We may blame him, however, if within his self-chosen limits the picture that he has drawn for us is misleading. That is the central point which we must now go on to test. The object of the Gospel would be called in modern technical language to exhibit a Christology. Is that Christology true? Does it satisfy the tests that we are able to apply to it? Can we find a suitable place for it in the total conception that we form of the Apostolic Age? Does it belong to the Apostolic Age at all; or must we, to understand it, come down below the time of the Apostles? To answer these questions we must compare the Christology of the Fourth Gospel with that of the other Apostolic writings, and more particularly with that of the Synoptic Gospels, of St. Paul, and of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It does not take us long to see that the Christology of the Fourth Gospel has the closest affinity with this group of Epistles—we may say, with the leading Epistles of St. Paul and with that other interesting Epistle of which we know, perhaps, or partly know, the readers but do not know the author. It is worth while to bring in this because the unmistakable quotation from it in Clement of Rome proves it to belong to the Apostolic Age. 2. The Christology of St. John compared with that of St. Paul and of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The meeting-point of all the authorities just mentioned—indeed we might say the focus and centre of the whole New Testament—is the title ‘Son of God.’ But whereas the Synoptic Gospels work up to this title, St. John with St. Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews work downwards or onwards from it. What I mean is this. The Synoptic Gospels show us how, through the conception of the Messiah and the titles equivalent to it, by degrees a point was reached at which the faith of the disciples found its most adequate expression in the name ‘Son of God.’ The culminating point is of course St. Peter’s confession represented at its fullest in the form adopted by St. Matthew, ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God’ (Matt. xvi. 16). In the Synoptic Gospels, and we may say also in the historic order of events, this confession is a climax, gradually reached; and we are allowed to see the process by which it was reached. ‘Son of God’ is the highest of all the equivalents for ‘Messiah.’ And in the Synoptic Gospels we have unrolled before us, wonderfully preserved by a remarkable and we may say truly providential accuracy of reproduction with hardly the consciousness of a guiding idea, the historic evolution, spread over the whole of the public ministry, by which at its end the little knot of disciples settled upon this term as the best and amplest expression of its belief in its Master. We have seen that the Fourth Gospel is by no means wanting in traces of this evolution. But these too are traces, preserved incidentally and almost accidentally, without any deliberate purpose on