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CORNELL 
 
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 Alfred C, Barnes 
 
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 Witness of St. John to Christ: be na the 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 342 445 
 

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 ^..^.^ ^r^^<^ Ic^c^ G^...:^c.w 
 
 ^^y^^t^ vvcj^t^o^e 
 
 
 THE BOYLE LECTURES 
 
 For 1870 
 
RIVINGTONS 
 
 London ••• Waterloo Place 
 
 Oxford High Street 
 
 Cambridge Trinity Street 
 
THE WITNESS OF ST. JOHN 
 TO CHRIST 
 
 lietttg tl)e ^ogU l^ettttreiS for 1870 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX 
 
 ON THE AUTHORSHIP AND INTEGRITY OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL 
 AND THE UNITY OF THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. STANLEY LEATHES, M.A. 
 
 MINISTER OF ST. PHILIP's, REGENT STREET, AND 
 PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, KINg'S COLLEGE, LONDON 
 
 RIVINGTONS 
 
 l^onbon, ©iforb, anli dambrilige 
 
 1870 
 

EXTRACT 
 
 FROM 
 
 A CODICIL TO THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE Esq, 
 Dated July 28, 1691. 
 
 " TITHEEEAS I have an intention to settle in my life- 
 time the sum of Fifty Pounds per annum for ever, 
 or at least for a considerable number of years, to be for an 
 annual salary for some learned Divine or Preacliing Minis- 
 ter, from time to time to be elected and resident within 
 the city of London or circuit of the BUls of Mortality, who 
 shall be enjoined to perform the ofi&ces following, viz. — 
 To preach Eight Sermons in the year, for Proving the 
 Christian EeUgion against notorious Infidels, viz. Atheists, 
 Theists, Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans, not descending 
 lower to any controversies that are among Christians them- 
 selves ; these Lectures to be on the first Monday of the 
 respective months of January, February, March, April, 
 May, September, October, November, in such church as 
 my trustees herein named shall from time to time appoint ; 
 to be assisting to all Companies, and encouraging of 
 
vi Extract from the Will of Robert Boyle, Esq. 
 
 them in any undertaking for Propagating the Christian 
 Eeligion in foreign parts ; to be ready to satisfy such real 
 scruples as any may have concerning these matters, and to 
 answer such new objections and difficulties as may be 
 started, to which good answers have not yet been made. . . 
 
 I will that after my death Sir John Eotherham, 
 
 Sergeant-at-Law, Sir Henry Ashurst, of London, Knight 
 and Baronet, Thomas Tennison, Doctor in Divinity, and 
 John Evelyn, sen., Esq., and the survivors or survivor of 
 them, and such person or persons as the survivor of them 
 shall appoint to succeed in the following trust, shall have 
 the election and nomination of such Lecturer, and also 
 shall and may constitute and appoint him for any term 
 not exceeding three years, and at the end of such term 
 shall make a new election and appointment of the same or 
 any other learned Minister of the Gospel, residing within 
 the City of London or extent of the Bills of Mortality, at 
 their discretions." 
 
 [Note. — By an arrangement of the Bishop of London, 
 the Boyle Lectures are now delivered annually at the 
 Chapel Eoyal, "Whitehall, in the afternoons of Sundays 
 after Easter, at the discretion of the Preacher. The 
 delivery of the following Lectures commenced the Second 
 Sunday after Easter, and terminated the First Sunday 
 after Trinity.] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 ~r HAVE tried in these Lectures to take a com- 
 mon-sense view of the most extreme position in 
 ■which a school of modern criticism has endeavoured 
 to place the Gospel of St. John. Even supposing 
 that position could be established as correct, it 
 would not by any means follow that the deadly 
 hlow had been struck at our received Christianity, 
 -which some apprehend, and others would have us 
 believe. If, indeed, we start with certain fore- 
 gone conclusions about the nature of Inspiration, 
 it may be fatal to any such notions to find one of 
 the conditions unfulfilled without which the idea 
 of Inspiration can scarcely be maintaitied. For 
 to believe that intentional forgery was compatible 
 with any degree of Inspiration, properly so-called, 
 in the mind of the person forging, would surely 
 
 not be possible. And yet this must be the case 
 
 a 
 
viii Preface 
 
 if it could be proved or shown to be highly pro- 
 bable that the Gospel of St. John, as an inspired 
 production, had been written in the middle or 
 latter half of the second century. 
 
 For upon that supposition the inference is un- 
 avoidable that the Writer pretended either to be 
 an eye-witness or else to have received his infor- 
 mation from an eye-witness, of the death of 
 Christ. In the former case he told a lie ; in the 
 latter he may have done so, and most probably 
 did. For a man writing, a.d. 150, can barely 
 have had personal communication with one who 
 had been an eye-witness of events that happened 
 A.D. 34. For instance, we may assume the 
 Evangelist to have been fifty years old at the 
 time of writing, which is perhaps a maximum 
 age : he must, then, have been at the very least 
 fifteen when he received the information he re- 
 corded. But the supposed eye-witness can hardly 
 have been much less than five-and-twenty when 
 he was present at the crucifixion, certainly not if 
 he was one of the Twelve.^ This would make him 
 
 ^ The eye-witneaa may, of course, have been an indifferent per- 
 son, and he may have been himself only a boy of fifteen at the 
 time ; but all these additional suppositions are attended with 
 
Preface ix 
 
 at the time of his presumed intercourse with the 
 Writer no less than a hundred and six, certainly 
 by no means an impossible age, but one which, 
 taken together with the other contingencies, is 
 not very probable. At least we may affirm that 
 had this been the case, a writer so minutely par- 
 ticular as the fourth Evangelist would have been 
 very likely to enlarge upon the circumstance of 
 the extreme old age of his informant, if not of 
 his own corresponding youth, and most probably 
 would have done so. 
 
 But more than this, suppose we allow the pos- 
 sible variation of another ten years in the above 
 reckoning, yet the improbability of the case is 
 not exhausted here. Because in every page of 
 the fourth Gospel there is so miich of detailed 
 narrative that it cannot possibly be accounted 
 for by the supposed intercourse of a boy of 
 fifteen with a man of ninety-six or even of eighty- 
 additional improbability. We must at aU events conceive of a boy 
 of fifteen living to the age of eighty-six, and then meeting with 
 another boy of fifteen to whom he related certain details of the 
 crucifixion, which, forty-five years afterwards, were woven into a 
 narrative, composed a.d. 150. A concatenation of circumstances 
 clearly quite possible, but, all things considered, not very pro- 
 bable. 
 
X Preface 
 
 six (in itself, under the circumstances; highly 
 improbable); but must necessarily be referred to 
 a desire, on the part of the "Writer, to seem to 
 have minute personal information on the subjects 
 of which he treated. That is, in other words, it 
 can only be ascribed to an intentional deception 
 on his part ; because, upon the hypothesis any 
 such personal information he cannot have had. 
 The only question, therefore, which can arise is, 
 whether or not circumstances are conceivable in 
 which a deception of this kind would have been 
 excusable. And it is certain that this question 
 can be answered in the affirmative, only upon a 
 recognition of the principle that the end justifies 
 the means. 
 
 Now, let us try to look at this matter in the 
 Writer's point of view. He was himself de- 
 votedly attached to the memory of Jesus. He 
 believed Him to have been Divine. He believed 
 that He was, notwithstanding His ignominious 
 death, still alive. He was very anxious to bring 
 others to the same belief And he thought, it is 
 supposed, that if he wrote an ideal narrative of 
 the life of Jesus, in which he depicted His 
 
Preface xi 
 
 character as he had himself conceived it, and 
 attempted to heighten the reality of his portrait 
 by saying that some of his materials had been 
 derived from the relation of an eye-witness, he 
 would do good service to the cause of his Master, 
 and to the cause of truth, because in his opinion 
 the two were identical. He thought, that is, 
 that he could do something to advance the 
 kingdom of the truth, which was his Master's 
 kingdom, by the composition of a work which in 
 its very principle was a violation of the funda- 
 mental laws of that kingdom ; or, in other and 
 simpler language, by writing a romance. 
 
 Nor can we for a moment dispute the propriety 
 of his undertaking to put forth a work of this 
 nature, having for its object the inculcation of 
 high moral teaching and a lofty conception of the 
 character of Jesus — if this was really ivhat he did. 
 And assuredly in that case everything of truth 
 which his work was designed to teach would be 
 equally valuable in a didactic point of view, 
 whether or not he openly declared his object : in 
 some sense, indeed, it might be more valuable if 
 he could conceal the true nature of his work, than 
 
xii Preface 
 
 if he did not attempt to do so ; only, then, in 
 either case, and this is the point, it could not 
 pretend to be anything else than a romance; it 
 might, indeed, be founded upon truth, as it no 
 doubt was, but still it would be nothing more 
 than a romance. Now, we do not say it is abso- 
 lutely impossible that St. John's Gospel should 
 be a romance ; that is altogether another ques- 
 tion ; but we do most distinctly affirm that if it 
 was produced under these conditions, it was and 
 could have been nothing but a romance. 
 
 Let it be observed, then, that Inspiration is not 
 first postulated, in order to show the improba- 
 bility of the fourth Gospel being a romance ; but 
 the conditions, under which alone it could be a 
 romance, are simply estimated on their own 
 merits and judged accordingly. And, then, it is 
 shown to be inherently improbable that the 
 fourth Gospel is a production of this kind. There 
 are so many improbable contingencies to be as- 
 sumed before this conclusion can be drawn, that 
 it becomes in itself highly improbable. Whether 
 or not the fourth Gospel, not being a romance, 
 is also an inspired production, is a totally inde- 
 
Preface xiii 
 
 pendent question with which we have nothing 
 now to do. It may so happen that when we 
 fairly estimate the various circumstances of the 
 only probable alternative position we may feel 
 ourselves constrained to postulate, or at least to 
 contemplate contingently, some influence of the 
 nature of Inspiration as alone affording adequate 
 explanation of the phenomena before us — ^but this 
 is altogether another matter. Our own conclu- 
 sions simply carry us thus far : If the fourth 
 Gospel was written a.d. 150, then it must be a 
 a romance ; but it is a supposition of high ante- 
 cedent improbability that it was written so late 
 as the middle of the second century. 
 
 We forbear, then, to draw any i'nference froni 
 what may be conceived to be the moral attitude 
 of the Writer's mind in this matter ; for, on the 
 supposition that he is an unknown person, it is 
 hardly fair to do so. The only means open to us 
 for such a purpose, are those supplied by the 
 moral standard of the work itself, than which 
 none can be higher. It is safer, and on the whole 
 more satisfactorv. to consider the matter-of-fact 
 inferences which are actually consequent upon the 
 
xiv Preface 
 
 assumed hypothesis. And these are simply that 
 a person existing, A.D. 150, cannot be supposed to 
 have had such intercourse with an eye-witness of 
 the crucifixion as the fourth Evangehst seems to 
 have had, unless writing at the age of fifty or sixty 
 he had been as a boy of fifteen associated with an 
 eye-witness of that event, who was himself sur- 
 viving at the age of one hundred and six, or 
 ninety-six, or eighty-six. The respective ages are 
 not absolutely improbable, but it is a matter of 
 considerable doubt whether, supposing them to 
 be correct, any such writer would thus have 
 chronicled the circumstance after an interval of 
 thirty-five or forty-five years. And yet this is 
 the conclusion ivhich is demonstrably unavoidable.'^ 
 
 2 We may tabulate thus : — ■ 
 
 Years , „ Years , ^ Years , „ 
 
 old. ^■"- old. ■*■•»■ old. ^■°- 
 
 The Eye- Witness, if 25 at 34, would be 96 at 105, 106 at 115 
 
 „ „ 15 „ „ 86 „ 96 „ 
 
 The Writer, „ 60 at 150, „ 15 „ 25 ,, 
 
 )> ?) ^" 5? J) )) 15 J, 
 
 Years. Years. 
 
 The interval before writing, ,, 45 ,, 35 ,, 
 
 And the question of probability may be stated thus : — Is it more 
 likely that the substance of the fourth Gospel, having been com- 
 municated (say) to a youth of nineteen by an old man of ninety, 
 should have lain dormant in his memory for more than forty years, 
 and at last produced the Gospel ; or, that the Gospel, having been 
 first written (say) perhaps about a.d. 105, should have accidentally 
 escaped more distinct and explicit allusion by Christian writers 
 than appears to have actually fallen to its lot ? 
 
Preface xv 
 
 On the other hand, we must bear in mind that 
 the further the hypothetical date of a.d. 150 is 
 shifted backwards, the nearer it approximates to 
 the extreme limit at which a genuine Gospel of 
 St. John is historically possible, and the more 
 difficult it becomes to reconcile the existence of 
 our fourth Gospel at such earlier date with the 
 alleged absence of reference to it until much later 
 on in the century. In fact, the hypothesis in 
 question is self-destructive, when we find Theo- 
 philus of Antioch at an interval of less than 
 thirty years after the proposed date, a.d. 150, 
 appealing to a Gospel which came into existence 
 then as the genuine production of St. John. Had 
 that been the case, it could hardly have estab- 
 lished its position in so short a time. That it had 
 done so, is itself an argument for an earlier date ; 
 but if we accept an earlier date, we are at once 
 brought nearer to what was probably the true 
 date, besides being confronted with the fact that 
 Justin Martyr, at a.d. 150, makes apparent refer- 
 ence to a work which must have been in existence 
 then, but was at the . same time a forgery. For, 
 to suppose that, the fourth Gospel being in ex- 
 istence prior to a.d. 150, Justin Martyr, writing 
 
xvi Preface 
 
 as he then wrote, did not allude to it, is impos- 
 sible. If Justin did not allude to the fourth 
 Gospel, we can only suppose that both he and 
 the writer of that Gospel made reference to some 
 other work, whose very existence is imaginary. 
 
 On the whole, there cannot be the slightest 
 doubt that the balance of probability is strongly 
 in favour of an earlier origin for the fourth 
 Gospel. And if this be so, the only course that 
 is open to us as critics, is to accept the fact, and 
 account for it as we may. The earlier the origin 
 of this Gospel, the greater its value as a probable 
 narrative of fact. It may well have been written 
 in the last decade of the first century, or even in 
 the first decade of the second, and yet have been 
 the production of St. John. And the interval 
 between either of these dates, and that of a.d. 
 150, represents the whole period of time that we 
 have to bridge : surely not a very formidable 
 chasm when we bear in mind the character of the 
 age in which it occurs. 
 
 While, however, as it seems to us, this is a fair 
 view of the actual case with respect to the fourth 
 
Preface xvii 
 
 Gospel, -we have tried to construct the argument 
 in the Lectures in entire independence of it. On 
 the most extreme supposition, there are still cer- 
 tain elements in that Gospel which are indestruct- 
 ible. If it is even a romance, it is a romance that 
 was written for a purpose — z, very evident and 
 declared purpose ; and so being written the issue 
 turns wholly upon the truth or falsehood of the 
 conception embodied — ^the justice or injustice of 
 the purpose aimed at. We may not say that this 
 purpose is wrong, or this conception false, because 
 the Gospel is a romance; for the very circumstance 
 of its being written for such a purpose, as it 
 clearly was, is at least a witness to the tenacity 
 with which at that time the belief expressed in it 
 was held, and to the zeal with which it was pro- 
 claimed ; while the way in which the doctrine is 
 inculcated is such as to appeal at all times to the 
 intrinsic moral vitality which it claims to possess. 
 The Gospel comes with its own independent 
 message to every individual reader, and assures 
 him that if he will but believe in the Person 
 of whom it speaks he may know for himself the 
 substantial truth of the message. That message 
 will prove itself true to every believing heart. 
 
xviii Preface 
 
 It would not follow that the message was unre- 
 liable or the doctrine false, even if it could be 
 proved that the Gospel was in the strictest sense 
 a romance ; that message would even then stand 
 or fall on its own merits ; and therefore it is 
 obviously premature to depreciate the value of 
 the message because, as is alleged, on critical 
 grounds the Gospel after all may be nothing more 
 than a romance. The message comes with its 
 own witness to the truth, and all who will believe 
 shall hnow that it is true. The further question, 
 whether or not the form in which that message is 
 couched is romantic is a separate and independent 
 question, with which the intrinsic value of the 
 message itself has nothing whatever to do ; 
 and it is a critical error to blend these ques- 
 tions. 
 
 The present writer, then, is most anxious to 
 make his position clearly intelligible. He takes 
 nothing for granted. He does not assume Inspir- 
 ation. He does not assume that the fourth 
 Gospel is genuine. He does not assume that its 
 conception of Christ is true. But he does affirm 
 that if its message is fraught with substantial 
 
Preface xix 
 
 truth then certain results will follow. He be- 
 lieves, nay more, he is certain, that these results 
 do follow ; and he finds upon critical and dispass- 
 ionate investigation that there is even a 'priori 
 reason why they should follow because of the very 
 high probability, to say the least, that the fourth 
 Gospel is a genuine production of the first century, 
 and, in fact, of Apostolic origin. 
 
 To have done anything whatever towards 
 establishing this position, or towards keeping 
 separate and distinct the question of Johannine 
 authorship and the question of intrinsic worth 
 and verity, in reference to the fourth Gospel, 
 will not be without its bearing on the main- 
 tenance of Christian truth in the present day. 
 How far either of these objects has been 
 achieved it is for the public to determine ; but in 
 proportion to the success with which either has 
 been gained the writer is thoroughly convinced 
 that he will have contributed his quota towards 
 carrying out that other great and important 
 design which the excellent and pious founder of 
 the Boyle Lectureship had in view. And in this 
 belief he earnestly commends the labour of the 
 
XX Preface 
 
 present and the two previous years to the favour 
 and blessing of Almighty God, with the earnest 
 prayer that it may be made by His grace truly to 
 serve the cause of the great Head of the Church 
 and the one Saviour of mankind. 
 
 July 6, 1870. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 PAGE 
 ST. JOHN A CREDIBLE WITNESS 1 
 
 .LECTUEE II 
 
 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ST. JOHN'S TEACHING . . 36 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF ST. JOHN'S TEACHING ... 68 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 ST. JOHN'S APPEAL TO THE INWARD WITNESS . . 101 
 
 LECTUEE V 
 
 THE UNITY OF ST. JOHN'S WRITINGS . . . .130 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF ST. JOHN'S WRITINGS . . . 162 
 
xxii Contents 
 
 LECTUEE VII 
 
 PA&B 
 ST. JOHN'S MESSAGE TO THE AGE 193 
 
 LECTUEE VIII 
 
 ST. JOHN'S PLACE IN HOLY SCRIPTURE . . 224 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE A. — ON THE AUTHORSHIP OE THE FOURTH GOSPEL 267 
 
 NOTE B. — ON THE INTEGRITY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL . 336 
 
 NOTE C. — ON THE FEATURES COMMON TO THE JOHANNINE 
 
 WRITINGS 351 
 
LECTURE I 
 
 ST. JOHN A CREDIBLE WITNESS 
 
 St. John xix. 35 
 
 " And he thai saw it hare record, and his record is true; and he 
 hnoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.'' 
 
 THE subject we propose to take for the third 
 and last series of these Lectures on the 
 Boyle Foundation is The Witness op St. John to 
 Christ. We shall try to investigate the charac- 
 ter of that testimony to Jesus and the main facts 
 of the Gospel history which is borne by the writ- 
 ings tradition has handed down to us as those of 
 St. John ; though, indeed, the Gospel known by 
 his name will principally be the field of our in- 
 quiry, and upon it we shall chiefly draw for the 
 support of the argument we shall endeavour to 
 construct. 
 
 And in doing this, it will be needful to make 
 absolutely no demands which it may not be pos- 
 sible to satisfy, to assume no more than all will be 
 ready to grant ; but so to estimate the substantive 
 value of the existing evidence as to enable us to 
 
2 St John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 determine fairly the conclusions to be drawn 
 therefrom. 
 
 For example, there is a document preserved to 
 us among the treasures of ancient literature which 
 is manifestly not of later origin than the second 
 century ; this is in order the fourth of our existing 
 Gospels, and is known as that of St. John. What, 
 then, is the value of this document ? Let us try 
 to estimate its value apart from all bias or pre- 
 determination in its favour. Suppose it is not 
 earlier than the second century of the Christian 
 era — that it was written towards the end rather 
 than the beginning of that century — then what 
 follows ? First, that this writer, whoever he was, 
 intended, beyond all doubt, to represent himself 
 as an eye-witness of some of the events which he 
 describes, as^, for example, the piercing of the 
 side at the crucifixion, for he says, "he that saw it 
 bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth 
 that he saith true, that ye might believe." It is 
 
 1 Dr. Davidson, Introd. to the Study of N. T., 1868, ii. 436, 
 says boldly, "The author of the gospel indicates that he was not 
 " an eye-witness of the sufferings of Jesus in xix. 35," and again 
 afterwards, " Ewald himself admits that tlie, author of the gospel 
 " (i.e. John, as he supposes) is alluded to by the younger friend 
 " that wrote from his dictation, and thus that he is not equivalent 
 "to an emphatic I." Now it must be borne in mind that xxi. 24 
 runs o^Tos iartv 6 fiadriri}^ 6 imprvpGjv irepl ro&novj Kcd ypd^as ravra. So 
 that even if this verse is an addition of the elders of Ephesus it at 
 least expresses their belief that the narrator and the writer were 
 one. The only question is whether the eye-witness of the piercing 
 of the side was the beloved disciple or a different person. If he was 
 the same person these conclusions follow ; — The writer was also the 
 
I] 6"/. yohn a Credible Witness 3 
 
 virtually impossible to interpret these words other- 
 wise than as those of a person who was professing 
 to relate what he had himself witnessed. Conse- 
 quently, if they were not earlier than the end of 
 the second century, we are obliged to conclude 
 either that the author was romancing, or else that 
 he was endeavouring to impose upon his readers 
 as being a person who in reality he was not^. 
 
 Now, the supposition that the writer was 
 romancing is capable of being tested to a very 
 great degree by the consideration of features 
 which are apparent on the surface of the work. 
 For instance, it is scarcely within the limits of 
 possibility to believe that the chapters which 
 describe the last hours of the mortal life of Jesvis 
 are a romance. They are so vivid, so minutely 
 circumstantial, and bear so manifestly the stamp 
 of truth, that, to say the least, it is hard to believe 
 they are not true in the sense of being a romance. 
 
 narrator ; the narrator of the twenty-first chapter was also, in the 
 opinion of the Ephesian elders, the narrator of the previous 
 chapters ; the narrator was the beloved disciple of Jesus ; the be- 
 loved disciple was the eye-witness of the piercing of the side. 
 These conclusions are fairly and necessarily dedncible from the 
 evidence of the Gospel itself, but they still leave unsolved the 
 previous question, Who was the beloved disciple ? And as they 
 leave this the most important question of all unsolved, is it not a 
 proof that the last two verses of the Gospel cannot have been added 
 by the elders of the Church at Ephesus, for the simple reason that 
 their only conceivable motive for adding them would have been 
 frustrated by the indefiniteness of the addition ? See also n. p. 11, 
 
 2 See Appendix, Note A, where the subject is discussed at large. 
 
4 S^. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 It becomes, in fact, impossible to believe this 
 when we take into consideration the emphatic 
 assertion just referred to. No one writing a 
 romance would thus step out of his way to vouch 
 for incidents not bearing directly on his work as a 
 whole, but merely having reference to a subor- 
 dinate point in its development. Just as when 
 the author of " Waverley" gives his own personal 
 knowledge as the source from whence he has 
 drawn certain particulars in his narrative, we trust 
 him there on the credit of his own word^, so when 
 the writer of the fourth Gospel explicitly states 
 that a certain event happened within the cognis- 
 ance of his personal senses, we are bound, on all 
 principles of historical or literary criticism, to 
 accept his evidence, at any rate so far*. 
 
 But, in point of fact, the case is much stronger 
 here ; for, with respect to the author of " Waver- 
 ley," every such assertion is really an admission 
 
 ^ A friend has reminded me of the story of Thersander in 
 Herodotus as a case in point : TaCra jxh toO 'OpxoiMviov Qepa&vSpov 
 iJKOvov, Kal rdSe 7r/)6s Toiroitn, us aijT6s airUa X^oi ravra irpbs ApSpiiirovs 
 irpirepov fj yeviaBai. iv UXaTairja-L ttjv pdxv, ix. 16. Upon this incident 
 Mr. Grote remarks, "It is certainly one of the most curious revela- 
 tions in the whole history ; not merely as it brings forward the 
 historian in his own personality, communicating with a personal 
 friend of the Theban leaders, and thus provided with good means 
 of information as to the general events of the campaign — but also as 
 it discloses to us, on testimony not to be suspected, the real temper 
 
 of the native Persians, and even of the chief men among them." 
 
 History, v. 214. 
 
 * This, of course, is on the assumption that by the eye-witness 
 xix. S5, is meant himself. But see Appendix. 
 
I] Si John a Credible Witness 5 
 
 on his part of the generally romantic character of 
 the narrative which assumes the guise of history, 
 but in the fourth Gospel a declaration such as this 
 is practically a voucher for the trustworthiness of 
 the whole. For it gives us, as it were, once and 
 for all, the sources of information from which the 
 narrator has collected his facts. He was present 
 at the last hours of Jesus, he had been His com- 
 panion at supper-time, he was one of the first to 
 find the sepulchre empty, and he was present on 
 one other occasion by the shore of the Sea of 
 Galilee a little while before the Ascension^. It 
 was on the authority of this personal experience 
 that the writer recounted what he did. If he was 
 romancing elsewhere, as in the discourses ascribed 
 to Jesus or others, it is quite inconsistent with the 
 character of any sort of writing to assume that he 
 was so here. We have his own explicit acknow- 
 ledgment that he is himself responsible for the 
 accuracy of the facts he records^ ; they may be 
 startling, but he is perfectly aware of their nature, 
 
 ^ It appears also that he had followed Him into the palace of the 
 High Priest, St. John sviii. 15. But he is there called "another 
 disciple. '' 
 
 ^ Dr. Davidson says, ii. 442, " It is plain that the author meant 
 " his work to be taken for the apostle's. He intimates that he was an 
 " immediate disciple of the Lord, the, beloved disciple, who was none 
 " other than the apostle John ; and avoids all mention of the name." 
 This virtually concedes the point on which the argument in the Lec- 
 tures is based. On the supposition that the author wrote in the middle 
 of the second century it is by no means plain that he meant his work 
 to be taken for the Apostle John's, nor does it appearwhy it should be. 
 
6 S^. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 and wishes us to identify him with the person on 
 whose authority they are recorded, and to include 
 him in any verdict we may feel disposed to pro- 
 nounce on them. 
 
 The supposition, therefore, that the narrative is 
 as late as we have said, so far as it involves the 
 idea of romancing on the part of the writer, is in 
 the highest degree improbable, and could only be 
 maintained on the existence of strong external 
 evidence to render it probable, the absence of 
 which, however, is notorious. 
 
 It would seem, moreover, that the essential 
 requirements of romance are opposed to the truth 
 of this hypothesis, for romance may be constructed 
 in two ways. It may purport to be a narrative 
 of the hero's personal experiences and adventures, 
 and so be written in the first person, in which case 
 it takes the reader into the writer's confidence, and 
 makes him acquainted with the sentiments, hopes, 
 and fears of the imaginary actor, according as they 
 are affected by the evolution of incident. This is 
 one kind of romance, but the fourth Gospel is 
 clearly not of this kind. 
 
 There is, however, another kind of romance 
 which purports to be a story told by the writer 
 about another person with whom he has no con- 
 nection, of whose life and opinions he gives such a 
 sketch as imagination may supply, while he leaves 
 the reader to conjecture the scenes that are 
 omitted, and to exercise his ingenuity in unravel- 
 
I] S^. John a Credible Witness 7 
 
 ling the thread of the narrative. The merit of 
 this kind of romance consists in its verisimihtude, 
 and the accuracy with which it keeps within the 
 limits of the natural in sentiment, and the pro- 
 bable in circumstance. The defective character of 
 the romance is at once betrayed, when the reader 
 is carried into scenes and incidents which could 
 not have been described except by an eye-witness, 
 which the writer never professes to have been 
 otherwise than in imagination. This is a species 
 of romance entirely distinct from the other. But 
 it is contrary to the principles of romance and the 
 practice of romance-writers for the two species to 
 be combined. And it is also clear that the Gospel 
 of St. John cannot be referred to this second 
 species of romance, for it does combine the charac- 
 teristics of the two. 
 
 "Where, however, such a combination as this is 
 found to exist, the result is not romance but his- 
 tory. When the writer relates events on the 
 authority of his own personal experience, it is of 
 course possible that he may transgress the limits 
 of actuality, but there can no longer be any doubt 
 in the reader's mind as to the intentional character 
 of the narrative. The writer desires his composi- 
 tion to pass for history ; he does not mean it to be 
 interpreted as romance ; and so far as it is so in- 
 terpreted, he has manifestly been unsuccessful. 
 We are therefore warranted in saying that the 
 features to which we have referred in the fourth 
 
8 Si. yohn a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 Gospel are, up to a certain point, an a 'priori evi- 
 dence of an earlier origin for it than the second 
 century. 
 
 Let us turn, however, now to the second sup- 
 position, which, upon this hypothesis, must be 
 made. If the writer lived towards the end of the 
 second century, he must have written on the 
 assumption of a personality to which he had no 
 right. It is absolutely impossible to avoid this 
 conclusion. He wrote wishing to pass himself off 
 as an eye-witness of many of the incidents which 
 he recorded. He says he was an eye-witness, and 
 he says it in order to gain credit with his readers, 
 for he manifestly wishes and expects to be be- 
 lieved. It is indeed alleged'^ that this habit of 
 impersonation was a common practice with early 
 
 ' " It was a common practice to put forth a work under the cover 
 " of a -well-kno-wTi name, to procure its readier acceptance. Such 
 " was the method in which good men often conveyed their senti- 
 " ments and taught the public. It is not our Western one, nor 
 " does it fall in with modem notions of rigid morality. Being 
 " theirs, however, it is but fair to judge them from their own point 
 ' ' of view. The end was unexceptionable ; the means adopted were 
 ' ' in harmony with the prevailing notions of the time. Had the par- 
 " ties believed these means to be wrong or immoral they would not 
 " have adopted them. In their eyes they were right and per- 
 " tinent. It should also be observed that the authors had no idea 
 " of the use that would be made of their compositions by a rigid 
 ' ' separation of them into canonical and uncanonical ; the former to 
 " be taken as an infallible standard of faith, the latter not. 
 " Neither apostles nor evangelists wrote as conscious organs of a 
 " dictating or superintending Spirit ; nor did they suppose them- 
 " selves so far elevated above other spiritual men as to claim for 
 " their writing a divine authority. They worked in the interests 
 
I] Si. John a Credible Witness 9 
 
 Christian writers, and one that was adopted both 
 in the Old and the New Testaments. We may, 
 however, fairly question whether the practice was 
 ever followed except in the case of a writer of 
 whom genuine works were known to exist. Would 
 any one, for instance, have ventured to write a 
 Gospel, and ascribe it to a certain disciple, if it 
 was not otherwise known or supposed that any 
 Gospel had ever been written by such a disciple ? 
 If such a fictitious Gospel had been written, is 
 it presumably possible that it would have been 
 commonly received within a short time afterwards? 
 The difficulty is greater in believing that this 
 Gospel, having originated- late in the second 
 century, would soon have been generally accepted, 
 as it is allowed to have been, than, on the sup- 
 position of its genuineness, it is to believe that 
 it might nevertheless remain for a long time, 
 comparatively speaking, unknown^. 
 
 However, in estimating the probability of 
 
 " of truth, and as they thought they might best promote it." — • 
 Dr. Davidson, ii. 448. The true issue is one of historical credibility. 
 It is unnecessary to cloud this issue with any questions touching 
 inspiration. We may be sure that the author wrote expecting to 
 have readers ; that he expected these readers would believe what 
 he said ; and that he desired they should do so. Would this be a 
 reasonable way of gaining their confidence, supposing his method 
 to be detected, as was certainly not impossible ? 
 
 8 To assume that the fourth Gospel was written with the inten- 
 tion of its being supposed to be by the author of the Apocalypse, is 
 to make an assumption which they have no right to make, who 
 insist upon the differences between the Gospel and the Apocalypse 
 as a reason for denying their common origin. 
 
lo S^. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 the present assumption, we must not forget 
 the way in which the writer makes the imper- 
 sonation alleged, which, indeed, is very remark- 
 able. He does not claim to be St. John, or 
 any one particular disciple, but only an eye-wit- 
 ness of his Master's glory, and that disciple whom 
 Jesus loved. Surely, then, on the supposition of 
 a late origin for the Gospel, many elements of im- 
 probability are added to the hypothesis which 
 would represent an unknown writer as laying 
 claim to identity with a particular person, who 
 nevertheless is not distinctly specified, but most 
 obscurely alluded to. How do we know who 
 the disciple was whom Jesus loved, or who it was 
 who lay on His breast at supper, biit for the tra- 
 dition which has ascribed the Gospel to St. John ? 
 We cannot identify him with that disciple but 
 upon a belief in the accuracy of that tradition. 
 
 Now, it is quite unlikely that these minute parti- 
 culars should have been handed down, for a period 
 of 120 years or more, as characteristic of St. John, 
 in such a concrete form as to become the sub- 
 stratum for the identity upon which the Gospel 
 was framed. That is to say, in order to suppose 
 that the Gospel was a late production of the 
 second century, we must assume that a floating 
 tradition had long existed to the efiect that St. 
 John had been the beloved disciple of Jesus, 
 had lain on His breast at supper, had found the 
 sepulchre empty — for this is not otherwise 
 
I] Si. John a Credible Witness \ \ 
 
 known — and the like, and that this tradition had 
 been seized by some unknown writer and made 
 the point he aimed at in the forged identity upon 
 which he based his claim to the world's attention 
 and belief. " He that saw it bare record, and 
 his record is true ; and he knoweth that he saith 
 true, that ye might believe^," is the challenge of 
 a man who, after all, gives us no clue to his re- 
 cognition but the fact of his identity with the 
 disciple whom Jesus loved, who also leaned on 
 His breast at supper, and said, " Lord, who is he 
 that betrayeth thee ? " Is it more likely, then, that 
 these traditions should have survived, as it were, 
 in a disembodied form for almost a century and a 
 
 8 Dr. Davidson saya of this passage, Introd. to the Study of oS". 
 T., vol. ii. p. 436, " The identification of the vyr%te,r {kKeivof) with 
 " the eye-witness (iapaKds) is neither logically nor grammatically 
 " right in the verse, unless the words were, 'he that saw hea/rs 
 " record,' {iMprvpei) i.e., bears witness now in the act of writing. 
 " The past tense houre record points to an author who has already got 
 " the testimony of an eye-witness, and refers to him as a credible 
 "person." Let the reader judge of the fairness and accuracy of 
 this with the Greek before him : ko! 6 iapaKiis pjeimprrip-qKe, koI 6,\ri$i.inj 
 airoO iarLv t] naprvpla, Kixeivos otSev 8n i,\Ti6rj X^yei, ha i/xets iriffTeiirriTe. 
 Cf. St. John i. 32, 34, and Alford's note on vii. '29. Also note, 
 ante, p. 2. It is remarkable that in xxi. 24 the present and the 
 first aorist are in juxtaposition. The aorist indicated the act of 
 writing just completed, the present the character of the testimony 
 which was abiding. Surely, on Dr. Davidson's supposition, if 4KeTms 
 refers to the vyriter, the words ought to run, " and he (the writer) 
 knoweth that he (the eye-witness) said ox hath said true," &c. But 
 is not the subject of olSev and \iyei one and the same ? Mr. Orr 
 remarks, " Authenticity of John's Gospel," p. 57, " Here we have, 
 on the part of a sacred writer, as solemn an affirmation as man can 
 make as to a certain fact being actuaUy witnessed. He does not 
 
12 St. y ohn a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 half, and at last have created the fourth Gospel, 
 or that the fourth Gospel, being already in exist- 
 ence, should have been the means of preserving 
 the traditions ? For the only alternative supposi- 
 tion is preposterous, that the Gospel, coming into 
 existence, as alleged, towards the end of the second 
 century, was itself the origin of an interpretation 
 which generated the tradition. And yet, if it 
 was not so, it could not have been understood by 
 those who first became acquainted with it. We 
 may venture to affirm that there is a critical 
 dilemma here involved of no inconsiderable mag- 
 nitude. 
 
 The hypothesis, then, we are at present consider- 
 
 assert, indeed, that he himself witnessed the soldier's piercing the 
 side of Jesus, but he does affirm most emphatically the trustworthi- 
 ness of the evidence. Here is no question of coincidence. The 
 question is, are we to believe this sacred writer when he pledges 
 his veracity as to the truthfulness of the party whose evidence he 
 records. The affirmation is made with no reference to the question 
 of authenticity now before us. It refers solely to a question that 
 had arisen in the early Church amongst Greek converts, whether 
 Jesus Christ had actually " come in the flesh," or whether that 
 body crucified on Calvary were not really a phantom. These men 
 said that it was. This writer affirms this testimony in contradic- 
 tion of them. We are now told that the book was written in order 
 to magnify Jesus as the Divine Logos. Here its author writes to 
 contradict a party who, for the purpose of doing so, denied his 
 humanity. This writing emanates from Ephesus, where John 
 lived, and who wrote letters to the same effect. The question, 
 therefore, for the English reader is, simply, Had this writer John's 
 authority, or at least the authority of an eye-witness, for this 
 solemn affirmation ? Or, does he make it on the authority of some 
 legend or tradition, of whose truth he personally knew nothing?" 
 See also Appendix, Note A, 
 
I] S^. John a Credible Witness 1 3 
 
 ing distinctly shuts us up to a twofold position, — 
 first, that the writer of the fourth Gospel, whoever 
 he was, wished to pass for a disciple and an eye- 
 witness of the life of Jesus ; and, secondly, that he 
 desired to pass for some one particular disciple and 
 eye-witness. From whence it follows that the 
 way in which he indicated his identity with this . 
 disciple implies the existence of certain traditions, 
 which, however, are too minute and insignificant 
 to have lasted for well-nigh a century and a half 
 without the aid of some such record as this in- 
 which alone they are found ; that the appearance, 
 therefore, of this Gospel towards the close of the 
 second century implies also the contemporaneous 
 origin of a method of interpretation for which it is 
 impossible to account in the absence of such tradi- 
 tions, and which in fact, as far as it went, was 
 opposed to the very brief record of the character 
 of St. John as one of the sons of thunder ascribed 
 to him by the other Evangelists^. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that we may fairly say that 
 the hypothesis which assigns this Gospel to the 
 latter half of the second century obliges iis to 
 affirm, that it is more probable that these tradi- 
 tions should exist and be preserved than that they 
 should have been forgotten and lost ; that on the 
 first appearance of the Gospel the supposed author 
 should at once have been known than that he 
 should not have been recognised ; that it is more 
 
 i,St. Mark iii. 17. Of. St. Matt. xx. 21. St. Luke ix. 54. 
 
14 S^. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 probable that the true author should be able to 
 maintain his incognito than that he should fail in 
 preserving it; that it is more probable that a 
 document such as this appearing with no creden- 
 tials, (for it manifestly had none except on the 
 supposition we have dismissed as improbable), 
 should forthwith be commonly accepted by the 
 whole Christian body, when we know that many 
 other documents were rejected, as the preface to 
 the third Gospel seems to imply, than that it 
 ■should make its way slowly and by degrees, and 
 after a time only be adopted ; and, finally, that it 
 is more probable that this Gospel should be ac- 
 cepted for the sole reason that it appeared or was 
 thought to be the work of St. John, which it 
 nowhere purports to be, than that it should be 
 questioned and rejected for the obvious reason that 
 the identity, or at least the name, of the writer 
 nowhere transpires. 
 
 Nor must we omit to take into account one 
 other conspicuous feature in this matter, which is 
 that the question now raised as to the authorship 
 of this Gospel does not lie between St. John and 
 any other disciple, but between St. John and no 
 disciple at all ; that is to say, not between St. John 
 and one of the twelve, but between St. John and 
 a person utterly unknown, who must have lived 
 at least some two or three generations later. For 
 the credibility of it does not depend upon the 
 identity of the disciple whom Jesus loved with 
 
I] 6"/. John a Credible Witness 15 
 
 the younger son of Zebedee, but upon his identity 
 with any one Apostle or eye-witness of our Lord. 
 If such a person were really the writer of this 
 Gospel there can be no question whatever that its 
 testimony would be greatly enhanced^, and conse- 
 quently, upon the hypothesis of its origin in the 
 second century, we have not only to explain the 
 imposition by which the writer passed himself off 
 as an eye-witness, but also to answer the entirely 
 independent question how he came to be identified 
 with the Apostle John, for on the lowest calcula- 
 tion the chances were ten to one against it^. 
 
 Nor is the difficulty of maintaining the supposi- 
 tion in point by any means exhausted. For we 
 must take into consideration certain other facts 
 which cannot be overlooked ; for instance, that 
 the author wrote with the full expectation of being 
 believed, and that he wrote with a very high moral 
 purpose. The possibility of his testimony being 
 questioned on the simple ground of his authority 
 being insufficient, (which it clearly would be if he 
 were not, as he affirmed he was, an eye-witness), 
 never for the moment seems to cross his mind. 
 He is not careful to protect himself against the 
 insult or the injury of doubt. He assumes not 
 
 2 " The fourth gospel would certainly have greater authority if it 
 " had been written by an apostle and eye-witness." — Dr. Davidson, 
 ii. 449. However true this may be I have endeavoured to show 
 that all the testimony of the fourth Gospel to Christ is not invali- 
 dated if it can be proved that St. John did not write it. 
 
 ' See, however. Appendix, Note A. 
 
i6 St. y ohn a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 that men will be incredulous but that they will 
 believe* "These things are written that ye 
 might believe," is his own professed motive for 
 writing. Upon what known principles of criticism 
 are we to call in question this alleged naotive ? 
 But if the alleged motive was the tnie one it be- 
 comes yet more difficult to reconcile that fact with 
 the position of a man who was consciously playing 
 a part which was nothing less than fatal to the 
 simplicity of any such motive. He might, indeed, 
 be writing that men might believe, but he must 
 have known that were his disguise thrown oif he 
 was ministering not to their belief but to their 
 incredulity. 
 
 And yet more is any such thought impossible 
 to be maintained when we bear in mind the high 
 moral purpose which is transparently clear through- 
 out. He believed that for a dying world his 
 testimony about Jesus was fraught with life. He 
 knew from his own experience that if that testi- 
 mony were accepted, its result would be nothing 
 less than life ; a moral and spiritual existence 
 which was to be discovered nowhere else, and 
 compared with which all other existence was an 
 unreality. He may have been quite wrong in 
 holding this belief, altogether visionary as to its 
 
 * Believe, that is, the substantive matter of what he relates, not 
 believe in anything about Mm; he was indiflferent as to whether or 
 not men believed that he had been an eye-witness, except so far as 
 that belief affected the credibility of the things related. 
 
I] Si(. John a Credible Witness 1 7 
 
 merits and effects ; but, holding it, as he most un- 
 questionably did, we are at a loss to reconcile that 
 fact with the deliberate assumption on his part of 
 a line of conduct not to be characterised otherwise 
 than as a pious fraud — as a wilful attempt to pass 
 for what he was not — for the sole purpose of per- 
 suading men to believe what he knew perfectly 
 well was false. Because we must not forget that 
 his alleged motive in writing refers not to what 
 Jesus said, but to what He did. It is, therefore, 
 the recorded acts of Jesus to which he appeals as 
 calculated to beget that life which upon the sup- 
 position could have been nothing less than a 
 known delusion ; and by which, therefore, rather 
 than by the discourses of Jesus, we must put to 
 the test the sincerity of the writer's motive. 
 
 There is, moreover, one other significant point 
 to be observed which is not without its bearing on 
 the present argument, for striking as is the differ- 
 ence between this Evangehst and the others whose 
 works are allowed to have been in existence when 
 he wrote, yet there are " many points common to 
 him with them. And with respect to these points 
 he evidently assumes an acquaintance on the 
 part of his readers ^ ; for example, the life and 
 
 ^ Davidson mentions the following particulars as similar in St. 
 John and the Synoptists. The cleansing of the temple. The 
 miraculous feeding of the multitude. Jesus walks on the sea. 
 Jesus is anointed by a woman in Bethany. Jesus's public entry 
 into Jerusalem. Jesus points out his betrayer. He foretells Peter's 
 denial. His passion and resurrection. — ii. 356. 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Si John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 ministry of John the Baptist ; the selection and 
 number of our Lord's chosen disciples ; the antag- 
 onism of the Pharisees ; the main facts of our 
 Lord's life and the like. Now the way in which 
 these things are spoken of shows that the writer 
 did not think it needful to enlarge upon them, 
 beca,use they were more or less familiar to his 
 readers. " And many other signs truly did Jesus 
 in the presence of His disciples which are not 
 written in this book^," is a tacit admission that 
 they had been written by others, that they were 
 recorded elsewhere, that it was therefore needless 
 for the present writer to treat of them. But if so, 
 this is also to some extent a recognition of the 
 labours of others, an indication on the part of the 
 writer that his purpose was rather to supplement 
 than to supersede^, an involuntary evidence, there- 
 fore, of conscious veracity notwithstanding his 
 manifest and acknowledged divergence from the 
 
 6 St. John XX. 30. 
 
 ' He was willing so far to accept the aid of the synoptical Gospels 
 and not desirous to supplant them, as he must have been if his 
 intention was to idealise their portrait of Christ, or to soften down 
 the earthly features of it and to present substantially another 
 Christ. The assumption is that he was not satisfied with the 
 existing idea of Christ ; but his own idea cannot be shown to differ 
 materially from that which is expressed in the Pauline Epistles to 
 the Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians. See Lecture vi. "His 
 " Gospel was certainly intended to be supplementary to those 
 " which went before ; not to go over ground which they had suffi- 
 " ciently gone over already ; but to treasure up previous aspects of 
 " the life of Christ, of His words and works, which they had 
 " passed by." — Abp. Trench, "Studies in the Gospels," p. 2. 
 
I] 6"/. jfohn a Credible Witness 19 
 
 line adopted by others. He was not inwardly- 
 aware of any reason why he should not be be- 
 lieved, although it was true that there were other 
 narratives very different from his already in 
 existence. 
 
 Now, if a man wrote with the avowed expecta- 
 tion of being believed, in spite of the confessed 
 unlikeness of his own narrative to those of others, 
 it would not only be an additional evidence that 
 his own narrative was trustworthy, but would also 
 be just such an evidence as no one would readily 
 think of presenting by design for the express pur- 
 pose of seeming to be more trustworthy than he 
 really was. In other words, in order to allege 
 with any show of justice a want of truthfulness as 
 underlying the great apparent simplicity of this 
 writer, we must first assume in him a corresponding 
 amount of the most accomplished duplicity. He 
 was not merely chargeable with the imposition of 
 endeavouring to pass for what he certainly was 
 not, an eye-witness of the events recorded, but, 
 more than this, he was master of the most con- 
 summate art in adjusting the garb he had assumed. 
 It is impossible to acquit him of a degree of 
 intentional deception in writing as he did, propor- 
 tionate to the success which his adopted method 
 would seem calculated to secure. And as to the 
 degree of this success there can be no manner of 
 doubt, because if the words now spoken of are not 
 sincere they have every appearance of sincerity. 
 
20 6"/. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 It seems, therefore, altogether not unreasonable 
 to conclude that on the supposition of this Gospel 
 being the production of the second century there 
 are many considerations on internal grounds which 
 make strongly against it. There is, in fact, 'prima 
 facie internal evidence of its being of an earlier 
 date. We proceed to trace out any further indica- 
 tions of this kind that we can discover. 
 
 Now it may be stated as a truth that unless 
 there are strong reasons, either external or internal, 
 to the contrary, we should never assume conjoint 
 rather than single authorship in the case of any 
 production which comes down to us ostensibly as the 
 work of one man. To assume that an Epode of 
 Horace, or a Treatise of Cicero, was the joint pro- 
 duction of two or more writers would seem to be 
 an unwarrantable exercise of criticism, except upon 
 the very fullest evidence in confirmation of the 
 theory. Neither should we willingly believe that 
 the writings of Caesar or Tacitus had been wantonly 
 tampered with, whether by the way of addition or 
 curtailment, except upon sufficient evidence to 
 that effect. Why then should we be willing to 
 believe otherwise with respect to the Gospel of St. 
 John ^ % Before assuming then that a document, 
 which has ostensibly come down to us in its in- 
 
 ^ Is it more likely, or unlikely, that the Gospel was left finished 
 by its author without the 21st chapter, or without the last two 
 verses of it ? Can it be said to be finished without either "> See 
 Appendix, Note B. 
 
I] kS"/. yohn a Credible Witness 2 1 
 
 tegrity, is to be divided and subdivided in order 
 that every writer supposed to be concerned in it 
 may have his share — -before assuming that it has 
 been added to or taken from, it would surely be 
 the wiser course to accept it as it is, and to do 
 what we can with it. Doubtless it were wiser to 
 interrogate the oracle than to determine before- 
 hand what its answer was to be. Why then 
 assume beforehand, in the absence of external evi- 
 dence for doing so, that the last chapter, or the 
 last verses of the last chapter, must be dissevered 
 from, the rest 1 Would not the more natural 
 course be, aS we find them one, simply to examine 
 their evidence on the supposition that they are 
 one ; and then, in the event of that failing, to 
 adopt some other method ? Is it not rather like 
 a concealment of evidence to jump at once to the 
 conclusion that another method is the first to be 
 adopted ? Is it not like silencing what witnesses 
 there are in order that we may summon imaginary 
 witnesses of our own 1 Let us rather forbear to 
 do so till we have first collected the evidence 
 which exists and endeavoured to arrive at an 
 honest estimate of its value. 
 
 Now, it is quite certain that in the Gospel of 
 St. John as it stands, there are three methods of 
 narration adopted by the writer. The one which 
 is most commonly followed is that of the third 
 person. This is in fact, with three exceptions, the 
 universal method. Once, however, in the first 
 
2 2 Si. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 chapter and twice in the last the use of the first 
 person is adopted instead. When the writer 
 says in the opening chapter " we beheld his glory/' 
 it is impossible ^ not to understand the words as 
 a claim to having been an eye-witness of it, 
 identical with that we have been considering in 
 the case of our Lord's crucifixion. Nor is there 
 any reason to believe that the two cases are not 
 precisely identical. If, however, in the opening 
 of his work the writer has once spoken in the 
 first person, what need is there for surprise if we 
 find him resorting to it in the close. In this case 
 the phrase "we know that his testimony is true,^" 
 
 ' As far as regards abstract impossibility the expression in the 
 text requires modification, for some do propose to understand 
 them otherwise ; not, however, as it seems to me, with any show of 
 probability. Cf. 1 John i. 1. Acts ii. 32, &c. Dr. Davidson says 
 " the writer speaks from the standpoint of a general Christian in- 
 " tuition," p. 438; but this cannot be so, because the words are 
 thrown in parenthetically to enforce and supplement the assertion 
 that " the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us ; " " and we 
 beheld His glory," &c. ; the us is general; the we is limited, and 
 must imply a personal testimony borne to the truth of the foregoing 
 statement, otherwise it is without point or meaning. Unless, 
 indeed, the us itself is limited in its significance, " The Word was 
 made flesh and dwelt among 'ws who beheld his glory," &c. The 
 phrases alleged "as mcmy as received him," "of his fulness have 
 all we received," do not here apply ; in as much as they express a 
 consciousness common to all Christians, the other a special experi- 
 ence of the writer, who claimed to be one of a limited class, the 
 class of eye-witnesses. 
 
 ^ The question is whether "We know that his testimony is 
 true "can be equivalent to " I know that what I say is true?" 
 Now it is certain that there would be nothing remarkable in such 
 an asseveration as this last. But if we suppose the first to be not 
 
I] S^. John a Credible Witness 23 
 
 miglit at least be identical with that used before, 
 " he knoweth that he saith true." This at least 
 would be more consistent with the internal 
 phenomena of the work than the gratuitous sup- 
 position that the last two verses of the last 
 chapter were the addition of some other and 
 unknown person or persons. Let us then assume, 
 for the while, that our own position is correct 
 so far. 
 
 When now we turn to the last verse of the last 
 chapter we -find another peculiarity, in the fact 
 that whereas before, if the writer has departed 
 from his accustomed use of the third person he 
 has only changed it for the first person plural, he 
 now for once and once only resorts to the first 
 person singular. On the supposition then that 
 the last chapter, or these verses of it, were the 
 addition of the Church at Ephesus, or of any body 
 of elders who would naturally speak in the first 
 person plural, on what principle are we to account 
 for their adoption suddenly of the first person 
 singular instead. It cannot be fairly accounted 
 for. We can understand any one person making 
 use of the plural number, whether for dignity, 
 modesty, or any other reason, and yet occasionally 
 throwing ofi" the thin disguise afforded by it, and 
 
 equiTalent to it, there is surely something strange in a body of men 
 attesting the credibility of an anonymous writer, especially when 
 we have to postulate that body of men. Of two gratuitous assump- 
 tions, therefore, the first would seem to be the least gratuitous and 
 the most natural. 
 
24 6"/. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 taking up the singular instead ; but we cannot see 
 why persons speaking in their official or corporate 
 capacity, and naturally using the plural number, 
 should for no cause whatever resort suddenly, in 
 such a case as this, to the use of the singular^. 
 The instance of the Greek choruses, which some- 
 times use the singular and sometimes the plural 
 number, is not to the point, for there the persons 
 composing them could speak either in their in- 
 dividual or their collective capacity, according as 
 the chorus was or was not merged in the individual, 
 and as it wanted to express sentiments which were 
 those of the individual ; but in a case such as this 
 there was nothing of the kind. In supposing that 
 these verses are an addition of the Church giving 
 the authority of its belief to what has gone before, 
 then why should the expression of individual 
 sentiment appear just where it does ? — ^that is to 
 say, not in a profession about the veracity of the 
 
 ^ It was not with the Evangelist as with Dante's Eagle com- 
 posed of blissful souls in Paradise — the " milizia del ciel," 
 
 Parea dinanzi a me con I'ale aperte 
 La bella image, che nel dolce frui 
 Liete faceva I'anime conserte. 
 
 Parea ciascuna rubinetto, in cui 
 
 Raggio di sole ardesse si acceso, 
 Che ne' miei occhi rifrangesse lui. 
 
 E quel che mi convien ritrar testeso, 
 
 Non portd voce mai, nfe sorisse inohiostro 
 Nfe fu per fantasia giammai compreso ; 
 
 Ch'io vidi, ed anche udii parlar lo rostro,. 
 E sonar neUa voce ed lo e Mio, 
 Quand' era nel concetto Noi e Nostra. 
 
 Paradiso xix. 1-12, 
 
I] kS"/. John a Credible Witness 25 
 
 work or the author, but in the far less important 
 matter of the world's capacity for containing the 
 books that shc5uld be written about Jesus 1 We 
 conclude; therefore, that the ol{i.ai of the last verse 
 is precisely an instance of the writer's individual 
 personality escaping, as it were half unconsciously, 
 from the thin disguise of the first person plural, or 
 the more successful one of the third person singular 
 that he had before habitually assumed. In other 
 words, it seems to be something more than prob- 
 able that in this word otfj-ai, so delicately and yet 
 so casually thrown in, we have the key to the 
 authorship of this wondrous Gospel. He who 
 wrote it, before concluding, does set his own seal 
 of individual participation and responsibility to 
 the work he is now bringing to a close. He no 
 longer leaves us in doubt as to his own identity 
 with the disciple whom Jesus loved, but lets us 
 know that it was he himself. 
 
 In the contemplation, then, of the phenomena 
 we have been considering, it seems fair to say that 
 we must adopt one of two positions. Either we 
 must allow that on the supposition of St. John's 
 authorship of the Gospel, or that of any eye- 
 witness, there is nothing at first sight in the 
 internal evidence that militates against it, but, on 
 the contrary, much that harmonises therewith ; a 
 delicate concealment of himself which is forgotten 
 only once in the most spontaneous and unde- 
 signed manner, and which certainly would do the 
 
26 Si. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 highest credit to any writer : — or else, on the con- 
 trary supposition^ we must admit that the person, 
 professing to be an eye-witness, who wrote the 
 Gospel, not only was possessed of the most con- 
 summate art — an art which is simply unparalleled 
 in the whole cycle of supposititious literature — 
 but also that he was chargeable with the most 
 accomplished duplicity, because in proportion as 
 those traces of possible authorship are the more 
 delicate, exactly in that proportion it .is impos- 
 sible that they can have been occasioned 
 without design. But the design in this case can 
 have been nothing less than a deliberate inten- 
 tion to deceive — a deep-laid scheme of delusion. 
 
 Now, in order to establish an argument such as 
 that we are now pursuing, there are two points 
 which it is requisite to make out. First, That 
 our own position is not untenable, nor improbably 
 the true one ; secondly. That the position of our 
 adversaries is neither tenable nor probable. And 
 it must be borne in mind that, in considering the 
 question before us critically, we are bound to leave 
 out of it everything arising from the supernatural 
 character of the events recorded. We must not 
 suffer our judgment to be biassed one way or the 
 other by their presence, but consider the merits 
 of the case apart from them. Now, in asserting 
 that the fourth Gospel was the production of the 
 second century, we make a statement which may 
 fairly challenge the question, What was the cha- 
 
I] S^. John a Credible Witness 27 
 
 racter of the Christian literature towards the close 
 of the second century, and are we acquainted with 
 any one author who is capable of haying written 
 this Gospel % Can it not be proved that those 
 who may be thought by some to be intellectually 
 not incapable of writing it certainly did not do so ? 
 And are we not, after exhausting every name that 
 occurs to us, driven to the assumption that the 
 writer must have been otherwise entirely un- 
 known ? That is to say, we pass by one, or 
 rather many eye-witnesses who may be presumed 
 capable of writing it in order to invoke a writer 
 who has confessedly no known existence but in our 
 own imagination, and who can only on the most 
 gratuitous assumption be supposed capable of 
 writing it^. Is this a wise or a probable course to 
 adopt ? Surely a sufficient reply to this theory 
 
 ' It may be said that the existence of the Gospel being a fact, 
 we may siippose an author capable of writing it to have existed at 
 one age as well as at another. But this argument cuts both ways. 
 For, if he existed in the second, he may have existed in the iirst. 
 There is absolutely no one to whom we can refer the fourth Gospel 
 in the second century. If Jesus was the being that the Gospel sets 
 Him forth, and the author was His beloved disciple, then this is 
 the kind of work we might expect from him. It is wholly impro- 
 bable that a writer living in the middle of the second century, and 
 capable of writing this Gospel, should be otherwise totally unknown. 
 It is absolutely incredible that a writer with moral and spiritual 
 perceptions so sublime, living at that time, should have resorted to 
 such means of at once instructing and imposing upon mankind. 
 For he was not what he gave himseH out as being. For he was not 
 a genuine disciple of Jesus, the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 stiU less an eye-witness of His life and death. St. Matt. v. 37. 
 
28 S^. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 may be found in the assertion, which may fear- 
 lessly challenge contradiction, that the Christian 
 consciousness of the latter end of the second cen- 
 tury, judged by its own existing monuments, and by 
 them alone, was not adequate to the production of 
 such a work as the fourth Gospel. We conclude, 
 therefore, that it may have had a much earlier 
 origin. 
 
 "We must turn now to the consideration of 
 another question. Supposing the T^iter to have 
 been an eye-witness, how far is he a credible one % 
 What internal indications are. there of his credi- 
 bility ? Surely the divergence so often insisted 
 upon between this Evangelist and the others has 
 a very direct bearing upon this point. It is clear 
 that the writer's aim must have been to give a 
 sketch of the teaching of Jesus rather than a his- 
 tory of His life. Even the miracles recorded ap- 
 pear to hold a subordinate position to the teaching 
 they are designed to illustrate. And even in 
 recording the last hours of the life of Jesus, where 
 the writer is precise and circumstantial, more 
 attention and space are devoted to the discourses 
 than to the sufferings of our Lord. It is fair to 
 a,ssume, therefore, that it was not his object merely 
 to record the facts of the life of Christ, but much 
 more to relate its moral, if we may so say. But 
 is not this a proof, in addition to the one we have 
 already mentioned, that other books were in exist- 
 ence then which supplied the circumstances here 
 
I] Si. John a Credible Witness 29 
 
 omitted ? And is not this writer's entire inde- 
 pendence of the rest an argument quite as strong 
 in favour of his veracity as the reverse ? Nay more, 
 for is it likely that he could maintain his ground 
 in competition with others, from whom he differed 
 so widely, if he were actually less trustworthy 
 than they ? The fact that this Gospel was gene- 
 rally known much later than the others is a nega- 
 tive indication of its genuineness, because, had it 
 not been genuine, its struggle for acceptance, on 
 becoming known, would have been incomparably 
 more severe from the very circumstance of other 
 and divergent narratives being alreadyin possession 
 of the field. So far, therefore, from the different 
 character of the fourth Gospel being any cause 
 for suspicion, it is rather an argument in its favour. 
 It is, then, by a natural inference that we 
 advance one step further in the argument, and 
 decide that, on the manifest evidence of this 
 writer's minute acquaintance with those events 
 that he describes, — such as the feeding of the five 
 thousand, the healing of the impotent man, the 
 raising of Lazarus, and the like, he is certainly 
 not less trustworthy than any other Evangelist. 
 We cannot but feel that, supposing him to have 
 been an eye-witness, his information on these and 
 similar points can be second to none. "We may, 
 of course, reject it, if we please ; but if we do, we 
 shall reject it arbitrai-ily, and without any suffi- 
 cient show of reason. Judging by the same in- 
 
30 S^. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 ternal proofs by which we should judge any other 
 species of writing, there is an absence of all indica- 
 tion that this writer, if an eye-witness, is not 
 credible. We may say that the other Evangelists 
 are not to be believed, but we cannot with justice 
 say that this Evangelist, as far as regards his nar- 
 rative of facts, is less to be believed than they. 
 He is not romancing in the sense of giving a 
 coloured and designed representation of the facts 
 recorded. There is no valid proof of it. 
 
 But what are we to say with reference to the 
 long discourses attributed in this Gospel to our 
 Lord and others ? Is it possible that these can 
 represent, with any approximate accuracy, the 
 language used, or even" the thoughts expressed ? 
 More especially, when we bear in mind the long 
 interval that, under any supposition, must have 
 elapsed between their occurrence and the record 
 of them ? How can the last prayer of Jesus*, 
 which occupies the seventeenth chapter, possibly 
 
 * "The I7th chapter, containing the final prayer of Jesus, ex- 
 " presses the sublimest and purest utterances of a spirit in inti- 
 " mate union with God. The consciousness of the divine in the 
 " man Jesus is reflected here in a very high form. The prayer 
 " sets forth the glorification of the Son in consequence of the com- 
 " pletion of his work, and an intercession with the Father for the 
 " disciples that they may be kept in the faith. Nor is it limited 
 " to the few followers then present. It is extended to all believers, 
 " that they may be taken into union with the Father and Christ." 
 Davidson ii. 336, 439. How, then, is it out of place in the mouth of 
 Jesus ? That it was conceived by a mem is evident, why not by the 
 highest, holiest man, even though he be not the Son of God ? 
 
I] Si. yohn a Credible Witness 3 1 
 
 be regarded as a real and not an imaginary prayer, 
 when we know, on other authority, that our Lord 
 had only three disciples with him in His agony, 
 and that He returned to thena three times and 
 found them sleeping ? It is not too much to say 
 that, obvious as these questions are, the answers 
 that may be given to them, if less obvious, are 
 certainly both numerous and sufficient^. But it is 
 enough for us now to ask whether there is any 
 principle suggested by the writer himself upon 
 which they may be fully explained ; because, if 
 so, then the existence of difficulties such as these 
 becomes a mark of this writer's consistency with 
 himself rather than the contrary. Now, we do 
 find him distinctly saying that our Lord promised 
 to endow His disciples with a faculty which, if 
 not really supernatural, should so far assist their 
 natural faculties as to bring all things that He 
 had said unto them to their remembrance. Of 
 course, it is possible that He may not have said 
 anything of the kind, but if He, did, and this is 
 the point, then the difficulty vanishes at once, as 
 far as it arises from His own discourses having 
 been recorded. The writer is at least clear from 
 the charge of any negligent and involuntary trans- 
 gression of the limits of probability. He is not, 
 on his own showing, guilty of a gross or inad- 
 
 ^ The true answer no doubt is, that this prayer was offered on 
 the Mount of Olives before the agony took place in the garden of 
 Gethsemane. See Mr. Pound's " Story of the Gospels," i. 559. 
 
32 Si. John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 vertent violation of the laws imposed by them. 
 And so far as he is not, we must either attribute 
 to him again the dexterity of the most consum- 
 mate art, or must allow that this fact, joined to 
 his apparent artlessness, is an additional and an 
 undesigned evidence of his truth. On the whole, 
 then, we conclude that the internal evidence in 
 the fourth Gospel is stronger in favour of the 
 writer's credibility than the reverse. 
 
 One allegation, however, still remains which we 
 must not omit to deal with. It is said that the 
 design of the writer, in assuming the personality 
 of a disciple and eye-witness, must be regarded as 
 innocent, because, judged by the morality of those 
 days, it would certainly have been thought so. 
 No one living towards the close of the second 
 century would have thought there was any harm 
 in writing as though he had been a companion of 
 our Lord, for the purpose of instructing mankind 
 with the additional authority which that assump- 
 tion would confer^. The end would be considered 
 to justify the means. Now, here there are two 
 points to be borne in mind. First, what should 
 we ourselves think now of a parallel case ? What 
 
 « The question is really one of fact. Is there any reason to be- 
 lieve that a person writing a.d. 150 would have pretended to be an 
 eye-witness of our Lord's life, when it was obvious he could not 
 have been 1 Is there sufficient reason to believe that the Christian 
 public of that day would have been deceived by any such preten- 
 sion, supposing it to be made ? Is it any more likely that they 
 would have received without suspicion a narrative then making its 
 
I] Si. yohn a Credible Witness 33 
 
 is the verdict we find ourselves unconsciously pass- 
 ing on this particular case ? Do we not call it a 
 pious fraud ? Is not the character or the memory 
 of Chatterton to a certain extent sullied by the 
 pertinacity with which he maintained that he had 
 not written the poems of Rowley X^ Is it not a 
 fact that there is in the persistent adoption of an 
 incognito somewhat of the nature of a falsehood, 
 even as practically it must oftentimes involve an 
 actual lie ? And if we cannot help feeling this, 
 why should we assume that others do not ? Why 
 should we place the standard of our morality 
 higher than theirs ? Why should we deny to 
 others the possession of a moral sense equally fine 
 and sensitive 1 
 
 For, secondly, in order to do this in the present 
 case, we must be willing to maintain that the 
 general standard of morality in the fourth Gospel 
 is not higher than our own. We must be pre- 
 pared to assert that this writer, in spite of the 
 marvellous insight into character and motive that 
 he exhibits ; in spite of the ruthless probing of 
 conscience of which his Gospel is so full ; in spite 
 
 appearance for the first time merely because it purported to be the 
 authentic work of a disciple ? What chance of success would a 
 narrative meet with now professing to embody the genuine remiais- 
 cences of an actor in the struggle of 1745 ? Would it not first have 
 to make good its claim ? And must it not have been so then ? Is 
 there any evidence that it was not so ? 
 
 ' See, however, Dr. Daniel Wilson's very interesting Life of 
 Chatterton. Macmillan, 1869. 
 
34 Si John a Credible Witness [Lect 
 
 of the unparalleled appreciation of truth every- 
 where conspicuous in it, — was nevertheless defec- 
 tive in the first principles of honesty, as it cannot 
 fail to strike the mind of every ordinary reader, 
 and as it does strike the minds of those who feel 
 that it needs apology ; that he being, as he mani- 
 festly was, on a platform which may be said to be 
 even higher than that of other sacred writers, was 
 all the while deficient in that instinctive percep- 
 tion of right and wrong which is the common pro- 
 perty of all men of educated moral sense. Surely 
 this is a position too monstrous to be maintained. 
 And yet are we not virtually pledged to maintain 
 it if we deliberately affirm that a writer, at the 
 close of the second century, wrote a narrative 
 of the life and teaching of our Lord, in which 
 he pretended to be, and declared that he was 
 an eye-witness of many of the facts recorded, 
 and the bosom companion of his Master ; when, 
 from the simple fact of his adopting an anony- 
 mous style, he must have had the intentional 
 design of imposing upon his own generation, and 
 upon all the generations of posterity 1^ 
 
 ^ Suppose a writer in the middle of the second century to have 
 deliberately assumed the name of John, the son of Zebedee — Is it 
 likely that his work would have been received as Apostolic ? And 
 how many degrees is it more likely that it would have been so re- 
 ceived had he written, as it is assumed he did write, anonymously ? 
 And why was it that, writing as he did write, he should at once 
 have been identified, contrary to all tradition, with a disciple whose 
 name he studiously concealed, and whom he never even once men- 
 tioned, except by an unintelligible periphrasis ? 
 
I] S^. yohn a Credible Witness 35 
 
 "We conclude, then, finally, that there are a 
 'priori reasons of sufficient strength to warrant us 
 for the present ^ in regarding the writer of the 
 fourth G(^pel as a not otherwise than credible 
 witness to Christ ; and, in the absence of all evi- 
 dence to the contrary, but in accordance with the 
 voice of uniform tradition, to warrant us also in 
 identifying him with the beloved Apostle John. 
 It was he who " saw it," and " bare record," and 
 " his record is true." It is he who " knoweth 
 that he saith true," that we might believe. 
 
 ° But see the fuller discussion of this question in Appendix, 
 Note A. 
 
LECTURE 11 
 
 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ST. JOHn's TEACHING 
 
 St. John i. 1 
 
 " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word vxis with God, and 
 the Word was God." 
 
 THE positiqn to which our argument has thus 
 far brought us seems to be this. There is 
 certainly not less prima facie evidence of an 
 internal character for the fourth Gospel having 
 been written by an Apostle and eye-witness than 
 there is for its origin in the middle or end of the 
 second century. Judging on purely internal 
 grounds, and allowing to every indication of this 
 kind its due weight, we may fairly say that first 
 appearances are in favour of its Apostolic origin. 
 And if such an origin is admitted at all we shall 
 hardly prefer the claims of any other Apostle to 
 those of St. John, its traditional author. If his 
 authorship is called in question it is in conse- 
 quence of other considerations than those which 
 meet us on the surface of the work. Such con- 
 siderations must receive their full share of atten- 
 
Lect. IIJ Si. John's Teaching 2)1 
 
 tion elsewhere, but they need not detain us now.^ 
 At the present time we may proceed to inquire 
 into the chief characteristics of this writer's 
 teaching, on the supposition that he is St. John, 
 though not by any means resting our argument 
 on that supposition. 
 
 It is certain then that no one can fail to 
 recognise the opening words of this Gospel as 
 eminently characteristic of it. They form, as it 
 were, the keynote or motto to the whole, if indeed 
 . they may not be regarded as almost peculiar to 
 the fourth Gospel. That they are, however, not 
 absolutely so may perhaps be shown conclusively; 
 in the first Epistle of St. John we meet with the 
 phrase ^ The Word of Life, and in the Revelation 
 The Word of God : in both also with a usage 
 more or less analogous to that of the phrase in 
 the beginning, and with the emphatic assertion of 
 the Sonship of Jesus. But whether or not 
 common to other writings ascribed to St. John 
 
 ^ See Appendix, Note A. 
 
 ? On the other hand Dr. Davidson says, " Christ is not termed 
 " the Logos or Word absolutely, as he is in the gospel. He is the 
 " life, the eternal life which was with the Father, the Son of God; 
 " not the Word. High as the epithets are, they imply a conception 
 " of his person inferior to the gospel's," ii. 297 ; and " The 
 " Messiah is called the Word of God in the Apocalypse (xix. 13) ; 
 " in the gospel he is the Word absolutely. The two phrases show 
 " a different theological stand-point, the former savouring of 
 " Palestinian, the latter of Alexandrian metaphysics. The one is 
 " the weU-known Memra of Jehovah so frequent in the Targums ; 
 " the other resembles PhUo's idea," i. 334. Probably few wiU 
 agrep with him in either case. 
 
38 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 they are clearly characteristic of the fourth 
 Gospel. And yet this language, marked as it is, 
 may find its parallel even in the Old Testament. 
 Indeed it is hard to believe that the Evangelist, 
 vrhoever he was, had not intentionally before his 
 mind the opening verses of Genesis — "In the 
 beginning God created . . . and God said." We 
 cannot positively affirm this, but the similarity is 
 at least a patent fact. However startling and 
 original the conception or the language of the 
 Gospel may seem to us, it is certain that there 
 are continual traces of both to be found in the 
 Old Testament. In the Pentateuch what more 
 common than "the Lord spake unto Moses;" or 
 in the prophets than "the. word of the Lord came 
 unto me saying " % It is perhaps impossible to 
 prove the thoughts identical, but it is equally 
 impossible to prove them not so, while an ap- 
 parent correspondence does exist which cannot be 
 denied. 
 
 It is customary, however, as we all know, to 
 trace the origin of this writer's language to the 
 works of Philo and the influence of Alexandrine 
 thought. And the assumption that this origin 
 is correct has doubtless contributed much to 
 strengthen the theory of a non- Apostolic author- 
 ship for the Gospel.^ Nor may we, on the other 
 
 ^ " The fourth Gospel, however, has an important advance upon 
 " Philo's doctrine, when it announces the incarnation of the Logos 
 " in Jesus. In this respect the author expresses an idea foreign to 
 
II] Si. yohns Teaching 39 
 
 hand, assume that there is so much unity among 
 the books which the canon of Scripture has thrown 
 together as to make the Biblical origin more pro- 
 bable, though it is certain that if that unity were 
 admitted there could be no doubt at all as to its 
 greater probability. All that we can assert is 
 this — even allowing the influence of Philo to be 
 traceable in St. John — it cannot be denied that 
 the relationship is closer between his Gospel and 
 the other books of Scripture than it is between 
 those books and Philo. There is a generic bond 
 in the one case which is altogether missing in the 
 other. There is a specific relation between the 
 synoptical Gospels and the prophets, for example, 
 which is not found to exist between them and Philo. 
 And no one can say that the fourth Gospel does 
 not bear a nearer relation to the other three than 
 it bears to Philo ; therefore a nearer relation even 
 to the prophets than does exist between them and 
 
 " the Alexandrian philosophy. Though the Logos is almost, if not 
 " altogether hypoatatised in Philo, his incarnation is alien to 
 " that writer's conceptions. The Word, the Son of God, was mani- 
 " fested personally in the flesh. Whence this element was derived, 
 " we cannot tell. Did it exist before it was incorporated in the 
 " gospel? Was it the result of philosophical reflection subsequent 
 ' ' to PhUo ? Did Hellenic culture excogitate it ? Or did the writer 
 " himself educe it from the depths of his consciousness ? These 
 " are questions we cannot answer, and therefore an important link ' 
 " between Philonism and the Logos-theory of the fourth gospel is 
 " missing," Davidson, ii. 341. This testimony is very valuable 
 because true. The only question we need care to answer is, was 
 the Evangelist right, or was he wrong ? But this is a question 
 which criticism necessarily waives as irrelevant. 
 
40 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 Philo. It is not by accident alone that the works 
 of Philo are excluded from the canon of Scripture. 
 They are felt to be of a different kind. And great 
 as the chasm is between the books of the Old 
 Testament and those of the New, it is not by any 
 means so great as that between both and Philo. 
 One may affirm, indeed, that the charmed circle 
 of canonicity is a spell which must be broken 
 because it is unreal, but whether the spell is 
 unreal or not the fact remains the same that a 
 consanguinity, so to say, was recognised between 
 writers very diverse in age and character, as, for 
 example, Isaiah and St. John, which was not 
 recognised between them and Philo, or between 
 Philo and other writers even of the Alexandrine 
 school. 
 
 It is exactly in proportion then to the degree of 
 this consanguinity that we may seek for the 
 prototype of St. John's thoughts and language in 
 the Old Testament rather than in Philo. It is 
 morally certain that the writer of the fourth Gospel 
 must have been acquainted with the books of the 
 Old Testament. It is by no means so certain 
 that he must have been acquainted with the works 
 of Philo or embued with Alexandrine thought.* 
 . Least of all is it needful that we should search in 
 the schools of Alexandria for that which may 
 
 4 " The general thiakmg of the age in which he lived was 
 " moulded by PhUo," Davidson, ii. 340. This at any rate is to 
 prejudge his age. 
 
11] S^. yoAfi's Teaching 41 
 
 certainly be found much nearer at hand in the 
 Old Testament^ when one must have been familiar 
 to the writer and the other perchance may have 
 been. 
 
 It seems to be very clear then that the fourth 
 Gospel opens with the pre-existence of the Word, 
 who, it afterward says, " was made flesh." Surely, 
 therefore, on the strength of the relationship of 
 which we have spoken and on that of the apparent 
 likeness between the commencement of this book 
 and the beginning of Genesis, we are not afiirm- 
 ing too much if we say that the pre-existence here 
 announced must be that of a person who has been 
 known before, however strange his recent guise may 
 be. He who becomes flesh is one who has been 
 known of old — known, moreover, not as a modern 
 speculation of the schools of Alexandria — a recent 
 theory — ^but known throughout all the past and 
 known in the beginning. He of whose hunaan 
 existence the manifestation is about to be recorded 
 is the same Person who was recognised by pro^ 
 phets and lawgivers as speaking to them of old. 
 His existence was merged, indeed, in that of the 
 God with whom He was more or less identified, 
 
 ^ Philo himself seems to intimate that his doctrine of the Logos 
 was tanght by Moses. Bi Si tis ^SeXiJireie yviuioripoii xP''l<"''<'9ai tois 
 ivtimaai, oiSh h> Irepov e&roi rbv vo7it()I> eXvai Kbaiiov ^ BeoO \6yov <fiSri 
 Koar/jtovoiovPTOs- oidi yap i] vofyrl] ttiSXis hrepbv n icrrlv fj o toC i,pxi,TiKTOvos 
 'Koyiap.bs fiS-q tV aM-riT^v irliKa/ r'j vot)t-^ Krlieiv SiavooviUvov. MuV<r4ois 
 iarl T68e Sbyiia tovto, oiK i/idv. De Mundi Opificio i. 6. This 
 was pointed out to me by my friend the Rev. A. I. M'Caul. 
 
42 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 but it was He who spoke, for He was the "Word 
 of God. Now, indeed, that appellation is more 
 distinctly enunciated, and bestowed upon Him 
 with more confident precision because of His 
 manifestation in the flesh, for not until that 
 manifestation had brought out into relief the 
 distinction between the Father and the Son could 
 any real distinction be clearly apprehended be- 
 tween God and the Word of God. 
 
 And as it is the pre-existence of the Word with 
 which St. John opens his Gospel, so it is the 
 pervading character of His existence upon which 
 he constantly dwells throughout its course. . Not 
 content with showing who the Person who was 
 made flesh had been in the past, he endeavours 
 always to show the character of His existence in 
 the present : that the incarnate One was the 
 Light which lighteth every man ; that He was 
 cognisant of Nathanael's actions when under the 
 fig tree ; that He knew what was in man from 
 spiritual contact therewith in every man, as no 
 other man could know it ; that in this, the truest 
 and highest sense. He was verily the Son of Man, 
 that is to say, a Son in whose being man merely 
 as man had a share, to whom every man was 
 joined by ties of consanguinity even as a father 
 and a son are joined. 
 
 Thus he shows that this Son of Man even 
 during His midnight conversation with Nicodemus 
 was then in heaven, that He then had ascended 
 
II] 6"/. yohfis Teaching 43 
 
 up to heaven because He had come down from 
 heaven in the sense that no one else had ever 
 come down ; that He was the central light and 
 truth from which all men had departed and were 
 lost in their departure, but by which on their 
 return to it they would be restored to light and 
 truth and life — " should not perish but have ever- 
 lasting life." Thus he shows that this Son of 
 Man, while sitting on Jacob's well conversing 
 with the woman of Samaria, has cognisance of all 
 her history, speaks to her spirit and conscience in 
 such a way as to tell her in a few brief but illum- 
 inating words all things that ever she did. Such 
 is the character of the Word made flesh. His 
 presence is subtle as the Divine presence, per- 
 meating and pervading all things. It is to be 
 borne in mind that this is entirely independent of 
 the accuracy or inaccuracy with which such char- 
 acteristics are ascribed to Jesus ; it is a matter of 
 fact which admits of no dispute that by the writer 
 of the fourth Gospel they are ascribed to Him. 
 
 The like characteristic is to be discerned in 
 almost every incident the Evangelist relates of 
 Jesus, and in all His discourses with the Jews. 
 There is the same direct speaking to the con- 
 science. The same searching with a bright light 
 the secrets of the heart, which is more like a 
 reflection of the thought slumbering within than 
 the utterance of another's voice spoken from 
 without. Take, for instance, "therefore did the 
 
44 The Characierhiics of [Lect 
 
 Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay Him 
 because He had done these things on the Sabbath 
 day. But Jesus answered them, My Father 
 worketh hitherto, and I work."^ There was np 
 meaning in that answer, nor in the exasperation- it 
 awoke, if it was not spoken to something which in 
 spite of itself could not but there recognise the 
 Father. The hatred arose not from the mere 
 annunciation of the Father whose name had been 
 spoken of old, but from the assumption of a claim 
 in Him which was not willingly admitted. The 
 justice of this claim was felt in the conscience. 
 It was no sooner advanced than recognised, be- 
 cause it was seen to be according to the truth of 
 nature ; but it was forthwith stifled and repressed. 
 The previous considerations of hatred for the Person 
 speaking were found to neutralise the truth with 
 which He was felt to speak. But not the less had 
 His speech the characteristics of the Word of God. 
 Again, " I know you that ye have not the love of 
 God in you,"'' and " Do not think that I will accuse 
 you to the Father," ^ are indications of the same 
 power of scrutiny, of the same penetrating light, 
 which the Son of Man in His character of the 
 living Word of God bore with Him wherever He 
 went. They were words spoken in anticipation 
 rather than in reply. They read the thoughts 
 more than they answered the sayings. And it is 
 not possible to read the fourth Gospel and not to 
 
 ■ " St. John V. 16, 17. ' St. John v. 42. « St. John v. 45. 
 
II] Si. yoh-ds Teaching 45 
 
 see that from one end to the other the writer's 
 object is to draw out the identity of the Word 
 made flesh with an invisible and ever-present 
 Being who is the fountain of life and light and 
 truth. It is not after all the pre-existence of the 
 Word which is the keynote to his teaching, but 
 the identity of the Word with a Being whose 
 existence could not possibly be dated from the 
 moment that the Word was made flesh, but 
 whose existence in the present implied and in- 
 volved His existence in the past. 
 
 It will be interesting to pursue the same in- 
 quiry further. In reply to the observation of the 
 Jews, " When Christ cometh, no man knoweth 
 whence he is;"^ whether made openly or in secret 
 does not appear — " Jesus cried in the temple as 
 he taught, saying. Ye both know me and ye know 
 whence I am : I am not come of myself, but he 
 that sent me is true, whom ye know not," ^ speak- 
 ing to the consciousness of those who felt — ^they 
 knew not why — ^that the Man before them was in 
 some inscrutable way the man within them ; that 
 they knew Him, therefore, and did not know Him. 
 It was on account of this intensely searching lan- 
 guage that they sought to slay Him^ though in 
 reply to His question, " Why go ye about to kill 
 me," they had before asked, " Who goeth about 
 to kill thee?"^ For the same reason the officers of 
 the chief priests and Pharisees who were sent to 
 
 9 St. John vii. 27. ^ St. John vii. 28. = St. John vii. 19, 20. 
 
46 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 apprehend Him were unable to do so, but were 
 constrained to confess, "Never man spake like 
 this man." Many bad spoken like Him for elo- 
 quence, many had surpassed Him in the graces of 
 rhetoric. The triumphs of the schools in these 
 things were greater than the triumphs of Christ ; 
 but where no man ever spake like Him, was in the 
 accuracy with which the spoken word agreed with 
 the truth of the silent voice within. 
 
 It is needless to point out how this is exempli- 
 fied in the narrative of the woman taken in 
 adultery. We shall not stop to inquire into the 
 genuineness of that passage ; suflBce it to say that 
 the supposition of its being spurious^ opens out a 
 far greater difficulty in accounting for its origin 
 than is occasioned by the mere fact of its omission 
 in some of the oldest manuscripts and versions. But 
 taking it as we find it now, how completely does 
 it harmonise with the portrait uniformly given 
 elsewhere of the Word made flesh. How does He 
 assert His majesty by the discomfiture of the 
 woman's accusers ? How does He proclaim His 
 Deity by that irresistible appeal to conscience 
 before which the oldest and the youngest quail ? 
 There, if anywhere, is given the sentence of a 
 
 ^ The question whether or not it ■was actually written by St. 
 John, or by the author of the rest of the Gospel, is of incomparably 
 less moment than the question whether or not it is an authentic 
 narrative of an actual incident in our Lord's life. On this latter 
 point, I have myself no shadow of doubt, and scarcely less on the 
 former one. But see Appendix, Note B. 
 
II] Si. jfohiis Teaching 47 
 
 Divine Judge, and given, as God's judgment is 
 mostly given, in silence and submission. Truly, 
 there, if anywhere, the voice without was the in- 
 carnation of the voice within. The Word made 
 flesh was He whose silent utterance, in spite of 
 themselves, was heard in the breast of those sur- 
 prised and convicted sinners. 
 
 And is not this our Lord's own meaning when 
 afterwards He asks the Jews, " Why do ye not 
 understand my speech ?" and Himself replies, 
 " Even because ye cannot hear my word."^ His 
 outward discourse was unintelligible to them, 
 because they were too obtuse to hear its counter- 
 part within.^ His speech they listened to ; if so 
 be they rejected it. His unspoken word they 
 could not hear. 
 
 Take, again, the narrative of the healing of the 
 man born blind. What a piteous spectacle of 
 self-willed bigotry does the conduct of the Phari- 
 sees present ! What a foil to the bright shining 
 of the light of life in Christ is the wilful extinc- 
 tion of the light of truth in them ! How does 
 their deliberate resistance to evidence throw out 
 into stronger contrast the purity of Jesus, till the 
 two are confronted face to face in the question, 
 "Are we blind also ?" and in the reply, " If ye 
 
 * St. John viii. 43. 
 
 ^ And so "ye seek to kill me because my word hath no place in 
 you," (viii. 37) — doth not gain ground, or work, in you ; for as the 
 innate sense of right and truth loses weight or influence in, so the 
 principle of evil gains ascendency over, a man. 
 
48 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 were blind, ye should have no sin, but now ye say, 
 We see, therefore your sin remaineth." It is the 
 conscience which is the field of the Word's energy. 
 It is there that He operates and makes His power 
 felt, and it is there we must seek for indications 
 of that personal essence whose identity is pro- 
 claimed with the person of the Son of Man. 
 
 As the history proceeds, and the breach between 
 Jesus and the Pharisees becomes greater, the 
 traces of the presence of the Word as a living 
 energy within the conscience of His enemies be- 
 come fewer. The actual discussions cease, and 
 there is naturally less occasion for observing the 
 analogy between the spoken truth and the un- 
 conscious truth within. But one memorable in- 
 stance is recorded in our Lord's interview with 
 Pilate, in which it is brought out in all its start- 
 ling vividness. We must examine the narrative 
 in detail, and observe it closely. 
 
 A prisoner was brought to Pilate at the last 
 Passover, whose fame had doubtless reached him, 
 although perhaps he knew no more than vague 
 report had spread abroad. He asks the people, 
 " What accusation bring ye against this man \ " 
 and his curiosity is yet further stimulated by the 
 evasive reply they give, " If he were not a male- 
 factor, we could not have delivered him up unto 
 thee." During his residence in Judea he had no 
 doubt learned enough of the traditions of the 
 people to attach a certain- meaning to the phrase 
 
II] S^. yoh-ds Teaching 49 
 
 "whicli rumour had associated in some way with 
 the prisoner, namely, " the King of the Jews." 
 "When, therefore, he entered into the judgment 
 hall, he called Jesus and said unto Him, " Art 
 thou the King of the Jews ?" Now, the mere fact 
 of his putting such a question showed that for 
 some reason or other he felt a more than common 
 interest about Jesus, and was desirous to hear His 
 account of Himself. Notice, then^ our Lord's 
 reply. Jesus answered him, " Sayest thou this 
 thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me ? " 
 That is to say. Hast thou any personal intei-est in 
 the question asked ? or Is it the mere thoughtless 
 echo of an idle rumour ? Dost thou ask from 
 mere curiosity, or from a deeper and more inti- 
 mate concern ? In other words. He traverses 
 Pilate's consciousness ; He forces him against his 
 will to question his own motives, to pass some 
 sort of judgment on the inward workings of his 
 mind, as before an invisible judge. Pilate is 
 touched, and resents the intrusion, which was too 
 searching not to be felt, and too remarkable to be 
 unobserved. He replies, " Am I a Jew ? Thine 
 ovm nation and the chief priests have delivered 
 thee unto me : what hast thou done ?" Here is 
 the evidence that the prisoner has found him out. 
 He at once stands upon his dignity, but he cannot 
 do so without evading the point of which the 
 prisoner had made him conscious. He virtually 
 gives the lie to his wakening apprehensions, and 
 
50 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 tries to stifle them. " How can it be as you sug- 
 gest 1 I am not a Jew. I care nothing for them 
 or their king. It is no concern of mine. You 
 are my prisoner, and I demand what you have 
 done." Our Lord pursues the same train of 
 thought as before ; He passes by Pilate's intended 
 deviation, and answers, still speaking to Pilate's 
 thoughts and not to his words, " My hingdom is 
 not of this world : if my hingdom were of this 
 world, then would my servants fight, that I should 
 not be delivered to the Jews : but now is my 
 hingdom not from hence." ^ That is to say, He 
 thrice declares that He has a kingdom — ^that He 
 is a king — ^but He takes care to point out the 
 contrast between His kingdom and the only king- 
 dom of which Pilate can form any idea. It is not 
 a kingdom built upon war and bloodshed, violence 
 and wrong, not a kingdom in which the servants 
 fight — but a kingdom of a difierent pattern, a king- 
 dom not of this world, Notice the sequel, 
 " Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king 
 then ?" He returns from the deviation in which 
 he had sought refuge. His vague and unaccount- 
 able misgivings are confirmed. His prisoner's 
 suspected royalty is established. Before he felt 
 that He might be, now he feels that He is a king. 
 Therefore Jesus answered, " Thou sayest that I 
 am a king." The voice within thee says so ; thine 
 own confession ratifies it. My dominion is the 
 
 « St. John xviii. 36. 
 
II] S^. Johns Teaching 51 
 
 dominion of the truth, for " to this end was I born, 
 and for this cause^ came I into the world, that I 
 should bear witness unto the truth. Every one 
 that is of the truth heareth my voice." That is to 
 say. The voice which has been holding converse 
 with thee — ^which has been speaking to thee — 
 which thou hast heard and recognised — is none 
 other than the voice of truth — the voice of that 
 which is. It lies deeper than all falsehood ; but 
 when once aroused, it cannot be stifled. It is my 
 voice. The mention, however, of anything so real 
 as truth, is enough for Pilate. He has on prin- 
 ciple ceased to believe in truth. So he turns 
 away with a sneer, " What is truth V He cares no 
 more for Jesus or His kingdom when he finds it 
 is nothing more than the kingdom of the truth ; 
 and yet he must yield a partial homage even to 
 the truth, for he has heard its voice and felt its 
 power. He goes out again unto the Jews and 
 saith unto them, " I find in Him no fault at 
 all ; .... will ye that I release unto you the 
 King of the Jews 1" ^ 
 
 We see, then, in this episode, how the Word 
 made flesh identifles Himself with the voice of 
 truth in the conscience, which, whether it can be 
 recognised or not, has its existence there. The 
 Son of Man is the incarnation of the ever-present 
 voice of truth — of the light which lighteth every 
 man, which is the witness to God and to truth in 
 
 ' St. John xviii. 39. 
 
52 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 every man — ^which. may be imprisoned, bound, put 
 to death, and stifled, but which sooner or later will 
 assert and vindicate itself— which may be cruci- 
 fied, but will assuredly rise again from the dead, 
 ascend into heaven, and rule on the right hand of 
 God. 
 
 The irresistible power of this voice of truth is 
 shown in Pilate's subsequent conduct. He had 
 not the courage to obey the truth, to trust its 
 guidance, and surrender himself to its sway ; but 
 neither had he the power to set it at defiance, to 
 ignore or to forget it. Twice he persisted, in 
 opposition to the people, that he found no fault in 
 Jesus, though he could submit to stand by and 
 see Him scourged, crowned with thorns, and clad 
 in purple ; till at last the cry, " We have a law, 
 and by our law he ought to die, because he made 
 himself the Son of God," raises Pilate's suspicions 
 to the highest point of awe and terror. He is 
 more than ever convinced of the mysterious cha- 
 racter of the prisoner he has to deal with. He 
 must question Him once more. He went again 
 into the judgment hall and saith unto Jesus, 
 " Whence art thou ?" What a strange question ! 
 Why ask Him, "Whence art thou?" Why 
 should His origin all at once become the matter 
 of inquiry ? Was He not like other men ? Were 
 those words, " My kingdoin is not of this world," 
 still ringing in Pilate's ears ? Did he feel there 
 was a truth in them ? Was the prisoner's origin, 
 
II] 6"/. Johns Teaching 53 
 
 after all, not of this world ? Was it from that 
 undiscovered world of truth in whose existence 
 Pilate tried to persuade himself that he did not 
 beheve ? 
 
 The fact of this question being asked showed 
 that Pilate was not unconscious of an inward 
 struggle, which arose from something more than 
 uneasiness on account of the prisoner's innocence 
 — for a man of Pilate's character, who had mingled 
 the blood of innocent and helpless Galilaeans with 
 their sacrifices would not commonly be so anxious 
 about the execution of strict justice on offenders 
 only as this would imply — but his uneasiness arose 
 rather from a growing consciousness, which the 
 prisoner had been the first to work in him, that 
 there existed a truth and justice to which he was 
 himself responsible, while, for some reason he 
 could not explain, he felt that Jesus was myste- 
 riously identified therewith. He had found that 
 the voice of the prisoner had awoke responsive 
 echoes in his conscience to. which before he had 
 been a stranger, and for which he could not ac- 
 count. And hence the question, " Whence art 
 thou?" 
 
 It is then a further characteristic of the nature 
 of the Word which is discovered to us when we 
 read that to this question Jesus vouchsafed to give 
 him no answer. He had heard the Voice — he 
 had confessed to having heard it. He was there- 
 fore no longer independent of its authority. He 
 
54 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 could not escape from the obligations under wliich 
 it laid him. On the contrary, he was bound to 
 yield to it, so far as he felt it had spoken. But 
 instead of doing this, he was resisting it. He 
 had done it the greatest possible indignity by 
 giving a denial to its existence. He had asked 
 unbelievingly, "What is truth?" Now, it was 
 time for the Yoice of Truth to vindicate itself by 
 the dignity of silence. God speaks once and 
 twice, but He does not speak again when the lie is 
 given to the voice which has once been recognised. 
 God is too high and holy to be careful, to main- 
 tain His existence, when, in spite of the witness 
 of the conscience, that existence is denied. It is 
 so with truth. She rests on a foundation too 
 secure for her to be anxious to defend herself 
 against every wanton or violent assault. She is 
 confident of the strength of her foundations though 
 the storm may rage, and the wind and the rain 
 may fall and blow and beat pitilessly upon her 
 house. But none the less would the grandeur 
 and the majesty of the Word be compromised if 
 He were eager to assert Himself. He had now 
 wrested from Pilate against his will a recognition 
 of His voice, and on that recognition He could 
 stand. He would not make the fact of his exist- 
 ence to depend, or to be contingent on a categori- 
 cal reply to the random and unbelieving interro- 
 gation of a presumptuous and impertinent querist. 
 And therefore it was, when Pilate asked Him, 
 
II] vS"/. Johns Teaching 55 
 
 "Whence art thou 1" that "Jesus gave him no 
 answer." ^ The conduct of the "Word made flesh 
 was the direct counterpart of the habitual conduct 
 of the unincarnate Word in His dealings with the 
 conscience which is awakened to His demands, 
 but a rebel to His authority, — not ignorant of His 
 claims, but wilfully sceptical and obtrusively 
 curious as to their source. 
 
 Once again, however, upon Pilate's telling his 
 prisoner of the power he had to crucify or to re- 
 lease Him, Jesus speaks, but it is with a voice 
 that in the same manner indicates the origin after 
 which Pilate had inquired, not indeed directly, 
 but in the sphere of conscience. " Thou couldest 
 have no power at all against me," He says, " ex- 
 cept it were given thee from above ; therefore he 
 that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin." 
 Now, there were two thoughts here which can 
 hardly have been very familiar to Pilate, and yet 
 Jesus confronts Pilate with them. One was the 
 thought of a power higher than his own, but not 
 of this world — a Power above him from whom he 
 had himself received power; and the other was the 
 thought of sin. Jesus deals with these as primary 
 thoughts in the uneducated conscience of Pilate. 
 He did not assume that he was ignorant of either. 
 He spoke to that in him which recognised both. 
 And again Pilate confessed his perception of the 
 light shining within him, for we are told from 
 
 * ' St. John xix. 9. 
 
56 The Characteristics of [Leot 
 
 thenceforth he sought to release Jesus. The 
 bitter irony of his subsequent question, " Shall I 
 crucify your king ? " only showed too plainly how 
 deep the words of Jesus had entered into him ; 
 how severe was the struggle that was going on 
 within between the demands of his self-interest 
 and the mysterious convictions that had been 
 aroused of the supremacy of truth, of the sin of 
 resisting it, and of the unknown relation between 
 the voice of truth heard in the conscience and the 
 calm dignity of the prisoner before him. 
 
 Now the instances we have been- considering 
 are sufficient to show the characteristic manner in 
 which the fourth Evangelist represents Jesus as 
 the incarnation of the Word. It is, to say the 
 least, an assumption to suppose' that the writer of 
 this Gospel, whoever he was, had in his mind 
 certain modes of Alexandrine thought which he 
 worked up in his own way and for his own purpose. 
 It is, to say the least, not more, but, on the con- 
 trary, rather less of an assumption to suppose that 
 the meaning of his work was contained in the 
 work itself. If there is little or no evidence that 
 he was himself acquainted with these modes of 
 thought, there certainly is still less evidence that 
 he pre-supposed any such acquaintance on the 
 part of his readers. And yet we must make this 
 latter assumption as ivell as the former one before 
 we can fairly suppose that the writer's meaning 
 can only be discovered by looking for the* key to 
 
II] S^. yoAn's Teaching 57 
 
 it in such modes of thought. We would much 
 more strongly insist that the Gospel itself supplies 
 the key, if not to the phraseology employed, at 
 least to the manner in which it is used. We 
 would confidently maintain that sundry illustra- 
 tions of this manner are presented by the Gospel 
 itself, specimens of which the instances that have 
 been adduced exhibit. 
 
 Whether, however, this be so or not, certain it 
 is that a Power such as we have endeavoured to 
 describe has its existence in the world. We have 
 only to examine the spiritual nature of man and 
 to search our own consciences in order to discover 
 rays of a light correspondent to that of which the 
 fourth Gospel speaks. It is a fact that there is a 
 light which lighteth every man. The universal 
 conscience of man is the organ which discerns that 
 ■ light. That there are those who discern it not is 
 no proof of its non-existence any more than the 
 fact that some men are born blind is a proof that 
 the sun is non-existent, or than the fact that, for 
 many days in winter, it is invisible to us, is a proof 
 that it is Adsible nowhere else. To man, as he exists 
 generally all the world over, there is a consciousness 
 of such a light. And what is more, even in those 
 cases where naturally or from accident the percep- 
 tion of this light is feeble, as for instance it was 
 with Pilate, there also it has only to shine in order 
 gradually to effect a recognition. The shining of 
 the light produces a witness to itself in the region 
 
58 The Characteristics of [Leot 
 
 where it shines. Pilate, though naturally and 
 from the accidents of his position blind to truth 
 and unaffected by the consciousness of sin, was 
 nevertheless constrained to acknowledge the exist- 
 ence of both in the presence and the light of the 
 Word made flesh. 
 
 Again, whether or not we may predicate an 
 intention on the part of this Evangelist to exhibit 
 such effects as those referred to, certain at least it 
 is that they are to be perceived. His Gospel, 
 whether from design or not, does most marvel- 
 lously illustrate the keen, subtle, penetrating, 
 scrutinising power of a light which judges and 
 detects the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 
 It is absolutely impossible to deny this, -whenever 
 the Gospel may have been written and whoever 
 may have been its author. But when we find 
 him starting with the assertion that Jesus was 
 the true light which lighteth every man, that 
 John was not that light but came to bear witness 
 of that light, it becomes hardly less impossible to 
 deny that the writer's professed intention was to 
 exhibit Jesus as the incarnation of this light, 
 and to show how He proved Himself to be 
 so by the circumstances and the conduct and 
 the teaching of His natural life. Now these 
 are points which it is not only difficult to 
 deny but which also it must be remembered 
 are altogether and entirely independent of any 
 questions we may choose to raise upon the date 
 
II] St Johns Teaching 59 
 
 or autliorship, the authority or credibility of his 
 work. 
 
 Let us then gather up the threads of the argument 
 which we have in our hands. There is a treatise 
 recording the discourses and incidents from the 
 Hfe of Jesus, which dates not later than the com- 
 mencement of the second half of the second 
 century after Christ. It purports to be written, 
 however, by one who was himself an eye-witness 
 and an. intimate companion of Jesus, and there 
 are certain internal considerations which are not 
 inconsistent with the supposition of his being so, 
 in which case we must of course assign to it an 
 earlier date. This, however, we leave for the 
 present as an open point, content with the earliest 
 date for which our opponents have declared, that 
 namely of a.d. 150. It must be borne in mind, 
 however, that we attribute no particular authority 
 to this document such as would tend to neutralise 
 our previous concessions. We take it only for a 
 witness to an unknown writer's view of Jesus and 
 the character of Jesus, at the time he wrote. 
 More than this it is not possible to ask of us. But 
 we have a right to inquire what. was the nature of 
 his view ? What was the character or bearing of 
 his thoughts ? And to this his own work must 
 furnish the only .and a sufficient answer. From 
 the study of that work it appears that he believed 
 Jesus to be not a mere man like other men or 
 even like John, who, on the testimony of Jesus 
 
6o The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 elsewhere preserved, was the greatest of the 
 prophets, but the embodiment or incarnation of a 
 light which was in all men — ^that Jesus was the 
 human impersonation of that principle of truth 
 which does in fact constitute the very foundation 
 of our personal existence — which found its witness 
 in Nicodemus and the woman of Samaria and the 
 man born blind, as well as in Pilate and Judas 
 and the other enemies of Jesus, the Jews and 
 Pharisees. He believed and wished others to 
 believe that in this sense Jesus was the Word of 
 God made flesh, that He not merely had an 
 existence in the beginning of things before the 
 world was, but that He, so to say, was in 
 existence in the consciences of men during the 
 time that He was manifest in the flesh — ^that this 
 existence of His was a permanent existence quite 
 independent of His existence as a man among 
 men, but to which His existence as a man among 
 men accurately corresponded, and of which it was 
 manifested once for all as a witness never to be 
 forgotten. He believed that there lay dormant 
 in the conscience of every man that which was 
 capable of reflecting the light which Jesus was, 
 unless the rays of it were intercepted by darkness 
 or blindness, or prejudice, just as in every drop of 
 water on the earth's surface there is a capacity for 
 reflecting the image of the sun if only the beams 
 of it are permitted to fall appropriately. He be- 
 lieved in the existence of such a spiritual light as 
 
II] S^. yohfis Teaching 6i 
 
 this, and he believed that Jesus was that light. 
 We are warranted in saying so much on the 
 evidence of his own language. For the moment 
 it matters not from what source he borrowed his 
 knowledge of this light or the phraseology he 
 employed to express it. Certain it is that if he 
 borrowed them from the schools of Alexandria he 
 did not borrow from those schools the no less 
 striking feature of his doctrine, namely the identi- 
 fication of Jesus with this light. Fpr the schools 
 of Alexandria were not Christian if he was an 
 Alexandrine Christian. 
 
 Under all circumstances, therefore, there still 
 remains this feature of his doctrine to be ex- 
 plained. He believed that by searching deep 
 enough into the spiritual nature or " the life " of 
 men, you could arrive at that germ or essence 
 which became man in the person of Jesus. He 
 believed that the universal witness to the person 
 of Jesus was at the bottom of the personality of 
 every man. The first primal element of our com- 
 mon nature as men was that which became man 
 in Jesus, for He was the incarnation of the God 
 which is in every man. This, of course, pre-sup- 
 poses that God is the root or apyr\ of our being ; 
 but does the teaching of the fourth Gospel assume 
 that we have any other hpyji than God ? Does it 
 not, on the contrary, assert that the Word was 
 God ? That in the Word by whom all things 
 were made was that life which was the light of 
 
62 The Characteristics of [Leqt 
 
 men, and that the light of men was He who robed 
 Himself with flesh in the person of Jesus. 
 
 It will, perhaps, hardly be maintained that we 
 have misrepresented our writer in endeavouring 
 thus to exhibit the substance of his teaching. 
 There is, and can be, no question that he did iden- 
 tify Jesus with the Word. There scarcely can be 
 more, upon consideration and study of the Gospel 
 itself, that he was not less anxious to make his 
 readers understand who the Person he wrote of 
 was in the Present than that He had existed in 
 the Past. In fact, the one depended on the other. 
 ]f Jesus was really apprehended as the truth 
 which was at the bottom of all existence — ^the life 
 which really underlay all the manifestations of 
 life, the I am, "Who is the Cause, the Stay, the 
 Hope, the Object, and the End of all creation- 
 then it follows as a necessary consequence that 
 there can be neither Beginning nor End of His 
 existence. He must be from ages of ages unto 
 ages of ages, even from all eternity unto all eter- 
 nity. For His is the only self-existent life, and 
 the world, and all things that are therein, are but 
 the breath of His mouth, and as the shadow of 
 the style upon the dial-plate compared with the 
 sun that casts it. 
 
 If, then, we are right in saying that the object 
 of the fourth Evangelist was to reveal and lay bare 
 'the Word as He exists in the inviolate and un- 
 biassed conscience of every truthful man, and to 
 
II] S^. Johns Teaching 6 
 
 o 
 
 assert the identity of the personal existence of that 
 Word with the man Jesus, — if he taught that 
 there was a light in every man of which Jesus 
 was the manifestation in human flesh, — and this 
 cannot be denied, even if it be denied that the in- 
 stances we have given were proposed as examples 
 of its existence and operation — ^then it is important 
 to observe what follows on the assumption which 
 we are provisionally prepared to admit of the late 
 origin of this Gospel. For then, in that case, it 
 follows, first, that no writer living 150 years after 
 Christ could possibly have advanced such a theory 
 as the one here propounded, if Jesus had been a 
 mythical or imaginary personage who had no real 
 existence. For, on the assumption the tone of 
 this writer's mind was of a mystical and abstract 
 character, he took delight in thought as thought, 
 in ideas of a purely metaphysical nature. But it 
 certainly cannot be denied that the Jesus whom 
 he portrayed was to his imagination a real exist- 
 ence. He was concerned with the actions and 
 discourses of a living person — a person who had 
 lived. He was not setting before his readers the 
 history of one whom he intended them to accept 
 as a shadow. The Jesus of his narrative was a 
 real Jesus to him, and was meant to be a real 
 Jesus to others. This, then, being so, why was it 
 that he, as a dealer in abstractions, should not 
 rather have taken the abstraction which he found 
 ready to his hand, and been content with it ? 
 
64 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 Why attempt to give a real existence to that 
 which, on the hypothesis, had none, and which, 
 according to the assumed tendency of his own 
 mind, wanted none \ Why should he of all men 
 assay to give " a local habitation and a name" to 
 that which one would think he might rather have 
 preferred to contemplate as an " airy nothing," a 
 " form" of " things unknown" to actual life ? The 
 very shape his work assumed was a witness that 
 the Life which he recorded was not an invention 
 of his own, but had been lived in the flesh. For, 
 if otherwise, why should he who delighted in 
 abstractions have laboured to give consistency and 
 form to that which was before impalpable ? , 
 
 Again, we must bear in mind that on the 
 present hypothesis the fourth Gospel came into 
 existence about a century and a quarter after the 
 death of Christ ; that is to say, in a space of time 
 •rather longer than three generations or rather less 
 than four, and equal as near as may be to that 
 period of time which has now elapsed since the 
 events of 1745. We ourselves, therefore, can 
 well estimate the probability at this distance of 
 time of the known Scottish devotion to the house 
 of Stuart creating the historic picture of the 
 Prince Charles Edward. Many traditions sur- 
 vive at this moment in the Highlands of Scotland 
 of the romance of that fruitless struggle. But is 
 it possible that these can have congealed now into 
 the familiar form and features of the young 
 
II] vS/. yohn's Teaching 65 
 
 Chevalier? Would it be possible for any man 
 now to write a Life of that unfortunate Prince 
 wliich should circulate in the Highlands of Scot- 
 land and be generally accepted as historic if he had 
 never lived ? And yet this is an exact parallel to 
 the case in point. It is assumed that the devotion 
 of the Christians to an idea created the portrait of 
 the human Christ. As well might the devotion 
 of the Highland clans to the house of Stuart at 
 this distance of time create the familiar portrait of 
 the young Pretender. Pomantic as his name has 
 not ceased to be, it is nevertheless a romance 
 which is gathered round something more than a 
 mere nucleus of truth. His memory is as fresh at 
 this hour in the minds of the Scottish nation as if 
 he had died but yesterday. But this would not 
 have been so had he been an unreality. The 
 existence, therefore, of the fourth Gospel, if its 
 origin was so late as a.d. 150, is at all events, 
 even though it be a romance, a witness to the 
 existence of an historic Christ. "We have 
 heard of those who have mistaken memories 
 for hopes,^ but it is only in the dreams and 
 visions of the night that hopes are converted 
 into memories. 
 
 Lastly, it is not possible, on the same hypo- 
 thesis as before, to account for the teaching of 
 the fourth Gospel if we assume it also to contain 
 a false or unauthorised development of Christian 
 
 9 Madame de Stael, Corinne. iv. 3. 
 
66 The Characteristics of [Lect 
 
 doctrine. For in that case it would not have 
 been commonly received as genuine by the Chris- 
 tian body at the end of the second century. 
 Supposing it to have started into existence so late 
 as A.D. 150, why was it generally received at a.d. 
 200 ? Could it have been recognised as the best 
 interpretation of Christianity when Christianity 
 as a name had possibly no existence, and when 
 certainly it was not felt to need any interpreta- 
 tion ? when the faith of Christians had much of 
 the unconsciousness of infancy and had not begun 
 to contemplate itself? If it be true that "This 
 " great unknown, in departing from apostolic tra- 
 " dition, teaches us to rise above it,"^ how is it that 
 his Gospel was accepted by an age which if any- 
 thing was only too jealous of so-called Apostolic 
 tradition ? This is a question which beyond all 
 doubt may more fairly be asked than it can readily 
 be answered. Bear in mind that we are not 
 speaking now of authorship, but of the extreme 
 improbability of such a work as this being com- 
 monly accepted by the Christian body, if its view 
 of the teaching and character of Christ were alto- 
 gether as recent, and, so to say, tentative as it is 
 alleged to be. It is doubtless a remarkable and 
 significant fact that the fourth Gospel should have 
 been received in Christian Churches, appealed to 
 as authoritative by Christian Fathers, and assailed 
 by the adversaries of the Christian faith, as early 
 
 ^ Davidson, ii. 449. 
 
II] S^. yoAn's Teaching 67 
 
 as the close' of the second century, ^ if its own 
 conception of the person and character of Christ 
 as the Word which was in the beginning with 
 God and was God, had been borrowed from the 
 schools of Alexandria but fifty years before, and 
 was not the native and spontaneous outgrowth of 
 the Church's virgin soil, identical in form and 
 substance with the tradition she had received from 
 the first known dis(g,ples and accredited preachers 
 of the word. 
 
 ^ Dr. Davidson says, " Theophilus of Antioch (about a.d. 176) is 
 " the first who expressly ascribes the gospel to John. . . . The 
 " Mnratorian fragment recognises the apoatoUc origin of the 
 " gospel. . . . From this time forward the gospel is generally 
 " referred to as the work of the apostle John. Irenaeus (a.d. 
 " 190), Clement (200), and Tertullian (200), unmistakably use it as 
 " his. The fathers generally are agreed on the point at the end of 
 " the second century ; and the voices that object to its Johannine 
 " origin are few. The current belief at the beginning of the third 
 " century was, that the apostle wrote it." — ^ii. 402. 
 
I 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE ESSENTIALS OF ST. JOHn's TEACHING 
 
 St. John x. 30. 
 " I amd my Father are one.'' 
 
 T is a truth which cannot be too often or too 
 earnestly impressed upon men's minds at the 
 present time that Christianity has no interest 
 whatever in maintaining the Johannine authorship 
 of the fourth Gospel if it was not written by St. 
 John. 
 
 The supposed advantage of having in our pos- 
 session a genuine work of our Lord's own Apostle 
 would be entirely neutralised if the work were not 
 genuine. The traditional St. John is dear, but 
 truth is dearer, and nothing would be gained by 
 mistaking the fictitious for the real ; on the con- 
 trary, great would be the gain if, being mistaken, 
 we could be convicted of our mistake. 
 
 If, therefore, there is really, as a matter of fact, 
 sufficient evidence to show that this Gospel was 
 not written by St. John, we should not only be 
 prepared, but thankful to have our minds purged 
 
Lect. Ill] Essentials of St. Johns Teaching 69 
 
 of all regard for the adventitious worth that 
 attaches to it from the supposed Johannine author- 
 ship. So much we may readily admit ; but then 
 there arises a further question, whether the non- 
 Johannine authorship being proved, the Gospel 
 ceases to. have any real value at all. We have, I 
 think, a right to insist upon the distinct and entire 
 independence of the abstract and absolute value 
 of the Gospel as a theological work, and its rela- 
 tive and conditional value as the production of St. 
 John. Certain it is that whoever wrote it, and 
 whenever it was written, its artistic and literary 
 beauty remains the same ; nay, more, its merit as 
 a work of art is more open to the commendations 
 of criticism in proportion as the art of it is the 
 direct result of conscious design — the intentional 
 effect of educated skill. But as with its beauty, 
 so also with its truth. So far as the ideal it ex- 
 presses is a true one, so far it should be acknow- 
 ledged as true. If this Gospel happens to be the 
 embodiment of great spiritual truths, then unques- 
 tionably those truths have a claim on our accept- 
 ance for their own sake, and on their own merit, 
 quite independently of the writer who may have 
 uttered them. It is perfectly obvious that this 
 writer cannot have intended to commend these 
 truths to our acceptance on his own personal 
 authority or on that of the Apostle John, because 
 in that case he would have been careful to identify 
 himself more unmistakeably with the son of 
 
70 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 Zebedee, or have told us more explicitly who lie 
 was. It was plainly part of his method to cast 
 his truth upon the world, and to leave it to take 
 care of, and to vindicate itself It is the mere 
 creation of our own fancies — for which there is not 
 the slightest foundation — to suppose that he 
 desired to pass for the Apostle John, and on that 
 ground, to command a favourable hearing for his 
 opinions. Had this been so, he should, at all 
 events, for his own sake as well as ours, have made 
 his identity more plain ; nay, he surely would 
 have done so. 
 
 We see, then, that supposing the view of Christ 
 which the Gospel embodies to be correct, there is 
 a certain amount of unfairness in using the non- 
 Johannine authorship of the book as an argument 
 against such correctness. If that view be true 
 absolutely, it is certainly not less true because St. 
 John did not write the Gospel. We are not at 
 the present moment assuming its truth, but we 
 say that, if true, the question of authorship does 
 not affect the truth. It is possible to assail the 
 truth on other and independent grounds, but it 
 most assuredly does not stand or fall upon the 
 question. Who wrote the Gospel ? 
 
 Now, let us inquire. What are really the essen- 
 tials of that teaching which is presented by the 
 fourth Evangelist, admitting, for the sake of argu- 
 ment, the same hypothesis as before, that he 
 wrote about the middle of the second century, 
 
Ill] iS/. jfohns Teaching 7 1 
 
 many years, therefore, after St. John's death ? 
 This is, happily, a question that is further re- 
 iQOved from the region of debate than the one of 
 authorship ; for, whatever our notions on this 
 latter point, no one has any doubt as to the ten- 
 dency of the Johannine teaching. The author of 
 the fourth Gospel has written with the point of 
 a diamond in the clearest, the most lucid, the most 
 incisive manner, so as to leave no shadow of am- 
 biguity on the reader's mind as to what his mean- 
 ing and opinion were. The purpose of the writer 
 not only transpires oftentimes incidentally, but is 
 declared explicitly when he says, " These things 
 are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the 
 Christ, the Son of God." It is one of the rash 
 and baseless assertions brought against the synop- 
 tical Gospels^ that, according to their account, our 
 Lord did not commence His ministry in the cha- 
 racter of the Messiah, but that the conception 
 was one which grew upon Him by degrees, Simon 
 Peter being the first to originate and apparently 
 to suggest it to his Master. On the other hand, 
 it is alleged with truth that in the fourth Gospel 
 Jesus appears as the Messiah from the very com- 
 mencement. We can hardly imagine that the 
 common sense of Englishmen will readily accept 
 this as an instance of disagreement in the Evan- 
 gelistic narratives. 
 
 But with respect to the fourth Gospel, the 
 
 ^ Albert E^ville, Eerue des Deux Mondes, vol. Ixiii., p. 93. 
 
72 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 position is clear. In the very first chapter Philip 
 confesses Jesus as the Christ of prophecy, and in- 
 timates to Nathanael that he has found Him. 
 Immediately afterwards, upon adequate proof, 
 Nathanael himself acknowledges Him with the 
 spontaneous and magnificent confession, " Rabbi, 
 thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of 
 Israel? At the first miracle of Jesus in Cana of 
 Galilee it is said that He " manifested forth his 
 glory," that is, His glory as Messiah, and His 
 disciples believed on Him.^ At the first passover 
 He gave a practical illustration of His royal power 
 in His Father's house by. the summary and suc- 
 cessful manner in which He purged the temple of 
 the money-changers. His first discourse with 
 Nicodemus was occupied with the conditions of 
 entrance into the kingdom of God, as though it 
 rested with Him, as the King, to make them. In 
 His second discourse with the woman of Samaria, 
 He expressly announces Himself as the Messiah 
 which was to come. The Samaritans themselves 
 confess that He is " indeed the Christ, the Saviour 
 of the world." * The same confession appears to be 
 implied of the Capernaum nobleman, for it is said 
 that " himself believed and his whole house." ^ In 
 the fifth chapter, when discoursing with the Jews, 
 He says Himself that Moses wrote of Him, which 
 is a direct claim to be the subject of prophecy. 
 
 ^ St. John i. 49. = St. John ii. 11. 
 
 * St. John iv. 42. ^ St. John iv. 53. 
 
Ill] St. yokn's Teaching 'j2, 
 
 In the sixth chapter, the multitudes who are fed 
 declare, their conviction, " This is of a truth that 
 prophet that should come into the world," ^ and 
 on that ground proceed to organise an abortive 
 effort to make Him their " king." At the close 
 of the same chapter Simon Peter makes virtually 
 the same confession that he is reported to have 
 made by the other Evangelists, which, after the 
 allegation we have mentioned, it may be to us a 
 matter of surprise to encounter here, " We believe 
 and are sure that thou art that Christ the S6n of 
 the living God."'' In the seventh chapter we 
 find the question asked at Jerusalem, not without 
 much debate, " Do the rulers know indeed that 
 this is the very Christ f" while shortly afterwards, 
 under the pressure of still graver doubt, many of 
 the people said, " Of a truth this is the Prophet," 
 and " Others said. This is the Christ." ^ In the 
 ninth chapter, the enmity against Him had pro- 
 ceeded to such a height that " the Jews had 
 agreed already that if any man did confess that 
 he was Christ, he should be put out of the syna- 
 gogue." ^ In the tenth chapter, we read that as 
 He " walked in the temple in Solomon's porch," 
 at " the feast of the dedication, the Jews came 
 round about him and said unto him. How long 
 dost thou make us to doubt ? If thou be the 
 Christ, tell us plainly." ^ At the grave of 
 
 « St. John vi. 14 '' St. John vi. 69. ^ St. John vii. 26, 40, 41. 
 " St. John ix. 22. ^ St. John x. -24. 
 
74 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 Lazarus we find Martha, in reply to the Lord's 
 interrogation, saying, "I believe that thou, art the 
 Christ, the Son of God, which should come into 
 the world." ^ The twelfth chapter records the 
 royal progress of Jesus to the Holy City, when 
 " much people that were come to the feast, when 
 they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, 
 took branches of palm trees and went forth to 
 meet him, and cried, Hosanna ! blessed is the 
 King of Israel that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord." ^ Shortly afterwards the question is asked 
 Him, " We have heard out of the law that Christ 
 abideth for ever, and how say est thou. The Son of 
 Man must be lifted up ? who is this Son of Man ? "* 
 In our Lord's last prayer we find Him using words 
 which, strange to say, have been perverted so as 
 to wing the arrow of assault against its genuine- 
 ness, " This is life eternal, that they might know 
 thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
 thou hast sent." ^ His assertion of His kingly 
 power in the presence of Pilate we have already 
 at large considered. It is not the slightest indica- 
 tion of the efiect produced on Pilate by that won- 
 
 = St. John xi. 27. ^ St. John xii. 13. * St. John xii. 34. 
 
 " St. John xvii. 3. " The words ' J^iis Christ whom thou hast 
 " sent,' are unsuitable in the lips of Jesus himself. The proper 
 " name Jesus Christ, is foreign to his time, and even to the early 
 " apostolic era. It appears for the first time in Paul (Rom. i. 1)" 
 — Davidson, ii. 351. But it is found in 2 Thess. i. 1, which accord- 
 ing to him is six years earlier. Cf. St. Matt. xxvi. 68 ; St. Luke 
 xxiii. 2 ; St. John ix. 22 ; Acts ii. 36. 
 
Ill] S^. yohns Teaching 75 
 
 drous interview that he brought Jesus forth say- 
 ing, " Behold your King ; . . . . Shall I crucify 
 your King?" — ^that the title which he wrote to 
 put upon the cross ran, " Jesus of Nazareth, 
 the King of the Jews;"^ and that when "the 
 chief priests of the Jews" said to Pilate, "Write 
 not the King of the Jews, but that he said I am 
 the King of the Jews," Pilate was inflexible, and 
 " answered, What I have written I have written."'^ 
 
 Now, from this amount of evidence, it appears 
 that there cannot be the slightest doubt that it 
 was the intention of the fourth Evangelist to 
 represent Jesus as the Christ. The Messiahship 
 of Jesus was one of the essentials of his teaching. 
 It is not possible to arrive at any other conclusion. 
 As far as his own belief went, (and this is the 
 only point at present), he was fully convinced that 
 Jesus was the Christ, 
 
 Let us see, then, what that implies. It implies 
 that he believed Jesus to have been at once the 
 subject and the object of prophecy. It implies 
 that he was enough of a Jew^ to believe that the 
 Old Testament Scriptures centred round the Per- 
 son of One who was to come. That there was in 
 those Scriptures an element of expectation which 
 required to be satisfied — an element of promise 
 
 6 St. John xix. 19. ' St. John xix. 22. 
 
 ^ His anti- Judaic prejudices, and his foreign relation to Judaism 
 and the Jewish nation, are frequently alleged — e.g., Davidson, ii. 
 433. 
 
76 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 which waited to be fulfilled. It implies that, in 
 his opinion, apart altogether from the interpreta- 
 tion and application of individual passages, the 
 Scriptures, as a whole, warranted the belief that a 
 Person would arise as a deliverer who should 
 realise to the full Israel's highest instinctive hopes 
 of glory. It implied that, whether or not he was 
 a disciple of Philo, he was at all events thus far a 
 disciple of Moses and the Prophets.^ For this 
 was a belief that was not inculcated in the schools 
 of Alexandria, but was mainly, if not exclusively, 
 to be learned from the Hebrew Scriptures. We 
 have, therefore, conclusive evidence that, whether 
 or not the writer was a Platonist or a Philonist, he 
 was at any rate a Jew. 
 
 » Were it not for certain chronological considerations that it is 
 impossible to set aside, it would be almost as reasonable to seek for 
 the origin of much of St. John's language, and many of his thoughts 
 in the "Bhagavad-Grita," as in Philo. Those who are acquainted 
 with Sanskrit poetry cannot fail to have been struck with the mar- 
 vellous resemblance, in parts of that episode, both to the fourth 
 Gospel and to the Revelation, as they must also have been at a 
 loss to account for it, e,.g. : — 
 
 aham sarvasya prabhavo matta?i. sarvam pravartate, (B.Gr. x. 8.) S 
 
 Ego Universi fons, ex me Universum procedit. (Of. St. John i. 3.) 
 
 aksharcmamakaro 'smi dwandwa/i samasikasyacha 
 
 ahamevakshaya?!, kalo dhataham viswatomukha/i 
 
 mrityuft. sarvaharaschahamudbhavascha bhavishyatam. 
 
 kirttifc srirvakcha (B.G. x. 33, 34.) 
 
 Inter elementa sum littera A, atque copulatio inter verba com- 
 
 posita. Ego sum tempus seternum, altor ego omnituens, et mors 
 
 cuncta rapiens ego, et ortus futurorum. Fama, Fortuna, atque 
 
 Vox.— (Cf. Eev. i. 8 ; St. John i. 1, &c.) 
 
 The " Bhagavad-Gita" is probably not much older than the 
 
 second century of our era. The theology of it is Theistio. 
 
Ill] -5"/. yokn's Teaching 
 
 n 
 
 But there was another element no less con- 
 spicuous in his teaching and essential to its 
 integrity, which we proceed now to develop. If 
 it is a fact that according to this writer Jesus was 
 the incarnation of the Word and was identified 
 personally with the Word, it is likewise a fact 
 that according to him the Word was God. He 
 was in the beginning with, by, at, or close to God. 
 All things came into existence, or became, by 
 Him, and nothing that was made was made or 
 became without Him. So that He was the direct 
 and necessary personal instrument of creation, if 
 not ultimately or absolutely the Creator.^ He 
 was, moreover, the Being who had dealt of old 
 with His people by the promises to the patriarchs 
 and the redemption out of Egypt, and the revela- 
 tions to the prophets, and the long series of 
 mercies and of marvels which had been shown for 
 upwards of a thousand years to the chosen race, 
 for " He came unto His own and His own re- 
 ceived Him not." The glory which He manifested 
 was " the glory as of the only begotten of the 
 Father," and He who manifested it was " full of 
 
 1 C'est par son action que " tout est dewmtt." Qu'on veuille 
 Men noter oette expression ; le quatrifeme ^vangdliste est trop 
 philonien pour dire que le monde a ^t^ crik, au sens absolu, par le 
 Verbe. — Albert Rdville, Revue des Deux Mondes, vol. Ixiii. p. 107. 
 It is to be observed, however, that Christ was the author of creation 
 exactly in the same sense that He was the omthor of the grace and 
 truth which are characteristics of His redemptive work. St. John 
 i. 17. 
 
78 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 grace and truth." His fulness was the source of 
 all grace in men, and in this respect He was 
 worthy of more honour and was higher than Moses, 
 for whereas the Law (which is an instrument of 
 condemnation) was given by Moses it was grace 
 and truth that came by Jesus Christ. Though it 
 is true that no man hath seen God at any time, 
 yet the only begotten Son which is in the bosom 
 of the Father, with whom Jesus is identified, 
 hath declared, led the way to, pointed out, ex- 
 pounded or interpreted Him.^ It was He who 
 had the power, as an innate or inherent faculty, 
 of baptising with the Holy Ghost.^ On being 
 assured of this John himself bare record of Him 
 "that this is the Son of God." * 
 
 One of His earliest disciples, Nathanael, as we 
 have seen already, confessed Him as " the Son of 
 God ; " ^ and He Himself gave a tacit assent to 
 that recognition in His reply, "Hereafter ye shall 
 see heaven open and the angels of God ascending 
 and descending on the Son of Man," ^ for the 
 significance of that familiar title is destroyed if it 
 implies no more than it literally expresses. Thus 
 we find Jesus Himself affirming to Nicodemus 
 that the natural habitation and the uniform abode 
 of the Son of Man is "in heaven."'' While at 
 the same time He shrinks not from thrice appro- 
 priating the alternative appellation " Son of God," 
 
 2 St. John i. 18. ' St. John i. 33. « St. John i. 34. 
 = St. John i. 49. « St. John i. 51. ' St. John iii. 13. 
 
Ill] 6"/. yohns Teaching 79 
 
 and twice enhancing its manifest significance 
 by the adjunct of the incommunicable epithet 
 Only-Begotten.^ The Baptist confesses that he 
 himself is but the friend of the Bridegroom who 
 must ever increase as he decreases, but that the 
 Bridegroom "cometh from above," and ''is above 
 all " for that He alone who " cometh from heaven 
 is above all ; " that He is " sent " of God and 
 " speaketh the words of God," because He 
 receiveth not the Spirit by measure, as a man ; 
 that " the Father loveth the Son and hath given 
 all things into His hand," and that only by 
 believing " on the Son " any man hath or can 
 have "everlasting life."^ 
 
 We pass now to another aspect of the like 
 teaching which may be called, not the direct but 
 the inferential aspect, which comes out in our 
 Lord's discourses with the Jews; and which serves 
 to show by implication the real bearing of this 
 cardinal expression " Son of God." We shall now 
 see that Jesus habitually speaks in a capacity 
 which cannot be realised, and in which the mean- 
 ing altogether collapses, except upon the under- 
 standing that it was intended to be identical with 
 that of a Divine Personality. Take again the 
 words, " My Father worketh hitherto and I work." 
 Why was it that the Jews " sought the more to 
 kill Him" but because they understood Him to 
 say " that God was His Father, making Himself 
 
 8 St. John iii. 16, 17, 18. ' St. John iii. 29-36. 
 
8o The Essentials of [Leot 
 
 equal with Godl"^ There is no ambiguity here 
 about the interpretation passed upon His words, 
 or upon the writer's intention in recording them. 
 Jesus rephes in His most emphatic manner, 
 wholly undaunted by the impression He had con- 
 veyed, which to encourage and not repress would 
 have been the height of unpardonable and most 
 audacious blasphemy, except upon one condition, 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you. The Son can do 
 nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father 
 do, for what things soever he doeth these also 
 doeth the Son likewise." ^ He affirms " that the 
 Father loveth the Son and showeth him all 
 things that himself doeth," that the Son's quick- 
 ening whom He will is the counterpart of the 
 Father's raising the dead ; that the Father hath 
 committed all judgment unto the Son; that the 
 Son is to be honoured precisely as the Father is 
 honoured ; nay more, that if the Son is despoiled 
 of honour then neither is the Father honoured. 
 He declares again most emphatically that the 
 hearing of His word so as to believe on Him that 
 sent Him is for all men the one passage from 
 death unto life. That the hour is at hand when 
 hearing the voice of the Son of God "the dead" 
 "that hear shall live," for that "as the Father 
 hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son 
 to have life in himself." ^ 
 
 In the face of assumptions such as these the 
 
 I St. John V. 18. 2 gt jojjjj ^_ i9_ 3 g^" j^j^^^ ^_ 20-26. 
 
Ill] S^. Johns Teaching 8i 
 
 challenge that He had greater witness than that 
 of John, which some of the Jews had been dis- 
 posed to esteem highly and to accept, that challenge 
 being the assertion that His own works done 
 in the Father's name bore witness of Him, be- 
 comes at once of the most formidable and emphatic 
 character. Either the works were not done and 
 the assumptions were nothing better than inflated 
 boastings, or else being done the assumptions were 
 amply justified. Or, on the other hand, if we 
 choose to say that the works were not accom- 
 panied by any such assumptions as the writer 
 affirms, then these works being exclusively of the 
 nature of works of mercy, it becomes unintelligible 
 why they should have excited the animosity 
 with which they were received. Or, once more, 
 if we choose to assert that no works were wrought 
 and no assumptions made, then we can only stand 
 aghast at the ingenuity and fertility of invention, 
 no less than the stubbornness of complicity, with 
 which four writers, wholly independent and it is 
 alleged discordant, should have undertaken to re- 
 late a history, which, whatever its difficulties or 
 discrepances, is uniformly consistent in this respect. 
 It were a needless tax upon your patience, 
 brethren, to bring in array before you every 
 single passage in this Evangelist in which Jesus 
 speaks of God in the terms " My Father " or 
 " The Father ; " moreover, it is plain that taken 
 alone such terms are inconclusive and may be used 
 
82 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 by any man ; it is only in their context tliat they 
 become inferentially of unambiguous significance. 
 Take, for instance, one passage out of many in the 
 sixth chapter, where these phrases constantly 
 occur. " The bread of God is He which cometh 
 down from heaven and giveth life unto the world. 
 ... I am the bread of life : he that cometh to 
 Me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on 
 Me shall never thirst." "What is this but a claim 
 to the possession of those resources which belong 
 only to the Infinite and the Eternal, while it assumes 
 an origin which is distinctly more than human 
 when taken in connection with other words which 
 follow shortly after, " not that any man," it should 
 be any one, t/?, "hath seen the Father save He 
 which is of God, He hath seen the Father." Or 
 again, "Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that 
 believeth on Me hath everlasting life." Can He 
 who said " God is a Spirit, and they that worship 
 Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth " 
 have spoken thus or been represented as speaking 
 thus, if after all He was only the foremost among 
 ' the sons of men, the best and wisest man ; yea, 
 even the highest and holiest manhood, in the 
 thought of the Evangelist ? If belief on Him is 
 the one condition of everlasting life, then He can 
 be nothing less than, as Simon Peter called Him, 
 the Son of the Living God ; * that is to say. His 
 
 '' In the midst of the accumulation of evidence before us we can 
 
II I J S^. yohtis Teaching 83 
 
 humanity is the avenue which ends not in itself, 
 but leads right on till it brings us to the one source 
 of life, the essential Deity of God, a life which we 
 are taught is not in the humanity itself but is in 
 the Word or Only Begotten Son which is in the 
 bosom of the Father.^ 
 
 Take again the words, " I am the light of the 
 world," ^ in connection with the Evangelist's own 
 declaration that the Word was the true light which 
 lighteth every man, and the statement " I know 
 whence I came and whither I go,"^ which, if 
 meant to be literally true, can assuredly be pre- 
 dicated of no mortal man ; and the assertion " If 
 ye had known me ye should have known my 
 Father also," ^ which can alone be understood as a 
 claim to identity of nature with the Highest. 
 Again, " When ye have lifted up the Son of Man 
 ye shall know that I am," ^ " I speak that which 
 I have seen with my Father," ^ " I proceeded 
 forth and came from God," ^ taken in connection 
 with that climax of self-assertion, " Verily, verily, 
 I say unto you. Before Abraham was I am," 
 which elicited from His adversaries the attempt 
 to stone Him for blasphemy — can only be inter- 
 preted as an assumption of equal honours with 
 
 afford to surrender this the received reading, if need be,, for 6 Syios 
 ToC Qtov, but cf. St. Matt. xvi. 16. 
 
 5 St. John vi. 57 ; i. 4, 18 ; v. 30. « St. John viii. 12. 
 
 '■ St. John viii. 14. ^ gt. John viii. 19. » St. John viii. 28. 
 1 St. John viii, 38. ' St. John viii. 42. 
 
84 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 God and a proof that the -writer intended to 
 represent Jesus as offering to His nation what _ 
 they felt to be the insult of a claim topersonal 
 identity with the Divine Being. 
 
 Once more, the interview of the man born blind 
 with Jesus after his sight had been given him 
 affords the same evidence. In reply to the ques- 
 tion, " Dost thou believe on the Son of God 1 " he 
 asks, " Who is He, Lord, that T might believe on 
 Him ? " and upon our Lord's answer, " Thou hast 
 both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with 
 thee," he replies, " Lord, I believe." Then adds 
 the Evangelist, "and he worshipped Him,"^ in 
 order to indicate the true character and import of 
 the faith professed. 
 
 The whole teaching and argument of the tenth 
 chapter becomes absolutely meaningless, illogical, 
 and inconsequent except upon the supposition that 
 the words " I and my Father are One " supply 
 the key to it. The man who wrote this chapter 
 saw in Jesus nothing less than the human person- 
 ality of God, the express image of the Father, 
 and unless we throw ourselves, provisionally if 
 not sincerely, into the position of the speaker as 
 here represented, and are willing for the time to 
 adopt his own ground, it becomes hopelessly im- 
 possible to discover anything like a rational 
 direction of thought in the language ascribed to 
 Jesus, or intelligible conduct on the part of His 
 
 3 St. John ix. 35-38. 
 
Ill] S^. Johns Teaching 85 
 
 adversaries. Our only conclusion can be that in 
 the mind of the Evangelist, "the Father" was 
 "in" Jesus, and Jesus "in" the Father.* 
 
 Again, when Jesus hears of the death of 
 Lazarus He says, " This sickness is not unto death, 
 but for the glory of God, that the Son of God 
 might be glorified thereby," ^ using of Himself a 
 title which Martha recognises and adopts, and one 
 which is ratified and warranted by the subsequent 
 events at the grave of her deceased brother. If 
 the reanimation of the dead body of Lazarus was 
 an actual fact, there is every reason to believe 
 that this language was used both by Jesus and by 
 Martha, for the writer who relates the one records 
 the other, and if we accept his testimony in one 
 case we may accept it in both. But the language 
 if used by Christ was unquestionably justified by 
 the sequel, for being used it would not have been 
 recorded had it been followed by failure or dis- 
 concerted by defeat. At least the Evangelist be- 
 lieved and wished others to believe, that the arro- 
 gant claims of Jesus were not falsified by the event. 
 
 In the next chapter we find the remarkable 
 citation from Isaiah, which proves that the writer 
 making it intended to identify Jesus with the God 
 whom the prophet beheld in vision, " These things 
 said Esaias when he saw His glory and spake of 
 Him ; " ^ and his observation, " They loved the 
 
 ■* St. John X. 30, 38. ^ St. John xi. 4. 
 
 * St. John xii. 41. See Pearson on the Creed, i. 160, Oxford edit. 
 
86 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 praise of men more than the praise of God" in 
 reference to those who shrunk from the reproach 
 of ejection from the synagogue for the name of 
 Christ, is further illustrated by the words that 
 follow immediately, "Jesus cried and said, He 
 that believeth on me believeth not on me, but on 
 Him that sent me, and he that seeth me seeth 
 Him that sent me," which, if actually spoken by 
 Christ, show that the claims of the disciple were 
 in no sense greater than those of the Master, 
 being an assertion of His personal position in the 
 scale of existence as emphatic and unambiguous 
 as we can well conceive. 
 
 It is not possible to understand the transactions 
 and discourses of the Maunday recorded in the 
 thirteenth chapter unless we assume for the time 
 the writer's own position that Jesus was the 
 incarnate God. When we receive Him, as God 
 acting, God speaking, God revealing Himself, 
 then everything becomes intelligible on that basis, 
 as it unquestionably is on no other ; or to put it 
 less forcibly, if need be, it becomes more intelli- 
 gible than on any other. 
 
 The same- remark applies with equal justice to 
 the remaining chapters of the Gospel. However, 
 we may attempt to explain logically or scientific- 
 ally the exact relation subsisting between the 
 Father and the Son, which one would have 
 thought was a subject that might well be admitted 
 to baffle the intellect, and one that the reverent 
 
Ill] S^. John's Teaching 87 
 
 mind ought ever to regard as calling for adoration 
 rather than supplying material for definition and 
 logomachy, certain it is that to the naturally 
 earnest but obtuse mind of Philip, who out of 
 the deep. yearning of his eager and unsatisfied 
 humanity exclaimed, " Lord, show us the Father 
 and it sufficeth us," Jesus answered, " He that hath 
 seen Me hath seen the Father." "Wearied with 
 the endless strife of Patri-passionism and Sabell- 
 ianism, of Tritheism and orthodoxy, and of the 
 intellectual gladiator-show from age to age ex- 
 hibited on the broad field of sacred thought, how 
 unspeakable the relief of taking refuge in these 
 simple words of Jesus ! That which the human 
 heart instinctively and insatiably longs after is 
 the vision of its God — to see the glory of the 
 living God. To the heart so thirsting and longing 
 Jesus says, " He that hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father ; " " Look on me, and behold your God ; " 
 " Look unto me, and be ye saved all the ends of 
 the earth; for I am God, and there is none else." 
 He sets before us the perfection of humanity in a 
 Son who is Himself the truest manifestation of 
 the ultimate God, and that God a Father. 
 
 But I check myself, for the necessities of the 
 task imposed upon us demand that we receive not 
 these words as in any sense authoritative but only 
 as criticism itself, the most icy criticism, cannot 
 demur to our receiving them, namely, as a witness 
 to the thought and intention of the writer. 
 
88 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 According, then, to his representation, Jesus 
 declares Himself in language the more intelligible 
 to the wants of the heart because in paradoxical 
 defiance of scientific accuracy, as the very incarna- 
 tion of the personal God, " He that hath seen Me 
 hath seen the Father." As to the meaning and 
 import of these words there can be no question ; it 
 is unmistakeable what they mean. Here, if any- 
 where, Jesus identifies Himself with the very 
 being of the personal God. " I and my Father 
 are One." 
 
 And in the remainder of these Paschal dis- 
 courses it is virtually the same. He is in the 
 Father, and the Father in Him. The Father 
 dwelleth in Him, and doeth the works. He goeth 
 unto the Father. He that loveth Him shall be 
 loved of the Father. The Father will send the 
 Comforter in His name. The Father is greater 
 than He, which would be an obvious truism if 
 He were nothing but the highest manhood. The 
 Father is the husbandman who planteth and nur- 
 tureth the true Vine, which is His humanity. 
 He hath called His disciples friends, for all things 
 that He has heard- of His Father He has made 
 known unto them. Whatsoever they shall ask of 
 the Father in His name. He will give it them. 
 He that hateth Him, hateth His Father also. 
 He will send the Comforter unto them from the 
 Father, who Himself is the spirit of truth, and 
 proceedeth from the Father. If He goes not 
 
Ill] S^. yohns Teachhig 89 
 
 away, the Comforter will not come unto them, 
 but if He departs, He will send Him unto them. 
 All things that the Father hath are His. The 
 time Cometh when He will show them plainly of 
 the Father. He came out from God, forth from 
 the Father, and is come into the Avorld ; again 
 He leaves the world, and goeth to the Father. 
 Though they shall be scattered every man to his 
 own, and shall leave Him alone, yet He is not 
 alone, because the Father is with Him. 
 
 It is needless to examine further the last prayer 
 of Jesus, because the teaching of the previous dis- 
 courses is only accumulated and summarised in it, 
 and no additional elements of importance bearing 
 upon our present subject are contained therein. 
 
 The evidence of the remaining chapters is very 
 soon collected. When apprehended by the band 
 of Judas, the men who apprehended Jesus went 
 backwards and fell to the ground on hearing His 
 announcement, " I am." ^ Taken with their im- 
 mediate context, these words doubtless refer to 
 Jesus of Nazareth as their predicate ; but having 
 been used before by Jesus, without any such pre- 
 dicate, in a sense far more awful and significant, 
 their meaning here may perhaps be designedly 
 ambiguous. When arraigned before Pilate the 
 Jews affirmed unhesitatingly, " We have a law, 
 and by our law He ought to die, because' He made 
 Himself the Son of God."^ And finally, the 
 
 ' St. John xviii. 5, 6. * St. John xix. 7. 
 
go The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 writer sets his own seal to all that has gone before 
 by declaring, in direct and explicit terms, his own 
 purpose in recording it : " These things are writ-_ 
 ten that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ 
 the Son of God." 9 
 
 It would seem, then, in the face of this large 
 amount of evidence, impossible to deny that the 
 intention of the writer was to exhibit Jesus in 
 His twofold capacity, first as Messiah, and 
 secondly, as the Son of God, of co-equal power 
 and majesty with God, and essentially one with 
 Him. "What, then, is our position ? It must be 
 remembered that we are constructing an argu- 
 ment on the ground of an hypothesis that the date 
 of the Gospel is a.d. 150 and its author unknown. 
 At this period, then, an unknown writer pro- 
 pounded these opinions about Jesus Christ. They 
 were manifestly opinions of the truth of which he 
 himself was profoundly convinced. Is there any 
 reason to believe that he invented them ? With 
 regard to the opinion of Jesus being the Christ, 
 this cannot have been his own invention ; for 
 before his time the people who were called Chris- 
 tians bore witness by their very name to it as a 
 common feature of his and their belief With 
 regard to the other point, the Godhead of Jesus, 
 it is not possible to assert that this writer was the 
 first to propound it ; for, before his time, the un- 
 doubted Epistles of St. Paul necessarily imply it, 
 
 ^ St. John XX. 31. 
 
Ill] S^. yohris Teaching gi 
 
 while the date of others which have been without 
 sufficient cause disputed, is prior to that proposed 
 for the fourth Gospel, and their witness on this 
 subject is scarcely less decided and conspicuous 
 than its own.^ If, then, we are right so far, it 
 would seem that the fourth Evangelist is in no 
 way responsible for the abstract truth or falsehood 
 of his most essential and conspicuous doctrines. 
 As they were not conceived or originated by him, 
 he is not primarily answerable for their verity. 
 They were first accepted as true on other autho- 
 rity than his own, and if true, they do not stand 
 or fall with him. If, on the other hand, they are 
 iiot true, he is not chargeable with having proposed 
 them to the acceptance of the Church, or for hav- 
 ing added them to the fabric of her belief, because 
 it is certain that they were commonly accepted 
 and believed before. His Gospel, then, may have 
 been received, because it was found to express 
 more fully and conclusively than it had hitherto 
 been expressed that which was already lying in a 
 semi-conscious state in the mind of the Church. 
 It certainly was not received, because it pro- 
 pounded new and important doctrines which were 
 felt to be attractive, because new. It precipitated, 
 in a concrete and palpable form, elements which 
 had hitherto been held in solution, but not one of 
 which owed its existence to the process of preci- 
 pitation. How, then, is it possible that these 
 
 1 See Lecture vi. 
 
92 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 doctrines, if they are true, are dependent on the 
 establishment of this author's identity, when, if 
 they are false, it is absolutely certain that he is 
 not responsible for their invention ? 
 
 To put a parallel case. The creed of Nicsea is 
 known to have come into existence at a certain 
 date, and certain circumstances are known to have 
 attended its promulgation. It is not pretended 
 that that creed added anything to the bulk of 
 the Church's faith, the elements expressed in it 
 were there before. But the creed itself must 
 stand or fall ultimately upon the faithfulness with 
 which the authors of it fulfilled their trust. If it 
 could be proved that substantial additions were 
 made to the traditional deposit of the faith, then 
 on all Catholic principles those additions must be 
 condemned. But coming into existence as it did, 
 the creed of Nicsea is formally the production of 
 the Council there assembled. The Fathers com- 
 posing that Council are responsible for the form, 
 but not in any way responsible for the substance 
 of the creed, which was intended and supposed to 
 be an expression of the faith once delivered to the 
 saints. If the form is inaccurate, they are to 
 blame, but not for the substance, so far as the 
 form has accurately expressed it. Yet we receive 
 the creed of Nicsea on the authority of the Council 
 that drew it up. "What, then, was that authority ? 
 It was the authority of the Church at the time 
 represented by the 318 individual Fathers who 
 
Ill] S^. Johns Teaching. 93 
 
 composed the Council. But who these Fathers 
 were, with a few exceptions, we know not ; autho- 
 rities differ even as to their number. By what 
 selection, or proportion of them, the creed was 
 drawn up, we know not ; least of all do we know 
 to what individuals of the Council particular 
 clauses are to be attributed. As regards authors, 
 the creed is an anonymous production. An influ- 
 ence which predominated in producing it was 
 doubtless the mind of Athanasius, who at the 
 time was only a deacon. But what was the special 
 share he had in it we cannot tell. How, then, is 
 the authority of the creed being a purely formal 
 instrument in any way dependent on the identity 
 of its particular authors. It may have been the 
 work of one, or of ten, or of fifty Fathers. If it 
 was the work of one, we may assume, but cannot 
 establish his identity ; if it was the work of fifty, 
 or of ten, we are wholly at a loss to do so. 
 
 Now, the case of the fourth Gospel is not dis- 
 similar, but is even stronger. For that is in no 
 sense a formal instrument. The form of it is 
 wholly subordinate to its substance, which is con- 
 spicuous in manifold ways, and transparent in lan- 
 guage of unsurpassed lucidity. Here we know 
 the date, hypothetically accepting that which has 
 been proposed to us, and in a certain sense the 
 authors of the composition ; for we have witnesses 
 to its very general acceptance by the Church as an 
 authoritative work at a period shortly afterwards. 
 
94 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 which acceptance could not have been the growth 
 of a day ; and those who thus accepted it were its 
 authors in the sense that the great majority of 
 Fathers at the Council of Nicsea, who could have 
 borne no part in drawing up the creed, were 
 nevertheless the authors of it, inasmuch as they 
 set their seal of attestation and acceptance to its 
 doctrines, they acquiesced in its contents, were a 
 party to its teaching, consented to and embraced 
 the substance of belief which it embodied ; but as 
 here our ignorance of the actual author of its several 
 clauses is no hindrance to our acceptance of its 
 authority, if we accept it, so neither can our sup- 
 posed ignorance of the author of that Gospel, 
 which does not depend upon clauses for the con- 
 veyance of its meaning, but upon its testimony, as 
 a whole, to certain cardinal positions, be any valid 
 hindrance to our acceptance of the teaching which 
 is everywhere so transparent throughout it, and is 
 explicitly summed up by the writer in the verse 
 to which we have referred, unless it can be shown 
 that that teaching was absolutely original to, and 
 therefore must stand or fall with, him. It must 
 be remembered that we are speaking now, not of 
 the matters of fact recorded in the Gospel, but of 
 the general purport of its teaching, as defined by 
 the author himself Its authority in matters of 
 fact is altogether another point with which we are 
 not now concerned. 
 
 All, then, that Ave are anxious to maintain at 
 
Ill] vS/. Johns Teaching 95 
 
 the present time is this, that the testimony of the 
 fourth Evangelist, as far as it goes, and taken only 
 for what it is worth, on the hypothesis we have 
 accepted, is clear and unmistakeable. He may 
 have been deceived ; he certainly was human, and 
 therefore liable to err. His opinions may have 
 been visionary and incorrect ; he may have formed 
 a wrong estimate of Jesus ; but at all events, and 
 under all circumstances, his witness to Him as the 
 Christ, and as the Son of God, is unfaltering in 
 its constancy and unambiguous in its meaning. 
 We may, indeed, reject his testimony, but there 
 cannot possibly be two opinions as to what that 
 testimony is. In the middle of the second century 
 he had learnt to regard Christianity as the absolute 
 religion. He looked on it as the fulfilment of all 
 that was past, as containing in itself the germ and 
 promise of all that was to come. It was at once 
 the centre and the circumference of all truth. The 
 knowledge of Christ, as the revelation of the 
 Father, was to him that eternal life which, as it 
 was raised above the flux of time, so it was inde- 
 pendent of all the mutations of thought, the revo- 
 lutions and oscillations of speculative belief. It 
 was not to vary as they varied, but was the un- 
 erring standard to which they were to be reduced. 
 Again, I repeat, whether or not the Evangelist 
 was right, it cannot be denied that such was the 
 tenor of his declared conviction. 
 
 Now then comes another point, which, bearing 
 
96 The Essentials of [Leot 
 
 as it does on the question before us, cannot rightly 
 be overlooked. This writer was plainly of opinion 
 that the facts he had undertaken to deliver, which 
 he gave, at all events, on the authority of an eye- 
 witness, were not so important in themselves as 
 they were in the results to which they pointed. 
 If the results were correct, the facts, we may be 
 quite sure, could not have been far wrong, as they 
 were related. At any rate, if the results did not 
 follow from the facts, it is clear that in this writer's 
 mind the facts themselves, however correctly nar- 
 rated, would have been matters of trivial import- 
 ance. In his opinion, if Jesus was not the Christ, 
 and not the Son of God, then the circumstance of 
 blood and water flowing from His pierced and 
 lifeless side, and by parity of reasoning other cir- 
 cumstances likewise, was, comparatively speaking, 
 a matter of trifling interest. The truth of this 
 circumstance, for which, however, he vouched, 
 was, after all, subordinate to a higher truth. For 
 it clearly might have been true, and yet that 
 higher truth might not have followed. But it 
 was the proclamation of the higher truth on which 
 he was intent, and it was with reference to this 
 truth that he said, " These things are written 
 that ye might believe ; and that believing,, ye 
 might have life throtigh his name." ^ 
 
 ' It is most important to observe that the Evangelist's desire is 
 not that he should be himself believed, but that life shoiild be had 
 through belief in Jesus. 
 
Ill] -5"^. y ohfH s Teaching 97 
 
 There are, therefore, three conceivable positions 
 with respect to the case in point. The facts re- 
 lated may be true, and the results alleged may 
 follow from them ; or the facts related may be true, 
 and yet the results alleged may not follow from 
 them ; or the facts related may be false, in which 
 case the results alleged cannot follow. Now, with 
 regard to this writer, he declares unhesitatingly 
 and unmistakeably that certain results do follow 
 from the facts related. The whole object of his 
 Gospel is to proclaim this truth. But if these 
 results do follow, — ^that is to say, if Jesus is the 
 Christ and the Son of God, the facts related can- 
 not be so false as to prevent the results from fol- 
 lowing which are alleged" to follow. Now, it is 
 conceivable that these facts may be sufficiently 
 true for tliis purpose, that is substantially true, 
 even though this writer was not St. John, and was 
 not himself an eye-witness, but had only received 
 his narrative from an eye-witness, and had only 
 written in the middle of the second century. For 
 the facts related by him are by no means the only 
 facts that can be produced which point in the 
 same direction, nor is he the only writer who, 
 from these or similar facts, has deduced a like 
 result. 
 
 It is illogical, therefore, and inconsequent, to 
 make the abstract truth, for which the fourth 
 Evangelist contends, to turn upon the resolution 
 of various critical questions relating to his identity 
 
98 The Essentials of [Lect 
 
 and his age, or even to depend upon the minute 
 verbal accuracy of particular portions of his nar- 
 rative. It is not fair to say, These things are so 
 uncertain that we may reasonably be excused for 
 holding our judgment in suspense upon the fur- 
 ther and more abstruse questions at issue. For 
 they are not so uncertain as is alleged, and even 
 if they were, we should not be warranted in say- 
 ing or acting thus. For the ultimate question in 
 debate is one of such transcendant magnitude, 
 and such paramount importance, that we are not 
 warranted in putting it aside until we have not 
 only discovered some probability that it may be 
 false, but have proved conclusively that it cannot 
 possibly be true. 
 
 Certain it is that critical writers on the authen- 
 ticity of St. John's Gospel, waive altogether the 
 question of Jesus being the Christ or the Son of 
 God. They postpone it as one which is. wholly 
 beside and beyond them, and they have a right 
 to do so. Nay, it is their bounden duty not to 
 suffer the consideration of this question to bias the 
 conclusions of their judgment. Only let it be 
 borne in mind that it is on the resolution of this 
 question in one way, and in one way alone, that 
 they can be in harmony with this writer, whoever 
 he was. If they resolve this question otherwise, 
 they are opposed not only to his identity with 
 St. John, but to his declared opinions as an anony- 
 mous writer asking for no more authority than 
 
Ill] .5"/. yohris Teaching 
 
 99 
 
 the authority of the truth which he proclaims. 
 If they come to the conclusion that Christianity 
 is not the absolute religion — that Jesus is not the 
 only begotten Son of God — ^that He was wrong 
 in calling Himself the Christ — then the fourth 
 Gospel is no less decidedly against them than if 
 it had been written by St. John. Its authority 
 as a genuine work may be lessened, but not its 
 authority so far as the doctrine it inculcates imay 
 happen to be the truth. Its testimony to Jesus 
 on these points, as the testimony of an independent 
 writer living in the middle of the second century, 
 is no less distinct and emphatic. It is a clear 
 and conclusive proof that there was at least one 
 man then who believed in Jesus as the Son of 
 God. And he wrote for the express purpose of 
 bringing others to the same belief. As long, then, 
 as they are not brought to it, they are not dis- 
 ciples of this writer, whether or not they are 
 disciples of Christ. They take a view of the 
 person and character of Jesus which is different 
 from his. They may be in the abstract right or 
 wrong, but they are at variance with him. The 
 very anonymousness of the style which he has 
 adopted is an abiding protest on his part against 
 shifting the ground of the argument he has raised 
 off the claims of his Master on to that of his own 
 personal identity. The position which he puts 
 before us, and would have us adopt as our own, 
 is that of the Samaritans whom he, with touches 
 
100 Essentials of St. Johiis Teaching [Lect. Ill 
 
 so life-like, has drawn saying, " Now, we believe 
 not, because of thy word, for we have heard 
 him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the 
 Christ, the Saviour of the world." " These 
 things," he says, " are written that ye might be- 
 lieve that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, 
 and that believing, ye might have life through 
 His Name." 
 
LECTURE lY 
 
 ST, John's appeal to the inward witness 
 
 St. John v. 10, 11, 12 
 
 " He that helieveth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself: He 
 that helieveth not God hath made him a liar becaiise he helieveth 
 not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the 
 record that God hath given to its eternal life, and this life is in 
 his Son: He that hath the Son hath life a/nd he that hath not 
 the Son of God hath not life." 
 
 THE position at which we have now arrived 
 has shown us that the main issue which is 
 raised by the writer of the fourth Gospel himself 
 is one which does not turn on the question of his 
 own identity, or even on the abstract correctness 
 or incorrectness of his expressed opinions, but 
 upon the clear and decided testimony he has 
 offered to the Divine nature of Jesus. The one 
 question he has himself proposed is. Whether or 
 not Jesus is the Christ the Son of God ? 
 
 Now we know from various sources that this 
 Jesus was not an imaginary creation of his own ; 
 that the memory of such a person was indelibly 
 stamped upon the world at the time when the 
 
102 Si. John's Appealio [Lect 
 
 writer lived ; and we know, moreover, that how- 
 ever original his manner of writing may have 
 been there is undoubted proof that the opinion 
 itself was not original with him. He may have 
 stated it more forcibly or more largely than 
 others, but he certainly was not the first to 
 state it. 
 
 And it is, of course, admitted on all hands that 
 if pretensions like these were advanced in favour of 
 any ordinary or even extraordinary person they 
 would demand the very fullest confirmation, or else 
 be entitled to no regard whatever. The very fact, 
 therefore, of their being advanced and successfully 
 advanced in the case of Jesus of Nazareth is to some 
 extent an evidence that they did not lack a measure 
 of confirmation, because there was nothing in the 
 character or history of Jesus calculated at first 
 sight to command this success. There were in 
 Him none of those qualities which do instinctively 
 command the world's admiration or allegiance. 
 His success was a success based wholly, upon 
 goodness. Power, greatness, wealth, conquest, 
 brilliant achievement, popular enthusiasm, and 
 the like, were influences unknown to Him. It 
 Avas not for these things that He was proclaimed, 
 or proclaimed Himself, the Son of God; but 
 solely on account of His surpassing goodness, 
 sealed as it was with the triumphant paradox of 
 the cross. And if from our acquaintance with the 
 world we determine, as we not improbably may, 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 103 
 
 that goodness alone, resulting in defeat so disas- 
 trous, was scarcely adequate to the producing of 
 consequences so conspicuously successful, we shall 
 not be able otherwise to explain them unless we 
 admit the apparent probability of a series of 
 miracles issuing in the crowning miracle of the 
 resurrection.^ But if admitting, as we may be 
 constrained to admit, this long series of miracles, 
 as an indispensable element in the character and 
 history of Jesus, we shall hardly be disposed to 
 believe that those to whom we owe the record of 
 our Lord's miracles have siibstantially perverted 
 His discourses. Admitting the resurrection as a 
 fact, it seems difficult to imagine any reason the 
 disciples can have had to represent themselves as 
 being taken by surprise on that occasion, notwith- 
 standing the way they had been prepared for it, 
 when, if they had not been prepared, it could 
 only have been to them a matter of the most ex- 
 treme surprise ; while, on the other hand, if they 
 had been prepared; the miracle of the resurrection 
 at once assumes another character from the fact of 
 its having been deliberately foretold by Jesus. 
 
 ' It was this fact that impressed the vigorous mind of Dante 
 when he was being catechised by St. Peter. 
 
 Se U mondo si rivolse al cristianesmo, 
 Diss' io, senza miracoli, quest' uno 
 E tal, che gli altri non sono il centesmo ; 
 
 Ch^ tu entrasti povero e digiuno 
 
 In campo, a- seminar la buona pianta, 
 Che fu gi4 vite, ed ora h fatta pruno. 
 
 Pwr. xxiv. 106-111. 
 
I04 St. Johiis Appeal to [Lect 
 
 We can hardly suppose that sitting down to 
 record the resurrection, which we assume now to 
 have been a fact, they could gratuitously insert 
 the feature of their own surprise and show yet 
 further that it was inexcusable because their Lord 
 had said that He would rise again. If He had 
 said so, why should they be surprised, and if He 
 had not said so, how could they fail to be ? 
 Whereas if He had said that He would rise again 
 and actually did rise, what are we to think of this 
 exact agreement of promise and performance ? 
 Only one of two things, either that the death and 
 resurrection were a reality, or else that there was 
 some mistake in them ; either one or the other was 
 a delusion practised by Jesus upon His disciples. 
 But, here, we are thrown back upon one of 
 the primary foundations on which the claims of 
 Jesus to be the Son of God are found to rest, 
 namely, His goodness. It is plain to the most 
 careless observer of the Gospel history that the 
 reason why our Lord was slain was because of 
 His goodness. He was too good for the genera- 
 tion in which His lot was cast. They did not 
 crucify Him because of His miracles, but because 
 His miracles seemed to stamp His goodness, and 
 because His goodness seemed to stamp His 
 miracles, and because both seemed to lend undue 
 prominence and weight fo His intolerable arro- 
 gance in claiming to be the Son of God. As we 
 have seen before, unless He did claim to be so, 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 105 
 
 even His goodness and His miracles combined 
 ■would scarcely have been sufficient to arouse the 
 animosity which was felt against Him. 
 
 And it is precisely the same now. The verdict 
 of mankind has long ago determined that the 
 moral character of Jesus is not to be surpassed. 
 It stands out like the highest of the mountain 
 chain, in unrivalled majesty, soaring far and clear 
 above the host of lesser peaks which would pre- 
 sume to compare with it among the moralists, the 
 philosophers, the philanthropists, and the sages of 
 the world. It is little less than impiety to say of 
 Him that He was the best, the holiest, the purest, 
 the least selfish, the most heroic, the tenderest, 
 simplest, and most transparent character ever seen 
 among men. Whether or not this is the way in 
 which the Gospel narrative has presented Jesus, 
 certain it is that it has originated such a concep- 
 tion and fixed it in the imagination of mankind, to 
 which the Jesus of the Gospels is at once the 
 nearest and the unique approximation. We may 
 withhold from Him the honours of the Godhead, 
 but we can scarcely deny to Him this as His just 
 and indisputable meed. 
 
 Again, whatever theory may be advanced in 
 explanation of our Lord's miracles in the present 
 day, it can hardly be affirmed that there were not 
 in those miracles phenomena which require to be 
 explained. The evidence for some mighty works 
 of some kind having been systematically per- 
 
io6 St. y ohrC s Appeal to [Leot 
 
 formed is so overwhelming that whatever our 
 theory of causation or the uniformity of natural 
 laws may be, it is scarcely consistent with the 
 recognised principles of historic criticism to assert 
 delibera.tely that He did not work miracles. Or, 
 howsoever this may be, certain it is that a man 
 may accept as an unexplained phenomenon, for 
 which he cannot account, the fact of Jesus work- 
 ing miracles, and yet demur very seriously to the 
 confession which nevertheless His own language 
 makes imperative that He was Himself the 
 Divine Being veiled in human form, working, 
 labouring, teaching, suffering, and dying for men. 
 Now it is precisely at this very point that the 
 testimony of the fourth Evangelist comes in. He 
 says, "Many other signs truly did Jesus in the 
 presence of His disciples which are not written in 
 this book : but these are written that ye might 
 believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, 
 and that believing ye might have life through 
 His name." It is to be observed that if these 
 signs are rejected there are many others which 
 Jesus did ; those others were not different from, 
 but of the same character and bearing with these. 
 They are not now under our consideration, for 
 they were attested by competent witnesses and 
 are, in fact, commonly received. There is un- 
 doubted and irresistible evidence that miracles of 
 some kind were wrought. But these have been 
 recorded as samples of the rest, and they are 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 107 
 
 recorded not only as samples of the rest, but also 
 as signs of something further, which, indeed, , if 
 wrought at all, they all were, namely, as signs of a 
 further and more remote truth which is shadowed 
 forth and indicated, rather than established by 
 logical demonstration, which may be rationally 
 believed, but cannot be mathematically proved — 
 that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God. The 
 signs here recorded, then, were meant to lead us 
 on to this truth, but so also were the rest ; the 
 purport and object of all was the same. It was 
 not that these signs were more striking and signi- 
 ficant than the others, or had a bearing which the 
 others had not, but this was the end and design of 
 all — that we might believe ; and believe, it must 
 be observed, not the signs but the truth to which 
 the signs pointed. 
 
 It is clear, then, that until we have believed, 
 the Evangelist, whoever he was, has written in 
 vain for us. And it is likewise clear that until 
 we have done something more than disputed his 
 identity, or even disproved his veracity, there 
 still remains a considerable body of evidence 
 which leaves our responsibility exactly where it 
 was before to decide whether or not Jesus is the 
 Christ the Son of God. For this responsibility 
 must remain very much the same, as long as there 
 exists any adequate proof at all that Jesus of 
 Nazareth truly lived, that He was a man of 
 extraordinary virtue, of pure and sublime moral 
 
io8 St. John's Appeal to [Lect 
 
 character, that He wrouglit miracles, or acquiesced 
 in and cherished the belief among His followers 
 that He wrought them, that He was put to death 
 by the Jews for His arrogance and obstinacy in 
 professing to be the Son of God, and that, after 
 His death, it was a matter of considerable notoriety 
 that He was reported, and very generaiUy believed, 
 to have risen from the dead, as He had declared 
 He would rise. 
 
 Nor can we entirely realise the supposed case 
 of this Evangelist, or fully appreciate the character 
 of his testimony, till we put ourselves side by 
 side with him at the time when we have decided 
 that he wrote. For conceive him, at the interval 
 of a hundred and twenty years after the death of 
 Christ, coming out of his obscurity, in this way, 
 with no credentials, and with no clue to his 
 identity but a possible vague tradition about a 
 certain disciple whom Jesus loved, and declaring 
 in the most emphatic manner that this very Jesus 
 was then alive, that He was at that moment the 
 Christ and the Son of God, that He was then the 
 object of faith and to be believed. 
 
 We do his position great and conspicuous in- 
 justice when we represent it as tantamount to 
 making an assertion of higher claims for the 
 historic character of Jesus than we may have been 
 in the habit of conceding ; as though a writer 
 should undertake, for example, to vindicate the 
 memory of Cardinal Wolsey or of Richard the 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 109 
 
 Third, or should assay to prove that Csesar, or 
 Hannibal, or any illustrious personage of this 
 kind, was even a greater general or a greater man 
 than we had imagined him to be, great as that 
 was, for in the present case there was nothing of 
 the kind. The fourth Evangelist was not labour- 
 ing to prove how great Jesus had been ; he was 
 endeavouring to show Who He then was. He 
 came to the men of his own day and said, This 
 man Jesus whom I have spoken of, is now, at this 
 moment, the Christ, the Son of God. Believe it, 
 and you shall have life through His name. He 
 took the character of Jesus as he found it, neither 
 greater nor less, and he said. This man is the Son 
 of God ; and any one hearing that message could 
 not but feel that it had an immediate bearing on 
 himself, for it offered to do something for him, to 
 give him life upon believing it. 
 
 The verity of the message then would turn and 
 turn wholly upon its power to give this life. An 
 understanding was implied on both sides that the 
 message itself was worthy of credit ; for if not, on 
 the messenger's own premises, there could be no 
 reality in his offer of life. But this offer was one 
 which admitted of being practically tested, apart 
 from the previous consideration, which was set 
 aside, of the truth of the facts which the message 
 assumed. In short, the question for the men who 
 lived in the days of Christ was th^ validity of His 
 claims to be then considered the Son of God. 
 
no kS/. Johiis Appeal to [Lect 
 
 But the question which the fourth Gospel raises 
 is not whether He was then, but whether He is 
 now the Son of God. We are, in some sense, 
 becoming less and less competent to decide the 
 former question, because so much of the ground 
 we have to go upon is obscure, and conjecture is 
 invoked to supply the place of certainty, but the 
 other question is one which is ever asking for 
 our decision, while the way in which it is proposed 
 remind^jsus that there is only one condition upon 
 which it can be decided, which is Belief ; and that 
 upon so deciding it the practical evidence of pos- 
 sessing life is guaranteed to us. 
 
 It is plain, then, that as long as we do not 
 believe in Jesus as the living Son of God, or the 
 Son of the Living God, we are out of harmony 
 with the fourth Evangelist, if he be St. John. 
 If, however, we are constrained to admit that he 
 is not St. John, his testimony still remains as 
 clear and distinct as before to the same effect. 
 That is to say, his Gospel is a witness to us that 
 one man had found life upon belief in a living 
 Christ, and that others might find it too on the 
 same conditions. Now this is a matter in which the 
 testimony of one man is as good as that of another. 
 The testimony of James or Peter would have 
 been as good as that of John. The testimony of 
 a poor beggar, or a sick woman, or a suffering 
 prisoner, to th& same effect, would not by any 
 means be inconsiderable, more especially if found 
 
IV] the. Inward Witness 1 1 1 
 
 practically to counterbalance the evils of poverty, 
 sickness, or loss of freedom in eacti particular case. 
 This, of course, is on the supposition that we reject 
 the testimony of St. John as a personal witness 
 to what he had himself seen. There even then 
 remains a testimony which is by no means to be 
 despised. It will of course be said that this testi- 
 mony is of no use whatever except to those who 
 have it. The inward witness cannot be advanced 
 in the place of valid external testimony. It is 
 useless to speak of the inward witness to those 
 who feel that the other evidences are insufficient. 
 "Why tell me I ought to believe when it is the 
 foundation of my faith that I feel to be so insecure? 
 Can any amount of personal obstinacy make up 
 for the unreasonableness of the ground on which 
 it rests ? Can gaps in the evidence be supplied 
 by the mere intensity of personal conviction? 
 Because if so, in that case, faith should be strong 
 in an inverse ratio to the reason that can be given 
 for it. We should be most confident where we are 
 least sure. Besides, to put forward considerations 
 of this kind when professedly dealing with the 
 evidences of the faith has a tendency to lead men 
 away from the exact issue before them. They are 
 endeavouring to deal in a calm, dispassionate, and 
 judicial spirit with the precise question in hand, 
 and you break in obtrusively with your irrelevant 
 appeal to the inward witness and tell them that 
 the question is one which cannot be decided 
 
112 Si. Johtis Appeal to [Lect 
 
 except upon believing upon the evidence advanced, 
 which evidence is itself the subject of debate. 
 What course can be more illogical or less cal- 
 culated to have any influence with reasonable 
 men? 
 
 Now to such objections our answer is. Then be 
 it so. We are not careful to determine whether 
 or not the method is logical, We are most espe- 
 cially careful not in any way to warp or to over- 
 estimate the evidence or to misrepresent its char- 
 acter. But this we do say, that the evidence, 
 being what it is, neither more nor less, and being 
 accepted for what it is, there is given to the 
 believer over and bfeyond this evidence an amount 
 of additional evidence which we admit to be 
 simply personal, but which is at once both con- 
 clusive to him and yet wholly contingent upon 
 belief. That is to say, the believer has a witness 
 which he can alone have as a believer, which from 
 its very nature he cannot have except he believes, 
 but which he may have upon believing. 
 
 Now the bearing of this truth upon those who 
 do not believe is simply this. If the amount of 
 evidence were greater than it really is it would 
 still be inoperative as long as belief were with- 
 held. " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, 
 neither will they be persuaded though one rose 
 from the dead."^ The multiplication of signs may 
 be indefinitely great, and yet the . thing signified 
 
 ■'■ St. Luke xvi. 31. 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 1x3 
 
 by them may not be apprehended. There is un- 
 questionably a special faculty needed for belief, 
 just as there is a special organ needed for sight, 
 or hearing, or the exercise of any other sense. 
 This is a truth which is not only self-evident, but 
 one also which is constantly inculcated in the 
 Scriptures, " In thy light we shall see light ;" ^ 
 "Except ye be converted and become as little 
 children ye shall not enter into the kingdom 
 of heaven ;" * " He that believeth on the Son of 
 God hath the witness in himself." ^ 
 
 Now, here again, if this is a truth — if it is a 
 fact that the believer in Jesus as the Son of God 
 knows in whom he has believed, as he who has 
 not believed cannot know — then it also becomes a 
 matter of subordinate interest who was the author 
 of the statement. Let us put the case that it was 
 not St. John. Does that invalidate the truth of 
 it ? The man who wrote these words, whoever he 
 was, had learnt this truth by belief in Jesus. His 
 faith had taught it him. We may reject his state- 
 ment, but we cannot invalidate it. There will 
 still be those who will accept it. To them it will 
 continually prove itself true. To others it will 
 indeed be no evidence of the faith ; but this is 
 what it will do, it will convict them of unbeHef ; 
 that is to say, it will be a permanent and persist- 
 ent witness to an essential and inherent diflference 
 between them and the believers whom they dis- 
 
 ' Ps. xxxvi. 9. ^ St. Matt, xviii. 3. * St. John v. 10. 
 
 H 
 
114 "S^- John's Appeal to [Lect 
 
 like, ridicule, and despise ; and so it will ever be, 
 no matter who the writer was, until they can not 
 only affirm, as they may with justice, that it is no 
 evidence of the faith, but also that it is a state- 
 ment inaccurate in itself, — that is, until they can 
 prove to demonstration the exact contrary, which 
 is, He that believeth hath not the witness in 
 himself. 
 
 But, in order to show more plainly that, if 
 illogical ourselves, we are not one whit more 
 illogical than the unknown writer^ of this Epistle, 
 let us examine what he says, " He that believeth 
 on the Son of God hath the witness," that is, the 
 witness to the Sonship of the Son of God in 
 himself, but " he that believeth not God " (which, 
 you observe, begs the question that it is God 
 whom he does not believe, a momentous petitio 
 principii, no less than a momentous issue) " hath 
 made him a liar," or given God the lie ; where- 
 fore ? " because he believeth not the record that 
 God hath given of his Son." And what record is 
 that ? Miracles, prophecy, the spread of Chris- 
 tianity, the moral character of Christ, the resur- 
 rection of Christ, or the sublimity of His teaching 1 
 Is it any one or all of these combined 1 No ! 
 not any one nor all of them combined, but " this 
 
 " Such is the verdict which recent criticism has passed upon him. 
 " He has no logical ability, and the circle of his ideas is confined." 
 — Davidson, Introd. ii. 311. Yet more surprising are the words 
 which follow, " He does not enter deeply into the interior life." 
 Can WR venture to suppose that we have entered more deeply ? 
 
I Y] the Inward Witness 1 1 5 
 
 is the record that God hath given to us/' — that is, 
 to us Christians, not to any others, as we shall see 
 presently, but to us Christians, " eternal life ;" 
 another esoteric reason, then, which appeals exclu- 
 sively to those who are already within the charmed 
 circle of Christianity ; the actual record which 
 God hath given — which men are asked to believe — 
 is one that Christians only have received, for " this 
 life" which we Christians have " is in His Son," 
 and in Him alone ; because it is a matter of fact 
 within the cognisance of Christians, but hidden 
 from the world at large, that " he that hath the 
 Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of 
 God hath not life." In other words, the one wit- 
 ness which the believer hath is the Son of God in 
 him ; this is God's own especial witness or record, 
 which is, to the Christian, life — eternal life ; but he 
 only has, or can have this witness upon believing 
 in the Son ; for if it is not the Son in whom he 
 believes, then it is not the Son who dwells in him, 
 and then he has not life, which is the one witness 
 of God ; for he that hath not the Son of God hath 
 not life. That is to say, the writer argues in a 
 hopelessly vicious circle, which can be nothing 
 but vicious until we accept implicitly the one 
 centre from which he draws it, which is Jesus the 
 Son of God. Accept that, and however circular 
 the reasoning may be, our eye travels onwards 
 from the centre along every radius till it is lost 
 successively in each direction in the immensity 
 
ii6 St. yokn's Appeal to [Lect 
 
 of bliss, absorbed in the infinity of light and 
 life. 
 
 We maintain, then, that it is impossible to 
 acquit this writer of a method of reasoning at 
 once illogical and inconclusive, because he ad- 
 vanced as a proof of his statement that which 
 could only be a proof to those who had already 
 accepted his statement. He said that the Chris- 
 tian's greatest evidence was one that the Christian 
 alone could have — one therefore that was no evi- 
 dence to the non- Christian, but one which, if a fact, 
 was equally valid as evidence to the Christian, 
 whatever the period when the writer lived. 
 
 We may make this period as late as we please ; 
 to take an extreme limit, after the Nicene Coun- 
 cil, if we please, and yet the statement, " He that 
 believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in 
 himself," if true, is not affected in the degree of 
 its truth thereby. 
 
 But let us now make the opposite supposition, 
 and admit, for the moment, that the author of it 
 was St. John, then what follows ? Simply this, 
 that the beloved Apostle of Jesus, the companion 
 of His ministry, the chosen witness of His glory 
 on the mount and His agony in the garden, — he 
 who had known his Master as none else had ■ ever 
 known Him, who had been favoured, therefore, 
 with evidence such as was granted to no other, 
 and never can be granted to us, who had the full- 
 est possible proof that can be borne in upon 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 117 
 
 humanreason, — ^nevertheless considered and taught 
 that, after all, the best and strongest evidence 
 that even he or those to whom he wrote could 
 have, was the inward and personal evidence that 
 God had given to him and them that eternal life 
 which was in His Son, and which they had not 
 known till they had believed in Him. That is to 
 say, he declared that the fullest proof that the 
 Christian had or could have was one which was 
 and could be no proof whatever to the non-Chris- 
 tian; while it is obvious that his assertion was 
 tantamount to saying that they who chose to 
 deny the inward witness as a fact, proved by that 
 denial that they were incompetent to decide upon 
 it, being, as it was, a matter of which they were 
 ignorant, and lying altogether beyond the region 
 of their own experience. 
 
 You will see, then, that, whether or not we are 
 wrong in dilating upon the inward witness to 
 Christ, when professedly discussing the subject of 
 Christian evidences, it is certain that the writer of 
 this Epistle dwelt very strongly upon it, and that 
 in a way which is the more striking if we suppose 
 him to have been St. John. And it is, moreover, 
 equally certain that we should do no justice on 
 this hypothesis to the witness of St. John to 
 Christ unless we were to take into -consideration 
 the bearing of the inward witness upon the subject 
 of the evidences generally. And its bearing may 
 be stated thus : Suppose it to be allowed that the 
 
ii8 St. Johns Appeal to [Lect 
 
 external evidences to Christ were complete and 
 satisfactory— on the basis of this Epistle, there 
 would still be wanting, over and above these ex- 
 ternal evidences, that inward witness to Christ 
 which could alone be given by the conscious pos- 
 session of eternal life consequent upon belief. If, 
 then, under any circumstances, this is a witness 
 which is indispensable, how can we, as Christians, 
 consent to neglect it altogether in considering the 
 subject of Christian evidences ? We can only do 
 so by first renouncing our birth-right as Chris- 
 tians. We may, indeed, debate these subjects 
 with the very strictest impartiality, and it is our 
 bounden duty, as disciples of Him who bid us call 
 no man our master upon the earth, to do so, but 
 we must never forget that both Jesus and His 
 Apostles equally declare that the chief and para- 
 mount evidence to Christ is bestowed upon con- 
 version of the heart to Him, and cannot he re- 
 ceived without it. 
 
 We may say, indeed, that the writer of this 
 Epistle was not discussing Christian evidences, 
 which to some extent is true, but still he was 
 treating of the inward witness. Though, there- 
 fore, not directly proposing any argument which 
 should have the object of convincing those who 
 were not Christians, he was indirectly weakening 
 the non- Christian cause by reminding Christians 
 why they should demur to becoming non-Chris- 
 tians, by holding up to them a motive which 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 119 
 
 would be felt to be stronger and stronger in pro- 
 portion as they became more and more Christian. 
 
 For the strength of the influence which this 
 motive exercised was in proportion to the degree 
 in which it was disengaged from the authority of 
 the person giving it. The words, " He that be- 
 lieveth hath the witness in himself" did not influ- 
 ence, if they influenced, because they were St. 
 John's, or because they were accepted as inspired, 
 but because they awoke in those who accepted 
 them an echo of the truth with which they were 
 instinct — an assurance that they would awake a 
 similar echo in all who should yield to them, — 
 that is to say, they influenced exactly in propor- 
 tion as those who received them became disciples 
 of the writer, whoever he may have been— exactly 
 in proportion as they received the testimony which 
 he bore to the power of belief in the Sonship of 
 the living Jesus. In other words, the secret of 
 their power was not St. John, but Jesus. 
 
 We have only to substitute one or two alter- 
 native expressions in the place of this, " on the 
 Son of God," in order to perceive its true force 
 and bearing. For example, " He that believeth 
 in my authority as the Apostle of Christ," — " He 
 that believeth in the inspiration of this Epistle," — 
 " He that believeth in its genuineness or canoni- 
 city, hath the witness in himself," — the words not 
 only cease to be true, as a matter of fact, but they 
 become absolute nonsense. This may serve to 
 
1 20 S^. Johns Appeal to [Lect 
 
 shew that the writer's statement contains in itself 
 a challenge to the world, as an element which is 
 at once inherent and inalienable. There is no life 
 to be derived from any one of these alternative 
 convictions ; because, for the object of the faith, a 
 dead thought is substituted in the place of a living 
 person. Even allowing, therefore, that it is of 
 the nature of all belief, merely as belief, to become 
 self-sustaining in proportion to its strength, as 
 some may be willing to affirm, yet this does not 
 depreciate the value of the writer's statement, so 
 far as it is true, because, in order to satisfy the 
 terms of his expression, there must be, in belief 
 on the Son of God, an especial strength which 
 does not belong, as an essential characteristic, to 
 belief of any other kind at all. Consequently, 
 although his words can only prove themselves 
 positively to, or be known to. be true by, those 
 who believe in the truth of them, yet negatively 
 they verify themselves in the case of others by 
 detecting the absence of that which is stated to 
 be alone the result of belief on the Son of God — - 
 namely, that witness which is supplied by the 
 conscious possession of eternal life. For, if they 
 are true, they shew, conclusively that where there 
 is not this inward witness of which they speak,, 
 there there is a deficient or ineffectual faith in 
 Jesus as the living Son of God. The precise 
 nature, therefore, of the testimony to Christ which 
 is borne by these words, apart from all considera- 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 121 
 
 tions of authorship or the like, is that of the testi- 
 mony which is borne by the expressed conviction 
 of any sincere believer in the living Jesus, which, 
 though it may be rejected or perchance excite 
 ridicule, is nevertheless substantial testimony that 
 does not pass away without a substantive result. 
 
 If, therefore, we would estimate the true charac- 
 ter of this writer's language, we must bear in mind 
 very distinctly what it is that he asserts. He 
 does not say that Jesus was proved to have been 
 'the Son of God by the miracles which He wrought, 
 or by the prophecies that converged in Him, or by' 
 the purity of His teaching, however true any one 
 or all of these statements may have been. He 
 approaches the matter in hand from a totally dif- 
 ferent quarter, and he says, "I, as an unknown 
 man, and, so far as the world at large is concerned, 
 as one who desires to remain unknown, emphati- 
 cally declare that the Jesus whom we saw and 
 knew personally — whom you know by the common 
 report of those who likewise saw and knew Him, 
 however that report has reached you— is now 
 alive, and is the living Son of God ; and I further 
 declare that if you believe in Him, you shall have 
 the witness in yourself, as he ever hath who be- 
 lieveth on Him, for you shall have in yourself 
 that eternal life with which He lives in God." 
 It is needless to observe how this declaration 
 implied and involved the fact of our Lord's resur- 
 rection, and therefore of the generally supernatural 
 
122 St. y ohfH s Appeal to [Lect 
 
 character of His life ; but it is most important to 
 remark that it is framed so as to shift the evidence 
 to the claims of Jesus off from the supernatural 
 witness of the past on to the supernatural and 
 abiding witness of the continual present. " Jesus 
 is now the Son of God, believe in Him, and you 
 shall hnow he is." That is to say, the witness 
 borne by this writer is of an eminently searching 
 and practical character. He refuses to regard the 
 question before him as one of abstract theory, 
 which may or may not be true, and which involves " 
 no consequences in its issue. He is prepared to 
 stake everything on the verdict of the present, 
 and on the confirmation which the living Christ 
 can give to the cardinal truth of His own exist- 
 ence in the present. 
 
 This we well know is not the method which the 
 world would commonly adopt, nor is it one to find 
 acceptance generally with men, but it nevertheless 
 is the method which he has chosen to adopt, and 
 it is one which perhaps may be shown by results 
 to be not without its special advantages. Thus 
 much at least is clear, that the present existence 
 of Jesus Christ is not and cannot be proved by 
 the establishment of the Gospel miracles as mere 
 historical occurrences ; for we may accept those 
 miracles as such occurrences, and yet have no 
 spiritual perception of the life of Jesus Christ. 
 This life may follow, indeed, as a necessary truth 
 Avhich, accepting the miracles as premises, we 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 123 
 
 cannot refuse intellectually to accept ; but it can- 
 not follow or be proved, in this writer's sense, 
 except through the operation of the Holy Ghost, 
 for he says, "Hereby we know that he abideth 
 in us by the Spirit which he hath given us;"^ 
 " Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he 
 in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit ;" ^ 
 " And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because 
 the Spirit is truth." ^ Here, again, in order to 
 accept his statement, the existence and operation 
 of the Holy Ghost must be conceded — a concession, 
 however, which will at once cloud the issue — but 
 a concession which the very nature of his argument 
 imperatively demands. 
 
 Nor let it be said that we avail ourselves of an 
 unwarrantable license in adopting substantially 
 the same method of discourse, for that he wrote 
 for believers, but that we are supposed to be 
 reasoning with unbelievers, because the assertion 
 does not hold good. Though it is quite true that 
 this writer appealed to the Christian consciousness 
 in a way that can only be appreciated by that 
 consciousness in its highest development, yet it is 
 also true that he wrote for the express purpose of 
 stimulating such development. "These things 
 write we unto you," he says, " that your joy may he 
 full." ^ " And this is his commandment that we 
 should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Chnst, 
 
 ' Si John ii. 24. ^ St. John iii. 13. 
 » St. John V. 6. 1 St. John i. 4. 
 
124 •^^- Johris Appeal to [Lect 
 
 and love one another as he gave us command- 
 ment." ^ " These things have I written unto you 
 that beheve on the name of the Son of God ; that 
 ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that 
 ye may believe on the noMie of the Son of God."^ 
 It is plain, therefore, that he contemplated in 
 those to whom he wrote not only the fulness of 
 Christian faith, but also that defective and unde- 
 veloped form of it to which alone this language 
 is applicable. If, therefore, his method appKes 
 where faith is defective in a slight degree, it may 
 likewise be not inapplicable where it is yet more 
 deficient, if not wanting altogether. 
 
 It is one of the paradoxes of Christian teaching, 
 which this writer at all events is by no means 
 anxious to conceal, that we cannot believe without 
 the operation of the Holy Spirit, while yet we 
 cannot have the Holy Spirit except upon condition 
 of believing. Paradoxical as this position is, it 
 nevertheless is confessedly true, and the paradox 
 is one which can only be resolved in practice. 
 He who comes to Jesus as the living Christ with 
 the sincere desire to believe, and the earnest 
 prayer for light and guidance in the way to faith, 
 which is not more than may he reasonably demanded 
 if it is a fact that Jesus is a living, operative 
 Person, shall not be suffered to walk in darkness, 
 but shall have the light of life. 
 
 The very writer whose works we have been 
 
 = St. John iii. 23. ' g^. John v. 13. 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 125 
 
 considering, much as he dwells upon the need and 
 power of faith, has yet given us the highest proof 
 we can have of his perfect sympathy with un- 
 belief, in the incident he alone has recorded in the 
 life of Thomas. If that incident is only a 
 romance, it yet shows us, as a romance-writer, his 
 sympathy with the ideal character of the unbe- 
 lieving Apostle. If, as we believe, it is the 
 genuine record of the beloved disciple of a fact 
 which actually occurred, it shows us something 
 more, for it shows us that the compassionate heart 
 of the Divine Man can feel compassionately to- 
 wards the doubts and agonising difficulties of those 
 who long to believe but cannot. For the unbelief 
 of Thomas rose to a height pf daring obstinacy 
 which cannot frequently, if in any case, be 
 equalled. It is plain not only that he must have 
 had evidence of the very nature that our modern 
 doubters ask for, and such as they cannot have, 
 but also that every single convert whom Thomas 
 brought to Christ must have believed upon less 
 evidence than he himself had fixed as the limit on 
 which alone he would believe. He stands out, 
 therefore, as an example of resolute and deter- 
 mined scepticism, which cannot easily be sur- 
 passed ; though also, thank God, as a bright 
 example of earnest and intelligent belief. And it 
 is not a little remarkable that a writer who has 
 declared so plainly the nature and office, and 
 dwelt so strongly on the importance of faith, 
 
126 St. y ohfi s Appeal to [Lect 
 
 should nevertheless have recorded also the most 
 conspicuous instance in Scripture of persistent 
 unbelief. It at least suggests to us a fair pre- 
 sumption that his own belief, firm and decided as 
 it waS; rested notwithstanding on the widest, 
 loftiest, and most intelligent foundation possible, 
 inasmuch as it commanded a prospect which em- 
 braced the whole area of unbelief. 
 
 Nor again may we forget to see in the same 
 fact an evidence that the method adopted by the 
 writer of this Epistle, (supposing for the while 
 that he was the author of the fourth Gospel), is 
 one that is not altogether inappropriate for dealing 
 with actual unbelief. There is nothing which so 
 perplexes the unbelieving or the half- believing 
 mind as the calm and deliberate conviction and 
 the unmistakeable manifestation of simple and 
 sincere belief It unquestionably has its effect, 
 though that effect may be imperceptible, and 
 though it cannot be estimated. Nor is there any 
 way more effectual of confronting the open or 
 implied denials of the present day than by accept- 
 ing much of the ground they occupy, and yet 
 showing that a deep and earnest belief may be 
 held in spite of them, because other conclusions 
 than those they assume follow naturally from 
 their provisionally admitted premises. Certain it 
 is that no man can come forward and declare his 
 belief in Jesus as the living Christ and the living 
 Son of God, in such a way as to make his belief 
 
lYJ the Inward Witness 127 
 
 felt to be a reality and not a falsehood, without 
 thereby offering such testimony to Christ as can- 
 not easUy be silenced. Assertion may be contra- 
 dicted, and argument may be confuted, but the 
 deliberate confession of a childlike belief in Jesus 
 is after all a substantive witness to Him which 
 survives in spite of its own rejection. 
 
 Now this is the kind of witness which the 
 writer before us has borne to Jesus. He has 
 made us feel that his own belief was a reality and 
 not a falsehood to Mm, — ^that it was a sincere and 
 genuine conviction, and not one that was hypo- 
 critically assumed ; for were we to assert even that, 
 we should at once admit the abstract possibility of 
 the thing assumed being real, which is what is 
 now affirmed. And as this belief is a reality in 
 idea, if not in the particular case of the writer 
 before us, it bears witness to the reality of the cause 
 from whence it was derived — vitality in the effects 
 produced points unmistakeably to vitality in the 
 cause producing them. However late then may have 
 been the period at which these words were written, 
 the very fact of their being written at all points 
 to the inference that Jesus was then alive, not 
 merely in the thought of the writer, but as a 
 Living Influence which could alone avail to 
 generate that thought which was confessedly 
 dependent on a Living Source ; for where there 
 was no belief in the Son of God there there was 
 no witness to His existence in the heart. The 
 
128 St. JohrHs Appeal to [Lect 
 
 expressed consciousness of life is evidence of life 
 in the subject, when that consciousness is not 
 arbitrary but obedient to an unvarying law — ^the 
 law namely of belief in the Son of God ; but if it 
 is evidence of life in the subject, it is evidence also 
 of a life external to itself producing it. Now if 
 Jesus were dead, as Csesar or Muhammad are 
 dead, belief in His present existence could not 
 produce this consciousness of life ; but that it is 
 produced is proved, not only by the very language 
 of this writer, but likewise by the confessed ex- 
 perience of thousands and tens of thousands who 
 have learnt to adopt his language as their own. 
 If, therefore, belief in the present existence of 
 Jesus Christ is the one solitary cause which can 
 produce this particular phenomenon of life, the 
 only reasonable inference we can draw from it is 
 that His present existence is a fact. 
 
 That is to say, the consciousness of Christians, 
 regarded as a phenomenon external to ourselves 
 and represented by the language of this Epistle, 
 seeing that its occurrence is dependent on the law 
 therein defined, is not only the fullest evidence that 
 Christians themselves can have of the reality of their 
 Divine Master's life, but it does also constitute, 
 as the writer's words appear to imply, an abiding 
 witness to the non-Christian world, whether it is 
 allowed and accepted or not, that the Jesus whom 
 it confesses and adores, and from whom alone it 
 claims to be derived, is after all not a dead and 
 
IV] the Inward Witness 1 29 
 
 powerless thought of the forgotten past, — a Hfe- 
 less shadow flitting about among the disembodied 
 shades of the departed great, who survive only in 
 the fragrance of the ideas they have left behind 
 them, but a living, powerful, and energetic verity, 
 a personal force and influence, an animated 
 Person, who is, from age to age, asserting and 
 reasserting His own existence by the creation of 
 individual believers whom He raises up, and the 
 continuation of the vast body of the faithful 
 whom He preserves- unfailingly to bear the life 
 and light and power of His name before the 
 unbelieving but rebviked conscience of mankind. 
 
 And thus "He that believeth on the Son of 
 God " not only " hath the witness in himself " 
 for the confirmation of his own faith and a 
 testimony to the truth of Him in whom he 
 hath believed, but also hath a witness in him- 
 self And is himself a witness to the reality of 
 that Divine Life from whence he draws his life ; 
 while he that believeth not God, thus witnessing 
 to Himself and the power of His own will, hath 
 made Him a liar, because he believeth not the 
 record or witness which God hath thus witnessed. 
 of His Son ; " And this is the record," or witness, 
 " that God hath given " to those who know and 
 believe in Him " eternal life, and this life is in 
 His Son, He that hath the Son hath life, and he 
 that hath not the Son of God hath not life." 
 
LECTUBE V 
 
 THE UNITY OF ST. JOHN's WRITINGS 
 
 Bev. ii. 17. 
 
 " Be that hath an ea/r let hi/m hea/r what the Sjpvrit saith wnto the 
 Chwrches ; To hvm that overcometh will I give to eat of the hMden 
 marma, and mil give hi/m a white stone, and in the stone a new 
 name written, which no mem hnoweth saving he that receiveth it." 
 
 THUS far we have seen that, supposing St. 
 John to have been the author of the first 
 Epistle which bears his name, there is no doubt 
 whatever that he appealed to the inward witness 
 of Christians, as a fact obvious to themselves, 
 which was practically sufficient for their need, 
 which was directly calculated to prevent the pos- 
 sibility of their defection from Christ, and which, 
 regarded as an actual phenomenon, was in fact of 
 the nature of a witness also to others, to those even 
 who rejected it, inasmuch as the conditions under 
 which it was realised were uniform and unvarying. 
 Those only pretend to have the inward witness 
 to Christ who believe in Him as the Son of God. 
 Some, indeed, profess to believe in Him who have 
 
Lect. V] Unity of St. yohn's Writings 1 3 1 
 
 it not, but to them, as well 'as to others, this 
 writer's words are a standing protest against the 
 inadequacy of their belief as long as there remain 
 any persons who have found them true. For the 
 inward evidence which accompanies belief in Christ 
 is phenomenally distinct from that which results 
 from any other persuasion whatever. So power- 
 ful, indeed, and so fascinating is the influence of 
 truth upon the mind, that it is a joy at all times 
 to think we have found it, and the conviction of 
 having done so may not seldom pass for a confir- 
 mation of the thought, even though the supposed 
 truth be falsehood. But the inward witness to 
 Christ is something more than a joy like this ; 
 and when a man is able to say, " To me Christ is 
 a living reality, and I am conscious of a life by 
 faith in Him which once I had not, and which but 
 for Him I should not now have," there are but 
 two ways of meeting his assertion, if it find no 
 response in ourselves : Either we may say, " 1 do 
 not believe you ; the consciousness of which you 
 speak is a delusion of your own ;" or we may say, 
 " I can only wish that your experience were mine," 
 but we cannot in fairness turn round upon him 
 and say, " Your statement is not true ;" for, even 
 though in particular instances this might be the 
 case, there are many others in which it could not 
 possibly be so ; and, in fact, the mere existence of 
 Christian literature, and of this Epistle, for ex- 
 ample, is an evidence to the contrary. Christ has 
 
132 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 not now left Himself without a witness in the 
 world, and the life of every Christian which is con- 
 sciously derived from Him is of the nature of such 
 a witness. That consciousness may not be ours, 
 but we are bound to respect it as a substantive 
 existence, a fact, in itself ; and, being so, it is a 
 fact that testifies to Christ. 
 
 It is nothing, therefore, to the point to depre- 
 ciate the value of the inward witness on the ground 
 that it is not of the nature of external evidence, 
 which is obviously true, because, until it can be 
 shown that " he that believeth on the Son of God 
 hath" not "the witness in himself," every indivi- 
 dual Christian who has been taught to find in his 
 own experience an answer to the words in question 
 is an independent witness to their truth. The 
 very words themselves, whoever wrote them, are 
 a witness to Christ, and every one who has found 
 them true is an additional and independent wit- 
 ness to their truth. 
 
 Thus far, then, we have proceeded in presumed 
 ignorance of the writer of this Epistle, or whether 
 the author of it was likewise the author of the 
 fourth Gospel. We have endeavoured to disen- 
 gage altogether the value of his statements from 
 any considerations for the particular person who 
 may have made them. There can be no doubt 
 that they have an independent value of their own 
 which must be measured by the degree of accept- 
 ance they may be able to command. And this 
 
V] Si. JohiUs Writings 133 
 
 acceptance can only be regarded as complete where 
 the credit attaching to them is on account of their 
 substantive intrinsic message, and not from any 
 adventitious respect for their author. Unless they 
 have made us disciples of Jesus instead of St. 
 John, they have failed in the very purpose for 
 which they were written, and no one would have 
 been more ready to admit this than St. John him- 
 self, had he been their author. 
 
 While, however, it is very needful in the pre- 
 sent day to insist upon the independent value of 
 the Johannine writings to whomsoever they are to 
 be referred, in order to show that we cannot 
 escape from the responsibility of deciding upon 
 their message with the excuse that we believe 
 they were not written by St. John, it may be 
 nevertheless expedient to dwell upon certain 
 marked characteristics which are common to all 
 these writings ; because, if the broad features of 
 family likeness are discoverable in all, it may 
 partly help us to determine the previous question 
 of authorship. This, however, is an inquiry which 
 cannot properly be conducted in a lecture of this 
 kind,'- nor does it relate to a matter in which we 
 can hope to persuade those who are not already 
 more or less convinced, appealing as it does to 
 faculties of taste and judgment which must vary 
 with the individual ; we must therefore be content 
 to deal with it in a general way, and be thankful 
 ' See Appendix, Note C. 
 
134 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 if we can succeed in showing that, after all, the 
 received opinion may possibly not be wrong. 
 
 Now, it has been admitted by recent critical 
 authorities of some weight that the Revelation of 
 St. John was certainly the work of the Apostle, 
 while for that very reason it has been affirmed 
 that the Gospel and Epistles were not by him. 
 If, then, the Revelation is conceded to us as the 
 undoubted work of the beloved Apostle, we have 
 manifestly some solid and common ground to stand 
 upon. We have in our possession at least one 
 work which is certainly the production of St. John. 
 If, then, it can be shown that, in spite of many 
 apparent differences of an obvious character, there 
 are still likenesses of a deeper and more inherent 
 kind in the several works, and that these are also 
 more intrinsically characteristic of unity of mind 
 than the differences are of diversity, we may, per- 
 haps, not unreasonably suffer ourselves to be 
 guided to the inference that all the writings pro- 
 ceeded from one and the same author. 
 
 And, perhaps, the safest position that can be 
 taken up in dealing with this subject is that which 
 would assign to the first Epistle of St. John an 
 intermediate place between the Revelation and the 
 fourth Gospel. It is, perhaps, nearer in time, 
 and less different in character than the Gospel. 
 There are at least certain features in the Revela- 
 tion, which are supposed to be absent from the 
 fourth Gospel, which are plainly to be distin- 
 
V] S^. yohns Writings 135 
 
 guished in tlie first Epistle. In the Revelation, 
 for instance, there is much of vindictiveness and 
 the execution of judicial wrath. There is but one 
 passage in the fourth Gospel where the phrase 
 " the wrath of God " ^ is found ; neither, indeed, 
 does it actually occur in the first Epistle, but a 
 very broad line of demarcation is there drawn 
 between those who are of God and those who are 
 of the world— between those who confess that 
 Jesus Christ is come in the flesh and those who 
 do not — ^between those who believe the record of 
 God and those who make him a liar. 
 
 And the mere fact of this broad line being very 
 definitely drawn shows us at least that the writer 
 of the first Epistle could have contemplated, with- 
 out that revulsion of feeling which some of our 
 critics affect, the terrible delineations of judgment 
 which characterise the Revelation. That is to 
 say, so far as mere sentiment is concerned, it is 
 conceivable that the man -who wrote the first 
 Epistle could also have written the Revelation. 
 For the germ of that judgment, the execution of 
 which is depicted in the one, is discoverable like- 
 wise in the other. And when the writer of the 
 Epistle, who discerned so clearly the distinction 
 between ther evil and the good, speaks of the love 
 of the faithful being made perfect, that tliey ^ may 
 have boldness in the day of judgment, as if the 
 righteous even should scarcely be saved, we cannot 
 
 = St. John iii. 36. ^ St. John iy. 17. 
 
136 The Unity of [Leot 
 
 but feel that he has virtually adopted the very- 
 principle which is embodied in the eschatological 
 visions of the Revelation. However full, there- 
 fore, he may be of love, and however strongly he 
 may inculcate the duty of it ; nay, more, however 
 firmly he may be possessed with the conviction 
 that Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation 
 for the sins of the whole world, he is not by any 
 means blinded thereby to the fact that separation 
 must be made between the righteous and the 
 wicked, and that in the day of judgment, when it 
 shall be made, those only can have " boldness " 
 who have known and believed the love that God 
 hath to them. 
 
 Let us turn, then, with the light of this fact, to 
 the contemplation of the fourth Gospel. As we 
 have seen, " the wrath of God " is expressly men- 
 tioned only once in it, and that by John the Bap- 
 tist. It is open, therefore, to conjecture that, 
 supposing the writer to have recorded accurately 
 the Baptist's language, he may not himself have 
 sympathised with the sentiment of it ; though, on 
 the other hand, supposing him to have put these 
 words into the Baptist's mouth, there is the less 
 likelihood that he did not agree with them ; in 
 which case, the mere occurrence once of such a 
 phrase as " the wrath of God," however we may 
 explain it, is quite sufl&cient to show that it was a 
 conception which was not foreign to the author's 
 mind, and so far the observations we have made 
 
Y] S^. Johns Writings 137 
 
 with, reference to the first Epistle apply likewise 
 to the fourth Gospel, whereas the simple fact that 
 a phrase like this, which is absent from the Epis- 
 tle, is actually found in the Gospel, tends the 
 rather to confirm them. 
 
 But, in point of fact, we are not limited in 
 dealing with the fourth Gospel to the solitary 
 occurrence of a single phrase. On the contrary, 
 that which we may call the principle of discrim- 
 ination which was manifest in the Epistle is not 
 only prevalent but .pervading throughout the 
 whole of the Gospel. The whole spirit of it is a 
 spirit of the most searching discrimination. Our 
 Lord declares the very purpose of His mission, 
 " For judgment I am come into this world, that 
 they which see not might see, and that they which 
 see might be made blind."* If this discrimination 
 is a fact and not a sentiment, it is impossible but 
 that it must issue in something like the open pro- 
 clamation and exhibition of judgment which we 
 perceive in the Apocalypse. Indeed it were easy 
 to show, were this the place to do so, not only 
 that the same thing must issue in future judg- 
 ment, but that it does actually issue in it now, so 
 that if the fourth Evangelist did not recognise 
 this discrimination as a fact he would be most 
 conspicuously opposed to not a few of the realities 
 of suffering life as they are known to exist. This, 
 however, would oblige us to digress too widely. 
 
 * St. John ix. 39. 
 
138 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 But, on the other hand, if we can reconcile our- 
 selves to the use of a word so dreadful and so 
 inapplicable to Holy Writ as vindictive, it is 
 certain that there is not any part to which it 
 would apply so well as to the fourth Gospel. 
 For, premising that vindictiveness is a term 
 altogether inappropriate when applied to the 
 wrath of God against sin, and that there is 
 nothing but sin which can be the subject of His 
 wrath, there is, we may safely affirm, no one book 
 of Scripture, not even the Apocalypse itself, 
 which so marvellously reveals the character of 
 God's relation to sin as this particular Gospel. 
 It draws the distinction sharper than any other 
 book between light and darkness, truth and false- 
 hood, belief and unbelief, life and death. There 
 is a great gulf fixed between them, and the 
 elevation at which we are placed is so high as to 
 prevent the alien shores from being dimly clouded 
 by the distance or blended confusedly from the. 
 disadvantages of our position. The character of 
 Jesus as portrayed in it stands out in perfect and 
 sublime isolation from the midst of the hatred 
 and depravity which everywhere surrounds Him. 
 Sin has absolutely no power of cohesion with 
 Him, it does not come into contact with the 
 Divine purity of His mind. It passes off from 
 His hallowed soul like the stream of mercury 
 poured on a surface of shining crystal or an even 
 slab of polished alabaster. It cannot touch so as 
 
V] Si. yohfLS Writings 139 
 
 to defile or stain His unsullied nature, it cannot 
 enter so as to rest in Him. But this it is that 
 serves to manifest the inherent antagonism of its 
 own character — its irreconcilable antipathy to 
 Him. It likewise stands out in all its hideous 
 deformity in clear and defined contrast to the 
 holiness of His Person. And this is seen not 
 more in the enemies who resist Him than it is in 
 the teaching which He delivers. From first to 
 last that teaching expresses a consciousness of 
 evil as a principle with which He is engaged in 
 deadly conflict — as an element which can never 
 amalgamate with Him so long as its nature 
 remains unchanged. "Ye are from beneath, I 
 am from above. Ye are of this world, I am not 
 of this world." ^ " He was a murderer from the 
 beginning, and abode not in the truth ; when he 
 speaketh a lie he speaketh of his own, for he is a 
 liar and the father of it." '° Here at least is the 
 consciousness of hatred against Him if it be not 
 hatred that is returned with hate. " Hereafter I 
 will not talk much with you, for the prince of this 
 world cometh and hath nothing in me." '^ " I have 
 given them thy word, and the world hath hated 
 them, because they are not of the world, even as I 
 am not of the world. I pray not that thou 
 shouldest take them out of the world, but that 
 thou shouldest keep them from the evil." ^ Here 
 
 s St. John viii. 23. ° St. John viii. 44. 
 
 ' St. John xiv. 30. *. St. John xvii. 14, 15. 
 
140 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 the existence is declared of a principle of evil 
 which is not only opposed to Him, but which He 
 foresees will continue to be opposed to those who 
 believe in Him. And it is a slight but remark- 
 able and significant illustration of this fact that 
 the word to hate is used more frequently in the 
 fourth Gospel than in any other, and as often in- 
 the writings, attributed to St. John as in all the 
 rest of the New Testament put together. It is in 
 fact used more frequently in this Gospel than in 
 any other book of the New Testament, and, 
 strange to say, by no one but by our Lord Himself. 
 Now, whatever may be the value of this circum- 
 stance, it is at least a proof that the idea of hatred 
 was not foreign to the mind of the Evangelist, 
 and that he did not regard it as inconsistent with 
 his conception of his Master's character to represent 
 Him as using language which showed at least a keen 
 susceptibility to the world's hatred of Himself, and 
 therefore a keen perception of the antipathy of evil 
 and of the judgment which was due to it. If there- 
 fore we choose to say that judgment and vengeance 
 are marked features of the Revelation, we cannot 
 say that they find no place in the fourth Gospel, 
 or that because they do the same author could not 
 have written both. 
 
 Again, the actual word Antichrist is not found 
 in the Revelation, but it is obvious that the con- 
 ception is one which is very highly developed in 
 that book. In the Epistles of St, John, however. 
 
V] Si. JohrCs Writings 141 
 
 "we have the word frequently, but nowhere else in 
 the New Testament. And yet in the fourth 
 Gospel is it not clear that the principle of Anti- 
 christ is everywhere conspicuous ? Christ is thus, 
 as we have seen, in direct antagonism with " the 
 prince of this world," and the disciples whom he 
 leaves behind may expect to be. If the Apoca- 
 lypse is the work of St. John there is no question 
 about the early development of the idea, and by 
 the time the first Epistle was written it had be- 
 come so prevalent that the word also was in 
 vogue ; but is it not somewhat strange that, in a 
 work supposed to be later than either, the germ 
 of the idea should be so conspicuous ? the actual 
 Antichrist so plainly drawn, and yet drawn in 
 such a way as can scarcely have been consistent 
 with the fuller development of the idea as ex- 
 pressed already by a previous writer, in the 
 Revelation ? Supposing this to be veritably the 
 work of St. John, and the Gospel to have been 
 written some seventy or eighty years later, we 
 cannot imagine such a resolution of the concrete 
 notion of Antichrist into its primary component 
 elements as the Gospel presents to us, that notion 
 having previously been expressed as it is in the 
 first Epistle. To imagine this would be' to ascribe 
 to the writer of it a power of philosophical 
 analysis such as, to say the least, it is highly 
 improbable he can have possessed. Supposing 
 the discourses of Jesus, as the fourth Evangelist 
 
142 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 records them, to have exhibited that marked 
 antagonism to a root principle of evil which they 
 show, we can easily understand the idea develop- 
 ing till it assumed the character of Antichrist 
 which the Revelation depicts and till the word 
 itself was generated which is found in the Epistles; 
 of St. John. But the reverse process is one- 
 which is contrary to the natural growth of ideas, 
 and for that reason is not likely to have occurred. 
 Unity of authorship, therefore, in the writings 
 attributed to St. John is not improbable so far, 
 judging merely from the phenomena which they 
 present. 
 
 There are, however, other points in which the 
 first Epistle seems to occupy a mid position be- 
 tween the Gospel and the Revelation, or in which 
 at least we can trace a similarity of thought that 
 is too slight to have been intentional, and yet too 
 remarkable an indication of unity of sentiment, if 
 not of mind, to be overlooked. For example, we 
 meet with these words, " Ye know that he was 
 manifested to take away our sins, and in him is no 
 sin." ^ Now we need not dwell upon the 
 similarity between the first clause and the words 
 in the Gospel, " Behold the Lamb of God which 
 taketh away the sin of the world," ^ because being 
 so obvious it might be designed. One is, in fact, 
 the echo of the other, and both are almost 
 identical in substance, if not in form, with the 
 9 St. John iii. 5. ' St. John i. 2&. 
 
V] S^. Johi^s Writings 143 
 
 ascription of glory in the Apocalypse, "Unto 
 him jthat loved us and washed us from our sins in 
 his own blood." 2 But we will take the second 
 clause, "in him is no sin," which is perhaps the 
 only direct statement of the sinlessness of Jesus 
 Christ in the New Testament. St. Paul does 
 indeed say, " He hath made him to be sin for us 
 who hnew no sin ; " ^ but besides the fact that here 
 the same truth is stated indirectly, no one could 
 for a moment suppose that the statement in the 
 one Epistle was borrowed from the other or sug- 
 gested anything with respect to authorship. It 
 is, moreover, not necessary to show that the same 
 idea of the sinlessness of Jesus virtually underlies 
 the whole of the Revelation. His equality with 
 God the Father is so plainly taught there that 
 His sinlessness must be supposed to follow as a 
 matter of course. But let us turn to the fourth 
 Gospel, and search for what we may find there. 
 Of course, so far as the Sonship of Jesus is 
 taught in that Gospel, His sinlessness must 
 follow likewise by implication ; and the same 
 may be said, perhaps, of His Messiahship. But 
 it is something more explicit than this that we 
 want, something, for instance, which, if really 
 said by Christ, might have sunk into the mind 
 of His disciple, and eventually produced the 
 statement which is here made. Our Lord, then, 
 openly confronted by His enemies, challenges 
 
 2 Eev. i. 5. ^2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
144 The Unify of [Lect 
 
 them in these words, " "Which of you convinceth 
 me of sini"* Now, it is impossible to over- 
 estimate the significance of this question when we 
 hear in mind that just before He had said, " I 
 proceeded forth and came from God, neither came 
 I of myself, but he sent me."^ It can mean 
 nothing less than an assertion of His own absolute 
 sinlessness. And the same thing is taught us 
 many times over, for example, when He says, 
 " He that sent me is with me, the Father hath 
 not left me alone, for I do always those . things 
 that please him ;" ^ and again, " Verily, verily, I 
 say unto you. Whosoever committeth sin is the 
 servant of sin, and the servant abideth not in the 
 house for ever, but the Son abideth ever," '^ and 
 therefore doth not commit sin. But more than 
 all, we may surely find the exact prototype of the 
 statement, of the first Epistle in other words of 
 Jesus in the Gospel, " He that speaketh of him- 
 self seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh 
 his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no 
 unrighteousness is in him." ^ Now, seeing that He 
 is here vindicating Himself, there can be no doubt 
 that His words, ' though cast in the form of a 
 general statement, are virtually equivalent to an 
 assertion of His own personal freedom from un- 
 righteousness or sin. It is certain, therefore, 
 that, whatever may be our estimate of this coin- 
 
 * St. John viii. 46. = St. John viii. 42. « St. John viti. 29. 
 7 St. John viii. 34, 35. = St. John vii. 18. 
 
Vj Si. Johiis Writings 145 
 
 cidence, and of its actual bearing on the question 
 of authorship, it does show a unity of sentiment 
 and teaching such as might well characterise pro- 
 ductions of the same mind, but such as we should 
 hardly expect to find as the result of design in any 
 work which was consciously moulded on the pat- 
 tern of some other. Or, at least, we may say 
 this, that, supposing the words in the Gospel to 
 have been actually spoken by our Lord, we do see 
 a very striking reason in the Gospel for the some- 
 what bold and novel assertion made in the Epistle. 
 The writer was not then speaking on his own 
 authority, but was making an original statement 
 based on the recollection of what he had heard 
 our Lord say. 
 
 Once more, assuming the Revelation to be the- 
 work of St. John, we must by no means infer that 
 the prevailing character of that book was an 
 adequate representation of the prevailing character 
 of his mind. On the contrary, we cannot shut our 
 eyes to the evidence afforded by the book itself, 
 which purports to be the record of a special reve- 
 lation or series of visions combining to constitute 
 a revelation which was once given him for a special 
 purpose, and under special circumstances, in the 
 island of Patmos. Unless, therefore, there is 
 evidence that he was in the habit of receiving 
 revelations such as this, and of having visions 
 such as those which are here recorded, we have 
 every reason to suppose that the phenomena of 
 
 K 
 
146 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 this book must be altogether exceptional, not only 
 to the prevailing character of Christian literature, 
 but likewise to the prevailing character of the 
 writer's own mind. And so it is, for there is not 
 the slightest evidence of the kind. Even if this 
 book were the unique production of the Apostle 
 John, it would still bear on the face of it the 
 tokens of a revelation altogether exceptional. The 
 mere existence, therefore, of this book affords no 
 evidence that the author did not write others, or 
 that, if written, they would not be different in 
 style and character from this. On the contrary, 
 the analogy of the books of the Old Testament 
 rather tends to show that they would. The 
 visionary parts of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah 
 are in style and character very different from the 
 rest ; and if any doubt attaches to the integrity of 
 Daniel or Zechariah, the same doubt does not 
 attach to Ezekiel,^ nor indeed to the first part of 
 Zechariah, and yet the remark holds good. We 
 have every reason, therefore, to infer that a con- 
 siderable difference in style would be discernible 
 between such a book as the Revelation and any 
 other works which the author may have written. 
 That this difference is very great is no valid argu- 
 ment against unity of authorship in the fourth 
 Gospel, the so-called first Epistle of St. John, 
 and the Revelation. 
 
 ' Only a few rash critics, and these of little name or mark, have 
 disputed the integrity of Ezekiel in chaps. xl.-xlviii. 
 
V] S^. Joh-fUs Writings 147 
 
 On the other hand, if, beneath the superficial 
 differences of style we can really discern a sub- 
 stantive identity of thought, the existence of this, 
 notwithstanding the obvious difierences which 
 may be specially accounted for, would constitute a 
 positive evidence in favour of a single author. 
 For example, the doctrifie of judgment according 
 to works is a prominent doctrine of the Revela- 
 tion. We find, however, manifest traces of this 
 same doctrine in the traditional Epistles of St. 
 John. For, if otherwise, what is the meaning of 
 such statements as these : " Hereby we do know 
 that we know him if we keep his commandments." ^ 
 " The world passeth away, and the lust thereof : 
 but he that doeth the will of God abideth for 
 ever." ^ " Little children, let no man deceive you : 
 he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as 
 ' he is righteous." ^ " He that keepeth his com- 
 mandments, dwelleth in him and he in him." * 
 " This is the love of God, that we keep his com- 
 mandments." ^ " This is love, that we walk after 
 his commandments." ^ " He that doeth good is 
 of God, but he that doeth evil hath not seen 
 God." '^ " He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in 
 God, and God in him ; herein is our love made 
 perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of 
 judgment." ^ There is no question but that the 
 
 1 St. John ii. 3. =* St. John ii. 17. ' St. John iii. T. 
 " St. John iii. 24. = St. John v. 3. « 2 St. John 6. 
 ■> 3 St. John 11. ' 1 St. John iv. 16, 17. 
 
148 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 writer of these passages laid great stress upon the 
 necessity of good works ; that he looked forward 
 to the judgment-day as that which would alone 
 reveal the relation of good works to union with 
 Christ — that they contained in themselves the 
 germ of that which would be manifested at the 
 judgment-day. But if this be so, neither can 
 there be any doubt but that the same writer, as 
 far as the enunciation of doctrine is concerned, 
 could have spoken also of the dead being judged 
 out of those things which were written in the 
 books according to their works, and have repre- 
 sented Jesus as saying, " Behold, I come quickly, 
 and my reward is with me, to give every man 
 according as his work shall be," ^ as well as given 
 utterance to many similar statements which are 
 found in the Apocalypse. But are these state- 
 ments in the Epistles of St. John so very different 
 after all from many which occur in the fourth 
 Gospel .? Is there not rather a marked similarity, 
 not to say identity, among them ? What, for 
 instance, is the bearing upon this matter of the 
 famous words, " This is the condemnation, that 
 light is come into the world, and men loved dark- 
 ness rather than light, because their deeds were 
 evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the 
 light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds 
 should be reproved. But he that doeth truth 
 cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made 
 
 " Eev. xxii. 12. 
 
V] S^. Johns Writings 149 
 
 manifest that they are wrought in God." ^ Or 
 again, " If ye love me, keep my commandments." 
 " He that hath my commandments, and keepeth 
 them, he it is that loveth me." ^ " He that loveth 
 me not, keepeth not my sayings ;" ^ and the like. 
 Or, to take another passage, which is stronger than 
 all, " The hour is coming in which all that are in 
 the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come 
 forth, they that have done good unto the resur- 
 rection of life, and they that have done evil unto 
 the resurrection of damnation." * One and all of 
 these passages, which are the words of our Lord 
 Himself, recognise the doctrine of judgment 
 according to works no less strongly than that 
 doctrine is recognised in the Revelation. As far, 
 then, as this point is concerned, one writer might 
 have written all, for there is a unity of sentiment 
 and teaching common to all. 
 
 A careful consideration of the fourth Gospel 
 and the first Epistle of St. John can scarcely lead 
 an unbiassed student to any other conviction than 
 that they were both the work of one and the 
 same writer, whoever he may have been. There 
 is substantially the same teaching, the same lan- 
 guage, the same characteristic thought in each. 
 And to say this is not to deny that there are also 
 distinguishing differences between them. There 
 must of necessity be such differences between any 
 
 ^ St. John iii. 19-21. = St. John xiv. 15. 
 
 =* St. John xiv. 24. " St. John v. 28, 29. 
 
ISO The Unity of [Lect 
 
 two separate works of the same miud. There 
 may be great similarity, but there must be a 
 certain difference. And this is really the case 
 with the two works before us. But in addition to 
 this, there are also certain features in the first 
 Epistle which approximate considerably to the 
 thought and teaching of the Revelation. If, then, 
 it is admitted that the Revelation was written by 
 St. John, it is plain that, as far as internal 
 evidence is concerned, this fact is to a certain 
 extent in favour of the supposition that the first 
 Epistle was also his work. 
 
 And let it not be said that the facts adduced 
 are of trifling import, for we have purposely con- 
 fined ourselves now to the exclusive consideration 
 of the internal evidence on the subject, and in all 
 such questions the facts adduced can hardly be 
 other than slight; if in this case they were of 
 overwhelming force the question would not admit 
 of debate. The value of the points we have 
 adduced must of necessity depend very greatly 
 upon the character and bias of the mind which 
 estimates them. All that can be required of us 
 is that we do not lay undue weight upon them, 
 and this it is which we are most anxious to avoid. 
 They are only advanced as having significance up 
 to a certain point and in connection with other facts. 
 
 In this way, then, let me direct your attention 
 to a trifling circumstance which may serve to 
 show an approximation in sentiment between the 
 
V] Si(. Johiis Writings 151 
 
 Revelation and the fourth Gospel. The latter 
 chapters of the Revelation are occupied with a 
 vision of the Bride of the Lamb of God. The 
 reference to her is a marked feature of the 
 Apocalypse. But surely it is not unworthy of 
 observation that it is only the fourth Evangelist 
 who has recorded the circumstance, or the fact, of 
 our Lord's presence at the marriage in Cana of 
 Galilee, and still more that it is he only to whom 
 we are indebted for the striking words of John 
 the Baptist in which the like figure is used of 
 Christ, "He that hath the bride is the bride- 
 groom, but the friend of the bridegroom which 
 standeth and heareth him rejoiceth greatly because 
 of the bridegroom's voice : this my joy therefore 
 is fulfilled."^ The similarity of thought to the 
 mystical language of the Apocalypse is greater 
 here than it is anywhere else in the New Testa- 
 ment. For, though our Lord in the synoptical 
 Gospels does speak of the kingdom of heaven 
 being like to the marriage of the king's son, and 
 St. Paul does speak of the Church as the spouse 
 of Christ, yet the likeness there in either case is not 
 such as would for a moment suggest identity of 
 authorship among the several books.^ And yet 
 
 s St. John iii. 29. 
 
 ^ "We have also in the synoptists, " Can the children of the bride- 
 chamber motirn as long as the bridegroom is with them ? But the 
 days will come when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and 
 then shall they fast."— St, Matt. ix. 15. St. Mark ii. 19. St. 
 Luke V. 34 But the same remark applies. 
 
152 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 we must bear in mind that the likeness to the 
 Revelation now spoken of in the fourth Gospel is 
 quite independent of veracity on the part of the 
 author, and of the accuracy with which he may or 
 may not have reported the words of John the 
 Baptist. The fact is one which concerns him 
 merely as an author, and in this respect there can 
 be no question but that a similarity of thought is 
 discernible between the Apocalypse and the 
 Gospel, and yet a similarity which from the 
 nature of the case cannot have been designed. 
 
 And it is likenesses of this kind, far more than 
 mere similarity of language, which indicate iden- 
 tity of authorship. There is a manifest similarity 
 of incident and character in the several produc- 
 tions of the author of " Waverley " — a strong 
 family likeness of this kind runs through both the 
 poems and the novels. The unity is one of 
 thought, sentiment, and feeling, far more than of 
 language or even of style. And that style alone 
 is not a sufficient guide to authorship is shown by 
 the success with which for years the author of 
 " Waverley " maintained his incognito. And yet 
 it may be safely said that the similarity between 
 " Eedgauntlet " and " Marmion " is not greater 
 than that between the fourth Gospel and the 
 Revelation. Neither are the sonnets of Shake- 
 speare more unlike Macbeth than is the first 
 Epistle of St. John unlike the Apocalypse. 
 
 But we come now to unity of esoteric teaching 
 
V] Si. y^oAn's Writings 153 
 
 in the several writings ascribed to St. John. It 
 is said that the carnal views of Christ's Messiah- 
 ship which are attributed to the sons of Zebedee 
 by the synoptical Evangelists characterise the 
 teaching of the Revelation, while more catholic 
 and spiritualised ideas predominate in the fourth 
 Gospel. Now it cannot be denied that in both 
 the Gospel and the Apocalypse Jesus is repre- 
 sented as the Christ — that in both He is repre- 
 sented as the Son of God, equal with the Father, 
 being set down with the Father 6n His throne'' — 
 as the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, 
 which is, and which was, and which is to come, the 
 Almighty^ — that before Him the four and twenty 
 elders fell down and worshipped Him as living 
 for ever and ever^ — that, in short, the highest 
 possible Divine honours are from first to last 
 ascribed to Him. In this respect, then, the ador- 
 ation paid to Jesus in the Apocalypse is worthy 
 of that writer who either recorded the Lord's 
 words or represented Him as saying, "That all 
 men should honour the Son even as they honour 
 the Father. He that honoureth not the Son 
 honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." ^ 
 The only point open to question is whether the 
 view of the Messiahship is or is not essentially 
 different in the two books. Now, in order to 
 ascertain the true answer to this question, we 
 
 7 Rev. iii. 21. ' Bev. i. 8. 
 
 9 Rev. iv. 10. ' St. John v. 23. 
 
154 The Unity of [Leot 
 
 must bear in mind that, while a limit is expressly 
 assigned to the number of the children of Israel 
 that were sealed to be delivered from the judg- 
 ments of God upon the earth, the writer distinctly 
 says, " After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multi- 
 tude, ivhich no man could number, of all nations, 
 and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood 
 before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed 
 with white robes, and palms in their hands ; and 
 cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our 
 God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
 Lamb." 2 If such, then, is the writer's own 
 estimate of the relative proportion of Jews and 
 Gentiles who are to ascribe salvation to God and 
 the Lamb, where is the justice of the charge 
 which is brought against him of Judaic prejudice 
 and exclusiveness ? Or how can he be chargeable 
 with carnal notions of Christ's Messiahship who 
 represents the dissolution of the material heavens 
 and earth as an indispensable pre-requisite for the 
 complete exercise of that Messiahship ? While 
 with reference to the chiliasm which is thought 
 by some to be so marked a feature of the Apoca- 
 lypse, it is a fact that, whatever may be the right 
 interpretation of the thousand years, the mention 
 of them is confined to one solitary passage, and 
 therefore chiliasm can not with more show of 
 justice be selected as the characteristic feature of 
 the Revelation than the Epistles to the seven 
 
 2 Rev. vii. 9, 10 ; cf. v. 9. 
 
V] Si. yohns Writings 155 
 
 churches, nor, in fact, with nearly so much. Nor, 
 again, is it anywhere said that the saints were to 
 live and reign with Christ a thousand years u^pQn 
 the earth.^ And this, I apprehend, was the pre- 
 vailing idea of chiliasm. It may be out of place, 
 but one can scarcely forbear to add, that on the 
 supposition of the Apocalypse being really the 
 work of John the beloved Apostle of Jesus, and 
 on the supposition which must surely follow, that 
 it was a revelation which God gave him.; we are 
 well-nigh precluded from dealing with the writer's 
 alleged chiliasm as a peculiar characteristic of his 
 own mind, because, so far as it was a part of the 
 special revelation which God gave him, the Giver 
 rather than the recipient must be held responsible 
 for it. Least of all must the absence or omission 
 of any trace of chiliasm from the fourth Gospel 
 be held adequate to prove that it also was not the 
 production of St. John, because, as Ave have seen, 
 there is but one passage in the Apocalypse itself 
 in which there is any reference to chiliasm, and 
 that passage of the nature of an episode. 
 
 There are but three books in the New Testa- 
 ment, if we except a somewhat uncertain passage 
 in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the 
 appellation of "the Word of God" is ascribed to 
 Jesus. The use of this term, however, in the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews * is different in kind from 
 that which is met with in these books. And, 
 
 2 Cf. Eev. V. 10 ; xxii. 5. ^ Heb. iv. 12. 
 
156 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 though the employment of it cannot alone be held 
 conclusive with respect to authorship, yet we 
 must allow that the use of a phrase so rare is 
 sufficient to characterise the writings in which it 
 is found as belonging to a particular class. Now 
 these three books are the fourth Gospel, the first 
 Epistle of St. John, and the Revelation. In point 
 of fact the use of this phrase is confined to a 
 single passage in each. It is found four times in 
 the Gospel, once in the Epistle, and once in the 
 Revelation. But in the Revelation there is also 
 found, if we may so say, a resolution or analysis 
 of the phrase into its original idea. For instance, 
 in the opening vision of Jesus, it is said that 
 "out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged 
 sword," ^ which can only refer to Him in His 
 capacity as the Word of God who is to judge all 
 the kindreds of the earth. And again, in the 
 nineteenth chapter, with obvious reference to the 
 name of "The Word of God," which is there 
 assigned to Him, it is said, "And out of his 
 mouth goeth a sharp sword that with it he should 
 smite the nations."^ Now, these circumstances 
 taken together may surely be allowed, to show that, 
 judging on internal grounds alone, there are not 
 wanting certain indications which may warrant us 
 in assigning the Revelation to the same class of 
 Logos-writings to which the fourth Gospel and 
 the first Epistle of St. John unquestionably 
 
 = Eev. i. 16. ^ Rev. six. 13, 15. 
 
V] Si. Johns Writings 157 
 
 belong. Whether or not we include the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews in this class is another matter 
 which need not influence our decision about the 
 authorship of these three books. Certain it is 
 that a feature, which is admitted to be one of 
 the most marked characteristics of the fourth 
 Gospel and the first Epistle of St. John, is to 
 be found also with considerable prominence in 
 the Revelation, and, excepting the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, nowhere else. 
 
 It was observed also, in a former lecture, that 
 it was characteristic of the fourth Evangelist to 
 identify Jesus with an unseen but ever present 
 Person who searches the hearts and reins. And, 
 as an indication that this idea was not foreign to 
 the writer of the Apocalypse, we may observe 
 that each of the Epistles to the seven churches, 
 which are sent expressly in the name of Jesus, 
 commences with the striking formula, " I know 
 thy works." Now, it is not pretended that 
 phenomena such as these are other than slight, 
 but because they are slight they are not imaginary, 
 and the common features which mark a unity of 
 authorship in works so different in form and 
 object, as the Revelation and the fourth Gospel, 
 must of necessity be slight. It is the union of 
 many fibres which makes the strength of the 
 stoutest cable. 
 
 But, lastly, there remains another and a very 
 important feature which is alike discernible 
 
158 The Unity of [Lect 
 
 throughout the supposed writings of St. John. 
 We have seen already what stress the writer of the 
 first Epistle lays upon the inward witness. This 
 witness, although mentioned exclusively in the 
 first Epistle, is not less conspicuous in the fourth 
 Gospel. The professed motive which the author 
 of that Gospel had in writing "that ye might 
 believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, 
 and that believing, ye might have life through his 
 name,"'' contains virtually the same principle, 
 and enunciates the same truth that is stated in 
 the first Epistle. For there the inward witness is 
 declared to be the conscious possession of eternal 
 life through belief in Jesus. The position which 
 the two writers contemplate is precisely identical, 
 and their language is almost identical. Indeed, 
 there are probably but few persons who can bring 
 themselves to believe that the two writers are not 
 one. The principle of esoteric conviction, as the 
 seal of the Spirit of God to the truth of Jesus 
 Christ in the heart of the believer, is insisted upon 
 so strongly, both in the Gospel and Epistle, as to 
 constitute a most conspicuous feature of resem- 
 blance — an undoubted evidence of identity of 
 teaching. Nor only so ; for, though the same 
 principle is by no means unknown to other writers 
 in the New Testament, yet there is no single 
 writer who dwells upon it in the same way, or to 
 the same extent, as the author of this Gospel and 
 
 ' St. John XX. 31. 
 
V] S^. yohfis Writings 159 
 
 Epistle. Let me ask you, therefore, whether, in 
 the words which we read in the letter to the angel 
 of the Church in Pergamos, there is not a nearer 
 approximation to this principle of esoteric convic- 
 tion than is to be found in any other writer of the 
 New Testament ? " He that hath an ear let him 
 hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches ; 
 To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the 
 hidden'manna, and will give him a white stone, 
 and in the stone a new name written, which no 
 man knoweth saving he which receiveth it." What 
 is this but the same principle of the inward wit- 
 ness in its highest possible development ? The 
 hidden manna, whatever else it may be, can only 
 be manna of which the world knows nothing, 
 which it can neither discover nor appreciate. He 
 only who would appeal to the inward witness 
 would make mention of the hidden manna as the 
 reward of victory, for the conception is one and 
 the same, and points us unmistakeably to one 
 mind conceiving it. 
 
 Nor is it otherwise with these other words, the 
 "new name which no man knoweth saving he 
 which receiveth it." We can hardly imagine a 
 more manifest token of similarity, not to say 
 identity of thought in two writers than this. And 
 it is the kind of identity which is beyond the 
 reach of conscious or designed imitation. More- 
 over, the writer who ascribes to believers an 
 esoteric witness of this kind is fully consistent 
 
i6o The Unity of [Lect 
 
 •with himself when he represents Him in whom 
 they have believed as possessing the like myste- 
 rious characteristic. Jesus Christ, who, by His 
 Spirit, bestows this witness on His disciples, is 
 Himself called the faithful and true witness. He 
 Himself is the source and fountain of their testi- 
 mony. Because He is faithful and true, their 
 confidence in Him is not misplaced. He who is 
 faithful confirms their faith, and the witness by 
 which it is confirmed is the pattern and reflex of 
 His own incommunicable prerogatives ; for He 
 who was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, 
 in token of His own faithfulness even unto death, 
 and whose name is called the Word of God — the 
 God that cannot lie — had likewise " a name writ- 
 ten that no man knew but He Himself." ^ 
 
 Now, surely we may point with confidence to 
 indications such as these, which, taken together, 
 afibrd undeniable evidence of a marked similarity 
 in tone, and thought, and teaching between writers 
 who at first sight may strike us as being so diver- 
 gent as the authors of the fourth Gospel, the first 
 Epistle, and the Revelation. "We do not profess 
 to have proved their identity, for this you cannot 
 do. If you did not know it, you could not prove 
 identity of authorship in " Eikonoklastes " and 
 " Paradise Regained." These are questions which 
 depend very much upon individual imagination. 
 But, perhaps, there are those who may think that, 
 
 « Eev. six. 12. 
 
V] Si. jfoh-i^s Writings i6i 
 
 after all, the best solution of this problem is that 
 which has been given by the uniform tradition of 
 the early Church, and that there are internal 
 features of a remarkable kind in these several 
 Johannine books which make it not improbable 
 that he, who " was in the isle that is called Pat- 
 mos for the word of God and for the testimony 
 of Jesus Christ," ^ was he who wrote, " That 
 which we have seen and heard declare we unto 
 you, that ye also may have fellowship with us : 
 and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and 
 with his Son Jesus Christ ; and these things write 
 we unto you that your joy may be full ;" ^ that it 
 was even he also who said in the fourth Gospel, 
 " This is the disciple which testifieth of these 
 things, and wrote these things ; and we know that 
 his testimony is true." ^ 
 
 » Rev. i. 9. ^1 St. John i. 34. = St. John xxi. 24. 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF ST. JOHn's WRITINGS 
 
 St. John sii. 46, 47, 48 
 
 " I am come a light into the world, that whosoever helieveth on me 
 should not abide in darkness. And if any man hear my 
 words, and believe not, I judge him not : for I came not to 
 judge the world, but to save the world. Se that rejecteth me, 
 and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him : the 
 word that I have spoken, the same shall judge hvm in the last 
 day." 
 
 THE object of our last lecture was to show 
 from the internal evidence of the so-called 
 Johannine writings that there was reason why we 
 should not think it so incredible as some would 
 have us believe, that they had all proceeded from 
 one author, and that author St. John. We have 
 chosen to deal only with the internal evidence 
 because all evidence of another kind will be better 
 dealt with elsewhere, and because, as it seems to 
 us, the strongest positive arguments against the 
 authenticity of St. John's Gospel are those which 
 are derived from the internal evidence. The 
 arguments which are based upon the silence of 
 
Lect. VIJ Authority of St. yohfis Writings 163 
 
 contemporary or almost contemporary writers are 
 of less weight and merely of a negative kind ; for 
 it is obvious that a work might have been in 
 existence for a long time, and yet from a variety 
 of probable causes not be mentioned by other 
 writers till after the lapse of many years, and 
 more particularly is this the case in a society con- 
 stituted as the Christian Church was during the 
 first two centuries after Christ. It is a weak 
 argument, for example, to infer that because 
 Justin Martyr does not mention St. John's Gospel 
 by name he was certainly ignorant of it, and more 
 especially so when his own language is almost a 
 verbal repetition of that Gospel, and expresses 
 thoughts which are not found elsewhere in the 
 New Testament.^ This argument from a writer's 
 silence or omission is of all arguments the most 
 unsatisfactory, and at the best it is only negative, 
 whereas an argument drawn from a writer's style 
 so far as it goes is of positive value. 
 
 We have seen, then, that in the several 
 Johannine writings, different as we may allow 
 them to be, there are nevertheless some remark- 
 able common elements, and that these elements 
 exhibit similarity of thought and not merely a 
 verbal or linguistic similarity. They are like 
 children of the same parent, oftentimes very 
 unlike in feature and in form, but yet possessing a 
 family likeness of expression which is very per- 
 
 ^ See Appendix, Note A. v. 
 
1 64 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 ceptible but not easy to be defined. It is of the 
 very nature of this likeness that it is not visible 
 at all times or to all persons. It is only some 
 particular incident, or attitude, or condition of 
 mind, that calls it out, but under given circum- 
 stances it exists and becomes apparent, and then it 
 must be referred to identity of origin or parentage 
 and not to chance, to the fact of consanguinity 
 rather than to fancy. Certain it is that among 
 members of the same family we can frequently 
 discern no other likeness than this ; they are 
 different in character, different in complexion, 
 different in manner, different in station and in 
 age, but in spite of all there is still the indescrib- 
 able blood resemblance. This is a physical 
 phenomenon that we daily recognise ; but it is 
 not equally recognisable in the productions of the 
 mind % Many of the greatest names in literature 
 have confessedly produced works that are un- 
 worthy of their genius, and if the fact of author- 
 ship could not be established upon other grounds 
 it certainly could not upon those of style or merit. 
 It is obvious, therefore, that in cases where this 
 fact is called in question, the evidence of style or 
 manner alone must not be trusted without great 
 caution. It is hazardous to say that such a work 
 cannot be by a particular writer because it is 
 unlike his other works. And though it is equally 
 hazardous to affirm that because of certain sup- 
 posed likenesses two or more works are by the 
 
VI] Si. Johns Writings 165 
 
 same author, yet -we may safely say that the 
 existence of such, likenesses, confirmed as they are 
 in this case by the testimony of tradition, does 
 constitute a valid reason why we should hesitate 
 to belieye the contrary, if there is no better reason 
 for believing it. 
 
 Now, the value of these reasons must be dis- 
 cussed elsewhere ■p' for the present we may content 
 ourselves with inquiring into the authority of the 
 Johannine writings, not, indeed, assuming them 
 to be St. John's, but seeking rather to estimate 
 with justice the nature of that authority whether 
 they are his or not. And, in the first place, it 
 may be remarked that they are entitled to a 
 very considerable degree of authority from being, 
 as they doubtless are, the production of a very 
 early period of the Church, even if not really of 
 Apostolic origin. No one thinks of denying to 
 the first Epistle of Clemens Romanus a certain 
 amount of interest and of value merely because he 
 was not an Apostle. We claim nothing for the 
 so-called Johannine writings but what cannot be 
 denied to them on the lowest possible ground. 
 Taking them as we find them, they are, at all 
 events, a record of the mind of a large portion of 
 the Christian Church at a very early period of its 
 history, and their very general, not to say universal, 
 acceptance towards the end of the second century 
 shows that they accurately expressed the prevalent 
 
 ^ See Appendix, Note C. 
 
1 66 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 belief and thought of the Church at that time. 
 The whole body of believers, with a very few 
 unimportant exceptions, were content to be taught 
 by them. They received them as authoritative 
 whether or not they were authentic. 
 
 Now the question is, What is the value of this 
 acceptance ? How far are we right to take it as 
 a guide for ourselves % And the answer to these 
 questions must depend upon two considerations. 
 First, upon the probability there is of the faith of 
 the Church being pure and correct in proportion 
 to its primitive antiquity ; and, secondly, upon the 
 degree in which our own opinions are in accord- 
 ance with those of the early Church as thus 
 expressed. If we are prepared to believe that the 
 purity of the stream is in proportion to its near- . 
 ness to the fountain head, and that Christian 
 doctrine was never so simple and uncontaminated 
 as in its very earliest forms, then we cannot but 
 regard the Johannine writings, even though they 
 be not St. John's, as documents of the highest 
 possible value, and as possessed of a proportionate 
 authority. If again our sentiments are in unison 
 with the teaching which they unquestionably 
 inculcate, then whether or not they are of Apos- 
 tolic origin we shall thankfully accept them as 
 furnishing undoubted evidence that at a period of 
 little more than a century after the death of 
 Christ the same belief was held by the very large 
 majority of Christian men. That as we ourselves 
 
VI] ■ Sif. yohns Writings 167 
 
 accept Jesus of Nazareth for the Incarnate "Word 
 now, so at least He was accepted at the time 
 when these "writings first appeared, and in all pro- 
 bability for some considerable time before. If, on 
 the other hand, we are disposed to think that the 
 early Church was not better off than we ourselves 
 are with regard to matters of belief — that their 
 creed, however accurately it may be determined, 
 is of no authority for us — that as they were 
 clearly wrong upon certain points, such, for 
 instance, as the millennium and the approaching 
 consummation of all things, so they may have 
 been upon many others, such, for instance, as 
 those which are taught by the writings of St. 
 John — then most undoubtedly we shall be willing 
 to depreciate the value of those writings, to 
 repudiate them as authoritative and not impro- 
 bably to impugn the credentials with which they 
 come to us, and to insist upon the invalidity 
 thereof as a reason for rejecting their authority. 
 We may not, indeed, suffer our judgment con- 
 sciously to be biassed by such considerations, but, 
 as a matter of fact, our disbelief in the Johannine 
 authorship of these writings and our rejection of 
 their authority will go hand in hand together. 
 It is not common to find a man thoroughly imbued 
 with Johannine teaching, and morally convinced 
 of its abstract and absolute truth who at the same 
 time disbelieves it to have been strictly speaking 
 apostolic. Thus the condition of our own belief 
 
1 68 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 in Christ will not improbably, as a matter of fact, 
 be a correct index of the opinion we have formed 
 upon this question of authorship. 
 
 Let it be granted, then, in a spirit of the most 
 entire concession that this is a purely critical 
 question to be decided upon purely critical 
 grounds, and upon no others ; and let it further 
 be assumed, though it is not granted, that the 
 balance of evidence is in favour of a non- Apostolic 
 origin for the Johannine writings, then the point 
 we are most anxious to insist upon is this, that 
 the question is not closed there, but much rather 
 an entirely separate and independent question is 
 raised ; namely, the abstract tnjth or error of the 
 doctrine taught by these writings. Now it is of 
 course admitted that we cannot appeal to certain 
 writings whose authority we have surrendered in 
 support of the teaching they inculcate — that were 
 indeed to reason in a circle — but forasmuch as the 
 teaching in this case is of a piece with and not 
 opposed to the prevalent teaching of the early 
 Church, forasmuch as it is substantially identical 
 with the teaching of St. Paul's known Epistles — 
 since those Epistles contain a view of the Person 
 and work of the Lord Jesus, which to all intents 
 and purposes is identical with and is certainly not 
 surpassed by the view exhibited in these writings, 
 since in both the same Lord Jesus is the one object 
 of worship and the one source of grace, since in 
 both He is represented as the Judge of the world 
 
VI] Si. yohns Writings 169 
 
 and the Son of God, since in both the gift of 
 eternal life is distinctly asserted to have come 
 through Him, and since in both the blood of 
 redemption is set forth as the one hope of pardon 
 — ^therefore we affirm that the right unquestion- 
 ably is ours to estimate the character of the 
 Johannine teaching solely on its own merits, to 
 inquire into the witness of St. John to Christ 
 apart altogether from the adventitious weight 
 which his testimony would derive from the fact of 
 its being undisputedly his. 
 
 If, for example, the message of the fourth 
 Gospel were intrinsically different from that which 
 it is evident that St. Paul had received and handed 
 on, and from that which the Church generally had 
 accepted and professed to believe — if the doctrine 
 of the fourth Gospel led us to a position which 
 was untenable and irreconcilable with our alle- 
 giance to other Christian documents of no less 
 eminent repute — (I am not speaking now of the 
 alleged discrepances in matters of fact recorded 
 in the Gospel narrative, but of that body of 
 Christian doctrine inculcated by St. Paul and St. 
 John in common, which, whatever may be its 
 differences, is, after all, one in substance and in 
 heart) — if, in this sense, the message of the fourth 
 Gospel were inconsistent, for example, to put the 
 case strongly, with the message of the Epistle to 
 the Galatians, then the right which we have 
 claimed might indeed be challenged. But if this 
 
170 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 be not so, if the ultimate result to which the 
 teaching leads us is the same in both, if mere 
 . belief in Jesus may briefly be selected as the one 
 central point where both converge — ^then we may 
 boldly postpone the question of authorship in the 
 Johannine writings, and endeavour to estimate 
 the character of their teaching solely on its own 
 merits. 
 
 And let it not be said that to pursue such a 
 course as this is conspicuously uncritical for that 
 it takes no note of the very points upon which it 
 is the function of criticism specially to dwell, be- 
 cause it surely is the function of the critic to tell 
 us the meaning and import of a particular docu- 
 ment no less than to decide upon its date. If the 
 function of the interpreter is to be merged in that 
 of the critic, so that the critic is to be allowed to 
 pronounce dogmatically upon works which he can- 
 not understand, then plainly his office becomes 
 one of diminished value : it is of small practical 
 utility. The meaning of these writings is, we 
 may well thank God, transparently clear ; it 
 admits neither of ambiguity nor of dispute. The 
 writer's professed object was to lead men to simple 
 faith in Jesus. It surely cannot be denied that 
 the writer of the Epistle to the Galatians had no 
 other object set before him ; but if this be so, the 
 object of the two writers was one and the same, 
 and if this be so, the writer of the fourth Gospel 
 aimed at identically the saine object with St. 
 
VI] Si. yohfis Writings 171 
 
 Paul, but lie compassed liis object in another way. 
 The fourth "Gospel, in fact, whatever else it was, 
 most assuredly was this, another and a different 
 method of accomplishing the same result — of 
 bringing men to believe in Jesus. It is entirely 
 gratuitous, and contrary to all evidence, to affirm 
 that the object of the two writers was intrinsically 
 diverse, however great we may well allow their • 
 superficial differences of style, or manner, or 
 method to have been. It cannot fairly be alleged 
 that the Person whom both proclaimed was not 
 the same. The crucified and suffering Jesus, the 
 risen and ascended Jesus, Avas the theme of both. 
 The constraining love of Jesus was the ruling 
 impulse in both. The central thought and truth 
 was the same in both, however wide apart the 
 position of the two might be on the circumference 
 of expression. Indeed, we are not without the 
 means of fairly estimating the significance of this 
 divergence in two early Christian writers, by a com- 
 parison of the same divergence in the great Christian 
 writers of our own land. It is scarcely possible 
 to magnify the difference between Hooker and 
 Bunyan, Pearson and Howe. They were writers 
 not only different in style, but totally different, 
 and even opposed in ecclesiastical predilections. 
 Their conception of Christ was wholly different. 
 But the difference between Hooker and Bunyan, 
 or Pearson and Howe, is scarcely greater in either 
 case than that between Hooker and Pearson, who 
 
172 The Authority of [Leot 
 
 were both great luminaries of the same Church, 
 Surely their conception of Christ was very diffe- 
 rent. Where do we find in Pearson anything 
 approaching to that eloquent warmth of mystical 
 devotion which is wrought up to a climax in the 
 rapt and fervent meditation which concludes the 
 discussion on the Eucharist in Hooker's fifth Book? 
 The spark of seraphic fire which glows in Hooker 
 is well-nigh extinguished in Pearson. There is 
 scarcely a glimmer of it to be seen. And yet we 
 cannot for a moment doubt, not only that both 
 would have acknowledged the same Jesus to be 
 the object of their common worship, but also that 
 it was identically the same person in whom both 
 believed, and about whom both intended to dis- 
 course. And the same may be said of Hooker 
 and of Bunyan, or of Pearson and of Howe. But 
 it may well be questioned whether the difiference 
 is as great between St. Paul and St. John — be- 
 tween the fourth Gospel and the Epistle to the 
 Galatians — as it is between these several writers. 
 Surely, therefore, parity of reasoning would lead 
 us to admit that the divergence in style or senti- 
 ment is no warrant for believing that the Jesus of 
 the fourth Gospel is intrinsically different from 
 the Jesus of St. Paul. The Person and the cha- 
 racter are one, though the way in which He is 
 presented may be different. And philosophically 
 we are not warranted, if we are critically, in 
 assuming that this difference in style, manner, and 
 
VI] Si. jfohris Writings 1 73 
 
 conception is any proof whatever of intrinsic 
 difference in the object. The character of Jesus, 
 like the form and features of His Person, is 
 indelibly stamped upon the world's memory. 
 Obliterate the Gospels, or prove them historically 
 inaccurate, and you cannot obliterate the impres- 
 sion of this character from the memory or the 
 imagination of mankind. It will still survive in 
 ineffaceable distinctness, like the impression of a 
 seal of which the die has irrecoverably been lost. 
 Now, the Gospel *of St. John, whatever else it is, 
 is the writer's own interpretation of this impres- 
 sion. It is the record of his conception of Christ. 
 It is his monograph upon this ancient seal, and it 
 is the more valuable because it is almost as ancient 
 as the seal itself. It is possessed of the very 
 highest interest and value from the mere fact of 
 its great antiquity. 
 
 And forasmuch as the matter of which it treats 
 is permanently the same — ^for the impression pro- 
 duced upon the world by the character of Christ 
 does not and cannot vary — it is a substantive 
 result, independently of the world's belief in Him, 
 as much as the impression produced by Socrates, 
 or Caesar, or Muhammad, is a substantive result — 
 forasmuch as this result is permanent — we may 
 take this writer's interpretation of the character 
 of Jesus, his delineation of His person, and endea- 
 vour to estimate it on its own merits; only in 
 this case — and here is the point — our estimate 
 
174 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 must vary according to the degree in whicli our 
 opinions coincide with his — according as we do or 
 do not beheve in that which it is his professed 
 object to teach. The authority, therefore, of St. 
 John's writings, of which we now speak, is an 
 inherent and intrinsic authority quite independent 
 of the accuracy or inaccuracy of the particular 
 facts which they relate. Even supposing the 
 fourth Gospel to be an ideal representation of the 
 character of Christ, that ideal is one which appeals 
 to us on its own authority. But if we do not 
 believe it to be ideally correct, it is not possible 
 that we can accept it as historically true. "Whether 
 or not it is historically true does not depend upon 
 our acceptance of it as ideally correct, but we can- 
 not accept it as historically true without admitting 
 also its ideal accuracy. The issue, therefore, to 
 which we are brought is simply this, Are we pre- 
 pared to accept the Johannine conception of Christ 
 as correct or incorrect, as right or wrong, as true 
 or false ? And the answer to this question does 
 not depend upon the accuracy or inaccuracy of the 
 details he has recorded, for these details are sub- 
 sidiary to his conception ; they are but the setting 
 which preserves the jewel. The Evangelist's 
 position is this : The character of Christ being 
 what we all know it to be, is that character the 
 Divine character, or is it not ? Let us, however, 
 by no means be misunderstood to affirm that it is 
 a matter of secondary importance whether the 
 
VI] S^. yohrHs Writings 175 
 
 Evangelist's narrative is true or false — (quite the 
 reverse, it is a matter of the very last importance) 
 — but what we do say is, .that the issue he raises 
 is of another kind altogether, namely this, The 
 character of Christ being what it is represented 
 and supposed to be, is He, or is He not, the Son 
 of God ? In other words, the Evangelist himself 
 postpones the critical to the moral question. He 
 reverses the previous consideration ; and whereas 
 we are inclined to make the claims of Christ to 
 turn upon the authenticity and veracity of the 
 Gospel narrative, he fearlessly and openly advances 
 those claims, and leaves them to take their chance 
 of success, and to stand or fall upon their own 
 intrinsic merits. And, according as we are of one 
 heart and of one soul with him, we shall be willing 
 to do likewise. 
 
 What, then, are these merits of which we 
 speak ? What is that inherent authority with 
 which the Gospel of the fourth Evangelist comes 
 charged ? That authority and those merits are 
 well represented by the words of our Lord, as 
 there recorded, " I am come a light into the 
 world, that whosoever believeth on me should not 
 abide in darkness." Now, it is not necessary to 
 believe, or rather to insist upon believing, that 
 these words were actually spoken by our Lord. 
 The real question is. Supposing them to have been 
 spoken by Him, are they or are they not true ? 
 To what extent would they have been true of 
 
1 76 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 Him had He spoken them ? Now, it is manifest 
 that there are two ways 'of answering these ques- 
 tions : one is by sifting and criticising the evi- 
 dence in order to arrive at some definite opinion 
 how far Jesus of Nazareth was warranted in using 
 such language, which would lead us into a very 
 long and elaborate operation — an operation, more- 
 over, be it observed, that the vast majority of the 
 world is wholly precluded from undertaking ; and 
 the other is by taking the words and dealing with 
 them exactly as we find them, and testing them 
 each one for himself according to the very condi- 
 tions which they prescribe, which are those of 
 belief, — •" that whosoever believeth in me, should 
 not abide in darkness." While, therefore, we 
 allow to the critic the utmost possible licence of 
 disputing about the genuineness of these words, 
 and even, if he pleases, of deciding finally that 
 they were not spoken by Christ, it is self-evident 
 that there is a much shorter, and, on the whole, 
 a more satisfactory path near at hand available 
 for those who are willing to take it, which will or 
 will not lead to the requisite position, and that is 
 the path of simple faith, not in the words them- 
 selves, but in the Person supposed to speak them. 
 They may be tested experimentally, just as any- 
 thing else is tested, which can alone be tested by 
 experience. It is nothing to the point to say, " I 
 have tested them by my own experience, and have 
 found them not true," because that is only an 
 
VI] S^. jfohns Writings 177 
 
 acknowledgment of the very darkness which proves 
 their truth \ and that they are true does not 
 depend upon whether or not this or that individual 
 has been able to certify himself about them, but 
 upon the fact that all who come within the circle 
 of their influence do find them true ; and more than 
 this they do not profess to assert. They hold 
 forth a promise of light upon the condition of 
 belief, and upon that condition only ; and they 
 imply that where there is not belief, there is no- 
 thing but spiritual darkness, however great the 
 intensity of intellectual light. And we confidently 
 put it to any man to say whether this is or is not 
 their obvious literal meaning — whether they could 
 have any other meaning by whomsoever they 
 were spoken. If, therefore, they are the Evan- 
 gelist's own words which he ascribes to Jesus, 
 then he is himself responsible for any amount of 
 criticism which our interpretation may tend to 
 raise. The objection that may be taken must be 
 taken against him. And the same must be said 
 of our Lord if the words were really spoken by 
 Him. The man who spoke thus, whoever he was, 
 beyond all question laid himself open to the 
 charge of circular reasoning, for he threw down a 
 challenge which cannot be taken up except by 
 violating the conditions upon which alone it was 
 thrown down. He was content simply to advance 
 his own personal claims, and left them to be re- 
 jected or allowed, as the case might be. "We are 
 
 M 
 
1 78 The AtUhority of [Lect 
 
 at liberty to reject them, Taut it does not follow, 
 because we reject them, that they are invalid. 
 
 And there are two observations to be made 
 here. First, there never was any man, as far as 
 we are aware, who advanced such unmitigated 
 pretensions as these. They surpassed in audacity 
 all that ever was uttered by any religious teacher. 
 And with justice, for if it was possible for any one 
 to speak in such language about himself, it is 
 manifest that no one else could speak so. If these 
 rights legitimately belonged to him, they could be 
 shared by no one else. The question is, therefore, 
 not whether they can belong to any one besides 
 Jesus, or to any one rather than to Jesus, but 
 whether they can belong to any one at all. But 
 there is only one Being to whom they can belong, 
 and that is the Deity Himself ; if, therefore, they 
 belong at all to Jesus, it can only be because in 
 Him the Godhead and the Manhood are one. 
 And this is the simple issue which is raised by 
 the words themselves, whether they were spoken 
 by Jesus or by the fourth Evangelist about Jesus. 
 
 But it may be said that, being spoken by the 
 fourth Evangelist himself, they are the unautho- 
 rised assertion of claims which were not advanced 
 by Jesus. ISTow, we know from various passages 
 in the synoptical Gospels,^ too numerous to quote, 
 
 '^ The parallelisms exhibited in the Appendix, Note A, are the 
 best proof of this. Nothing is more remarkable than the assump- 
 tion of finality in Christ. " Come unto me, . . . and I will give 
 
VI] Sf. yoAn's Writings 1 79 
 
 that if these identical words were not spoken by 
 Jesus, there were other words scarcely less extra- 
 vagant which He did speak. The self-assertion 
 of the Sermon on the Mount is hardly less con- 
 spicuous than that of the fourth Evangelist. The 
 emphatic, " I say unto you," * many times re- 
 peated, together with the yet more solemn decla- 
 ration, " Many will say to me in that day, Lord, 
 Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? and 
 in thy name have cast out devils 1 and in thy 
 name done many wonderful works ? and then will 
 I profess unto them I never knew you ; depart 
 from me, ye that work iniquity," ^ — can leave no 
 doubt upon any ordinary mind as to the nature of 
 the claims put forth by Christ, and that they were 
 not essentially different from those of the fourth 
 Gospel. And, therefore, on the lowest possible 
 ground, the issue that is raised by the words in 
 question remains, after all, very much the same. 
 And this is the witness of St. John to Christ, 
 which asks for acceptance or rejection upon its own 
 inherent authority, and upon that alone. 
 
 you rest," (St. Matt. xi. 28) ; and tMs, it must be remembered, 
 was spoken prior to Peter's confession of Him as the Christ (St. 
 Matt. xvi. 16.) The very phrase, " The kingdom of God," which 
 was the keynote of His teaching, was tantamount to this assump- 
 tion of finality. Indeed, finality was implied, and not seldom 
 expressed, in all that He said and did. Which of us could pre- 
 sume to say, " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words 
 shall not pass away?" (St. Luke xxi. 33.) And yet the " reputa- 
 tion'' of Christ must stand or fall upon statements such as these. 
 * St. Matt. V. 22, &c. = St. Matt. vii. 22, 23. 
 
i8o The Authority of [Lect 
 
 But, secondly, we are not unable to estimate 
 partially at least the truth of this assertion inde- 
 pendently of belief in it altogether. For the 
 words " I am come a light into the world/' appeal 
 to the world's verdict about Christ whether or not 
 it believes in Him. And even in days of enlight- 
 enment like ours, no one can at all pretend that 
 the light which has been brought into the world 
 by any single individual, or by many individuals 
 taken together, is to be compared with the light 
 that was brought into "it by Christ. Take the 
 greatest of English, not to say of modern philoso- 
 phers. Lord Bacon, a man who has shed the pure 
 " dry " light of a true science over the length and 
 breadth of two worlds, the new and the old, but 
 what is his light compared with Christ's ? "What 
 is the light of the Novum Organon compared with 
 the light which streams forth perennially from 
 one verse, one syllable, of the Gospel ? Weigh 
 the aphorisms of Bacon against "Your Father 
 which is in Heaven," and will they not kick the 
 beam ? What is it for man to know his position 
 and his power as the minister and interpreter of 
 nature compared with the authoritative assurance 
 that he may " have faith in God " who is the Lord 
 of nature ? What is the knowledge of the true 
 method of induction compared with the knowledge 
 of eternal life through Christ ? What is the 
 promise of victory over science compared with 
 the unsearchable riches of the ever blessed words, 
 
VI] S^. Johns Writings i8i 
 
 " Son, thy sins be forgiven thee ? " What is the 
 value of all human inventions, of printing, gun- 
 powder, the loadstone, or the compass, compared 
 with the priceless discovery that the gracious 
 words which were spoken to one may be spoken 
 to all, "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." 
 It is true that in all these cases the just estimate 
 can alone be formed where there is faith to 
 appreciate the worth of the Gospel message. 
 But it is no less true that the just estimate can 
 alone be formed of Bacon's value where there is the 
 knowledge requisite to appreciate his work. And 
 it is a joy to think that he whom all the wise 
 agree to acknowledge as " the first of those 
 who know"® was himself the foremost also to 
 accept with thankfulness the Evangelic offer of 
 salvation, that he was wilhng to illustrate as well 
 as to proclaim the everlasting truth that except as 
 little children we cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven.'^ He was content to " pale the ineffectual 
 fire " of his giant intellect before the brightness of 
 
 ^ " Plato the wise, and large-brow'd Verulam, 
 The first of those who know." 
 
 Tennyson's Falaae of Art 
 So Dante says of Aristotle — 
 
 Poi che innalzai un pooo piu le ciglia, 
 Vidi il Maestro di color che sanno, 
 Seder tra filosofica famiglia. 
 Tutti Tammiran, tutti onor gU f an,no, 
 
 Jnfemo, iv. 130. 
 It is oftentimes interesting to trace the influence of Dante upon 
 Tennyson. 
 
 'See "Novum Organon," i. 68, and his noble "Confession of 
 Faith " prefixed to it. 
 
1 82 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 the Gospel beam. Nor is there any one else who 
 named with Christ can for a moment compare, 
 whether we believe in Him or not, as a bringer in 
 of light. He was the true Son of the Morning 
 who came down from heaven, not as the false 
 Lucifer by a precipitous fall "sheer o'er the 
 crystal battlements," but by the joyous entrance 
 of His mild and benignant ray into the darkness 
 and sorrow of an estranged and perishing world. 
 It is then in this capacity that He presents Him- 
 self and is presented to us, that whosoever be- 
 lieveth in Him should not abide in darkness. 
 The fact that beyond all question He does bring 
 and bear this light is the sole authority upon 
 Avhich He comes. For He comes in His Father's 
 name as the fountain and source of light. The 
 light which He brings " cometh down from the 
 Father of lights." And as of old he that re- 
 ceiveth his testimony sets his seal to the 
 acknowledgment that God is true. But except 
 by receiving the light as God's light there is no 
 other way in which it can be known in its relation 
 to the truth of God. As long as the light is 
 rejected. His very truth is regarded as false- 
 hood. 
 
 Nor again is the acknowledgment of Christ's 
 light consistent with a desire to assign to Him 
 His relative position among the lesser lights of 
 men under the pretext that they are all the lights 
 of God. Because Christ distinctly claims to be 
 
VI] S^. Johfis Writings 183 
 
 not only a light, but the one solitary light on 
 those subjects upon which He sheds light. It is 
 He who alone gives us authoritative information 
 about God or ourselves, about sin, repentance, or 
 forgiveness. If His light on these subjects is not 
 authoritative it is no light at all, and we are still 
 in darkness deceiving ourselves with fancied gleams 
 of light, like those of the ignis fatuus hovering 
 over the unwholesome dangerous marsh, which 
 lead us away from safe and solid ground. If, on 
 the other hand. His light is authoritative, then 
 the claims of His unlimited self-assertion are 
 more than vindicated, for there is no one else 
 whose light can be proposed as of equal authority 
 with His. If it is light at all it is the highest 
 and the only light. Thus it is that the recogni- 
 tion of Christ at all resolves itself virtually into a 
 recognition of Him altogether. If we take Him 
 at all we must, to be consistent with ourselves, 
 take Him at His own estimatje. It is impossible 
 to depreciate that estimate without rejecting Him 
 altogether. The position in this respect to which 
 the synoptical Gospels bring us is not substantially 
 different from that of the fourth. We are not 
 blind to, nor do we wish to underrate, the differ- 
 ences which do exist, but these differences are 
 best measured in the light of the result which is 
 common to all, which is nothing less than the un- 
 qualified exaltation in the scale of existence of the 
 man Christ Jesus. The main difference between 
 
1 84 The Authority of [^ect 
 
 the fourth Gospel and the others is this, that it 
 proposes that result to us directly, omitting the 
 preliminary stages by which also it may be 
 approached. This is the method which the fourth 
 Evangelist has chosen of bearing his testimony 
 to Christ. That testimony would still be valid 
 even though the subordinate matters of detail 
 with which it was associated could be proved 
 erroneous. 
 
 It is the boast of science that when she has 
 achieved a particular result she is independent of 
 the means by which she achieved it. The means 
 may not have been the best ; they may have been 
 defective in themselves or have been wrongly used, 
 but they have served their end, or, it may be, served 
 an end for which they were not designed ; and, 
 the position being reached, we can kick away the 
 ladder by which we reached it. Having planted 
 our foot upon the shore we are independent of the 
 craft which bore us thither. It is so with Christ. 
 Having once laid hold on Him we are absolved 
 from the necessity of perpetually retracing and 
 examining the path by which Ave reached Him. 
 There may be steep, miry, slippery, thorny places 
 along the path ; there may be gaps in it here and 
 there, but when the ultimate position, which is 
 Christ, is won, then all is won. Now it is the 
 purpose of each Evangelist to land us in this 
 position. It cannot be denied that every Evan- 
 gelist is more or less indifferent to some of the 
 
VI] S^. Johns Writings 185 
 
 earlier steps along the path, but the ultimate 
 result is plain in each, and nowhere more plain 
 than in the last, and this position or result is one 
 that speaks for itself. It is not only intelligible 
 and visible before it is won, but final, satisfactory, 
 conclusive, afterwards ; it is the position of entire 
 belief — the result of simple and complete convic- 
 tion. 
 
 It is plain, from the way in which our Lord 
 here speaks, that this is the kind of authority He 
 advanced for Himself, or, at least, that the Evan- 
 gelist advanced on His behalf " If any man 
 hear my words and believe not, I judge him not : 
 for I came not to judge the world but to save the 
 world." He proposes Himself — He proposes 
 truth for the acceptance of mankind — He speaks, 
 that is, to the moral sense, to the spiritual con- 
 stitution of mankind, and does so with the greater 
 force because He proclaims in the same breath its 
 entire liberty of action, professing only the 
 benevolence of His own intentions- — that He 
 came not to judge but to save ; a profession, by 
 the way, which is fully corroborated by other 
 words from the synoptical Gospels, " The Son of 
 Man is come to seek and to save that which was 
 lost." 8 
 
 But, having certified this liberty. He does not 
 fail to enter a warning against the abuse of it. 
 "He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my 
 
 5 St, Luke xix. 10. St. Matt, xviii. 11. 
 
i86 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 words " (hereby showing that personal rejection of 
 Himself is preliminary to and the cause of not 
 receiving His words) "hath one that judgeth him: 
 the word that 1 have spoken, the same shall judge 
 him in the last day." That is to say, He dis- 
 tinctly disengages the authority of the Word from 
 any personal relation to Himself, He leaves it to 
 stand alone and takes the place merely of a witness 
 to its truth. 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that having done this 
 He can do no more. He has made the light to 
 shine, and he who will not recognise it can only 
 abide in darkness. It is not possible to reject 
 that light critically, and at the same time to 
 believe in it. One or the other we may do, but no 
 man living can do both. 
 
 And here again this issue is entirely indepen- 
 dent of the accuracy with which these words are 
 ascribed to Christ ; for if they are simply the 
 words of His disciple, then they are the testimony 
 of that disciple concerning Him. Not about 
 himself did that disciple write, nor to advance his 
 own conception of Christ, so far as it was his own, 
 but about His Master to whom He bore this 
 witness, and in whose hands he was content to 
 leave the result of it. And even if, as a matter 
 of fact, such language was never used by Christ 
 at all, it would nevertheless still remain true of 
 the ideal truth, and so the only question that 
 could arise would be, whether or not Christ was 
 
VI] St yohfCs Writings 187 
 
 the ideal truth, or whether there was any other 
 ideal truth which He did not teach, and did not 
 claim to be. In other words, the one definite 
 issue which this writer sought to raise was this, 
 What was the true character and estimate of 
 Jesus Christ % Did His life, teaching, and death, 
 as they are commonly known to the world, declare 
 Him to be also the light of the world, and the one 
 source of life to men ? It is impossible to raise 
 this question for 'the first time, even supposing 
 St. John to have been the first to raise it, and to 
 leave the world in the same position morally as it 
 was before. A new light has entered into it, 
 which must either be proved false or else be 
 accepted as true. The very fact that this light 
 shows the claim to divine honours to rest not upon 
 victorious prowess, or the desolation of vast con- 
 tinents for the exaltation of a single man, but 
 upon moral purity and goodness, upon a life passed 
 in doing works of active benevolence, upon a heart 
 manifestly and consciously at one with God, upon 
 a love which could sufier and die, upon a sym- 
 pathy that could feel for sin, and a humility which 
 could stoop to shame — all of which we know from 
 other sources than the fourth Gospel — is a fact so 
 significant and so striking that, whether the idea 
 be true or false, it is one that we cannot put aside 
 without incurring the very gravest responsibility 
 on account of it. Rightly, therefore, does our 
 Lord abdicate the office of judge which the 
 
1 88 The Authority of [Leot 
 
 synoptical Gospels assign to Him in favour of 
 that Word which, according to the fourth Gospel, 
 He has spoken, and which, whether he spoke it 
 or not, raises a legitimate and inevitable, issue 
 which we are responsible for deciding. 
 
 To gather up, then, what has hitherto been 
 said. We need not shrink from admitting, for the 
 sake of argument, that the fourth Gospel gives 
 us a new estimate of Christ, new thoughts of Him. 
 And yet it is an estimate not absolutely inconsis- 
 tent with that of the other Gospels, but one which 
 may naturally be grafted on them, if indeed it is 
 not one to which at times they pledge us. On 
 the other hand, these thoughts are not altogether 
 in themselves so new but that they waken in the 
 mind a recognition' of their truth apart from 
 Christ. No man, for example, can read the ninth 
 chapter of St. John and not feel that, supposing 
 the miracle to have been wrought, the position 
 assigned by the writer to Jesus was the true one. 
 His position is at least provisionally true, while 
 that of the Pharisees is provisionally false. But, 
 more than this, the fourth Evangelist has given 
 utterance to truth which, but for him, we should 
 not have known, and yet truth which we cannot 
 but instinctively recognise as true. For example, 
 " God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must 
 worship him in spirit and in truth." ^ There are 
 probably few who will not acknowledge the wis- 
 
 " St. John iv. 24. 
 
VI] S^. Johfis Writings i8g 
 
 dom of this sentiment, and yet it is found only in 
 the Gospel of St. John. So again, " Whosoever 
 committeth sin is the servant of sin ;" ^ and 
 " Every one that doeth evil, hateth the light ; 
 neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should 
 be reproved." 2 These and many others are all 
 words put into the mouth of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 They were either spoken by Him, or they were 
 not ; if they were, He must have the credit of 
 them ; if they were not, the writer of the Gospel 
 cannot in justice be deprived of it, and they do 
 not cease to be true even though that writer be 
 not St. John. Nay, more, I am not sure that 
 they receive any higher degree of authority even 
 though they were spoken by St. John or by Jesus. 
 Their authority is simply the authority of truth, 
 at once the highest authority because it is Divine. 
 Thus far, then, the authority of the fourth 
 Gospel is undoubted and unimpeachable. Now 
 comes its testimony concerning Christ, for it not 
 only attributes these and similar statements to 
 Jesus, but is manifestly written with the express 
 purpose of absolutely identifying Him with the 
 truth that is in them. It does not hesitate to 
 represent Him as saying " I am the truth." And 
 this is the one single issue that it raises. The 
 light it has brought in is undeniable. It can 
 neither be hidden nor disguised. But that is 
 not the point. The real point is whether and 
 
 1 St. John viii. 34. " St. John iii. 20. 
 
I90 The Authority of [Lect 
 
 in what sense Christ is the light.- The fourth 
 Evangelist so completely identifies the two, that 
 he not only says Christ is the true light which 
 lighteth every man, but also says virtually that 
 there is no true light except in Christ. This is 
 his witness to Christ. And we are irreconcilably 
 at variance with him if we reject it. There can 
 be no question about this. We may treat him 
 with the highest possible honour. We may re- 
 ceive him as the disciple whom Jesus loved, but 
 we are hopelessly at issue with him if we refuse 
 to accept this testimony. On the other hand, it 
 is surely possible to accept his testimony with 
 the most implicit faith and to endorse it for 
 ourselves, even though for critical or other reasons 
 we may think it not absolutely certain that he 
 was St. John. And the reason is because we 
 believe in Jesus more than we believe in John, 
 for we believe in Jesus to salvation, but believe 
 in John as a preacher only of that salvation 
 which is alone in Jesus. 
 
 And from this there follow two inferences. 
 First, that testimony such as the fourth Gospel 
 gives having been borne to Jesus the position of the 
 world cannot be the same after as it was before 
 it. For, to say the least, a particular theory 
 has been enunciated concerning Christ which 
 from its very nature is of the highest possible 
 importance and imperatively demands either 
 acceptance or rejection. The same pretensions 
 
VI] S^. JoJms Writings 191 
 
 that St. John advances, to put it on the lowest 
 ground, were never advanced of any other than 
 Jesus. They can be advanced of no one else. 
 They, must either be true or false. Jesus either 
 was or was not, is or is not, the Light of the 
 World. If He was and is not the Light of the 
 World, and we have rejected the Johannine 
 testimony concerning Him, then we are gainers, 
 for having had that testimony set before us and 
 for having detected its invalidity. We can go on 
 unshackled and unhindered in the infinite pursuit 
 of truth. We can wipe out the eighteen centuries 
 of Christian thought as a misconception and a 
 blunder, and begin for ourselves anew : — 
 
 " The world is all before us, where to choose 
 Our place of rest, and t'rovidence our guide.'' 
 
 If, on the other hand. He is the Light of the 
 World, and we have rejected Him as such, then 
 also our position cannot be what it was before 
 the testimony concerning Him was given ; for in 
 that case the truth is against us. We have 
 rejected it, and whatever our conviction may 
 be the truth remains the same, unchangeable and 
 unchanged. The truth is constant but we vary, 
 and if there be such a thing as truth and the 
 truth is what its name implies, it cannot vary 
 as we vary. It must be our judge, although we 
 sit in judgment on it. 
 
 Secondly, if the witness of St. John to Christ 
 is true, and He really is what he says He is, 
 
192 Authority of St. Johns Writings [Lect. VI 
 
 then we cannot but believe that He has it in 
 His power to confirm and will confirm this testi- 
 mony concerning Himself in those cases where 
 it is received. It was so, we have reason to 
 suppose, in Apostolic times, even in cases where 
 no claim was made to any special inspiration or 
 Divine illumination. St. Paul says that the 
 testimony he had borne concerning Christ was 
 confirmed in the Colossians, and he speaks of 
 the Ephesians being sealed, after they had be- 
 lieved, with that Holy Spirit of promise, the 
 Spirit of Pentecost,^ which is the earnest or pledge 
 of our eternal inheritance. And it must be so 
 now. The Lord not only knoweth His own, but 
 He leaves them not without assurance that He 
 knoweth them, and thus to the present hour and 
 in every case he verifies, the ancient words 
 whether they be His or not, " I am come a light 
 into the world, that whosoever believeth on me 
 should not abide in darkness, and if any man 
 hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not : 
 for I came not to judge the world, but to save 
 the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth 
 not my words, hath one that judgeth him : the 
 word that I have spoken, the same shall judge 
 him in the last day." 
 
 ■'' Preached on Whitsunday. 
 
LECTURE YII 
 
 ST. John's message to the age 
 
 St. John x. 7-10 
 
 " Then said Jesus unto them agcrni, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
 I am the door of the sheep. All that ever came before me are 
 thieves and robbers : but the sheep did not hear them. I am the 
 door : by me if any mam, enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go 
 in a/nd out, and Jmd pasture. The thief cometh not but for to 
 steal, and to kill, and to destroy : I am, come that they rmght have 
 life, a/nd that they might haije it more abundantly.'' 
 
 THERE can be doubt whatever that the writer 
 of the fourth Gospel believed Christianity 
 to be the absolute religion, that he recognised in 
 Jesus the very incarnation of the absolute, truth. 
 Whether or not his conception of Jesus was cor- 
 rect, this, beyond all question, was his conception. 
 As we have already seen, his belief in his Master 
 was so deep, and his conviction of the truth of his 
 testimony concerning Him so simple and sincere, 
 that he thought it needed only to be given in 
 order to succeed ; it had an authority of its own 
 which was the authority of truth. This at least 
 was the way in which he advanced his testimony, 
 
194 "S"/. Joh-ds Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 and he felt sure that it would maintain its ground. 
 If it was true, it would have an authority of its 
 own, and if it was not true, nothing that he could 
 say in support of it would give it that authority. 
 The careful concealment of his individuality 
 throughout the Gospel is at least consistent with 
 this belief in the absolute truth of his testimony 
 to Jesus. He was anxious n6t to lessen in the 
 very slightest degree the weight and value of the 
 message in itself by blending with it any autho- 
 rity of his own. 
 
 But if the Evangelist's belief in Jesus as the 
 truth itself was just, it is evident that his message 
 would be possessed of a permanent and undying 
 value. It is a mistake to suppose that the essen- 
 tial condition of mankind varies from age to age. 
 The characteristics of human nature in the present 
 day are substantially what they always were. The 
 spiritual wants of humanity are the same now as 
 ever. The fourth Evangelist proclaims the recog- 
 nition of Jesus as the one remedy that is sufficient 
 to meet these wants. " As many as received 
 him, to them gave he, 'power to become the sons of 
 God."^ According to him, the reception of Jesus 
 had the power to elevate the existing condition of 
 humanity to a level with that of Divine Sonship. 
 Now, if this is really the case, it is surely capable 
 of being put to the test experimentally. Where 
 Christ is received in the Apostle's sense, there 
 
 ' St. John i. 12. 
 
VII] Si. yohii!s Message to the Age 195 
 
 men either will or will not be elevated into sons 
 of God according as his word is or is not true. 
 Only we must not fail to observe that this eleva- 
 tion is contingent upon such reception. It cannot 
 take place without it, neither can Jesus truly be 
 received without its taking place. This is a state- 
 ment which, according to St. John, is axiomati- 
 cally true. 
 
 But here the preliminary position is assumed 
 that the natural condition of mankind is charac- 
 terised by some great defect which is represented 
 as being nothing less than an absence of Divine 
 life. Men are only sons of God in proportion 
 as they are recipients of the true light. If they 
 do not receive this light which shines in the midst 
 of them, but is not identical with them, they 
 abide in darkness and have no life. It is the 
 want of that life which is derived from union with, 
 and reception of, the true hght in which consists 
 their great defect. This at least is the way in 
 which the writer of the Gospel represents the 
 case ; the question arises whether or not it is the 
 truth. 
 
 Now, without assuming that his representation 
 is correct, let us inquire what appearance of reason 
 there may be for it. There are three chief direc- 
 tions in which it might fairly be supposed that 
 the amelioration of humanity might be sought 
 for, if not secured. These are political organisa- 
 tion, the progress of arts and manufactures, and 
 
196 Si. Johf^s Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 the advancement of science. It will no doubt be 
 admitted that not any one of these by itself is 
 adequate to bring about that desirable condition 
 of society or state of existence which man cannot 
 but believe is his indefeasible birthright. For 
 every one of them is more or less dependent on 
 the other. A perfect form of government, without 
 any knowledge of arts or skill in manufactures, 
 would minister but superficially to the wants of 
 mankind. Again, it is not possible to attain to a 
 high proficiency in art, or to much skill in manu- 
 factures, without the cultivation of those scientific 
 principles and that knowledge upon which they 
 depend. And the pursuit of science alone, without 
 the aid of those arts and manufactures upon 
 which it also is so largely dependent, and to 
 which it is so deeply indebted, would ofier but a 
 poor resource to man. Science, moreover, though 
 conferring benefits on many, must necessarily be 
 confined to a few. And the social benefits which 
 science is enabled to bestow, may be said to bear 
 but a small proportion to the labour and assiduity 
 with which it must be pursued. In a defective 
 political organisation also, the prospects of the arts 
 and, sciences cannot fail to languish. Neither 
 does it appear at all probable that the increased 
 development of political organisation will ever 
 lead to such results as will prove an effectual 
 remedy for the wants of mankind. At this period 
 of the world's history there are not wanting pre- 
 
VII] Si. Johns Message to the Age 197 
 
 cedents of various forms of government more or 
 less highly developed and perfect in their kind. 
 But it does not appear that the real condition of 
 mankind has been materially affected or im- 
 proved by any of them. Each in its turn has left 
 society very much where it found it. Some of 
 the very deepest forms of evil in our own day 
 legislation is utterly powerless to touch ; but if 
 this be so, what hope for the real amelioration of 
 mankind can be looked for from political develop- 
 ment ? The great philosopher of Greece, while 
 proposing an imaginary scheme for a model re- 
 public, left on the surface of his work traces of 
 his own impotence to deal with man's natural and 
 inherent corruption. And whatever may be the 
 possible advantages to be derived to society from 
 the more perfect development of any one form of 
 government, it is obvious that there are many 
 points it must be wholly incompetent to meet. 
 What eifect would universal suffrage have upon 
 the average of suicides ? What protection would 
 the ballot offer against the occurrence of commer- 
 cial frauds ? How would compulsory education 
 eradicate crime 1 Would the removal of any 
 political disability whatever produce any appre- 
 ciable result on the moral condition of mankind ? 
 The answer in every case can be but one. It is 
 certain that, as man's physical nature is liable to 
 disease, and must eventually succumb to death, so 
 his moral nature is infected with a disorder which 
 
1 98 S^. Johns Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 we term sin. We may labour to prove to our- 
 selves or others the non-existence of sin as a fact ; 
 we may relegate it to the region of delusive and 
 erroneous ideas, but the mere occurrence of the 
 word in every language of the earth is a witness 
 to the reality of a something in man's heart which 
 answers to it. And it is plain that where legisla- 
 tion, or the most perfect form of polity, attempts 
 to deal with the exigencies of sin is only in some 
 special forms of its more aggressive outactings; the 
 motive principle of sin is uninfluenced thereby. 
 It can take no cognisance of sin as sin, but only 
 of some of its more obtrusive and baneful conse- 
 quences. 
 
 And just as political organisation is at a loss to 
 deal with sin, while the very protection it offers 
 to society is a witness to its existence, so also is 
 the cultivation of art, or the progress of mechani- 
 cal skill. It would be difficult to determine the 
 precise degree in which the moral or spiritual 
 condition of mankind has been improved by the 
 accomplished proficiency of art or by the ingenuity 
 of manufacture. The immediate tendency of art 
 is to refine the taste, but the sphere of its opera- 
 tion is manifestly the senses, and the ' utmost re- 
 finement of the senses is consistent with great 
 moral degradation. The world owes a debt of 
 gratitude immense to the labours of a Rafaelle or 
 a Giotto, but their exquisite and sublime concep- 
 tions, it must be confessed, have left humanity 
 
VII] .5'/. yohns Message to the Age 199 
 
 very much where they found it. On the other 
 hand, the achievements of mechanical skill, pro- 
 digious as of late years they have been and are 
 likely to become, are powerless to affect in the 
 slightest degree the innermost condition of man- 
 kind. They minister, indeed, to the comfort and 
 the luxury of man ; they tend to promote the 
 greater happiness of the greater number ; but the 
 moral or spiritual condition of humanity they 
 leave untouched. What is the influence of the 
 electric telegraph or the §team engine on the 
 statistics of crime, or how have manufactures 
 tended to contract the limits of the vast empire 
 of vice ? Is it not a fact that the further we push 
 our material conquests, the greater and more 
 galling is the tribute they levy on what we term 
 the lower classes of society. While civilisation 
 ministers to the freedom of the few, we must not 
 forget the bondage it entails upon the subject 
 many. We may smile at the absurd eccentri- 
 cities of a Rousseau, but wild as they are, they 
 may surely be accepted as the witness of a man of 
 undoubted genius to the impotence of civilisation 
 to cope with the inherent evils of society. 
 
 But if all that has been said is true, and it 
 can hardly be disputed, we may well hesitate to 
 withhold our assent to the position of St. John 
 that the natural condition of mankind is charac- 
 terised by the absence of Divine life. The exist- 
 ence of one phenomenon alone, which it is impos- 
 
200 Si JoMs Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 sible for the politician, if not for the philosopher, 
 to disregard, is more than sufficient to establish 
 the general truth of the Apostle's statement, and 
 that is crime. There is no nation that has ad- 
 vanced beyond the state of savagedom where 
 crime is not recognised, and no condition of society 
 in which it does not exist. Just as death is the 
 general doom of the whole ■ family of man, so 
 crime is an accident which is common to, and 
 characteristic of, the race ; not, indeed, like death, 
 of every individual comprised in it, but still an 
 incidental feature which cannot fail to be perceived 
 in any general survey of the race. But crime is 
 nothing more than the fully developed fruit of an 
 earlier and more universal seed. That which 
 produces crime in the individual is only another 
 form of sin existing in the race. As every action 
 must be recognised as the result or the concomi- 
 tant of previously existing thought, so doubtless 
 crime is but the particular development of the 
 far more general sin. There is no one who does 
 not feel in himself the workings of that evil 
 principle which results in sin. Every one must 
 be conscious of internal disorder which he cannot 
 rectify ; every one must know that at times he 
 has departed from the standard of rectitude, which 
 in spite of himself he cannot but recognise ; he 
 may explain the circumstance as he may, but 
 there it is. Unless a man will maintain, not only 
 that he is a law unto himself, but also that he has 
 
VII] S^. yohfis Message to the Age 201 
 
 never at any time infringed that law, it is impos- 
 sible but that he must plead guilty to the charge 
 of sin. And though such an admission of the 
 charge as this may be widely different from that 
 which the Apostle's language demands, it is, at 
 any rate, to a certain extent a confirmation of its 
 truth. And it must be remembered that in saying 
 this we are dealing with an insensibility to sin 
 which is at least highly exceptional. By far the 
 large. majority of mankind give evidence of a con- 
 sciousness of sin which they would not care to 
 deny. In fact the proofs of the existence of sin 
 in the world around us are at once abundant and 
 conclusive. There is no shutting our eyes to 
 them in others, if, in our own case, we endeavour 
 to hide them from ourselves. Sin is practically 
 the evil of our nature. It is all pervading in its 
 extent and irresistible in its dominion. It is use- 
 less, therefore, attempting to dispute the premises 
 with which the Apostle starts. 
 
 But if this be so the question that next arises 
 is, whether or not the remedy he proposes is 
 adequate to deal with the inherent evil of sin. 
 And here we may safely affirm that if it be not 
 adequate, then there is no remedy at all. If the 
 Gospel which St. John proclaims can be fairly 
 shown to be powerless to grapple with this special 
 disorder of our nature, then we need not be 
 anxious either about his own identity or about the 
 Divine authority with which his Gospel professes 
 
202 St. y ohfi s Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 to come. But forasmuch as the existence of this 
 disorder is undeniable we may reasonably face the 
 question as to how far the Gospel is adequate to 
 deal with it. And here the form that the objec- 
 tion will probably assume is this, " We do not see 
 that, even admitting the existence of sin, the 
 influence of the Gospel in exterminating it has 
 been very great. On your own confession the 
 prevalence of crime is still to be deplored. The 
 moral condition of mankind is anything but satis- 
 factory. For nearly two thousand years the 
 Gospel has been preached among men, and the 
 very complaint they are beginning to raise against 
 it is, that judged by its results it is a failure." But 
 here again the only answer we can give is that 
 the Gospel does not profess to work miracles 
 when there is not the faith requisite for believing 
 them. St. John emphatically says that " as many 
 as received him to them gave he power to become 
 the sons of God." And in this respect his testi- 
 mony is clearly at one with that of the other 
 Evangelists. Here, at least, the four are singu- 
 larly unanimous. In short, it would seem that 
 the one message which the Gospel brings is this, 
 that the point in which human nature is defective 
 on account of sin is its want of faith. It seems to 
 say that where sin has inflicted the greatest 
 damage on our nature is in the matter of belief. 
 We are at fault because we do not believe. Sin 
 has destroyed faith, and until faith is restored sin 
 
VII] S^. y^oAn's Message to the Age 203 
 
 cannot be overcome. Now if this be so it is plain 
 tliat the success of the Gospel can only be in exact 
 proportion to the belief with which it meets. 
 The want of success in other quarters cannot fairly 
 be charged against it. 
 
 Neither again can the merely partial success 
 with which it works even where it is believed ; 
 because there again the sole condition upon which 
 it can work at all is at the best but partially ful- 
 filled, and under any circumstances the success 
 which the Gospel challenges to itself is prospective 
 rather than present. It professedly reserves its ulti- 
 mate and perfect triumph to the future. We may 
 fairly ask whether it gives any reasonable prospect 
 of such final and complete success, but we cannot 
 bring it as a charge against the Gospel that such 
 success is not yet achieved. It were wiser to in- 
 vestigate the justice with which the Evangelists 
 have uniformly seized upon man's want of faith 
 as the real cause or seat of his moral and spiritual 
 disorder. Is it true that he is a sinner just 
 because he does not believe ? ^ And first, it is 
 impossible for us, constituted as we are, to pro- 
 nounce upon the relative merits of belief and 
 unbelief in the abstract otherwise than in favour 
 of belief. It is more consonant with our innate 
 ideas of right to believe in our fellow man than to 
 disbelieve in him. It is impossible not to regard 
 with feelings of abhorence the act of him who 
 
 = St. John xvi. 9. 
 
204 Si. Johns Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 would wilfully betray unsuspecting and trustful 
 innocence. Why is this, if belief does not do 
 honour, and disbelief do dishonour, to our nature ? 
 The character of him who believes in no one and 
 trusts no one, however miich of its serpent wisdom 
 it may have gathered from knowledge of and 
 contact with the world, is at least one from which 
 we instinctively recoil. And we may certainly 
 affirm the same of belief in the existence of a God. 
 It is more honourable to human nature in the 
 judgment^ — the instinctive judgment — of the vast 
 majority of mankind to believe that there is a 
 God, than it is to believe the contrary. We Icnow 
 and cannot help knowing that it is the fool 
 only who says in his heart, There is no God. But, 
 more than this, if it is consonant, as it plainly is, 
 with our best feelings to believe in the being of a 
 God, and if it is repugnant to our feelings to disbe- 
 lieve in Him, is it not also manifest that the value 
 of our faith must rise, as an essential possession of 
 our humanity, in proportion to our estimate of the 
 moral character and attributes of that Being in 
 whom our faith is placed ? Without, therefore, 
 caring to decide upon the purely theoretical and 
 abstract question whether it is better for man to 
 entertain a debased and degraded faith rather than 
 an enlightened unbelief — upon whether in the 
 abstract superstition, is better than scepticism — we 
 need not hesitate to determine that it is more in 
 accordance with the moral constitution God has 
 
VII] S^. yoAn's Message to the Age 205 
 
 given him that he should believe rather than dis- 
 believe ; as it is also clearly more advantageous for 
 his well-being in society that faith rather than the 
 absence of it should predominate. Abolish 
 mutual confidence from among men and society 
 must have an end. Trust is one of the primary 
 laws of life, and distrust its greatest bane. Com- 
 merce languishes when credit is destroyed. Con- 
 fidence is the first lesson of infancy as it is also 
 the last hope of old age. The child has no fear in 
 its mother's arms, and the man who trusts in God 
 is delivered from despair. 
 
 So far, then, it is clearly consistent with the 
 natural constitution God has given us that the 
 greater development of faith should conduce to 
 the greater development of our moral perfection. 
 And so far the Evangelists were not wrong in 
 seizing upon faith as the particular faculty which 
 needed development in man. It is clear that the 
 defection of faith in society is fatal to its well- 
 being, and that in the most perfect conditions of 
 society mutual confidence must abound. At the 
 same time, in order that such a condition may 
 exist, it is needful that faith be not subjected to 
 rude or violent assaults. Those things that 
 destroy faith must cease to exist. Treachery, 
 deceit, dishonesty, and unworthy conduct of every 
 kind which would shake confidence must come to 
 an end. And then the complete restoration of 
 faith between man and man would be the very 
 
2o6 SI Johfis Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 first indication of a restored and perfected condi- 
 tion of society. 
 
 Nor is it otherwise between man and God. It 
 is obvious tbat as long as man does not believe in 
 God there can be no communion with Him. For 
 he that cometh to God must believe that He is, 
 and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently 
 seek Him.^ And here also it is manifest that 
 faith can only be perfect in proportion to the 
 worthiness and perfection of the object of faith. 
 The degradation of soul which results from the 
 worship of base and unworthy objects is patent. 
 The spiritual development of man is in direct 
 proportion to the purity of his belief. If, there- 
 fore, it is the faculty of faith which needs develop- 
 ment in man it is essential that the highest 
 possible object should be set before him. Every 
 one must allow that there can be no higher object 
 than Truth. And if the object of man's religious 
 worship were to be identified with Truth — with 
 absolute Truth — then it is plain that the greatest 
 possible impulse would be given to the develop- 
 ment of his faculty of religious faith. For it is 
 plain, in that case, that his faith would repose 
 securely upon that which could not possibly fail 
 him. Now it is precisely such an object as this 
 that the Gospel of the fourth Evangelist pro- 
 poses. It is absolutely certain, therefore, whether 
 or not we reject his testimony, that his principles 
 =< Heb. xi. 6. 
 
VII] Si. Joh-n^s Message to the Age 207 
 
 are in strict accordance with the constitution of 
 our moral nature. Even if we do not believe his 
 message about Jesus we can see that the principles 
 upon which he based that message are sound. 
 That man should worship Truth as the very light 
 and life of his being is clearly consistent with his 
 moral nature. And if the object of his worship 
 were to have any personal existence at all, that 
 personal existence must be identical with Truth. 
 It may be undesirable that Truth as the object of 
 his worship should be personified, but if a personal 
 being was to be that object he must be identical 
 with Truth — ^he must be absolutely true. But 
 this is exactly what St. John says our Lord was. 
 There can be no question, therefore, but that on 
 first principles we are all agreed. The Evangelist 
 has proposed the very highest object to man's 
 faith and worship that can be proposed. He has 
 laid his finger on that very faculty in man, to the 
 failure and imperfection of which it seems that his 
 moral disorder may be traced. This, you will 
 observe, is an essential element in St. John's 
 witness to Christ, and it is wholly and entirely 
 independent of the truth or falsehood with which 
 he has identified the sole object of man's worship 
 with the man Christ Jesus. 
 
 Now, let us be perfectly clear on this matter 
 before we take one step further. We are pro- 
 visionally prepared to admit that the fourth 
 Evangelist may have been quite wrong in assign- 
 
2o8 S^. John's Message to the Age [Lbot 
 
 ing to Jesus the high attributes he assigned. The 
 Life and Light of men, the Truth, the Fulness of 
 Grace, and the like may have been terms not only 
 to which Jesus of Nazareth was not entitled, but 
 to which He made no claim Himself We are 
 willing to grant this provisionally. But then we 
 join issue upon the first principles which are in- 
 volved in this ascription of attributes to Jesus, and 
 which attributes are capable of being estimated 
 apart from any such ascription. And then we 
 ask. Are not these the very principles upon which 
 all adoration and worship must be based % Is it 
 not plain that if there is an Object of worship for 
 man His characteristics must be these ? Can 
 man with all his god-like faculties reasonably 
 consent to worship any being in whom such 
 attributes of Deity are not found ? And if it be 
 affirmed that the highest object of man's adora- 
 tion and worship is Truth, is it not certain that 
 this language is likewise applicable to Truth — 
 that the possession of these qualities may be pre- 
 dicated of Truth ? The one question, therefore, 
 to which we are again brought back, and which 
 alone remains, is the justice or injustice with 
 which the fourth Evangelist identified Jesus with 
 the Truth. Being, as he was, obviously right 
 upon first principles, was he right or wrong 
 here ? 
 
 Now, in answering this question, we must not 
 fail to observe that one or the other he certainly 
 
VII] Sif. Johns Message to the Age 209 
 
 was, lie could not possibly have been both. He 
 was not partly right and partly wrong. Jesus of 
 Nazareth either was or was not the Light and 
 Life of men : He either was or was not the Truth. 
 If He was not, then the pretensions which He 
 put forth, or which were put forth for Him, were 
 false, and there is no middle position. And this 
 leads us to another principle which the whole of 
 the Evangelist's teaching involves, namely, the 
 essential and inherent difference between truth 
 and falsehood. Falsehood according to him is 
 not another form of truth ; it is the mortal anta- 
 gonist of truth. If, therefore, he asserts that man's 
 highest object of worship is truth, he means not 
 truth in which falsehood is inseparably and indis- 
 tinguishably mixed, but absolute truth which 
 expels falsehood. The very existence of the terms 
 truth and falsehood as expressive of primary ideas 
 in man's mind is a witness to the existence of a 
 discriminating faculty in him which refuses to 
 confound them. And the very form of these 
 terms in our language is a witness to the simplicity 
 of truth in comparison with falsehood. For truth 
 is a primitive and simple word, but falsehood a 
 derivative. We speak, moreover, of the true and 
 the untrue, not of the false and the un-false. Truth 
 is the standard, falsehood the departure from it. 
 Truth is the primary existence, falsehood the 
 secondary and subsequent. " He was a murderer 
 from the beginning and abode not in the 
 
2IO S^. JoMs Message to the A^e [Leot 
 
 truth." * The truth existed, therefore, prior to his 
 existence who abode not in it. It was the 
 original and ancient law from which he departed. 
 Henceforth his reminiscence of the early truth 
 was that by which alone he could hope to main- 
 tain the perpetually falling cause of falsehood. 
 The realm of falsehood could only be upheld by 
 the counterfeit presentment of former trutL The 
 judicious admixture of truth with falsehood was 
 that which would warrant him the greatest 
 success among men, in whom truth was still a 
 fundamental principle of their nature, although 
 they were under the dominion of falsehood. But 
 this admixture could constitute no element in the 
 original kingdom of the truth which his defection 
 had left incorrupt. As far as our own experience 
 is concerned, we may find it hard to discriminate 
 between these rival elements, because we are 
 alternately under the influence of each ; but the 
 power of belief even now remains with us by 
 which we can realise the existence of an empire of 
 the Truth, in which falsehood can have no place. 
 And in this empire is the habitation and the 
 throne of God. This is the dwelling-place of the 
 Being whom we worship. And such the nature 
 of it must be, unless following the inevitable law 
 by which the worshipper acquires by degrees the 
 character of the being whom he worships, we 
 would never become emancipated from the domin- 
 
 * St. John viii. 44. 
 
VII] S^. yohfis Message to the Age 211 
 
 ion of falseh-ood but would remain to all eternity 
 partly false and partly true. 
 
 It would seem, then, that the conception of a 
 being whose prerogative is absolute and unmixed 
 truth may be regarded almost as a necessity of 
 our nature, and cannot in any way be held ques- 
 tionable merely because characteristic of the 
 teaching of St. John. Such a Being, then, must 
 exist if the deepest instincts of our moral nature 
 do not give us the lie. The point in which St. 
 John's teaching becomes exposed to criticism is 
 when he identifies this Being with Christ. We 
 may reasonably concede him his premises, but 
 can we grant his conclusions ? This is the very 
 question which he raises. We can see that his 
 conception of the Supreme Being must be right ; 
 He must be absolute truth which is opposed to 
 and excludes falsehood ; but how about Jesus as 
 the human manifestation of this Being ? As far 
 as His claims to be so regarded are just, He like- 
 wise must be characterised as absolute Truth, 
 This, however, is the point to be decided, but 
 nothing less than this is the, witness of St. John to 
 Christ. 
 
 We begin, therefore^ to see more clearly the 
 nature and bearing of our Lord's words, " All that 
 ever came before me are thieves and robbers." 
 The question is not even whether our Lord spake 
 these words of Himself, but whether being spoken 
 they are true of Him. Of course, we do not for a 
 
212 St Johns Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 moment maintain that because St. John, or the 
 fourth Evangelist, has recorded them they were 
 really spoken by Jesus or are true of Him, but 
 we do most emphatically say that their truth with 
 reference to Jesus is the question, and the only ques- 
 tion which the author of the Gospel raises, and 
 that it is a question, as he has put it, which is 
 capable of being decided on its own merits, and that 
 so he would have us decide it. For why ? We 
 have clear proof that pretensions of this kind were 
 really advanced by Jesus, if not in these identical 
 words, and therefore the testimony of the last 
 Evangelist is a testimony differing in form rather 
 than in substance. "We may cordially accept that 
 testimony concerning Jesus, even though for 
 critical or oth^r reasons we may not be fully per- 
 suaded, or may not be able fully to persuade 
 others, that it is the testimony of St. John ; but 
 if we believe it to be the testimony of St. John 
 we shall scarcely question whether it appUes to 
 Jesus, though indeed we may fail to see the full 
 bearing of that application. 
 
 If, then, we are right in our estimate of St. 
 John's testimony to Jesus, what is the nature and 
 value of his Message to the Age ? Its nature is 
 briefly this, that there is truth and life alone in 
 Jesus. " I am the truth." " I am the Light of 
 the world." "I am come that they might have 
 life, and that they might have it more abun- 
 dantly." These are, every one of them, state- 
 
"VII] Si. Johfis Message to the Age 213 
 
 ments which., whether made by our Lord or not, 
 whether written by St. John or not, will all be 
 disputed on the ground of their own merits ; and 
 on this ground alone we desire that they should 
 be disputed. 
 
 Now it may be doubted whether there is any 
 statement more opposed to very much of the 
 thought of the present day than that which would 
 ascribe the exclusive possession of the truth to 
 Jesus in such a way as to involve an admission of 
 the words, " All that ever came before me are 
 thieves and robbers." These words themselves 
 impose a yoke which is felt to be simply intoler- 
 able. But is it a yoke from which we can afford 
 to escape ? If Jesus was the Saviour of the world, 
 then it must be true that there is no salvation in 
 any other. He would not have laid down His 
 life and stooped to the death of the cross to be 
 in 'part a Saviour conjointly with Zoroaster or 
 with Buddha, with Confucius or Laotse. We 
 do not deny that there were fragments of truth — 
 " broken lights " — of Him in these and other 
 teachers ; we do not deny that the wisdom of their 
 wise sayings was part of the central wisdom which 
 dwelt in Him, but we do say, in common with all 
 the Evangelists, that He laid claim not only to a 
 brighter light, but also to the exclusive possession 
 of a truth which was not in them, and that this 
 Truth and- Light was in one word Himself And 
 to say this, is not to presume to pass any judg- 
 
214 Si Johns Message to the Age [Leot 
 
 ment whatever on the future destiny of these great 
 teachers, who, so far as they were wise and true, 
 doubtless had a mission from God, or of those 
 who were taught by them — it is not to say or to 
 imply that they cannot be saved — but merely to 
 affirm, what is in fact a self-evident truth, that 
 they were ignorant of Christ's salvation ; and to 
 say further, that those who, having had tMs sal- 
 vation offered to them reject it, are not now saved, 
 and cannot be saved so long as they reject it. 
 
 Now this comes before the men of our own day 
 and generation as a hard saying which they will 
 not hear, but it is most unquestionably involved 
 in the testimony of St. John to Christ, and not 
 only in the testimony of St. John but likewise of 
 all the Evangelists, and, as far as we know any- 
 thing at all_ about it, in the testimony of our Lord 
 Himself. That the bright shining of the light of 
 day is scattered alternately over half the world is 
 no argument against, but on the contrary the 
 direct consequence of the centralisation of that 
 light in the body of the sun. The diffusion of 
 light points us to its original source in one centre. 
 The sun's light and heat penetrate into ten thou- 
 sand places where he cannot be seen, but if we 
 would enjoy to their fullest extent that light and 
 heat we must place ourselves under the direct 
 influence of his beams ; and we must gather 
 those beams in the prism or the lens if we would 
 
VII] S^, jfohfCs Message to the Age 215 
 
 have certain special results produced by them. In 
 like manner, we may admit the greatest possible 
 diffusion of the light of truth among the religions 
 and philosophies of the ancient world consistently 
 with an acknowledgment of Christ as the one 
 central source of light. Whatever light they had 
 may have been unconsciously derived from Him, 
 and if He was the true light which lighteth every 
 man, it could have had no other origin. But the 
 admission of this truth to the fullest extent is 
 by no means inconsistent with the confession of 
 another, but rather suggestive of it, that it is only 
 by direct intercourse with this original source of 
 light that we can become subject to its influence, 
 or be penetrated by its warmth. Nay more, it 
 would be just the same whatever or wherever the 
 central light might be. Unless it is a fact, which 
 the analogy of nature forbids, that the light of 
 truth is only like the diffusion of a subtle and 
 luminous vapour which has no central source, it 
 is obvious that the more direct our relation to the 
 centre, the more complete our possession of the 
 light. The question then again must turn upon 
 whether or not Christ is the central source of 
 light. If He is, then all that has been said of 
 Him or that He says of Himself is true. And all 
 that ever came before Him, however bright or 
 true their light, can only be regarded as thieves 
 and robbers, in proportion as they or their fol- 
 
2i6 S^. yoAn's Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 lowers have refused to ascribe their light to Him, 
 and to recognise in Him the true source from 
 whence it flowed. 
 
 . And as we can clearly see for ourselves not only 
 that, if what Jesus says of Himself is true, this is 
 a consequence which must necessarily follow ; but 
 also that, if there is any central source of truth at 
 all, the like consequence must follow with refer- 
 ence to that source, be it what or where it may ; 
 so we cannot fail to perceive that the value of this 
 message of the fourth Evangelist turns and turns 
 only upon our willingness to identify Jesus with 
 this central source of truth. That is to say, our 
 own individual possession of the truth, according 
 to this writer, depends upon, and is proportionate 
 to, our readiness to accept Jesus as the appointed 
 channel through whom we receive it. It is not 
 that other men are less true than ourselves, or are 
 debarred from access to those sources of truth 
 which are open to all who seek them truly ; but 
 that, by accepting Jesus as the one Person in 
 whom alone truth absolute dwells, we are brought 
 into a line with that particular point towards 
 which all the manifold rays of truth converge, 
 and in a line with which that convergence can be 
 alone perceived. Thus, according to St. John, 
 the believer in Jesus is a man of the widest pos- 
 sible sympathies, inasmuch as he can thankfully 
 recognise truth, wherever it may be found, though 
 at the same time he is bound, by his allegiance to 
 
VII] Si. Johfis Message to the Age 2 1 7 
 
 his Master, to hail it as an emanation from His 
 original light, and to trace it back to him. There 
 the light becomes intensified and brighter than it 
 can be when regarded as having a substantive 
 existence of its own underived from any source. 
 
 St. John's message to the age, then, is simply 
 this, that whereas men now-a-days would make 
 Christ to be but as one light among many, he de- 
 clares Him to be the central light of all. Now, 
 from the very nature of the case, this is a state- 
 ment which does not admit of direct demonstrative 
 proof. Till the sun was acknowledged as the 
 centre of our system no calculations could be cor- 
 rect. The fundamental error which made the 
 earth the centre threw them all into confusion. 
 When the sun was taken as the centre, all were 
 rectified. It is not otherwise with Christ ; we 
 must first take Him for the central light, if it be 
 but tentatively, then we shall discover clear and 
 palpable proof that He is so. He will bring all 
 our calculations into order. Then the light will 
 shine in the darkness and dispel the darkness, 
 which before had comprehended it not. But this 
 is obviously a result which can only be perceived 
 where it is accepted. We cannot deny the truth 
 of the result and yet perceive it. The utmost we 
 can promise is a result commensurate with that 
 which the Evangelist has recorded. " As many 
 as received him, to them gave he power to become 
 the sons of God, even to them that believe on 
 
2 1 8 Si. Joh'ds Message to the Age [Leot 
 
 his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of 
 the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but 
 of God." This is the witness of St. John to 
 Christ, but we cannot fail to observe that it begs 
 the whole question at issue between the adver- 
 sary and ourselves. 
 
 Our position, then, is simply this. The fourth 
 Evangelist states a truth which he knows and has 
 found to be true. It is a truth, he is persuaded, 
 which will always verify itself What it needs 
 is repetition rather than corroboration. The clear, 
 emphatic, enunciation of the truth, backed with 
 the evidence of entire conviction, may be trusted 
 to achieve its own results. If that will not 
 achieve them, we may rest assured that argument 
 will be powerless to do so. Every man, no mat- 
 ter who he is, who believes in Jesus as the fourth 
 Evangelist believed in Him, is, like that Evan- 
 gelist, a witness to Jesus, whom it is not possible 
 to set aside. His logic may be at fault, his 
 rhetoric feeble, his reasoning inconclusive, but 
 his faith is simple, clear, and strong ; and as 
 such, it affords its own evidence to men. The 
 bodily presence of Jesus, as the world knows Him 
 in the Gospel history, so obscure in its origin, 
 and so contradictory, as some would have us be- 
 lieve, in its narrative, may be weak, and His speech 
 contemptible ; but every man who, with the whole 
 heart, believes in Jesus, is a living epistle from 
 that master-mind at once weighty and powerful. 
 
VI I J Si. Johtis Message to the Age 219 
 
 and known and read of all men. And as the 
 work proclaims the workman, so does every Chris- 
 tian proclaim Christ ; for he is a living witness 
 to those identical truths which Paul and John 
 proclaimed, and which are substantially the same 
 in their intrinsic essence, however great and mani- 
 fest their superficial variations. 
 
 We know full well, brethren, that an apology 
 may be demanded of us for the utterance of sen- 
 timents such as these in this place, and from 
 this foundation, but we are persuaded that, after 
 all, they are neither inopportune in time nor in- 
 appropriate in place, and we are quite sure that 
 the memory of Boyle is honoured rather than dis- 
 honoured by such a method of dealing with the 
 cause of that Master whom he served. We may 
 concede point after point in argument, and remove 
 difficulty after difficulty, but sooner or later the 
 only questions we shall have to answer will be 
 these. Whether or not we will have this man to 
 reiffn over us % Whether or not He is the truth of 
 truths 1 Whether or not He is the light of lights 1 
 Whether or not He is that light of the world, 
 which whosoever foUoweth shall not walk in 
 darkness, but shall have the light of life ? 
 
 But it may be said. Can you seriously ask us to 
 believe that Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the 
 carpenter, was really the greatest of all philoso- 
 phers, the wisest of all sages ; nay, more, that He 
 was this to such a degree as to be virtually the 
 
2 20 ,5"/. yohn's Message to the Age [Leot 
 
 only philosopher and the only sage ? Can you 
 reasonably maintain that salvation is tg be hoped 
 for only by those who acknowledge Him to be this, 
 while for the great body of mankind, who are 
 either ignorant of Him or who are unable in their 
 consciences thus to acknowledge Him, there is 
 nothing promised but the terrific alternative of 
 damnation 1 Is this the Gospel which you have 
 to preach to men, and can you verily persuade 
 yourself that it is a Gospel of the grace of God, 
 of that compassionate and all-merciful God whom 
 Jesus Himself taught us to call Father % 
 
 No, my brethren, to state the question thus is 
 to overstate it. This is emphatically not St. 
 John's message to the age. While we admit that 
 belief in Jesus has not only the promise of this 
 life, but also of that which is to come — while it is 
 nothing less than eternal life which the believer 
 finds in Jesus — ^yet we must bear in mind that it 
 is with direct reference to the present life and to 
 the present moment of this life that His offer of 
 salvation is made. He says virtually, " You are 
 helpless and lifeless now : come to me and I will 
 give you life — eternal life which I alone can give. 
 It is only by coming to me that you can receive 
 it ; but come to me and you shall have it, for he 
 that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he 
 that believeth on me shall never thirst." If there 
 is no answer in the consciousness to this condition 
 of utter helplessness — to this want of life — then 
 
VII] Si. Johi^s Message to the Age 221 
 
 it is obvious that Christ's offer^ however true and 
 just, can only fall powerless on the soul, but it 
 does not follow that it may not be just and true, 
 although it does so fall : it does not follow but 
 that man's condition without Christ may be as 
 helpless and lifeless as He says it is, and that it 
 must continue so as long as he deliberately stands 
 apart from Christ. 
 
 Again, the person of the historic Christ is not 
 to be placed higher or lower in the scale of virtue 
 or philosophic excellence as we might place 
 Socrates or Plato, Buddha or Muhammad. It is 
 not by so placing it that we believe or disbelieve 
 in Jesus. But the person of the historic Christ is 
 the abiding reminiscence in time of One who is 
 from everlasting to everlasting — ^the memorial left 
 in human history of One who is invisible but who 
 is alive for evermore. It is not that we predicate 
 the existence of a certain man and then say that 
 this man was Divine — was the Son of God — was 
 the Deity Himself; but we say to every man. 
 There is that in you which witnesses to God, to 
 your estrangement from God ; but which never- 
 theless desires to know God, which longs for the 
 completeness which is in God and not in yourself, 
 and which so far yearns after God and is capable 
 of hailing with gratitude any authentic message 
 which may come from God ; and we say that the 
 image of Himself left by Christ on the plastic 
 memory of the world is at once such as to do 
 
2 22 Si Johris Message to the Age [Lect 
 
 justice to the highest conceptions we can forni of 
 God, and is also pre-eminently calculated to satisfy- 
 to the full the deepest yearnings of our nature 
 after God, and to allay the most gnawing wants 
 of the human heart ; and that if there is such a 
 God as the character of Christ, supposing it to be 
 Divine, would warrant us in believing that there 
 is, then we have in that God a Father to whom we 
 can return with penitence and love, and then we 
 have in Christ and the character of Christ that 
 permanent assurance, that continual pledge, of 
 the unchanging nature of God, which, when 
 accepted, cannot fail to bring peace, health, and 
 satisfaction, as well as exuberant gratitude and joy 
 to the believing soul. 
 
 And here it must be remembered that the 
 insinuation can not be thrown out that the wish 
 was father to the thought, that the instinctive 
 desire after such a God as this has created the 
 supposed realisation of it ; because then we shall 
 have all the facts of history against us. The sup- 
 posed character of Christ is beyond all question 
 the result of an actual human life lived among 
 men. That character is unique in the annals of 
 the world. It is attributed to no one else, and 
 there is no reason, a priori, why it should be 
 attributed to Christ, or why, if fictitious, it should 
 not be attributed to others besides Christ ; but 
 being attributed as it is to Christ, and to Christ 
 alone, and being so attributed to Him that it can 
 
VII] S^. Johns Message to the Age 223 
 
 nevermore be dissociated from Him, we are simply- 
 constrained to exclaim with Peter, " Lord, to whom 
 shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life, 
 and we believe and are sure that thou art that 
 Christ the Son of the living God," and then we 
 can faintly understand, but fully and entirely be- 
 lieve, the wisdom of His own words, " Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. 
 All that ever came before me are thieves and 
 robbers : but the sheep did not hear them. I am 
 the door : by me if any man enter in, he shall be 
 saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. 
 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, 
 and to destroy : I am come that they might have 
 life, and that they might have it more abun- 
 dantly." 
 
LECTURE VIII 
 
 ST. John's place in holy scripture 
 
 St. John v. 39 
 
 " Search the Scrvptwres; for in them ye thmk ye ha/oe eternal Ufe, and 
 they a/re they which testify of me.'' 
 
 THERE can be no doubt that one of the great 
 difficulties experienced by thoughtful men in 
 the present day when contemplating the Gospel 
 record of the Ufe of Christ arises from this circum- 
 stance, that they labour to recall the past and in- 
 vest it with the life it must have had when present, 
 rather than take the record of the past as a wit- 
 ness to the living present, and a means of holding 
 intercourse with Him who ever is, and is eternally 
 the same. And yet this is the way in which pre- 
 eminently the fourth Evangelist presents Christ, 
 not so much or solely as a person who once was, 
 but as a being who is everlastingly the Life. And 
 there can be no question but that when Christ is 
 thus apprehended, any difficulties that may arise 
 in studying the human record of His Life, pro- 
 vided they be not insuperable in their very 
 
VIII] St. Johns Place in Holy Scripture 225 
 
 nature, must sink into a position of comparative 
 unimportance. If we admit human agency at all 
 in the composition of the Gospels, it is hardly 
 possible to exclude certain elements of error, and 
 it is obvious that this might enter probably to a 
 much greater extent than it can be shown to have 
 done, without invalidating the general character 
 of the narrative. And it is surely far more rea- 
 sonable to suppose that such may have been the 
 case than it is to insist upon the mechanical opera- 
 tion of a supernatural Power sufficient to preserve 
 the records which were manifestly and necessarily 
 the work of men from the addition of any par- 
 ticle of error, and from any traces of 'divergence. 
 Judging them merely as human records of a 
 human life, it would not be reasonable to reject 
 the Gospels on account of the discrepances they 
 contain. These discrepances are certainly not 
 greater than, probably not so great as, those 
 which would inevitably be found in any four 
 separate narratives of the same events. Suppos- 
 ing, therefore, the truth of our Lord's human 
 existence, there is nothing in the mere diver- 
 gences of the records to invalidate it as a fact. 
 It is conceivable that much greater divergences 
 might have existed without the truth of it being 
 invalidated. Nay, it would not be reasonable to 
 demand, in four independent writers narrating 
 the same events, four absolutely unvarying re- 
 cords, or four records which presented no con- 
 
2 26 6"/. Joh'fis Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 siderable discrepances. If the Gospels are in 
 any sense human productions, they must neces- 
 sarily vary, perhaps even err, in minor and 
 unimportant points. This is not to say that the 
 Evangelists actually have erred, but that it is 
 conceivable they might have erred without in- 
 validating their testimony. 
 
 Now in the present lecture we shall endeavour 
 to show that the writings of St. John, and 
 notably so the Gospel which may be taken as 
 representing them, have a certain definite position 
 in the New Testament and in Holy Scripture 
 generally — a position which can alone be fairly 
 estimated by supposing them omitted from the 
 cycle of the canon. "What the Old Testament 
 would be without the New, that the New 
 Testament would be without the writings of St. 
 John. 
 
 It is impossible not to see that there is a 
 certain supplemental relation borne by the New 
 Testament to the Old — ^that for some reason or 
 other there is a subtle bond between the two which 
 can be discovered between either and no other 
 writings whatsoever. It is certain that but for 
 the existence of the Old Testament the New 
 could never have been written ; yea, more, that 
 Christianity as it appeared could never have 
 originated. And this is a statement quite inde- 
 pendent of any arbitrary definition we may assign 
 to the canon. For without the Old Testament 
 
VIII] S^. Johns Place in Holy Scripture 227 
 
 not one of the Gospels, nor the Acts of the 
 Apostles, nor one of the Epistles, nor the Apoca- 
 lypse, could have been written, or even fabricated, 
 supposing we chose to say that any or all are 
 fabrications. The relation, therefore, between the 
 New Testament and the Old is a fact which can- 
 not be controverted — a fact quite irrespective of 
 any ideal unity with which we may be in the 
 habit of investing the later Scriptures. And this 
 relation is a phenomenon which cannot be pro- 
 duced at will by the substitution of any other 
 writings for those of the New Testament. We 
 may take, if we please, the early Christian litera- 
 ture of the first two centuries, and though it is 
 equally true of this that it could not have existed 
 without the Old Testament, yet it is no less 
 obvious that it could not have existed without the 
 New ; as it is also confessedly later than almost 
 all the books comprised in the New, The exist- 
 ence of this literature, as a whole, as well as in 
 detail, pre-supposes the existence of the New 
 Testament ; it cannot, therefore, take the place of 
 the New Testament in the relation which that 
 bears to the Old. 
 
 Now these are statements which it is wholly 
 impossible to controvert. We may deny, as the 
 Jews deny, that the New Testament is the fulfil- 
 ment of the Old, but it is not possible to deny 
 the relation of cause and efiect which subsists 
 between the Old Testament and the New. And 
 
2 28 ,5"/. Johns Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 therefore, if we choose to regard the Old. Testa- 
 ment apart from the New, we cannot do so 
 without ignoring the relation between cause and 
 effect, nor without looking at a work alone and by 
 itself with no reference whatever to another work 
 which cannot but be regarded as a most remark- 
 able product of that earlier work. Whatever we 
 may think of the relation between the Old Testa- 
 ment and the New, the fact that it subsists is one 
 that cannot be denied, and it is a fact, moreover, 
 which has no parallel in the literature of the 
 world. Take away, therefore, the New Testament 
 from the Old, and you have a cause left without 
 an effect, or rather you have an effect, and a most 
 remarkable effect, which can only be traced to a 
 particular cause, while you refuse to regard the 
 cause in its relation to that effect. 
 
 Now the relation of St. John's writings to the 
 other books of the New Testament generally is 
 not very different from the relation which subsists 
 between the Old Testament and the New. To a 
 certain extent it is the relation of cause and effect. 
 We may safely say that the fourth Gospel could 
 not have been written if the materials of the other 
 three had not existed. This is not to pronounce 
 upon their relative date, but simply to affirm that 
 the germ of the fourth Gospel is to be found in 
 the substance of the other three, and that if there 
 had not been in the early consciousness of Christ- 
 endom that which was expressed and recorded in 
 
VIII] St. yohns Place in Holy Scripture 229 
 
 the synoptical Gospels the very existence of the 
 fourth would have been an impossibility. To a 
 certain extent it is possible to conceive of a 
 mythical origin for the first three Gospels, but a 
 mythical origin for the fourth without the other 
 three is inconceivable. The fourth Gospel repre- 
 sents a development of an earlier idea. It could 
 not itself have formed the basis of that idea which 
 the other Gospels express. So far, then, the 
 relation between the fourth Gospel and the others 
 is illustrated by the relation between effect and 
 cause. 
 
 And yet, on the other hand, it is obvious that 
 this relationship does not subsist to the same 
 degree between the first tliree Gospels and the 
 last as between the Old Testament and the New. 
 The illustration holds good, but it is more appli- 
 cable in the former than the latter instance. In 
 the latter instance the eflfect is one which might 
 have been foreseen — it was inevitable : in the 
 former it was not so. It was natural that a 
 history such as that which the three first Evan- 
 gelists have preserved should generate an idea 
 like that embodied in the work of the fourth, but 
 no one could have said beforehand that after an 
 interval of nearly five centuries the Old Testament 
 should result in such a production as the New — 
 should become the efficient cause of a supplement 
 so utterly unlike, and yet so entirely dependent 
 on, it. 
 
230 S^. Johris Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 But in proportion as this relationship of cause 
 and effect between the Old and Nfew Testaments is 
 admitted, it will also be difficult to deny that our 
 interpretation of the Old must be influenced by 
 our estimate of the New. In proportion as the 
 light of the New Testament is acknowledged it 
 must be allowed to reflect backward on the Old. 
 It is not possible for us as Christians, on the 
 platform of the New Testament, to reject its aid 
 in our interpretation of the Old. If the actual 
 relationship between them, as cannot be denied, 
 is one of cause and efiect, we can hardly 
 escape from determining whether or not the effect 
 was a legitimate and a right one. And, if it is, 
 then we cannot but regard the Old Testament in 
 its relation to that effect. So neither can we fail 
 to estimate the writings of the New Testament in 
 relation to the light which is shed upon them by 
 those of the fourth Evangelist, more especially if 
 we accept that light as genuine and true — not as 
 delusive and misguiding. The shining of that 
 light, if it be not erroneous, must necessarily have 
 its influence and effect upon the view we take of 
 those writings, and on our opinion of the facts 
 related in the Gospels. 
 
 Nor is such a consequence unnatural or unjust. 
 We all know what a different aspect the same 
 landscape assumes according as we behold it, on a 
 cloudy day or in bright and glowing sunshine ; 
 according as we view it before sunrise, in the still 
 
VIII] S^. yohris Place in Holy Scripture 231 
 
 moments of sultry noontide, or when the heat is 
 over in the tranquil calm of the dewy evening. 
 Certain it is that when the sun is high and the 
 light strongest we shall discover many points 
 which before we could not discern, and it would 
 be something more than unreasonable to overlook 
 or to disregard these points on the ground that 
 they were only visible in the sunshine. The 
 knowledge of their existence so revealed would 
 naturally and justly influence our notion of the 
 landscape as a whole. Now this illustration fairly 
 represents what the influence of the writings of 
 St. John must be if the light they shed is a true 
 and not an artificial or fictitious light ; that is to 
 say, if the view they give us of the life and char- 
 acter of Christ is a true and correct view. 
 
 And this view may be perfectly correct and 
 true even though much of the language be the 
 writer's own, and even though some of the inci- 
 dents he records may be imaginary rather than 
 strictly historical ; but if it is correct, it must have 
 a reflex bearing on what the other Evangelists 
 have related. It cannot indeed be allowed mate- 
 rially to alter their testimony, but it may set what 
 they have written in another and a stronger, 
 though for all that in a perfectly natural and in- 
 telligible light. And, moreover, if that is the 
 case, these writings of St. John must also be 
 allowed to be not without their corresponding 
 influence on the writings of the Old Testament 
 
232 Si. Johns Place in Holy Scripture [Leot 
 
 itself. For, as the New Testament has a reflex 
 influence on the Old, and as they must influence 
 the New, so also must the effect of their influence 
 be felt indirectly on the Old. Now, this is in the 
 way of additional light brought in, which we can 
 refuse or not as we please, but which does produce 
 real and manifest results. 
 
 What, then, are these results ? First, the 
 Apostle's conception of a mortal man, who is also 
 God, must be allowed to throw very great light 
 not only on much of the language, but also on 
 some of the incidents of the Old Testament, as it 
 cannot fail to clear up, as nothing else can, many 
 of the sayings ascribed to Christ by the synoptical 
 Evangelists. For instance, it is a conspicuous 
 feature in the writings of the prophets that they 
 speak alternately, and very often in the same sen- 
 tence, now in their own person and now in the 
 person of God. Such a phenomenon is indeed to 
 be explained on the assumption of unqualified 
 audacity on the part of the prophets, by which 
 they did not shrink from identifying themselves 
 with the person of the Most High, and from 
 claiming for their own spontaneous utterances the 
 solemnity and authority of a Divine announce- 
 ment ; but it may well be doubted whether this is 
 a theory that is at all tenable, or whether it can 
 be reconciled with many obvious features of the 
 prophetic office ; and however it may be explained, 
 it is at least certain that it becomes susceptible of 
 
VIII] S^. yohns Place in Holy Scripture 233 
 
 the very fullest explanation when regarded in 
 connection with the clear testimony of St. John. 
 If a mortal man ever was God, and was in the 
 beginning with God, then we can at once under- 
 stand the propriety with which He whom no man 
 hath seen, nor can see in His ultimate Divine 
 essence, can be said to have appeared to the 
 patriarchs and to the elders under the old dispen- 
 sation. Then, we can understand the ambiguity 
 with which the narrative records certain angel 
 visits, while it leaves us in doubt as to who these 
 angels were, because of the mysterious language 
 in which it speaks of them — then we can under- 
 stand how David and the Psalmists of various 
 ages appropriated to themselves and their own 
 circumstances words expressive of feelings, and 
 incidents even, which can scarcely have been 
 realised in them — then we can understand the 
 many passages throughout the Old Testament 
 which are so startling in the terms employed, that 
 critics have sought to excuse or to condemn them 
 by an epithet which may be considered as invented 
 expressly for the purpose, and have called them 
 anthropomorphic — then we can at least partially 
 understand the sudden assumption and divestment 
 of human or Divine personality in the fervid 
 rhetoric of the prophets ; — and then finally we 
 can understand also how much of the Mosaic 
 ceremonial could at once come with Divine autho- 
 rity, even while the things enjoined were nothing 
 
2 34 '^^- Johris Place in Holy Scripture [Leot 
 
 better than carnal ordinances imposed upon a car- 
 nal and stiff-necked people until the time of refor- 
 mation. It were in the highest degree absurd and 
 contradictory to affirm that if St. John's concep- 
 tion of a mortal man who was also God were 
 true in fact, and that His existence was an eternal 
 existence, specially manifested under the condi- 
 tions of mortality and time, such a conception 
 would not throw great light upon phenomena like 
 these, and light far superior to any which could be 
 brought to bear upon them from any other quarter. 
 We must decide, therefore, whether there is evi- 
 dence sufficient to warrant us in rejecting such 
 light as this, when the only consequence can be, 
 to leave ourselves, comparatively speaking, in 
 total darkness 1 May not light which so con- 
 spicuously " doth make manifest," according to 
 the Apostle's affirmation, itself be really "light ?" 
 May not the very clearness and lucidity of that 
 which it reveals be taken in evidence of the nature 
 and reality of the light ? 
 
 But, again, there is another feature in St. John's 
 conception of Jesus of which we must also take 
 account, the feature, namely, which represents 
 Him as that Man who is the Root of every man. 
 St. Peter tells us expressly that the spirit of Christ 
 dwelt in the prophets — that it " testified before 
 hand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that 
 should follow ;" but this statement becomes even 
 more luminous and intelligible when we learn that 
 
VIII] S^. JohrHs Place in Holy Scriplure 235 
 
 the mortal man who was also God was none other 
 than that Light which lighteth every man, and to 
 be identified with that Wisdom whom the Lord 
 possessed in the beginning before His works of 
 old, whose delights were ever with the sons of 
 men. For then we can understand how patriarchs 
 and psalmists and prophets, by virtue of their 
 closer union with the True Man, who is the 
 Root of every man, could speak in language the 
 meaning of which would only fully be revealed 
 when the True Man Himself was revealed. Then, 
 if the Christian consciousness really was in David, 
 we can understand how he, by reason of it, could 
 say in words which cannot have been true of him- 
 self, " They parted my garments among them, 
 and upon my vesture did they cast lots." ^ Then 
 we can understand how the same consciousness, 
 speaking by Zechariah, could say, " They weighed 
 for my price thirty pieces of silver" — " a goodly 
 price that I was prized at of them," ^ and 
 "they shall look upon me whom they have 
 pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one 
 mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitter- 
 ness for him as one that is in bitterness for his 
 first-^born."^ Then we can understand how the 
 same consciousness, speaking by the prophet 
 Micah, could distinctly declare, " They shall 
 smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the 
 cheek."^ It is beyond all controversy that the 
 
 1 Ps. xxii. 18. 2 Zech. xi. 12, 13. ^ Zech. xii. 10. « Micah v. i. 
 
236 S^. Johns Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 application of these and many like words to cir- 
 cumstances in tlie life and death, of that Man 
 who was the, Christ — ^the root and foundation of 
 humanity as the Son of Man — gives a meaning 
 and life to them which no other known or con- 
 ceivable interpretation can give. This is the as- 
 pect they assume when seen beneath the light. 
 Their meaning becomes feeble and attenuated, 
 meagre and diluted, if we refer them to other 
 circumstances, more especially when these circum- 
 stances must be imagined, because they are not 
 known. Let us be clearly understood. We do 
 not say that this is their meaning, but only, that 
 if it were their meaning, they would be more 
 intelligible than they can otherwise be shown to 
 be. The writers of the New Testament do not 
 hesitate to declare that this is their meaning. 
 The Gospel of St. John sets before us such a con- 
 ception of Christ, that we are enabled by it, at 
 least partially, to understand how it was that men 
 speaking many centuries before should have used 
 language which at any rate appeared to anticipate 
 the more striking features of Christ's life. If He 
 being the true Light which lighteth every man — 
 that light which, in proportion as a man is de- 
 voted to the truthj and. true to himself, he per- 
 ceives and recognises — dwelt pre-eminently in 
 certain favoured individiials of the stock of Abra- 
 ham, and spoke of Himself by them — ^we can 
 well understand that their language would at times 
 
VIII] SA Johns Place in Holy Scripture 237 
 
 bear witness to Him in terms inapplicable to them 
 — that their tongue, as the pen of a ready writer, 
 would discover and unfold the good matter of 
 which their heart was inditing. This, to say the 
 least, brings us nearer to the process by which we 
 can conceive that holy men of old, without^ losing 
 their true and proper individuality, as respon- 
 sible beings, spake as they were moved by the 
 Holy Ghost ; for, under His influence they were 
 so elevated out of and above themselves, that 
 their independent personal consciousness was 
 merged in the consciousness of the Christ in 
 them ; the natural, for the time, was wholly 
 subordinated to thp spiritual, and, " out of the 
 abundance of the heart" of God, with which 
 they were at one, their " mouth spake." 
 
 The same fact, moreover, which points us to 
 Christ as the root of every man, enables us to 
 understand how no religion of the world has 
 ever been without some elements of truth ; nay 
 more, May we not say that it is impossible to con- 
 ceive of any living man so given over to the spirit 
 of lies as to be entirely devoid of truth 1 The 
 real foundation of our being is Christ, who was 
 manifested as the truth. In a personal union 
 with Him we become true ; we enter into the 
 Light of Truth. Far as we may wander in our 
 search after, and widely as we may differ in our 
 apprehension of the truth, it is still the truth only 
 for which we long. No man could deliberately 
 
238 Sif. Johns Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 choose a lie knowing it to be one. "We are under 
 obligations to the truth which we cannot disown. 
 "We are bound to it by ties which we cannot 
 wholly sever. Hence in the old religions of the 
 world, and the old philosophers of Greece and 
 Rome^ we meet with scintillations and corusca- 
 tions of the truth which at times it may be we are 
 at a loss to estimate in comparison with the Light 
 of Christ.^ The only questions which can fairly 
 arise are these : Is there or is there not some 
 one person in whom these various rays of truth 
 converge — in whom the separate fragments com- 
 bine to form a whole 1 Is it likely that such a 
 person has ever been seen upon earth moving 
 among men ? Is there any character recorded in 
 history to whom such a function may fairly be 
 ascribed ? Is there more than one for whom we 
 can advance the claim? Is it not a fact that if 
 there is any one, the Christ of the Evangelists, the 
 Jesus of St. John, can alone be He ? We may 
 
 ^ I may perhaps be allowed to remark here that I am acquainted 
 with no one book of the ancient world so pregnant with sentiments 
 of practical truth and wisdom, and so conspicuous at times for its 
 correspondence with the utterances of the Higher Wisdom of the 
 Gospel, as the " Hitopadesa." — Cf. e.g., " The moon does not with- 
 draw her light from the dwelling of the outcast," ("Hit. i. p. 19. 
 Edit. Sohlegel and Lassen), with "He maketh his sun to rise on 
 the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the 
 unjust." — St. Matt. v. 45, &c. &c. The jewels, indeed, are both 
 numerous and brilliant, though there is yet room to say, si sic 
 omnia. The date of the "Hitopadesa" is about the 7th or 8th 
 century of our era. 
 
VIII] S^. Johns Place in Holy Scripture 239 
 
 safely say there is no one miracle related by the 
 synoptists as wrought by Christ, no one parable 
 spoken by Him, which does not receive additional 
 significance and light from being viewed in rela- 
 tion to the, Johannine idea of Christ as the truth 
 in every man. 
 
 Now it cannot for a moment be alleged that 
 this idea was consciously added by the writer for 
 the purpose of affording this additional illustra- 
 tion. We believe he wrote to supplement the 
 narratives of the other Evangelists, but not to 
 supplement them in this way. The kind of 
 illustration given is such as arises casually from 
 the juxta-position of his narrative with theirs. 
 The contribution is unintentional and undesigned, 
 but it is one which, being rendered, it is impos- 
 sible to do without. It is the only key which 
 can unlock the innermost casket containing the 
 treasures of the highest value. And the same is 
 true whether or not the fourth Gospel was the 
 work of St. John, whether it was written in the 
 second century or the first. The idea is one 
 which, having been projected, we cannot surren- 
 der without a loss. And as we may fairly say that 
 the light reflected backwards by the New Testa- 
 ment on the Old is a valid argument for the 
 truth of the meaning which it then assumes, so in 
 like manner we may say that the light which is 
 shed upon the whole of Scripture by the Johan- 
 nine conception of Christ, regarding it merely as 
 
240 Si Johfis Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 a conception, is so great as to warrant the infer- 
 ence that after all it may be the true one. With 
 it the significance of all that has gone before is 
 heightened to a tenfold degree, without it, we 
 may truly say, it is pointless and incomplete. But 
 as far as I am aware, the most reckless criticism 
 has never dared to insinuate that the writer of 
 the fourth Gospel whoever he was, conceived the 
 design of thus putting the coping-stone to the 
 edifice of Holy Scripture. For to do so would be 
 suicidal ; it would imply an admission of a unity 
 which is not admitted, and would not account for 
 the construction of the edifice which was found to 
 want, and yet was capable of bearing such a coping- 
 stone. Besides, the entire absence of any such 
 allusion in the writings of St. John to the other 
 books of Scripture as would imply a design of this 
 kind, is conclusive against the notion. 
 
 Again, St. John's conception of Jesus as the 
 Life — ^the eternal Life — of man is one which can- 
 not fail to influence our intelligence of the whole 
 of Scripture. Read in the light of it, what a 
 different aspect do the eschatological statements 
 of the other Evangelists assume. Speaking as a 
 man among men. Himself subject to the condi- 
 tions of time, it is impossible but that our Lord 
 must have spoken of His coming again in the 
 way He is said to have done ; and having so 
 spoken it is equally impossible but that He should 
 have been misunderstood as He seems to have 
 
VI 1,1] S^. yohris Place in Holy Scripture 241 
 
 been. But, if He really was that very eternal 
 Being wlio had life in Himself and was the Life, 
 it is no less plain that His words must be inter- 
 preted by the standard of His own eternal exist- 
 ence. And, interpreted by this standard, it is 
 hardly possible to conceive the period of human 
 history at which the coming of Christ may not 
 still be future. All we know is that He is now 
 in the fulness of His risen and ascended life, and 
 that He is still to come ; but may it not be the same 
 at a period of ten thousand years from the present 
 time ? Supposing the present constitution of 
 things to be still existing it cannot be otherwise. 
 It is the eternal present which is the abode of 
 Christ, and from that abode He is ever promising 
 to come and ever coming ; but the times and the 
 seasons, though all-important to us, are of no 
 importance 'to Him. He was once, and He spoke 
 then of a "last day," but what He was once He is 
 now ; to Him the lapse of time between the 
 present and the past, and that time which shall 
 yet elapse between the final future and the 
 present, is as nothing. The ages roll by, and 
 their flight is not unmarked by mortal man, but 
 to Hiin their passage is only like the passage of 
 summer clouds across the sun which leave his 
 brightness unobscured, his glory undiminished. 
 If He truly is, and we are truly with Him, then 
 He still says to us as He said to His own of .old, 
 "A little while and ye shall not see me, and 
 
242 St Johiis Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 again a little while and ye shall see me, because I 
 go to the Father." We may still ask, as some of 
 His disciples asked among themselves, " What is 
 this that he saith unto us ? " and the only answer 
 to be given is, "We cannot tell what he saith." 
 But if He is Himself the very eternal Life it can- 
 not be otherwise. That it is as it is can at once 
 be explained on this supposition, and it is capable 
 of explanation on no other. But had the writer 
 of the fourth Gospel the very smallest conception 
 that he was writing for a future of nearly two 
 thousand years ? Or did he really intend to furnish 
 what was essentially the solution of questions 
 which should then be asked ? At any rate, would 
 not the fact of his having done so tend to furnish 
 something like conclusive evidence that his solu- 
 tion was the true one ? For the same teaching, 
 be it observed, would not only serve to explain 
 the long delay with which the saints of old waited 
 for the promises — how from the time when 
 Abraham rejoiced to see His day until the dawn- 
 ing of it on the world was so many weary cen- 
 turies — how, when the Old Testament dispensa- 
 tion was drawing to a close, the prophet Haggai 
 could affirm, "It is a little while . . .- and the 
 desire of all nations shall come," ^ and the last of 
 
 * Haggai ii. 6, 7. I retain this translation, notwithstanding 
 certain recent attacks thereupon in Convocation and out of it, 
 simply because I believe it to be the right one and that which is 
 alone "consistent with the context. The passage in ver. 6, 7, 8, and 
 9 is one prophecy ; it will hardly be denied that ver. 9 tnMkst be 
 
VIII] S^. yohfis Place in Holy Scripture 243 
 
 the prophets could say, ''The Lord whom ye seek 
 shall suddenly come to his temple,"^ — but also 
 help in some degree to reconcile the demands of 
 science for inconceivable epochs of past time with 
 the creative days of Genesis and the Decalogue ; 
 for what is eternity to man is only as time to God, 
 and when God speaks of eternity to man He can 
 only do so in human language, which is the lan- 
 guage of time.^ It is, moreover, obvious that 
 many of the statements of St. Paul, St. Peter, 
 and St. James, receive great elucidation when 
 viewed in the light of the Johannine testimony 
 to Christ as the eternal life of man and the very- 
 incarnation of the Life of God which was in the 
 beginning with God. 
 
 There is manifestly no composition of the ISTew 
 Testament in which the double aspect of the 
 character of Christ is so clearly set forth as it is 
 in the Gospel of St. John. Who can read our 
 
 Messianic ; if, that is, it has any meaning at all ; but if it is, ver. 7 
 may be so too ; and it is most certainly more in accordance with 
 the Hebrew idiom to find the immediate subject of the verb, with 
 which it agrees, in the nations of that verse than in the siher and 
 the gold of ver. 8. All Hebrew scholars are familiar with this con- 
 struction, e.g. cf. Isa. xxii. 7 ; zxv. 3, &c., &c. 
 
 '■ Malachi iii. 1. 
 
 * I have much pleasure in referring here to Mr. George Waring- 
 ton's "Week of Creation, or the Cosmogony of Genesis considered 
 in its relation to Modern Science." Macmillans, 1870. See 
 especially p. 78. He has thrown much light on his subject, and 
 has brought out some points in the Scripture naiTative, which to 
 me at least were new. 
 
244 '^^- yoh'tHs Place in Holy Scriphire [Lect 
 
 Lord's statements in tlie fifth and sixth, chapters 
 and not feel that provision is there made for an 
 indefinite extension of time % The "resurrection " 
 and the " last day " cannot fail to transport us to 
 periods of indefinite remoteness. But these vague 
 ideas of remote futurity are modified and held in 
 check by His own words to Martha, whose lan- 
 guage had implied the same, " I am the resurrec- 
 tion and the life," showing that He gathered up 
 in His own Person all the mysteries of time and 
 eternity — of life and death — of the present and 
 the future — and by His reference to the "little 
 while" in which He would come again to His 
 disciples and receive them unto Himself — while 
 the due remembrance of these facts may serve to 
 correct the hasty judgment of those critics who 
 would sever the last chapter from the others 
 because of its allusion to the coming of Christ as 
 possibly about to happen within the lifetime of 
 the beloved disciple. The truth is, that the point 
 of view from which the Gospel from first to last 
 is written is that of Jesus as the central Life — 
 the Being in whom life existed and exists as an 
 unoriginated and indestructible attribute — an un- 
 derived and inalienable prerogative — as He there- 
 fore who was and is and is to come, and is alive 
 for evermore, to whom there is no past and no 
 future, but one infinite and unmeasured present, 
 an everlasting now. 
 
 Not that the Apostle John enunciated any new 
 
VIII] S^. yohns Place in Holy Scripture 245 
 
 truth ; on the contrary, he gave fuller and. more 
 explicit utterance to a thought which is felt to 
 underlie the whole of Scripture, but such utter- 
 ance as makes it more intelligible and more com- 
 plete. The language of the ninetieth Psalm is 
 virtually the same as the language of St. John. 
 "Before the mountains were brought forth, or 
 ever the earth and the world were made, thou art 
 God from everlasting, and world without end." 
 How does this differ from, " Before Abraham was 
 I am," or this last again from words spoken to 
 Moses at the burning bush, without which our 
 Lord's words cannot be understood, " I am that I 
 am ; this is my name for ever, and this is my 
 memorial unto all generations ? " 
 
 But there is no way in which the light of St. 
 John's writings reveal to us his true place in Holy 
 Scripture more clearly than in the illumination 
 which they shed on the moral problems of our 
 being and the existence of evil in the world. No 
 one will care to dispute the statement that our 
 position in this world is enveloped in obscurity. 
 What we are ? Whence we come ? Whither we go 1 
 are questions which the wisest of mankind have 
 not been able to answer, and to which even Scrip- 
 ture itself does not pretend to give us anything 
 more than a partial answer. And yet, doubtless, 
 this is practically a sufficient answer; for, accord- 
 ing to St. John, our Lord says, " He that followeth 
 
246 S^. JohfCs Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the 
 light of life." ^ While elsewhere He also says, 
 by way of explanation, "He that walketh in 
 darkness knoweth not whither he goeth." ^ So 
 that it is plain that He-- regarded His followers 
 as in possession of a light which others had not, 
 which could not elsewhere than in Him be had, 
 but which was in itself sufficient for every need. 
 
 Now let us see how this was. According to 
 St. John, our Lord clearly teaches us that He is 
 Himself, in His own Person, the solution of the 
 problems of humanity. That is to say, a suffi- 
 cient practical solution will be found in Him. 
 Scripture nowhere gives us a theoretical answer 
 to our difficulties. It looks at facts as facts, and 
 throws sufficient light thereon to enable us to deal 
 with them as facts. It gives us no answer to the 
 question why we were made ; but, being made, it 
 teaches us how to act. Now, St. John's revela- 
 tion of Christ teaches us that He was our Maker, 
 for it teaches us that in Him was the light by 
 which we live. And it teaches us, moreover, 
 that if we would make our life a deathless and 
 eternal life, we must become united to Christ, our 
 Maker, as we can alone become united by direct 
 personal faith in Him. Now it is a matter of 
 which the mere human reason can judge, that if 
 Christ is our Maker it must be as the Apostle 
 says. For man to know his Maker, and be united 
 
 » St. John viii. 12. ' St. John xii. 35. 
 
VIII] S^. Johns Place in Holy Scripture 247 
 
 to Him, must be the life of man. The only ques- 
 tion that can arise is, How can he know his Maker 
 except He reveals Himself? Must not all know- 
 ledge without such revelation be nothing better 
 than guess-work ? The only question therefore 
 that remains is, "Whether or not Christ is the 
 personal revelation of his Maker — the human 
 manifestation of God. This is a question we 
 should have had to determine even if St. John 
 had not written. But, as he has put the distinct 
 issue before us, we cannot refuse to determine it. 
 And as the issue thus distinctly raised throws 
 great light not only on other portions of the New 
 Testament, but also on the Old — light which, 
 being once cast on them, cannot be dispensed 
 with — we are also bound to determine whether 
 we are justified in rejecting it. Now given the 
 existence of man in this world as an unexplained 
 mystery which we are not required to solve, surely 
 it does practically solve the chief problem of his 
 being to find that he can have eternal life by be- 
 lieving in Jesus — surely it is a truth self-luminous 
 and radiant amid the gross darkness of natural life 
 to be told and to know that he can have the light 
 of eternal life by walking with Jesus. The Per- 
 son of Jesus as a manifested reality, and no less a 
 reality now when we see Him no more, is itself a 
 centre and source of the brightest light. To be- 
 lieve those words as spoken by Jesus is verily to 
 walk no more in darkness, but to have the light 
 
248 S^. John's Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 of life ; and even if it could be proved that He 
 did not speak them, yet to be assured on suffi- 
 cient authority that they are as true as if He had 
 spoken them, that authority being the confessed 
 experience of all believers in all ages which has 
 ratified and does continually ratify their truth, is 
 itself a ground of confidence scarcely less secure. 
 If there is a Person who is Himself the Truth, to 
 be able to know that Person and to hold com- 
 munion with Him by believing in Him, would 
 obviously be a sufficient solution of the problem 
 of existence, at least to those who were content to 
 walk by faith and not by sight. It would at all 
 events be a solution to which none other could be 
 compared. 
 
 Now this is the solution which St. John's reve- 
 lation of Jesus proposes, which illustrates and 
 confirms the whole of Scripture, as well as being 
 illustrated and confirmed by it; and it is a solution 
 which may well be left to stand or fall on its own 
 merits, and to challenge competition to the end of 
 time. For here it must be observed, that Faith 
 does not create the object of its adoration, but 
 only supplies the medium of communication by 
 which that object, supposing Him to exist, is able 
 to reach and influence the creature. And this 
 must equally be the case whosoever and whatso- 
 ever that object may be defined to be. The sole 
 issue, therefore, still before us is. Whether* or not 
 Jesus is that object ? 
 
VIII] St. yohrHs Place in Holy Scripture 249 
 
 The absolute superiority of the method of solu- 
 tion thus proposed is seen moreover in this fact : 
 That while it admits the development of the 
 rational faculty in man to the utmost conceivable 
 extent; it admits also of man's development to an 
 infinite degree, and in a totally different direction, 
 that, namely, of the unseen and the spiritual. It 
 adds, therefore, something to the being of man by 
 allowing the full and unrestrained development of 
 an integral portion of his nature, whereas it is 
 exactly this portion that is altogether repressed 
 and stunted in its growth by that other method, 
 based only upon positive and scientific demonstra- 
 tion, which, in our own day, presents itself in 
 most direct antagonism to the method of Scripture 
 as it can alone aspire to be substituted in its place. 
 
 Again, St. John's conception of Christ is that 
 which throws the greatest possible, and, in its 
 kind, the only light upon the dark problem of the 
 existence of evil in the world. With the origin 
 of evil Scripture indeed has nothing whatever to 
 do, for it is a speculative and not a practical ques- 
 tion ; but for our conflict with evil Scripture either 
 does provide us with adequate resources, or else 
 it must be declared a failure and an imposition. 
 The mystery of evil then consists in its permis- 
 sion by One whom we cannot but regard as in- 
 finitely wise and holy, and at the same time in- 
 finitely powerful. That evil should exist side by 
 side with the unrestrained exercise of almighty 
 
250 Si. Johris Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 goodness, is a fact in the contemplation of which 
 the human mind is utterly baffled and over- 
 whelmed. That this evil should assume the 
 various forms of moral obliquity, of physical 
 suffering, of mental derangement, and of temporal 
 calamity, and that we, without any concurrence or 
 consent on our part should be subjected simul- 
 taneously or alternately to the pressure of one or 
 all of these forms of evil, is a problem that may 
 well stagger us, as it is oftentimes known to drive 
 successively to the extreme of wretchedness, 
 frivolity, despair. Now for the solution of this 
 problem, which confronts us universally wherever 
 we turn, positive science not oiily has discovered 
 and can discover no single ray of hope, but is also 
 totally powerless to assist us to grapple with it as 
 a fact. But the revelation of Scripture, though 
 it has sublimely refused to do the former, has 
 triumphantly succeeded in accomplishing the 
 latter. And how has it done so ? It has given 
 us a double or a fourfold picture, as we choose to 
 regard it, of that Being who has constituted our 
 position, as it is, surrounded by the pressure of evil 
 independently of our will. Himself stooping Volun- 
 tarily to direct and intimate participation in all 
 the more terrible forms of evil to which we are 
 ourselves exposed. It has exhibited Him op- 
 pressed by poverty, afflicted by hunger and thirst, 
 assaulted by vehement temptation from within, 
 exposed to relentless persecution from without, 
 
VIII] Si. John's Place in Holy Scripture 251 
 
 encountered by hatred, malice, jealousy, bigotry, 
 obstinacy, fury, duplicity, and the whole host of 
 uncontrolled human passions, buffeted, reviled, 
 spit upon, falsely accused, betrayed by His 
 familiar and favoured friend, deserted by His 
 trusted and beloved associates, despised and ridi- 
 culed by the great, spitefully entreated and scoffed 
 at by the rabble, scourged and tortured by a 
 brutal soldiery, crowned with a chaplet of thorns, 
 and arrayed in a purple robe in solemn mockery 
 of regal pomp, crucified with robbers who were 
 allowed to taunt Him with impunity, suffered to 
 hang naked and exhausted, hungry and athirst 
 under the burning blaze of a noontide eastern 
 sun, while coarse and ruffian mercenaries divided 
 and gambled for His raiment, till at last the 
 strength of a highly organised and sensitive nature 
 gave way, and with one loud voice of agony, not 
 unmingled with the taste of that spiritual death 
 which consists in being forsaken of God, He bowed 
 His head and gave up the ghost. It has exhi- 
 bited Him pierced with a spear after death, as 
 though the malice of His enemies would fain have 
 pursued Him into the world unseen ; then taken 
 down from the cross of shame and cruelty, for 
 which our only corresponding equivalent is the 
 gallows, and lastly consigned to the darkness and 
 silence of the cold and solitary tomb. It has 
 thus exhibited God as drinking to the very dregs 
 the bitterness of that cup He has given man to 
 
252 Sf. yohris Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 drink, of which man complains so bitterly, and 
 drinking it in order that the cup which God had 
 tasted might be made sweet to man. It has 
 exhibited God as moving in the labyrinth of 
 human circumstance just as we move in it with 
 earthly relationships, social ties, moral obliga- 
 tions, accidental hindrances ; exposed to the trial 
 of bereavement, the pain of being misunderstood, 
 misinterpreted, misjudged, confronted by the 
 sickening spectacle of human depravity in a 
 Tiberius, a Herod, or a Pilate, which from the 
 conditions of His own true humanity He was 
 destined to witness and to deal with, not to alter 
 or prevent ; subject to the necessity of prudential 
 management and forethought, and yet open to 
 the possibility of finding His designs, so far as 
 they were merely personal and earthly, frustrated ; 
 constrained to pass through the ordeal of bending 
 His own human will to compliance with an ex- 
 ternal will fully acknowledged as Divine, and yet 
 perhaps in His human consciousness imperfectly 
 known and understood. 
 
 Surely, then, the light which this exhibition of 
 God throws upon our position as men who have 
 to cope with evil, is adequate to our utmost 
 want, if not to our full desire. For it shows us 
 how He coped with the evil that is in the world 
 who said to us, " Be of good cheer, I have 
 overcome the world." ^ It shows us that His 
 
 2 St. John xvi. 33. 
 
VIII] S^. yohris Place in Holy Scripture 253 
 
 position was precisely ours, that He availed 
 Himself of no superiority over us, that He did 
 not attempt to control or alter circumstances in 
 virtue of His superhuman power over man and 
 nature, but set Himself resolutely to grapple with 
 circumstances as He would have us grapple with 
 them, thus shedding a Divine light on the darkness 
 of our circumstances which we too feel ourselves 
 powerless to control, and are frequently at a loss 
 to meet. Had He altered His circumstances it 
 would have shed no light on ours, unless it should 
 please Him to alter ours also. The very difficulty 
 for us arises from our circumstances being what 
 they are ; if they were other than they are, we 
 should have no difficulty. We know from long 
 and sad experience that, while we are here, they 
 cannot and will not be other than they are, but He 
 has come among us who has shared them with us, 
 and that which He has laid on us He has shown 
 His perfect willingness to bear Himself. 
 
 Now, this is verily to break the yoke of evil 
 from off our necks ; it is to snap asunder the staff 
 of the oppressor, to bring in the blessings of re- 
 demption from the power of evil. It is not only 
 a work that is worthy of God, but also a work 
 that God alone could do. And, therefore, if St. 
 John alone had spoken of Jesus as God, seeing 
 that all the Evangelists are unanimous in repre- 
 senting Him as that Christ who should redeem, 
 he would have been justified in doing so ; for re- 
 
254 '5'/'. Johiis Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 demption, to be worthy of the name, must be a 
 redemption from the extremest forms of evil, 
 such as sin and death, which could not pos- 
 sibly be accomplished by any one who was 
 nothing more than man. Redemption effected 
 by a being on the mere level of humanity 
 would be no redemption at all, inasmuch as it 
 would still leave death and sin accidents to which 
 man alone was subject ; but when we see these 
 accidents submitted to by One who is Himself 
 God, the galling pressure of their yoke is taken 
 off us by being made to rest on Him. "We are 
 not left alone m our misery, but have God as our 
 companion in it, who, for His own inscrutable 
 reasons, has laid a burden on us, which He has 
 at the same time spontaneously lightened by con- 
 descending, for our sakes, and for pure love of us, 
 to bear it Himself. In the face, then, of such 
 testimony to Christ as St. John has borne, we 
 may not say, God would have displayed His love 
 more clearly by not laying the burden on us at 
 all, for, — independently of the fact that love such 
 as this which stoops to sin and death for no object 
 but to save the sinner, is manifestly deeper and 
 more worthy of the name than a love which sim- 
 ply declines all contact with suffering and all 
 knowledge of sin — to say so would be to commit 
 the practical error of refusing to deal with the 
 plain facts of existence as they come before us, 
 and therefore to leave the painful burden of these 
 
VIII] Si. John's Place in Holy Scriptnre 255 
 
 facts unalleviated. The Gospel of Christ, as pre- 
 sented by St. John, does indeed oflfer no solution 
 to account theoretically for the facts, but it does 
 offer a complete solution of the problem how to 
 deal with them practically, for it opens out to us 
 the Godhead in conflict with these facts, and pro- 
 claims His finished triumph over them. Rightly 
 therefore was it reserved for this Evangelist to 
 record the dying words of Jesus, " It is finished." 
 For God so to enter into and to grapple with the 
 extremest forms of evil, namely, death, and sin as 
 the very sting of death, would be to solve the 
 problem of man's existence in the midst of evil as 
 a fact ; it would be to complete that work of 
 redemption which, if wrought out at all, must be 
 wrought out by God, and which, if complete at all, 
 would only be complete by His experience as a 
 man of the root-evils to which man is exposed, 
 and by His voluntary participation in them Him- 
 self 
 
 And if "he that saw it bare record, and his 
 record is true," we have on the one side the fact 
 that death such as this would be complete re- 
 demption, and, on the other, the attested evidence 
 that such a death actually did take place. It only 
 remains, therefore, for us to decide whether the 
 death of Jesus was the death of God as man, and 
 upon the issue of that question, to decide whether 
 humanity has been redeemed. For, if otherwise, 
 not only is man's position as in the midst of evil, 
 
256 6"/. yohns Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 and exposed to sin and death a problem unex- 
 plained, but also there is no prospect of deliver- 
 ance for him from the sorest accidents of his 
 condition over which he has no control. 
 
 But there is yet another side of this problem 
 which is illuminated by the death of Jesus as the 
 Son or Word of God according to the testimony 
 of St. John, and that is the duration of evil and 
 the prolonged continuance of sin and suffering in 
 the world. Why is it permitted to last so long 1 
 Why is it not all nipped in the bud and not suf- 
 fered to develop its baneful flower and its poison- 
 ous fruit, but allowed to go on sowing its deadly 
 seed, and handing down its disastrous entail to 
 the countless generations of humanity ? We 
 cannot tell, and we need not desire to ask. Our 
 premises are strictly limited and defined. They 
 are : Given the existence of sin, and suffering, and 
 death in the world, for which we do not pretend 
 to account ; is there any adequate method of 
 dealing with them, any sufficient hope of deliver- 
 ance from them 1 Now the mystery of iniquity, 
 and the whole problem of evil is concentred in 
 its mere existence, and is entirely irrespective of 
 its duration or extent. The evil of which we are 
 conscious in ourselves is in no way increased by 
 the knowledge that the same evil exists in others, 
 it is rather diminished than increased thereby to 
 us. This is seen by the sympathy that exists 
 between persons who are afflicted by the same 
 
YIII] St Johris Place in Holy Scripture 257 
 
 maladies, or subject to the same infirmities, or 
 suffering from the same misfortunes. The special 
 form of evU in each case is not intensified but 
 rather diminished by its multiplied repetition in 
 others. The present evil and misery existing in 
 the world is wholly unaffected by our knowledge 
 that the same or a greater amount of it existed a 
 thousand years ago, or will exist a thousand years 
 to come. In every case the essence of evil is con- 
 centrated in its individual isolation. We do not 
 of course deny that it is in the power of every 
 individual to add to the evil already existing in 
 himself or others, and that this fatal power of repro- 
 duction is eminently characteristic of evil — ^by no 
 means, the reverse is manifestly the case — but the 
 mystery of evil as far as we are ourselves con- 
 cerned, consists in our own personal relation to 
 and contact with it. That mystery is in no de- 
 gree heightened, but rather the reverse, by the fact 
 of its existence in numberless instances external 
 to ourselves. And this mystery, as far as we are 
 concerned, terminates with death ; death is itself 
 part of the mystery as long as we survive, but it 
 puts an end to the mystery when we die. The 
 mystery is simply perpetuated in other subjects, 
 and under varied conditions and altered circum- 
 stances, for .the variety of individual relation to 
 the same root principal of evil can be regarded as 
 nothing less than infinite. But this perpetuation 
 does not increase the mystery, for the mystery is 
 
258 S^. John's Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 one and individual ; it is the same in every case, 
 and the multiplicity of cases adds nothing what- 
 ever to the mystery. That sin and death exist at 
 all is the puzzle, and not that existing as they do 
 their dominion is so extended and so prolonged, 
 for the whole problem of their mystery is felt 
 to be concentred in the I, and the agony of this 
 problem is only life-long. The stroke of death, 
 every time it smites, carries home the solution of 
 the mystery to one more of its perplexed and 
 benighted subjects. And each successive gene- 
 ration of the family of man has to offer but the 
 same and not a different problem to other subjects 
 for whom it will in turn be solved. 
 
 Now it is this mystery of evil which confronts 
 us that was voluntarily confronted by Jesus Clv:ist, 
 and He solved it for us on the Cross. If He was 
 God, the ultimate author of death, it is plain that 
 by stooping to die Himself He must have taken 
 away the sting of death. He therefore solved 
 that part of the mystery which consists in its pain. 
 This he did for each, and at the same time did for 
 all, and when His death is thus apprehended, the 
 sting of death is felt to be destroyed, its essential 
 evil is eradicated. If a being so great and glori- 
 ous as the Lord of all has consented to die my 
 death, then I can no more fear to die ; nay, death 
 itself can no more be death to me, for in His death 
 I find an ever failing source of life ; since by dying 
 He has overcome death and brought life and im- 
 
VIII] SA Johfis Place in Holy Scripture 259 
 
 mortality to light. And as for the continuation 
 of evil, that is a feature in it which exists only to 
 myself and not to Him, for, as far as He is con- 
 cerned, the present conflict with evil in the world 
 is one which never existed before, because it is 
 carried on in different subjects ; it is now in pro- 
 cess of decision, and in every individual case will 
 very shortly be decided. To our eyes who link 
 the present to the past and the future to the pre- 
 sent, the most conspicuous feature in the mystery 
 is its continuation ; but this is one that is purely 
 relative, and so far delusive. It has pleased God, 
 for reasons we cannot fathom, that this problem 
 should continually work itself out in fresh and 
 different subjects ; there is no conceivable limit 
 to the variety of the subjects, or of the conditions 
 under which it is being wrought out, but after all 
 the problem is intrinsically one and the same. 
 It is we who differ, not the problem. 
 
 And hence it arises that the solution of this 
 problem for one is the solution of it for all, for if 
 the problem is one, so also is the solution. If in 
 one single instance it has been solved, then it has 
 been solved in all. 
 
 Now it is the declaration of Jesus Christ, or at 
 any rate the testimony of His disciple concerning 
 Him, that He, by dying, has wrought out the 
 solution of this problem. In the first place He 
 solved it for Himself, because m stooping to death 
 He had the promise of eternal Life, "Therefore 
 
26o 6"/. Johris Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 doth my Father love me because I lay down my 
 life that I might take it again. No man taketh 
 it from me, but I have power to lay it down and 
 I have power to take it again. This command- 
 ment have I received of my Father." ^ " And 
 I know that his commandment is life everlast- 
 ing."* Forasmuch as Jesus was truly man, He 
 must have felt the weight and pressure of this 
 mystery of evil no less than we do, but when He 
 died that He might rise again, and by rising again 
 effectually overcame the world by overcoming the 
 root-evil that is in the world, He virtually solved 
 the problem of the existence of evil as far as that 
 problem affected Him personally, or affects us 
 practically. For, having solved it in Himself and 
 in His own consciousness, He solved it for all 
 who can see and accept His solution. Because, 
 if there is a solution of the mystery, it must be 
 such a solution as this ; and if there is a solution 
 of the mystery, it can only take effect where the 
 personal consciousness of the individual is identi- 
 fied with the consciousness of Him who solved it. 
 A participation in the consciousness of Him who 
 in His own case, had solved the mystery, would 
 in each repeated instance he the solution of it. 
 
 Now this is the testimony of St. John to Christ ; 
 it remains for us to determine whether or not we 
 will accept it. Participation in the revealed con- 
 
 ' St. John X. ir, 18. " St. John xii. 50. 
 
VIII] St.yohiis Place in Holy Scripture 261 
 
 sciousness of Jesus Clirist is complete salvation 
 from tlie root-principle of evil, whether moral, 
 physical, or spiritual, whether temporal or eternal. 
 But it is obvious that the area in which this sal- 
 vation operates can only be coextensive with par- 
 ticipation in the consciousness of Him in whose 
 person the evil that is in the world was overcome, 
 the mystery of iniquity was solved. 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that the one condition 
 required is belief in what the words attributed to 
 our Lord declare, and not belief in the distinct 
 and independent fact that the words reported were 
 spoken by Him. The words are a witness to the 
 reality of Him to whom they are ascribed, and 
 they are a witness to nothing else, not to the 
 accuracy of the narrator nor to his identity with 
 St. John. Do we believe in the reality of Him 
 to whom they are a witness ? The writer of the 
 fourth Gospel did. The words are the memorial, 
 the abiding memorial of his testimony to Christ. 
 They are the everlasting record of his personal 
 experience. Have we accepted and believed his 
 testimony, and thereby set our seal, as the Bap- 
 tist declared in the case of Him to whom the tes- 
 timony was borne, to the fact that God is true ? 
 This is, after all, the one question for this genera- 
 tion and for this age, as indeed it is for all genera- 
 tions and for all ages. 
 
 Now, it is plain that such a conception of God. 
 and the work of God and of Jesus as the Word of 
 
262 SL Johfis Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 God, as St. John has given us, throws an amount 
 of light on the rest of Scripture, which, being 
 once thrown on it, cannot be dispensed with. 
 Seen in this light, all the law, the prophets, and 
 the psalms become bright and luminous to a 
 degree that otherwise beyond all question they are 
 not. " I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord." ^ 
 " I am the Lord your God which brought you out 
 of the land of Egypt to be your God : I am the 
 Lord your God." ^ " Yea, he loved the people ; 
 all his saints are in thy hand : and they sat down 
 at thy feet ; every one shall receive of thy 
 words." '' " I, even I, am he that blotteth out 
 thy transgressions for my own sake, and will not 
 remember thy sins." ^ "I have blotted out as a 
 thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy 
 sins ; return unto me, for I have redeemed thee." ^ 
 " I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks 
 to them that plucked off the hair : I hid not my 
 face from shame and spitting." ^ " The Lord hath 
 redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand 
 of him that was stronger than he." ^ "I will 
 ransom them from the power of the grave ; I will 
 redeem them from death : death, I will be thy 
 plagues ; grave, I will be thy destruction." ^ 
 " I have set the Lord always before me : because 
 he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. 
 
 " Gen. xlix. 18. ^ Num. xv. 41. ' Deut. xxsiii. 3. 
 8 Isa. xUv. 25. » laa. xlv. 22. i laa. 1. 6. 
 
 ° Jer. xxxi. 11. ' Hos. xiii. 14. 
 
VIII] Si. yokiis Place in Holy Scripture 263 
 
 Therefore, my heart is glad, and my glory re- 
 joiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope."* "I 
 will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise 
 thy name for thy loving-kindness and for thy 
 truth : for thou hast magpified thy word above all 
 thy name." ^ " All things are delivered unto me 
 of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son but 
 the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father 
 save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal 
 him." ^ " All power is given unto me in heaven 
 and in earth ; and lo, I am with you alway, even 
 unto the end of the world." '^ It is obvious that 
 there is a uniform spirit breathing through these 
 and a thousand other passages in the Old and 
 New Testaments, which, considering the difference 
 in age, character, and circumstance of the various 
 writers, is, to say the least, remarkable. They all 
 seem to point to a central thought, and to meet in 
 a single Person. That Person is undoubtedly 
 Divine : it is not one whit less clear that He is 
 also human. According to all the Evangelists, 
 but pre-eminently according to St. John, a person 
 claiming to be both was known upon earth, and 
 conversant among men. If His claim is admitted, 
 this unique phenomenon of Scripture is explained ; 
 for all the rays of, holy Scripture converge in the 
 Jesus of St. John as they converge in no one else. 
 They find a unity and a meaning there which 
 
 " Ps. xvi. 8, 9. ° Ps. cxxxviii. 2. = St. Matt. xi. 27'. 
 
 ' St. Matt, xxviii. 18, 20. 
 
264 Si. JohfUs Place in Holy Scripture [Lect 
 
 otherwise they lack ; and yet this unity is pre- 
 cisely that feature which no man could have dis- 
 covered, and which no man therefore could have 
 supplied. The Evangelists do not claim this for 
 themselves ; but, in spit* of all their differences 
 and their likenesses, they combine in claiming it 
 for Christ. This is their testimony to Him. 
 This is the witness of St. John to Christ. There 
 is no question about the meaning of the witness, 
 or about its uniform agreement. But, from first 
 to last, the one question is, whether or not we 
 have received this witness, whether or not we will 
 receive it. Redemption such as this is what we 
 want. Redemption such as this the Scriptures 
 promised. Redemption such as this has been 
 given to the world. According to the writer of 
 the fourth Gospel, be he who he may have been, 
 Jesus of Nazareth was the Redeemer ; for He 
 was the incarnate Word of God, the anointed 
 King of Israel, the Lamb of God who was slain 
 to take away the sin of the world, and to bring 
 in more abundantly the priceless gift of everlasting 
 life. Shall we reject Him as a deceiver and a 
 hypocrite, for that, on the evidence, we must also 
 do, whether or not we surrender the fourth Gos- 
 pel, or shall we acknowledge and adore Him as 
 the Lord our God % If we reject Him, the unex- 
 plained unanimity of Holy "Writ will testify against 
 us ; if we confess and adore Him, it is equally 
 
VIII] S^. yohiis Place in Holy Scripture 265 
 
 certain that it will confirm the verdict of the Son 
 of Man, and vindicate the wisdom of His precept, 
 " Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye 
 have eternal life, and they are they which testify 
 of ME." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE A 
 THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FOURTH GtOSPEL 
 
 I. 
 
 rjlHE question of the authorship of the fourth Gospel, as 
 ■*• far as internal evidence is concerned, turns in a great 
 degree upon the question whether or not the ■writer ia 
 identical with the eye-witness spoken of in xix, 35. The 
 first lecture is based upon the supposition that he is.. 
 But the question is one that requires fuller discussion on 
 its own merits. Let us assume then that an unknown 
 author was writing this Gospel A.D. 150. What would be 
 his object in saying, "He that saw it hath borp.e record 
 and his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true 
 that ye might believe ? " His object clearly would be to 
 assume the air of credibility and to gain belief. He must 
 have meant one of two things, either (1) That he was 
 himself the person bearing record for whom he desired to 
 pass ; or (2) else that he had received the statement he 
 made from one who had been an eye-witness, on whose 
 authority he repeated it. The possibility of any other 
 supposition is precluded, because it is evident that this 
 verse is thrown in for the purpose of enhancing the value 
 of the testimony given; so that even if the writer was 
 
268 The Authorship of [App 
 
 uttering an untruth in saying that he had this particular 
 testimony from an eye-witness there can be no manner 
 of doubt that whether true or false he intended to 
 say so.^ 
 
 Now, if he received the statement from an eye-witness, 
 we may well believe the particular fact recorded, namely, 
 the piercing of the side and the efPasion of blood and 
 water ; but this is just one of those very points of which 
 the credibility is denied. For here it is alleged that a 
 later sacramental teaching is discoverable which can by no 
 means be refjitred to the Apostle. We have, therefore, 
 manifest proof that criticism of this kind is vitiated by the 
 presence of a latent petitio principii. If the Gospel is 
 Apostolic then this teaching, so far as the passage in 
 question supports it, is Apostolic likewise. It is uncritical 
 to decide beforehand that the teaching is not Apostolic, 
 and then to say that the work which contains it cannot be. 
 If the writer of the Gospel had this circumstance from an 
 eye-witness, then surely on all principles of right criticism 
 we are bound to believe it as a fact. At least it is certain 
 that he not only believed it, but corroborated it also by 
 his own professed testimony to the trust-worthiness of his 
 
 ' There seem to be three, but only three, possible ways of understanding 
 the verse in question, which are as follows : — 
 
 1. And he that saw it (the writer) hath borne record (now in the act of 
 writing) and his (the writer's) record is true, and he (the writer) knoweth 
 that he (the writer) saith true, &o. 
 
 2. And he that saw it (the eye-witness) hath borne record (to me, the 
 writer) and his (the eye-witness's) record is true, and he (the writer) 
 knoweth that he (the eye-witness) saith true, &o. 
 
 3. And he that saw it (the eye-witness) hath borne record (to me, the 
 writer) and his (the eye-witness's) record ia true, and he (the eye-witness) 
 knoweth that he (the eye-witness) saith true, &c. 
 
 Of these interpretations the first or the third can stand, but not the 
 second. The first is our own ; the third is Mr. Orr's ; the second is Dr. 
 Davidson's, but we may say with confidence that few vrill prefer it. 
 
Apf] the Fourth Gospel 269 
 
 informant ; " and lie (the writer) knowetli that he (the 
 eye-witness) saith true." 
 
 We are then shut up to this inference, that the writer 
 having given the testimony of an eye-witness (than which 
 we can have none greater) confirms that testimony by the 
 testimony of one who was on the supposition not an eye- 
 witness. An unknown person, whom we can have no 
 reason for believing, tells us that a person from whom he 
 received a particular statement was thoroughly trust- 
 worthy. How does this mend the matter, or help to sub- 
 stantiate the narrative in question, or therefore to realise 
 the only conceivable object which the writer can have had 
 in view ? He merely tells us that his informant was 
 trust-worthy, but if this was so we are surely bound to 
 believe him. For if not, otherwise, we must say that the 
 eye-witness was mistaken, and that the M^riter was mis- 
 taken, for if the eye-witness was mistaken the testimony 
 of the writer to his trust-worthiness goes for nothing ; or 
 else that the eye-witness was a myth, and the asseveration 
 pf the writer a falsehood, in which case our respect for 
 him as a writer vanishes altogether. We cannot possibly 
 set any store by that author who first conjures up an eye- 
 witness to vouch for his narrative and then tells us a lie to 
 corroborate his testimony. On this hypothesis, then, the 
 only legitimate conclusion is that the fourth Gospel is a 
 romance. We can call it nothing else. 
 
 The difficulties, therefore, of this position lead us inevit- 
 ably to adopt the alternative one, which is that the writer 
 was himseK the person bearing witness for whom he 
 desired to pass. This is virtually shown by the whole 
 context of the passage in question : " One of the soldiers 
 with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came thereout 
 blood and water. And he that saw it hath borne record, 
 and his record is true : and he knoweth that he saith true. 
 
2 70 The Authorship of [App 
 
 that ye might believe. For these things were done, that 
 the Scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not 
 be broken. And again another Scripture, saith, They shall 
 look on him whom they pierced. And after this Joseph 
 of Arimathea/' &c. We do violence to the narrative by 
 introducing a second person distinct from the narrator and 
 of whom we have heard nothing before, at the thirty-fifth 
 verse. It is plain that the personal opinions of the 
 narrator, on the interpretation of Scripture, are interwoven 
 with his narrative in such a way as to make him undistin- 
 guishable from the eye-witness. The two are clearly one, 
 and the asseveration of v. 35 applies not only to that 
 particular fact, but likewise to the surrounding incidents 
 of the narrative. It is, indeed, difficult to see how any one 
 can admitj as Dr. Davidson does, that the writer meant to 
 pass for the beloved disciple, and yet deny that he meant 
 to pass for the eye-witness of the piercing of the side. 
 The distinction is clearly arbitrary. Whether or not the 
 writer was the Apostle there can be no reasonable doubt 
 that by the eye-witness was meant the Apostle, for it is 
 distinctly said that he was present a little while before at 
 v. 26. Mr. Pound has 'indeed shown with very strong 
 probability that after the time indicated by this last verse 
 St. John was absent with the mother of Jesus, but that 
 having taken her to his own home he returned in time to 
 witness the remaining incidents of the crucifixion which 
 he has recorded. This absence accounts for the omission 
 in his Gospel of any allusion to the revilings of the thieves 
 and the mob. — "Story of the Gospels," i. 618. It may 
 perhaps be safely said that few persons will care to distin- 
 guish between the beloved disciple and the eye-witness. 
 They were doubtless one, and meant to be one by the 
 writer, whether or not Ae was a different person. The 
 question of authorship is at any rate entirely distinct, but. 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 271 
 
 in point of fact, there is no valid reason for concluding 
 that the writer himself did not intend to pass for the eye- 
 witness. He wrote and intended to write as though he had 
 personally witnessed the incidents he has recorded as 
 taking place at the crucifixion. We may fairly argue on 
 the basis of this identity as is done in the first Lecture. 
 And then the question arises how far this identity is com- 
 patible with the theory of a late authorship. 
 
 It may help us, moreover, to estimate rightly the 
 meaning of " He that saw it bare record " to assume for a 
 moment that the author was St. John. Then, on that 
 supposition, can any reasonable doubt be entertained that 
 by the eye-witness he meant himself? But, if on this 
 supposition such an inference is unavoidable, is it any the 
 less so when we assume that a writer in the second century 
 wrote a work which he desired to pass for his ? In that 
 case we are surely warranted in saying that the writer 
 pretended he had been an eye-witness. It is nothing 
 better than a forlorn hope of criticism to affirm — as 
 Davidson does, ii. 436 — that "the author of the Gospel 
 " indicates that he was not an eye-witness of the sufferings 
 " of Jesus in xix. 35," in order to avoid the conclusions 
 which must follow if he was. 
 
 The only places in the Gospel in which the writer 
 makes any allusion to himself are — 
 
 (1.) ch. i. 14, "And we beheld His glory," &c. 
 
 (2.) xiii. 23. "Now, there was leaning on Jesus' bosom 
 
 one of his disciples whom Jesus loved." 
 (3.) xviii. 15, 16. " And Simon Peter followed Jesus, 
 
 and so did another disciple," /^aiiiT^s oKXoi, &c. 
 
 "That disciple," 6 fiaOnrfis hilioi, and "that other 
 
 disciple," aXKog [J^a^nrni. 
 (4.) xix. 26. " When Jesus therefore saw his mother 
 
2/2 The Authorship oj [App 
 
 and the disciple standing by whom he 
 loved," &c. 
 27. "The disciple" and "that disciple," h 
 
 (5.) xix. 35. " And he that saw it hath borne record," &c. 
 (6.) XX. 2. " Then she runneth and cometh to Simon 
 
 Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus 
 
 loved," &c. 
 
 3. " That other disciple," o aXKog /ia^tiriis. 
 
 4. " The other disciple," 
 8. " That other disciple," 
 
 (7.) xxi. 20. " Then Peter, turning about, seeth the 
 disciple whom Jesus loved following," &c. 
 23. " That disciple," o it.a&n'^iis exiTvoe. 
 
 Now, there can be no reasonable cause to doubt that one 
 and the same person is referred to in all these places, if we 
 except (5). We see also that twice the word hsivos is 
 used in speaking of this person, a fact which bears on the 
 use of the same word in xix. 35, xaxsTtos oJds]i on aXn^n 
 Xsys/, and makes it still more probable that it is he .also 
 who is referred to there. The expression too, " knoweth 
 that he saith true that ye might believe," must be taken 
 together with the corresponding one at xx. 30, 31, " And 
 many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his 
 disciples which are not written in this book, but these 
 have been written that ye might believe," &c. — that is to 
 say, have been written by one of the disciples in whose 
 presence they were done. The similarity of expression in 
 these two places can scarcely leave any moral doubt that 
 the eye-witness and the beloved disciple are one, and that 
 the claim to personal knowledge is everywhere advanced 
 in the Gospel. 
 
 ]S"ow, then, we come to the attestation' at the end, o5ros 
 "Itfr/v /(ia^^jr^s 6 (iagrv^uv , . . xal y^&-^cti .... that is 
 
App] ' the Fourth Gospel 273 
 
 to say, the beloved disciple is the person testifying, and 
 the person writing. The witness is the writer. Surely 
 the single article to the two participles shows this very 
 plainly. It is difficult to see how otherwise the language 
 can be interpreted, or how the writer, whoever he was, 
 can be held blameless of, or at least not chargeable with, 
 the desire and design of passing for the disciple, whom 
 Jesus loved. But who was he ? The only possible clue 
 we have to the answer to this question is, that he was 
 clearly one of the disciples enumerated at xxi. 2. " There 
 were together Simon Peter, and Thomas, called Didymus, 
 and Nathanael of Cana in GaHlee, and the sons of Zebedee, 
 and two other of His disciples." AU we can be sure of is, 
 that he was not Simon Peter nor Thomas, but which of 
 the other five he was, there is nothing whatever to show. 
 He may have been Ifathanael of Cana in Galilee, for a 
 special reason is assigned why he, should be beloved of 
 Jesus, inasmuch as He had once addressed him, " Behold 
 an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile." But more than 
 this we cannot tell. There is nothing but tradition to 
 fall back upon, which, as every one knows, is uniform and 
 unvarying.^ "We may here observe, by the way, that the 
 special mention of Nathanael in this chapter, who is men- 
 tioned nowhere else in Scripture but in the first chapter, 
 and the additional circumstance told us about him here, 
 that he was of Cana in Galilee, in immediate connection 
 with which he is at first introduced, though it is not 
 there said that he belonged to that place — is a strong pre- 
 sumptive argument that the author of the last chapter was 
 the author likewise of the first. The next and only other 
 clue we can discover towards the identification of the 
 
 ^ The exception of the AJogi, a small and unimportant sect in Asia 
 Minor, in the second century, who ascribed the Gospel to Cerinthus, 
 scarcely needs special mention. They likewise rejected the Apocalypse. 
 
 S 
 
274 The Authorship, of [App 
 
 beloyed disciple is tjie fact tbiat he would seem to be some 
 one who was frequently a companion of Peter. Now, the 
 two disciples most frequently associated with Peter, ac- 
 cording to the other Gospels, were James and John, the 
 sons of Zebedee. James, we know, could not have written 
 this Gospel, Acts xii. 2, nor, therefore, have been the 
 beloved disciple, and thus we are left to the choice of 
 Nathanael and St. John. In St. John would doubtless be 
 found those conditions requisite for the authorship of it. 
 Being a close companion of our Lord, he would naturally 
 be an eye-witness of many of the scenes of His life, and 
 have that minute knowledge of particulars wMch is so often 
 conspicuous in his Gospel. That Jesus had a special regard 
 for him is shown by the testimony of the other Evangelists, 
 according to whom he was on three several occasions 
 selected as one of three favoured disciples chosen to an 
 exceptional nearness to their Master, and on one occasion 
 he is found associated alone with Peter (St. Luke x^ii. 8). 
 As, therefore, the authorship of the fourth Gospel cannot 
 be ascribed to_ Peter or to James, it necessarily rests with 
 John. 
 
 If it, is only by a process such as this that we can 
 approximately arrive at the author of the fourth Gospel, 
 all must admit that it is in the highest degree improbable 
 that in a.d. 150 a writer would delibeiately set himself 
 down to calculate the chances by which he could thus dis- 
 guise his identity, in order the more successfully to recom- 
 mend his supposed reconstruction of the Gospel ; and yet 
 if he desired to pass for an Apostle and eye-witness, and 
 for some one particular Apostle and eye-witness, this is 
 neither more nor less than he must have done. In short, 
 the concomitant difficulties of the hypothesis show very 
 plainly that it is u]jt.enable. 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 275 
 
 II. 
 
 It may be as well to notice liere some of those points in 
 the fourth Gospel which are supposed to be internal indi- 
 cations of a sub- Apostolic date. Mr. Tayler says, " Fourth 
 Gospel," p. 89, " No doubt, the doctrine of the Logos 
 'existed anterior to the apostolic age, but it was confined to 
 the higher sphere of philosophical thought, and came into 
 no direct contact with the popular mind." And, conse- 
 quently, the supposed prominence of this doctrine in the 
 fourth Gospel is insisted on as a proof of its late origin. 
 But surely there has been too much made of this so-called 
 Logos doctrine. The Logos of St. John is not the Philonian 
 Logos, neither is the mention of it in the fourth Gospel so 
 prominent as is assumed. The technical use of the ex- 
 pression is confined to some four places in the opening 
 verses of the first chapter, and these are explained as fully 
 and completely by reference to the Old Testament which 
 had " come into direct contact with the popular mind " as 
 by reference to Philo, and very niuch more so. Of the 
 real idea of the Logos, as embodied in St. John, there is 
 not a trace in PhUo. It is the object of the Evangelist to 
 emancipate his readers from the trammels of technical 
 language, and thus his Gospel may, with much more pro- 
 priety, be termed an explanation of the phrase " Logos" than 
 a treatise on the technical notion. His object is to show 
 what the Logos is rather than to discourse about the Logos 
 as an entity in itself. Judged in this latter capacity, his 
 work is an utter failure ; but as a revelation of the thing' 
 Logos, or rather of the Person of the Logos, it is invaluable. 
 It is to the Old Testament rather than to Philo that we 
 must turn for illustration of the Apostolic Logos. 
 
 The same writer mentions the Johannine use of the 
 
2 76 The Authorship of [App 
 
 phrase "the Jews/' and the expression in xii. 19, "Behold 
 the world is gone after him " as tokens of a late origin, 
 (Of. xi. 48.) Tn the first case, the choice of expression 
 would mainly be ruled by the persons for whom, in the 
 first instance, the author wrote. If these were not Jews, 
 it is reasonable to expect that the inhabitants of Judaea 
 and Jerusalem would be called Jews, especially after the 
 dissolution of the Jewish polity ; they were at this time a 
 people who had been, not a people that were. The use of 
 v.i(slLtii in xii. 19 is the use common in the Gospel ; and, 
 as was observed by Leopardi,^ has its origin in the New 
 Testament, and more especially in the writings of St. 
 John. It is a use exactly corresponding to our modern 
 usage of " the world ; " and whether or not actually em- 
 ployed by the Pharisees in the case in point, may well 
 have expressed their meaning with sufficient accuracy. 
 It is, indeed, possible, from Mr. Tayler's point of view, 
 that a later writer might, by an anachronism, insert such 
 an expression here, but it is in itself most certainly no 
 necessary indication of an anachronism, especially as it is 
 found in connection with " certain Greeks that came up to 
 worship at the feast," xii. 19, 20. 
 
 Another indication of this kind is found in the alleged 
 early conversion of the Samaritans, iv. 40-42. This state- 
 
 ' Opere ii. 168. Gesi Oristo £u il primo che distintamente additb agli 
 uomini quel lodatore e precettore di tutte le virtti finte, detrattore e perse- 
 cutore di tutte le vere ; quell' awersario d'ogni grandezza intriuseea b 
 veramente propria dell' uomo ; derisore d'ogni sentimento alto, se non 
 lo orede falso, d'ogni affetto doloe, se lo crede intimo ; quello sohiavo dei 
 forti, tiranno dei deboli, odiatore degl' infelici ; il quale esse Gesti Cristo 
 dinotb col nome di mondo, che gli dura in tutte le lingue oolte insino al 
 presente. Questa idea generale che fe di tanta veritk, e che poscia fe stata e 
 Bark Bempre di tanto nso, non credo che avanti quel tempo fosse nata ad 
 altri, nfe mi rioordo che si trovi, intendo dire Botto una voce unica o sotto 
 una forma precisa, in alcun filosofo gentile. 
 
App] ' the Fourth Gospel 277 
 
 ment is declared ty Mr. Tayler to be wholly at variance 
 with Matt. X. 5, Luke ix. 53, and still more with Acts 
 viii. 5, where the twelve are forbidden to enter any city 
 of the Samaritans, where the Samaritans refuse to receive 
 Christ into one of their villages because His face was as 
 though he would go to Jerusalem, and where we are told 
 that Christ was first preached in Samaria by Philip. Now, 
 here we must bear in mind — that it is only one particular 
 city of the Samaritans, viz., Sychar, to which St. John 
 refers ; the incident happened early in our Lord's min- 
 istry (see Pound), before either of the other occasions ; 
 that at the time mentioned by St. Matthew there were not 
 improbably special reasons for the injunction given, which 
 was intended to be special and not general ; that at the 
 time alluded to by St. Luke, according to some, our 
 Lord was on His way to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of 
 Tabernacles, a circumstance of itself calculated to rouse 
 hostility in the minds of Samaritans (in aU probability not 
 those of Sychar) not otherwise favourably disposed to 
 Christ ; and lastly, that in the Acts the mission of Philip 
 especially refers to fhe city of Samaria, and not to any one 
 of the numerous cities or villages of the province. There 
 is not necessarily here any discrepance whatever. We 
 only require to know more than the several Evangelists 
 have told us in order to see union and concord everywhere. 
 The supplement of a variety of not improbable omissions, 
 which, owing to the brevity of the narrative, we must 
 supply, will make all clear. 
 
 There is, however, one remark about criticism of this 
 kind which it seems by no means inappropriate to make. 
 The principle which is the very essence of the method in 
 vogue is a needless imputation of motives to the sacred 
 writers. This, to say the least, is scarcely fair. Why is it 
 not consistent with criticism to take their works as we find 
 
2 78 The Authorship of [App 
 
 them, and not try to exercise our ingenuity in discovering 
 motives by which they may or may not have heen actuated 
 in writing them ? The more so because, in almost every 
 instance, the motive assumed is an evil rather than a good 
 one. If the fourth Evangelist says that, in the opinion of 
 the Pharisees, the world had gone after Christ, an expres- 
 sion which their known envy of Him might not unnatu- 
 rally prompt, why are we to assume that he had a personal 
 object in attributing this expression to the Pharisees, and 
 still more, why are we to make this assumption — which 
 cannot be shown to be anything more than an assumption 
 — the basis of an attack against himself and his work ? 
 iNow-a-days, in our own dealings between man and man, 
 the practice of imputing motives is unanimously con- 
 demned. Why, then, if we reprobate the practice with 
 living men, should we recognise and tolerate it in our 
 dealings with those of whom we know less, but whom we 
 have every reason to esteem as highly ? Till criticism is 
 purged of this baneful habit, we cannot hope for such 
 results from it as are alone worthy of the name. It is 
 criticism falsely so called. 
 
 Another passage discredited by Mr. Tayler is x. 8, of 
 which he says that " if we call to mind the Jesus of the 
 synoptical narratives, and the attitude uniformly assumed 
 by him there towards the law and the prophets, we shall 
 find it difficult to believe the words could ever, in their 
 present unqualified harshness, have been uttered by him," 
 p. 94. Surely there is no real difficulty concealed here. 
 Our Lord is not speaking of those who followed the law 
 and the prophets, but of those who opposed and rejected 
 them. If we are to take the words as Mr. Tayler takes 
 them, St. John is a witness against himself, for he had 
 before recorded other words of Jesus, " Ye search the 
 Scriptures, (that is to say, the law and the prophets), for 
 
App] the Fouf-tk Gospel 279 
 
 in tliem ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they 
 that testify of me." If he intended to draw the portrait 
 of an inconsistent Christ, then he has done so ; biit if 
 not, then we must weigh one pa^ssagS against the other, 
 and strike the balance between them. 
 
 Once more, the sacramental teaching of chap. vi. and 
 xix> 34, is declared to b?P evidential of a doctrine which 
 " was dereloped in the course of the second century," p. 95. 
 It is said, " There is nothing mystical in the account of the 
 Last Supper given by the three first evangelists, nor in 
 the almost identical statement of Paul," 1 Cor. xi. 23, 25. 
 And yet surely the teaching of the same Apostle in this 
 same Epistle, which was one of his earliest, is after all 
 virtually identical with that in St. John, "The cup of 
 blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
 blood of Christ ? The bread which we break, is it not the 
 communion of the body of Christ ?" 1 Cor. x. 16. No lan- 
 guage can be stronger than this, and it is remarkably con- 
 sonant with, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man 
 and drink his blood, ye haVe no life in you," St. John vi. 
 53. It may reasonably be questioned whether th6_ 
 additional forty or fifty years in the life of the Church for 
 which Mr. Tayler asks before the existence of the Gospel 
 would be sufficient, being such years as they Were, to allow 
 of the development assumed, supposing that the doctrine in 
 point had not been primitive. See also Mr. James Orr, 
 The Authenticity of John's Gospel, p. 100 ffi 
 
 Lastly, the raising of Lazarus is declared to be the 
 " greatest of aU the miracles ascribed to Jesus," but it is 
 evidently discredited because " the synoptists say not one 
 word " about it, and " it is difficult to understand how they 
 should have omitted aU allusion to the extraordinary 
 occurrence." The only explanation is the most obvious one 
 that for some teason not assigned St. John was the only 
 
28o- The Authorship of [App 
 
 one of the disciples who had personally witnessed it. The 
 exhortation of Thomas, v. 16, "Let us also go that we may 
 die with Him," was not improbably for prudential reasons 
 overruled by our Lord, in literal accordance with His own 
 words, " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go that I may 
 awake him out of sleep." John may have been His only 
 companion, and having left His' disciples at Ephraim, or 
 having " directed them to meet Him there on His return 
 from Bethany " (Pound), our Lord may have gone thither 
 unaccompanied except by His chosen companion, the be- 
 loved disciple. If this was so, the whole thing is explained; 
 we dare not reject the narrative as unhistorical because 
 omissions are made which would explain it, or say that 
 because it is one of the mystic number of seven miracles 
 recorded by John, therefore it owes its origin to mysticism 
 and is not worthy of credit. Surely, if the writer was the 
 beloved disciple, he may oftentimes have been our Lord's 
 only companion, a circumstance which will at once account 
 for many peculiarities in his Gospel. 
 
 By the way, is it fair to say, with Mr. Tayler,- p. 98, 
 that the miracles of the fourth Gospel " are just seven in 
 number?" Is not the "symmetrical disposal of them 
 according to the mystic number seven" altogether de- 
 pendent on an imaginary, not to say an arbitrary, arrange- 
 ment ? We have — 
 
 1. Turning water into wine, chap. iL 
 
 2. Healing the nobleman's son, chap. iv. 
 
 3. Healing the impotent man, chap. v. 
 
 4. Feeding the five thousand, chap. vL 
 
 5. Giving sight to the man born blind, chap. ix. 
 
 6. Eaising of Lazarus, chap. xi. 
 
 7. Miraculous draught of fishes, chap. xxi. 
 
 This arrangement, it wUl be observed, not only makes 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 281 
 
 the last chapter an integral part of the Gospel) but also 
 omits — 
 
 1. Our Lord's own resurrection, xx. 
 
 2. His seeing Nathanael under the fig-tree, i. 48. 
 
 3. His cleansing of the temple, prophesying His own 
 resurrection, &c., ii. 19-23. 
 
 4. His telling the woman of Samaria, a stranger, that 
 she had had five husbands, iv. 18. 
 
 5. His walking on the sea, vi. 19. 
 
 6. His detection of Judas, vi. 71. 
 
 7. His escape from the people, viii. 59. 
 
 8. His second escape, x. 39. 
 
 9. His knowledge of the death of Lazarus, xi. 14. 
 
 10. The allusions to miracles not recorded, xi. 47, and 
 xii. 37. 
 
 11. The voice from heaven, xii. 28. 
 
 12. His detection of Judas, xiii. 26. 
 
 13. His prophecy" of Peter's denial; xiii. 38. 
 
 14. His passing through the closed doors, xx. 19. 
 
 15. His knowledge of Thomas's unbelief, xx. 27. 
 
 All these incidents were more or less miraculous, and 
 their occurrence in the Gospel at least shows that the 
 "disposal" of the miracles "according to the mystic 
 number seven " is fanciful, and conseq[uently proves nothing 
 as to the authorship of the work. "Whatever else criti- 
 cism of this kind proves, it conclusively shows that the 
 standpoint of the critic is not that of the Evangelist. 
 Whether that standpoint is right or wrong, it is clearly and 
 confessedly not the same.* 
 
 Dr. Davidson finds traces of " an unapostolic writer " — 
 in the mention of Bethany beyond Jordan, which he says 
 "probably had no existence," though the writer again 
 
 * ]VIr. Orr has a remark somewhat similar to my own on this enumeration 
 of Mr. Tayler, p. 41, n. 
 
282 Thi Authorship of [App 
 
 makes mention of tMs place at x. 40, showing his perfect 
 acquaintance with it ; — in the representation of the Messiah 
 not as "the King of Israel :" in spite of Nathanael's con- 
 fession, i 49, cf xviii. 33, xix. 19, nfec. ; — in the interpretation 
 of Siloam by kncieruXfifiwi : " Ari etymologising remark 
 " at once trifling and incorrect, betrays a distant Gentile 
 " writer," however this may be, it is quite in the manner 
 of the Evangelist, e.g., i. 38, 41, 42; xix. 13, 17; xx. 16 ; 
 xxi. 2 ; and, as far as we can judge, his etymology is not 
 incorrect; — in the assertion of the Jews that they were 
 never in bondage to any man, forgetful of the Eoman yoke, 
 viii. 31, which may strike some as a very graphic touch of 
 human nature, particularly as coming from those who had 
 partially believed Christ, vi. 66; — in the gloss "making 
 himself equal with God," v. 18, which "proceeds from a 
 " writer attributing more than a Messianic sense to the 
 " title — a metaphysical and later idea equivalent to that of 
 " Logos," iL p. 427-429. Whether these words proceed from 
 the writer or not, they are simply consistent with the whole 
 discourse, the purport of which remains sufficiently unmis- 
 takeable if they are omitted. 
 
 " In xii. 32-34, the multitude in Jerusalem take occasion, 
 " from the words of Jesus, ' And I, if I be lifted up from 
 " the earth, &c.,' to attribute to him the phrase 80% of man, 
 " which he did not employ. Probably the Jews refer to a 
 " former conversation (iii 14), but one which they did not 
 " hear, that he held with Mcodemus. The evangelist has 
 " put an unsuitable phrase into their mouth." This does 
 not aifect the question of authorship, because a late writer 
 would probably endeavour to be accurate ; but the refer- 
 ence really is to viii. 28, a speech which the Jews did 
 hear. 
 
 " In vi. 36, Jesus, addressing the Jews in the synagogue 
 " of Capernaum, speaks thus, 'But I said unto you that ye 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 283 
 
 " also have seen me and believe not.' "Wliere do we find 
 " him so addressing them ? The only probable allusion is 
 " to V. 37-44, though both language and scene are different 
 " there, for the place was Jerusalem." The reference is to 
 the previous verses, 26, 27, which are in effect equivalent 
 to V. 36. " Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, 
 but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. 
 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that 
 meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son 
 of man shall give unto you : for him hath G-od the Father 
 sealed," i.e... Ye saw me, and seek me because ye have seen 
 me and received of my bounty, not because ye hunger after 
 the true meat which is received only by faith. This is the 
 obvious meaning, and is not by any means " far-fetched " 
 as Alford says it is. In caUing Simon the son of John, 
 according to the better reading, Davidson asks, " Did the 
 " writer suppose the two names Jonas and John to be 
 " synonymous ? So it would seem." Here again the 
 question of authorship is not touched either way. It 
 would be more remarkable that an author writing A.D. 150 
 should make such a mistake than that St. John should, if 
 it be a mistake. Any how, it is of slight importance, and 
 there are many obvious ways in which it may be explained. 
 The change of name is preserved throughout the Gospel, 
 cf. xxi. 15, 17, another indication of this last chapter being 
 by the same hand. 
 
 The mention of Annas conjointly with Caiaphas is held 
 by Dr. Davidson to be "scarcely compatible with the 
 " authorship of a Palestinian Jew." To appreciate the force 
 of this remark and those which foUow it, the reader must 
 refer to the narrative of the transaction in Mr. Pound's Story 
 of the, Gospels, i. 576, seq. ii. 436. The critic's remarks are 
 self-destructive, because a fabricator writing at the time he 
 supposes would be specially careful to agree with and not to 
 
284 The Authorship of [App 
 
 contradict existing records. It is obvious that there were two 
 examinations, one before Annas, as St. John says, and one 
 before Caiaphas, as the synoptists say, " Per it would have 
 been useless to have led Jesus to Annas after He had been 
 to Caiaphas, whose judgment alone had the authority of the 
 civil governor." Jesus by appealing to witnesses, v. 21, and 
 "thus challenging Annas, who had no political authority, to 
 proceed to the examination of witnesses, brought the present 
 inquiry to an end," therefore, he sent Himstill 'bound to Caia- 
 phas, which he would not have been " before a magisterial 
 tribunal." Dr. Davidson asks if " Annas still retained his 
 " title of office after he had been deposed ?" . . . "why did not 
 " Ishmael, Eleazar, and Simon, who were high priests after 
 " Annas and before Caiaphas, bear the title still ? " The 
 probable answer is obvious, because in the elevation of 
 Caiaphas to the high-priesthood a man was appointed who 
 was willing that his father-in-law should, be reinvested 
 with a shadow of the authority he had enjoyed before. The 
 same reason would not apply in the case of Ishmael, 
 Eleazar, and Simon, who were not thus related to Caiaphas. 
 They had held the office but a short time and had been 
 deposed, and he did not care to associate them with himself 
 in any of the sacerdotal functions. Annas, on the con- 
 trary, had been for many years high-priest and was his 
 father-in-law. 
 
 Again, the explanation of the words "Destroy this 
 temple," ii. 21, is declared to be "altogether improbable." 
 " Christ did not refer to his body, and even if he did, he 
 " must have pointed to it ; whereas the apostles were 
 " first led to the apprehension of the words by his 
 " resurrection." It is not likely that they, aijy more than 
 the other Jews, would have understood them before. If 
 He didnot refer to His body the words were meaningless ; 
 to what could He have refen-ed ? I have much pleasure 
 
App] ike Fotirtk Gospel 285 
 
 in drawing attention here to a very excellent work on our 
 Lord's life and character, recently published anonymously 
 under the title of " Judged by His Words," Longmans, 1870. 
 See p. 22. The argument is original, though at the same 
 time obvious when once suggested; it is very ably con- 
 ducted, and conclusive in the impression it leaves. 
 
 Three instances are given in proof of the statement that 
 "traditional reminiscences are sometimes inserted in im- 
 "proper places," p. 431. The first is iv. 43-45. "i^or Jesus 
 himseK testified that a prophet hath no honour in his own 
 country," in which the writer is supposed to have mistaken 
 G-alilee in general for Nazareth. There is no occasion to refer 
 the particle far " to the subsequent verse, as Tholuck takes 
 it.'' Our Lord did not seek either publicity or popularity. 
 He was gaiaing both, v. 1-3, tJierefore'he went into Galilee. 
 
 The second is xiiL 20, where we are told " there is no 
 proper connection between the words spoken and the con- 
 text." Surely there is a very intimate connection. The 
 Apostles needed to be assured that the treachery of Judas 
 just detected would not invalidate the efficacy of their own 
 mission, and therefore He said to them, " He that receiveth 
 whomsoever I send receiveth me," &c. * 
 
 The third is in the words, "Arise, let us go hence,'' 
 xiv. 31, which are said to be " taken from Matthew and 
 Mark, where we read, ' Arise, let us be going ; behold he 
 " is at hand that doth betray me.' The evangelist was 
 " unwilling to lose words in harmony with his endeavour 
 " to set forth the voluntary nature of the sufferings which 
 
 " Jesus underwent In the synoptic account, the 
 
 " words belong to the scene in Gethsemane, — a scene incon- 
 " sistent with the character of the fourth gospel. Soul 
 " conflicts had too much of the human to suit a gospel 
 " which describes the eternal Word. The omission of that 
 " scene, coupled with the wish to retain the words before 
 
2 86 The Authorship of [App 
 
 " us, occasioned tlie present collocation." — Davidson ii. 452, 
 after Strauss's Das Leben Jestt, pp. 554, 555, ed. 1864. 
 
 I must here again refer the reader to the narrative in 
 Mr. Pound's work. The words, " Arise, let us go hence," 
 applied to the. departure from the supper-room at Bethany 
 for Jerusalem,- where our Lord was to eat the Passover 
 with His disciples. They were therefore spoken some 
 hours, before the others in Matthew and Mark. That the 
 fourth Evangelist did not consider " soul conflicts" unsuit- 
 able to his- work, is proved by his alone recording the 
 memorable words, xii. 27, 28. Cf. xvii. 1, 5. Criticism 
 renounces her proper function when she exercises herself 
 in discovering a writer's, secret motives, instead of carefully 
 noting his actual work. It. may well be qiiestioned 
 whether, if this had been the Evangelist's real motive, it 
 would have been apparent to one reader in a hundred 
 thousand, and whether therefore the effect of his supposed 
 device would have been accomplished. 
 
 Another indication of non-Palestinian origin discovered 
 by Davidson is the writer's use of the word J&ws, which 
 seems to. be. that of a person " distant from their religion 
 " a^d customs." If, according to tradition, he wrote at 
 Ephesus, and for the. Christian world, this need not sur- 
 prise us. It is- not, however, without considerable sur- 
 prise that we read " in the synoptists, the Gableans are 
 the warm adherents and friends of Jesus of Nazareth," 
 ii. 433, when we remember, — " Woe unto thee, Chorazin ! 
 woe unto thee, Bethsaida," &c. ; that at Nazareth they 
 would have cast Him down headlong from the brow of the 
 hill whereon their city was built ; that even " they were 
 filled with madness, and communed one with another what 
 they might do to Jesus," St. Luke vi. 11 ; that He was 
 caUed " a gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of 
 publicans and sinners ;" and that, after one of His mighty 
 
App] . the Fourth Gospel 2S7 
 
 •works, they besouglit. Him that He would depart out of 
 their coasts, &c. ; — and when this is advanced as a proof of 
 the injustice with which the same term Jews is indiscri- 
 minately applied to the Galileans as a name implying 
 more or less of reproach, supposing such to be the case 
 which it is not. 
 
 Not less striking is the statement that in the fourth 
 Gospel the Jews " are never termed the ' people of God,' 
 " but ' the nation,' (?-6 'ihas) a term which they applied 
 " to the heathen." — Hid. St. John says, i. 11, " He came 
 unto This own, and his own received him not." Is not this 
 tantamount to saying that Jews were the people of God ? 
 vh ihos is only applied to the Jews on two occasions, 
 once in xi. 48-52, " The Eomans shall come and take away 
 both our place and nation" &c. ; and once by Pilate in 
 xviii. 35, " Thine own nation and the chief priests have 
 delivered thee unto me i what hast thou done V' and it is 
 difficult to say in either case what, word would suit the 
 context so well. 
 
 Surely it will be some time before any large body of 
 intelligent people will throw up their belief in the Johan- 
 nine authorship of the fourth Gospel on internal evidence 
 so trivial and flimsy as this. The court of popular opinion, 
 to which we may with perfect confidence appeal, will cer- 
 tainly return a verdict of " Kot Proven" : it can return no 
 other. 
 
 III. 
 
 After noticing these supposed internal indications of a 
 later and non- Apostolic origin for the fourth Gospel, let us 
 see if we can discover any internal indications of credi- 
 bility or of Apostolic origin, and any undesigned coinci- 
 dences or marks of correspondence, and of acquaintance 
 with the other Gospels. 
 
288 The Authorship of . [App 
 
 In the first place, as was remarked in Lecture VII., we 
 find the same position and efficacy assigned to Faifh in all 
 the Gospels. " Thy faith hath saved thee." " He could 
 there do no mighty work . . . and He marvelled because of 
 their unbelief," correspond exactly to " as many as received 
 Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, 
 even to them that believe on His name " . . . " that who- 
 soever lelievefh in Him should not perish," &c. 
 
 John the Baptist is introduced abruptly as a " man sent 
 from God," without any direct mention of his office as the 
 Baptist, but with a direct reference to his teaching else- 
 where recorded. " This was he of whom I spake." "V\Tien 
 and where had he spoken, if not in the other Gospels ? The 
 man that wrote thus assumed acquaintance on the part of 
 his readers with these Gospels. 
 
 St. Luke's narrative of the Baptist's preaching differs as 
 much from that in St. Matthew and St. Mark as St. John's 
 does from either, yet he expressly says, " And many other 
 things in his exhortation preached he unto the people," by 
 which we are prepared for the additional specimens of his 
 doctrine which St. John has preserved. 
 
 In all the four Gospels John is represented as making 
 the same reference to Isaiah — St. Matt, iii 3, St. Mark i. 3, 
 St. Luke iii. 4, St. John i. 23. In the second and third it 
 is doubtful whether the Evangelist makes the quotation or 
 attributes it to John, but it is the same quotation. 
 
 The special mention of the place Bethabara or Bethany, 
 where John was baptising, which is peculiar to our Evan- 
 gelist, is of a piece with the minuteness of him who, in 
 the following verse, says, " The next day John seeth Jesus 
 coming to him." This indicates the reminiscence of one 
 who had been himself an actor in the scene, and probably 
 a disciple of John's. 
 
 "And I knew him not," i. 31. Whatever difficulty 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 289 
 
 there may be in reconciling this with John's spontaneous 
 confession in St. Matt, iii 14, "I have need/' &c., it is at 
 least explained by St. Luke's narrative, i. 80, " And the 
 child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the 
 desert till the day of his shewing unto Israel." Or he 
 may have known Him personally and by character, and 
 yet not known Him as the person to whom he had himself 
 borne witness as the One to come, in which case his mes- 
 sage is the more remarkable. But see also Mr. Pound's 
 " Story of the Gospels," ii. 118. 
 
 In L 45, our Lord is called " Jesus of Nazareth, the son 
 of Joseph ;" and in vi. 42 the Jews ask, " Is not this 
 Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we 
 know ? " The fourth Evangelist then agrees with the 
 others in representing Jesus as the reputed son of earthly 
 parents, though it has been remarked by ISTeander (quoted 
 by Alford, loc. cit.), that by combining his two declarations 
 that the " Word was made flesh," and that what is " born 
 of the flesh is flesh," " we cannot escape the inference that 
 a supernatural working of God in the conception of the 
 man Christ Jesus is implied ;" and at the same time St. 
 Matthew and St. Luke are at one with him in saying, 
 " That which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost," 
 and " That holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be 
 called the Son of God." 
 
 St. John's has been called the Jerusalem Gospel ; it is 
 .well, therefore, to observe that he represents our Lord's 
 ministry as commencing in Galilee ; that, according to 
 him. His first miracle was wrought in Galilee ; that the 
 nobleman's son was healed in GaUlee ; that He lived with 
 His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples, at any 
 rate for a few days, at Capernaum, ii. 12 ; that, after hav- 
 ing baptised with John in Jordan, He left Judea and 
 departed again into GaKlee ; that, after healing the im- 
 
290 Th6 Authorship of [App 
 
 potent man at Betkesda, He is again found in Galilee, vi. 
 1 ; that He was sought for in Capernaum, vi. 24 ; that He 
 taught in the synagogue in Capernaum, probably on more 
 than one occasion ; that He had many disciples in Galilee, 
 vi. 66 ; that He walked (habitually) in Galilee, in prefer- 
 ence to Judsea, on account of the animosity of the Jews 
 there, vii. 1 ; that He abode stiE. in Galilee after He was 
 urged by His brethren to go up to Jerusalem at a certain 
 feast of tabernacles, vii. 9 ; that He was so identified with 
 Galilee that the reproach was thrown at Nicodemus by 
 some of the members of the Sanhedrim, " Art thou also of 
 Galilee ? Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no 
 prophet ?" vii. 52 ; that it was not improbably with refer- 
 rence to the same reproach that the Pharisees said, " We 
 know that this man is a sinner," ix. 24, Cf. i. 46 ; that four 
 at least of His disciples were of Galilee, namely, Andrew, 
 Peter, Philip, and IsTathanael, which implies a certain 
 amount of habitual converse with Galilee, and that the 
 title by which He was designated on the Cross was " Jesus 
 of Nazareth, the king of the Jews." It is, therefore, by no 
 means inconsistent with the previous tenor of the narrative 
 when we read in the last chaper that the third manifesta- 
 tion of Christ to His disciples after the resurrection was 
 " by the sea of Tiberias." 
 
 The miracle of turning water into wine at a marriage 
 feast was certainly not inconsistent with the chara,cter of 
 Him who was ialUd, a gluttonous man and a wine- 
 bibber. 
 
 It is strange that any one not under the influence of 
 strong bias can for a moment suppose that the act of cleans- 
 ing the temple recorded in St. John ii. 16, can be the same 
 with that of the synoptical Gospels. Mr. James Orr says, 
 " Every candid critic will concur " with Mr. Tayler " as to 
 the synoptical being the more probable place for this event 
 in the histoiy of Jesus," and he evidently thinks it mis- 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 291 
 
 placed in St. John, but a little consideration wiU show 
 that the two events are distinct: — (1.) The scourge of 
 small cords is peculiar to St. John ; (2.) The driving out 
 the sheep and the oxen, as well as those that trafficked in 
 them, is peculiar to St. John ; (3.) In St. John the Lord 
 speaks only to those that sold doves ; and (4.) the words 
 He uses are not in any one of the other Gospels. Mr. Orr, 
 however, has well observed, that this narrative both sup- 
 plements and is supplemented by the others, for the accu- 
 sation brought by the two false witnesses against Jesus 
 was, " This fellow said, I am able to destoy the temple of 
 God, and to build it in three days ;" and that when on the 
 Cross He was reviled, it was by those who wagged their 
 heads, saying, "Thou that destroyest the temple and buildest 
 in three days, save thyself." — The, Authenticity of John's 
 Gospel, p. 25. We are unable to follow him to his conclu- 
 sion " that some such expression had been used by Jesus 
 .... more recently than John leads us to suppose," for 
 we believe that the Evangelists did not write without 
 regard to chronological accuracy ; but it does seem not at 
 all improbable, that when St. Mark adds, " But neither so 
 did their witness agree together," xiv. 59, he may have 
 referred to a discrepance in point of time, some of the 
 witnesses having spoken of a former occasion at our Lord's 
 first passover, and some of a latter one at His last. We 
 cannot regard St. John's narrative as " unlikely " with Mr. 
 Orr, bvit rather take it as a striking instance of our Lord's 
 moral power over men indicative of His real nature as 
 something more than man. 
 
 The words of Christ recorded by St. John, "Except 
 a man be born from above he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God," are identical in teaching with other words 
 recorded by St. Matthew, and spoken to His disciples, 
 " Except y& be converted and become as Uttle children, 
 ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 
292 The Authorship of [App 
 
 Kotice also tlie expression "kingdom of God," "kingdom 
 of heaven." It is evident from the abrupt way in which 
 this phrase is here introduced, that it had been used by 
 Christ before. It was not possible that Mcodemus could 
 have understood what our Lord said had the phrase not 
 been familiar to him, and identified in some way with the 
 teaching of the Teacher. ]^ow, according to the other 
 Gospels, this was the case. Jesus had begun His ministry 
 with an announcement of the nearness of the kingdom of 
 God. Nicodemus knew this, and consequently the dis- 
 course of Jesus went straight to the real subject-matter in 
 hand, the nature and object of His own mission. 
 
 As instances of minute personal acquaintance on the 
 part of the writer with the incidents he recorded, we may 
 mention, " John also was baptising in -iEnon near to Salim, 
 
 because there was much water there For John was 
 
 not yet cast iato prison," iii. 23, 24. 
 
 " Jesus himself baptised not, but his disciples," iv. 2. . 
 
 " Then cometh he to a city of Samaria which is called 
 Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to 
 his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there." Of Gen. 
 xxxiii. 19 ; xlviii. 22; Josh. xxiv. 32. 
 
 In St. John's narrative of feeding the five thousand, 
 there are many particulars which mark an eye-witness ; 
 e,.g., the question of Jesus to Philip, "Whence shall we buy 
 bread that these may eat ?" while in the subjoined re- 
 mark of the Evangelist, " This he said to prove him, for he 
 himself knew what he would do," we see the observation 
 of one who was intimately conversant with the habit of 
 his Master's mind : Philip's reply, " Two hundred penny- 
 worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of 
 them may take a little:" " One of his disciples, Andrew, 
 Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him. There is a lad here," 
 &c. : " Now there was much grass in the place :" St. John 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 293 
 
 alone tells us why the fragments were taken up, because 
 Jesus had said, " Gather up the fragments that remain, 
 that nothing he lost." St. John alone tells us why Jesus 
 went up into a mountain to pray after this miracle; it was 
 because He " perceived that they would come and take 
 him by force to make him a king," knowing as before his 
 Master's mind. 
 
 " So when they had rowed about ^i;e and^ twenty or thirty 
 furlongs." 
 
 " For neither did his brethren believe in him,'' vii. 5. 
 
 " Now about the midst of the feast, Jesus went up into 
 the temple and taught," vii. 14. 
 
 " As Jesus passed hy, he saw a man which was blind from 
 his birth. When he had thus spoken, he spat on the 
 ground, and made clay of the spittle, and anointed the 
 eyes of the blind man with the clay," ix. 1-6. 
 
 " And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, 
 and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in 
 Solomon's Porch" x. 22, 23. 
 
 " And went away again beyond Jordan into the place 
 where John at first baptised, and there he abode. And 
 many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle ; 
 but aU things that John spake of this man were true. 
 And many believed on him there," x. 40-42. 
 
 Surely the man who wrote thus must have been present 
 with Jesus at the time. 
 
 , Ch. xi. 2, is a clear reference to the other Gospels, for a 
 writer would not in this way refer to a fact as well knoM'n, 
 of which he had not himseK as yet informed his readers, 
 unless they might be supposed familiar with it from other 
 sources. 
 
 The speech of Thomas, xi. 16, " Let us also go that we 
 inay die with him," is worthily recorded by him who sub- 
 sequently related the story of his unbelief. "We may add, 
 
294 The Atithorship of [App 
 
 also that the two anecdotes are appropriate to the same 
 man, for daring devotion and ohstinate unbelief may be, 
 and not unfrequently are, characteristic of the same mind. 
 
 It is needless to make any reference to the 11th chapter, 
 for it is so full of individual touches which mark the pre- 
 sence of an eye-witness that, to us, at least, it seems im- 
 possible to read it without perceiving them. Mr. Orr has 
 very well pointed out the bearing of this chapter on the 
 Synoptical Gospels in " The Portraits of the two Sisters," 
 pp. 35-38 of his pamphlet before quoted. 
 
 It is worthy of observation that St. John twice over says 
 of Mary, that she rose up quickly, (29, 31,) at the word of 
 Jesus ; this, although in direct contrast, is by no means 
 inconsistent with the conduct of her who sat at " Jesus' 
 feet and heard His words," but it is another delicate Johan- 
 nine touch. 
 
 "Then took Mary a 'pound of ointment of spikenard, 
 very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his 
 feet with her hair : aind the house was filled with the odour 
 of the ointment" xii. 3. 
 
 " The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Beth- 
 saida of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we would see 
 Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew: and again 
 Andrew and Philip tell Jesus" xii. 21, 22. This is the 
 particularity of a person who had been present and 
 remembered the circumstances; such minuteness is un- 
 accountable in one romancing, except indeed on the 
 Bupposition of an intentional deception with which the 
 character of the writer cannot be reconciled. 
 
 It is evident, on looking at xvi. 33, xvii. 1, and xviii. 1, 
 that the prayer of Jesus in xvii. was spoken in the presence 
 of His disciples before His agony, and that His agony, as 
 related by the synoptists, occurred between v. 1 and 2 of 
 ch. xviiL Why the agony of Jesus is omitted by St. John 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 295 
 
 we cannot tell, except it wai3 because lie knew it had been 
 recorded by others; the reason cannot be as alleged by 
 some because he did not wish so to exhibit the eternal 
 Logos, for had that been his reason he would not have 
 written, suoh passages as xiL 27, xi. 35, iv. 6, or xix, 
 28. 
 
 St. Matthew and St. Mark mention the fact of Peter'g 
 cutting ofP the mr of the high-priest's servant. St. Luke 
 and St. John alone say that it was his right ear ; but St. 
 John adds "the servant's name was Malchus." Is this 
 the remark of one who linew, or of one who vtzs fdbricatingi 
 If of one who knew, the reason is discovered in xviii. 1 5, 
 where we are told that the " other disciple " was " known 
 unto the high-priest, and " (because known) " went in with 
 Jesus into the palace of the high-priest." This other 
 disciple was evidently more or less at home in the high- 
 priest's palace ; he at any rate knew the high-priest and 
 knew certain members of his household, for we find in the 
 next verse that while Peter could not gain admission, the 
 " other disciple " had only to speak to the damsel at the 
 door in order to bring Peter in, and that one of the servants 
 who said to Peter, " Did not I see thee in the garden with 
 hitn ? " was related to Malchus. The narrator here is 
 manifestly to be identified with the " other disciple." No 
 other inference is possible ; unless we assume that the 
 servant's name, and the entrance of the " other disciple," 
 and the relationship of the second servant to Malchus, are 
 devices resorted to for the purpose of giving the narrative 
 the air of verisimilitude ; but even in that case the effect 
 could only be produced by supposing the " other 
 disciple '' to be the informant. If the " other disciple " was 
 not the historian, the historian must have had the incidents 
 on the authority of the " other disciple," in which case the 
 same remarks apply which hav^ already been made in thp 
 
296 The Authorship of [App 
 
 early part of this Note. Here is, at least, Apostolic 
 authority for these incidents. 
 
 But now we come to another point. If the "other 
 disciple " was St. John, is there any reason to believe that 
 he was known to the high-priest ? It is somewhat re- 
 markable that a tradition of the second century has 
 supplied us with an answer to this question, and that in a 
 manner quite unexpected. Eusebius in two passages, iii. 
 32 and v. 24, quotes from a letter of Polycrates, Bishop of 
 Ephesus, to Victor, Bishop of Eome, A.D. 192-201, in which 
 he says, " Moreover, John, who rested on the bosom of our 
 Xord, who was also a priest, and bore the sacerdotal plate 
 (irira.'Kov) and was both martyr and teacher ; he also rests 
 at Ephesus." Critics have not known what to make of 
 this iriraXof or plate of the priestly mitre inscribed " Holy 
 to the Lord," but it seems not unreasonable to suppose 
 with Mr. Orr, p. 45, "that he was somehow connected with 
 the priestly of&ce — that one of these golden plates had 
 been in John's possession as an heir-loom," and that " the 
 circumstance at least is worth considering, as tending to 
 identify him with the ' disciple known to the high-priest.' " 
 But what I wish to observe is this, that the statement of 
 Polycrates cannot under any circumstances be referred for 
 its origin to these words in the Gospel. He cannot have 
 intended to illustrate them. And yet, if the tradition is 
 worth anything, as it probably is, it does clearly show how 
 St. John may have been not only known to the high-priest, 
 but even possibly a distant relative. Suppose, therefore, 
 the Gospel had been written A.D. 150, it is in the highest 
 degree improbable that any such allusion would be made 
 by the writer to a vague tradition of this kind, even if it 
 existed or was generally known. As far as we can judge, 
 the tradition serves to corroborate the Gospel, and the 
 Gospel to confirm the tradition. 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 297 
 
 Precisely in tlie same way it is in the higliest degree 
 improbable that the tradition of St. John's lying on his 
 Master's bosom and being the beloved disciple should have 
 furnished the only ground for a writer in a.d. 1 50 to construct 
 a fictitious Gospel upon, which was to pass for the work of 
 that disciple. If John did lie on his Master's bosom and 
 was the beloved disciple, then we can perhaps understand 
 the tradition being preserved ; only it is somewhat hard to 
 reconcile even that tradition with what is otherwise told 
 us of John ; and indeed the same difficulty confronts us in 
 the fcLct which is perceived in tJieory upon comparing the 
 fourth Gospel portrait of John with that of the other three. 
 But in reality it is far more probable that we are indebted 
 to the Gospel for the tradition than to the tradition for the 
 Gospel. And then, in that case, any allusion to either 
 of these latter circumstances points us to the inference that 
 the Gospel was known to the person by whom the allusion 
 was made. Now there is no allusion to these circumstances 
 in any writer earlier than A.D. 150, therefore we may 
 reasonably conclude that the allusions which do exist owe 
 their existence to an acquaintance with the Gospel, which 
 in fact had been the means of preserving the tradition. It 
 is in a very high degree improbable that the tradition 
 would survive without the Gospel; there is no independent 
 evidence of its having done so ; but it is even more impro- 
 bable stiU that the Gospel would be written to fit the 
 tradition. The expression iiti(STrj6iai applied to St. John 
 by later writers is only traceable to the influence of the 
 Gospel. The preservation of the other tradition about the 
 ffsraXov can be understood on the supposition of an 
 interest existing about St. John which the Gospel had 
 created, but otherwise there is no reason why we should 
 know more about that Apostle than we know of Simon 
 Zelotes or Bartholomew. The alternative cannot too 
 
298 The Authorship of [App 
 
 forcibly be insisted upon, that if St. John's Gospel is not 
 authentic it can be nothing else but a romance. It is im- 
 possible to account for the phenomena which do char- 
 acterise it without admitting the supposition of a very 
 subtle design, an endeavour to deceive, or, at any rate, to 
 mislead. 
 
 In the last three chapters there are so many indications 
 of the presence of an eye-witness that it is needless to specify 
 them ; e.g., St. John alone mentions the Pavement or Gab- 
 batha — ^that the title on the cross was read by many of the 
 Jews — that the chief priests desired to alter it — that the 
 fmvr soldiers divided the garments of Jesus among them in 
 four parts— that the coat was without seam woven from 
 the top throughout — that this was why it was not divided 
 — that His mother and other women were standing by the 
 cross — that He consigned His mother to the keeping of 
 the beloved disciple — ^that He said " I thirst " and " It is 
 finished " — that " He bowed His head and gave up the 
 ghost " — that His side was pierced^hat Nicodemus took 
 part in His burial, &c., &c. ; these must be either the 
 accurate reminiscences of an eye-witness, or they are the 
 fabrications of a romancer. Can any one hesitate to decide 
 which ? It is the same with the narrative of the resurrec- 
 tion — taken merely as an independent narrative of an 
 event we otherwise accept — ^is there any evidence that this 
 narrative is unauthentic ? Is not the visit of Peter and 
 John, XX. 3-10, told in language so graphic and life-like 
 that it cannot be the fictitious narrative of a true story, 
 but if the story ahont which it is told is true it must be 
 true likewise? And so with the appearance to Mary- 
 Magdalene and the episode of Thomas ; it is in vain that 
 we are asked to believe that these things are only true in 
 the lessons they are designed to teach : our judgment, yea, 
 our very nature, revolts against the insinuation and deter- 
 
App] the Four tJi Gospel 299 
 
 mines tliat they must be fads. And is it not the same 
 with, " Cast the net on the right side of the ship," xxi. 6 ; 
 Simon Peter girding his fisher's coat to him, the two 
 hundred ciihits, the hundred and fifty and three fishes, 
 and the dialogue with Peter ? It is very hard to believe 
 that the man who wrote thus was romancing, and he was 
 romancing if he pretended to be the person within whose 
 cognisance the various incidents occurred, but was not. 
 
 It may be asked, however, what motive had the writer 
 in concealing himself ? ^ " Cur autem, quseso, nomen suum 
 suppressit ? Cur potissimum, cap. xxi, 20. in insignienda 
 sua persona tot ambagibus usus, cur, v. 24. nomen suum 
 non professus est ? Nonne hoc venerando nomine addito 
 maximam libro suo fecisset fidem ? — ^Dicis fortasse, non 
 opus erat, ut nomen profiteretur ; omnes enim Ephesini et 
 relic[ui Asise Minoris bene sciebant, quis evangelii sit 
 auctor, quis iste aKXoi (i.aSnf^i Sv ^ydfa 6 'Itjeous, neque 
 igitur necesse erat, ut libro fidem faceret. Quod si autem 
 hoc fuisset, cur tandem historise suss fidem tam saepe et 
 solemniter asseverasset ? quid opus fuisset verborum v. c. 
 cap. xix, 35. et similium ? Joannes de fide, qua lectores 
 evangelium, quod ab ipso scriptum scirent, accepturi 
 essent, minime poterat esse dubius, nihUque ei hujus fidei 
 gratia curandum fuisset nisi hoc, ut lectores scirent, se illud 
 scripsisse, — igitur ut se auctorem nominaret, nomen suum 
 profiteretur. Id vero ipsum est, quod non fecit ; quo vero 
 opus non fuisset, scl. asseveratione a^iomerias, id fecit. 
 Egit igitur ita, ut Joannes Apostolus baud dubie non 
 egisset. Qua in re originis hujus libri apostolicge fautores, 
 
 ^ The answer proposed by Dr. Oosterzee, "John's Ctospel: Apologetic 
 Lectures," Dr. Hurst's Translation, T. & T. Clark, 1869, p. 27. "Why 
 should the Apostle have done what was not customary in his day ? " seems 
 hardly admissible when we bear in mind the Apocalypse and the Epistles 
 of St. Paul. 
 
300 The Authorship of [App 
 
 nil quo auctorem defenderent protulerunt, nisi hoc, 
 modestice esse, quod Joannes suum nomen nuUo in loco 
 professus sit. At ista apostoli modestia (si vel non urgeam, 
 loca Luc. ix. 46-48, Marc, x, 35-41, Matt. x. 22, Luc. 51-55, 
 illam minime probaMlem facere) quo modo hie appareat, 
 profecto non video." Bretschneider, Probabilia, iii. 19. 
 
 This is totally to misrepresent and to misunderstand 
 the writer's motive. It was necessary that the things 
 Avritten should be sufficiently trustworthy to fulfil the 
 purpose with which they were written ; namely, that we 
 might believe in Jesus, and believing have life through His 
 name; but this object being secured the less the things 
 written were identified with the person writing them, and 
 the more the person writing them was kept out of sight, 
 the better. This is the explanation of the whole matter. 
 Surely it cannot be needful in writing for an English 
 public to enlarge upon the advantages of anonymous 
 composition. 
 
 For other marks of undesigned coincidence the reader is 
 referred to Mr. Orr's pamphlet. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Let us now inquire how far the accounts of the other 
 Evangelists corroborate St. John, either in doctrine or in 
 incident. 
 
 St. Matt. iii. 11. St. John i. 33. 
 
 He shall baptise you with the The same is he which baptiseth 
 
 Holy Ghost and with fire. with the Holy Ghost. 
 
 iv. 17. iii. 3, to xviii. 33, xix. 19. 
 
 From that time Jesus began to Except a man be born again he 
 
 preach, and to say, Eepent : for the cannot see the kingdom of God 
 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand : [and enter into the kingom of Gfod. Art 
 passim in the first three Gospels.] thou the king of the Jews ? Jesus 
 
 of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. 
 [Was there not an allusion here to 
 His uniform teaching not otherwise 
 recorded by St. John ?J 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 .301 
 
 St. John v. 
 Had ye believed Moses, ye would 
 have believed me i for he wrote of 
 
 St. Matt. v. 17. 
 
 Think not that I am come to 
 destroy the law, or the prophets : I 
 am not come to destroy, but to 
 fulfil. 
 
 V. 28. 
 
 But I say unto you, That whoso- 
 ever looketh on a woman to lust 
 after her hath committed adultery 
 with her already in his heart. 
 
 The oft repeated " I say unto you " iu the Sermon on the 
 Mount is in keeping with the appellation bestowed on 
 Christ by St. John, " The Word of God." 
 
 me. 
 
 viii. 7. 
 He that is without sin among 
 you, let him first cast a stone at 
 her [the woman taken in adultery.] 
 
 St. Matt. vi. 23. 
 If therefore the Hght that is in 
 thee be darkness, how great is that 
 darkness. 
 
 vii. 22, 23. 
 Many will say to me in that day. 
 Lord, Ijord, have we not prophesied 
 in thy name ! and iu thy name have 
 cast out devils? and in thy name 
 done many wonderful works ? And 
 then wfll I profess unto them, I 
 never knew you : depart from me, 
 ye that work iniquity. 
 
 vii. 28. 
 And it came to pass, when Jesus 
 had ended these sayings, the people 
 were astonished at his doctrine: 
 for he taught them as one having 
 authority, and not as the scribes. 
 
 V. 16, vii. 20, xii. 33, of. xiii. 23. 
 
 Let your light so shine before 
 men, that they may see your good 
 ■works, and glorify your Father 
 which is in heaven. Wherefore by 
 their fruits ye shall know them. 
 The tree is known by his fruit. 
 
 vii. 19. 
 Every tree that bringth not forth 
 good fruit is hewn down, and cast 
 into the fire. 
 
 St. John i. 9. 
 That was the true light, which' 
 lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world. 
 
 V. 22. 
 The rather judgeth no man, but 
 hath committed all judgment unto 
 the Son : . . . And hath given him 
 authority to execute judgment also, 
 because he is the Son of man. 
 
 vii. 45, 46. 
 Then came the officers to the 
 chief priests and Pharisees ; and 
 they said unto them, Why have ye 
 not brought him? The officers 
 answered. Never man spake like 
 this man. 
 
 XV. 8. 
 Herein is my Father glorified, 
 that ye bear much fruit ; so shall ye 
 be my disciples. 
 
 XV. 2. 
 Every branch in me that beareth 
 not fruit he taketh away : ... If 
 a, man abide not in me, he is cast 
 
302 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Matt. vii. 7. 
 Ask, and it shall be given you ; 
 geek, and ye shall find ; knock, and 
 it shall be opened unto you. 
 
 forth as a branch, and is withered ; 
 and men gather them, and cast 
 them into the fije, and they are 
 burned. 
 
 St. John xvi. 23. 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
 Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father 
 in my name, he will give it you. . . . 
 Ask, and ye shall receive, that your 
 joy may be full. 
 
 The appeal to Scripture is tlie same in all the Evangelists. 
 St. Mark has ha. itKrigwium a! y^afal, xiv. 49, once only, but 
 cf. XV. 28. St. Luke, Ss? ffXjjgw^^na/ ^diira, xxiv. 44, cf. xxi. 
 22. St. Matthew and St. John, the frequent phrase "m 
 v\r!^ca6fi. This consentient view of the character and office 
 of Holy Scripture is remarkable in writers so different as 
 St. Matthew and St. John. 
 
 St. Matt. viii. 15. 
 And he touched her hand, and 
 the fever left her. 
 
 ix. 6, 7. 
 Then saith he to the sick of the 
 palsy. Arise, take up thy bed, and 
 go unto thine house. And he arose 
 and departed to his house. 
 
 ix. 15. 
 Can the children of the bride- 
 chamber mourn as long as the 
 bridegroom is with them ? 
 
 ix. 18. 
 My daughter is even now dead : 
 but come and lay thy hand upon 
 her, and she shall live. 
 
 ix. 37, 38 ; xiii. 16, 17. 
 
 The. harvest truly is plenteous, 
 
 but the labourers are few ; pray ye 
 
 therefore the Lord of the harvest, 
 
 that he would send forth labourers 
 
 St. John iv. 52. 
 Yesterday at the seventh hour 
 the fever left him. 
 
 V. 8, 9. 
 Jesus eaith unto him, B>ise, take 
 up thy bed, and walk. And im- 
 mediately the man was made whole, 
 and took up his bed, and walked : 
 and on the same day was the Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 iii. 29. 
 The friend of the bridegroom, 
 which standeth and heareth him, 
 rejoiceth greatly because of the bride- 
 groom's voice. 
 
 iv. 47. 
 He went unto him, and besought 
 him that he would come dowli, and 
 heal his son : for he was at the 
 point of death. 
 
 iv. 35-38. 
 
 Lift up your eyes, and look on 
 
 the fields ; for they are white already 
 
 to harvest. And he that reapeth 
 
 receiveth wages, and gatheretb fruit 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 303 
 
 into Ms harveet.... Blessed are your 
 eyes, tor they see : and your ears, 
 for they hear. Tor verily I say 
 unto you. That many prophets and 
 righteous men have desired to see 
 these things which ye see, and have 
 not seen them ; and to hear these 
 things which ye hear, and have not 
 heard them. 
 
 St. Matt. x. 16, 22. 
 Behold, I send you forth as lambs 
 in the midst of wolves. 
 
 And ye shall be hated of all men 
 for my name's sake. 
 
 X.17. 
 
 But beware of men : for they will 
 deliver you up to the Councils, and 
 they will scourge you in their syna- 
 gogues ; and ye shall be brought 
 before governors and kings for my 
 sake, for a testimony against them 
 and the Gentiles. 
 
 [Spoken probably about two years 
 before His death.] 
 
 X. 22. 
 He that endureth to the end shall 
 be saved. 
 
 X. 24. 
 The disciple is not above his 
 master, nor the servant above his 
 lord. 
 
 X. 25. 
 If they have called the master of 
 the house Beelzebub, how much 
 
 tmto life eternal : that both lie that 
 Boweth and he that reapeth may re- 
 joice together. And herein is that 
 saying true. One soweth and another 
 reapeth. I sent you to reap that 
 whereon ye bestowed no labour ; 
 other men laboured, and ye are 
 entered into their labours. 
 
 St. John xv. 16, 19. 
 
 Ye have not chosen me, but I 
 have chosen you, and ordained you. 
 [See St. Matt. x. 1 ; St. Mark iii. 
 13, 14 ; St. Luke vi. 13.] 
 
 If ye were of the world, the 
 world would love his own ; but be- 
 cause ye are not of the world, but I 
 have chosen you out of the world, 
 therefore the world hateth you. 
 
 xvi. 2, 4. 
 
 They shall put you out of the 
 synagogues ; yea, the time cometh, 
 that whosoever killeth you will 
 think that he doeth God service. . . , 
 And these things I said not imto 
 you at the beginning because I was 
 with you. 
 
 [However We may reconcile this 
 l&st statement with that in St. 
 Matthew, the apparent discrep- 
 ance is one of which the writer 
 must have been aware.] 
 
 Of. Kev. ii. 10. 
 Be thou faithful unto death, and 
 I win give thee a crown of life. 
 
 xiii. 16 ; xv. 20. 
 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you. 
 The servant is not greater than his 
 Lord ; neither is he that is sent 
 greater than he that sent him. 
 
 Remember the word that I said 
 unto you. The servant is not greater 
 than his lord. 
 
 viii. 48 ; vii. 20 ; x. 20. 
 Say we not weU that thOu art a 
 Samaritan and haM a devil ? [Had 
 
304 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 more BLall they call them of hia 
 household 1 [Not yet so called in 
 St. Matt. Cf. xii. 24.J 
 
 St. Matt. x. 39 ; xvi. 25. 
 
 He that findeth his life shall lose 
 it ; and he that loseth his life for 
 my sake shall find it. 
 
 X. 40. 
 He that receiveth you, receiveth 
 me ; and he that receiveth me, re- 
 ceiveth him that sent me. 
 
 X. 42. 
 
 Whosoever shall give to drink 
 unto one of these little ones, &c. 
 
 xi. 11. 
 
 Verily I say unto you, Among 
 them that are bom of women there 
 hath not risen a greater than John 
 the Baptist : notwithstanding, he 
 that is least in the kingdom of hea- 
 ven is greater than he. 
 
 xi. 27. 
 
 All things are delivered unto me 
 of my Father : and no man knoweth 
 the Son, but the Father ; neither 
 knoweth any man the Father, save 
 the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
 Son will reveal him. [A distinct 
 assertion of His Godhead.] 
 
 xi. 28. 
 
 Come unto me, all ye that labour, 
 &c., for I am meek and lowly in 
 heart, &c., and ye shall find rest 
 unto your souls. 
 
 xi. 30. 
 
 For my yoke is easy, and my 
 burden is light. 
 
 this any reference to Hia visit to 
 Samaria, ch. iv. ?] 
 
 St. John xii. 25. 
 
 He that loveth his life shall lose 
 it ; and he that hateth his life in 
 this world, shall keep it imto life 
 eternal. 
 
 xiii. 20. 
 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you. He 
 that receiveth whomsoever I send 
 receiveth me ; and he that receiveth 
 me receiveth him that sent me. 
 
 Cf., The use of riKvla, St. John 
 xiU. 33, and of vaiSla, xxi. 5. 
 
 V. 35. 
 
 He was a burning and a shining 
 lamp : and ye were willing for a 
 season to rejoice in his light. Bat 
 I have greater witness than that of 
 John. 
 
 iii. 35 ; xiv. 6 ; xvii. 2 ; x. 15. 
 
 The Father loveth the Son, and 
 hath given all things into his hand. 
 No man cometh unto the Father, but 
 by me. As thou hast given tiim 
 power over all flesh, that he should 
 give eternal life to as many as thou 
 hast given him. As the Father 
 knoweth me, even so know I the 
 Father. 
 
 vi. 37, 38, 35. 
 Him that cometh to me I will in 
 no wise cast out. For I came down 
 from heaven not to do mine own 
 will, but the wiU of him that sent 
 me. He that cometh to me shall 
 never hunger, and he that believeth 
 on me shall never thirst. 
 
 Cf . 1 John V. 3. 
 
 And hia conunandments are not 
 grievous. 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 305 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 2. 
 
 Bat when the Pharisees saw it 
 they said unto him, Behold thy dis- 
 ciples do that which is not lawftd 
 to do upon the Sabbath day. 
 
 xii. 5. 
 
 Or have ye not read in the law, 
 how that on the Sabbath days, &c. 
 
 xii. 6, 8. 
 But I say unto you, That in this 
 place is one greater than the tem- 
 ple. For the Son of man is Lord 
 even of the Sabbath day. [In these 
 two places He unequivocally asserts 
 His Deity.] 
 
 xii. 14. 
 Then the Pharisees went out and 
 held a council against him, how they 
 might destroy him. But when 
 Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself 
 from thence. 
 
 xii. 32, 41, 42. 
 And whosoever speaketh a word 
 against the Son of man, it shall be 
 forgiven him : but whosoever speak- 
 eth against the Holy Ghost, it shaU 
 not be forgiven him, neither in this 
 world nor in the world to come. Be- 
 hold, a greater than Jonas is here. 
 Behold, a greater than Solomon is 
 tere. [This is self-assertion equal 
 to that of the fourth Gospel, and 
 only intelligible on the supposition 
 of His Deity.] 
 
 xii. 49, 50. 
 And he stretched forth his hand 
 toward his disciples, and said. Be- 
 hold my mother and my brethren ! 
 For whosoever shall do the will of 
 my Father which is in heaven, the 
 same is my brother, and sister, and 
 mother. 
 
 St. John ix. 16. 
 
 Therefore said some of the Phari- 
 sees, This man is not of God, be- 
 cause he keepeth not the Sabbath 
 day. 
 
 X. 34 ; vii. 22, 23. 
 
 Is it not written ia your law, I 
 said, Ye are gods ? &c. 
 
 Moses therefore gave unto you 
 circumcision, &c. ; and ye on the 
 Sabbath day circiuncise a man, &o. 
 
 ii. 19-21. 
 Destroy this temple, and in three 
 days I win raise it up. . . . But he 
 spake of the temple of his body. 
 
 X. 39, 40. 
 Therefore they sought again to 
 take him : but he escaped out of 
 their hand ; and went away again 
 beyond Jordan, &c., &c. 
 
 viii. 52, 53, 58. 
 Now we know that thou hast a 
 devil. Abraham is dead, and the 
 prophets ; and thou sayest. If a 
 man keep my saying, he shall never 
 taste of death. Art thou greater 
 than our father Abraham, which is 
 dead ? and the prophets are dead : 
 whommakest thou thyself ?. . .Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you. Before Abra- 
 ham was, I am. 
 
 XV. 14. 
 
 Ye are my friends if ye do what- 
 soever I command you. 
 
 XS 
 
3o6 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Matt. xiii. 10, 11. 
 
 Why speakeet thou unto them in 
 parables ? . '. . Because it is given 
 unto you to know the mysteries of 
 the kingdom of heaven, but to them 
 it is not given. 
 
 xiii. 14. 
 
 And in them is fulfilled the pro- 
 phecy of Esaias, which saith, By 
 hearing ye shall hear, &c. — Isa. vi. 
 9, 10. 
 
 xiii. 54. 
 
 And when he was come into his 
 own country, he taught them in 
 their synagogue, insomuch that they 
 were astonished, and said. Whence 
 hath this man this wisdom, and 
 these mighty works ? 
 
 xiii. 55. 
 
 Is not this the carpenter's son % 
 is not his mother called Mary ? and 
 his brethren. . . . And his sisters, 
 are they not all with us ? [Spoken 
 in Capernaum.] 
 
 XV. 1. 
 Then came to Jesus Scribes and 
 Pharisees which were of Jerusalem, 
 saying, &c. [Why should they 
 come from Jerusalem if He had not 
 already been there, as the fourth 
 Gospel says He had ?] 
 
 xvi. 17. 
 
 Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona : 
 for ileah and blood hath not revealed 
 it unto thee, but my Father which 
 is in heaven. 
 
 St. John xiv. 22, 23. 
 
 Lord, how is it that thou wilt 
 manifest thyself unto us, and not 
 unto the world 1 Jesus answered 
 and said unto him. If a man love 
 me, he will keep my words, : and 
 my rather wiU love him, and we 
 will come unto him, and make our 
 abode with him. 
 
 xii. 39, 40. 
 Therefore they could not believe, 
 because that Esaias said again. He 
 hath blinded, &c. — Isa. vi. 9, 10. 
 
 vii. 14, 15. 
 
 Now about the midst of the feast, 
 Jesus went up into the temple, and 
 taught. And the Jews marvelled, 
 saying. How knoweth this man 
 letters, having never learned ? 
 
 vii. 27 ; vi. 42. 
 
 Howbeit we know this man 
 whence he is. [Spoken in Jerusa- 
 lem.] 
 
 And they said. Is not this Jesus 
 the son of Joseph, whose father and 
 mother we know ? [Spoken in 
 Capernaum.] Cf. ii. 12. 
 
 vii. 1. 
 
 After these things Jesus walked 
 in Galilee : for he would not walk 
 in Jewry, because the Jews sought 
 to kill him. [This corresponds in 
 time, after feeding five thousand, 
 &c.] 
 
 vi. 44. 
 
 No man can come to me, except 
 the Father which hath sent me 
 draw him. . . . Every man, there- 
 fore, that hath heard and hath 
 learned of the Father, cometh unto 
 me. [The teaching is identical, if 
 the time and place are different.] 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 307 
 
 St. Matt. xvi. 19 ; xviii. 18. 
 
 Whatsoever thou shalt bind on 
 earth, shall be bound in heaven ; 
 and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
 earth shall be loosed ia heaven. 
 Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth 
 shall be bound in heaven : and 
 ■whatsoever ye, &o. 
 
 xvi. 24, 25 ; Of. xix. 21. 
 
 If any man will come after me, 
 let him deny himself, and take up 
 his cross, and follow me. For who- 
 soever will save his life shall lose it ; 
 and whosoever will lose his life for 
 my sake shall find it. For the Son 
 of man shall come in the glory of 
 his Father, with his angels, and 
 then shall he reward every man 
 according to his works, 
 xvii. 4. 
 
 Then answered Peter, and said 
 unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us 
 to be here : if thou wilt, let us make 
 here three tabernacles ; one for thee, 
 and one for Moses, and one for 
 EUas. 
 
 xviii. 11. 
 The Son of man is come to save 
 that which was lost. 
 
 xviii. 14. 
 Even so it is not the will of your 
 Father which is in heaven that one 
 of these little ones should perish. 
 
 xviii. 19. 
 If two of you shall agree on earth 
 as touching anything that they shall 
 ask, it shall be done for them of my 
 Father which is in heaven. 
 
 St. John xx. 23. 
 Whose soever sins ye remit, they 
 are remitted unto them ; and whose 
 soever sins ye -retain, they are re- 
 tained, [The same remark applies.] 
 
 xii. 25, 26. 
 He that loveth his life shall lose 
 it ; and he that hateth his life in 
 this world, shall keep it unto lite 
 eternal. If any man serve me let 
 him follow me ; and where I am 
 there shall also my servant be ; if 
 any man serve me, him will my 
 Father honour. 
 
 xiii. 8, 9 ; xxi. 7. 
 Thou shalt never wash my feet. 
 . . . Lord, not my feet only, but 
 also my hands and my head. . . . 
 He girt his fisher's coat unto him, 
 (for he was naked,) and did cast 
 himself into the Sea. [Is not this 
 the same man ?] 
 
 iii. 17 ; X. 10 ; xii. 47. 
 
 God sent not his Son into the 
 world to condemn the world, but 
 that the world through him might 
 be saved. I am come that they 
 might have life, and that they 
 might have it more abundantly. 
 I came not to judge the world, but 
 to save the world. 
 
 vi. 39. 
 
 This is the Father's will which 
 hath sent me, that of all which he 
 hath given me I should lose no- 
 thing, but should raise it up again 
 at the last day. 
 
 xvi. 23. 
 
 Verily, verily, I say unto you. 
 Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father 
 in my name, he will give it you. 
 
30S 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Matt, xviii. 35. 
 
 So likewise shall my heavenly 
 Pather do also unto you, if ye 
 from your hearts forgive not every 
 one his brother their trespasses. 
 
 XX. 27, 28. 
 Whosoever will be chief among 
 you, let him be your servant : even 
 as the Son of man came not to be 
 ministered imto, but to minister, and 
 to give his lite a ransom for many. 
 
 xxi. 4. 
 All this was done that it might 
 be fulfilled which was spoken by the 
 prophet, saying, Tell ye the daughter 
 of Zion, &o. 
 
 xxi. 33. 
 There was a certain householder 
 which planted a vineyard, &o. 
 
 xxi. 43. 
 
 Therefore say I unto you, The 
 kingdom of God shall be taken 
 from you, and given to a. nation 
 bringing forth the fruits thereof. And 
 when the chief priests and Phari- 
 sees had heard his parables, they 
 perceived that he spake of them. 
 
 xxii. 29. 
 Ye do err, not knowing the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 xxiii. 
 [How is this terrible denunciation 
 explained on the supposition of one 
 visit only to Jerusalem ?] 
 
 XXV. 46. 
 
 And these shall go away into ever- 
 lasting punishment, but the righteous 
 into Ufe eternal. 
 
 St. John xv. 17. 
 
 These things I command you, 
 that ye love one another. 
 
 xiii. 12-15; x. 11. 
 Know ye what I have done to 
 you ? Ye call me Master and IJord : 
 and ye say well ; for so I am. If 
 I, then, your Lord and Master, 
 have washed your feet, ye also 
 ought to wash one another's feet. 
 Por I have given you an example, 
 that ye should do as I have done 
 to you. The good shepherd giveth 
 his life for the sheep. 
 
 xii. 14. 
 And Jesus, when he had found a 
 young ass, sat thereon ; as it is writ- 
 ten, Fear not, daughter of Zion, &c. 
 
 XV. 1. 
 I am the true vine, and my Father 
 is the husbandman. 
 
 xi. 47, 48. 
 
 The chief priests and Pharisees 
 . . . said ... If we let him thus 
 alone, all men wiU believe on him, 
 and the Komans shall come and taJce 
 away both our place and nation. 
 
 XX. 9. 
 
 Tor as yet they knew not the 
 Scriptures that he must, &c. 
 
 xii. 37. 
 But though he had done so many 
 miracles before them, yet they be- 
 lieved not on him. 
 
 V. 28, 29. 
 
 Marvel not at this : for the hour 
 is coming in which all that are in 
 the graves shall hear his voice, and 
 shall come forth ; they that have 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 309 
 
 St. Matt. xxvi. 38, 39. 
 M^ soul is exceeding sorrowful, 
 even unto deati. ... 0, my Father, 
 if it be possible, let this cup pass 
 from me ! nevertheless, not as I 
 ■win, but as thou wilt. 
 
 xxvi. 51. 
 ' And behold one of them which 
 were with Jesus stretched out his 
 hand, and drew his sword, and 
 struck a servant of the high priest's, 
 and smote oS his ear. 
 
 xxvi. 55. 
 I sat daily with you teaching in 
 the temple, and ye laid no hold on 
 me. [Was this only at the last visit 
 to Jerusalem ?] 
 
 xxvii. 40, 42, 43. 
 If thou be the Son of God, come 
 down from the cross. . . . He saved 
 others, himself he cannot save. . . . 
 He said I am the Son of God. Cf. 
 xxvi. 63, 64. 
 
 xxviii. 1. 
 The first day of the week came 
 Mary Magdalene and the other 
 Maiy to see the sepulchre. 
 
 xxviii. 7. 
 Behold, he goeth before you into 
 Galilee ; there shall ye see him. 
 
 done good, unto the resurrection of 
 life ; and they that have done evil, 
 unto the resurrection of damnation. 
 
 St. John xii. 27. 
 Now is my soul troubled, and 
 what shall I say % Father, save 
 me from this hour, but for this 
 cause came I unto this hour. [Dif- 
 ferent in time and place, but identi- 
 cal in sentiment.] 
 
 xviii. 10. 
 
 Then Simon Peter, having a 
 sword, drew it, and smote the high 
 priest's servant, and cut off his right 
 ear. The servant's name was Mal- 
 chus. [Were these additions in- 
 vented ?] 
 
 xi. 57. 
 
 Now, both the chief priests and 
 the Pharisees had given a command- 
 ment that if any man knew where 
 he were, he should shew it, that 
 they might take him. 
 
 [We need only turn to -passages 
 such as these to see that the teach- 
 ing of the first Gospel on these 
 points is identical with that of the 
 fourth. They cannot be understood 
 without it.] 
 
 XX. 1. 
 
 Then she runneth . . . and saith, 
 . . . They have taken away the 
 Lord out of the sepulchre, and we 
 know not where they have laid him. 
 
 xxi. 1. 
 After these things, Jesus shewed 
 himself again to the disciples at the - 
 sea of Tiberias. [It is not called 
 Galilee. Cf. vi. 23.] 
 
 A point of contrast between the second Gospel and the 
 fourth is the frequent mention in the former of our Lord's- 
 miracles on unclean spirits, to which there is no allusion in 
 the latter. The same may he said, indeed, to a certain 
 
3IO 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 extent, of all the synoptical Gospels, and an inference 
 might be drawn that the fourth Evangelist intentionally 
 suppressed these allusions, were it not that the charge 
 brought against our Lord, and the way it is met by him, 
 are fatal to any such notion, vii. 20 ; viii. 48, 49, 52 ; x. 
 20, 21. This is an instance of the impossibility of arguing 
 from omissions. 
 
 There are a few correspondences between St. Mark and 
 St. John, besides those already collected from St. Matthew. 
 
 St. Mark ii. 12. 
 We never saw it on this faahion. 
 
 ii. 28. 
 Therefore the Son of man is Lord 
 also of the Sabhath. 
 
 iii. 21-30. 
 And when his friends heard of it, 
 they went out to lay hold on him, 
 for they said he is beside himself, 
 
 Because, they said, he hath an 
 unclean spirit. 
 
 iv. 33, 34. 
 
 And with many such parables 
 spake he the word unto them as 
 they were able to hear it. But 
 without a parable spake he not 
 unto them : and when they were 
 alone, he expounded all things to 
 his disciples. 
 
 V. 86 ; ix. 23. 
 Be not afraid, only believe. If 
 thou canst believe, aU things are 
 possible to him that believeth. 
 
 V. 39. 
 The damsel is not dead, but 
 sleepeth. 
 
 St. John vi. 31 ; ix. 32. 
 
 When phrist cometh, wiU he do 
 more miracles than these which 
 this man hath done % 
 
 Since the world began, was it not 
 heard that any man opened the eyes 
 of one that was bom blind. 
 
 ix. 16. 
 This man is not of God, because 
 he keepeth not the Sabbath-day. 
 
 vii. 20. 
 The people answered and &id, 
 Thou hast a devil, Aai/jAnov Ix^is, 
 
 xvi. 12, 25. 
 I have yet many thiags to say 
 unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now. These things have I spoken 
 unto you in proverbs : but the time 
 cometh when I shall no more speak 
 imto you in proverbs, but I shall 
 shew you plainly of the !Father. 
 
 xi. 40. 
 Said I not unto thee, that if thou 
 wouldest believe, thou shouldest be 
 the ^lory of Grod 1 
 
 xi. 11, 14. 
 Our friend Lazarus sleepeth. 
 Then said Jesus vmto them plainly, 
 Lazarus is dead. 
 
App] 
 
 thej^ourtk Gospel 
 
 311 
 
 St. Mabk vi. 4. 
 A prophet is not without honour, 
 but in his own country, and among 
 hia own kin, and in hia own house. 
 
 Tii. 34. 
 And looking up to heaven he 
 sighed, and saith, &c. 
 
 is. 1. 
 There be some of them that stand 
 here which shall not taste of death 
 till they have seen the kingdom of 
 God come with power. 
 
 xii. 13. 
 I say unto you, That Elias is 
 indeed come. 
 
 ix. 19. 
 How long shaU. I be with you ? 
 how long shall I sufier you ? 
 
 ix. 32. 
 
 But they understood not that 
 saying, and were afraid to ask him. 
 
 i. 18. 
 Why caUest thou me good ? there 
 is none good but one, that is, God. 
 
 X. 39. 
 
 Ye shall indeed drink of the cup 
 that I drink of, &c. 
 
 xi. 18. 
 And the scribes and chief priests 
 heard it, and sought how they 
 might destroy him, &c. They 
 feared hiwi because all the people 
 was astonished at his doctrine. 
 
 xiii. 23. 
 But take ye heed ; behold I have 
 foretold you aU things. 
 
 St. John iv. 44. 
 Tor Jesus himself testified that a 
 prophet hath no honour in hia own 
 country. 
 
 xi. 41 ; xvi. 1 ; xi. 33, 38. 
 
 And Jesus lifted up his eyes and 
 said, &c. These words spake Jesus, 
 and lifted up his eyes to heaven and 
 said, &c. He groaned ia the spirit, 
 &c. Jesus therefore again groaning 
 in himself, &o. 
 
 viii. 52. 
 
 Thou sayest, If a man keep my 
 saying, he shall never taste of death. 
 
 i. 21. 
 Art thou Elias ? and he saith, I 
 am not. 
 
 xii. 35. 
 Yet a little while is the light with 
 you, &c. 
 
 xvi. 19 ; xxi. 12. 
 Now Jesus knew that they were 
 desirous to ask him, &o. And none 
 of the disciples durst ask him. Who 
 art thou, &c. 
 
 vi. 30. 
 I can of mine own self do nothing. 
 
 XV. 21. 
 
 All these things will they do unto 
 you for my name sake, because they 
 know hot him that sent me. 
 xi. 47, 48. 
 
 What do we ? for this man doeth 
 many miracles. If we let him thus 
 alone, all men will believe on him : 
 and the Eomans shall come and 
 take away both our place and nation, 
 
 xvi. 4. 
 These things have I told you, 
 that when the time shall come, ye 
 may remember that I told you of 
 them. 
 
312 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Maek xiv, 14. 
 The Master saith, Where is the 
 guest-chamber, &c. 
 
 xiv. 36. 
 Nevertheless not what I 'wiU, but 
 what thou wilt. 
 
 xiv. 41. 
 It is enough : the hour is come. 
 
 xiv. 50. 
 And they all forsook him, and 
 
 fled. 
 
 xiv. 61, 62. 
 
 Art . thou the Christ, the Son of 
 the Blessed ? And Jesus said, I am : 
 and ye shall see the Son of man 
 sitting on the right hand of power, 
 and coming in the clouds of heaven. 
 [This was our Lord's distinct public 
 and judicial assertion of His God- 
 head, and at the same time His own 
 interpretation of the phrase. Son of 
 man.] 
 
 xiv. 70. 
 
 Surely thou art one of them, for 
 thou art a Qalilean. 
 
 xvi. 15, 
 
 Go ye into all the world, and 
 preach the gospel to every creature. 
 
 xvi. 16. 
 He that beUeveth and is baptised 
 
 St. John xiii. 13. 
 
 Ye call me Master and Lord. 
 [The Jewish title Babbi is used more 
 frequently by St. John than by any 
 other Evangelist ; (it is not used at 
 all by St. Luke ;) this is worth 
 noticing, as he is said to write as a 
 Gentile.'] 
 
 iv. 34 ; V. 30 ; vi. 38. 
 
 My meat is to do the will of him 
 that sent me, and to finish his work. 
 I seek not my own will, but the 
 will of the Pather which hath sent 
 me. I came down from heaven not 
 to do mine own will, but the will of 
 him that sent me. 
 
 ii. 4 ; xiii. 1. 
 Mine hour is not yet come. When 
 Jesus knew that his hour was come, 
 xvi. 32. 
 Behold the hour cometh, yea, is 
 now come, that ye shall be scattered 
 every man to his own, and shall 
 leave me alone. 
 
 viii. 28. 
 
 When ye have lifted up the Son 
 of man, then ye shall know that I 
 am he. 
 
 i. 44. 
 Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the 
 city of Andrew and Peter. 
 
 xvii. 10 ; XX. 21. 
 As thou hast sent me into the 
 world, so have I also sent them into 
 the world. As my Pather hath sent 
 me, even so send I you. 
 
 iii. 36. 
 He that believeth on the Son 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 313 
 
 shall ' be saved ; but he that be- 
 lieveth not shall be damned. 
 
 hath everlasting life : and he that 
 believeth not the Son, shall not see 
 life, but the wrath of God abideth 
 on him. 
 
 The following are some of the parallelisms between St. 
 Luke and St. John : — 
 
 St. Luke i. 3. 
 It seemed good to me also . . . 
 to -write . . . that thou mightest 
 know the certainty, &o. 
 
 i. 79. 
 
 To give light to them that sit in 
 darkness, and in the shadow of 
 death, to giiAde, our feet into the 
 way of peace. 
 
 ii. 4. 
 
 And Joseph also went up from 
 Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth 
 into Judea, unto the city of David, 
 which is called Bethlehem (because 
 lie was of the house and lineage of 
 David). 
 
 ii. 19, 51. 
 
 Mary kept all these things, and 
 pondered them in her heart. 
 
 ii. 32. 
 A light to lighten the Gentiles, 
 and the glory of thy people Israel. 
 
 ii. 35. 
 Yea, a sword shall pierce through 
 thine own soul also. 
 
 ii. 47. 
 And all that heard him were 
 astonished at his understanding and 
 answers. 
 
 St. John xx. 31. 
 But these are written that ye 
 might believe, &c. 
 
 viii. 12 ; xii. 46. 
 
 I am the light of the world : he 
 that foUoweth me shall not walk in 
 darkness, but shall have the light 
 of life. Cf. xvi. 33, That in me ye 
 might have peace. 
 
 vii. 42. 
 
 Hath not the scripture said. That 
 Christ Cometh of the seed of David, 
 and out of the town of Bethlehem, 
 where David was. [This M an in- 
 direct admission on the part of the 
 fourth Evangelist, that these condi- 
 tions were fulfilled in Jesus, as St. 
 Luke says.] 
 
 ii. 5. 
 
 His mother saith unto the ser- 
 vants. Whatsoever he saith imto 
 you, do it. 
 
 i. 9. 
 
 That was the true light, which 
 lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world. 
 
 xix. 25. 
 
 Now there stood by the cross of 
 Jesus his mother. 
 
 vii. 15, 46. 
 And the Jews marvelled, saying, 
 How knoweth this man letters, 
 having never learned ? The officers 
 answered, Never man spake Uke 
 this man. 
 
314 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Luke ii. 48, 49. 
 Son, why hast thou thus dealt 
 with us ? behold, tky father and I 
 have sought thee sorrowing. . . . 
 How is it that ye sought me ? wist 
 ye not that I must be about tny 
 Father's business ? 
 
 u. 50. 
 They understood not the saying 
 which he spake unto them. 
 
 iii. 2. 
 Annas and Cadaphas being the 
 high priests. 
 
 iii. 21, 22, 
 It came to pass, that Jesns also 
 being baptised, and praying, the 
 heaven was opened, and the Holy 
 Ghost descended in a bodily shape 
 like a dove upon him, &c, 
 
 iv. 6, 13. 
 AH this power will I give thee, 
 and the glory of them : for that is 
 delivered unto me. And when the 
 devil had ended all the temptation, 
 he depmrted, from him for a season. 
 
 iv. 16. 
 As his custom was, he went into 
 the synagogue on the Sabbath day, 
 and stood up for to read, 
 iv. 22. 
 Is not this Joseph's son ? 
 
 iv. 24. 
 
 Verily, I say unto you (Nazarenes;), 
 mo prophet is accepted in his own 
 country. 
 
 St. John ii. 4 ; ix. 4. 
 
 Woman, what have / to do with 
 thee 9 
 
 I must work the works of him 
 that sent me, while it is day. 
 
 X. 6 ; xii. 16. 
 This parable spake Jesus unto 
 them : but they understood not 
 what things they were which he 
 spake unto them. 
 
 xi. 49 ; xviii. 13. 
 
 And one of them, named Caia- 
 phas, being the high priest that 
 same year. 
 
 And led him away to Annas first ; 
 for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas, 
 which was the high priest that same 
 year. 
 
 i. 33, 
 
 He that sent me to baptise with 
 water, the same said unto me, Upon 
 whom thou shalt see the Spirit 
 descending, and remaining on him, 
 the same is he which baptiseth with 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 xii. 31 ; xiv. 30 ; xvi. 11. 
 Now shall the prince of this world 
 be cast out. The prince of this world 
 Cometh, and hath nothing in me. Of 
 judgment, because the prince of this 
 world is judged, 
 
 xviii. 20. 
 I spake openly to the world ; I 
 ever taught in the synagogue, &o. 
 
 vi. 42. 
 Is not this Jesus, the son of 
 Joseph ? 
 
 iv. 45. 
 
 Then when he was come into 
 Galilee, the Gahlseans received him. 
 [Of. V. 44, which also apparently 
 contradicts it.] 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 315 
 
 St. Luke iv. 30. 
 But he passing through the midst 
 of them went his way, and came 
 down to Capernaum. 
 
 T. 4. 
 Launch out into the deep, and 
 let down your nets for a draught. 
 
 V. 5. 
 We have toiled all the night, and 
 have taken nothing. 
 
 V. 6. 
 And when they had this done, 
 they inclosed a great multitude of 
 fishes : and their net brake, 
 
 V. 16. 
 And he withdrew himself into the 
 wilderness and prayed. Cf. vi. 12. 
 
 vi. 8. 
 But he knew their thoughts. 
 
 vi. 14. 
 Simon, whom he also named 
 Peter. 
 
 vi. 22, 26. 
 Blessed are ye, when men shall 
 hate you, &c. Woe unto you, when 
 aU men shall speak well of you. 
 
 vii. 6. 
 Lord, trouble not thyself; for I 
 am not worthy that thou shouldest 
 enter under my roof, 
 vii. 15. 
 And he that was dead sat up, and 
 began to speak. 
 
 vii. 16. 
 They glorified God, saying. That 
 a great prophet is risen up among 
 us ; and, That God hath visited his 
 people. 
 
 St. John viii. 59. 
 But Jesua hid himself, and went 
 out of the temple, going through 
 the midst of them, and so passed by. 
 
 zxi, 6. 
 Cast the net on the right side of 
 the ship, and ye shall find. 
 
 xxi. 3. 
 And that night they caught 
 nothing. 
 
 They cast therefore, and now they 
 were not able to draw it for the 
 multitude of fishes . . . yet was 
 not the net broken. 
 
 vi. 15. 
 He departed again into a moun- 
 tain himself alone. 
 
 xvi. 19. 
 
 Now Jesus knew that they were 
 desirous to ask him. 
 i. 42. 
 
 Thou art Simon the son of Joua : 
 thou shalt be called Cephas, which 
 is by interpretation, A stone. 
 
 XV. 19. 
 If ye were of the world, the world 
 would love his own : but because ye 
 are not of the world, but I have 
 chosen you out of the world, there- 
 fore the world hateth you. 
 iv. 49. 
 The nobleman saith unto him. Sir, 
 come down ere my child die. 
 
 xi. 44. 
 And he that was dead came forth, 
 bound hand and foot with grave- 
 clothes, &c, 
 
 vii. 40. 
 Many of the people therefore, 
 when they heard this saying, said, 
 Of a truth this is the Prophet. 
 Others said. This is the Christ. 
 
3i6 
 
 The Atithorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Ltikb \di. 23. 
 Blessed is he, whosoever shall not 
 be offended in me. 
 
 vii. 34. 
 The Son of man is come eating 
 and drinking, &c. 
 
 ix. 32. 
 But Peter and they that were 
 with him (James and John) were 
 heavy with sleep : and when they 
 were awake, they saw his glory. 
 
 ix. 48. 
 Whosoever shall receive this child 
 in mynamereceivethme; and who- 
 soever shall receive me, reoeiveth 
 Viim that sent me. 
 
 ix. 52. 
 
 And sent messengers hefore his 
 face, and they went and entered 
 into a city of the Samaritans to 
 make ready for him. 
 
 iv. 56. 
 
 The Son of man is not come to 
 destroy men's lives, but to save 
 them. 
 
 X. 16. 
 He that heareth you heareth me, 
 and he that despiseth you despiseth 
 me, and he that despiseth me de- 
 spiseth him that sent me. 
 
 X. 40. 
 
 But Martha was cumbered about 
 much serving. 
 
 xi. 17. 
 But he, knowing their thoughts. 
 
 St. John vi. 66. 
 From that time many of his dis- 
 ciples went back, and walked no 
 more with him. 
 
 ii. 2 ; xii. 2. 
 And both Jesus was called, and 
 his disciples, to the marriage. There 
 they made him a supper. 
 
 i. 14. 
 And we beheld his glory, the 
 glory as of the only begotten of the 
 Father. 
 
 xii. 44. 
 He that beUeveth on me, believeth 
 not on me, but on him that sent me. 
 [Cf. xiii. 20.] 
 
 iv. 4, 8. 
 
 He must needs go through Sama- 
 ria. His disciples were gone away 
 imto the city to buy meat. 
 
 iii. 17 ; xii. 47. 
 
 God sent not his Son into the 
 world to condemn the world, but 
 that the world through him might 
 be saved. I came not to judge the 
 world, but to save the world. 
 
 xiii. 20; v. 23. 
 He that receiveth whomsoever I 
 send receiveth me ; and he that re- 
 ceiveth me receiveth him that sent 
 me. He that honoureth not the Son 
 honoureth not the Father which 
 hath sent him. 
 
 xii. 2. 
 
 And Martha served. [See Mr. 
 Orr's Pamphlet.] 
 
 ii. 24, 25. 
 
 He knew all men, and needed 
 not that any should testify of man, 
 for he knew not what was in man. 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 Z^7 
 
 St. Ltjke xi. 26. 
 And the last state of that man is 
 worse than the first. 
 
 zii. 4. 
 I say unto you, my friends. 
 
 xii. 32. 
 Tear not, little flock ; for it is 
 your Father's good pleasure to give 
 you the kingdom. 
 
 xii. 50. 
 I have a baptism to be baptised 
 with ; and how am I straitened till 
 it be accomplished. 
 
 xiii. 9. 
 Aud if it bear fruit, well : and if 
 not, then after that thou shalt cut it 
 down. 
 
 xiii. 14. 
 And the ruler of the synagogue 
 answered with indignation, because 
 that Jesus had healed on the Sab- 
 bath day. 
 
 xiii. 24. 
 Strive to enter in at the strait 
 gate : for many, I say unto you, 
 win seek to enter in, and shall not 
 be able. 
 
 xiv. 22. 
 Lord, it is done, as thou hast 
 commanded, and yet there is room. 
 
 XV. 17. 
 How many hired servants of my 
 father's have bread enough and to 
 spare, and I perish with hunger. I 
 will arise and go to my. father. 
 
 xvi. 8. 
 The children of this world are in 
 their generation wiser than the 
 chMren of light. 
 
 St. John v. 14. 
 ■Sin no more, lest a worse thing 
 come unto thee. 
 
 XV. 14. 
 I have called you friends. 
 
 i. 29. 
 My rather which gave them me 
 is greater than all, and no man is 
 able to pluck them out of my 
 Father's hand. 
 
 xii. 27. 
 Now is my soul troubled ; and 
 what shall I say ? Father, save me 
 from this hour : but for this cause 
 came I unto this hour. 
 
 XV. 1, 2. 
 My Father is the husbandman. 
 Every branch in me that beareth 
 not fruit, he taketh away. 
 
 V. 16. 
 Therefore did the Jews persecute 
 Jesus, and sought to slay him, be- 
 cause he had done these things on 
 the Sabbath day. 
 
 X. 9 ; vii. 34. 
 I am the door ; by me if any man 
 enter in he shall be saved. Ye 
 shall seek me, and shall not find 
 me : and where I am, thither ye 
 cannot come. 
 
 xiv. 2. 
 In my Father's house are many 
 mansions. 
 
 vi. 35. 
 
 I am the bread of life ; he that 
 Cometh to me shall never hunger. 
 
 xii. 36. 
 
 While ye have light, believe in 
 the light, that ye may be the chil- 
 dren of light. [This is thought to 
 be a specially Johannine phrase.] 
 
3i8 
 
 The Authorship of 
 
 [App 
 
 St. Luke xvi. 29. 
 They have Moses and the pro- 
 phets ; let them hear them. 
 
 xvi. 31. 
 If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they be per- 
 suaded though one rose from the 
 dead. 
 
 xvii. 16, 11. 
 And he was a Samaritan. And 
 it came to pass as he went to Jeru- 
 salem, that he passed through the 
 midst of Samaria and Grahlee. 
 xvii. 20 ; xix. 11. 
 The kingdom of God cometh not 
 with oiservation, , , , because they 
 thought that the kingdom of God 
 should immediately appear, 
 xviii. 34. 
 And they understood none of 
 these things. 
 
 xix. 14. 
 His citizens hated him, and sent 
 a message after him, saying, We 
 will not have this man to reign 
 over us. 
 
 xix. 41. 
 And when he was come near, he 
 beheld the city, and wept over it. 
 xix. 47. 
 And he taught daily in the tem- 
 ple. 
 
 XX. 9, 13, 14. 
 A certain man planted a vine- 
 yard. Then said the lord of the 
 vineyard, ... I wiU send my be- 
 loved son. . . . This is the heir, 
 xxi. 8. 
 Take heed that ye be not de- 
 ceived : for many shall come in my 
 name, saying, I am Christ, &c. 
 
 xxi. 17. 
 And ye shall be hated of aU men, 
 for my name's sake. 
 
 St. John v. 39. 
 Search the scriptures ; for in 
 them ye think ye have eternal life : 
 and they are they which testify of 
 me. 
 
 V. 46, 47. 
 Had ye believed Moses ye would 
 have believed me : for he wrote of 
 me. But if ye believe not his writ- 
 ings, how shall ye believe my words 1 
 iv. 4. 
 And he must needs go through 
 Samaria. 
 
 iii. 3. 
 Except a man be bom from above, 
 he cannot see the kingdom of God. 
 
 xii. Ifi. 
 These things imderstood not his 
 disciples at the first, 
 Lll. 
 He came unto his own, and his 
 own received him not. But now 
 have they both seen and hated both 
 me and my father. 
 
 xi. 35. 
 Jesus wept. 
 
 xviii 20. 
 I ever taught in the synagogue 
 and in the temple. 
 XV. i. 
 I am the true vine, and my 
 Father is the husbandman. God 
 so loved the world that he gave his 
 only begotten Son. 
 V. 43. 
 I am come in my Father's name, 
 and ye receive me not ; if another 
 shall come in his own name, him 
 ye will receive. 
 
 AU these things will they do unto 
 you, for my name's sake. 
 
App] 
 
 the Fourth Gospel 
 
 319 
 
 St. Luke xxi. 18. 
 But there shall not an hair of your 
 head perish. 
 
 xxii. 27. 
 Whether is greater, he that sit- 
 teth at meat, or he that serveth ? 
 Is not he that sitteth at meat ? 
 but I am among you as he that 
 serveth. 
 
 xxii. 32. 
 I have prayed for thee. 
 
 xxii. 33. 
 I am ready to go with thee both 
 into prison and to death. 
 
 xxii. 38. 
 Lord, Behold here are two swords. 
 
 xxii. 53. 
 This is your hour and the power 
 of darkness. 
 
 xxiii. 41. 
 
 This man hath done nothing 
 amiss. 
 
 xxiv. 19. 
 Conoeming Jesus of Nazareth, 
 who was a prophet, mighty in deed 
 and word before God and all the 
 people. 
 
 xxiv. 40. 
 And when he had thus spoken, 
 he shewed them his hands and his 
 feet. 
 
 xxiv. 41. 
 Have ye here any meat ? 
 xxiv. 44, 45. 
 
 These are the words which I 
 ke unto you while I was yet 
 
 St. John x. 27. 
 They shall never perish ; neither 
 shall any man pluck them out of 
 my hand. 
 
 xiii, 14, 15. 
 
 If I, then, your Lord and Mas- 
 ter, have washed your feet, ye also 
 ought to wash one another's feet. 
 For I have given you an example, 
 that ye should do as I have done to 
 you. 
 
 xvii. 9. 
 
 I pray for them, I pray not for 
 the world. 
 
 Lord, why cannot I follow thee 
 now ? I will lay down my life for 
 thy sake. 
 
 xviii. 10. 
 Then Simon Peter, having a 
 sword, drew it. 
 
 xii. 35. 
 Walk while ye have the Ught, 
 lest darkness come upon you ; for he 
 that walketh in darkness knoweth 
 not whither he goeth. 
 
 viii. 46. 
 
 Which of you convinceth me of 
 sin. 
 
 iii. 2. 
 We know that thou art a teacher 
 come from God ; for no man can do 
 these miracles that thou doest eX" 
 cept God be with him, 
 
 XX. 20. 
 
 And when he had so said, he 
 shewed unto them his hands and his 
 side. 
 
 xxi. 5. 
 Children, have ye any meat ? 
 V. 35, 46 ; vi, 45 ; x. 34 ; xx. 9. 
 They are they which testify of 
 me. He (Moses) wrote of me. It is 
 
320 The Authorship of [App 
 
 with you, that all things must be written in the prophets, And they 
 fulfilled which are written in -the shall be all taught of God. Erery 
 law of Moses, and in the prophets, man, therefore, that hath heard and 
 and in the Psalms, concerning me. hath learned of the Father cometh 
 Then opened he their understand- unto me. Is it not written in your 
 ings, that they might understand law, I said, Ye are gods ? [i.e., Ps. 
 the Scriptures. Ixxxii. 6.] Tor as yet they knew 
 
 not the Scriptures, that he must 
 rise again from the dead. 
 
 St. Luke xxiv. 48, 49. St. John xv. 26, 27. 
 
 And ye are witnesses of these When the Comforter is come, 
 
 things. And, behold, I send the whom I will send imto you from 
 
 promise of my Father upon you : the Father, even the Spirit of Truth 
 
 but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem which proceedeth from the Father, 
 
 imtil ye be endued with power from he shall testify of me, and ye also 
 
 on high. shall bear witness. 
 
 xxiv. 51. XX. 17. 
 
 And it came to pass, while he I ascend to my Father and your 
 
 blessed them, he was parted from Father, and to my God and your 
 
 them, and carried up into heaven. God. 
 
 When we bear in mind that the difference between the 
 fourth Gospel and the others, both in style and subject- 
 matter, is obvious, it is certainly remarkable that there are 
 so many traces of similarity of teaching and identity of 
 thought between them as are here shown. It would be 
 possible to bring forward additional instances, but these 
 are noted as they occurred to me, and I have not been 
 careful to omit those passages- which presented a contrast 
 rather than a correspondence in the narratives ; so that, in 
 a few cases, the conclusion may be drawn unfavourably to 
 my general argument as well as in favour of it, or even 
 against rather than for it. But it seems that we may 
 fairly say that, great as is the apparent difference between 
 the teaching of Christ in the fourth Gospel and His teach- 
 ing in the others, there is after all a very real and substan- 
 tial identity between them — an identity which is the more 
 remarkable because it is to be discerned in spite of the 
 difference, and is such as could not have been produced by 
 any writer with the intention of giving to his work the 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 321 
 
 appearance of being a true record of Christ's teaching when 
 compared with the earlier Gospels. The likeness, so far as 
 it exists, is a genuine likeness, and can only be the result 
 of adherence to truth ; while the equally strong features 
 of contrast must either be referred to the writer's own 
 mind, or else must be taken as evidence of a wider and 
 more varied kind of teaching on the part of Christ than we 
 had been prepared to expect. Now, it is very certain that, 
 though there are great similarities between the three first 
 Gospels, there are also very great differences between them 
 — differences not indeed so great as are apparent in the 
 fourth Gospel, but still differences great enough to render 
 it possible and even probable that a teaching which was 
 capable of embracing the various modes represented by the 
 synoptical Evangelists was not incapable of embracing the 
 yet further variation of the fourth. The teaching in St. 
 Luke is widely different from that in St. Mark — take, for 
 instance, the parable of the rich man- and Lazarus peculiar 
 to St. Luke ; the circumstantial narrative of the temptation 
 in St. Luke, and the summary allusion to it in St. Mark ; 
 the narrative of healing the deaf and dumb, and the blind 
 by a twofold action, recorded only by St. Mark vii. 32, 
 viii. 22, and the very solemn verses at the close of ch. ix. 
 not found elsewhere. The teaching in St. Matthew, again, 
 is widely different from either: take, for instance, the 
 parable of the ten virgins, or that of the separation of the 
 sheep from the goats ; or, in narrative, the visit of the wise 
 men to Bethlehem. If these things are verities, they rest 
 wholly on the testimony of individual men; and if the 
 teaching is Christ's, it must be allowed to add considerably 
 to the compass of that teaching as it is exhibited by the 
 three Evangelists where they all agree. But this is to 
 judge the powers of Christ by a merely human standard. 
 When, however, we take into consideration the fact that 
 
32 2 The Authorship of [App 
 
 each of the three Evangelists evidently regarded Jesus as a 
 Being who was more than man, and not man only, then 
 we surely cannot demur to accepting another aspect of 
 His teaching, ostensibly delivered under different circum- 
 stances, as being within the possible range and compass of 
 His Divine powers, when we find that aspect presented to 
 us by the fourth Evangelist. His narrative, simply on that 
 ground, will certainly not be incredible. On the contrary, 
 the very great minuteness of detail in narrative for which 
 this Evangelist is remarkable, may lead us to expect a cor- 
 responding accuracy in the discourses he has ascribed to 
 our Lord. At least there is a presumption against his 
 having so far deviated from truth, as a superficial compari- 
 son of his narrative with those of others has led some 
 critics- to suppose. 
 
 It is also worthy of notice that the character of one who 
 was intimately acquainted with the thoughts and inten- 
 tions of his Lord's mind, to which the writer lays claim, is 
 consistently maintained throughout. He often reveals to 
 us the motives of his Master's actions, e.g. ii. 24, 25, " Jesus 
 did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all 
 men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he 
 knew what was in man." 
 
 iv. 1. " When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees 
 had heard that Jesus made and baptised more disciples 
 than John, he left Judea, and departed again into Galilee." 
 
 iv. 43. "Now after two days he departed thence, and 
 went into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a pro- 
 phet hath no honour in his own country." 
 
 V. 6. " When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had 
 been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt 
 thou be made whole ?" 
 
 vi. 6. " And this he said to prove him : for he himself 
 knew what he would do." 
 
App] the Fotirik Gospel 2)'^2i 
 
 vi. 15. "When Jesus i^iQv&ioxQ ^perceived that they would 
 come and take him by force, to make him a, king, he de- 
 parted again into a mountain himself alone." 
 
 vi. 61. " When Jesus knevj in himself that his disciples 
 murmured at it, he said unto them. Doth this offend youl" 
 
 vi. 64. " Jesus hnew from the beginning who they were 
 that believed not, and who should betray him." 
 
 ix. 35. " Jesus heard that they ha d cast him out ; and 
 when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou be- 
 lieve on the Son of God ?" 
 
 xii. 33. " This he said, signifying what death he should 
 die." 
 
 xiii. 1,3. " ISTow before the feast of the passover, when 
 Jesus hnew that his hour was come," &c. " Jesus knowing 
 that the Father had given all things into his hands," &c. 
 
 xiii. 11. " For he hnew who should betray him; therefore 
 said he, Te are not all clean." 
 
 xiii 21. " When Jesus had thus said, he was trouhlid in 
 spirit, and testified, and said," &c. 
 
 xvi. 19. "ISTow Jesus hnew that they were desirous to 
 ask him," &c. 
 
 xviii. 4. " Jesus therefore knowing all things that should 
 come upon him," &c. 
 
 xviii. 9. " That the saying might be fulfilled which he 
 spake," &c. 
 
 xviii. 32. " That the saying of Jesus might be ful- 
 filled," &c. 
 
 xix. 28. " After this, Jesus hnowing that aU things were 
 now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, 
 saith, I thirst." 
 
 xxi. 20. " This spake he, signifying by what death he 
 should glorify God." 
 
 Now, there is no question but that these things do indi- 
 cate in the writer a very intimate knowledge of the Lord's 
 
324 The Authorship of [Afp 
 
 mind ; they are in keeping -with the character of one who 
 professed to he His intimate and beloved disciple; they 
 are either the spontaneous expressions of one who was 
 what he professed to be, or else they are the designed 
 impersonations of such a character. Is it possible to hesi- 
 tate upon the issue which is thus raised ? For the only 
 conceivable alternative is one which cannot for a moment 
 be entertained — namely, that being written by one who 
 was not the familiar disciple and companion of Christ, 
 they, nevertheless, undesignedly and accidentally, were 
 uttered in entire and minute agreement with the conditions 
 of one who was. As therefore we cannot believe this, the 
 fact of their occurrence constitutes an additional evidence 
 in favour of the Johannine authorship of the fourth 
 Gospel. 
 
 The impossibility, however, of the latter supposition is 
 yet more apparent when we perceive that the feature now 
 alluded to is characteristic of this writer, not only when he 
 is speaking of our Lord, but also of others — e.g. viii. 9, 
 "being convicted by their (mn conscience;" ix. 22, "These 
 words spake his parents, because they feared the Jews ;" 
 xix. 8, " When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was 
 the more afraid;" xxi. 17, "Peter was grieved, because he 
 said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me ?" and the 
 like. It is the habit of this writer to depict the operations 
 of the mind. He had an insight into character ; but the 
 way in which he speaks of our Lord's motives and feelings 
 shows not only an acc[uaintance with character generally, 
 but likewise an intimate acquaintance with the particular 
 character he was depicting. His more intimate knowledge 
 of the character of Christ gave him the wider scope for the 
 exercise of his individual tendency as a writer. The fact 
 that he speaks thus of others as well as Jesus, shows that, 
 in speaking so of Him, he was spontaneously following the 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 325 
 
 bent of his own disposition, and not merely doing his best 
 to impersonate the character of the beloved disciple. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The chief difficulties -which have been advanced against 
 the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel are (1), its 
 apparent contradictions to the synoptical Gospels in narra- 
 tive — e.g. the mention of three or four passovers instead of 
 one, and the Lord's frec[uent residence in Jerusalem ; (2), 
 its obvious difference in the discourses related, and the style 
 of teaching attributed to Christ ; and (3), the apparent dis- 
 .erepance in the day of our Lord's deabh, conjoined with 
 the fact that the custom of celebrating Easter, ascribed by 
 tradition to St. John himself, is at variance with the al- 
 leged teaching of the Gospel on this point. 
 
 (1). With respect to the first, we may refer the reader 
 to the Apologetic Lectures of Dr. Oosterzee (T. &. T. Clark), 
 and the pamphlet of Mr. Orr. It is evident that, though 
 the synoptical Gospels do not mention, they necessarily 
 imply a greater familiarity with Jerusalem, and a longer 
 ministry to its inhabitants than the brief visit of the last 
 Passover wiU account for ; whether we consider the hatred 
 manifested towards Christ, or the discourses spoken by 
 Him. On the other hand, the fourth Gospel, though it 
 places Christ constantly in Jerusalem, yet expressly men- 
 tions a period when it was not safe for Him to go there, 
 and also speaks frec[uently of His Galilean ministry, as 
 well as otherwise implying it. 
 
 (2). With respect to the second, the previous pages wiU 
 have shown a very remarkable correspondence and sub- 
 stantial identity between the teaching of Christ, as recorded 
 by the fourth Evangelist, and by each of the others, not- 
 withstanding aU apparent differences. 
 
326 The Authorship of [App 
 
 But (3), with respect to the third, a few words appear 
 to be required. 
 
 It is affirmed that according to the synoptical Gospels 
 the Passover took place on the 14th day of Nisan, the 
 legal day, and the crucifixion on the 15th; but that ac- 
 cording to St. John, the crucifixion took place on the 
 14th, — xviii. 28. "They themselves went not into the 
 judgment-haU, lest they should be defiled, hut that they 
 might eat the Passover." " Had John described the paschal 
 " supper," says Dr. Davidson, ii. 404, " he would have 
 " placed it on the 13th of Msan." " The synoptical ' pre- 
 " paration-day' is not ' the preparation' of the fourth gospel 
 " (xix. 14, 31, 42), but ' the preparation for the Sabbath,'* 
 " or Friday (Mark xv. 42 ; Luke xxiii. 54.) John's ' pre- 
 " paration of the Passover ' is ' the preparation for the 
 " first passover-day, which was a sabbath. In other words, 
 " the synoptists speak of the weekly, John of the festival 
 " preparation. The ablest critics admit that there is an 
 " irreconcilable difference between the synoptists and the 
 " fourth gospel, in respect to the day on which Jesus 
 " was crucified. . . . The Quartodeciman interpretation is 
 " the only natural one. . . . This necessitates the conclu- 
 " sion that the work was not written by an eye-witness 
 "of all the transactions connected with the death of 
 " Jesus." 
 
 It is clear from St. John that the 15th of Msan was a 
 Sabbath, "for that Sabbath-day was an high day," xix. 31, 
 that is to say, it coincided with the first day of unleavened 
 bread, Lev. xxiii. 5-8 ; it is also clear that our Lord was 
 taken down from the cross that He might not remain 
 there on the Sabbath, consequently the day on which He 
 was crucified was, according to St. John, a Friday. It is 
 also certain that this day is called by him " the prepara- 
 tion of the Passover," v. 14, "the preparation," v. 31, that 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 327 
 
 is to say, the Passover-day was also the preparation-day, 
 or the eve, of the Sabbath. But St. Matthew says the 
 same thing, " Now the next day that followed the day of 
 the preparation," xxvii. 62, that is, after our Lord was laid 
 in the tomb, and after 6 p.m. on Friday, the chief priests 
 asked for and obtained from PHate a watch to guard the 
 sepulchre. This was done some time between 6 p.m. on 
 Friday and 6 p.m. on Saturday, for it was done before the 
 first day of the week, or Sunday. According, therefore, to 
 St. Matthew, the day of the crucifixion was the Friday. 
 But St. Mark says the same thing, xv. 42, " Now when the 
 even was come, because it was the preparation, that is, the 
 day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathsea . . . came . . . 
 and craved the body of Jesus," that is to say, according to 
 St. Mark, Jesus was buried on the evening of the day before 
 the Sabbath, that is, the evening of Friday, the day He was 
 crucified. St. Luke is still more explicit, for he says, " and 
 that day," the day He was crucified and buried " was the 
 preparation, and the Sabbath drew on." So that according 
 to all the Evangelists the Lord was crucified and buried on 
 the 14th, or Passover preparation-day before the Sabbath, 
 which that year coincided with the 1 5th of Msan. If this 
 were not so, and He ate the Passover with His disciples on 
 the I4th, and was crucified on the 15th, that would make 
 the Sabbath to fall on the 16th, in which case "that Sab- 
 bath-day " would not have been a " high day,'' as St. John 
 says it was ; for its being a " high day " was consequent 
 upon its coincidence with the first and not with the second 
 day of the feast of unleavened bread. The 15tli and the 
 21st were "high" days, not the 16th. But when did the 
 I4th of Nisan commence ? Clearly at sunset on the 
 Thursday. It was therefore after sunset on the Thursday 
 that our Lord desired with desire to eat the Passover with 
 His disciples before He suffered. It was that night, as Mr. 
 
328 The Authorship of [App 
 
 Orr says, of whicli He spake, " All ye shall be offended 
 because of me this night, for it is written, I will smite the 
 shepherd," &c. When, therefore, the day of the 14th 
 arrived, the shepherd was nailed to the cross, while as yet 
 some among the Jews had not eaUn the Passover, John 
 xviii. 28;® and before that day closed, which was the 
 Passover preparation-day preceding the Sabbath, He had 
 bowed His head and given up the Ghost, probably at the 
 very hour when those Jews would be eating the Passover. 
 The only difficulty here is, that according to Josephus, 
 "Wars, vi. 9, 3, the Passover was eaten between the 9th 
 and 11th hours, in which case we must suppose either that 
 our Lord ate the Passover before the usual time, or else 
 that there were two days ofi which the Passover might be 
 eaten, according to variation in the Jewish kalendar. "We 
 believe not only that the legal phrase " between the two 
 evenings," cf Lev. xxiii. 32, admitted of our Lord's eating 
 the Passover on the evening of Thursday, but that it gave 
 a sanction, of which the Jews frequently availed them- 
 selves, to eat it at any time between sunset on Thursday and 
 sunset on Friday. So that those Jews who went not into 
 the judgment-hall, lest they should be defiled by entering 
 a house that had leaven in it, had, in accordance with this 
 sanction, not yet eaten the Passover. If, on the other 
 hand, we prefer the supposition that the kalendar was 
 liable to variation, this is a fact that has been fully proved 
 by Cudworth. — Intellectual System, ii. 528, American 
 edition. If the exigencies of our position allowed us to 
 assume that the fourth Gospel was by an eye-witness, we 
 
 ^ To eat the Passover after midnight is said in the Mishna, Pesaohim, x. 
 9, to " defile the hands ;" but this may, perhaps, he taken as evidence that 
 it was possible to eat it later. The Jews in question were about to do so. 
 Their zeal against Jesus had caused them to defer it hitherto, and' they 
 would not further disqualify themselves for eating it by entering into the 
 judgment-hall. Cf. also n. p. 330 post. 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 329 
 
 might infer with Alford (see note on Matt. xxvi. 17-19) 
 that some Jews must have gone into the judgment-hall, 
 and that they, therefore, had eaten the Passover, also that 
 Joseph of Arimathsea in going to Pilate had done likewise ; 
 but at all events we may say that these circumstances are 
 either inconsistences on the face of the narrative or else 
 trifling indications of truth involving difficulties which the 
 writer being conscious of truth did not care to explain. 
 
 The Bishop of Lincoln prefers the Patristic method of 
 solving the difficulty, and supposes that the Priests and 
 Pharisees were so eager to put Christ to death that they 
 had delayed to eat the Passover; however it is to be 
 explained, one thing is certain that even if St. John repre- 
 sented the crucifixion as taking place on the I4th of 
 ISTisan as affirmed, a supper on the previous evening, such 
 as our Lord held, would not have fallen on the 13th. Mr. 
 Pound has conclusively shown that the computation of the 
 hours of the day in St. John's Gospel is the same as that 
 used by the other Evangelists. — " Story of the Gospels," 
 ii. 451. 
 
 Dr. Davidson says, ii. 403, " The synoptists intended to 
 " express the fact that Jesus partook of the legal passover- 
 " meal on the evening of the 14th of Nisan. Hence he was 
 " crucified on the 15th, the day before the Jewish sabbath." 
 This will make, according to the synoptists and Dr. 
 Davidson, 
 
 14th, the Passover. 
 15th, the Crucifixion. 
 16th, the Sabbath. 
 Whereas we are also told just afterwards — " Thus instead 
 " of the 15th of Nisan in the morning, we are brought by 
 " the fourth gospel [xviii. 28] to the 14th of Nisan, and 
 " there is a day's difference between the synoptists and 
 " John." 
 
330 The Authorship of [App 
 
 This will make, according to St. John, 
 
 14th, the Crucifixion. 
 15th, the Sabbath. 
 
 Now, it is admitted that the 15th of Msan was a Sab- 
 bath. But we find from the synoptists that our Lord was 
 taken down from the cross and buried on the eve of the 
 Sabbath, Mark xv. 42. Therefore, according to them also. 
 He was crucified on the 14th, which makes a discrepance 
 in their narrative upon this admission, and consequently 
 we must allow either that the 15th was not a Sabbath, or 
 that there is some other way of reconciling the two 
 accounts. If the loth was a Sabbath, then it is certain 
 that the Evangelists agree in saying that the crucifixion 
 took place the day before. Our choice lies, then, between 
 leaving St. John's words, x-viii. 28, unexplained, or insisting 
 upon one explanation of them, which makes the other 
 three narratives inconsistent with themselves. The solu- 
 tion proposed many years ago by Dr. S. Lee, of Cambridge, 
 is at once the simplest and the most consonant with 
 Scripture — that namely which interprets the phrase " be- 
 tween the two evenings," as including the space of the 
 entire day — from evening to evening — Cf. Lev. xxiii. 32.^ 
 
 The due consideration of this fact likewise explains 
 another difficulty which Dr. Davidson puts thus, ii. 408, 
 " The Christians of Asia Minor kept the paschal feast on 
 " the 14th of Nisan, the same day in which Christ ate the 
 
 ' The passage referred to by Dr. Lee in his Lexicon s. v. (^erev, is as 
 follows : — " The precept extended over the whole twenty-four hours com- 
 prehended within the two periods just named, as Sir John Marsham has 
 well remarked (Chron. .lEgypt., p. 185), and as it has been also remarked 
 by an interlocutor in the Gemara, on the Jerusalem TaJmud, published by 
 tJgolinus in his " Thesaurus Antiquitatum Sacrarum,'' in these words : — 
 " Chananjah ben Jehuda dicit : Crederem tempus inter vesperas, inter ves- 
 peram quartae decimse, et vesperam decimse quintse comprehendi diem et 
 noctem ? . . . Post mediam uoctem statim est legitimum ; . . . vel manfe 
 
App] the Fotirik Gospel 331 
 
 " lamb according to the synoptic gospels. In this they 
 " appealed to apostolic tradition, and the example of John 
 " himself. The fourth gospel is opposed to their view, for 
 " it puts the crucifixion of Jesus on the 14th, so that his 
 " last meal with the disciples must have been on the 
 " 13th." 
 
 Now surely if the crucifixion occurred on the 14th, then 
 our Lord must have eaten the Passover on the 14th also, 
 for the previous night was part of the same day; and 
 therefore the Quarto-decumans were quite right in appeal- 
 ing to the practice of St. John, so far as his practice was 
 expressed or represented by the fourth Gospel. The 
 same writer goes on to say, " It is equally strange that the 
 " Eoman church did not appeal to the fourth gospel, 
 " which is on their side ; as that the Asiatics adduced the 
 " apostle's practice for a custom to which the gospel is 
 " adverse." According to our view there is nothing at aU 
 strange in it, for the Gospel is in favour of and not adverse 
 to the custom in point, and therefore we conclude that the 
 Asiatic Christians, knowing the fourth Gospel to be St. 
 John's, saw no discrepance between it and the practice 
 they advocated. Consequently, the argument that is 
 drawn from the prevailing Quarto-decuman practices of 
 the Asiatics, in favour of which they appealed to the tra- 
 ditional authority of St. John, in order to prove that the 
 fourth Gospel cannot have been by him seeing it discoun- 
 tenances that practice, utterly falls to the ground. 
 
 ita fiet?" &c. — Tom. xvii. p. Dccxciv. And if tMs be the case, tlie plirase, 
 between the two evenings, must be equivalent, or nearly so, to one used in 
 Lev. xxiii. 32, and intended to designate precisely the same period." — 
 Sermon on the Sabbath, p. 23. The former of these references given by Dr. 
 Lee I have not been able to verify ; the latter quotation is correct, and is 
 most interesting and important. The passage occurs in Codex de Pasohate 
 G-emara Hierosolymitana illustratus nunc primum a, Blasio Ugolino ex 
 Hebraico Latine reddita. Venetiis, mdcclv. 
 
332 The Authorship of [App 
 
 After having thus noticed the internal evidence to the 
 authorship of the fourth Gospel, it only remains very 
 briefly to refer to the body of external evidence existing 
 in favour of it. This has recently been well put together 
 in a small pamphlet by Mr. David Eowland, The, Evidence 
 from Tradition and from the Fathers to the Apostolic Origin 
 of the fourth Gospel. Longmans, 1869. 
 
 Dr. Davidson, on the other side, has well summed up 
 and examined the evidence from history and tradition in 
 vol. ii. pp. 367-^02 ; but it seems to us, upon the careful 
 study of it, that the conclusion points in an exactly oppo- 
 site direction to his. If the work in question was not the 
 fourth Gospel, there can be little doubt but that this would 
 be admitted. If a favourite theory had to be maintained, 
 and this were the amount of evidence to be adduced in 
 proof of it, there is no question whatever but that it would 
 be considered to be conclusively established; as, on the 
 contrary, an old belief has to be uprooted, all the positive 
 evidence that does exist must be minimised and its worth 
 depreciated. All that is not proved to demonstration 
 must be regarded as not proved at all, and therefore 
 doubtful. 
 
 Now it seems to us that Tischendorf is quite right in 
 believing an acquaintance with the fourth Gospel to be 
 evidenced in the Epistle of Barnabas, when it speaks, 
 ch. xii., of Christ as typified by the brazen serpent of 
 Moses. When we bear in mind that the one solitary allu- 
 sion to that episode of the Exodus in the whole of the 
 canonical Scriptures is found in St. John iii., we may at 
 least think it significant that the same allusion is found 
 here. The passages in the Epistles of Ignatius to the 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 333 
 
 Eomans and Philadelpliians are certainly not conclusive, 
 biit they are at least very remarkable if, being so similar 
 as they are to the language of St. John, they were written 
 in ignorance of that language : " I wish for the bread of 
 God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the 
 flesh of Jesus Christ the Son of God, who in the last time 
 has been made of the seed of David and Abraham, and 
 I wish for the drink of God, his blood, which is incor- 
 ruptible love and perennial life," Eom. vii. And, again, 
 " For if, even according to the flesh, some wished to de- 
 ceive me, yet the spirit being from God is not deceived. 
 For he knows whence he comes and whither he goes, and 
 makes hidden things manifest." oJ3sv yag, vdkv s'^x^ra/, ««/ 
 mxi hiti^ii %a.] rci %gmrk iXs'/x.^i (PhUadelphians vii.) The 
 very words of St. John, be it observed, in iii. 8, xvi. 8. It 
 is not, however, to isolated passages that we need confine our 
 appeal. It is difficult to read these letters of Ignatius and 
 not perceive in them frequent evidence of an acquaintance 
 with the Johannine writings, as well as with the Pauline 
 Epistles. The latter perhaps few would care to dispute, 
 but the former is scarcely less certain. We cannot expect 
 to find the same sort of reference that is found in later 
 authors, but the question is, whether there are not traces 
 of a mode of thought which is substantially identical with 
 that of the fourth Gospel, and, whether being so, it was 
 not derived from it. To the oldest Ignatian Epistles 
 Davidson himself assigns a date of about a.d. 165 (ii. 369). 
 If, then, in these there is evidence of an acquaintance with 
 the thought and language of the fourth Gospel, it is proof 
 positive that the writer regarded that Gospel as genuine. 
 It is quite beyond the bounds of probability to suppose 
 both that the Ignatian letters are forgeries," and that being 
 so they contained allusions to a forged Gospel,. the very 
 language of which they borrowed ; for that the language 
 
334 The Authorship of [App 
 
 is borrowed, or rather perhaps spontaneously adopted, even 
 on this supposition we cannot doubt. Under any circum- 
 stances the thought and language in both must have had 
 a common origin. But that origin being the fourth Gospel, 
 and there is no other to which we can point, it is a very 
 strong , presumptive evidence of its Apostolic authority. 
 Cf. Ignat. ad. Eph. iii. and St. John xv. 5, xiv. 9 ; iv. and 
 St. John xvii. 21 ; xvii. and St. John xii. 7. Ad Maghesios 
 vi. and St. John i. 1 ; vii. and St. John v. 17, 30 ; viii. and 
 St. John i. 18. Christ is here called Aoyoj athtn. Ad Tral- 
 lianos viii. and St. John vi. 35. Ad Philadel. ix. and St. 
 John x. 7, 9. Ad Smyrn. iii. and St. John xxi. 13 ; iv. and 
 St John xvii. 3, &c. &c. 
 
 To pass on to Justin Martyr's first apology, A.D. 147. 
 Few persons probably will be persuaded that the most 
 obvious inference from such words as the following is, that 
 the writer was not' acquainted with the fourth Gospel : — 
 " For Christ himself said. Unless ye be regenerated, ye 
 shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. And that it is 
 impossible for such as have been once born to enter the 
 wombs of their mothers, is manifest to all" (61). The 
 slight departures from the precise Johannine phraseology 
 in this passage surely go to show not ignorance of, but the 
 greater familiarity with, the words of Christ. It was the 
 doctrine and the sentiment that the writer borrowed, not 
 the language. And the juxtaposition of the two consecu- 
 tive clauses is almost conclusive proof that he had in his 
 mind a corresponding passage in which the same two 
 thoughts were combined. It is only special pleading to 
 attempt to prove the contrary. If we hn&w that St. John's 
 Gospel was then in existence, we should not for a moment 
 doubt that it was quoted here. May not such apparent 
 quotation therefore be accepted as evidence that, it did 
 exist ? Again, in the Dialogue with Trypho, c. 63, " As 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 335 
 
 His blood did not arise from human seed, but from the 
 will of God." The similarity here to St. John i. 13, is too 
 close to allow us to regard it as a mere casualty. "What 
 direct appeal he could make to the New Testament in 
 arguing with a Jew (Davidson ii. 376) is by no means clear. 
 
 JSTow it must be borne in mind that if there is any 
 allusion to the fourth Gospel in these and similar passages, 
 it places that Gospel in a very marked and definite posi- 
 tion as a work which had been widely read and was com- 
 monly recognised — the only question is whether or not 
 the allusions are allusions, and no man living can decide 
 tliat — it is a simple matter of judgment, which must 
 depend, in a great degree, upon individual bias or tem- 
 perament. 
 
 But when we find on all hands that a clear and express 
 citation is allowed in Theophilus of Antioch, A.D. 180, by 
 whom the opening words of the fourth Gospel are quoted 
 and ascribed to St. John,, we may reasonably ask, Is it 
 likely that a work which had not been written more than 
 thirty years before, would in so short a time not only have 
 established its claim to be considered Apostolic, but also 
 have been commonly regarded and recognised as Holy 
 Scripture, (for the quotation by Theophilus implies this 
 common recognition), if its claims to be so considered 
 were as groundless as we are asked to believe? Surely 
 the adoption of Johannine language by Justin, about 
 thirty years before, goes some way towards supplying that 
 link in the evidence which we want between a.d 100 or 
 110 and 180. At the latter date we are sure of our position, 
 but that very security implies an earlier foundation for it 
 to rest on ; for if such foundation did not exist, our position 
 would not be so secure as it is. Supposing, then, that 
 there are indications in Justin and Ignatius of acquaint- 
 ance with the fourth Gospel, we have traces of that very 
 
336 The Authorship of [App 
 
 foundation which, it is obvious, must have existed. And 
 be it observed, further, that one manifest allusion to the 
 fourth Gospel at A.D. 140, is as good as a hundred, for all 
 we want to prove is that at such a date it was sufficiently 
 known and prominent to be referred to by Christian 
 writers, and sufficiently familiar to the Christian com- 
 munity to be recognised when referred to. And one such 
 acknowledged allusion is sufficient to prove that. The 
 fact that more allusions were not made, or that being made 
 they were not more explicit, can furnish no argument in 
 contradiction of such positive evidence as does exist.® 
 
 NOTE B. 
 
 THE INTEGRITY OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 
 
 The two passages that have been disputed are the last 
 chapter, and the narrative of the woman taken in adultery, 
 vii. 53, viii. 1-11. With regard to the twenty-first chapter 
 several reasons have been advanced by Dr. Davidson to 
 show that it is a supplement which did not proceed from 
 the writer of the Gospel. These reasons, however, seem 
 to be those of a person who had made up his mind that 
 such was the case, rather than of one who had been led by 
 them to that conclusion. — ii. 45't-457. 
 
 " 1. The gospel concludes with the 20th chapter, as the 
 " last two verses prove. Is it likely that the author would 
 " resume his pen ? If he did he would have removed 
 '' these verses." 
 
 ^ The idea tliat some one common source existed, and that source a written 
 one, to which all Christians commonly appealed, and from which our pre- 
 sent Gospels were derived, is too imaginary to be entertained. 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 337 
 
 That is to say, Dr. Davidson would liave done so. More 
 than this it does not prove. The question of likelihood is 
 foreclosed by the existing fact, which we may assume pro- 
 visionally to be a fact, with as much propriety as we may 
 assume the contrary. Is it likdy that a person intending 
 to supplement another's work would have added on the 
 supplement so clumsily? It is obvious that the writer 
 claims identity with the disciple before mentioned, xxi. 24. 
 If chap, xxi is an addition, the inference would rather be 
 that the former chapters were the work of St. John, or at 
 least of " the disciple whom Jesus loved." 
 
 " 2. The commencement of the 21st chapter, ' After 
 " these things,' &c. &c., is unsuitable to the last two verses 
 " of the 20th, whose contents reject the reference of 'these 
 " things ' to them. The pronoun rendered ' these things ' 
 " can only allude to the twenty-sixth and twenty-ninth 
 " verses of the 20th chapter, which is so awkward as to 
 " show a different writer for the 21st, who did not wish to 
 " alter the conclusion of the work in xx. 30, 31." 
 
 The same awkwardness is manifest elsewhere among 
 the sacred writers, where there can be no suspicion of 
 diversity of authorship, e.g. at the end of Job xxxi., and at 
 the end of 2 Cor. xi. It is conceivable that the same 
 writer might add chap. xxi. as an afterthought, even though 
 he had previously written xx. 30, 31, expressive of the 
 general tenor of his work. Cf. 1 Tim. v. 22-24. 
 
 " 3. The twenty-fourth verse, which is copied from xix. 
 " 35, betrays, in the use of the plural we know, the distinct- 
 " ness of the writer from the evangelist. Or if the plural 
 " stand simply for the singular, what is the meaning of a 
 " writer saying at the same time of himself, ' The disciple 
 " that wrote these things,' and ' We know that his testi- 
 " mony is true ?' Besides, the phrases, 'testify of these 
 " things,' ' wrote these things,' apparently refer to the pre- 
 
338 The Integrity of [App 
 
 " ceding work, to chapters i.-xx., which is an unsuitaUe 
 " allusion for a simple pronoun to bear. If it be thought 
 "that the 'these things' of xxi. 24, include the 21st 
 " chapter also because of the commencing words of xxi. 25, 
 " ' There are also other things,' we admit the reference ; 
 " but the assignment of the additional chapter to the 
 " apostle's attestation is awkward, and merely imitated 
 " from the preceding writer." 
 
 In Ecclesiastes we find the same phenomena as in the 
 fourth Gospel, viz., the use of the third person singular and 
 the first person singular and plural. Whatever may be 
 thought of the authorship of Ecclesiastes, its integrity 
 cannot be questioned. If, then, a parallel case can be 
 produced, it is useless arguing from the phenomena of the 
 last Gospel, when in that parallel case the like inference 
 does not hold good. Whatever may be our opinion about 
 the method of writing adopted in the Gospel, certain it is 
 that we find precisely the same method adopted in another 
 work with which the author of the Gospel must have been 
 familiar. This fact remains whether we decide that both 
 productions are spurious or both genuine. 
 
 According to our theory the author of the Gospel has 
 commonly spoken of himself in the third person ; he has, 
 however, some two or three times made use of the first 
 person plural, and once only of the first person singular, in 
 the concluding words of his work. The author of Ecclesi- 
 astes in like manner commonly, or at least frequently, 
 speaks of himself in the third person. It is the way in 
 which he begins when introducing his subject, and he 
 subsequently reverts to it; but he shortly afterwards throws 
 off the third person and speaks in the first, clearly showing 
 that he wishes to be identified with that particular person 
 whom he calls the Preacher, and this he does continu- 
 ally; once only, however, like the fourth Evangelist, towards 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 339 
 
 the end of his work, he nses the first person plural, " Let 
 us hear the conclusion of the ■whole matter." The us here 
 of course refers to the readers as well as to the writer, and 
 therefore must not be pressed as though the cases were 
 exactly parallel. It is not pretended that they are ; but still 
 it is singular that in/orm there is an exact similarity between 
 the language of the two writers in speaking of themselves. 
 What one has clearly done the other certainly may have 
 done likewise. In Ecclesiastes, " Let us hear," may of 
 course be "hath been heard;" but few probably would 
 prefer that rendering. 
 
 Now, the position of Dr. Davidson is this — 1. That the 
 first twenty chapters were not written by St. John. 2, 
 That the twenty-first chapter was written by some one 
 else who had not written the first twenty. Then, if this 
 be so, what follows ? — That this second writer authorita- 
 tively asserted that the first twenty chapters were the 
 v/ork of the disciple whom Jesus loved. He must have 
 had reasons for knowing this, or else reasons for asserting 
 it. If he had reasons for knowing this, then we have suffi- 
 cient reason for believing him. If he had reasons for 
 asserting it, then there can be no doubt but that he in- 
 tended to pass off the twenty-first chapter under cover of 
 the previous chapters, in which case as a writer claiming 
 identity with the former writer, he becomes fairly charge- 
 able with the same awkwardness that attaches to the 
 Apostle who on the common supposition resumed his pen 
 to make an addition to a work he had already concluded. 
 For the hypothesis is not tenable, that the bulk of the 
 Gospel not being written by St. John, the last chapter was 
 written by a third person, who did not pretend to be 
 identical either with that second unknown person or with 
 the Apostle John. 
 
 If a "Jewish Christian before the end of the second cen- 
 
34° The Integrity of [App 
 
 tury wrote tlie supplement," it shows that at that time 
 such a person believed a work written only fifty years 
 before to be Apostolic, and succeeded in perpetuating the 
 belief; or else that, knowing it to be otherwise, he lent the 
 weight of whatever influence he had to prove it so. And 
 there is no other alternative. 
 
 " 4. After the 20th chapter none could have expected 
 " from the same writer a third appearance of the risen 
 " Jesus ; since we read in the thirtieth verse that many 
 " other 'proofs {ernjjiTii) of his resurrection had been given 
 " to the disciples, which are not in the present book. Could 
 " the author therefore record another?" 
 
 It is sufficient to say that some author has recorded it, 
 and whoever he was, whether the same or a different 
 writer, he laboured under the particular difficulty here 
 implied, because that which would have prevented him 
 from writing thus would have prevented him also from 
 making this addition to what was already written. 
 
 It is, moreover, worthy of observation that the alternate 
 use of the first person singular and plural is characteristic 
 also of the three Epistles of St. John. 
 
 " 5. The discourse between Peter and Jesus is essentially 
 " different from that held with Thomas, because it descends 
 " to individual relations and circumstances, without pass- 
 " ing into general ideas after the evangelist's manner." 
 
 Are the two discourses so different that the same man 
 could not have held them with different persons, and if 
 they are not, why cannot one and the same person have 
 recorded them if they were held ? 
 
 " 6. ' The sons of Zebedee ' in the second verse, is the 
 " language of the synopists, not of the fourth gospel. And 
 " Peter is asigned a pre-eminence which the whole work 
 " intentionally ignores. The beloved disciple is also de-- 
 " scribed as a fisherman, a fact omitted by the evangelist. 
 
AppJ the Fourth Gospel 341 
 
 " who represents Mm as a person of distinction, and 
 " appears to transfer Ms abode from Galilee to Jeru- 
 " salem." 
 
 The general assumption is made that the fourth Gospel 
 is not Apostolic, chiefly on the ground of its diversity from 
 the others, and then this being assumed some of the few 
 features of resemblance which do exist between it and 
 them are advanced as evidence that the passage in which 
 they occur was not written by the author who wrote the 
 rest, because if they were he would be too much like the 
 real Apostle, and more in harmony with the other Evan- 
 gelists. It is not said that John's abode was in Jerusalem, 
 but only that he was acquainted with a servant of the 
 High Priest ; just as a man who lived in York might be 
 known to people in London, or have a private friend in 
 Buckingham Palaca He would not necessarily be a person 
 of distinction because he had. 
 
 " 7. The visible return of Jesus {till I come, verse 22) is 
 " unlike the evangelist, who resolves that return into the 
 " paraclete's presence." 
 
 Here, again, the former remark applies. We have a 
 point of resemblance between this Evangelist and the 
 others in this very expression. Are we to take it for what 
 it is worth in the way of evidence, or reckon it among the 
 reasons for tearing away the last chapter from those which 
 precede it? What proof is there that the writer of the 
 former chapters would not have made use of this expres- 
 sion ? It is plain that similar principles of criticism would 
 lead us to reject any analogous expressions, if they oc- 
 curred ; as indeed it is proposed to do with v. 28, 29 ; vi. 
 39, 40, 44 ; xii. 48, p. 457. It is manifestly not true that 
 the fourth Evangelist resolves Christ's return into the 
 Paraclete's presence, for he is most careful to distinguish 
 between Christ and the Paraclete, xiv. 16, 26; xv. 26; 
 
342 The Integrity of [App 
 
 xvi. 14, 15. One might say with truth that the return of 
 Christ is but darkly alluded to except in passages that are 
 regarded as doubtful by criticism, but one certainly cannot 
 say that Christ's return is resolved in the presence of the 
 Paraclete. 
 
 " 8. The scene is Galilee, of which there is no mention 
 " in the previous record of the appearances of the risen 
 " one. The evangelist usually specifies Galilee when 
 " Jesus and his disciples are there (i. 43 ; iv. 3, 43 ; vi. 1 ; 
 " vii. 1) ; he does not say here that they went to that dis- 
 " trict." 
 
 Though Galilee has not been named in connection with 
 the risen Jesus, it has been mentioned in connection with 
 His life. If it was a fact that our Lord said He would 
 meet His disciples in Galilee, it is not inherently impro- 
 bable 'that He should have done so under these circum- 
 stances, and in that case no just inference can be drawn 
 about the authorship of this chapter from the fact that no 
 otlur appearance of the risen Jesus in Galilee has been 
 mentioned. The real question is. Did our Lord or did He 
 not appear in Galilee under the circumstances here re- 
 corded ? If He did not, then there is something more in- 
 volved than a mere question as to authorship. The ques- 
 tion is plainly one of belief or unbelief in a matter of fact. 
 Does not the statement, " After these things Jesus showed 
 himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias," imply 
 that both He and they had gone to that district? The 
 objection is futile. It is very important to bear in mind 
 here that the sea of Galilee is called the sea of Tiberias 
 only by St. John, once in this place and twice in the sixth 
 chapter. Is it conceivable that another writer, intending 
 to supplement the Gospel, would be so scrupulously care- 
 ful to employ in the twenty-first chapter the very name 
 which had before been used by the Evangelist whose work 
 
App] the Foiirth Gospel 343 
 
 he supplemented, more particularly wheu that Evangelist 
 had already used both names, and had adopted this merely 
 as the alternative name, vi. 1 ? In other words, the use of 
 the same name in the last chapter, as had been used before 
 in the sixth, is a corroborative point in the evidence that 
 both chapters were by the same hand, for it is not likely 
 that any man supplementing the Gospel would have de- 
 signedly adopted this particular name. 
 
 " 9. The explanation given in xxi. 20, ' which also leaned 
 " on his breast at supper, and said. Lord, which is he that 
 " betrayeth thee V is superfluous from one who had written 
 " xiii. 25." 
 
 If intended as an explanation, it is of course superfluous, 
 but is it not evident that its intention is other than ex- 
 planatory ? On the former occasion Peter had asked John 
 to inquire of Jesus, in consequence of his near and inti- 
 mate relation to Him, who should be the traitor. Peter 
 now remembers this circumstance, and having just had his 
 own future career disclosed to him, he naturally asks, 
 " Lord, and what shall this man do " which also leaned 
 upon thy breast at supper ? The explanation lay dormant 
 in the mind of Peter, but John inserts it in his own nar- 
 rative, instead of putting it into the words of Peter, not to 
 explain his own statement, but to account for Peter's ques- 
 tion. The integrity of the last chapter is shown by the 
 I4th verse, which plainly assumes unbroken continuity 
 with the previous narrative. We cannot, therefore, acquit 
 the author of the last chapter of the deliberate intention 
 of supplementing the former chapters, while the attestation 
 in V. 24, conjoined with the use of of/tta/ in v. 25, shows 
 that the writer is the narrator, and the narrator "that 
 
 * 
 
 disciple whom Jesus loved." 
 
 It is, moreover, somewhat remarkable that, regarded 
 even in the light of a superfluous explanation, this state- 
 
344 The Integrity of [App 
 
 ment finds its exact parallel in the earlier portion of the 
 Gospel. In ch. xviii. 14, it would be quite as reasonable 
 to say that the explanation, " Now Caiaphas was he which 
 gave counsel to the Jews that it was expedient that one 
 man should die for the people," is superfluous from one 
 who had written xi. 49, 50, 51 ; and yet, whether super- 
 fluous or not, it is given, and, being given, is precisely paral- 
 lel to the case in point. He who wrote the one could most 
 assuredly have written also the other. Of. also i. 40, vi. 8 ; 
 and vi. 71, xiii. 2, 26 ; iii. 2, vii. 50. 
 
 " 10. One purpose of the writer of this chapter discovers 
 " itself in the relation between the apostles Peter and 
 " John. To the former is assigned the headship of the 
 " Church, ' feed my sheep ;' the latter is a spiritual media- 
 " tor between the Lord and his Church, ' that he tarry till 
 " I come.' The honour of martyrdom belongs to the one ; 
 " that of calm, continued spiritual existence to the other. 
 " But this purpose is only subordinate to the more general 
 " one, the attestation of the gospel by referring it to an 
 " apostle. It is probable that the work was at flrst under- 
 " valued by Jewish-christians, because of the inferior posi- 
 " tion which Peter occupies in it. Hence the author of 
 " the appendix brings Peter into prominence, yet without 
 " disparagement to John, ' If I will that he tarry till I 
 " come, what is that to thee ? ' " 
 
 The justice of these observations must, of course, depend 
 upon the opinion of the reader ; many probably wUl fail to 
 see it. At least it is certain that Simon Peter occupies no 
 inferior position in the earlier part of the Gospel : he is 
 frequently mentioned oftener even than any " other dis- 
 ciple," i. 40-44; vi. 8, 68; xiii. 6-9, 24, 36; xvui. 10, 
 27 ; XX. 2-6. The prominence of Peter is shown not 
 only in the circumstances related of him, but also in the 
 fact that Andrew is spoken of as his " brother," his 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 345 
 
 " brother " being confessedly more distinguislied than 
 Andrew himself. 
 
 " 11. The narrative has a minuteness of detail and a 
 " specification of numbers which show a striving after 
 " vividness without attaining it. The clearness and gene- 
 "' rality of the evangelist's manner are absent." 
 
 And yet this Evangelist has preserved certain details of 
 the miracle of the loaves and fishes that the other three 
 have omitted — e.g. the names of the disciples who were 
 foremost to speak, the fact that it was a " lad " with whom 
 the loaves and fishes were found, that there was " much 
 grass" in the place, and that the gathering up of the frag- 
 ments was in obedience to the express command of Jesus. 
 There is a certain "striving after vividness" here, and in 
 "the servant's name was Malchus," which is not unlike the 
 mentioning of the disciples who were on the sea of Galilee 
 by name, and of the exact number of the " great fishes." 
 So with the distance of Bethany from Jerusalem, " fifteen 
 furlongs," xi. 18; the time Lazarus had been in the grave, 
 " four days ;" the specification of the particular disciple on 
 various occasions who said or did anything ; the statement 
 put into the mouth of Philip, that " two hundred " penny- 
 worth of bread would be req^uired for the hungry multi- 
 tude ; the fact that Bethesda had " five " porches ; that it 
 was " Solomon's porch " of the temple in which Jesus 
 walked at the "feast of the dedication;" when it was 
 " winter ;" and others of the same kind. All these things 
 show that the mind of the Evangelist was very strongly 
 marked by that faculty which is known to phrenologists 
 as " individuality," the very faculty indeed which would 
 perhaps partly account for his impression, supposing it to 
 be nothing more than an impression, that he of all the 
 twelve was " that disciple whom Jesus loved." 
 
 " 12. The language differs from that of the gospel. Thus 
 
34^ The Integrity of [App 
 
 " we find %iyri(s6a.i eh (3) for axoXovhii ; vuv put after the verb 
 " (10), but precedes the imperative elsewhere ; <f ejs/h instead 
 " of &'yen (18) ; wgwfas ysvo/i.hns (4) for Wfai; inrctyw with the 
 " infinitive (3) ; iraidia (5) for Tixm ; o /iagnguv (24) for 6 
 " j(i6/*a|ri)gi)xwf ; igp^vsm (6) for blivaaiai ; emvdvnis (7) for i/id- 
 " !-/o> or ^(^iriav ; emergapsii (20) for argapls elg r& o^'ida ; ffr^na/ 
 " e/'s (4) for iiri ; eyigkh £* MxgSii for dvatfras Ix vsxjwv (14) j 
 " and of^a/ (25), a'lyiaXig, aXiiiiiv, Airo^alvsiv, otgierav, ^odxiit, 
 " yngdexeiv, l^ird^eiv, ^usvwai, xarA distributively, fi,ax^dv, vnx^t, 
 " mifiahm, irgogfdyioii, eugtn, toK/mv are peculiar to the chapter. 
 " T; 5rjo? (fs seems to be taken from Matt, xxvii 4. 
 
 This list, formidable as it seems, will not bear investiga- 
 tion. In many cases the phrases given are not synony- 
 mous — e.g. in v. 3, " we also go with thee," is manifestly 
 not equivalent to " we will follow thee," and both the 
 words are used conjointly in xx. 6. vZv follows the impe- 
 rative in ii. 8. In v. 18 MS. D reads a-gdymm. Cf. also 
 the use of (pigm in xix. 39, xx. 27. As for v. 4, some MSS. 
 read ir^uia, in xviii. 28. Anyhow, ir^ui is only twice used, 
 in St. John xviii. 20, and xx. 1. The Eev. W. Pound has 
 drawn a distinction in meaning between the two words, 
 " Story of the Gospels," vol. ii. p. 448. icrayw is used with 
 an imperative in iv. 16, and ix. 7; it is itself an infinitive 
 after an imperative in xi. 44, and xviii. 8. As therefore it 
 could not be followed by an imperative in v. 3, there is no 
 grammatical or linguistic reason why it should not take an 
 infinitive if necessity required, as is plainly the case. 
 Such construction, therefore, proves nothing, irailkv is used 
 by St. John iv. 49, xvi. 21, and rixm is only found in the 
 Gospel three times. With respect to v. 24, the present 
 participle and the past tense of this verb /ttajrujw are used 
 of the same person and' subject in v. 32, and v. 37. In 
 point of fact, tlie words, " This is the disciple who is testis 
 fying of these things and hath written these things," taken 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 347 
 
 in connection with " he who hath seen it hath home testi- 
 mony, and his testimony is true, and he knoweth that he 
 saith true," show very nearly complete indentity of usage, 
 and indicate with unmistakeable precision the intention of 
 the writer to identify himself with the beloved disciple, 
 whoever that disciple was. Ig^iiiv and iimeSai are both 
 used by the other Evangelists, and therefore might be used 
 by this Evangelist. Here he had special occasion for a 
 word denoting physical, and not moral strength, and there- 
 fore availed himself of laxfiim. The same remark applies 
 to ImMrris, a special word found nowhere else in the New 
 Testament, srgapls e'S rdi lirim is only once used, in xx. 14. 
 The writer had before used grgaifels above, in i. 38. Why 
 did he not use the same phrase again ? or why, having 
 used two, should he not have used a third here, having like- 
 wise used this very word in a moral sense (ace. to MSS.) 
 in xii. 40 ? In v. 4, some MSS. have Iot' for ds. The 
 verb is also used with h and rrghg in St. John, as well as 
 with other prepositions, so that its usage here shows 
 nothing, eyii^eiv ex nxguii is really the Johannine phrase, 
 see ii. 19, 20, 22 ; v. 21 ; xii. 1, 9, 17. The other is only used 
 once, in xx. 9, except in the sixth chapter where the verb 
 is transitive. The fact that certain words are peculiar to 
 the twenty-first chapter is of no importance in itself, un- 
 less, on other grounds, the circumstances related are such 
 as the previous writer can not have added, because the 
 relation of the circumstances gives occasion for using the 
 words. Most of these words are found in the other Gos- 
 pels, some as 'itgodfaym, oiiJ.ai are not found elsewhere in the 
 New Testament. None of them are so uncommon as to 
 prove a different author. Some words in the chapter are 
 peculiar to St. John, as avlgaxid, o-^d^iov, hiaZ,ww[i.i. m&tu) is 
 used eight times in the fourth Gospel, once in the Apoca- 
 lypse, twice in the Acts, and once in 2 Cor., but nowhere 
 
34^ The Integrity of [-^-FP 
 
 else in the New Testament. "We are therefore in a position 
 to affirm that the linguistic phenomena of this chapter are 
 certainly not unfavourable to the belief that it proceeded 
 from the same writer as the earlier chapters, whether or 
 not he was St. John. 
 
 Nevertheless, Dr. Davidson further says, "These con- 
 " siderations sufficiently show another hand than . the 
 " evangelist's. Difference of time, without difference of 
 " authorship, will not account for the characteristics of the 
 " chapter. Not merely is the gospel ratified but added to 
 " in another spirit. And the idea that the same person 
 "attested his own work at a later period of life, is a 
 " modern hypothesis. Peter and John were both dead 
 " when verses 19-23 were written. Probably a Jewish- 
 " christian, before the end of the second century, wrote 
 " the supplement. No MS. is so ancient as to want it. 
 " Perhaps several small interpolations in the gospel have 
 " proceeded from the same hand. Expressions occur here 
 " and there which do not suit their context nor the 
 " general spirit of the work. "Were the author consistent 
 " with himself, we might assign various clauses and verses 
 " to a later hand, perhaps to that which wrote the 21st 
 " chapter, where the Jewish -christian point of view re- 
 " specting the Lord's coming is taken ; such as v. 28, 29 j 
 " the clause ' and I will raise him up at the last day,' in 
 " vi. 40, 44 ; and ' at the last day,' vi. 39 ; xii. 48 ; but this 
 " assumption of Scholten's is somewhat arbitrary." 
 
 It is a strange hypothesis that John was dead when this 
 chapter was written. The natural inference would seem 
 to be the contrary. One cannot understand why " a Jew- 
 ish-christian " should write a supplement to a work that 
 "was at first undervalued by Jewish Christians," nor how 
 his doing so in this way would have had the desired effect. 
 It is, moreover, absolutely impossible to believe with 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 349 
 
 Scholten that the expressions alleged are interpolations, 
 because they cannot be spared from the context ; but being 
 retained, the light they throw upon "if I will that he 
 tarry till I come," is by no means inconsiderable. Our 
 conclusion, therefore, is that, until more cogent reasons 
 than these have been advanced, we see no sufficient ground 
 for believing that the last chapter of St. John's Gospel 
 was by a different hand. It is possible to say that St. 
 John did not write the fourth Gospel, or that an eyewit- 
 ness did not write it, but it is not possible to say that the 
 person who did write it did not wish to pass for an eye- 
 witness. Furthermore, the evidence is distinctly in favour 
 of the last chapter having been written by the same hand 
 as the rest, but if so, it is impossible to deny that the 
 writer claims to be both an eyewitness and the particular 
 disciple whom Jesus loved. The question therefore is, 
 how far his claim is valid, and how far he has imposed 
 upon mankind ; because to say that his claim being in- 
 valid he did not desire or intend to impose upon mankind, 
 is simply to say that he wrote in attestation of his own 
 identity what he did not intend or wish to be believed, 
 which is absurd. 
 
 II. With respect to the narrative of the woman taken 
 in adultery, the dif6.c\ilties about it have been amply 
 stated by Davidson and Alford. On the other side the 
 Eev. W. Pound, " Story of the Gospels," vol. ii. p. 277, 
 may be consulted. It certainly cannot be said to be out 
 of place here as lie has arranged the Gospel narrative ; 
 and with Alford the point that weighs most seems to be 
 the fact that tradition inserts it here, instead of other 
 places which, according to him, it would appear to suit 
 better. Davidson says, " The simple truthfulness of the 
 " story stamps it with credibility, and points to early evan- 
 " gelical tradition as its source." Upon examination, the 
 
350 The Integrity of [App 
 
 linguistic features mentioned by Davidson lose much of 
 their weight when we consider that the event recorded is 
 confessedly unique in our Lord's life, and, therefore, gives 
 occasion for a special phraseology — a phraseology which 
 we cannot assume was beyond the reach of the Evangelist 
 under the circumstances, or beyond the compass of his 
 vocabulary, e.g. The Evangelist nowhere uses the word 
 ^avrtt,u except in the opening chapters, and once in the 
 tenth chapter, in alluding to what is there said. He no- 
 where uses the word ^d-rren nor the word -vj/w/i/ov but in 
 the thirteenth chapter, for the simple reason that he had no 
 occasion to use them. Many of the words in chap. xii. 
 are peculiar to that chapter for a like reason ; but what 
 does this prove ? Just so much as we choose to think it 
 proves, and no more. And yet these words are numerous, 
 e.g. diaxoviTv, euvavaxeifiimy, ftJgfios, vhtikSs, m'Klirifiiie, mi'S^aexm, 
 rgiaxoelav, svra(piu.g/i6g, ra ^ata, tuv foivhm, ovation, xoxxof nZ 
 elroo, ^govTti, iruTjie, iivdvrtjSis, rirdtpXtoxiii, •jri'ffuguxiv, rdt, ^aXK6/iiva, 
 voiTv, pgaxiiiv, luXoyeTv, and bt/iri. Now, here is a vocabulary 
 of some twenty words or more, not one of which is found 
 in any other chapter of the Gospel ; but shall we argue 
 from this fact that this chapter does not belong to the 
 Gospel, that it was inserted by some one else ? Surely 
 this would be an extremely rash conclusion ; but as far as 
 the use of words can go the two cases are exactly parallel. 
 It is futile, therefore, to insist upon the difference of lan- 
 guage as conclusive against the integrity of this passage. 
 It is not so. One and the same author may well have 
 written it. 
 
 Another point is alleged, viz. that strangulation and not 
 stoning was the punishment for adultery, and that this 
 fact tells against the passage in question. But it is no 
 solution of this difficulty to surmise that the passage was 
 not written by St. John ; for the blot remains, if it be a 
 
App] the Fourth Gospel 351 
 
 blot, whoever the writer was. If, on the other hand, it is 
 advanced as an objection to the historical credibility of 
 the narrative, that is a question altogether independent of 
 the question of authorship, and one, we may add, which is 
 in no way affected by any solution of the former question. 
 Indeed, on-tMs point the internal evidence of the passage 
 must be felt to be conclusive. It cannot have been a 
 mere fabrication. No one would have ventured to repre- 
 sent our Lord as acting thus at the time when the passage 
 is known to have existed, e,.g. before the time of Jerome, 
 to say nothing of the extreme improbability of any second- 
 rate author conceiving a story so true, and so original. Many 
 critics seem to forget that their objections are of equal 
 weight whoever wrote the passage. It may be questioned 
 whether the testimony of the writer, whoever he was, to 
 the ^practice of the Jews in our Lord's time, is not at least 
 as good as that of the Talmud to the traditional interpre- 
 tation of the law. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that on internal grounds, which 
 are those mainly relied on by critics, there is not sufficient 
 reason for rejecting either of the passages under dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 It is not necessary to do more than allude to the dis- 
 puted words at v. 3, 4. 
 
 NOTE C. 
 
 FEATUEES COMMON TO THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS. 
 
 We must begin by at once admitting the great difference 
 between the Apocalypse and the Gospel or Epistles of St, 
 
352 Features Common to [App 
 
 John. It is obvious and undeniable. The question is 
 whether there are not points of similarity no less undeni- 
 able if not so obvious, and whether or not these points are 
 sufficiently important to be indications of identity of 
 authorship. It has been shown in the Lectures that the 
 first Epistle in some respects approaches nearer to the 
 Apocalypse than the Gospel does; and in one instance 
 there is a resemblance traceable in the third Epistle which 
 is not found elsewhere, namely, in the use of the word 
 ixxXTisla, which occurs three times there but not at all in 
 the Gospel. Taking, then, these three Epistles as generic- 
 ally related, there is a link here connecting them with the 
 Apocalypse which contains letters to the seven churches. 
 The word finds no place in the Gospel or the first two 
 Epistles because the writer had no occasion for it, but it 
 was a word he might have used, alien as it seems to be 
 from his ordinary line of thought, and thus in the third 
 Epistle we find him using it ; which, whether it be his or 
 not, belongs, at any rate, to the same class of writings. 
 Again, in the first three chapters of the Apocalypse we 
 find this word occurring frequently, but never afterwards 
 till xxii. 16. This is a trifling indication of the way in 
 which the Epistles of St. John hold a mid position between 
 the fourth Gospel and the Eevelation. 
 
 The similarities between the Apocalypse and the Gospel, 
 so far as they exist, are those of (1.) thought, (2.) manner, or 
 (3.) expression. It is similarities of thought and teaching 
 that are chiefly dwelt upon in the Lectures, and these are of 
 course the most important. They wUl, moreover, not fail 
 to occur to every reader who is careful to observe them. 
 Among these similarities- of thought we may perhaps men- 
 tion an evident familiarity with and frequent reference to the 
 Old Testament, and more particularly to the books of Moses. 
 The opening of the Gospel irresistibly reminds one of the 
 
App] the y ohannine Writings 353 
 
 opening of the Pentatench. " In the beginning . . . God 
 said, Let there be light : and there was light." " The same 
 was in the beginning with God ... in him was life and 
 the life was the light of men." " The Law was given by 
 Moses." " Art thou that prophet ? " " Hereafter ye shall 
 see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and 
 descending on the Son of man," — ^being the only allusion 
 in Scripture to the dream of Jacob. " As Moses lifted up 
 the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man 
 be lifted up." " Near to the parcel of ground that Jacob 
 gave to his son Joseph." "Had ye believed Moses ye 
 would have believed me, for he wrote of me." " Our 
 fathers did eat manna in the desert." " Moses therefore 
 gave unto you circumcision, not because it is of Moses, but 
 of the fathers." " "We be Abraham's seed, and were never 
 in bondage to any man ; " the reference possibly being to 
 Lev. XXV. 42, " They are my servants, which I brought 
 forth out of the land of Egypt ; they shall not be sold as 
 bondmen." " Before Abraham was I am," &c. 
 
 Now let us turn to the Eevelation. " To him that over- 
 cometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the 
 midst of the paradise of God," cf. xxii. 2. "Thou hast 
 there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught 
 Bake, to cast a stumbling-block before the children of 
 Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit 
 fornication." "There was a rainbow round about the 
 throne,"— the only allusion to the rainbow in the Old 
 Testament is Gen. ix. and Ezek. i. 28. " Thou hast created 
 aU things, and for thy pleasure they are- and were created." 
 " Behold the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Boot of David, 
 ' hath prevailed to open the book." The enumeration of the 
 tribes in chap. vii. The allusion to "the great rive^ 
 Euphrates," ix. 14; Gen. xv. 18. "And the great dragon 
 was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, 
 
354 Features Common to [App 
 
 wMch deceiveth the whole world/' Gen. iii. 13. "And 
 they sing the song of Moses the servant of God." " And 
 fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured 
 them," &c. &c. 
 
 The phrase " till I come/' St. John xxi. 22, 23, finds its 
 parallel in Eev. ii. 5, 25 ; iii. 11 ; xxii. 7,' 20. 
 
 The mention of individual love in the Eevelation is 
 remarkable when that book is regarded as the work of the 
 disciple whom Jesus loved. See i. 3, " Unto him that loved 
 us," &c. ii. 4, " I have somewhat against thee, because 
 thou hast left thy first love." iii. 9, " I wiU make them. . . . 
 to know that I have loved thee." 19, "As many as I love 
 I rebuke and chasten." " The heloved city," xx. 9. Cf. also 
 3 John 9. " Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre-emin- 
 ence," (o fi'KotrgoiTilm) and Eev. xxii. 15. "Whatsoever 
 loveth and maketh a lie " (« ipiKuv x«l mui 4'sCSos). 
 
 It is needless to draw attention to the special prominence 
 of love in the Epistles of St. John. 
 
 In St. John's Gospel our Lord's discourses frequently 
 begin, as every one knows, with the double Amen, a feature 
 which they lack in the synoptical Gospels. "What shall 
 we say, then, with reference to this matter to the name 
 which is given to Jesus, only in the Apocalypse, of " The 
 Faithful "Witness ? " i. 5. " These things saith the Amen, 
 the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation 
 of God " (Cf St. John i. 1) iii. 14 ; " and he that sat upon 
 him was called Faithful and True," xix. 11. Cf. also 
 " these sayings are faithful and true," xxi. 6 ; xxii. 6 ; and 
 1 John i. 9. " If we confess our sins he is faithful and 
 just to forgive us our sins." 
 
 Cf. also the frequent use of Amen in the Apocalypse, 
 e.g., i 6, 7, 18 ; v. 14; vii. 12 ; xxii. 20. 
 
 Cf. also Eev. xvii. 14, "They that are with him are 
 
App] the y ohannine Writings 355 
 
 called, and chosen, and faithful," with St. John xv. 16, 
 " Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," &c. 
 
 Another point of thought common both to the Gospel 
 and the Apocalypse is the recognition of the sovereignty 
 of the wiU of God as the ultimate cause of all things, and 
 standard of action, e.g., " My meat is to do the wiU of God, 
 and to finish his work," iv. 34. " I seek not mine own 
 win, but the will of the Father which hath sent me," v. 30. 
 " All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ... for 
 I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but 
 the will of him that sent me. And this is the Father's 
 will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given 
 me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again aS 
 the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me. 
 That every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, 
 may have everlasting life," vi. 37-40. " Ko man can come 
 to me except the Father which hath sent me draw him," 
 vi. 44. " N"o man can come unto me except it were given 
 unto him of my Father," vi. 65. " If any man wiU do his 
 will, he shall know of the doctrine," vii. 17. " The Father 
 hath not left me alone, for I do always those things that 
 please him," viii. 29. " Neither hath this man sinned, nor 
 his parents, but that the works of God should be made 
 manifest in him," ix. .3. " If any man be a worshipper of 
 God, and doeth his will, him he heareth," ix. 31. ''I know 
 that his commandment is life everlasting," xii. 50. " As 
 thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should 
 give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him," xvii. 2. 
 f Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it 
 were given thee from above," Jtix. 11. " If I will that he 
 tarry till I come, what is that to thee V xxi. 22, &c. 
 
 Now, let us compare the teaching of the Eevelation. 
 " Thou art worthy, Lord, to receive glory, and honour, 
 
35^ Features Common to [-^^^ 
 
 and power, for thou hast created all things, and fc/r thy 
 pleasure they are and were created," iv. 11. "The king- 
 doms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, 
 and of his Christ, and he shall- reign for ever and ever," 
 xi. 15. "We give thee thanks, Lord God Almighty, 
 which art and wast, and art to come, because thou hast 
 taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned," &c., 
 xi 17. "Now is come salvation and strength, and the 
 kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ," xii. 10. 
 " And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great 
 things and blasphemies, and power was given unto him 
 . . . And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against 
 God, to blaspheme his name . . . and it was given unto 
 him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them, 
 and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, 
 and nations," xiii. 5-7. " Here is the patience of the 
 saints : here are they that keep the commandments of 
 God and the faith of Jesus," xiv. 12. "Great and mar- 
 vellous are thy works. Lord God Almighty ; just and true 
 are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear 
 thee, Lord, and glorify thy name ? for thou only art holy : 
 for all nations shall come and worship before thee," xv. 3, 
 4 (Cf , " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.") 
 " Thou art righteous, Lord, which art, and wast, and 
 shalt be, because thou hast judged thus," xvi. 5. " Even 
 so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous art thy judg- 
 ments," xvii. 17. " God hath put in their hearts to fulfil 
 his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the 
 beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled," xvii. 17; 
 " Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the 
 Lord onr God : for true and righteous are his judgments," 
 &c., xix. 1, 2, &c. Here is acknowledgment of, and 
 acquiescence in, the sovereign will of God. 
 
 Belief in the I AM, the Eternal One, of St. John, viii. 58, 
 
App] theyohannine Writings 357 
 
 pervades the Eevelation, e,.g., " Grace be unto you and peace, 
 from him which is, and which was, and which is to come," so 
 V. 8, iv. 8, xi. 17, together with the continual ascription of the 
 names to God of "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the 
 end, the first and the last," i. 8, 11, xxi. 6, xxii. 13 ; of the 
 phrase, " which Kveth for ever and ever," iv. 9, 10 ; v. 14 ; 
 X. 6 ; XV. 7 ; cf. v. 13 ; vii. 12 ; xi. 15 ; and of the words 
 to Jesus, " I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I 
 am alive for ever more," i. 18, ii. 8. There is no book in 
 Scripture in which the eternity of God is more dwelt upon 
 than in the Eevelation, but the eternity of the "Word is 
 also the distinctive doctrine of the fourth Gospel. 
 
 Futurity is spoken of as " a little while " in the Gospel, 
 xvi. 16, 17, 18, 19. Cf Eev. vi. 11, "And it was said 
 unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season," 
 &c., and the oft repeated statement, " Behold, I come 
 quickly." 
 
 A remarkable phrase is used in Eev. vii. 14, xugli eb olbag, 
 which reminds one of the words of Peter to Jesus, xxi. 15, 
 16, 17, tending, on our supposition, to show the integrity 
 of that chapter. There is also a similarity of thought in 
 the ascription of the word reTsXegrai to Jesus, which is 
 peculiar to St. John xix. 30, and the proclamation " out 
 of the temple of heaven from the throne, saying. It is done, 
 yeyon," xvi. 17, and again, xxi. 6. 
 
 The very striking expression in St. John i. 14, "The 
 Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, kxTivueiii," finds 
 a parallel no less striking in Eev. xxi. 3, " Behold the 
 tabernacle, ^ e^riv^, of God is with men, and he wiU dwell 
 with them, gxtiviien" (Of. vii. 15). This is more than simi- 
 larity of expression, it is similarity of thought ; and not 
 only similarity of thought, but identity of expression. 
 
 The Judaic prejudices of the Apocalypse are spoken of 
 and contrasted with the Catholic breadth of the fourth 
 
358 Features Common to [App 
 
 Gospel. Now, can any terms be more hateful than those 
 which, in the Eevelation, xi. 8, are, as it would seem, ap- 
 plied to Jerusalem, " the great city which spiritually is 
 called Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was cruci- 
 fied." 'This is surely anti- Judaic; it savours of that deep 
 animosity against the writer's nation which is said to 
 characterise the fourth Gospel. On the other hand, the 
 prominence given to the Scriptures, and ' the prevalent 
 Messianic features which abound in the Gospel, plainly 
 mark the Jiodaic character of that author's mind. 
 
 The mention of thirsting, applied spiritually in the 
 Eevelation, e.g., xxi. 6, xxii. 17, corresponds exactly with 
 the language of the Gospel ih iv. 14, vi. 35, vii 37 ; and, 
 with the exception of " hungering and thirsting after righte- 
 ousness," St. Matt. v. 6, which, however, differs materially, 
 there is no corresponding usage in the New Testament. 
 
 Analogous to this is the mention of "living water," 
 Eev. vii. 17, xxi. 6, xxii. 1, 17, and St. John, iv. 10, 11, 14, 
 (ter), vii. 38, hut nowhere else in the New Testament. 
 
 It is characteristic of the Johanniue writings, for the 
 writer to allude to the act of writing in his own case; 
 e.g., " Many other signs truly did Jesus . . . which are 
 not written in the book, but these are written" &c., xx. 
 30,31. "This is the disciple which testifieth of these 
 things, and wrote these things. . . . And there are also 
 many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they 
 should be written, every one, I suppose that even the 
 world itself couM not contain the books that should be 
 written" xxi. 24, 25. " These things writei we unto you 
 that your joy may be full," 1 John i.. 4. «My little chil- 
 dren, these things write I unto you that ye sin not," 1 John 
 ii. 1. Cf. ii. 7, 8, 13 (ter), 14 (bis), 21, 26, v. 13. So also, 
 in the second Epistle, 5, " Not as though I wrote a new 
 commandment unto thee," 12 ; " having many things to 
 
App] the yohannine Writings 359 
 
 writt unto you ;" and in the third, 9, " I wrote, unto the 
 Church J " 13, " I had many things to write, but I will not 
 with ink and pen w^%te unto thee." Let us now turn to 
 the Apocalypse, i. 3, "Blessed is he that readeth and 
 they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those 
 things which are written therein;" 11, " "What thou seest, 
 write in a book;" 19, " Write the things which thou hast 
 seen." Cf. ii. 1, 8, 12, 17, 18 ; iii. 1, 7, 14 ; x. 4, (bis) ; xiv. 
 13 ; xix. 9 ; xxi. 5 ; xxii 18, 19. 
 
 It cannot be denied that these features are remarkable, 
 characterising as they do all the three classes of Johannine 
 writings ; more especially when St. Luke i. 1, is the only 
 instance of the same thing in the synoptical Gospels, and 
 it is not found in the Acts, only twice in the Eomans, xv. 
 15, xvi 22, and comparatively seldom in the Pauline and 
 other Epistles, where, however, it would naturally occur. 
 When, therefore, it is found in this way in two distinct 
 books not epistolary, its occurrence can only be regarded 
 as worthy of remark, if not peculiar. 
 
 These are aU additional similarities of thought over and 
 above those which have been noticed in the Lectures. 
 They show the same habit of mind and mode of thought, 
 and so far are especially valuable as evidence of possible 
 identity of authorship ia two works otherwise confessedly 
 very different. 
 
 2. We may now pass on to mention certain instances of 
 similarity in manner between the fourth Gospel and the 
 Apocalypse. Many critics regard the latter verses in St. 
 John iii., after v. 30, not as the words of the last speaker, 
 the Baptist, but as those of the Evangelist himself. Ifow, 
 whether they are right or wrong, the very fact of the opi- 
 nion being held, is sufficient to show that the Evangelist 
 himself has left the point open to question. But precisely 
 
366 Features Common to [App 
 
 the same thing is discernible in the last chapter of the Ee- 
 velation, where it is absolutely impossible to determine at 
 ■what place the words of the angel at v. 9 end, and those of 
 the Lord at v. 12 begin. In fact, there is a great deal of 
 confusion and uncertainty about the speakers in the whole 
 of that last chapter. There are three distinct speakers, 
 St. John, the Angel, and Jesus, but it is a matter of the 
 very greatest perplexity to decide where the words of each 
 several speaker begin and end. This abrupt transition, 
 then, from the writer's own words to those of others, is 
 another indication of the same manner that we have 
 noticed in the fourth Gospel. The same abrupt transition, 
 though there it is more definitely marked and less am- 
 biguous, is equally discernible in the first chapter of the 
 Eevelation, in xiv. 9-13, and in other parts of the same 
 book But we notice precisely the same thing in the nar- 
 rative of the sixth chapter of the Gospel, 24-59 ; for the 
 question put to our Lord, v. 25, could hardly have been 
 put to Him " in the synagogue as he taught in Caper- 
 naum," V. 59, but where the point of transition is we 
 cannot teU. C£ also i. 23, viii. 30-37, &c. 
 
 As another instance of similarity of manner, may be 
 mentioned the minute particularity of description which 
 characterises both the Gospel and the Apocalypse. This 
 has before been noticed in the Gospel, [Kote A, p. 292] ; 
 and in the Eevelation we have the numbering of the re- 
 deemed of Israel, ch. vii. ; the numbering of the army of 
 horsemen, ix. 16 ; the space overflowed by the blood from 
 the winepress, xiv. '20 ; the dimensions of the New Jeru- 
 salem, xxi. 17, and the like. 
 
 Great simplicity and directness of narrative is another 
 obvious mark of similarity of manner in the Gospel and 
 the Eevelation. 
 
 Though the flow of the narrative is sometimes broken by 
 
App^ the y ohannine Writings 361 
 
 parentheses, — e.g., in the Gospel, i. 14 ; ii. 9 ; iv. 2, 8 ; vi. 
 10, 23 ; xi. 2, &c. Of. in the Eevelation i. 2, the doxology 
 in 5, 6, 8 ; ii. 9, 13 ; ix. 11, (Cf. St. John i. 38, 42 \ xix. 13 ; 
 XX. 16), ix, 19 ; x. 6 ; xix. 3 ; xx. 6, &c. &c. 
 
 Some of these instances are of trifling importance, but it 
 may perhaps he allowed that they do indicate a certain 
 similarity of manner in the two books ; and so far as they 
 do, tend to show that they may have proceeded from one 
 and the same mind. Cf. 1 St. John i. 2 ; iii 12. 
 
 3. We now come to similarities of expression ; and here 
 it will be convenient to avail ourselves of those which Dr. 
 Davidson (i. 328, ff.) has enumerated with a view to prove 
 the opposite conclusion, in order that the reader may draw 
 his own. 
 
 " The christology of the Apocalypse is apparently in 
 " unison with that of the gospel. As the latter describes 
 " Jesus to be the incarnate wisdom of God, the former uses 
 " language of similar import, (iii. 14, 20.) His pre-exist- 
 " ence is asserted in the gospel, as it is in Apoe. iii. 14. 
 " The appellation Word, distinctive of person, occurs only 
 " in the gospel, first epistle and Apocalypse. And as the 
 " evangelist calls the Word, God, so Jesus bears the name 
 " Jehovah in the book of Eevelation. 
 
 " Christ, or God, is often termed the true ; so in the 
 " gospel Christ is called the true light ; and God is the true 
 " God in the first epistle. 
 
 " In Apoc. ii. 17, Jesus promises believers the hidden 
 " manna ; in the Gospel, the true tread from heaven, (vi. 32.) 
 
 " Christ is often styled in our book a lamh, an epithet 
 " nowhere else applied to him except in the fourth gospel" 
 [This is perhaps hardly accurate : in 1 Pet. i. 19, we have 
 " the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish 
 and without spot ; " it must be remembered that the word 
 
362 Features Common to [App 
 
 ■anifonnly naed in tlie Revelatioa is dgv/ov, wMle that ia 
 the Gospel and in Peter is di/tvfe It is difficult to ac- 
 count for this diversity, hut at any rate the idea is the 
 same.] 
 
 " In the Apocalypse, it is said of the Jews who reject 
 " Jesus that they are not tvue, Jesms, (iiL 9) ; so in the 
 fourth gospel, ('viii. 39, 40.) 
 
 " In ii. 11 a promise is made to him that overcometh, that 
 " he shall not be hurt by the second death ; in the fourth 
 " gospel it is said of him that keeps Jesus's word, that he 
 " shall never see death (viii.. 51). 
 
 " In xiv. 15 a call is addressed to the angel to thrust in 
 " his sickle and reap, because reaping-time is come, and 
 " the harvest of the earth is ripe. So in the gospel Jesus 
 " says to his disciples, ' Look on the fields ; for they are 
 " white already to harvest,' iv. 35. 
 
 " The favourite expression to testify, and testimony {jiag- 
 " Tugeo: and /t«grug/a) of the gospel, in the sense of declara- 
 " tion respecting the Saviour, public profession and decla- 
 " ration of belief in him, is common in the Apocalypse. 
 "Compare gospel i. 7, 19; iii. 11, 32, 33; v. 31-36; 
 " viii. 13, 14; xviii 37; xxi. 24. Epistle: v.. 9, thrice, 10, 
 " 11. Eev. i. 2, 9; vi 9; xii 11, 17; xix. 10; xx. 4; 
 " xxii. 18, 20. [6 /^agrugSi' is peculiar in the New Testa- 
 ment to the Gospel and Apoc. xxii. 20.] 
 
 " The use of to conquer (vixav), in the sense of overcoming 
 " the evil, opposition, and enmity of the world, "with the 
 " implication of remaining faithful and active in the Chris- 
 " tian cause, is peculiar to John and the Apocalypse. Gos- 
 " pel xvi. 33. Epistle ii. 13, 14 ; iv. 4 ; v. 4, 5. Apoc. ii. 
 " 7, 11, 17, 26 ; iii. 5, 12, 21 ; xii. 11 ; xiii. 7 ; xxi. 7. 
 
 " Countenance (o'^ig), in the sense of human visage, is 
 " only found in gospel xi 44, and Eev. i. 16. 
 
 " To keep the word (r^iii tIv Xfyai) is frequent in John's 
 
App] the Jokannin^ Writings 363 
 
 "gospel and epistle; the same often occurs in the Apo- 
 " calypse. 
 
 " To tabernacle {MnvoZi) is used in gospel i. 14, and Apoc. 
 vii. 15 ; xii. 12 ; xiii. 6 ; xxi. 3. 
 
 " To slay (etpdrrtiii) is employed ia epistle iii. 12 twice ; 
 " also in Eev. v. 6 ; vi. 4, 9, 12 ; xiii. 3, 8 ; xviii. 24. It is 
 " found nowhere else. 
 
 " To have part (^i^iiv fiegos) is used in gospel xiiL 8 ; and 
 " Apoc. XX. 6. 
 
 " To walk with one. Gospel vi. 66 ; Apoc, iii. 4. 
 
 "Hereafter (aoragr/). Gospel i. 52; xiii. 19 ; xiv. 7; Eev. 
 " xiv. 13. Elsewhere only in Matthew. 
 
 " To labour (xomaa), in the sense of fatigue. Eev. iL 3 ; 
 " gospel iv. 6. 
 
 " To speak with one (XaXiTu furd nvof). Gospel iv. 27 ; ix. 
 " 37; xiv. 30; Eev. i. 12; iv. 1 ; x. 8; xvii. 1; xxi. 9, 15. 
 " Not elsewhere, except once in Mark vi. 50. 
 
 " Seaven (ougavos), in the gospel and epistle, has almost 
 " always the article ; less frequently elsewhere. The like 
 " remark may be made as to Christ (i X^kstos). 
 
 "Lord, thou knowest (xu|/e (to. aJSas). Gospel xxL 15-17 
 " thrice ; Eev. vii. 14. 
 
 " He answered, saying (am^glSti Xsywn). Gospel i 26 ; 
 «x. 33; Eev. vii. 13. 
 
 " The frequent use of light, to enlighten, glory, to appear 
 " ((pus, pwr/^w, So^a, (paim), and the like, in a tropical sense, 
 " in the gospel, epistle, and Apocalypse, shows a simi- 
 " larity of colouring in the style. 
 
 " The comparison of Christ with the bridegroom in 
 " gospel iii. 29, should be placed by the side of Eev. xix. 
 " 7 ; xxi. 2 ; xxii. 17, chiefly on account of the diction. 
 " So of the water of life. Eev. xxi. 6 ; xxii. 17 ; and 
 "gospel iv. 10; vii. 37. So of hungering and thirsting. 
 " Eev. vii. 16; gospel vi. 35. The image of eup for suf- 
 
3^4 P'eaiures Common to [App 
 
 " fering, trial (gospel xviiL 11), is very common in tli6 
 " Apocalypse. The image of Christ as a shepherd (gospel 
 " X. 1), is presented in Eev. vii. 17. 
 
 " AfUr these, things (fierit raura), for the most part as a 
 " mere formula of transition, is a striking feature of resem- 
 " blance between the Apocalypse and gospel, as gospel iii. 
 "22; V. 1, 14; yL 1; vii. 1 ; viii. 7; xix. 38; xxi. 1. 
 " Apoc. i. 19 ; iv. 1 ; vii. 1, 9 ; ix. 12 ; xv. 5 ; xviii. 1 ; 
 " xix. 1 ; XX. 3. Luke occasionally employs the same for- 
 " mnla, but not with the same frequency. 
 
 "The Apocalypse frequently employs Hebrew words, 
 " and then adds a Greek explanation of them, which John 
 " also does in his gospel, as Eev. iii. 14 ; ix. 11 ; xii. 9 ; 
 " XX. 2 ; xxii. 20 ; gospel i. 39, 42, 43; ix. 7; xix. 13, 17. 
 " This is occasionally, but not so frequently done else- 
 " where. 
 
 " To write, followed by the preposition to (ygdpiv followed 
 " by sis) before the noun, signifying the object on which 
 " the writing is made, is peculiar to the apocalypse and 
 " gospel. Apoc. i. 11 ; gospel vui. 6, 8. 
 
 " The doctrine of perseverance is common to both writ- 
 " ings, and is expressed in the same manner. Compare 
 " Eev. iii. 12 ; epistle ii. 19 ; gospel vi. 37. 
 
 " The use of to signify {imiiatm) deserves notice. Gospel 
 " xii. 33 ; xviii. 32 ; xxi. 19 ; Apoc. i. 1. [These three 
 passages in the Gospel are not without their bearing on 
 the integrity of the last chapter.] 
 
 " The neuter gender is used to denote rational beings, in 
 " gospel vL 37, 39 ; xvii. 2, 10. So creature, (xrig/ioi) in 
 " Eev. V. 13 ; every, (*«►) xxi. 27. 
 
 " John alone has given an account of piercing Jesus's side 
 " with a spear. To this he applies the prediction in Zech. 
 " xii. 10. Apoc. i. 7, exhibits the same version as in the 
 " gospel. And as the version is a new translation, not 
 
App] the yohannine Writings 365 
 
 " that of the seventy, the same hand appears in both 
 " passages. 
 
 " In Apoc. vii. 15, he that sits upon the throne is said to 
 " dwell among the saints ; an idea similar to that in the 
 " gospel, xiv. 23, where the Father and Son are said ta 
 " take up their abode with the believer. The same thought 
 " is in Apoc. iiL 20 ; xxi. 22 ; xxii. 5. 
 
 " The manner of writing in the Apocalypse often reminds 
 " one of that in the fourth gospel and first epistle, where 
 " the same idea is expressed, both positively and negatively; 
 " and a certain parallelism of thought and expression may 
 " be noticed."— Vol. i. p. 332. 
 
 It will be observed from these remarks that in a few 
 instances I have been anticipated in what I have already 
 said, but it matters little and could scarcely fail to be 
 so. And it must be borne in mind that this last is the 
 testimony of one who believes the Apocalypse to have been 
 written by St. John, and therefore holds that the Gospel 
 was not, because of its inherent difference. The unbiassed 
 reader may perhaps come to the conclusion that there is at 
 least room for another inference, or, at any rate, that the 
 evidence is not so overwhelming as to leave us no alterna- 
 tive choice of opinion. 
 
 The grammatical peculiarities of the Apocalypse are thus 
 summed up by Davidson, i. 339. 
 
 " With respect to cases, the unusual licence is taken of 
 " discontinuing the genitive for a nomiaative, as in iii. 12 ; 
 " xiv. 12 (rijs Kaivni 'legoveaKriii,, tj xara^afvovga, x.r.X. — rSn dsy/'wn 
 " 01 rti^ouyrss) ; or the accusative for a nominative, as in xx. 2. 
 " (rhv S^dxovra,, ocfiis aj%a76f.) In viL 9 the nominative is 
 " discontinued for the accusative, (o^^og . . . Igrurii . . . 
 " lesp^s^'KniihoDs) [In some places the readings vary.] 
 
 " Greek usage is often violated in gender and number, as 
 
366 P'eatures Common to [App 
 
 " in vi. 9, 10; ix. 13, 14. (rhe, ■i^vyki -. . . >.iyovrss — ^mriii 
 "... ^i/ovra.) Neuters plural take plural verbs, xi. 18; 
 " XV. 4. The same nouns are both masculine and feminine 
 " in iv. 3 ; X. 1 ; xiv. 19. {Xnvk, T^ig.) In xii. 5 man child 
 " (yih( agdTit for ""sj la) ig an imitation of a Hebrew phrase. 
 
 " In regard to verbs, the apocalyptist uses the future like 
 " the Hebrew imperfect, in a frequentative sense, as at iv. 
 " 9-11. The participle stands for a finite tense in i. 16; 
 " while the present passes into the future in i. 7 ; or into 
 " the past, xii. 2-4. Future and past tenses are strangely 
 " mixed in xx. 7-10. 
 
 " In the syntax of nouns the plural stands regularly for 
 " the dual, as in xii. 14. (3uo irrepyee.) 
 
 " The genitive is always put after a noun to explain it, 
 " in the manner of an adjective ; and a number of adjec- 
 " lives are linked together, as at xvi. 19. {rh vnr^pm roD 
 " O0OU roD hfiou T-^5 i^yrjs "15 ©sou.) 
 
 "Two nouns coupled by a conjunction have each its 
 " own sufSx, as in vL 11 (0/ eut&ouKoi auruv xal 01 adi'K^ol 
 " airwv.) ; ix. 21. 
 
 " The repetition of a preposition with each connected geni- 
 " tive often occurs, xvi. 13. (ex rou ffrSfiarog rou SgaMvroe xal Ix. 
 " roD (iToiMaTOi rou tfjjg/ou xal ix roD ard/ians tou •v|x6uSorjop^rou.) 
 
 " The genitive absolute seems wanting, unless there be 
 " an example in ix. 9, which is doubtful. 
 
 " The preposition in (It.) is almost al^rays prefixed to the 
 " dative of the instrument, as in vi. 8. 
 
 " The usage of the writer in prepositions and conjunc- 
 " tions is altogether Hebraised. Thus we have the nom- 
 " inative after as (ws) where another case, should have' 
 " stood, iv. 7. Qx"^ vgienKtov &s Sivlguirte.) This ia from a 
 " Hebrew prefix, (f). 
 
 " The verb to teach (StSAgxtiv) is followed by a dative case; 
 
App] the yohannine Writings 367 
 
 " ii. 14, like the Hebrew (^ "«?>), to mange vi. 10, {iY.li%ih ex) 
 " has a preposition with the genitive equivalent to Hebrew 
 " usage 0? B)??) ; and to follow with (vi. 8 axoXouhn ^trd, like 
 « ^hs T^'pn) ig also Hebraic. Greek and Hebrew construc- 
 " tions are strangely intermingled in xvii. 4. (/e/aoh 
 " ^ds\uyu,dTi»v xa) t& aKdiagra,')." 
 
 Whatever may be the explanation of these phenomena 
 we can hardly suppose them to have been the result of 
 grammatical ignorance. They show, perhaps, that the 
 author was thinking in Hebrew while he wrote in Greek. 
 But surely a man knowing enough Greek to write the 
 Apocalypse could not from mere inadvertence or by mis- 
 take have written thus. He must have preferred, for his 
 own reasons, to retain his native idiom. What these 
 reasons may have been we cannot conceive. The fact is a 
 very curious one, but we can hardly suppose that he wrote 
 thus simply because he did not know better how to write. 
 And if so, the existence of this work with these phenomena 
 is quite consistent with the existence of other works by 
 the same author in which such phenomena may be 
 wanting. 
 
 The question really is. How far does the existence of 
 these phenomena in the Eevelation, which are not found 
 in the Gospel, and are difficult under any supposition to 
 account for, tend to outweigh the no less certain fact of 
 the existence of many remarkable similarities in thought, 
 manner, and expression, when the one is balanced against 
 the other as evidence of an identity of authorship in the 
 two books. The verdict of sober criticism will surely be 
 that this is a matter upon which it is in the highest degree 
 rash to pronounce dogmatically on either side, and that, 
 after aU, the common and traditional belief may not im- 
 
368 Features Common to [App 
 
 probably and still less impossibly be tbe true one. At any 
 rate, it is certain that if we allow the Apocalypse to be the 
 work of the younger son of Zebedee, the argument which 
 would infer therefrom that the fourth Gospel is not by 
 him is in the highest degree unsatisfactory and incon- 
 clusive. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 SANSON AND CO., PBINXEKS, EDINBUKeH.