The Christian Observer [Afterw.] the Christian Observer and Advocate (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. It would be impossible to estimate too highly, at the present time, the question of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel. If there be one part more than another of the conflict between the assailants and defenders of Christian doctrine which both sides know involves the error or the truth of that for which they contend, it is especially to be found in the Fourth Gospel; it ia there the citadel stands, which, if it could be taken by the invading host, would give them an important vantage ground over the whole battle-field. To this standard the believer in the old truths can point, and say, " We have here what no ingenuity can explain in any sense but that of our creed." To this also his opponent looks and insists, " We assert that this is not what it pretends to be; and, if it falls, it carries so much with it that we can meet you on more even terms as to what is left." Hence it is that the efforts of criticism have been so anxiously directed to point out what difficulties are found to lie in the way of the acceptance of the ordinary belief that the Gospel is the work of the Evangelist St. John, and have further tried to remove the obstacles which criticism itself finds are in the way of the opposite opinion. Thus on examining a recent work, to which it will be necessary again to refer, and to which must be allowed this merit,?that it contains a faithful resume of the strongest arguments on its own side, we find in it that the success of the Fourth Gospel in reaching the hearts of men, and even in influencing the judgment of critics who "ought to have known better," is to be attributed to its " literary skill," and to " the pathetic and picturesque details with which it surrounds its main facts." The author laments that the "beauty of the Gosp...