But it became the more needful to ask; How was it that the other writers omitted to tell of such decisive exhibitions?  Were they so dull in logic, as not to discern the superiority of these?  Can they possibly have known of such miracles, wrought under the eyes of the Pharisees, and defying all their malice, and yet have told in preference other less convincing marvels?  The question could not be long dwelt on, without eliciting the reply:  “It is necessary to believe, at least until the contrary shall be proved, that the three first writers either had never heard of these two miracles, or disbelieved them.”  Thus the account rests on the unsupported evidence of John, with a weighty presumption against its truth.

When, where, and in what circumstances did John write?  It is agreed, that he wrote half a century after the events; when the other disciples were all dead; when Jerusalem was destroyed, her priests and learned men dispersed, her nationality dissolved, her coherence annihilated;—­he wrote in a tongue foreign to the Jews of Palestine, and for a foreign people, in a distant country, and in the bosom of an admiring and confiding church, which was likely to venerate him the more, the greater marvels he asserted concerning their Master.  He told them miracles of firstrate magnitude, which no one before had recorded.  Is it possible for me to receive them on his word, under circumstances so conducive to delusion, and without a single check to ensure his accuracy?  Quite impossible; when I have already seen how little to be trusted is his report of the discourses and doctrine of Jesus.

But was it necessary to impute to John conscious and wilful deception?  By no means absolutely necessary;—­as appeared by the following train[23] of thought.  John tells us that Jesus promised the Comforter, to bring to their memory things that concerned him; oh that one could have the satisfaction of cross-examining John on this subject!  Let me suppose him put into the witness-box; and I will speak to him thus:  “O aged Sir, we understand that you have two memories, a natural and a miraculous one:  with the former you retain events as other men; with the latter you recall what had been totally forgotten.  Be pleased to tell us now.  Is it from your natural or from your supernatural memory that you derive your knowledge of the miracle wrought on Lazarus and the long discourses which you narrate?” If to this question John were frankly to reply, “It is solely from my supernatural memory,—­from the special action of the Comforter on my mind:”  then should I discern that he was perfectly truehearted.  Yet I should also see, that he was liable to mistake a reverie, a meditation, a day-dream, for a resuscitation of his memory by the Spirit.  In short, a writer who believes such a doctrine, and does not think it requisite to warn us how much of his tale comes from his natural, and how much from his supernatural memory, forfeits all claim to be received as an historian, witnessing by the common senses to external fact.  His work may have religious value, but it is that of a novel or romance, not of a history.  It is therefore superfluous to name the many other difficulties in detail which it contains.