CHAPTER V.

SPIRIT AND VALUE OF THE GOSPEL AND EPISTLES OF JOHN.

THE task that remains is the most attractive of all. We have to enter wholeheartedly into the spirit of the other four Johannine writings, and to try to realise their importance, on the one hand for their own time, and on the other for all times. When we did this in the case of the Apocalypse, we could only speak with a good deal of reserve; as regards these other writings, however, we are in a much more favourable position, especially as regards the Gospel and the First Epistle. At this point we assume, of course, that the reader is acquainted with all that we have said at the close of the first part of this book (pp. 151-165) about the intellectual currents observable in the Fourth Gospel.