An Englishman addressing an American audience must needs pause for a moment over the first of these three names[4]. It is the more incumbent on me to do this because as a young man, at a time when encouragement is most valued, I was one of many who profited by Dr. Ezra Abbot’s generous and self-denying kindness. He opened a correspondence with me, and sent me not only his own books but some by other writers that I might be presumed not to possess, and it was touching to see the care with which corrections were made in these in his own finely formed hand. I would fain not only pay a tribute of reverence to the memory of Dr. Abbot, but also, if I may, repay a little of my own debt by holding up his example to the younger generation of American scholars as one that I would earnestly entreat them to adopt and follow. I do not know how far I am right, but I have always taken the qualities of Dr. Ezra Abbot’s work as specially typical of the American mind at its best. His work reminds one in its exactness and precision of those fine mechanical instruments in which America has so excelled. To set for oneself the highest possible standard of accuracy, and to think no time and no pains misspent in the pursuit of it, is a worthy object of a young scholar’s ambition. In like manner we, in England, have a standard proposed to us by Dr. Westcott’s famous Commentary on St. John. It is the culminating product of a life that was also devoted to the highest ends. It is characteristic of Dr. Westcott that the Commentary was, I believe, hardly altered in its later editions from the form in which it first appeared. This was due to the thoroughness and circumspection with which the author had in the first instance carried out his task. I believe that in spite of the lapse of time Dr. Westcott’s Commentary remains, and will still for long remain, the best that we have on the Fourth Gospel, as it is also (with the article on Origen) the best and most characteristic work that its author bequeathed to the world. In this connexion I must needs mention another American scholar and divine, to whom I am also bound by personal ties of affectionate regard—the veteran Dr. George Park Fisher of Yale. It is matter for thankfulness that he has been able to give to the world, carefully brought up to date, a new edition of his _Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief_ (1902). The pages devoted to the Fourth Gospel are, like the rest, full of knowledge and suffused with sweet reasonableness and mild wisdom. Dr. Fisher’s attitude is perhaps not exactly that of the younger men, but it certainly is not any less near to the ideal. If I were a tutor or professor in an American seminary, there is no book that I should more warmly recommend to my pupils. To imbibe its spirit would be the best training they could have. I should think it especially excellent as a starting-point for further study. It would implant nothing that would have to be unlearnt.