tenderness of heart,[7] and his lively imagination,[8] must have had a great charm.  The personality of this extraordinary man, who has exerted so peculiar an influence on infant Christianity, did not develop itself till afterward.  When old, he wrote that strange Gospel,[9] which contains such precious teaching, but in which, in our opinion, the character of Jesus is falsified upon many points.  The nature of John was too powerful and too profound for him to bend himself to the impersonal tone of the first evangelists.  He was the biographer of Jesus, as Plato was of Socrates.  Accustomed to ponder over his recollections with the feverish restlessness of an excited mind, he transformed his master in wishing to describe him, and sometimes he leaves it to be suspected (unless other hands have altered his work) that perfect good faith was not invariably his rule and law in the composition of this singular writing.

[Footnote 1:  Mark iii. 17, ix. 37, and following; x. 35, and following; Luke ix. 49, and following; 54, and following.]

[Footnote 2:  John xiii. 23, xviii. 15, and following, xix. 26, 27, xx. 2, 4, xxi. 7, 20, and following.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xvii. 1, xxvi. 37; Mark v. 37, ix. 1, xiii. 3, xiv. 33; Luke ix. 28.  The idea that Jesus had communicated to these three disciples a Gnosis, or secret doctrine, was very early spread.  It is singular that John, in his Gospel, does not once mention James, his brother.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. iv. 18-22; Luke v. 10; John xxi. 2, and following.]

[Footnote 5:  Matt. xiv. 28, xvi. 22; Mark viii. 32, and following.]

[Footnote 6:  He appears to have lived till near the year 100.  See his Gospel, xxi. 15-23, and the ancient authorities collected by Eusebius, H.E., iii. 20, 23.]

[Footnote 7:  See the epistles attributed to him, which are certainly by the same author as the fourth Gospel.]

[Footnote 8:  Nevertheless we do not mean to affirm that the Apocalypse is by him.]

[Footnote 9:  The common tradition seems sufficiently justified to me on this point.  It is evident, besides, that the school of John retouched his Gospel (see the whole of chap. xxi.)]

No hierarchy, properly speaking, existed in the new sect.  They were to call each other “brothers;” and Jesus absolutely proscribed titles of superiority, such as rabbi, “master,” father—­he alone being master, and God alone being father.  The greatest was to become the servant of the others.[1] Simon Bar-jona, however, was distinguished amongst his fellows by a peculiar degree of importance.  Jesus lived with him, and taught in his boat;[2] his house was the centre of the Gospel preaching.  In public he was regarded as the chief of the flock; and it is to him that the overseers of the tolls address themselves to collect the taxes which were due from the community.[3] He was the first who had recognized Jesus as the Messiah.[4] In a moment of unpopularity,