this stupendous miracle is never appealed to by the earlier historians in proof of their master’s greatness, though ‘much people of the Jews’ are said to have seen Lazarus after his resurrection; this miracle is also given as the reason for the active hostility of the priests, ‘from that day forward.’  Jesus then retires to Ephraim near the wilderness, from which town he goes to Bethany, and thence in triumph to Jerusalem, being met by the people ‘for that they heard that he had done this miracle.’  The two accounts have absolutely nothing in common except the entry into Jerusalem, and the preceding events of the Synoptics exclude those of the fourth Gospel, as does the latter theirs.  If Jesus abode in Bethabara and Ephraim, he could not have come from Galilee; if he started from Galilee, he was not abiding in the south.  John xiii.-xvii. stand alone, with the exception of the mention of the traitor.  On the arrest of Jesus, he is led (ch. xviii. 13) to Annas, who sends him to Caiaphas, while the others send him direct to Caiaphas, but this is immaterial.  He is then taken to Pilate:  the Jews do not enter the judgment-hall, lest, being defiled, they could not eat the passover, a feast which, according to the Synoptics, was over, Jesus and his disciples having eaten it the night before.  Jesus is exposed to the people at the sixth hour (ch. xix. 14), while Mark tells us he was crucified three hours before—­at the third hour—­a note of time which agrees with the others, since they all relate that there was darkness from the sixth to the ninth hour, i.e., there was thick darkness at the time when, ‘according to St. John,’ Jesus was exposed.  Here our evangelist is in hopeless conflict with the three.  The accounts about the resurrection are irreconcilable in all the Gospels, and mutually destructive.  It remains to notice, among these discrepancies, one or two points which did not come in conveniently in the course of the narrative.  During the whole of the fourth Gospel, we find Jesus constantly arguing for his right to the title of Messiah.  Andrew speaks of him as such (i. 41); the Samaritans acknowledge him (iv. 42); Peter owns him (vi. 69); the people call him so (vii. 26, 31, 41); Jesus claims it (viii. 24); it is the subject of a law (ix. 22); Jesus speaks of it as already claimed by him (x. 24, 25); Martha recognises it (xi. 27).  We thus find that, from the very first, this title is openly claimed by Jesus, and his right to it openly canvassed by the Jews.  But—­in the three—­the disciples acknowledge him as Christ, and he charges them to ’tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ” (Matt. xvi. 20; Mark viii. 29, 30; Luke ix. 20, 21); and this in the same year that he blames the Jews for not owning this Messiahship, since he had told them who he was ‘from the beginning’ (ch. viii. 24, 25):  so that, if ‘John’ was right, we fail to see the object of all the mystery about it, related by the Synoptics.  We mark, too, how Peter is, in their account, praised for confessing