We will follow the example that is set us in presenting the whole of the passages alleged to contain allusions to the fourth Gospel; and it is the more interesting to do so with the key that the recent discovery has put into Our hands.  The first runs thus:—­

Hom. iii. 52.

Therefore he, being a true prophet, said:  I am the gate of life; he that entereth in through me entereth into life:  for the teaching that can save is none other [than mine].

[Greek:  Dia touto autos alaethaes on prophaetaes elegen; Ego eimi hae pulae taes zoaes; ho di’ emou eiserchomenos eiserchetai eis taen zoaen; hos ouk ousaes heteras taes sozein dunamenaes didaskalias.]

John x. 9.

I am the door:  by me if any one enter in, he shall be saved, and shall come in and go out, and shall find pasture.

[Greek:  Ego eimi hae thura; di’ emou ean tis eiselthae sothaesetai kai eiseleusetai kai exeleusetai kai nomaen heuraesei.]

Apart from other evidence it would have been somewhat precarious to allege this as proof of the use of the fourth Gospel, and yet I believe there would have been a distinct probability that it was taken from that work.  The parallel is much closer—­in spite of [Greek:  thura] for [Greek:  pulae]—­than is Matt. vii. 13, 14 (the ‘narrow gate’) which is adduced in ‘Supernatural Religion,’ and the interval is very insufficiently bridged over by Ps. cxviii. 19, 20 (’This is the gate of the Lord’).  The key-note of the passage is given in the identification of the gate with the person of the Saviour (’I am the door’) and in the remarkable expression ‘he that entereth in through me,’ which is retained in the Homily.  It is curious to notice the way in which the [Greek:  sothaesetai] of the Gospel has been expanded exegetically.

Less doubtful—­and indeed we should have thought almost beyond a doubt—­is the next reference; ‘My sheep hear my voice.’

Hom. iii. 52.

[Greek:  ta ema probata akouei taes emaes phonaes.]

John x. 27. [Greek:  ta probata ta ema taes phonaes mou akouei.]

’There was no more common representation amongst the Jews of the relation of God and his people than that of Shepherd and his sheep’ [Endnote 290:1].  That is to say, it occurs of Jehovah or of the Messiah some twelve or fifteen times in the Old and New Testament together, but never with anything at all closely approaching to the precise and particular feature given here.  Let the reader try to estimate the chances that another source than the fourth Gospel is being quoted.  Criticism is made null and void when such seemingly plain indications as this are discarded in favour of entirely unknown quantities like the ’Gospel according to the Hebrews.’  If the author of ‘Supernatural Religion’ were to turn his own powers of derisive statement against his own hypotheses they would present a very strange appearance.