The Historical Proofs of Christianity [pp. 51-84]

THE HISTORICAL PROOFS OF CHRISTIANITY.
As regards theology, there are traces in the synoptists of the
same vein of teaching which is so prominent in the Fourth Gospel. The memorable passage in Matt. xi. 27, "No man knoweth
the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him," is in
content and style coincident with what we find in John. It is a
specimen of that sort of teaching respecting himself and his
relation to God which we have good reason to expect that Christ
would impart to his followers. Is it probable that he would
have left them in the dark on those questions in regard to which
they must inevitably have craved instruction, and which form so
large a portion of the teaching in John? The institution of the
Lord's Supper as it is recorded by the synoptists implies that
instruction respecting his person and concerning the spiritual
reception of himself-such teaching as is given in John vi.-had
been imparted to his disciples. Else how could his words at
the Last Supper have been otherwise than strange and unintelligible to them? The conception of his person in the synoptical
Gospels is at bottom the same as in the Fourth. In them he
stands forth as the supreme lawgiver, as we see in the Sermon
on the Mount. He is distinguished from the prophets and is
exalted above them. He is at last to judge the world. The
particular point that is found in John, in distinction from the
other Gospels, is the explicit doctrine of his pre-existence.
This doctrine, together with that of his relation to the creation,
has its equivalent in the writings of the apostle Paul (I. Cor.
viii. 6; II. Cor. viii. 9; Phil. ii. 6), a circumstance, as was remarked above, which tends strongly to prove that it entered
into the testimony of Jesus respecting himself, and thus goes
to corroborate the evidence of the same fact, afforded in John.
In the Christian literature of the second century there is no
book which approaches in power the Fourth Gospel. Everything is on a lower level. When we take up the works of the
sub-apostolic age, we are conscious of an abrupt descent from
The inference finds no warrant in the data brought forward to sustain it. The
Fourth Gospel is as far as possible from being a mechanical composite of scraps
of phraseology gathered from other sources. It has a homogeneousness, a continuity, a life, which never could have belonged to it had it been composed in the
artificial way supposed.
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