How do these admissions affect our belief that he was the writer of the sentences which introduce the Gospel that bears his name? I believe they strengthen that belief exceedingly. I can conceive nothing more thoroughly Hebrew than these sentences. I pass over the resemblance, which will strike you all upon this day,[1] between these verses and those at the commencement of the Book of Genesis; though the correspondence between their style and the style of Moses, is one of those internal correspondences which we feel the more strongly the more we reflect. But I would beg you to notice the essential _difference_ between this kind of writing and that of any person who had been brought up in any school of philosophy whatsoever, whether one purely Greek, or where Greek and Hebrew elements were mixed as they were at Alexandria. Would you expect in such a person the broad, simple, assertive tone, '_In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God_'? Would not the _true_ philosopher try to vindicate his name by proving that he was a _seeker_ after wisdom? Would not the _false_ philosopher, if he were ever so much inclined to dogmatise, at least produce some plausible arguments in support of any statements which he advanced? Where, but in the writings of the Old and New Testament, do you meet with such an adventurous proclamation as this? Where, even in the Books of the Old and New Testament, do you meet with one that is quite a parallel to it? [1] Septuagesima Sunday, when the first chapter of Genesis is read. Schleiermacher, who is not likely to exaggerate the resemblance of the New Testament to the Old, dwells on this point. See "Homilien über das Evangelium Johannis;" edited after his death by Sydow.