Our remembrances are transformed with our circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have known changes as we change.[1] Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the truth.
[Footnote 1: It was thus that Napoleon became a liberal in the remembrances of his companions in exile, when these, after their return, found themselves thrown in the midst of the political society of the time.] If we must speak candidly, we will add that probably John himself had little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than by him.

One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes, coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit.

In fact, certain portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the entire twenty-first chapter,[1] in which the author seems to wish to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from the death of John himself, (ver.

21-23.) Many other places bear the trace of erasures and corrections.[2] It is impossible at this distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths.

But there is a decisive test.