of illustrating his meaning by short and simple parables. In John he is obscure, mystical, symbolic, and of his favorite method of teaching by parables there is not a trace. Both descriptions cannot be true. It would be monstrous to suppose either that the synoptical Gospels omitted some of his most extraordinary miracles and some of his most remarkable discourses, or that the Gospel of John passed over in silence the whole of that side of his character which is portrayed in the ethical maxims, the parables, and the exhortations of its predecessors. Were it so, none of the four could be accepted as other than an extremely one-sided and imperfect biography, and each of them is plainly regarded by its author as complete within itself. None of them refers to extraneous sources to supplement its own deficiencies. The concluding verse of the fourth Gospel does indeed allude to many unrecorded actions of Jesus, which, if they were all written, would fill more books than the world could contain. But, not to rely on the fact that the last chapter is spurious, these words contain no intimation that a mode of teaching completely different from that here recorded was ever employed by Jesus. And this is the point in which John's narrative is peculiar. Again, to turn to the Synoptics, there is no shadow of an intimation in them that, between the last supper and arrest, Jesus addressed to his disciples a long and remarkable discourse, full of the most interesting revelations. Can we suppose that they could have forgotten it, delivered as it was at such a moment as this, the very last before their master's condemnation at which he was able to speak to them? Such a supposition is utterly untenable. The two traditions embodied in these versions of his life do not therefore, as some learned men—Ewald, for example—have supposed, supplement, but exclude one another.
Let us enter into detail into some of the peculiar characteristics of the Jesus of John. In the first place, we may note that his miracles are altogether new. One of them at least is so astounding that no biographer who had heard of it could have passed it by. The raising of Lazarus is the greatest feat that Jesus ever performed. In other cases he brought persons who were supposed to be just dead to life, but skeptical Jews might have suspected that they had never in reality died at all.
