52,--whereby the reader, having read on to the end of that verse, was directed to skip all that followed down to the words [Greek: kai meketi hamartane] in ch.viii.

11: after which he found himself instructed to 'recommence' ([Greek: arxai]).

Again I ask (and this time does not the riddle admit of only one solution ?),--When and how does the reader suppose that the narrative of 'the woman taken in adultery' first found its way into the _middle of the lesson for Pentecost_?
I pause for an answer: I shall perforce be told that it never 'found its way' into the lection at all: but having once crept into St.John's Gospel, however that may have been effected, and established itself there, it left those ancient men who devised the Church's Lectionary without choice.

They could but direct its omission, and employ for that purpose the established liturgical formula in all similar cases.
But first,--How is it that those who would reject the narrative are not struck by the essential foolishness of supposing that twelve fabricated verses, purporting to be an integral part of the fourth Gospel, can have so firmly established themselves in every part of Christendom from the second century downwards, that they have long since become simply ineradicable?
Did the Church then, _pro hac vice_, abdicate her function of being 'a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ'?
Was she all of a sudden forsaken by the inspiring Spirit, who, as she was promised, should 'guide her into all Truth'?
And has she been all down the ages guided into the grievous error of imputing to the disciple whom Jesus loved a narrative of which he knew nothing?
For, as I remarked at the outset, this is not merely an assimilated expression, or an unauthorized nominative, or a weakly-supported clause, or any such trifling thing.
Although be it remarked in passing, I am not aware of a single such trifling excrescence which we are not able at once to detect and to remove.

In other words, this is not at all a question, like the rest, about the genuine text of a passage.