The recent Conference of Church of England Modernists has drawn attention to the Fourth Gospel. In calling it the Fourth Gospel we are not minded to deny that it is the Gospel of St. John, the beloved disciple. Indeed, we should be doing violence to our reason, or our reasons, if we did otherwise than believe it to be the eye-witness and ear-witness of him who leaned on the bosom of the Master. But our chief aim is to denote the historic value of this Gospel which, if it is not the eye-witness of the last years of Jesus was assuredly the eye-witness of the first years of His Church. In both cases it is of supreme value as a witness to that consciousness which has been the unique claim of the Catholic Church.

Two preliminaries will clear a way to the centre of our thesis.

The Fourth Gospel is a product of Eastern, not Western Christianity. It is a delicate point of history to decide whether it came from Jerusalem or from Ephesus. In either case its witness to the historic development of the Church can hardly be overrated. If it sprang from Ephesus, it arose out of a Christian consciousness which was definitely the work of St. Paul. If it sprang from Jerusalem, it arose from a Christian consciousness which, at the time of writing, owed little or nothing to St. Peter.

The oral instruction which Jesus had given His apostles had its limitations ; although it may well be doubted whether it had the limitations of written instruction. It is clear that human intelligences could not retain in a state of active consciousness all the sayings and doings of some three years, so filled with activity as to leave little time even for foodtaking.