the idea to a fact imagined to correspond with it. And in regard to the Fourth Gospel, I think we may lay down that the Evangelist always starts from something that he has seen. It is possible that his mind, acting retrospectively on his memory of the physical impression, may emphasize features in the impression that were not so distinct at the time when it was given. But the notion that the Gospel is a pure romance woven entirely out of the creations of the brain seems to me contrary to its whole character. I do not wish at all to imply—I desire expressly to guard myself against implying—that other miracles in the Fourth Gospel can be explained so simply as that of the pierced side. On the wider question I have just said what I have to say. But for my present purpose, in its bearing upon the criticism of the Fourth Gospel, I content myself with maintaining, that St. John’s descriptions of the supernatural always start from facts that had come under his own personal observation, or that of others who were very near to him. iv. A Patristic Parallel.