out of which I am said to “make capital” and those which Dr. Lightfoot characterises as “their main arguments,” if I am to judge by the “samples” of them which he gives me.  For instance, [26:2] he asks why, when asserting that the Synoptics clearly represent the ministry of Jesus as having been limited to a single year, and his preaching as confined to Galilee and Jerusalem, whilst the fourth Gospel distributes the teaching of Jesus between Galilee, Samaria, and Jerusalem, makes it extend over three years, and refers to three passovers spent by Jesus at Jerusalem: 

“Why then,” he asks,

“does he not add that ‘apologetic’ writers refer to such passages as Matt. xiii. 37 (comp.  Luke xiii. 34), ’O Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy children together’?  Here the expression ‘how often,’ it is contended, obliges us to postulate other visits, probably several visits, to Jerusalem, which are not recorded in the Synoptic Gospels themselves.  And it may be suggested also that the twice-repeated notice of time in the context of St. Luke, ’I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected,’ ’I must walk to-day and to-morrow and the day following,’ points to the very duration of our Lord’s ministry, as indicated by the fourth Gospel.  If so, the coincidence is the more remarkable because it does not appear that St. Luke himself, while wording these prophetic words, was aware of their full historical import.” [27:1]

Now it might have struck Dr. Lightfoot that if anyone making an enquiry into the reality of Divine Revelation were obliged, in order to escape charges of want of candour, fulness, and impartiality, or insinuations of ignorance, to reproduce and refute all apologetic arguments like this, the duration of modern life would scarcely suffice for the task; and “if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain all the books that should be written.”  It is very right that anyone believing it valid should advance this or any other reasoning in reply to objections, or in support of opinions; but is it not somewhat unreasonable vehemently to condemn a writer for not exhausting himself, and his readers, by discussing pleas which are not only unsound in themselves, but irrelevant to the direct purpose of his work?  I have only advanced objections against the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel, which seem to me unrefuted by any of the explanations offered.

Let me now turn to more important instances.  Dr. Lightfoot asks:  “Why, when he is endeavouring to minimise, if not deny, the Hebraic character of the fourth Gospel, does he wholly ignore the investigations of Luthardt and others, which (as ‘apologists’ venture to think) show that the whole texture of the language the fourth Gospel is Hebraic?” [27:2] Now my statements with regard to the language of the Apocalypse and fourth Gospel are as follows.