If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes, coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. In fact, certain portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the entire twenty-first chapter,[1] in which the author seems to wish to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from the death of John himself, (ver. 21-23.) Many other places bear the trace of erasures and corrections.[2] It is impossible at this distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a decisive test. Every one who sets himself to write the Life of Jesus without any predetermined theory as to the relative value of the Gospels, letting himself be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narration of John to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of the passion, unintelligible in the synoptics,[3] resume both probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of Jesus with any meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner of incessantly preaching and demonstrating himself, this perpetual argumentation, this stage-effect devoid of simplicity, these long arguments after each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the tone of which is so often false and unequal,[4] would not be tolerated by a man of taste compared with the delightful sentences of the synoptics. There are here evidently artificial portions,[5] which represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render us the conversations of Socrates. They are, so to speak, the variations of a musician improvising on a given theme. The theme is not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination of the artist has given itself full scope. We are sensible of the factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.[6] Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of which we speak. The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so familiar to the Master,[7] occurs there but once.[8] On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel, presents the most complete analogy with that of the Epistles of St. John; we see that in writing the discourses, the author followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat monotonous movement of his own thought.