Well may Dr. Davidson acknowledge "it is not easy to account for the early belief of its Johannine origin;" and that "if a disciple of John wrote it, he had learned more than his master." It _would_ have been "strange if such an author had continued unknown." If we reject the Johannine origin, we have to believe that during the fifty years between John's death and the time of the book's _general acceptance as his_ there lived some one capable of writing it, of whom history and tradition are silent. This is certainly a large matter for sceptical credulity to swallow. How much easier to believe that the refinement and beauty of composition, whose charm has captivated the world, is the work of a Grecian disciple, who wrote under the superintendence, if not dictation, of the apostle who only could have furnished the materials at the time when it was written. At the close of the first century all the other apostles were dead, and for its authorship we cannot look beyond the circle which surrounded Jesus at the instituting of that ever-abiding memorial of Him, "The Lord's Supper." Among the anomalies of our author's hypothesis we have to think of the apostles living in the first century, and attaining their reputation as writers during the second. In the first century men appear, but without their writings. In the second century the writings come to light, but without the men. How unnatural, says Dr. Christlieb, is this! Who can fail to see that the hypothesis is incredible? "We invariably find that an age which is fertile in literary productions is followed by a conservative period, in which the productions of the foregoing period are collected and digested--first the classical, then the post-classical. Does the second century, in other respects, bear the impress of a productive classical period in literature? On the contrary, its undoubted products breathe a spirit which bears the same relation to the New Testament writings as does the tenour of a post-classical age bear to that of the age preceding it. Did these writings, especially the Fourth Gospel, belong to 'unknown' authors, they would be perfectly inexplicable phenomena as compared with all the other products of that period. It has been well said that it were no less absurd to ascribe the most inspiriting writings of Luther to the spiritless period of the Thirty Years' War, than to transfer the Gospel of John to the middle of the second century."[63] [63] Dr. Christlieb, p. 541. "Notwithstanding their warm Christian life, the writings of the second century evince such a remarkable dearth of new ideas that one plainly sees how, after the spiritual flood-tides of the first century, the ebb had set in."[64] [64] Dr. Christlieb, p. 541.