After a preliminary sketch of his theory in the first edition of his _Lehre Jesu_ (1886), i. 215-342, Dr. H. H. Wendt brought out in 1900 an elaborate and fully argued analysis of the Gospel, carefully dissecting each section and assigning the parts either to the Apostolic author or to the later redactor. Approximately similar results were obtained independently with a less amount of published argument, by Dr. C. A. Briggs in his _General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture_ (1899), p. 327, and in his _New Light on the Life of Jesus_ (1904), pp. 140-58. A like theory has been put forward by Professor Soltau (_Zeitschrift f. d. neutest. Wissenschaft_, 1901, pp. 140-9). In my opinion all attempts of this kind are fore-doomed to failure. The underlying motive is to rescue some portion of the Gospel as historical, while others are dismissed as untrustworthy. At the same time it is allowed that the separation can only be made where there is a real break in the connexion. On this Schmiedel pertinently remarks:— ‘There is much reason to fear that distrust of the authenticity of the substance often causes an interruption of the connexion to be imagined where in reality there is none. Many passages of the same sort as others, which give Wendt occasion for the separating process, are left by him untouched, when the result would not be removal of some piece held to be open to exception in respect to its contents; the ground for exception which he actually takes, on the other hand, is often altogether non-existent[11].’ I look with considerable distrust on many of the attempts that are made to divide up documents on the ground of want of connexion. I suspect that the standard of consecutiveness applied is often too Western and too modern. But the one rock on which it seems to me that any partition theory must be wrecked is the deep-seated unity of structure and composition which is characteristic of the Gospel. Dr. Briggs turns the edge of this argument by referring the unity to the masterful hand of the editor. It is, no doubt, open to him to do so; but we may observe that, if in this way he makes the theory difficult to disprove, he also makes it difficult to prove. I must needs think that both in this case and in Dr. Wendt’s the proof is quite insufficient. I would undertake to show that the distinctive features of the Gospel are just as plentiful in the passages excised as in those that are retained. Perhaps the most tangible point made by the two critics is the attempt to distinguish between the words for ‘miracle’: ‘works’ they would assign to the earlier writer, and ‘signs’ to the later. We remember, however, that the combination of ‘signs’ and ‘wonders’ occurs markedly in St. Paul, e. g. Rom. xv. 19, 2 Cor. xii. 12, and is indeed characteristic of early Christian literature long before the Fourth Gospel was written.