The testimony, too, borne by these finds has been of the greatest importance. The _Diatessaron_ alone has formed the most triumphant reply to the argument against the Gospels, specially against St. John's Gospel, formulated some years ago by the author of _Supernatural Religion_. And the process of discovery is still going on. I have said something in the notes to the final lecture of the present volume concerning the latest discovery of this kind which throws some light upon the composition of the Acts. I refer to the lost _Apology_ of Aristides, which has just been brought to light. Let me very briefly tell its story and show its bearing on the age and date of the Acts. Eusebius, the historian of the fourth century, mentions in his _Chronicle_, under the year 124, the two earliest apologies written in defence of Christianity; one by Quadratus, a hearer of the Apostles, the other by Aristides, a philosopher of Athens. Now this year 124 was about twenty years after St. John's death. These apologies have hitherto been best known by this historian's notice, though Eusebius says they were widely circulated in his time. The _Apology_ or defence of Aristides has often been sought for. In the seventeenth century it was said to have been extant in a monastery near Athens,[5] but no Western had ever seen it in a complete shape in modern times. Two years ago, however, Professor J. Rendel Harris, M.A., of Cambridge and of Haverford College, Pennsylvania, discovered it in a Syriac version in the library of the convent of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai, whence he has published it with an English translation in a new series of _Texts and Studies in Biblical and Patristic Literature_, the first number of which has appeared at Cambridge within the last few weeks.[6] [5] Ceillier, _Hist. des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques_, i., 403.