Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and the Fourth Goipel. Divisions of the subject: The'judgment of centuries,' as well as because the Fourth Gospel has been made the central position upon which the forces of modern criticism have been directed, and because it stands out pre-eminently among the treasures of the New Testament writings, I propose to confine our attention to this chief problem of present-day thought. Thus limited, our subject becomes ' Modern Criticism considered in its relation to the Fourth Gospel.' Further limitations will be imposed by the scope of this course of ' lecture-sermons,' and it will be found necessary, in order that your patience may not be unduly taxed, to add in notes, details and references in support of the principles which will be submitted. The method of examination is marked out for us in the terms of the subject. The first step will be to ascertain what, as a matter of fact, the 'judgment of centuries ' on the Fourth Gospel is. With this end in view, the dawn of real knowledge in the last quarter of the second century will be a convenient starting-point, from which we may look backwards into the twilight of the preceding decades, and forwards into the history of sixteen centuries. Three short lectures will not allow us to take more than the most cursory review of these periods ; but of the time at our command this may be considered a sufficient proportion. It will be the less necessary for us to enter into fuller detail, as the position of the Fourth Gospel in the second century has been the subject of much recent examination ; and the history of the sixteen centuries which follow is for the most part a history of unquestioned acceptance. After arriving at an estimate of what the ' j udg- our age.' ment of centuries' is, we shall be in a position to inquire h... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.