up the world of high abstractions which themselves are also regarded as possessing a separate individuality; they are Logoi by the side of the Logos.  On its Stoic side it becomes a Pantheistic Essence pervading the life of things; it is ‘the law,’ ‘the bond’ which holds the world together; the world is its ‘garment.’  On its Eastern side, the Logos is the ‘Archangel,’ the ‘Captain of the hosts of heaven,’ the ‘Mother-city’ from which they issue as colonists, the ’Vice-gerent’ of the Great King [Endnote 287:1].

It needed a more powerful mind than Justin’s to reduce all this to its simple Christian expression, to take the poetry of Judaea and the philosophy of Alexandria and to interpret and realise both in the light of the historical events of the birth and life of Christ.  ‘The Word became flesh’ is the key by which Justin is made intelligible, and that key is supplied by the fourth Gospel.  No other Christian writer had combined these two ideas before—­the divine Logos, with the historical personality of Jesus.  When therefore we find the ideas combined as in Justin, we are necessarily referred to the fourth Gospel for them; for the strangely inverted suggestion of Volkmar, that the author of the fourth Gospel borrowed from Justin, is on chronological, if not on other grounds, certainly untenable.  We shall see that the fourth Gospel was without doubt in existence at the date which Volkmar assigns to Justin’s Apology, 150 A. D.

* * * * *

The history of the discussion as to the relation of the Clementine Homilies to the fourth Gospel is highly instructive, not only in itself, but also for the light which it throws upon the general character of our enquiry and the documents with which it is concerned.  It has been already mentioned that up to the year 1853 the Clementine Homilies were only extant in a mutilated form, ending abruptly in the middle of Hom. xix. 14.  In that year a complete edition was at last published by Dressel from a manuscript in the Vatican containing the rest of the nineteenth and the twentieth Homily.  The older portion occupies in all, with the translation and critical apparatus, 381 large octavo pages in Dressel’s edition; the portion added by Dressel occupies 34.  And yet up to 1853, though the Clementine Homilies had been carefully studied with reference to the use of the fourth Gospel, only a few indications had been found, and those were disputed.  In fact, the controversy was very much at such a point as others with which we have been dealing; there was a certain probability in favour of the conclusion that the Gospel had been used, but still considerably short of the highest.  Since the publication of the conclusion of the Homilies the question has been set at rest.  Hilgenfeld, who had hitherto been a determined advocate of the negative theory, at once gave up his ground [Endnote 288:1]; and Volkmar, who had somewhat less to retract, admitted and admits [Endnote 288:2] that the fact of the use of the Gospel must be considered as proved.  The author of ‘Supernatural Religion’ stands alone in still resisting this conviction [Endnote 288:3], but the result I suspect will be only to show in stronger relief the one-sidedness of his critical method.