I do not hesitate to say that this theory of the late origin of the Gospel is not one that will work, or bear to be consistently carried out. On the other hand, if we assume the traditional view, all the evidence falls into line; we have an adequate cause for the authority which from the first attached to the Gospel; and, allowing for the scantiness and critical drawbacks of the materials from which our evidence is drawn, we have a picture quite as satisfactory as we can expect of its gradually expanding circulation. So far, our course has been straightforward. The salient points stand out in orderly succession, and they all rest on solid foundations. But when we come to closer quarters, and try to reconstruct for ourselves the circumstances under which the Gospel was written, and which attended the first two or three decades of its history, the case is otherwise. Many questions may be raised that cannot be categorically answered. Bricks cannot be made without straw; and positive history cannot be written on the ground of mere surmises and possibilities. All I would contend for is that no valid argument can be brought from the facts as they stand against the Gospel; it is another matter, and will require longer time and perhaps further discoveries, before we can paint on the canvas of history a picture strictly harmonious and coherent in all its parts. III. Unsolved Problems. 1. The relation of the Gospel to the Apocalypse. Of the questions that are still _sub judice_ one of the most difficult is that of the relation of the Gospel to the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is a book on which criticism is very far from having said its last word. I should like to express myself about it with great reserve. But I do not think that in any case an argument can be drawn from it against the Gospel. I will quote two very unprejudiced opinions. Harnack writes as follows:— ‘I confess my adhesion to the critical heresy which carries back the Apocalypse and the Gospel to a single author, always presupposing that the Apocalypse is the Christian working-up of a Jewish apocalypse (I should be prepared to say of several Jewish apocalypses—to me this seems beyond our power to unravel). I mark off the Christian portions very much as Vischer has done, and see in them the same spirit and the same hand which has presented us with the Gospel[81].‘ We remember that in Harnack’s view the author is not the Apostle but the Presbyter. And then Bousset, who has written the commentary on the Apocalypse in Meyer’s series, though he does not go quite so far as Harnack, places the two works in close relation to each other. After a careful examination of the language of the Apocalypse he sums up thus:—