lililiii'/: '.'-.^ .(' i.''Vv ; I' ll;•■^L'■.■ m";' ,>.' •, •■ .' ' • ■ . ' - .'ti'-j't ,;'ii:;!!;;;,'' :*;!;!;!■ ':;;;;;;; .; 'i,y' 11;'. ''■;•' mimmm >ii ' IIS! •i')"'''!;' ' 1 •K ■•i:m: r i;;i:'Kp{?:!t; j •■'.■;;; 'l:::?*:iilB"'>:l:':|Kl';i'^l:': ^*-is!i/..:i 'C'?|.|i;''':;*:|S'i;!|:,ife::;;"i* *.;:!:;. Si, .S:Tb; iiiil'^iii'iliSi^^ ^M OF PR!NCf7S:js V <5^fO/.CGICAL St>*':J^ C>v THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF ST. JOM. THE DOCTEINAL SYSTEM OP ST. JOHN, CONSIDERED AS EVIDENCE FOR THE DATE OF HIS GOSPEL. BY THE KEY. J. J. LIAS, M.A., PR0FES30E OF MODERN LITERATURE AND LECTURER IN HEBREW AT ST. DAVIo'i COLLEGE, LAMPETER; AND SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF EMMANUKL COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. " For all the doctrinal matter characteristic of St. John (and on this argument the greatest stress should be laid) some parallels at least can be found in the Synoptical Gospels and Epistles." — Tholdck, Commentary on St. John, Introduction. LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 1875. LONDON . PRINTED BY WILIJAM CLOWES AND SONS BTAMFOBD STREET ANC CHARING CROSS. PREFACE. The inquiry contained in the following pages has been carried on slowly and with difficulty in the intervals of leisure afforded by a life devoted to other studies. It originated in a remark made some years ago to a friend whose reputation stands high as a scholar and as a preacher, that St. John's Gospel was the necessary bridge over the chasm which separates the theology of the Synoptic Gospels from that of the Epistles, and that if its genuineness be denied, it becomes impossible to account for the origin of the doctrines taught by St. Peter and St. Paul, and received by the universal Church. The encouragement I received from my friend induced me to examine the subject more in detail, and the result is now before the public. When I had advanced some way in the investigation I had proposed myself, Mr. Sanday's book appeared ; when it was almost concluded, and when little remained to be done but to put its results into shape, the Boyle Lectures of Mr. Stanley Leathes were given to the vi Preface. world. As the subject of the former book appeared to be the same as my own, I took it up with some fear that my labour might have been in vain, and my con- clusions anticipated by another. I was relieved to find that, notwithstanding the similarity of subject, the treatment was so different that Mr. Sanday's able Essay had only one or two points of contact with my own. It is, however, some time since I saw his Essay, and I may possibly have touched a little more on common ground when I came to say a few words on the Jewish element in St. John's Gospel. I have judged it best to avoid reading the treatise of Mr. Leathes, feeling that, as I had gone so far, I might as well publish what I had written, since if I did not happen to go over the same ground as Mr. Leathes, this essay would not be superfluous, while if I did, I should only be confirming his arguments by an independent testimony. In the endeavour to make what I have written useful to intelligent readers who are not well acquainted with foreign languages, I have translated most of the pas- sages from the Fathers ; while in German I have availed myself of the excellent translations published by Messrs. Clark and Co., the more readily, in that I did not happen to have ready access to the originals. I should also add that I have frequently adopted a literal ren- derino- of the Greek Testament, when it seemed to Preface, vii make clearer the beariog of the passage cited in my argument. I ought to add that the method I have here adopted was first suggested to me by Dr. Liddon's Bampton Lectures. He applies to the one particular doctrine of the Divinity of Christ the comparative mode of treat- ment, which I have extended to all the leading doctrines of Christianity. As I read those Lectures, it appeared to me that their method was capable of such extension, though I should most probably never have attempted it myself, but for the encouragement to which I have alluded. I have judged it best to assume the genuineness of St. Paul's Epistles. To have entered into a discussion of the theories of the Tiibingen school on this subject would have been beside my point, and would have added much to the bulk and little to the interest of this essay. But I cannot place much reliance on criticism whose results change day by day like the images in a kaleidoscope, and whose only claim to at- tention is that its last phase is confidently presented to the public by the periodical press of the hour as " the conclusions at which modern criticism has arrived." I fear that in a work written at such uncertain inter- vals of time, and corrected in ill-health and under much stress of other work, many repetitions will be viii Preface, found. I can but ask the indulgent reader to excuse them. It only r:^mains to express a hope that what I have written may not, like many crude though well-intended efforts, serve to injure the cause it was meant to ad- vance, but, on the contrary, may help to remove the doubts which have been so widely disseminated, and sometimes so keenly felt, concerning the authenticity of the most important book, as I venture to think, in the Sacred Canon. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PAGE Ancient and modern ideas concerning the origin of St. John's Gospel — Its purpose as stated by the author — Reasons for doubting its authenticity— -Difference between the Synop- tists and St. John in their mode of presenting Christ to their readers — Epistle-writers, with the exception of St. James, identical with St. John in their conceptions — Sy- noptists, with one exception, the companions and pupils of St. Peter and St. Paul — No evidence in ecclesiastical history of any disagreement among the original teachers of Christianity in their doctrine concerning Christ — The only countenance to such an opinion to be found in criti- cism— Object of the present treatise to ascertain whether criticism lends any real countenance to it 1-15 PART I. THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF ST. JOHN COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE OTHER WRITERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. CHAPTER I. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. Speedy declension from the Apostolic model, whether shared by the author of the fourth Gospel or not. — His doctrine of God — Fundamental principle, Qod is Spirit — Truth — Life — Light — Love — Beyond the reach of our intellects — The Author of all Being — Significant absence of any philosophy of the Infinite — Personality of God — Plurality X Contents, PAGE of Persons — Ultimate union of humanity with God ex- duding pantheistic conceptions — Doctrine of the Synop- tists — Absence of some of these fundamental conceptions supplied in Acts — St. Stephen's doctrine of the nature of God identical with that of St. John — Coincidence of phra- seology between St. John and the two remarkable pas- sages St. Matt. xi. 27 and St. Luke x. 22 — General agreement between the Evangelists in their teaching con- cerning God — Doctrine of the Epistles — God is Spirit — Above the reach of human language — Truth — Light — Life — Love — His Unity — Plurality of Persons — Avoid pantheism — Combine simplicity with mysterious depth in precisely the same manner as St. John — Complete har- mony between all the New Testament writers on this head 16-32 CHAPTER IL DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS AND THE PERSON OF CHRIST. Origin of St. John's doctrine of the Logos — Opinions of Tholuck — Neander — Dorner — St. Paul not less guilty than St. John of appropriating " Philonian " expressions — These " Philonian " expressions older than Philo — Peculiar suitability of the word Logos to express the Christian doctrine of the Person of Christ — Correspondence of Old Testament expressions with those of St. John regarding the Logos — Foreshado wings in the writings of the other Apostles of St. John's supposed peculiar use of the word Logos — St. John's doctrine of the Person of Christ — His Divinity — Derived from that of the Father — Yet equal with Him, and possessing a distinct personality — And perfect man — Doctrine of St. John's Epistle — Of the Apocalypse — Identical with that of the fourth Gospel — Synoptic Gospels — Their humanitarianism less emphatic than that of St. John — Tacit assumption of Divine au- thority by Jesus Christ — Supernatural power residing in Him — Portents attending His birth — Application of Old Testament passages to Him in which the Incommunicable Name is found — If not a formal, yet a virtual assertion of His Godhead — Doctrine of the Acts — Disputed passage in Acts XX. 28 — Other passages — Doctrine of St. Peter Contents, xi PAGB and Stii'James — Absence of any attempt of the latter to combat St. Paul, after whom he wrote — Identity of the conceptions of the former with those of St. John — Doc- trine of St. Paul — Assertion of the same paradox — The highest attributes of Divinity combined with those of humanity — Singular agreement on a question of much complexity 33-64 CHAPTEK III. DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION. Feeble hold of modern theology on the Incarnation — An- thropology of St. John — ddp^ and nvevixa — Salvation of o-dp^ through nvevfia, effected by Jesus Christ — Similar doctrine of the Epistle — Agency of the Spirit — Laws of the higher life — Birth — Nourishment — The Sacraments — Con- dition on man's part, faith — Supposed tendency of St. Paul to base his system on faith, St. John on love — God's and man's part in the work of salvation — Faith — Love — The Church, the company of believers — Summary of St. John's doctrine — The Synoptists — Their Anthropology — St. John's doctrine of the life from above implied — Faith — The Sacraments — The Church — The Acts — Gospel the revelation of Life — OiBce of the Spirit — The Sacraments — Faith — St. John's theory of the Church exemplified in the Acts — St. Paul — From whom did he derive his system? — Nature of the system — Communication of life and Hght to lost humanity — Justification by imparted as well as imputed righteousness — Regeneration — Agency of the Spirit — The Sacraments — Faith — Love — The Church — Summary of his teaching — St. James, St. Peter, and St. Jude — St. James's doctrine of Regeneration, the engrafted "Word, of the possibility of working righteousness — His Epistle either identical with the other New Testa- ment writings, or opposed to Christianity altogether — St. Peter: his Anthropology — Christ our Life — The Sacra- ments — Faith — Love — The Church — Singular reference by him to St. John xxi. — Remarkable agreement of the doctrine of the fourth Gospel with the rest of the New Testament 65-134 xii Contents. CHAPTER IV. THE DOCTRINE OF PROPITIATION. PAGE Teaching of the fourth Grospel concerning sin — Propitiation — Use of the word tXao-yxos- in the Epistle — The Synoptists — St. Paul — Epistle to the Hebrews, the formal treatise on Sacrificial Atonement — Significance of the silence of St. James on the doctrine of Propitiation 135-142 CHAPTER V. THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. Personality of the Holy Ghost — His threefold office, expressed by the term Paraclete — St. John's teaching the germ of all we find elsewhere — Agreement of St. John's Epistle and the Apocalypse — Meaning of the " seven spirits " in the latter — Synoptic doctrine — St. Paul's an expansion of the teaching of the four Gospels — St. Peter and St. Jude — — Epistle to the Hebrews explains why Christ must de- part before the Comforter could be sent — Promise of the Holy Ghost, referred to in the Acts and elsewhere, only recorded by St. John — Holy Ghost in the after-history of the Church " convinces men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment" 143-158 CHAPTER VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION AND THE FINAL JUDGMENT. St. John's doctrine of the Resurrection and of future retribu- tion— Its point of view different from that of the Apoca- lypse— The Acts confirm the hypothesis that the teaching of St. John's Gospel is the doctrine preached by Christ — St. Paul's agreement yet more thorough — St. James — St. Peter— Conclusion 159-170 Contents, xiii PAET II. THE PRIORITY OF THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. CHAPTEK I. ST. JOHN AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE SECOND CENTURY. PAGE St. John, if writing in the second century, must display acquaintance with its literature, and especially with the writings of St. Paul — Whether his Gospel contains traces of acquaintance with Valentinus or Basilides — The Pro- logue contradicts the leading Gnostic doctrines — St. John's doctrine of the Being of God at variance with Gnostic con- ceptions— The same the case with his view of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Eesurrection — St. John's conceptions concerning the world, the devil, angels, &c., irreconcilable with the Gnostic systems- Grounds on which the allegations have been made — St. John's supposed use of Gnostic terms — The terms not Gnostic, but Jewish — The fourth Gospel and Montanism — Montanism not a perversion of St. John's Gospel, but of other Scriptures — The term Paraclete a proof of the priority of the fourth Gospel — If the fourth Gospel be a second- century forgery, who forged it ? 171-201 CHAPTEE II. ST. JOHN AND THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS AND ACTS. The Apocryphal Gospels avoid doctrine — Simply history blended with legend — Gospels of the Infancy — Gospels of the Passion — Apocryphal Acts 202-207 xiv Contents. CHAPTER III. THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THE EPISTLES. PAGE Prologue of St. John bears evidence of a later date — The contrary the case with the discourses — Absence of theo- logical terms in them — Such terms of constant occurrence in the Epistles — Nothing in St. John's discourses which could have been spoken save in the infancy of Christianity — The doctrinal matter of St. John always more elementary in form than in the Epistles — Examples — Doctrine of the being of God — Incarnation — Propitiation — OflSce of the Spirit — Antagonism between the Spirit and the Flesh — Lesser doctrines of the Gospel — Slavery and Freedom — Sanctification — Election — Grace — Peace — Truth — Two- fold conception of the Koa-fios — Jewish tendencies of the fourth Gospel — Spiritualizing interpretation of the Old Testament — Conversion of the Gentiles — Undesigned co- incidence— Theory of Christian worship 208-248 CONCLUSION. Result of the inquiry — Discordance between the Gospels much exaggerated — Close connection between their writers and those of the Epistles — Originality of thought and ex- pression in St. John's Gospel — Absence of Gnostic ideas — Of Pauline or Fetrine ideas or expressions — Pauline and Petrine language unauthorized by Christ if the fourth Gospel be spurious — Language of discourses in St. John's Gospel the original language of the Founder of a religion, not the later inventions of a disciple — Bridges over the chasm otherwise existing between the Christ of history and the Christ of theology — The development theory of Christ's Divinity, acknowledged to have no historical, shown to have also no critical basis — St. John's Gospel the necessary link between the Scriptures, the absence of which reduces the history of Christianity to chaos 249-256 Contents, xv APPENDIX. PAGE I. On Grace 257-260 11. On Justification 261-263 III. On the traces of Johannean Theology in THE Second Century 264-271 IV. On THE CONNECTION BETWEEN St. JoHN's GoSPEL AND THE Old Testament 272-284 V. On the Last Supper 285, 286 VI. Supplementary Observations 287, 288 THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF ST. JOHN memDers oi me iiieAaiiuLitm sunuui ui tucuiui^j, a, uucm of extensive learning and high intellectual gifts, and a critic of no mean capacity. He flourished Gcarcely a century after the Apostolic ei-a, and he had access to many sources of information which have since been lost. For nearly eighteen hundred years this account of the origin of the fourth Gospel has been believed, xln hypo- thesis, however, has lately been put forth, with great con- fidence and much plausibility, that Clement was mis- taken ; that he had been imposed upon by a forgery not fifty years old at the date at which he wrote, and that, ERRATA. Page 11, last line (note), for " their," read " his." 12, first line (note), for " he," read " Marcion." 81, line 15, for " his," read " St. John's." 138, „ 2, for " by effusion," read " by the effusion." 142, „ 18, for "in the Gospels," read "in the first three Gospels „ 19, for " Epistles," read " fourth." 169, „ 7, omit " than." „ „ 8, o»i?^ "that." 2.55, dele note. THE DOCTRINAL SYSTEM OF ST. JOHN INTRODUCTION. A WRITER at the beginning of the third century gives the following account of the origin of the Gospel which goes by the name of St. John. The Apostle, he tells us, perceiving that the three Gospels previously pub- lished confined themselves chiefly to the deeds done in the Body by the Lord Jesus Christ, and urged by his friends to place on record the higher spiritual teaching of his Master, composed the Gospel which is now attributed to him. This statement is made by Clement of Alexandria, one of the most distinguished members of the Alexandrian school of theology, a man of extensive learnins^ and hi ah intellectual a'ifts, and a critic of no mean capacity. He flourished Gcarcely a century after the Apostolic ei-a, and he had access to many sources of information which have since been lost. For nearly eighteen hundred years this account of the origin of the fourth Gospel has been believed. An hypo- thesis, however, has lately been put forth, with great con- fidence and much plausibility, that Clement was mis- taken ; that he had been imposed upon by a forgery not fifty years old at the date at which he wrote, and that, 2 The Doctrinal System of St. John. ■ whatever be the literary value of the Gospel which goes by the name of St. John, and whatever its use as bearing witness to the prevalent tone of theological feeling in the middle of the second century, it is absolutely worthless as an authentic tradition of the sayings and doings of Jesus Christ. The object of these pages is to examine this alleged forgery, to compare its theological system with that of other writings of more generally acknowledged authority,^ and to inquire whether there is any proof from this point of view of the later origin for which many in our own day so strenuously contend. We are not left to guess the purpose for which the Gospel in question was written. It is stated in express language by the author : " These things have been written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life through His name."^ Let us assume for a moment that the ordinary belief about its origin is the true one. Under what circumstances then was the Gospel composed ? It is admitted on all hands that, if written by St. John, it ^ The genuineness of several of St. Paul's Epistles is also vehemently impugned by some critics. In these pages we have assumed the genuineness of them all. But inasmuch as the most important of St. Paul's Epistles are not contested, and as the great bulk of our citations will be made fiom them, our argument will be little affected by the fact that the canonicily, e.g., of the Pastoral Epistles is disputed by some. - St. John XX. 31. The writer rejects all which does not advance this object. He relates (1) such matter as will manifest the Divine power and authority of (!)hrist and thus lead to the conviction that He is the Son of God, and (2) such as may bear on the communication of a supernatural vitality from Christ to His disciples, and thus might enable them to " have life through His name." — See Hug, ' Eiu- leitung,' sec. 48. Introduction, 3 was written at the close of his life. The Apostles were all dead but himself. They had left Epistles behind them, professing to be based on the teaching of Christ, but there was a marked difference between the theo- logical principles enunciated in the Epistles, and those contained in the memoirs of Christ which had as yet appeared. These were simple biographies of His human life, with some of His more striking parables and moral exhortations subjoined. But for some reason or other, they said little or nothing of those deeper truths which formed the main feature in the epistolary literature of the Apostolic Church. Much was said of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ while on earth, but only the vaguest hints were preserved (as in Matt, xxviii., and Mark xvi., if the latter be genuine) of the nature of the relations which were to subsist between the Saviour and His disciples after His Ascension. At the same time, error was very prevalent. " Philosophy, falsely so called," was entrapping the votaries of the Cross. As years rolled on the writings of the Apostles assumed a more sombre colouring. St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude vie with one another in the sternness with which they denounce the heresies which threaten the peace of the infant Church.^ But as yet there was no record ' The Epistles of St. Paul's imprisonment are obviously inspired by a feeling of dangers more pressing than any which were apprehended in the earlier years of his ministry. So St. Peter's Second Epistle is far severer in its language than the first. Hug remarks how St. John's Epistle bears witness to the denial of Jesus as the Son of God. — ' Einleitung,' part ii. sec. 49. " That the Gospel of St. John did not owe its origin to any mere impulse to write on the part of the author, but to an historical, practical necessity for its existence in the Church, I think I have shown in opposition to my friend Luthardt." — Ebrard, 'Introduction to St. John's Gospel.' 4 TJie Doctrinal System of St. John. of the deeper spiritual utterances of Christ, which had formed the basis of Apostolic preaching and teaching. Hitherto they had subsisted in oral tradition only ; handed on from one to another as the most sacred dieposit of the faith, too sacred to be profaned by common eyes and ears. But now the disciples of St. John appealed to him. Was it well, they said, to leave the Church without a record of that oral teaching which had permeated the Church so widely and borne such admirable fruit. Since error was so dangerous and seductive, might not those profound and touching words of Christ which had sunk so deeply into the Apostle's heart,^ be soon forgotten or denied if left on the precarious footing of tradition. The Apostle re- sponded to their solicitations. It was not well, he declared. The Church must not be left without an authentic record of those living words of Christ which had been the root of his own spiritual life, and of the spiritual life of those to whom he had imparted the Gospel. The strong meat might have been hitherto kept back because there were so many into whose hands it might have fallen who as yet were unable to bear it.^ But now the pressure of necessity forbade the Apostle to withhold it any lonoer. He must take in hand the task which no living man but himself could perform ; jind leave to the world a true report of those mysterious discourses of Christ which were the groundwork of His religion ; containing a philosophy, so to speak, of * More deeply, perhaps, than into the heart of any of tlie others. See Hengstenberg, 'Commentary on St. John,' Conclutling Obser- vations. 2 1 Cor. iii. 1. Introduction, 5 Christianity;^ an exposition of the spiritual truths which underlie its sacraments ; a proclamation of the eternal relations between Christ and every believer in His Word. There is nothing inherently improbable in this ex- planation of the origin of the fourth Gospel, and, as we have said, it has been universally accepted until within a comparatively recent period. But when that school of criticism arose which has subjected the contents of each book of the New Testament to a far more minute and unsparing analysis than had before been deemed necessary, it \a as soon discovered that the character of the discourses recorded in the fourth Gospel differed materially from that presented by the discourses con- tained in the other three.^ The suggestion was made, doubtfully at first, and then with increasing confidence, that the Gospel was not the composition of the Apostle whose name it bears, but that it must be assigned to another and a later hand. It was the offspring, in fact, of the epoch when the intense and fervent admiration felt by His disciples for Christ had passed into a belief in His Divinity. When once launched upon this track, 1 " John gives us not merely a history of the external life of Jesus, but in some measure also a philosophy of this history." — Grimm, ' Trustworthiness of the Evangelic Narratives/ p. 66. 2 Evanson, an Ecglishman, was the first — if we except an anonymous author about a century earlier — to raise the question in 1792, and was followed by Herder. Nearly thirty years elapsed before Bretschneider revived it in his ' Probabilia,' but he afterwards confessed that he had been wrong. A host of critics have since arisen who have main- tained the same thesis with less candour or more resolution. See Keville, ' Kevue des Deux Mondes,' 1 Mai, 1866, p. 99, and Liddon, 'Bampton Lectures' (1st Ed.), p. 312, seq. M. Keville has the can- dour to admit, while assailing tlie Gospel himself, that former attacks have been successfully repulsed. 6 The Doctrinal System of St. John. the critics grew bolder still. Not only moral and me- taphysical, but historical divergences were brought to light, which detracted still more from the credit of the later Gospel.^ The hand of the forger could be de- tected alike in what was said and in what was left unsaid.^ His Christ became an abstract ideal, devoid of reality. The characters introduced upon the scene *' lack colouring," are " outside the sphere of real life," and the like.^ The very fundamental conceptions of Christ's system as presented in this Gospel are so opposed to what we meet elsewhere, that it is quite impossible to acknowledge it as a genuine production of the Apostolic age.* It is our purpose to analyse the ' St. John mentions three passovers, we are told, while the other Evangelists only speak of one. - The Evangelist " believes that no prophet arose out of Galilee !" — ' Revue des Deux Mondes,' Mai 1866, p. 113. " St. John's name does not once appear !" — Tb. p. 106. ^ According to M. Reville, this is true of the woman of Samaria and of the blind man, in chap. ix. ! Strauss also (' Leben Jesu,' part ii. chap. vii. f'^c. 83) complains that " the interlocutors do not speak in conformity with their position and character," Criticism of this kind carries with it so much evidence of a foregone conclusion that it disposes men rather to the opposite opinion. The absence of St. John's name is, quoad hoc, an argument for the genuineness of the Gospel. And he who does not perceive the life-like character of the narratives in chaps, iv. and ix. must be devoid of all sense of dramatic reality. Since these words were penned, Canon Westcott has spoken strongly at the Brighton Congress in support of the opinion they express. After observing how entirely we owe our conceptions of the chief friends and enemies of Christ, with the single exception of St. Peter, ^ to the fourth Gospel, he adds " it is barely conceivable that the writer may have been an unknown Shakespeare.^' * M. Eeville (' Revue des Deux Mondes,' as above) goes so far as to say that coming to Christ is nowhere in the Synoptists said to be a sine qua non. One is tempted to the belief that Matt, xxviii. 19 must have been absent from his copies of the Gospels, and that he has never happened to light upon Acts iii. 12. He would naturally deny the Introduction. T doctrinal system of St. John's Gospel, to compare it with that presented on examination by tlie productions of Apostles and Evangelists whose genuineness is generally admitted, and to ascertain what evidence there is for these assertions. That there is a marked difference between the dis- courses of our Lord, as recorded in the three former and in the fourth Gospel, is a position which can hardly be seriously contested. Though the Synoptists claim for Christ the very highest powers and dignities, they do not in express words declare Him to be God. And they say little or nothing of the necessity of a personal and inward union with His Being, of a continual com- munication of life and strength from Him, doctrines which it would appear to be the main object of the fourth Gospel to disseminate. With the Synoptists Christ is the preacher of righteousness; yet though this righteousness, it is true, is of a more exalted type than any teacher had yet conceived of, Christ is not Himself put forward as the source from which that righteousness proceeds. With the exception of one remarkable passage, to which we shall advert at greater length hereafter, no hint is given of the peculiar inter- mediate position in which the Son stands between the Father and mankind as tlie sole channel for the com- munication of life.^ genuineness of the last twelve verses of St. Mark's Gospel. But the passaj^e above cited from :i wurk by St. Luke is as strong as any that can be found in St. John. And it should be remembered in the passage cited from St. Matthew (1) that the words rendered " in the name" are ets rh ovo/xa in the original, and (2) that the name stands in the Scriptures for the person named. ' 31. Eeville, in the above-cited article, p. 120, admits that the 8 The Doctrinal System of St. John. But while admitting to the full the fact of this divergence, we are met at the outset by another fact which does much to diminish the significance of the former. These assertions of the Divinity of Christ, this continual mention of His intimate union with His Father, of His indwelling within the soul of those who come to Him by faith, of Life, Light, Truth, Grace, Arche, Pleroma, which are supposed by some to indicate the later origin of the fourth Gospel/ are to be found with equal frequency in the Epistles. They form the ground- work of the teaching of St. Paul and St. Peter, and, though not so completely, of St. James also. The differ- ence between the theological stand-point of the two former Apostles and that of the Synoptists^ is as irrecon- cilable as that between them and St. John, while the differences between St. John's Gospel and the Epistles of these two Apostles will be found to be more apparent than real. Nor is this all. Two of the Synoptic Gospels were written by men who were in close and intimate connection with these Apostles. St. Mark is designated by St. Peter as "his son,"^ and though between St. Mark and St. Paul there was a long es- trangement,^ yet it was entirely of a personal, not of a controversial, nature, and it finally ceased to exist.^ St. Luke was in the closest and most intimate compa- evangelic cycle would not have been complete in the absence of a biography which essayed to represent the spiritual side of the character of Christ. ' See Sclienkel, ' Sketch of the Character of Jesus,' and M. Keville in the above-cited article. - Hengstenberg, in his 'Commentary oti St. John,' complains of this ill-sounding title, but submits to it as an inevitable necessity. 3 1 Ptt. v. 13. ^ Acts XV. 38. 5 Qoi_ jy, jq. Introduction, 9 Dioiiship with St. Paul for years, and there was the most thorough confidence between them. The cause, then, of the undeniable difference between the theology of the Epistles and that of tlie Synoptists, cannot be attributed to an hostility on the part of the latter to the views maintained in the former. Nor can \\e suppose that St. Luke, whose careful scrutiny of all authentic information, oral or written, that came within his reach is avowed as his sole claim to the attention of his readers,^ would have attached himself to St. Paul if he had been aware of the existence of a party opposed to him, which was more scrupulously careful to adhere to the original principles of the Christian faith. The contents of the Acts of the Apostles are sufficient to refute such a supposition. The form of that treatise is clearly determined by the anxiety St. Luke felt to make it clear that St. Paul was only anxious to keep within the lines marked out for Christ's ministers from the be- ginning of the Gospel.^ That there were differences in the Christian body he is willing to admit. But he niakes it quite plain what those differences were. They regarded the relations of Christianity to the religion from which it had sprung. They w^ere not the offspring of any radical diversity in the conception of Christianity itself. For while the author of the Acts, in relating occurrences which took place after the dispensation of the Spirit was fully at work, does not fail to drop hints » St. Luke i. 1-3. 2 This is surely the reason of his commencing with the ministry of St. Peter, of Lis following the career of that Apostle only as far as the conversion of Cornelius, as also of the introduction of the episode of St. Stephen, where the principles are enunciated which St. Paul I'oUowed out lo their legitimate conclusion. 10 The Doctrinal System of St. John, occasionally of the deeper teaching of the Apostles/ he says not a word of any disagreement between them concerning the person of Christ. Differences on a far less fundamental point had power to rend tlie Moham- medan body asunder from the very first.^ It is hardly conceivable, as matter of history, that while a com- paratively trifling controversy is recorded concerning the obligation of the Gentiles to keep the Jewish law, not one word should be let fall to indicate that the Apostles were not of one mind about the position oc- cupied by Christ in the scheme of salvation, had such been the case. And as the leaders of the two great parties, St. Peter and St. Paul were clearly agreed upon this point,^ we require at least some evidence to prove that there were others of the Apostolic band who entered into conflict with their leaders on behalf of the primitive purity of Christian tradition. There is not one single passage in the Scriptures themselves to warrant the conclusion.* And the silence of ecclesiastical history is equally remarkable. * As in the allusion to the Gospel as the words of Life, ch. v. 20 ; to Christ as the Source of Life, ch. iii. 15 ; and to Justification by Faith, ch. xiii. 39. - The Sonnites and the Shiites, Gibbon, ' Decline and Fall,' ch. 50. The question whether the Founder of a religion left a Vicar behind Him on earth is surely not more fundamental than whether He be God or man. ^ See Part I. Chapters ii., iii. * Yet it is confidently maintained by Schwegler, who believes that the original teachers of Christianity were enabled to maintain a semblance of unity, while at the same time rent asunder by funda- mental differences. If this be historical fact, it is at least without parallel in tlie world's history. "Is it likely," asks Tertullian (De Praescr. adv. Hser. 28), " that so many and so great churches should have gone astray into one and the same faith?" "Error in doctrine," he continues, " must of necessity have produced various results." Introduction, 11 There were many heretics, but there was scarcely one who ventured to assert that Apostolic tradition was in his favour. The Gnostics were humanitarians after their fantastic fashion, but they appealed to no Chris- tian authority on behalf of their ci eed, and they were energetically opposed by the whole body of doctrinally orthodox Christians, in spite of the divisions among themselves.^ The Ebionites were humanitarians, but they rejected with equal impartiality St. Peter and St. Paul, the Synoptists and St. John, and contented themselves with a mutilated Gospel of St. Matthew.^ The school of Theodotus and Artemon made a feeble attempt to represent their doctrines as the original doctrines of the Christian Church, but they sup- ported it by no evidence.^ And Marcion, who seems to have endeavoured to mediate between Gnosticism and the Church, rejects impartially the Synoptists and St. John, and fixes on a mutilated Gospel of St. Luke, and such portions as he chose to accept of the Epistles of St. Paul.* When we remember how ^ Tertullian, after he had separated from the Church, remained a violent opponent of Gnosticism. - This would seem to be the conclusion at which the generality of inquirers have arrived. Whether there were an Hebrew original of St. Matthew's Gospel or not, it is generally agreed that the Ebionitish Gospel of the Hebrews of which St. Jerome speaks is not that Gospel. See Alford, ' Prolegomena to the Gospels,' chap. ii. sec. ii. ; West- cott, 'Introduction to the Study of the Gospels,' p. 225. Iren. ' Contr. Hier.' i. 26, asserts that tliey accepted the Gospel of St. Matthew, but Eus. 'Eccl. Hist.' iii. 27, calls it the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Hippolytus is silent on the subject. ^ See the account of the rise of this school in Eusebius, 'Eccl. Hist.' V. 28. * Iren. ' Contr. Hser.' I. xxvii. 2, 4. Irenceus seems more angry with Marcion for driving to mutilate the Scriptures than with other heretics for rejecting them altogether. But it is at least clear from their 1 2 The Doctrinal System of St. John. jealously Apostolic tradition was guarded,^ and how eagerly it was sought after in the early Church,^ this silence of history is not a little surprising. And when we add to this the facts that the early opponents of Christianity, in endeavouring to bring arguments from the divisions among Christians, have been obliged to make the most of the trifling dissensions spoken of in the Acts and in the Epistle to the Galatians,^ and that the ecclesiastical writers of the second and third centuries, when referring to Apostolic tradition, do so account that he abandoned m^ny of the distinctive tenets of Gnosticism. TertuUian (' Adv. Marc' IV. i.-iv.) enters into arguments for the genuineness of the four Gospels, which prove that the early Church was not entirely ignorant of the science of criticism. * The Quarto-Deciman controversy is an evidence of this. It was elevated into importance solely by the fact that both sides pleaded Apostolic tradition. The presbyter, TertuUian tells us, who fabricated the spurious Acts of Paul and Thecla was deposed for so doing. De Baptismo, 16. - Iren. ' Contr. User.' III. iv. 1 : "If concerning some ordinary question theie were a discussion, would it not be our duty to recur to the oldest Churches, and to ascertain fi-om them what is certain and clear in the matter? For, supposing the Apostles had left no Scriptures, would it not be our duty to follow the order of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they committed the Churches ?" So also Tert. ' De Praescr. adv. Haer.' xxxvi. 3 Marcion (Tert. ' Adv. Marc' iv. 3), the heretics generally (Tert. ' De Prsescr. adv. Haer.' xxiii.), and Porphyry make the most of the trifling disagreement in Gal. ii. I do not remember seeing it noticed that Marcion, who was contemporary with Polycarp, and met him at Eome A.D. 160, is especially charged in the above-cited passage in TertuUian with having endeavoured to undermine the credit of those Gospels which were published as authentic (j^ropria) and under the name of Apostles. Marcion does not deny their genuineness, be it observed, but asserts that their writers are the " false Apostles" spoken of by St. Paul. M. Keville (p. 115) remarks that *' had Marcion had access to the fourth Gospel, he could not have failed to mould it to his views." It would seem from the passage just mentioned that he had seen it, and did not find it so pliable as has been imagined. Introduction. 13 in entire unconsciousness of any absence of agreement among the Apostles, it must be admitted that history gives no support to the theory of fundamental diver- gencies in the Apostolic conceptions of Christ and His scheme of salvation. Whatever claim, therefore, the supposition that the humanitarian was the original creed of the disciples, and that it was a later school which pushed its reverence for Christ so far as to assert His Divinity, may have on our acceptance, it must be admitted to rest on critical considerations alone. To criticism, therefore, let. us betake ourselves. We will endeavour to scrutinise minutely the doctrinal system of 8t. John, and compare it with that of the Synoptists on the one hand, and with that of the Epistle writers on the other. We will compare it also with tbe systems in existence at the time in which it has been supposed to have originated ; and we will thus endeavour to ascertain whether it be indeed the product of a later age, or whether the theory be true that the Synoptists were actuated in their reticence by a desire not to cast pearls before swine — not to make too heavy demands at first upon the faith of their readers, but to induce them first to acquaint themselves with the human character of Christ, confident that if they were once brought into contact with a character at once so pure, so majestic, and so tender, with teaching so far exceeding in moral elevation that of all former times, they could not fail in the end to exclaim with the centurion, " Truly this was the Son of God." But it must be remembered in common fairness that, in the absence of historical evidence, the internal evi- dence of the later origin of the fourth Gospel ought to 14 The Doctrinal System of St. John, be absolutely unequivocal. It is quite true that a careful scrutiny of documents has often led to the re- writing of history, and that no forgery, however skilful, has been able to bear the test of close investigation. But, on the other hand, the establishment of the fact that a document is forged must not rest upon assump- tion and conjecture — upon bold assertions and foregone conclusions. No mere general dissimilarity in colour- ing and tone can be relied on. It must be shown beyond a doubt that reference is made to opinions or facts unknown at the time to which the writing is ascribed. If the fourth Gospel be really written under the influence of Gnostic and Montanistic thought of the second century,^ we must have not merely vague general assertions of the fact, but specific allegations, supported by quotations of which there can be no doubt. It must be made clear that the Gospel derived its ideas from Basilides and Valentinus, and not they from it. Otherwise, the utmost that the opponents of its genuineness will have a right to say is, that they regard it as suspicious. They can have no right to speak as though their case were proved. We will proceed, then, to our inquiry. We will ask, first, whether there be that amount of divergence be- tween the fourth Gospel and the other books of the New Testament which has been alleged. Next, we will inquire into the allegation that its writer was indebted for many of his ideas to the Gnostics of the ^ So says M. Keville, in the above-cited article. Others (as Strauss, Scheiikel, &c.) are content with assigning a Gnostic origin to its peculiarities. According to Schweglcr, it was invented to mediate between Muntanism (which he seems to identify with Ebionitism !) and Paulinism. See Ebrard ' Gospel Hist.' p. 34-36. Introduction, 1 5 second centur}^ We will then proceed to compare the Gospel with those which are confessedly spurious, and then with the acknowledged writings of St. Peter and St. Paul, in order to ascertain which of them contains the more primitive form of Christian theology. The examination must needs be minute ; possibly to many it will be wearisome. But let it be remembered that only thus can we arrive at a candid conclusion. The more complete the analysis, the more certain the result. Not until we have thoroughly sifted the contents of the Gospel can we be in a position to judge whether it be a forgery of the second century or the genuine com- position of an Apostle of Christ. ( l'> ) PART I. THE DOCTEINAL SYSTEM OF ST. JOHN COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE OTHER WRITERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. CHAPTER I. THE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. Our first subject of inquiry will be tlie theology, properly so called, of the fourth Gospel, that is to say, its doctrine concerning the Being of God. On no subject did the Christian Church so soon decline from the spirit of her first teachers as on this. The tender and loving Father on whose perfections Clirist and His Apostles delight to dwell. Who wills that all men shall be saved. Who loves the world so deeply that He gave His only-begotten Son to save it from its corruptions and their inevitable result, becomes in later theology too frequently the fierce and malignant spirit, who is extreme to mark what is done amiss, in whose name re- vilings, anathemas, and curses are freely showered on all who do not accept not only his revelation of himself, but the interpretation which human intellects have thought fit to put on it. Already, in the second century, we see the first germs of this harder conception of the Deity, which grew into such forms as Novatianism, Donatism, and the stern discipline of the Church herself towards offenders. The Nature and Attributes of God. 17 Already they might be discerned in the increasing, harshness of the language of divines towards the heretics, and the growing severity towards those who, in a moment of weakness, apostatised from the faith. ^ If the fourth Gospel be tainted with these faults, we shall not be able to deny that it must have been of later date than has been hitherto believed. If, on the other hand, its conceptions of the Divine are as pure and exalted as those to be found in the rest of the New Testament, if there be not even a symptom of the tendency to substitute for the Eternal Jehovah a mere deification of human qualities and passions, we shall as infallibly be led to the conclusion that in this book we have the genuine words of Jesus Christ. At the outset, then, let us observe that the author of this Gospel puts into the mouth of Christ the important declaration, '• God is Spirit." ^ He thus rejects all an- ^ We can see this in the account of the conduct of the martyrs described in the Epistle of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne as compared with that of the Cliurch a little later, and in tlie distinction between the sympathetic mode of treatment of adversaries adopted by St. Paul and Jesus Himself, and the absence of it even in so moderate and gentle a writer as Irenajus. - Not necessarily " a spirit," as in our version. We must endeavour, in estimating the meaning of this and other common words in the New Testament, to divest our minds of the conventional sense in which they are too frequently used. The use of the word Tri/eC/ta, to denote the incorporeal part of man, is of Jewish origin. It dates as far back as the first chapter of the book of Genesis, where Moses describes the Almighty as " breaihing into man's nostrils the breath of life," and is not in use among the old Greek philosophers. It means either (1) a life-principle of whatever kind ; (2) the Divine life-principle in itself; (3) the Divine life-principle in man. See Cremer, ' Lexicon of the N. T.,' s. v. ivv^vixa. Other lexicographers seem hardly to have distinguished sufficiently between ■KVGVfj.a and ^vxh, that is to say between the Hebrew flp, or D\*n n?pC^J, and C^Q!l. Cremer rightly distinguishes between '• Tri/eu^a the Divine life principle, C 18 The Doctrinal System of St, John. thropopathical notions of His essence. He repels the notion tliat His worsliip, like that of the heathen deities, is to be confined to one place, as though God were nearer at one spot than another. He is Spirit, in spirit He must be worshipped. Christ is also here represented as rejecting the local ideas of the Jews, as treating with indifference the disputes between Jeru- salem and Gerizim regarding the question which of the two places were most honoured by the Most High. He would lead them to a higher idea of the Godhead than they had imbibed from God's apparent localisation of Himself in His temple by the presence there of the Shekinah. He enters, however, into no philosophical disquisitions ; no dissertation on geueral principles, no reference to the dogmas of theological or philosophical schools. The majestic declaration stands alone, an authoritative assertion of the nature of God, by His mouth whose mission it was to reveal Him. Next, God is Truth, the abstract, eternal Verity itself. For Jesus in this Gospel repeats again and again that God is true,^ and teaches that He Himself, the Revealer of the Father, mysteriously united to Him in being, is not only " full of grace and truth,"^ but, in virtue of His Divine essence, is Himself absolute truth.^ Again, God is Life, the source of all being, He is the " living Father."^ He hath " life in Himself," and has imparted this Life to His Son, through Whom it is communicated to all creation.^ Once more, God is Light, the power which ^vxh the individual life in which the 7rj/e0^a is manifested, and o-w/xa the material organisation vivified by the 4'i'X^-" See Genesis ii. 7. > St. John V. 32 ; vii. 28 ; viii. 26. ^ j^ j, 14. 3 lb. xiv. 6. * lb. vi. 57. ^ lb. v. 26 ; cf. i. 4, 18. The Nature and Attributes of God. 19 illuminates the whole being of man, physical, intel- lectual, moral, spiritual. " God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all," we read in the Epistle.^ And thus it was that His Kevealer, the only-begotten Son, acquired the right to declare Himself to be the Light.^ The Father had " given Him to have life in Himself," and that Life was the Light of men. The eyes of men had long been closed in a sleep which could only end in death. The Light of Life was to dawn on those who accepted the revelation of the Father which came by Jesus Christ. Again, God is Love. These are the very words of St. John in the Epistle which bears his name,^ but they are simply the epitome of the teaching of the Gospel. Christ, Who declares Himself again and again to be the representative of the Father, refers continually to His own love.* He speaks of the mutual love that exists between Himself and His Father.^ He intimates that this love is communicated through Him to His disciples.^ xlnd he seems to speak of the love of God as a principle inherent in His nature,' which when implanted in us produces results conformable to His will.^ The love which He bears to His creatures induces Him to take means for their preservation from the fate which threatens them. Not only does He not condemn them, but His Son comes not from heaven to pronounce judgment, which has already, in the nature of things, been passed, but to provide deliverance. He did not come to judge the world, but to save it.^ He ' 1 John i. 5. - St. John viii. 12; ix. 5 ; xii. 35, 46. ^ 1 John iv. 8. ' St. John xiii. 1 ; xiv. 21 ; xv. 9, 10, 13. ^ lb. x. 17. ® .lb. iii. 16 ; xv. 10 ; xvi. 27 ; xvii. passim. ^ lb. V. 42, compared with 1 John ii. 5; iii. 16, 17; iv. 9. ^1 John v. 3. ^ It is remarkable that our authorised version, which renders Kpiai^ 20 The Doctrinal System of St, John, so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, in order that all who believed in Him should have everlasting Life. And yet, though the Son did not come to judge the world, by a kind of paradox not unfrequently to be met with in every writer of the New Testament, He will judge it nevertheless.^ The threat- enings of vengeance against the ungodly, so prominent in the Old Testament, so solemnly denounced in the Synoptists and the Epistle - writers, so unsparingly applied in the next age of the Church, though miti- gated here, are not entirely left out of sight.^ God is also beyond the range of mortal vision. "No man hath seen God at any time."^ " Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape."* It needed the Eevelation of His only-begotten Son, Who existed in His bosom, to declare Him. to the world. Lastly, He is the Father of all; the source of all existence, created or uncreated. From Him His Eternal Son derives His being.^ He it is from Whom the Spirit of truth is sent. From Him, through the Eternal Son, all other things were called into being.^ To His eternity by "judgment" in chap. v. 27, should render it "condemnation" in chap. iii. 19, and chap. v. 24 ; and that it should render Kpiuw by "judge " in chap. v. 30, and by "condemn " in chap. iii. 17, 18. Neauder remarks that St. Paul "never says that God, being liostile to men, became reconciled to them through Christ, but that they, being enemies to God, became reconciled to Him." — ' Planting and Train- ing,' i. 450. St. John's language is different, but it amounts to pre- cisely the same thing. 1 St. John V. 22, 27. "" lb. v. 29. ^ lb. i. 18 ; vi. 46. * lb. V. 37. ^ lb. V. 26. * St' avrov : through His instrumentality. This by no means excludes the notion of the Father being tlie ultimate source of Life— a doctrine handed, down from the earliest times. See Gen. i. 1. Exod. xx. 11. The term " Father " implies as much. The Nature and Attributes of God, 21 we need not refer ; it is admitted on all hands. Thus then, to sum up what has been said, God is set before us as Spirit, as Truth, as Light, as Life, as Love. He is described as transcending the limits of our mortal preceptions ; and He is moreover the originator of all being. There is no attempt at a philosopliy of the Infinite ; no allusion to the Absolute — the to 6v of the Greek and Philonian philosophy ; no definitions, no dis- sertatious, no distinctions. Certain fundamental prin- ciples are laid down by the aid of which the Divine nature may be apprehended, and no more. But there is one more point, too important to be passed over. God is a Person. He is no mere abstract principle, underly- ing the world as its soul. We might infer this from the term Father, but we are not left to do so. He who dwells above is capable of love, of care, of tenderness.^ He gives honour to the Son.^ He bears witness to,^ He sends the Son,* and the Holy Ghost.^ He commits His prerogatives into His Son's hands.^ Jesus speaks of His will,^ His pleasure,^ the work which He gave His Son to do.^ He addresses Him in prayer,^*' and asserts His knowledge of the fact that those prayers are heard. ^^ And beside these clear assertions of the personality of the Father, there are not wanting intimations of other Persons, associated with Him in the unity of the God- head. The Godhead which dwells in Him would seem to be communicated to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. ^^ 1 St. John iii. 16, &c. 2 lb. viii. 54. » lb. viii. 18. 4 lb. V. 37. * lb. xiv. 26. « lb. V. 22. ' lb. vi. 38. « II). viii. 29. » lb. xvii. 4. •» lb. xi. 41 ; xii. 27, 28 ; xiv. 16 ; xvii. ^' lb. xi. 42. >- See chapters ii. and v. 22 The Doctrinal System of St. John. This is a point the full consideration of which must be deferred ; it will suflSce, however, to remark here that any indications of the doctrine of a Trinity are balanced by assertions no less distinct of the unity in the God- head. " I and My Father are one " says the Son ;^ and the unity is afterwards^ described to be an unity not of personal existence, but in the possession by each of a Life common to all, coming down from the Father as its source, and in the end enfolding not only the Blessed Trinity Itself, but all who are combined together by the indwelling of the Divine nature. The ultimate result of Christ's work, as declared by Himself in the fourth \ Gospel, would seem to be a merging all the redeemed \into the being of God, not in a pantheistic annihilation of all personality, but by bringing each personal soul, while in full and glad realisation of its own separate consciousness, into a complete union, not only of will and affections, hopes and desires, but of Being also with the Infinite Author of all.^ Turn we now to the Synoptists. And let us bear in mind at the outset that, as we have before remarked, it is DO proof of the later origin of the fourth Gospel if it be shown that the view of Divinity common to them all is heightened and strengthened by deeper and more mysterious touches in the narrative of St. John. No- thing short of a complete absence of harmony in the conceptions of the Supreme Being would warrant us in coming to so extreme a conclusion. Other circum- stances may be sufficient to account for the fact that the outline of the Synoptist conceptions of God is filled in by St. John. The earlier biographies, intended for ' St. John X. 30. 2 lb. xvii. 11, 21, 22. ^ lb. xvii. The Nature and Attributes of God. 23 simple-minded persons, may have intentionally pre- sented to their readers only the simplest and most childlike ideas of the Almighty Father, while St. John, writing for philosophers, for the Christian Church as a whole, and for the world at large, may have desired to place before them more abstract conceptions of His being. Or the mind of the Apostle may have been so constituted as to enable him to apprehend and to retain more of his Divine Master's teaching than was possible to the other Evano^elists. If the main features of the teaching be in all respects substantially the same, no arguments founded on diversity of treatment of minor points can be considered sufficient to disprove the authenticity of the Gospel of St. John. In dealing with the teaching of the Synoptists about God in the same order which we before followed, we come upon a remarkable confirmation of this view. We find in tliese Gospels no direct assertion of the spiritual nature of God, no rejection of the localisation of Him to which Jews and Gentiles were alike too much inclined. Yet it is a Synoptist who narrates in a spirit of the fullest sympathy the apology of St. Stephen, which is throughout an attack upon the Jewish tendency to localise the deity, and which culminates in the declara- tion which roused the passions of his hearers, " God dwelleth not in temples made with hands."^ It is the same Synoptist who records the repetition in days long subsequent of the same statement in the same words, by one who was driven almost to madness by that very statement when for the first time he heard it.^ A Synoptist therefore, though not in his Gospel, endorses ' Acts vii. 48. - lb. xvii. 24. 24 TJie Doctrinal System of St. John. the statement tlmt God is Spirit, One wlio is not only- incapable of localisation, but Who '' giveth to all life and breath, and all things." Truth, again, does not seem to be spoken of in the Synoptists as an attribute of God, though it is found in every Epistle in the New Testament, and though it is specially noted as one of the characteristics of His Son.^ The same may be said of Lii>ht. These abstract characteristics of God are not introduced by the Synoptists, inasmuch as they are concerned chiefly with the personal relations of God to His people. But He Who came to reveal God ^ is spoken of frequently as the Light.^ If not in the Gospels, yet certainly in the Acts, we are bid to regard God as our Life. St. Paul is recorded there as having taught that " in Him we live, and move, and have our being.-" Of His love it is needless that we should speak. Not only is He called " Good,"* and mentioned in one Evangelist as the " one chief Good,"^ but the pages of the Synoptists teem with assertions of His Fatherly care. That in their eyes He is a Person, and that His relation to those whom He has created is that of a Father to His children, we need hardly stop to demonstrate. He is to be addressed in prayer as " Our Father." Such prayer He will never neglect to hear.® Without His Fatherly knowledge not an hair of our heads shall perish. Our own care for onr children is made the basis of an argument to prove a fortiori how ' St. Matt. xxii. 16 ; St. Mark xii. 14 ; St. Luke xx. 21. ' St. Mutt. xi. 27 ; St. Luke x. 22. 3 St. Matt. iv. 16 ; St. Luke ii. 32. * St. Mark x. 18; St. Luke xviii. 19. * St. Matt, xix. 17, according to the better supported reading. " Compare Matt. vii. 7, xxi. 22, with John xiv. 18, 14. The Nature and Attributes of God. 25 much more God cares for His. We may safely there- fore leave this point, involving as it does the question of the personality of God, to the recollection of every one who lias given an hour's study to the Gospels. That the Synoptists speak of Him as the Creator of heaven and earth,^ while St. John refers this creation to the self-revelation of Himself which was given in the Logos, is a contradiction which may be left to be made the most of by those who ignore such passages as Col. i. 16, "By Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth : and He is before all things, and. by Him all things consist ;" and Heb. i. 2, '•By Mhom also He made the worlds." While the re-. markable passage to which allusion has been made^ in St. Matt. xi. 27, recorded also by St. Luke, is the correlative of that in St. John, "No man hath seen God at any time ;" for, it declares, in language more like the usual language of St. John than the passage we have just cited, that *' no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him." The Synoptic view of the unity of God may be inferred Irom St. Mark xii. 29, " Hear, O Israel ; The Lord our God is one Lord." And beside the various intimations of the doctrine of the Trinity which we must reserve for future consideration, there is perhaps the most emphatic of all at the end of St. Matthew's Gospel, where the disciples of Jesus are commanded to baptize all nations into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.^ In the Epistles, where the deeper doctrines of the faith are brought into fuller prominence than in the 1 Acts xvii. 24. ^ Above, p. 7. ^ Matt, xxviii. 19. 26 The Doctrinal System of St. John. Gospels, we naturally look for fuller manifestations of agreement between them and the work which goes by the name of St. John. Accordingly, when we have to deal with the spiritual and mysterious part of the nature of God, we find St. Paul repeating the language of St. John. " The Lord is the Spirit,"^ he says, and it is this Spirit-Lord who changes men from glory to glory. The very words of Christ, as recorded by St. John, are repeated by St. Paul in his declaration of the mysteriousness of God's existence, and it is surely not unsafe for us to infer that a tradition of their having been uttered was afloat in the Church, and had reached the Apostle's ears.^ " Not that any man hath seen the Father,"^ says Christ, according to St. John. *' Whom no man hath seen nor can see," echoes the Apostle.* That God is truth the Epistles abundantly testify. Precisely as St. John does, they reaffirm the emphatic statements of the Old Testament on this head, statements which it can hardly be pretended that the Synoptists wished to negative because they did not repeat them.^ It is one of the chief characteristics of the revelation that it is " the truth," ^ " the word of ' 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18. It would seem doubtful whether the Apostle means by b Kvpios to speak of our Lord, or of the Jehovah of the older covenant. 2 " There is no doubt, for he occasionally alludes to it, that he (St. Paul) had met with a traditionary record of the sayings, actions, and precepts of Christ." — Neand. ' Planting and Training,' book vi. vol. i. p. 415 (Bohn's ed.). Neander gives no references. 3 St. John vi. 46 ; cf. i. 18; v. 37. ♦ 1 Tim. vi. 16, also i. 17. Rom. i. 20. Heb. xi. 27. ^ Yet this is precisely, be it remembered, the argument supposed to be conclusive in regard to St. John ! « 2 Thess. ii. 13. Gal. iii. 1. Rom. ii. 8. 2 Cor. iv. 2, &c. The Nature and Attributes of God. '27 truth." ^ '• As God is true." says St. Paul, in a fervid appeal to the Corinthians.^ Untruth is foreign to His nature.^ ''The truth of God"* is another expression which implies the same thing, as also what the Apostle soon after directly asserts, namely, that the judgment of God is according to truth.^ And one of the results of the revelation contained in the Gospel is to imbue men thoroughly with truth ''in the inward parts."® Next, God is Light. He " inhabits the unapproachable light." ^ He is the source of all kinds of light.^ Light is His special possession,^ and that of all those who are His.^° That God is Life is not obscurely intimated. The Gen- tiles are described as " alienated from the life of God." " Eternal Life is His gift.^^ He is described as giving Life to His creatures.-^^ And all this may be held to be summed up in the title Father, that is to say, source of being, which is universally and continually applied to Him. Nor need we take up much time in proving that He is Love. We might almost infer it from 1 Cor. xiii. But the writings of the other Apostles breathe the spirit of love as strongly as those of St. John. As the result of the revelation of God it meets us everywhere. It is " the love of God " which " is shed abroad in our hearts."^* From it no power can separate us.^^ His benignity and love toward man were • 2 Cor. vi. 7. Eph. i. 13. James i. 18. ^ 2 Cor. i. 18. ' Tit. i. 2. * Rom. i. 25. » lb. ii. 2. 6 Eph. iv. 15, aX-nOevouTes. ^ 1 Tim. vi. 16. * iraTTjp Tuu (p<6Twv, James i. 17. ® rh dav/jLaffrhv avrou (pus, 1 Pet. ii. 9. »« Eph. V. 8. Col. i. 12. 1 Thess. v. 5. " Eph. iv. 18. 12 Rom y 23 ; cf. 2 Pet. i. 3. Tit. i. 2. " Tit. iii. 5. James i. 18. 1 Pet. i. 3, 23. " Rom. V. 5; cf. Jude 21. »5 jjom y^ 35 28 The Doctrinal System of St, John, manifested by Jesus Christ/ His favour toward them has become a theological commonplace under the well-known word Grace. One of the results of being " strength. en ed with might by His Spirit in the inner man" is the being ''rooted and grounded in love."^ Surely no more need be said to show that the whole of the Epistles are a commentary upon the text " God is Love." But though the Epistles regard Him as Love, His justice is declared no less plainly. St. John speaks of judgment and condemnation ; and the other Apostles speak yet more distinctly on the subject.^ The per- sonality of God may be inferred both from the title of Father and the attribute of love. It would be a tedious task to multiply references on this point. I therefore pass on to the assertion of the unity of the Godhead. This is so emphatically asserted in one passage by St. Paul that it may serve as a type of all others: ''There is one Body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one Hope of your calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."^ ^ Tit. iii. 5. ' Eph. iii. 17. * Eom. i. ii. ; xiv. 10. 1 and 2 Thess. passim. 2 Tim. iv. 1. Heb. X. 27. 2 Pet. ii. ; iii. Jude. St. John does not use the word condem- nation (^KaraKpiais), but he implies it in chap. v. 29. ■* Eph. iv. 4-G. 1 Cor. viii. 6 ; xii. 6. " Nor does St. Paul, any more than St. John, propound anything when he speaks of Father, Son, and Holy (ihost united, which revolts against sound reason. For equally does John refer all benefits which attach to Christianity to God the Father as the supreme and original Author of all; to Jesus Christ, as the Founder, by the Divine will, of the Christian religion and Church ; to the Holy Spirit, that Divine and -heavenly power supplied to the believers in Clirist, and efficacious in their souls, for the purpose of preseiving and strengthening the Divine kingdom." — Grimm, ' De Indole Joannese Christologifel'tiulinai comparata,' part i.cap. ii.sec.33. TJie Nature and Attributes of God. 29 The consideration of the doctrine of the Trinity will be pursued iu detail in subsequent chapters. We pass on to observe that the same doctrine is found pene- trating all the Epistles, of the indwelling of God in the soiils that He has called into beini?, knittino^ them together in the closest union with Himself, so as to make all one, while each at the same time retains his separate personality, to which we have referred in St. John. The fuller consideration of this, too, must be deferred to Chapter II. But we may remark here^- and the coincidence is surely worth noticing — that both in St. John and in the Epistles the truth of the pan- theistic system is extracted and its fatal error avoided. All those passages which we shall have to consider presently, which refer to the indwelling of Christ in the individual soul, which identify Him with the body in which He dwells, representing it as Himself,^ or His complement,^ as well as those which point out the in- timate inward union between Father, Son, and Holy Gliost,^ demand some notice here. For they indicate a by no means simple doctrine of the nature of God — a doctrine mysterious and inexplicable, in which human reason may easily lose itself, as it has often lost itself, in innumerable entanglements. It is surely iio light proof of the deep inward agree- ■ 1 Cor. xii. 12. " So also is Christ" Compare Gal. ii. 20, Eph. i. 10; ii. 16; iii. 17-19 ; iv. 12-16; v. 23-32. Col. i. 18, 22 ; ii. 7, 19 ; iii. 3. Heb. xii. 10. 2 Pet. i. 4. " There is no difference between Jew and Greek (Gal. iii. 28). There was in all the one life of Christ." — Neand. ' Planting and Training,' vol. i. p. 490. ^ Eph. i. 23. Some, however, imagine that the word irX^pw^wo refers to Christ. Against this, however, Col. i. 24 may be cited. 3 As for instance 1 Cor. viii. 6. Eph. ii. 18; iu. 16-19. Col. i. 15,19; ii. 9. 30 The Doctrinal System of St. John. ment between our Gospel and the Epistles that St. Paul,^ like St. John, contrives to avoid falling into pantheism, while asserting most plainly the union effected between the creature and the Creator by means of Christ and His Spirit, as well as the unity of Christ and the Spirit with the Father. It is attained by virtue of the pos- session of a Life common to all, and this without the least tendency to annihilate the personality of the individual. " Through Christ, in one Spirit, all man- kind have access to the Father." God " strengthens us with might by His Spirit " within, and the result is that " Christ dwells in our hearts." '^ All the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Christ corporeally," and yet all Christians " are filled in Him " — with that fulness surely — '* who is the Head of all rule and power." We are " rooted in Him," inseparably conjoined in one body with Him as the Head ; and thus, as we grow in perfection, we are advancing to the measure of the stature of Christ's fulness. This extraordinary doctrine, which identifies Christ with His members, and them with the Father, and which is found nowhere in the Synoptists, is, in spite of differences of language and expression such as might be expected when put forward by men of different temperaments, education, mode of apprehending things Divine, precisely the same in sub- stance, whether promulgated by St. Paul or St. John. It has since been imperfectly understood, and, by some, almost lost sight of The Vulgate translation, like our own, does much to obscure it.^ But it is worthy of the ' And St. Peter also. " We are partakers of the Divine Nature."' (diias KQivwvo\ (pva-ecos. 2 Pet. i. 3. ^ Nothing does more to obscure the relation between St. Paul and The Nature and Attributes of God, 31 utmost attention that here, where there is so much risk of misunderstanding, where the doctrine is so mys- terious as to be most easily perverted, there is a most exact agreement between two writers so opposite in many respects as St. Paul and the author of the fourth Grospel, displayed alike in the errors they avoid and in the truths they proclaim. This fact can hardly be without its significance in dealing with the question whether the Gospel be correctly ascribed to St. John. Thus, then, in our review of the teaching of the New Testament on the Nature of God we find a complete agreement between St. John and St. Paul, and a silence on the part of the Synoptists on some points on which these two writers insist. We could not safely infer that silence implied disapproval, even had we no other data to guide us. It is still less possible when we know that one of the Synoptists ardently embraced the teach- ing of St. Paul. And we may consider it entirely disproved by the fact, to which we shall presently call attention, that the Synoptists, who are supposed to reflect the Judseo-Christian rather than the Gentile tradition, are silent on precisely those points on w^hich the Jewish Scriptures lay most stress. So far, then, as this point is concerned, we have no evidence that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was at issue with his brethren, still less that he was deeply tinged with Gnostic opinions, and desired to introduce them within the pale of the Christian Church. On the contrary, we have a doctrine of God presented to us exactly corre- St. John than the custom of rendering the preposition eV " by " or " through," instead of *' in." 32 The Doctrinal System of St. John. sponding to that of the Apostolic age. Where corrup- tion and development were the most rapid, we find our author entirely free from either. So far, then, we have no grounds for concluding that he was a forger of the second century, but, on the contrary, the strongest reasons for supposing him to be what he represents himself, and what for so many centuries he has been supposed to be, an eye-witness of Christ's ministry and an Apostle of His choice. ( 33 ) CHAPTER 11. DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS AND THE PERSON OF CHRIST. It has been a subject of fierce debate from whence St. John derived his doctrine of the Logos. Those who strive to deny the authenticity of his G-ospel en- deavour to prove that the introduction of this expression into the terminology of Christianity was owing to the wide dissemination of Gnostic ideas, and that it passed over into the Christian Church, together with such phrases as Light, Life, Truth, Fulness (Pleroma), Only Begotten (Monogenes), Archon, Paraclete, and the like. The most moderate of the opponents of the authenticity are content with the assertion that St. John borrowed the phrase from Philo.^ It is not my intention to enter ' " Le quatrieme Evangeliste est un disciple Chretien de Philon." Reville in 'Revue des Deux Mondes/ May 1866, p. 107. M. Reville is not a little at issue with his fellow-countryman M. de Pressense', who declares emphatically that he •' knows not in the history of human thought contradictions more flagrant than exist between their doctrines That which is with St. John a capital truth would be to the Jew of Alexandria appalling blasphemy." — ' Life of Jesus Christ,' Preliminary Questions. Keim, however, cites Bret- schneider, Baur, Baumgarten-Crusius, Liicke, Bleek, Schmidt, and Weiszacker, on behalf of the Philonic origin of the Johannean Logos. He forgets to note that many more names could be cited on the oppo- site side, though he is at least consistent in tracing St. Paul's theology to the same source. Mr. J. S. Mill, in his posthumous Essays lately printed, gives it as his opinion that such " poor stuff" as the author's D 34 The Doctrinal System of St. John, into an examination of Philo's system on this point. This has been lately done so fully and exhaustively by Dr. Liddon in his well-known Bampton Lectures that I need only refer the inquirer to their pages. I may be allowed, however, to cite some authorities. Tholuck has observed, " We discover no necessity for resorting to other sources than the Bible in order to explain the doctrine of the Logos, though it has, to be sure, been customary since Semler to resort to Philo for this purpose."^ " The whole matter," says Neander,^ " is narrowed to this, that the Evangelist, from the circle around him, borrowed the term Logos, in order to lead those who busied themselves with speculation on the Logos as the centre of all theophanies, from their reli- gious idealism to a religious realism, to the recognition of that God which was revealed in Christ." He used the term, says Neander again, "because it expressed what he wished to say." But his conceptions of the Logos were very difierent from those of Philo. " Philo's monotheism," says Dorner, " decisively excludes any duality of Divine persons."^ The expressions of the Alexandrian writer as regards the Logos are indis- tinct and inconsistent with themselves.* It is, more- over, worthy of remark that, if St. John have appro- priated one of the terms used by Philo, St. Paul has attempted philosophy could be manufactured with the utmost ease out of Philo's writings by any one familiar with the literature of the East. * Commentary on St. John, Appendix to 7th edition. 2 Neander, ' Planting and Training,' i. 402. ' 'De Persona Christi,' Introd. p. 27 (Clark's Transl.), cf. Neander, • Planting and Training/ i. 504. * Liddon, ' Bampton Lectures,' pp. 102, 103. Doctrine of the Logos (^' the Person of Christ. 35 appropriated another. St. Paul calls Christ the eUcov Seov, one of the expressions Philo has applied to his Logos. ^ And if Philo calls the Logos the Trpcoroyovof; Seov, St. Paul calls Him Whom he styles the eUoov 0eou by the name also of irpcoro'TOKO'^ 7rda7]<; /criVect)?.^ So that if St. John borrows his doctrines from Philo, it may fairly be contended that St. Paul did the same. Is it not, however, more natural to suppose that they only adopted expressions already in use, in order to convey intelligibly to the world their doctrine of the Person of Christ ? The term €Ikq)v Seov, we must remember, was familiar to the Jews from its occurrence in the book of Wisdom.^ The term \6yo ... . ^ the thought. It allies itself with material substance, is incarnate, as it were, in order to convey its essence un- \ changed into the inner being of another.^ And the Greek ' Liddon, ' Bampton Lectures,' p. 100. Alford, 'Prolegomena to St. Johns Gospel.' ^ q^i i 15 ^ I give the passage in the original. " arf^U yap ian rijs rod &€ov SvvdjJL^ws, Kal aiToppoia ttjs tov iravroKparopos So'lr/s clXiKpiv^s airavyacTfJia yap iari (puTOS aiSiov, Kal eaoirrpov aKTjXiSurov ttjs tov 0eoS eVep7fias, Kal (Ikwu rrjs aya66Tr]Tos avTov." This passage had much influence on the expressions the writers of the New Testament applied to Christ. * St. Matt. xi. 27. St. Luke x. 22. St. John i. 18 ; xiv. 9. * " Just as, when we speak in order that what we carry in our minds should glide into the mind of the hearer by his fleshly ears, the word 36 The Doctrinal System of St. John, word has yet another, and equally applicable meaning.^ A0709 is the reason to be rendered of anything which requires explanation, the unfolding of its true nature and meaning to him who knows it not. It was in all respects, therefore, the most suitable word which could be found in the Greek language to express Christ's nature and mission. Consecrated as it had been to such purposes by its use in the Old Testament, familiar as it had become to more modern thought by the learned and acute exegesis of Philo, it was no wonder that St. John, writing at a time when the learned world at large was beginning to inquire curiously concerning Christianity, should adopt it as the expression best adapted to convey his doctrine concerning Christ. There were passages in the Old Testament in which the Word of the Lord had been spoken of prophetically, much as St. John speaks of Him. " By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth. "^ God sent His Word to which we bear in our hearts becomes a sound and is called speech, while yet our thought is not converted into the sound, but remaining perfect in itself takes the form of a voice, whereby it finds its way through the ears without any spot of change, so the Word of God, though unchanged, yet is made flesh, that He may dwell in us." — St. Aug. * De Doctr. Christ.' i. 13. * See Alford in loc. Cremer's Lexicon, s. v. \6yos. The second meaning here assigned to \6yos is not to be found in the New Testa- ment. It may, however, be questioned whether 1 Pet. iii. 15 is wrongly rendered in the Authorised Version. 2 Ps. xxxiii. 6. Cf. St. John i. 3, 10. The personification is not necessarily contained in the passage, but was deduced from it even before the coming of Christ. See Wisdom vii. 25, as quoted above. We must remember that the word translated "breath" is also often rendered " spirit.' And if we can, consistently with orthodoxy, say of Christ &ehs e/c 0eoD, and (pws e/c ^ciros, we may surely also sa iTVivim iK irvfvfiaros. Doctrine of the Logos Sf the Person of Christ, 37 them who were " in darkness and in the shadow of death," "in distress," "fast bound in misery and iron," "afflicted because of their transgression," "and they were healed, saved from their destruction."^ The Psalmist asks for life " according to Thy Word."^ Jesus says, " I am come that they might have life."^ The Word of God is " set for ever in heaven," says the Psalmist* A similar prerogative is claimed by St. John for the Son, who is the Word.^ The Word is a light to the feet of men.® Christ declares Himself to be the Light of the world. '^ Christ is, moreoyer, the Truth ; and the Psalm- ist declares truth to be, as it were, the chief charac- teristic of the Word.^ " My Word," says the prophet Isaiah, " which goeth out from My mouth, shall not return to Me empty, but doeth that in which I have delight, and prospereth in that for which I send it."^ Must not this passage, coming as it does in the midst of a prophecy which speaks of pardon and deliverance, of . support and help, have suggested to the mind of the Evangelist one who came forth from God,^*' who always did what was pleasing to Him,^^ through whom alone forgiveness was to be obtained, and who describes Himself as the living water, which should assuage men's thirst, the food and support of their souls ?^^ And, ^ Ps. cvii. 10, 14, 17, 20. " We detect in such passages the first glimmering of St. John's doctrine of the agency of the personal Word." — Perowne on Psalm cvii. Cf. St. John i. 5 ; iii. 18. 2 Ps. cxix. 25. 3 gt joiin x. 10. * Ps. cxix. 89. 5 St. John iii. 13. « Ps. cxix. 105. ^ St. John viii. 12. « nr?i< '?i-in'n-jj^Nh. Ps. cxix. i60. 9 Is.' Iv. 11.' ' "> St. John xvi. 28. " TO dpeo-Tct ahr(^. lb. viii. 29. Cf. a distinct quotation in Ignatius, Ep. to Magnesians, c. 8. " "Who in all things did what was pleasing to Him who sent Him." '2 Cf. Is. Iv. 1. " Ho, every one that thirsteth," &c. 38 The Doctrinal System of St. John. when we add to this the well-known fact that the Chaldee Paraphrasts, like Philo, almost personified the Word of Grod, and transferred to Him in many passages the act of creation, which the original Hebrew assigns to God the Father,^ we cannot be surprised that St. John should have seen in the word Logos the means of express- ing precisely what he wished to convey to mankind as the true doctrine of the Person and nature of Christ. It may not be desirable to insist on the point, but it is equally undesirable to pass by entirely without notice the fact that there are passages in Holy Scripture which seem to show that St. John's use of the word Logos had at least some foreshadowings in the writ- ings of the other Apostles. It is for those who doubt the authenticity of the fourth Gospel, but who assign the Apocalypse to the Apostle St. John, to explain the significant fact that the name of Him who was " called faithful and true ;" on whose "head were many crowns ;" who was " clothed in a vesture dipped in blood ;" on whose *'' vesture and on whose thigh was written King of kings and Lord of lords," is declared by " the some- what narrow-minded and unphilosophical Judseo-Chris- tian "^ to be the Word of God. It is for them to explain how he became familiar with the terminology of the Alexandrian schools. But passing by this, we have the notion of the Chaldee Paraphrast distinctly re- produced in Heb. xi. 3, and 2 Pet. iii. 5. To the Logos is there ascribed the work of the creation ^ Liddon, 'Bampton Lectures.' Pearson, 'On the Creed/ art. ii. " His only Son, note.'* 2 Rev. xix. 11-16. See DaYidson, on the Revelation of St. John, m hia'Intr. toN. T,' Doctrine of the Logos ideaad/xeda . . . irepl rov \6yov. ' Acts XX. 32. s 40 The Doctrinal System of St. John. the work of regeneration as being effected through a seed of life, not corruptible, but incorruptible, and explains that seed to be the living and ever-abiding Word of God.^ We have therefore some reason for supposing that the expression by which St. John has thought fit to designate the Saviour is not so foreign to the current of thought in the other books of the New Testament as some recent critics would lead us to imagine. We may even assert that, in applying this designation to Christ, he was only falling in with the spirit of tra- ditional and contemporary thought.^ His fellow-work- ers had paved the way, perhaps with hesitating steps ; the *' boldness with fervent zeal " of the Son of Thun- der, whose fiery and decided character we are apt to forget when we find him dwelling so exclusively on love, stamped the expression for ever on the theology of the Christian Church. We next proceed to inquire what were the attributes of the Logos, as taught by St. John ; what, in fact, was his doctrine of the Person of Christ. He presents to us a Being having an absolutely unique relation to the Author of all existence. Not only does the Logos issue forth from the fountain of all life ; not only is His gaze for ever directed towards the face of the Everlasting Father,^ but He is Himself actually God. St. John does not, with Philo, represent Him as a ' 1 Pet. i. 23. Cf. V. 3, avayewfja-as ■^/aSs . . . Si avacrrdaews 'ItjctoD XpKTTov €K veKpwv. Ses Llddoii, ' Bampton Lectures,' Lect. vi. 2 The Targum of Jonathan Ben Uzziel is supposed by some to have been written about the time of our Lord. See Kitto, ' Biblical Cyclopaedia,' s. v. Targum. 3 irphs Thu 0eoV. Liddon, ' Bampton Lectures,' Lect. v. p. 342. Doctrine of the Logos (|' the Person of Christ. , 41 hevrepo^ 0eo9, lior, with the Arians, does he represent Him as a being possessing indeed the name of God, but destitute of the most necessary of His attributes, the possession of His essence. " 0eo9 r)v 6 A670?," says the Evangelist, and we have the testimony of an un- prejudiced witness that the doctrine of the Church is a true interpretation of his words.^ Existent from all eternity in the bosom of the Father,^ He yet has a separate personal existence. It is true that this ex- istence is declared by Him to be derived from His Father. He is the only-begotten Son.^ He acknow- ledges God to be His Father as well as ours, His God as well as ours.* " I came forth from the Father," He says.^ He represents Himself as sent by the Father.® His name, the symbol of His power. His greatness, even of His very existence,' must be referred to the Father as having been received from Him.^ He even admits the priority of the Father in the much control verted words, " My Father is greater than I."^ And in conformity with this, He ascribes the life inherent in Him, the powers He possesses, the authority He wields. ^ Meyer, cited by Liddon, ' Bampton Lectures.' " John, by omitting the article before 0eos, would signify an essence not inferior to that which God Himself possesses." 2 St. John i. 18, also eV a.pxfi chap. i. 1 ; cf. viii. 58 ; xvii. 5, 24. 3 lb. i. 14, 18 ; iii. 16, 18. ' '^ lb. xx. 17. ^ lb. xvi. 27. 6 lb. iv. 34 ; v. 28, 24, 30, 37, 38 ; vi. 39, 44, &c. ^ So the commentators in general explain the word. * iv T(j3 ovofiaTL (Tov, I SeSw/cas /xoi, according to the best supported reading in St. John xvii. 11. * lb. xiv. 28. Some commentators (see Liddon, ' Bampton Lectures,' p. 300) refer these words to the human nature of Christ. The earliest of these is Ignatius, who (Ep. to Magnesians, chap. 13) says that " Christ was subject to the Father according to the flesh" 42 The Doctrinal System of St. John, to His Father as their giver.^ Yet, in spite of all this, He does not hesitate to place Himself on an equality with the Father.^ His language is understood by the Jews to imply such a claim, and He does not dispute their interpretation of it.^ He asserts continually that the Father is in Him, and He in the Father.* While yet on earth, He speaks of Himself as existing in heaven.^ Though derived fiom the Father, His ex- istence is not dependent on the arbitrary will of another ; the Father has communicated to Him the prerogative of self-existence.® In Him was life, says the Apostle,' and from Him was life communicated anew to lost mankind.^ He is full of grace and truth f and more than this. He is the Truth itself.^" He only has seen the Father, and whosoever has seen Him hath seen the Father also.^^ It is by these intimate relations with His Father that He possesses the Divine energy which enables Him to control the powers of nature, the laws of disease, and even of life and death. Thus it is that He declares that all power is given to Him,^^ » St. John V. 26, also 19, 20, 22, 27; xvii. 2. ^ 6 Hhv irapa tov Qeov. 3 St. John V. 18 ; x. 33. * lb. x. 38 ; xiv. 9, 10, 20 ; xvii. 21, 23. ' lb. iii. 13. « lb. V. 26. • St. John i. 4. « Chap. iii. » St. John i. 14. '** lb. xiv. 6. M. Reville (' Rovue des Deux Mondes,' p. 95) remarks that while in the Synoptists Christ is said only to preach the truth, in St. John He is Himself the truth. But St. John also represents Christ as preaching the truth (chap. viii. 40, 45). Either then St. John's Gospel is irreconcilably at variance with itself, and was written by different persons, at different times, or this kind of criticism is not very conclusive. " St. John vi. 46 ; x. 15 ; xiv. 9. »2 lb. iii. 35; xiii. 3; ''.2. Cf. St. Matt, xxviii. 18. The first cited passage perhaps gives the words of the Bapti Doctrine of the Logos cj* the Person of Christ, 43 that He quickeneth whom He will.^ And it is also in consequence of this Divine character that He alone can venture to present Hims^elf to us as an example which His disciples would do well to copy,^ and to challenge the Jews to find a single blemish in His character,^ sayings which under all other circumstances would be the height of presumption and folly. On the other hand, we have the strange paradox set before us, that He who claims for Himself these high prerogatives is nevertheless represented as a human being, possessing His full share of the ordinary weak- nesses of humanity.^ He eats and drinks with His disciples before and after His resurrection.^ He is tired with a journey;^ more than once troubled in spirit,^ and this to an extent which causes Him to shed tears.^ He enters into the peculiarly human relation of friendship. " The disciple whom Jesus » St. John V. 22, 25. « lb. xiii. 15. » lb. viii. 46. * " At first Christ presented Himself as a weak mortal, although conscious of possessing a Divine nature and dignify, partaking of all those evils which aifect human nature in connection with sin, and as the punishment of sin, so that in His outward appearance he placed Himself entirely on a level with men suffering on account of sin." — Neand. ' Planting and Training,' i. 447 (Bohn's Ed.). " Surely that Mediator between God and man was truly man. as we are men. Who when He fasted was an hungred, when he travelled was thirsty and weary as we are ; Who being grieved wept, being in an agony sweat, being scourged bled, and being crucified died.'' — Pearson, ' On the Creed,' Art. iv. Sufiered. Cf. Iren. ' Contr. Heer." book iii. cap. xxii. 2, which seems to have suggested the above eloquent passage. Cf. also Keim, ' History of Jesus of Nazareth,' p. 150 (Clark's Tr.). * St. John il. 1 ; xiii. 2 ; xxi. 12. « lb. iv. 6. ^ lb. xi. 33. M. Reville asserts that the Christ of St. John is haunted by "no dark presentiments." Surely he must have forgotten " now is My soul troubled " in St. John xii. 27, and the trouble in spirit recorded in xiii. 21. * lb. xi. 35. 44 The Doctrinal System of St. John. loved," is an expression which has passed into a proverb. Scarcely less remarkable is the affection He entertained for Martha and Mary and Lazarus/ When dying on the Cross, He complains of thirst. Nor does He, even in that hour of supreme solemnity when He is consummating the sacrifice of propitiation upon the Cross, consider Himself free from the claims of filial duty. " Woman, behold thy son," is an excla- mation which, uttered at such a moment, places beyond a doubt that the Gospel which sets forth most strongly the Divinity of Christ was also penetrated with the most clear apprehension of His humanity. The Epistle of St. John, considered by many as little else than a preface to the Gospel,^ and so obviously by the same hand that the fact needs no demonstration,^ sets forth the same doctrine concerning Christ. He is the " Word of life."* Through Him, it is hinted, is the light in which God dwelleth revealed to man.^ He manifested to us the life which was with the Father.^ He is the only-begotten of the Father,^ to deny whom is to deny the Father.^ With Him the source of truth, the truth itself, is identified even while it is distinguished.^ The words " which of you convinceth Me of sin ?" have evidently sunk deeply into ^ St. John xi. 5. It is noteworthy how thoroughly St. Luke's por- traiture of the sisters of Bethany corresponds to that of St. John. 2 See Ebrard and Hug on this point. ^ Dr. Davidson, however, after citing an extraordinary number of parallel passages occurring in the Gospel and Epistle ascribed to St. John, dismisses tlie argument from them as inconclusive, because in an Epistle of five chapters some of the distinctive doctrines of the Gospel are not introduced. *lJohni. 1. 5ibi, sjii. 8. « lb. i. 2. ' lb. iv. 9. 8 lb. ii. 22. 23. » lb. v. 20. Doctrine of the Logos Sf the Person of Christ. 45 the Apostle's mind.^ But notwithstanding this, His true humanity is no less plainly indicated. He is sent by God.^ He is '* come in the flesh."^ He was looked upon, handled, as a man among men.* So that the view of Christ which is presented to us corresponds in substance, and even in form, with the teaching of the Gospel concerning His Person. In the Apocalypse the doctrine which is presented to us is substantially the same, though from the nature of the case the form is different. Jesus Christ is now glorified in heaven. But it is no mere apotheosis of humanity tliat meets us there. Not only is Christ spoken of as the Word of God, but He is the source of all blessing,^ the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last,^ He who lives unto all eternity, and death and Hades are subject to His power. '^ To Hira, as to His Father, the worship is paid which inferior beings decline f and He is constantly associated with the Father in His authority and greatness.^ His it is to give or to withhold the gifts of which He speaks in His message to the churches. He is King of kings and Lord of lords.^° Yet His humanity is no less clearly af- firmed. He is the first begotten from the dead.^^ He overcame and was exalted, even as His followers will be.^^ He is the Lamb as it had been slain, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David.^^ He is the man- child of the woman who represents in a figure the identity of the two dispensations, the Church of the » 1 John iii. fi, 7. ^ n, jy, 14^ 3 i^ ^^ 2. " lb. i. 2. 5 Kev. i. 4, 5. « lb. v. 8. ' lb. vv. 17, 18. 8 lb. V. 8-14 ; vii. 10. » lb. xx. 6 ; xxi. 22 ; xxii. 3. '0 lb. xvii. 14 ; xix. 16. " lb. i. 5. 12 j^ jij 2I. '3 lb. V. 5, 6 ; xxii. 16. 46 The Doctrinal System of St. John. law and the Church of the Gospel ; and it is thus, as the type of all humanity, that He is caught up to God and to His throne.^ This is the teaching, be it remarked, of a book which is firmly believed by many to display all the features of Jewish Christianity, and to belong to the period when all attempts at an apotheosis of the Messiah were as yet unknown. It is strange, if this be the case., that it should reflect so accurately the spirit of the Gospel which bears the name of St. John. We will next review the contents of the Synoptic Gospels. The humanitarian character of these narra- tives is not denied by any one ; it may therefore be sufficient to remark in passing that the character of our Lord's humanity as portrayed in them is precisely identical with its character as depicted by St. John. The same absolute freedom from sin, the same liability to the infirmities as distinguished from the corruptions of our nature, the affection of tears,^ the capacity for personal and filial affection,^ appear in the Synoptic Gospels as a matter of course. But let it be observed that these purely human traits of the character of Jesus are more marked in the Gospel which is supposed to be peculiarly the Gospel of an apotheosis, than in the Gospels which are said to negative the idea of a Divinity in Christ. This one fact alone affords a strong argu- ment against the later origin of the Gospel of St. John, against the possibility of its being an attempt to give substance and authority to the teaching of those who had come by degrees to regard Jesus as a Divine Being. But if we examine the Synoptic Gospels care- 1 Rev. xii. 5. ^ Luke xix. 41. 3 Mark x. 21 ; Luke ii. 51. Doctrine of the Logos (Sf the Person of Christ, 47 fully, we shall see that not only is the Christology of St. John not inconsistent with theirs, but that the truth of St. John's doctrine is the very ground- work of their narrative.^ While the subordination of Christ to the Father is declared in language which harmonises with that of St. John,^ His equality, if not expressly asserted, is at least im- plied.^ The most cursory examination will show this. He spake as never man spake, and claimed an authority which none but He had ever ventured to assume. An acute writer has lately remarked that there is this essential diiference between Christ and every other great teacher who has attracted the atten- tion of mankind. Other teachers directed their hearers to their doctrines, and not to their person : Christ directed His hearers to His Person, and to His doc- trines only as emanating from Himself.* " He spake with authority and not as the scribes,"^ we are told. " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away," He declared in His first public ' " If we try to regard the objective facts from a subjective point of view, we find in St. John only the completion of the Synoptic narra- tives. Extraordinary and gifted individuals are frequently susceptible of this treatment, and seem different individuals when regarded from different points of view. The Synoptists present the external and national side of the life of Jesus, rather than its deeper side, that in which it must have presented itself to the consciousness of original Christianity." (Grimm on the 'Trustworthiness of the Evangelic -Narratives,' p. 66.) The author of 'Ecce Homo' has referred to a singular confirmation of this view in the case of Socrates as portrayed by Plato and Xenophon. 2 "My Father is greater than I," St. John xiv. 28. ''Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father," St. Mark xiii. 32. ' Liddon, 'Bampton Lectures,' Lect. viii. p. 687, seq. * ' Ecce Homo,' chap. ix. p. 94. * Matt. vii. 29. 48 The Doctrinal System of St. John. discourse. The whole subject matter of that discourse is characteristic. He does not reason, He does not persuade, He asserts. There is no attempt to search for truth ; there is a tacit assumption of an inherent right to proclaim it. So, throughout the three first Gospels, we see Christ directing attention to Himself, in a way which, from a purely humanitarian point of view, would be unwarrantable assumption, if not blas- phemy or insanity, and would certainly be fatal to any attempt to set Him up as a perfect human being. "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of MeJ' is His invitation to His disciples, — words involving a claim which would have seemed to us presumptuous in Socrates, which becomes simply ludicrous in Auguste Comte, but which on the hypo- thesis of St. John's Gospel, and on it alone, are perfectly intelligible in Jesus Christ. But He is not content with thus directing attention to Himself. In this very first Sermon He indirectly proclaims His own Divinity.^ By His own inherent authority He puts aside the precepts of the law — that law which, though " ordained by angels at the hand of a mediator," was understood from the first to have come from God. *' It was said to them of old time .... but I say unto ^ " What prophet ever set himself above the great Legislator, above the law written by the finger of God on Sinai ? What prophet ever undertook to ratify the Pentateuch as a whole, to contrast his own higher morality with some of its precepts in detail, to imply even remotely that he was competent to revise that which every Israelite knew to be the handiwork of God? What prophet ever thus implicitly placed himself on a line of equality, not with Moses, not with Abraliam, but with the Lord God Himself?" — Liddon, 'Bampton Lectures,* p. 252. Doctrine of the Logos There are whole Epistles of St. Paul, from which, as the Divinity of Christ is nowhere stated, it can only be inferred. This makes the absence of any direct statement in St. Peter's Epistles the less sig- nificant. * "T^® Bishop of Lincoln. Doctrine of the Logos (^- the Person of Christ. 61 spoken of here. Moreover, St. Paul is giving advice to Timothy how to conduct himself in God's habitatioD, which is also the pillar and foundation of the truth. It is in regard to this observation incidentally intro- duced, that St. Paul, as his manner is, turns aside to explain how it is that the Church merits this higli appellation. The relations of Christ and His Church are, he says, a great mystery, as he had already stated in a former Epistle.^ But the reason why the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth is because it is the Church of the living God, of Him who, having been manifest in flesh, declared righteous in spirit, seen by angels, and believed on in the world, was now received up to heaven in glory. Through the inhabi- tation of this Divine Eedeemer it is that the Church is able to bear witness to and to support the empire of truth in the world. But we are not obliged to depend on this passage alone. Christ is the eUoiv %6ov^^ by whom all things in heaven and earth are made.^ He is the aTravyao-fjua, the beaming forth of the Father's glory, the revelation of His Light to those who were outside its influence.* ^ Eph. V. 32. It is impossible to avoid noticing the recurrence here of a similar expression on a similar subject. ^ 2 Cor. iv. 4. Col. i. 15. 3 1 Cor. viii. 6. Eph. iii. 9, though most of the best MSS. omit iv XP'<'"^^ 'Itjo-oD, Col. i. 16. Heb. i. 2, 10; xi. 3. The word in the last passage is f>i]^ia. * Heb. i. 3. I cite the Epistle to the Hebrews among the writings of St. Paul, because the most strenuous opponent of its Pauline authorship will not deny that it represents the Pauline school of thought, and because the more I study it, the more I feel that the points of connection are significant, while the divergencies are no greater than may be expected between a letter written currente calamo, and a formal treatise written with deliberation and care. Moreover, if St. Paul did not write it, 1 fail to see who could have done so. 62 The Doctrinal System of St. John, Far above angels, and principalities, and powers, soars His unapproachable Majesty,^ insomuch that the Father addresses Him as God.^ Again, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God,^ though, as St. John tells us, there were those who did think it such.* St. Paul adds that He was " in the form of God ;" an expression which is rendered more distinct by the sub- sequent statement that He took the form of a servant. His unchangeableness is demonstrated by the statement that yesterday, to-day, and for ever He is the same.^ All things are put under Him, says the Apostle :® re- calling the declaration in St. John's GospeP that all thino^s were «:iven into the Saviour's hands. He is the Lord from heaven.^ God was in Him, reconciling the world unto Himself:^ a passage which seems to throw some light on the interpretation of 1 Tim. iii. 16. But yet His power, His very being was derived. God was His Father as well as ours ;'^° nay, even His God as well as ours." Christ was His,^^ and drew His Life from Him as His Head, or source ;^^ He was sent by the Father.^* 1 Heb. i. 4-7. ' Heb. i. 8. 3 Phil. ii. 6. This seems on the whole the best interpretation of the passage. * St. John v. 18 ; x. 33. 5 Heb. xiii. 8. ^ 1 Cor. xv. 27. Heb. ii. 8. ^ By the Baptist, in chap. iii. 35 ; by Christ Himself, in xvii. 2, and by the Apo.-tle, in xiii. 3. ^ 1 Cor. XV. 47. Kvpios is however omitted in many of the best MSS. and versions, though it is found as early as TertuUian. Alford says that TertuUian ascribed its insertion to INIarcion, but he does not appear to have done so. His language is not quite clear, but he appears to have read Kvpios. — ' Adv. Marc' v. 10. 9 2 Cor. V. 19. '" Rom. xv. 6, &c. " Eph. i. 17. 12 1 Cor. iii. 23. Cf. Eev. xi. 15 and Ps. ii. 2. '» 1 Cor. xi. 3. 1* Gal. IV. 4. It is remarkable that this phrase, so common in St. John, should be confirmed by one passage only in St. Paul. Cf. however St. Matt. xxi. 37. St. Mark xii. 4. Doctrine of the Logos ^* the Person of Christ, 63 He became to us, from the Father, Wisdom, and Kighteousness and Sanctification, and Redemption.^ He is described as God's Power and God's Wisdom to those who are called.^ On the other hand, affirmations of His true humanity are not wanting. He is the second man.^ He " took upon Himself the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man."* He is " the Man Christ Jesus."^ He is of the' seed of David,® of Abraham.' In the days of His flesh He offered His supplication with strong crying and tears unto Him who was able to save Him from death." ^ He was " made a little lower than the angels on account of the suffering of death." ^ His death is referred to so frequently as to make reference unnecessary. Thus we see the same paradox with reference to His Nature affirmed by St. Paul and his school as is to be found in St. John.^^ The highest attributes of Divinity are held to be compatible with a kind of subordination, with the assumption of humanity, with humiliation, suf- fering, and even death. Now it is necessary to remember that here again, as on the question of the Nature of God, agreement was, a priori, by no means to be expected. The doctrines of » 1 Cor. i. 30. 2 xb. i. 24. ' lb. xv. 47. * Phil. ii. 7. 5 1 Tim. ii. 5. « 2 Tim. ii. 8. ' Gal. iii. 16. » Heb. v. 7. " lb. ii. 9. 10 " Paul and John, for the purpose of designating the indwelling Divinity of the Eedeemer, employed the idea already formed among the Jewish theologians of a mediating Divine principle of revelation, through which the whole creation is connected with the hidden in- conceivable essence of God." — Neander, 'Planting and Training,' i. 504. " Thus, too, the doctrine of the Son of God as the Son of Man, in the sense of John and Paul, was not a mere isolated element acci- dentally mingled with Christianity, but is closely connected with the whole nature of its doctrine and morals." — lb, p. 507. 64 The Doctrinal System of St. John, the relation of Christ to the Father, of the two natures united in one Person, are not at all easy to be appre- hended. Gnostics, Monarchians, Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, alike misconceived the teaching of Scrip- ture on this point. Several of the Ante-Nicene fathers, and even the great Origen himself, are charged with making use of loose and inaccurate expressions upon these high mysteries. Marcellus of Ancyra could not defend orthodoxy against the Arians without fall- ing into Sabellianism.^ But St. Paul and St. John are in exact accord. In spite of all diversities of disposition and of style, they agree in representing Christ to be Cod, and to be Man; and not only this, but they both hold similar language on the far more subtle question of the relation of Christ as God to His Father.^ They both believe that the Father is the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,^ the fount of all being, human, angelic or divine ; while at the same time they maintain tlie essential equality of the Father and the Son. We do not at present inquire which writer re- presents the earlier form of Christian doctrine. We are content with affirming that, so far as our investi- gation has yet proceeded, the fourth Gospel, instead of being at variance, is in perfect harmony with the other books of the New Testament, and that this harmony is closest and most remarkable in the case of the Epistles of St. Paul. ' Neander, ' History of the Christian Church,' iv. 51 ; Gibbon, ' De- cline and Fail,' iii. 58 (Milman's Ed.). * See above, pp. 22, 29. ^ And so does St. Peter. See 1 Pet. i. 3. ( 65 ) CHAPTEK III. DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION. One of the most remarkable characteristics of modern theology is the feeble hold, which it has had upon the practical results flowing from the Incarnation of Christ. Most of us can remember the time when the good news of Christmas was explained to consist in this, that Christ came into the world in order that He might die upon the Cross for our sins ; and some, like the writer of this Essay in his early youth, may have wondered why the simple initiation of a purpose hereafter to be fulfilled should have been heralded by such rejoicings among the angels above, or celebrated with such tokens of gladness by the Church below. Much of this lack of a due appreciation of the nature and benefits of Christ's Incarnation must be ascribed to the exclusive preaching of the Sacrifice of Propitiation on the Cross ^ by one particular school among us. The effect of this preaching has not been confined to that school, but has been felt among those who, on many points, were most strongly opposed to it. But perhaps we may go further back still. .We may doubt whether the absence * I avoid the use of the term Atonement, inasmuch as I conceive it to have been effected by Christ's work as a whole, and not by any one act or part of it. F 66 The Doctrinal System of St. John. of a critical study of the New Testament, in the ori- ginal tongue, among the theologians of the Latin Church, has not led to some indefiniteness in regard to the true doctrine of tlie Incarnation. Even in St. Augustine himself we may detect the first germs of a disposition to substitute a certain theological con- ception called grace for the action of the Holy Spirit, and this disposition has been intensified among his successors.^ Nor did the Eeformation do much to correct this tendency. It is only in our own times, when the study of the New Testament in the original has become universal among the clergy, and when a general study of the Greek Fathers has been added to that of the traditional Latin authorities, that a firmer grasp of Christian doctrine has begun to reward the labours of the student. And thus we are escaping from the endless controversies about faith and works, predestination and free-will, nature and grace, justifica- tion and its processes, which disturbed our forefathers, into a region which affords a wider range of view — a region where the believer is lost in the contemplation of a fountain not only of pardon but of life, flo\Aing into the heart of every Christian, from the Father as its source, by the Son as its enabling poAver, through the Spirit as the active and efficient operating cause. • See Appendix I. St. Cyril of Alexandria, as his commentary on St. John when compared with otliers (e.g. that of St. Chrysostom) shows, has far surpassed liis Greek brethren in liis hold on the prin- ciples of the Incarnation, as they did the Latins. Perhaps in no English divine, till our own time, is the influence of Greek theology on this point more marked than in Bisliop Andrewes. It is remark- able, moreover, how little the Pelagian heresy affected the East, and it is not enough to explain this fact, as is frequently done, by the practical nature of the question. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 67 This doctrine is to be found in all its completeness in St. John. As the course of our inquiry will, however, show us, it is not confined to his pages. It is insisted upon with equal earnestness by St. Paul, and it is expressed or implied with more or less clearness in all the other books of the New Testament. The argument for the genuineness of the fourth Gospel which may thus be adduced derives additional force from the fact that in later times, at least in the West, this doctrine has in some measure been neglected. We proceed to examine the teaching of the New Testament upon this head, remembering that the more complex in detail it appears to be in each separate book, the more power- fully must we be led to seek a common origin for their contents solely in the oral teaching of Jesus Christ. We will commence with St. John's anthropology, as it has been termed. We are not in a position to esti- mate properly his doctrine of the Incarnation, until we understand his views of the condition of man previous to the Saviour's coming. It happens that St. John is unusually distinct on this point. He frequently de- scribes the condition of man before he possessed the enabling power of the Light of Life. Man was then in darkness.^ Even when Christ had come man did not always obtain the blessings He came to give.^ Nay, there were many Avho preferred darkness to light ;^ in; whose hearts there still remained that alienation from I all that was good which stirred them up to resist Christ's/ teaching,* and to vex and persecute His followers.^ This state of mind St. John denotes by the word ' St. John i. 5. • lb. i. 5, 10, 11. ' lb. iii. 19, 20, 21. * lb. xii. 37, 40. * lb. xv. 19 ; xvii. 14, 16. 68 The Doctrinal System of St, John. a-dp^} and it is placed in the sharpest antagonism to that possession of an inner life, breathed into the heart by Divine influence, which is denominated by the word nrvevixa? From this condition of alienation from God man cannot deliver himself: he needs an intervention from above to rescue him from the empire of darkness. This was the work the Son of God came to do. If man lay in darkness, Christ came to give him light. If his life was little better than a living death, Christ came to breathe into his nostrils yet again, and more effectually, that breath of God through which man first became a living soul, and through which now he became a quickened spirit.^ Life and Light are the ever-recurring theme of the Gospel we are now con- sidering. " In Him was life, and the life was the light of men," says the author, of Christ, at the outset. And to establish this innumerable declarations of Christ Himself are cited. He came that men might have Life f He came to give Life to His sheep.^ He quick- eneth whom He will.^ Nay, He is Himself the Life.' Life and Light Avould seem to be almost interchange- able words in this Gospel. We have just quoted the words of the prologue. Similar declarations are at- tributed to our Lord in the course of this narrative. " He that followeth Me shall have the light of life,"« are His words. He repeats over and over again the expression " 1 am the light of the world ,"^ and by the connection of this idea with that of Life He would seem • St. John iii. 6. Compare viii. 15. ^ i\y \ 13. jij 5 3 I have borrowed St. Paul's language to express what is found again and again in St. John's pages. * St. John x. 10. * lb. X. 28. « lb. V. 21. ' lb. xi. 25 ; xiv. 6. « lb. viii. 12. 9 lb. viii. 12; ix. 5 ; xii. 35, 36, 46. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 69 to imply something more than mere intellectual illu- mination, something which entirely changes the current | of man's being, just as the sun, when it revisits, after a long absence, the portions of our earth which lie near the poles, causes all organic creation to quicken into activity. A similar idea seems to be contained in the word TTvevfia as used in this Gospel. A breath from God, which comes by Jesus Christ,^ is imparted to man to inspire him with new life. On entering into the kingdom of God. he is born anew by this Divine in- fluence from above,^ and his whole nature as w^ell as relation to God is changed.^ From adp^ he becomes TTveu/jia ; flesh is revivified by the breath of God, and that reviving influence is compared to that of fresh, : living water upon an exhausted frame.* This doctrine of the mighty change wrought in man by the Spirit is a first principle of Christ's kingdom, and as such it was revealed to Nicodemus, one of the earliest inquirers concerning the nature of that kingdom. Every one who sought an entrance into it must first of all come under that influence of the Spirit which was called the new generation or birth ,^ a process which is elsewhere declared to have originated not in any human influence whether of natural gene- ration, of the will of the individual himself, or of any other human being, but solely and simply in the will of God.^ We shall examine more closely the doctrine of this Gospel concerning the Spirit of God in another chapter. Suffice it to say here that He » St. John XV. 26. 2 lb. iii. 5. ' lb. iii. 6, 7, 8. * lb. iv. 14 ; vii. 38, 39. ' lb. iii. 3. « lb. i. 13. 70 The Doctrinal System of St. John. is represented as the Personal Being who carries into effect the purposes of God in Jesus Christ.^ In an inferior degree, again, even the words of Christ, being in a sense the breath of God, are endued with a kind of Divine vitality.^ And here we come into contact with another statement of the mode in which this Divine vitality becomes operative in the soul. These words, which are Spirit and Life, con- tain the revelation of the truth that it is the Flesh and Blood, the human nature of Christ, which is the means of giving life to the world.^ That is to say, humanity in general was to be restored by the humanity of Christ.* This was to be inwrought in man by a spiritual communication, analogous in its effects to those of eating and drinking in the natural man. The same truth is taught in another form in eh. XV. Here Christ is the Vine, and His disciples tlie branches. A constant stream of Life flows from Him- self to them, or rather He is identified with them by reason of the mutual possession of a common life which ib not really theirs but His. And in that mysterious seven- teenth chapter, which however imperfectly apprehended, » St. John XV. 26 ; xvi. 13. * Ib. vi. 63. Cf. Hengstenberg in loc. ^ lb. vi. 51-58. * " I wish to impart to you this grace, ministering the full benefit, namely, incorruption ; and I grant to you the knowledge of God, my perfect self. This am I : this God desires : this is symphony : this ia the harmony of the Father : this is Christ : this the Word of God, the Arm of the Lord, the power of all things, the Will of the Father. ... I desire to bring you into conformity with the archetype that ye may be like Me. I will anoint you with the ointment of faith, by which ye may cast off corruption, and I show you the naked form of righteousness by which ye may ascend to God." The Saviour is represented as speaking thus in Clem. Alex. ' Cohortatio ad Grsecos,* cap. 12. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 71 has ever been a source of untold comfort to Christians, / the mystical union between Christ and His followers is traced to a deeper source still. It takes its rise in the unity of the Godliead itself. There is as close and as personal an union between Christ and the believer who has attained to his perfection as between the Persons in the Sacred Trinity itself. Jesus prays that " all may be One; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us." " I in them, and thou in Me, that they all may be made perfect unto One." The Epistle of St. John is. full of the same teaching. The mutual indwelling of God and man is asserted and reasserted no less explicitly than in the Gospel.^ Christians " walk in the light," because *' the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."^ They are born of God, and the result of the completion of that birth is freedom from sin.^ Eternal Life, which was with the Father, was manifested to the disciples of Christ.* The token whereby they may discern the indwelling of God is the possession of His Spirit.^ If what they have heard from the beginning abide in them, they shall continue not only in the Son, but in the Father.^ One passage, indeed, may be taken as summing up the Johannean doctrine on this head : " This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of Go(^ hath not life."^ j ' 1 John iii. 24 ; iv. 12, 15, 16. * lb. i. 7 ; ii. 8. 3 lb. iii. 9; v, 18. The force of the perfect participle would seem to be that given above. ♦ lb. i. 2. 5 lb. iii. 24. « lb. ii. 24. ' lb, V. 11, 12. Cf. Iren. ' Adv. H»r.,' book iv. 20, 4. " By Him 72 The Doctrinal System of St, John. We have seen that the life inherent in Jesus Christ, God and Man, is, according to the theology of the fourth Gospel, communicated to mankind by the agency of the Divine Spirit. We have next to in- quire whether any subsidiary agencies are employed in the work, and if so, what is their nature. We have at the outset of the fourth Gospel an intimation that the communication of Divine life was in some way associated with the employment of a certain external ordinance. Man is not to be born of the Spirit alone, but of water also. It would seem tolerably clear that here we have a reference to the Sacrament of Baptism, which it is admitted on all hands was instituted by Christ. The close connection of the words " water and the Spirit " in the original, to which it is impossible to do justice in a translation, would appear to point to baptism as the ordinary means whereby the gift of the new birth was conveyed. And the manner in which Christ's Passion and Ascension are dwelt upon in connection with this idea^ would lead us to ascribe the blessing of regenera- tion, not to this or that portion of the Kedeemer's work, but to His career as a whole. By His Life the Father's justice was satisfied by a perfect obedience.^ By His Death a propitiation was made for the sins of the whole world.^ By His Eesurrection the power of triumphing over death was conveyed.* His Ascension was, for some unexplained reason, necessary before the Spirit could was effected a commingling and communion between God and man according to the pleasure of the Father .... making us serve Him in holiness and justice all our days, that wlien man had embraced the Spirit of God, he might walk to the gloiy of tlie Father." » St. John iii. 13, 14. ^ i j^i^^ i^ 5 ^^^ jyj^^^ ^iii. 29, 46. 3 1 John ii. 2 ; iv. 10. * St. John xi. 25. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 73 be given.^ The gift of the Spirit, and the new Life He 1 imparted, was thus the result of Christ's Life on earth, of I His Death, Eesurrection, and Ascension. It was from these that the Sacrament of Baptism received all its power. This interpretation derives some confirmation from the fact that the Evangelist, immediately after the passage we have been considering, mentions the use of the Sacrament of Baptism by Christ, and we are thus led to the conclusion that in the discourse to Nicodemus Christ is explaining the rudimentary prin- ciples of His kingdom, into which, ordinarily speaking, the reception of baptism was at once the token and the means of entrance. But the Life thus imparted, we are further taught, is governed by the same laws as the natural life of man. It comes to maturity by means of growth, and growth is ministered by nourishment. There is this difference between the two processes. In our natural life we seize on other substances, and convert them by mys- terious and inexplicable processes into the means of supporting existence. In the spiritual world, on the contrary, the power which gives Life, and the power which sustains it, is one and the same. It is the Life of Christ which communicates Life to man ; and it is the , Life of Christ which sustains it. Our life must be in / continual dependence upon His, if we are to possess it permanently. Therefore, in another of His discourses » Jesus enlarges upon the means of preserving the Life i which He has given. He compares His sustaining power to the action of food upon the body. The ^ St. John xvi. 7. The reason is explained in the Epistle to the Hebrews. See below chap. iv. 74 The Doctrinal System of St. John. soul, He declares, requires bread for its sustenance, and this bread is Himself. He is the living Bread which came down from heaven.^ The true bread which came down from heaven was not intended, like the manna, to afford a temporary support, but to give a permanent Life to the world.^ And then He proceeds to connect this doctrine with His humanity, in the assertion that this bread of which He spake was His flesh, which He would give for the Life of the world.^ Taking flesh and blood as the symbol of His human nature, He announces that a perpetual communication of that flesh and blood to the soul of the Christian was the in- dispensable condition of the maintenance of the Life he had received from above. No doubt He here would have us understand some reference to the Paschal Lamb, which was not only the deliverance, but the food also of the Jews in the night of their departure from Egypt. And here, moreover, we are again led to connect this spiritual nourishment by Christ of His children with the principal events of His Life upon earth. The whole tenor of the discourse implies a reference to Christ's Death upon the Cross, though it is by no means to be confined to this one point. It is expressly connected with the Kesurrection and Ascension of Christ, and with the ofiice of the Holy Spirit, in the 62nd and 63rd verses of this chapter, where Christ answers the objec- tions of His hearers by a mysterious allusion to these events, as yet in the future.'^ We can scarcely, I » St. John vi. 51. 2 lb. vi. 58. 3 j^. vi. 51. * After His manner, it may be observed, as recorded in the Synop- tists, " Without a parable spake He not unto them." The manner in which He refers to His Kesurrection and Ascension is more compatible Doctrine of the Incarnation, 75 think, refuse to see in this discourse, so full of dark and hidden sayings, an enunciation of the principles which underlie the institution of the Sacrament of Holy Communion, or to acknowledge, in the words of the institution of that Sacrament at what was re- garded by Christ and His Apostles as a Paschal supper,^ an explanation of the difficulty which repelled so many of His disciples from Him after His discourse at Ca- pernaum.^ It would seem, then, that the Life of Christ, im- parted to men through the agency of the Holy Spirit, is ordinarily communicated through the medium, as St. John's words seem to indicate, of certain outward signs. But on man's part a certain condition of soul is required, without which he is incapable of receiving the gift which God's mercy has designed for him. This condition of soul is called faith. And here I may take the opportunity of remarking that a view of the distinguishing characteristics of St. Paul and St. John, which has been constantly repeated, even by distinguished Biblical critics and eminent divines, does with the idea that they were still to come, than with the theory that they were past events or else inventions of credulity or inconsiderate zeal, and the discourse invented to square with such inventions. ^ The ditiiculty of reconciling the Synoptic narratives, which speak of the Eucharistic meal as the Passover, with St. John's ar^sertion that it was eaten on the day of the Crucifixion, has long perplexed the commentators, and no thoroughly satisfactory solution has yet been offered. "^ How can this man give us His flesh to eat? St. John vi. 52. The reference to the sacraments in the third and sixth chapters of the Gospel seems to be generally admitted by commentators of the most widely divergent schools, with the curious exception of the ultra- Protestants and the Jesuits. 76 The Doctrinal System of St, John. not seem to possess the slightest foundation in fact. I refer to the idea that the foundation of St. Paul's system is faith, while that of St. John s is love. We hear, on high authority, that the influence of St. Paul on Christian theology is destined henceforth to decline, and that the Christianity of the future will be coloured principally by the teaching of the Apostle of Love.^ But this distinction between the system of St. Paul and that of St. John disappears before a careful exami- nation. It would appear to be one of those theological commonplaces which men catch up from one another, and repeat without carefully examining the grounds on which they rest. It might with just as much truth be asserted that the keystone of St. John's system was faith, while the main feature of St. Paul's is love. For nowhere can we find more emphatic assertions of the indispensable necessity of faith than in St. John ; while, on the other hand, nowhere do we find clearer assertions of the paramount importance of love than in St. Paul. It is strange that this fact has been so much over- looked. Possibly the peculiarity of our English ver- sion, which has rendered a'ydirr] so frequently by charity, may have blinded the eyes even of scholars whose earliest ideas have been tinged by the use of the English Bible. But of the fact itself I think there can be little doubt. It will appear with much greater distinctness when we have concluded the investigation in which we are now engaged.^ And though perhaps ' Mr. Matthew Arnold, ' St. Paul and Protestantism.' 2 Though it has an aflSnity with a kind of criticism which has been pressed too far, I may remark that the word aydirr} occurs seven times Doctrine of the Incarnation, 77 we are anticipating a conclusion to which our inquiries will lead us, we cannot fail on this particular point to be struck with the exact identity between Christianity as taught by St. Paul and Christianity as taught by St. John. That a position of supreme importance is assigned to faith in the Christian scheme as unfolded by St. John there can be little doubt. It is the very starting- point of the Christian life. It is quite unnecessary to multiply references. The assertion meets us on almost every page. God's part in the mystery of salvation is first, however, secured from misapprehen- sion. St. John starts in his Gospel by asserting the whole work to be of God. All salvation comes from Him as its ultimate source. God the Father is declared by God the Word.^ God the Word it was who gave power to men to become the sons of God by means of the new Life imparted to them.^ God the Holy Spirit it was through whom that new life was communicated.^ And it is not till this foundation is thoroughly well laid, the principle clearly asserted which is after- wards expressed in the words " no man can come unto Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him,* that St. John introduces Christ's words, declaring man's in St. John's Gospel, seventeen times in his first Epistle, and seventy- three times in those of St. Paul. But the verb ayairao} occurs twenty- times in St. John's Gospel, twenty-eight times in his first Epistle, and is only thirty-three times used by St. Paul. I have included the Epistle to the Hebrews, where, however, each of the words in question only occurs twice. 1 St. John i. 18. 2 j^, j 12, 13. » lb. iii. 3. * lb. vi. 44. Also in xvii. 2, 6, 9, 24, Jesus speaks of all His disciples as " given to Him " by the Father. 78 The Doctrinal System of St. John. part in the work of salvation, " He that believeth on Him is not condemned."^ Henceforth such declarations of the power of faith abound, without stint and almost without qualification. "He that believeth the Son hath everlasting^ life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him."^ *' This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent."^ "He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."* " He that believeth on Me, the works that I do he shall do also."^ " These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in His Name."^ This leading doctrine of faith as the sole avenue through which spiritual power is able to enter the human soul is asserted with equal distinctness in St. John's Epistle. " This is His commandment, that we should believe on the Name of His Son Jesus Christ."' " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come of the flesh is of God."^ The declaration rises in force and depth each time it is repeated, like the sayings of Christ in St. John's Gospel : " Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God ;"® and finally we are led to regard it as the fundamental principle which lies at the root of all outward confession and of all inward Life : " Whosoever * St. John iii. 18. St. John does speak of the power to become the sons of God as given to " those who believe on His name," in i. 12 ; but it is incidentally, and not by any means emphatically. - lb. iii. 30 ; vi. 47. ' lb. vi. 29. ♦ lb. xi. 25, 26. Also xii. 44 ; xiv. i. 11. * lb. xiv. 12. « lb. XX. 31. '1 John iii. 23. « lb. iv. 2. » lb. iv. 15. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 79 believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God ;"^ and are asked to contemplate its result : *' Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world : and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ?"^ We observe in this summary of St. John's teaching on the subject of faith, that he attributes to it the same powers which he does to the regenerating principle flowing from Christ Himself, and to the work of the Spirit.^ AA^e are *' born of God " by His will alone : we are " born of the Spirit :" we are " born of God " if we believe in Him. Jesus Christ has " overcome the world." He has " destroyed the works of the devil ;" " whatsoever is born of God cannot sin ;" yet neverthe- less our faith "is the victory that overcometh the world." What conclusion can we come to from this, but that St. John views the work of salvation now from a Divine, now from a human point of view ; and that as he views it from one stand-point or the other he attri- butes the whole work to God alone, or to faith as the only means whereby God can act upon the soul ? But while he does not omit to intimate, in the words of Christ Himself, how important a part a certain condition of the human soul has to play in the regeneration of ^ 1 John V. i. Alsb verses 9, 10. The repetitions of St. John's Epistle are very for from being vain repetitions. 2 lb. V. 4, 5. The same principle is asserted in the Apocalypse, where the unbelieving are classed with the rest of the ungodly, and the sentence of eterual punishment pronounced against them. Kev. xxi. 8. ^ "The objective on the part of God corresponds to the subjective on the part of man, namely, faith." — Neand. ' Planting and Training,' vol. i. p. 457 [Bohn's Ed.]. '• Faith is the reception and vital appro- priation of the Divine Kevelation," or rather Life. — Ih. p. 458. 80 The Doctrinal System of St. Jolm. man, he takes care, as we have seen, to lay it down that the orio^inal cause of all is to be found nowhere but in the Will of God,^ the operating principle of that Love, which is Himself.^ Faith, then, though subordinate and secondary to the working of God's Spirit, is the one all-important requisite on man's part in order that the regenerating power may act upon his soul. But faith has its laws of working ; faith must issue in the com- munication to the individual of the life of Christ ; and this life following the analogy of the natural life, capable of expansion and of growth, depending for its continuance upon external support, must have certain results in its influence on mankind. In point of fact, faith must produce likeness to God — in other words, Love. Love is the very Being of God Himself. When that Being is inwrought into each individual deriving Life from Him, the result must be a vast society, animated as it were by one soul, and breathing the spirit of the universal Love. This result will be seen in measure and degree in this world, though cramped and hindered by the influences still at work in each individual which are opposed to the Gospel of Christ. We should expect to find a theory of a Holy Catholic Church, a society in which faith is the one essential requisite, and love the one abiding principle ; a body the members of which are knit to one another and to their Lord by the closest and most inward of ties ; a body which assumes a position of antagonism to the principles which sway unregenerate man, and is in continual conflict with those who deny the pretensions ' St. John vi. 44 ; xv. 5 : " Without Me ye can do nothing." 2 1 John iv.. 8. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 81 of Christ to be the Saviour of mankind, or who, while professing to accept Him, reject the fundamental moral and. spiritual laws of His kingdom. The outlines of such a state of things may be clearly- seen in the Gospel. Under various types and figures such a society is shadowed forth, while the ties which should bind the members of such a society together, and the feelings which should animate them in their conduct towards each other, are also indicated before- hand by the Saviour. He does not confine Himself to the external relation of His disciples to Himself, though He does occasionally use language incapable of a wider interpretation — language of a kind which, when found in the Synoptists, is regarded as proof positive of an irreconcilable divergence between his views and theirs. He speaks of Himself, for in- stance, as a Shepherd, and His disciples as sheep,^ and from that point of view regards His Church as a gathering together of distinct individualities into one society, with no hint at any closer union between Himself and them.^ But He does not stop there. He prefers to describe His Church as an organic whole, its parts combined in a deep interior unity, the result of the possession by its members of a Life which they all enjoy in common, and which they all derive from Him^ The first hint of a closer union is given when Christ! is spoken of as the Bridegroom, and they who come to Him as the Bride.^ But it is amplified by Christ 1 St. John X. 2 lb. X. 16. ' These words of St. John the Baptist were afterwards expounded by St. Paul (Eph. v.). And the influence they had on St. John's mind is clearly shown by his allusion to them in the Apocalypse, xxi. 2, 9 ; sxii. 17. G 82 The Doctrinal System of St, John, Himself. Thus, as we have seen, He is the Vine ; His disciples are the branches.^ From Him, the source of Life, flows the Life into every portion of His Church. Separation from the Yine is certain death.^ But if the branches remain in the Yine, an impulse of Life is continually communicated to them, and by this they arrive at their perfection, and bring forth their natural fruit. What that fruit is we need scarcely inquire, ' although Christ ^oes not specify it. It can be no other 1 than good works. No other result could flow from a / participation in the Life of Christ. Their absence could only serve to show that he who had them not had neither part nor lot in Christ. If men are content to submit themselves to the operations of the Divine power within them, the good works will follow as a matter of course. But whether they will do so or not depends on themselves. They may either surrender themselves to the operation of the life-giving prin- ciple, or they may resist its operation. This is the '■ force of the exhortations to abide in Christ, which I have no meaning except on the supposition of a \ power to resist the influences of Christ and His I Spirit. ^ Such is the doctrine taught in the parable of the Yine and the branches. But it is not confined to that parable, it also pervades the whole of St. John's writings. it is implied in the declaration that a man needs to be born again. It is enforced in the assertion that he who has received the new birth of the Spirit has henceforth had a new character impressed upon him.^ It is the pervading idea of the discourse in chapter vi., in which » St. John XV. 2 lb, XV. 4, 6. ' lb. iii. 6. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 83 Christ proclaims Himself to be the necessary and con- tinual support of all who would receive salvation by His means. In the seventeenth chapter we have it assertedT^ and reasserted that the bond which compacts the people | of God together is the possession by each one of them I of an inward Life which is not their own, but which i proceeds from God. The Life everlasting which they possess is His gift.^ He prays that they may be made holy in the truth, which is nothing else but the utter- ance or revelation of the will of God.^ He goes on to pray for the unity of His disciples, — not for a mere external unity of a visible association, not for a mere ; agreement in any confession of faith, but an inward unity, the result of the indwelling of the Life of God.^ ' This is what the Apostle means by the Kocvcovla of) which he speaks in liis Epistle.* The effect of th^' manifestation of the Life ^ is the association of those who receive it in the possession of this heritage of all Christians ; and this heritage is something which we ' possess in some mysterious way, in common with the Father, and Jesus Christ His Son. The consequences of that possession are manifold. The first and most important of them is holiness. God the Father is asked to sanctify or make holy those whom He has given to the Son.^ He is asked to preserve them from what » Ver. 2. - "Thy word is truth," ver. 17, 19: bearing in mind that our expression "word" does not exhaust the force of the expression \6yo9. ^ Ver. 21, 22, 23. The reading h, instead of o&s, seems to imply the consolidation of all believers into one visible reality, the Body, in short, of Christ. * 1 John i. 3. ^ lb. i. 2. « St. John xvii. 17, 19. 84 The Doctrinal System of St. John, I is evil.^ He is asked to save them from the defiling contact of a world which has no participation in the Life of God.^ In the necessary antagonism between them and this evil world, a power of strength and victory is given to them.^ '* Be of good cheer, I have -overcome the world," says Jesus, and His words would seem to have made a deep impression upon His disciple. He repeats them from time to time in various forms, both in his Epistle and in the Apocalypse. The faith of a Christian is the victory that overcometh the world.* It is the pride of a Christian that he has " overcome the wicked one."^ The spirit of Anti-Christ is overcome by the Christian, because ''He that is in him is greater than he that is in the world. "^ All the promises of future glory in the Apocalypse are made to him that overcometh, by virtue of the power conferred by the Divine indwelling.' This power, however, it rests with them to employ or not, as they please. Xo irresistible grace is conveyed to them. They may either come to tLe light, or refuse to do so.^ They may either receive Christ, or reject Him.^ They may either remain with Him, or go away.^** ^ay, even among His closest and most attached followers there may be those who do not cleave to Him aright. ^^ But if they will preserve undivided the connection that subsists between them- * St. John xvii. 15. Some commentators prefer to render this " the evil one." The context would lead one rather to suppose that what is meant is the evil prevalent in a world which '• lieth in darkness." ' St. John xvii. 14-16. ^ Ih. xvi. 33 ; 1 John iii. 9. * 1 John v. 4. ' lb. ii. 13 ; v. 4. « lb. iv. 4. * Rev. ii. 7, 11, 17, 26; iii. 5, 12, 21; xxi. 7. * St. John iii. 20, 21 ; viii. 12. » lb. i. 11. '» lb. vi. 67. " lb. vi. 70. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 85 selves and Christ, they are sure of victory in the end,^ and not only of victory, but reward.^ The end of the -truggle is the victory over death itself. Death has no more than a temporary power over those who are united to Christ.^ And not only so, but the intermediate state between death and the resurrection is one of life.* The next consequence is that of mutual love. By their mutual love, their union in the life of God, men should recognize Christ's disciples, and Christ Himself as sent by God.^ Purity and truth were also among the blessings communicated by the Life which resided in them.® And they also derived from it the privilege of an entirely different relation to God. Tliey are once more His children, and have a claim on His love.' They have henceforth a title to bs heard in prayer.' Nor is this all. They are to be themselves the medium whereby these blessings are communicated to others. '* He that believeth in Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.''* Some at least of them are to receive a special mission to the world. In that mission they stand as the representatives of Christ. '* He that re- eeiveth whomsoever I send receiveth ]Me."^^ And again, " As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you."^^ * See passages cited above -with reference to overcoming. - Kev. ii. iii. " He united, as we have said, man to God. For if man had not conquered the enemy of man, the enemy was not fairly vanquished." — Iren. ' Adv. Haer.' book iii. IS, 7. 5 St. John vi. 44, 54. * lb. xi. 25. Our Lord's promise of life is not confined, in His answer to Martha, to a resurrection at the last day. * St John xiii. 35 ; xvii. 21. ^ lb. xiii. 10 ; xv. 3. ■ lb. xvi. 27. * Tb. xiv. 13 ; xv. 7, 16 ; xvL 23-27. « lb. vii. 37. Compare 1 John i. 2, 3. "> lb. xiii. 20. » lb. XX. 21. 86 The Doctrinal System of St. John. A certain power of discerning the spirits of men, and a certain authority over the external discipline of the Church, was committed to the rulers of His Church. Such, without entering upon the endless controver- sies suggested by the passage, would seem to be a reasonable inference from the words, " Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." These powers resided in the ministers of Christ by virtue of an abiding presence of the Holy Spirit within their hearts, a presence promised and communicated by Jesus Christ Himself.^ And the peculiar work they were to do among God's people was indicated in the charge given to one among them who was more than once singled out as the representative of his brethren, to be the feeding and shepherding of the lambs and sheep of their Master's flock.^ To sum up briefly what has been said of St. John's teaching about the Incarnation and its results, we find its substance to have been this. A Divine influence has been in the world since the Ascension of Jesus Christ, which has effected a thorough change in every one who has received it ; a change which not only alters his relations to God, but which has actually communi- cated to him a new nature — in fact, a new life. This change has been effected by the infusion of the Life of the ascended Lord into the hearts of all who will ■ St. John XX. 22. - lb. xxi. 15, 17. Is it fanciful to see here an undesigned coin- cidence with such passages as St. Matt. xvi. 19 ; St. Luke xxii. 31, 32 ? Observe i^Tp-fjcraro viixas and iSeiid-qv irepl aov. The coincidence is all the more remarkable from the entire absence of all prominence given to this fact of the singling out of St. Peter. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 87 receive it, by the operation of the Holy Spirit. The one necessary requisite on man's part for the reception of this life is faith ; a disposition of the soul which it is impossible for man to produce for himself, but which it is intimated that God is in all cases willing to grant to him, though man has the power and consequent responsibility of accepting or rejecting the gift. Certain external signs and means of grace are made use of in the communication of this life from above, namely, the use of water and the use of food. The individuals thus Divinely quickened are gathered into one body, united by the most inward and intimate of ties. The spiritual life imparted to each does not dwell in himself alone, but circulates through the whole body. In this body, moreover, there are certain officers, whose business it is to superintend and direct the streams of imparted life into their various channels, and to assist in promoting the healthy development of the whole. We will now examine how far this doctrine is agree- able to what we read in the Synoptic Gospels. And here we naturally revert to the history of the Incar- nation, and to the prophecies then uttered, in which we should expect to find some indication of the work Jesus Christ was expected to do. We shall not be disappointed. The angel prophesied of Jesus that He should save His people "from their sins,"^ nor was this the only prophecy concerning Him. In the ' Matt. i. 21. Cf. Acts iv. 12 ; v. 31, &c., and St. Luke ii. 30. We may remark that neither in the Synoptists nor in the Acts is there any explanation of the modus operandi of salvation by Christ, insomuch that without a fourth Gospel we are absolutely in the dark respecting 88 The Doctrinal System of St. John. inspired songs which the Holy Ghost spake by the mouths of Zacharias and the blessed Virgin herself, we shall find no obscure intimation of what Christ came to do. We are told of men lying " in darkness and the shadow of death,"^ of a "day-spring from on high,"^ which came to "give them light."^ Not only were they to be " delivered from their enemies," an expres- sion which can only be interpreted as referring to the enemies of the soul, but they were to " live in holiness and righteousness before God all their days,"* a promise which could hardly have been realized without some change of nature. The " knowledge of salvation," it is true, came " in the remission of sins,"^ but the salva- tion itself was something more than this ; it was actual safety from ** enemies, and all who hated them."^ And the song of the blessed Virgin herself implies something more than the advent of a mere teacher. A great spiritual revolution is surely foreshadowed in the words, "He hath shewed strength wdth His arm. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree ;" and the expression, " He hath filled the hungry with good things,"'^ does not, at least, exclude the idea of a gift of a new and better nature from above. Christ and His Apostles, moreover, proclaimed the same truth. The Eedeemer affirms that He has come the first principles of the doctrine of Christ. The passage in St. Mat- thew implies more than forgiveness. It is not only from the con- sequences of sin but from sin itself that Christ saves men. How this is done we only learn from the fourth Gospel and the Epistles. ' St. Luke i. 79. - avaToX)), lb. i. 78. 3 lb. i. 79. * lb. i. 74, 75. "■ lb. i. 77. « lb. i. 71. ' lb. i. 52, 53. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 89 " to seek and to save that which was lost."^ He is thus reported in St. Matthew's Grospel, and St. Luke con- firms this report by relating three most striking parables in which this doctrine is enforced.^ More than once Jesus speaks of the children of Israel as " lost sheep ;"^ and St. Luke relates that His Apostle describes his own mission as being intended to " open men's eyes, to turn them from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God."* Nor, perhaps, shall we be altogether wrong in regarding the Transfiguration as a deeply suggestive part of the Synoptic narratives. It clearly establishes the fact that some hidden power to transform humanity resided in Christ, some virtue inherent in Him which no humanitarian theory is sufficient to exhaust. From this portion of their narratives, alone, we might construct not only the theory of the Kesurrection, but the whole scheme of imparted spiritual vitality as taught in the Epistles and St. John. Although, as we have seen, the Synoptic Gospels embrace nothing beyond the record of our Lord's public teaching, and leave altogether unnoticed those discourses in which He unfolded the inner mysteries of His kingdom, yet in the course of their narrative ex- pressions are casually let drop which imply that such discourses must have been delivered. The remark contained in the Sermon on the Mount, to the effect that unless the righteousness of Christ's disciples ex- - St. Matte xviii. 11 ; St. Luke xix. 10. 2 The parables of the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the prodigal son, in St. Luke xv. 3 St. Matt. X. 6 ; xv. 24. ' Acts xxvi. 18. 90 The Doctrinal System of St. John. ceeded the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, they should in no case enter the kingdom of heaven,^ is a saying of this kind. For how were they to know that their righteousness exceeded that of the Scribes and Pharisees ? Not by a formal comparison of the merits of the two parties, for this they were expressly forbidden to make in another portion of the same dis- course.^ What test then was there by which they could estimate the relative excellence of the piety of each ? It may be said that the standard of the Scribes and Pharisees was external, while that of Christ's disciples was to be internal and real. But this expla- nation still implies that they were to sit in judgment upon their fellow-men, a course alien from the humility enjoined by the Gospel. But if we believe that Christ is speaking, though as yet obscurely, of an inner righteousness flowing from Himself, of which all who believed in Him were to be partakers, all the apparent inconsistency in the passage is removed, and His dis- ciples may understand His words to refer to a right- eousness different not in degree, but in kind, to any which had yet been revealed.^ This interpretation derives force from the consideration of other passages in the Synoptic Gospels. Thus the seemingly para- doxical declaration that " among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist, notwithstanding he that is least in the king- dom of heaven is greater than he,"* can only be » St. Matt. V. .20. 2 lb. vii. 1. ^ We are expressly informed, let us remember, by the Synoptists, that it was Christ's method to impart His teaching with a certain reserve. See Mark iv. 11. This will fully account for their own. * St. Matt. xi. 11 ; St. Luke vii. 28. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 9 1 satisfactorily explained of that inner righteousness which Christ came down from heaven to impart. So, too, the words kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, are repeatedly used throughout the Synoptic narra- tives, but what constitutes a member of that kingdom we are never told. It is contrary to all reason to suppose that no one ever arose who, like Nicodemus, desired to be informed how to enter that kingdom ; yet the only account we have of the question being asked, and of the answer given to it, meets us in the narrative of St. John. Similarly we read of exhortations given to " seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness,"^ but we are never told how the search is to be carried on, nor how success is to be assured. The emphatic assertions in the New Testament of the utter uselessness of attempting to establish one's own righteousness, would make this passage contradict the whole of the Christian Scriptures, unless we interpret it of the righteousness which prophecy tells us " shall look down from heaven."^ So with the exhortation to "make the tree good and his fruit good,"^ and the command to " be converted :"* the exhortation is given, but man is without power of himself to do what he is commanded. Christ Himself tells us as much when He insists on the difficulty with which a rich man shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but He reminds us that "the things that are impossible with men are possible with God.^ But the doctrine that the kingdom of God was to be the result of an inner power transforming the whole character of those who receive it, is not left in » St. Matt. vi. 33. ^ Ps. Ixxxv. 11. 'St. Matt. xii. 33. < (rrpa(pi]T€, lb. xviii. 3. ' lb. xix. 26. 92 The Doctrinal System of St. John. the Synoptic Gospels to mere inference. The parable of the sower presents it to us as the fundamental prin- ciple of that kingdom in the individual/ and tlie same doctrine is taught jn the parable of the leaven concern- ing the Church in its corporate capacity. Here then we have a view of the kingdom of Christ identical with that of St. John. The same idea is conveyed in St. Luke's Gospel when the disciples are informed that the king- dom of God is within them. The only difference is that St. John informs us of the nature of the inner prin- ciple, while the Synoptists do not.^ But when we come to the requisites on man's part we find all the Evange- lists in exact accord. Faith is the one indispensable requisite for all who would come to Christ/ and baptism by water the outward means whereby they are made His disciples.^ This baptism is described prophetically by St. John the Baptist as a baptism with the Holy Ghost/ and his words, though they differ in form, are absolutely identical in substance with the language of our Lord to Nicodemus concerning the new birth " of water and the Spirit.'"^ The body of Christians thus formed is spoken of by Christ beforehand as "the Church," the collective decision of whose members ^ Perhaps the parables of the ten virgins and the talents point in the same direction, as also the expression, " ye are the salt of the earth," witli other similar passages, as St. Mark ix. 50 and St. Luke xiv. 31. 2 St. Mark i. 15 ; ix. 23 ; x. 52 ; xvi. 16, &c. 3 St. Matt, xxviii. 19. St. Mark xvi. 16. The importance of baptism may be inferred from St. Matt. iii. 15, where Jesus speaks of it as a necessary portion of the righteousness He came to fulfil. * St. Matt. iii. 11. St. Mark i. 8. * The word TraKiyyeveala, though found in St. Matt. xix. 28, is applied to the final triumph of the Saviour. Doctriine of the Incarnation. 93 ouglit to settle all differences in the body and preserve its unity.^ Though God in Christ is not spoken of as the indwelling power in Christians, yet the Holy Spirit, through whose agency the Father and the Son are represented by St. John as living in us, is spoken of in the Synoptists as inhabiting the disciples. God is spoken of as " giving " His Holy Spirit,^ and the Holy Spirit, they are told, will speak in them in their hour of trial. ^ By His means they are gathered together into one body, beloved by the Father,* enjoying a promise that their prayers are accepted before Him,^ and fed with the spiritual food of His body and blood. The words in the Lord's Prayer convey this truth in no doubtful terms. The apro? eTrtovaco^, the bread on which we subsist, could hardly be supposed, in a Gospel whose whole object is to depreciate the present world and to elevate that which is to come, to refer to tem- poral subsistence alone. Christ Himself had rejected such a supposition when He replied to the tempter that " man did not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." But if any difficulty existed in the explanation of these words, it is removed by the institution of the Lord's Supper, in which Christ's Body is spoken of as given for His disciples, and His blood shed for them, and that in some mysterious way they were to be imparted to His disciples through their repeating His acts " in remembrance of Him."^ 1 St. Matt, xviii. 17. It can hardly be supposed that St. Matthew •would have taken the trouble to record these words, if they related only to a condition of things which was passing away as he wrote. 2 St. Luke xi. 13. ^ g^. Matt. x. 20. " St. Luke xii. 32. 5 St. Matt. vii. 7 ; xviii. 19 ; xxi. 22. St. Mark xi. 24, &c. « St. Matt. xxvi. 26-28. St. Mark xiv. 22-24. St. Luke xxii. 19, 20. [In 94 The Doctrinal System of St. John, We proceed to those passages in the Synoptic nar- ratives which relate to the ministry of the Church. These are but few, but those few are extremely im- portant for our purpose. Not only does the Saviour inform His disciples, over and over again, that whoso- ever received them would receive Him, and whoso received Him, would receive Him that sent Him.^ He proceeds to announce to His Apostles His deter- mination to impart to them that mysterious power of the keys, in words which, like those of the institution of the Sacrament, have been a stumbling-block and source of division to Christians. Into the controversy as to their precise force and meaning we need not enter. It is sufficient for our present purpose to remark, that though the form of words is different, their substance in each case is precisely the same. Whereas the commission in St. John runs thus : "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them, and whose soever sins ye retain, they have been retained ;" in St. Matthew, repeated twice over, and on a different and less solemn occasion than that of which St. John speaks, they assume the form, " Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall have been Idosed in heaven."^ Add to this the fact that, in each case in la the latter passage the reception of the cup is spoken of as " the new covenant in Christ's blood." The words imply more than a bare recognition of the fact that Christ's blood was shed, such as might possibly be inferred from the language of St. Matthew and St. Mark. The inference which may be drawn from the Synoptic account of the institution of the Lord's Supper will be found in part ii., chap. iii. » Matt. X. 40, &c. * lb. xvi. 19; xviii. 18. The latter passage "is a middle point Doctrine of the Incarnation, 95 St. Matthew's Gospel, Christ is dwelling on the funda- mental principles of His Church, and we can see at once how natural it was that Christ, before His dis- ciples were deprived of His bodily presence, should solemnly republish this peculiar characteristic of His kingdom, and accompany it with a special gift of the Holy Spirit for its due exercise. We now come to the Acts of the Apostles, in which, though written by a Synoptist, we should naturally expect to find the Church and her doctrines in a more advanced stage of development. We observe, then, that the whole course of the Acts describes the funda- mental principle of the Gospel to have been the com- munication of Life. Christ is called the dpxny^<; T^9 ffw*}?, an expression which is susceptible (as we have seen) of a double meaning.^ The Gospel is spoken of as Life.^ It is also " the way ;" ^ an expression which occurs in St. John in close connection with " the Life." * Though the primary effect of repentance was, as we between " the former and St. John xx. 23 (Alford). But it is singular (1) that St. John should use the present tense in " are remitted " and the perfect in " have been retained," and (2) that St. Matthew should in each case use the neuter to refer to the sins, rather than the mas- culine as applying to the sinner. ' P. 55. 2 irdvTa TCI. p-fifiara rris (ooris TavT-qs^ chap. V. 20, an expression which has puzzled those commentators who have failed to understand that the Gospel consisted in the proclamation of life as well as of remission of sins. It is worthy of remark, moreover, that the angel, who knew what the Gospel was, uses this phrase. With the Jews it is " this man," "this doctrine," "this counsel," " this work." » Acts ix. 2 ; xix. 9, 23 ; xxiv. 22. * St. John xiv. 6. What is predicated of Christ is also predicated of His Gospel. He is " the way, the truth, and the life." The pro- clamation of Him is entitled to the same designation. 96 2' he Doctrinal System of St. John. shall see presently, to dispose the heart to receive remission of sins, yet its ultimate issue was in Life.^ Those believed who were "disposed towards," "set in order for " (rerajfjievot) eternal Life.^ By their faith they were "justified,"^ a word which we should empty of much of its significance if we explained it simply as being accounted righteous. It bears the signification also, as we shall see more clearly when we come to examine the writings of St. Paul, of a righteousness imparted from on high, but rendered efficacious in man solely by means of faith. Those who believed were also, by that very faith, placed within the range of a power of sanctification.* In all these passages there is an allusion to a Divine power revealed through Jesus Christ, able not only to secure forgiveness of sins, but to invest His disciples with new capacities, which should enable them to attain that which man had never attained since the fall, namely, holiness. The stress laid upon the Kesurrection of Jesus ^ may also lead us to the same conclusion. The primary point which the recorded utterances of the Apostles use it to attest is the certainty of our resurrection. But if we venture to assign a deeper cause for the prominence given to this doctrine, we shall have advanced nothing contrary to the doctrinal system of the Acts, and shall moreover find abundant warrant for our interpretation in the Epistles both of St. Peter and St. Paul. The Kesurrection of Christ ' Acts xi. 18. 2 lb. xiii. 48. ' lb. xiii, 39. * lb. XX. 32 ; xxvi. 18. We see in these two passages, as in St. Jolin, sanctification attributed (1) to God's Will, (2) to man's faith. 5 lb. 1. 22. ; ii. 24, 32 ; iii. 15 ; iv. 33 ; xvii. 18, &c. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 97 was a fact on which the whole scheme of the Gospel depended, whether we regard it as a message of recon- ciliation or as a communication of supernatural Life. The river of death was, as it were, the baptismal flood which cleansed the Body of our Lord from even the bare likeness of sinful flesh, which, as a true descendant of Adam, He had been obliged to put on. As in the case of those wlio have put Him on by faith. His body was sown a natural body, and was raised a spiritual body. It was this spiritual body, with its enlarged capacities and powers, that He desired to communicate to all who would receive Him. Hence the importance attached to the doctrine of the resurrection in the Acts, and, as we shall see, in the doctrinal system of St. Paul. When we turn from the source of the spiritual Lite of man to its mode of operation, we find ourselves in the midst of a doctrinal system which precisely agrees with that of St. John. A Holy Spirit, promised by God Himself,^ sent by Jesus Christ,^ is the power where- by the Apostles of Christ are enabled to do all their works. It is the Holy Ghost who descends upon them at Pentecost ; ^ it is He who enables their followers to speak the word with boldness ;* it is He who resides in the Church, so as to identify Himself, as it were, with the assembly of believers ;^ it is He who inspires Stephen^ with that faith and courage which make Him so formidable an antagonist to the unbelieving Jews. The Holy Ghost it is who directs the afiiiirs of the Church : He is transmitted to the disciples by means of the ceremony of imposition of hands ;' and ' Acts i. 4 ; ii. 33. ^ i^. n 33. 3 ib. n 4, 4 jb. iv. 31. ^ lb. V. 3. « lb. vi. 5. ^ lb. viii. 17, 18, 19 ; xix. G. H 98 The Doctrinal System of St. John. His presence in the heart of each believer through the due use of that outward sign is so much a part of the ordinary rules of the Church, that the question is put as a matter of course to the believers at Ephesus, *' Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed ?" as though some special ordinance existed whereby He was ordinarily pleased to convey Himself to those in whom it was His purpose to dwell. And whereas the tirst beginning of the Life of the Spirit was attached by St. John to a parti- cular outward ordinance, we find this outward ordi- nance held in such reverence by the Apostles, that they never ventured to omit it, even upon the most extraordinary occasions.^ It formed a part of their most elementary teaching ;^ in fact it was the actual mode of admission into the Church, without which even the believer was not entitled to the privileges of the new order of things established by Jesus Christ.^ And not only was baptism the mode of admission into the Church, but rightly received it was a baptism of water and the Spirit.* Nor was the other sacrament ab- sent from the most rudimentary idea of the Church. The very moment a band of believers had been formed, deriv- ' Acts ix. 18 ; x. 47, 48. ' j^. n 33 ; viii. 12, 36. 3 lb. xvi. 31-33 ; xxii. 16. * lb, ii. 38. Davidson, 'Introduction to the ISew Testament,' vol. ii. p. 173, regards it as a sign of the non-Pauline authoiship of the Pas- toral Epistles that baptism is spoken of in connection with regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. He has overlooked the fact that every writer in the New Testament, with the exception of St. Jude and St. James, has so spoken of it. See St. Matt. iii. 11, 16. St. Mark i. 8. It is hard to see how the statement that baptism saves us by the resur- rection of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. iii. 21) can be otherwise explained than of the gift of regeneration. See p. 72. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 99 ing tbeir spiritual strength from the Spirit of a risen and ascended Lord, we read how the disciples continued daily in the breaking of bread ;^ and even when the Church had expanded from the little company at Jerusalem into a society which numbered its adherents in every city in the civilised world, we still find that on the first day of the week the disciples met together to break bread.^ When we pass from the elementary principle of the Christian life, and the external ordinances whereby that elementary principle was communicated, to the qualifications necessary on man's part for a due recep- tion of the principle, we find the harmony betAveen the writer of the fourth Gospel and the writer of the Acts preserved unbroken. There was but one requisite on the believer's part, and that requisite was faith.^ They who " gladly received the word were baptized."^ " When they believed, they were baptized."^ If the words said to have been uttered to the Ethiopian eunuch are not genuine,® they are, after all, only an echo of the proclamation to the Philippian gaoler in answer to the searching inquiry, " What shall I do to be saved ?"^ We have already seen that faith is spoken of by the Apostle Paul as the cause of justi- fication.^ We also find St. Peter speaking of faith as a means of purification.* Not only so, but the key- note of St. Paul's preparatory teaching is declared to be > Acts ii. 42, 46. ^ j^ ^x. 7. 3 Faith is here regarded as involving repentance, p-^Tavoia, change; of opinion ; that which induced a man to leave the darkness and come to the light. John iii. 20, 21. * Acts ii. 41. Compare St. John i. 12, also Acts xviii. 8, &c. 5 Acts viii. 12. « lb. viii. 37. ' lb. xvii. 31. » lb. xiii. 39. " lb. XV. 9, There is considerable similarity between this passage and 1 John iii. 3. 100 The Doctrinal System of St. John. repentance toward God, and faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ.^ We now come to the result of the Christian life as taught in the pages of the Acts. And it is simply the ful- filment of the prophecy recorded by St. John, " there shall be one flock and one shepherd," limited in its com- pleteness by man's infirmity, as shadowed forth in the fourth Gospel by the words, " Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil ?"^ and in the Epistle by the allusion to those who *' went forth " from the body of believers, but "were not of" them.^ Exactly the same picture of God's purpose, thwarted by man's perverseness, is displayed in the historical delineation of the Apostolic Church. Hope, joy, and gladness were its animating principles ; love its bond of union. " They that believed were of one heart and one soul,"* says the historian, of the Church in her infancy. " They partook of their daily food with gladness,"^ rejoicing in the salvation which had been proclaimed to them. But soon the spirit of the world invaded the Church, and henceforth the full realization of the ideal was postponed until the time of the restitution of all things, of which the Apostle Peter speaks. Hence- forth we hear of " murmurings."^ We read of dissen- sions in the Christian body,' even of contention among those who were foremost in proclaiming the Gospel message.® Was such a state of things unlooked for ? On the contrary, it was distinctly foretold in the Synoptic Gospels. Was it unexpected by the author of the ' Acts XX. 21. 2 gt j^^i^n vi. 70. ' 1 John ii. 19. * Acts iv. 32. ' lb. ii. 46. « lb. vi. ' lb. xv. « lb. xv. 39. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 101 fourth Gospel ? It could hardly be so, if, as supposed, he were writing his Gospel about the year loO; and the supposition that his narrative is authentic derives confirmation from the fact that he alone among the Evangelists makes no allusion to it.^ But it is clear enough that, whenever he may liave written, he held such a declension to be not only possible but almost certain. Wherefore the repetition of the commission to bind and loose contained in the other Gospels if no need for its exercise was likely to arise ? And it may be well to note that when the Apostle St. Peter acted upon the commission he had received, his language seems to reflect rather the terms of the fourth Gospel than of the first. The remission of sins was the subject of his earliest exhortation. Their retention was the awful feature of the cases of Ananias, Sapphira, and Simon Magus. The powers of the ministers of Christ correspond to the language in which tliey were announced beforehand in the four Gospels. They spoke in all cases as the representatives of Christ. The Holy Ghost spoke by their mouths.^ They were overseers of the flock.^ * Because it did not enter into his purpose, not because he was not aware of it. A later writer would hardly have refrained from putting into the mouth of Christ some prophetic denunciation of existing abuses, which St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude, and St. John himself in his Epistles and Kevelation, did not fail to specify and to rebuke. The existence of these denunciations is regarded by many as a proof of the post- Apostolic origin of the Epistles in which they are found. If this argmnent be valid, the fact of their absence in the fourth Gospel must be taken as affording a presumption of its having been written in the Apostolic age. ^ Acts xiii. 2 ; xv. 28. ^ Even the inferior orders of them. The charge in Acts xx. was given to the elders, or, as we should now say, priests. It is hardly necessary to observe that iiricrKoiros always in the New Testament signifies the second order of the clergy. It is not so generally allowed that the Apostles represent the first. 102 The Doctrinal System of St. John. It was their task, they were told, in the very words, be it observed, of Christ to St. Peter, in the 21st chapter of the fourth Gospel, to feed (Trot/jbalvetv) the flock of Christ. The power of guiding and rulins^ was exercised by them in the council of Jerusalem. The decrees of that council were sent by the hands of trustworthy commissioners to all the various Christian communities, and it was obviously expected that they would be observed.^ Thus the theory of the Church, as set forth by 8t. John, is fully and frankly accepted by the author of the Acts. If the after-history of the Church has scarcely realised that theory, it is in consequence of a truth set forth by Christ, of the proclamation of which, under any hypothesis, the writer of the fourth Gospel must have been aware. Christ was come to sow good seed in His field, but tares were to spring up among them. It was the work of an enemy. Tiiere was no remedy: both must grow together until the harvest.^ In the Acts of the Apostles, however, we see only the germs of the evil which after-times were to develop into such terrible results. The ideal given us by St. John is almost realised in the earliest record of eccle- siastical history. Christ, the source of life, diffusing His Spirit into the hearts of all who receive Him, and thus constituting a society of which the external signs were the Sacraments and the due subordination to authorized rulers and teachers, while the internal guiding principles were love and joy and brotherly affection, and the one qualification for admission a belief in Jesus Himself — this is the rationale of the Church's » Acts XV. 28 ; xvi. 4. * St. Matt. xiii. 30. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 103 existence alike in St. John and in the Acts. It is im- possible to imagine a more exact correspondence between theory and fact. Yet we are asked to believe that the theory was framed after man's depravity had made its realisation impossible for at least a century ! Contenting ourselves with calling attention to the identical anthropology of all the four Gospels, and the teaching by inference in the Synoptists of a similar doc- trine of the communication of Life from above to that of St. John, we pass on to St. Paul. And here we are abso- lutely bewildered by the amount of materials before us, arranged according to the workings of a mind which bears the stamp of individuality above that of any other of the writers of the New Testament. If we find that all the varied teaching of St. Paul is reducible to the main principles laid down in St. John's Gospel; that all his reasoning of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come — all his theories of justification, of grace, of faith, of freedom — all his ideas about the rela- tion of the law to the Gospel, are simply the play of his brilliant intellect upon the surface of the system of doctrine ascribed to Jesus Christ in the very Gospel whose authenticity is so strenuously impugned, we can scarcely avoid the inference that a conclusive answer has been given to its assailants. It can scarcely be seriously urged that the great storehouse from which St. Paul's theology was derived was an invention of later ages. Unwritten tradition these words of Christ most unquestionably were, until some years after St. Paul's death. But if they appeared at that later periorl, and are yet entirely untinctured by Pauline phrases and turns of thought, we shall be compelled to recognize 104 The Doctrinal System of St. John, in them the genuine utterances of Him whom M. Eenan is kind enough to recognize as " the true founder of Christianity." ^ St. Paul, like St. John, starts with the doctrine of the communication of Life to mankind, illuminating those who were formerly in darkness, and serving as a new starting-point of spiritual being. With far more fulness than St. John's Gospe), in many a figure and in many an argument does St. Paul insist on the enlightening and revivifying power which dwells in Christ. We seem to hear the echo of the words, *' I am come that they might have Life," " I am the light of the world," ^ throughout the whole of the Pauline Epistles. The need of the new birth, the entire recom- mencement of the inner and spiritual life of man, is as fundamental a principle of the Gospel with St. Paul as it is with our Lord, as reported by St. John. In one of the most important passages in perhaps the most important of St. Paul's writings occur the remarkable words, '' the gift of God is eternal Life in Jesus Christ our Lord." ^ Tiiat this '' Life " was " the Light of men," St. Paul takes care to inform us. There is a remark- able passage in tlie 2nd Epistle to tlie Corinthians which expands and illustrates the teaching of St. John con- cerning the Light that shineth in darkness. In this ^ " Kien n'est plus faux qu'une opinion de venue ii la mode de nos jours, et d'apies laquelle Panl serait le vi ai fondateur da Christianisme. Le vrai fondateur du Christianisme c'cst Jesus." — Kenan, ' Les Apotres.' Introduction, p. 4. 2 St. John X. 10 ; viii. 12. ^ Eom. vi. 23. Observe how the force of eV is lost in our version (and thus the identity of doctrine between St. Paul and St. John obscured), here as in many other places in St. Paul's Epistles, by translating it '' through " as here, or " by " as in other passages. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 105 passage, as well as in several others that will be cited, we see an exact reproduction of the anthropology of St. John, as well as his doctrine of redemption. " If our Gospel hath been hid," says the apostle, '' it hath been hid among those who are perishing ; in whom the god of this world blinded the minds (or rather, perhaps, ' mental processes ') of the unbelieying, so that the enlightenment of the glorious Gospel of Christ ^ (or the Gospel of the glory of Christ), who is the image of God, should not beam upon them. . . . For God, who bade light shine out of darkness, is He who hath shined in your hearts, to give the enlightenment of the knowledge of the glory of God^ in the person of Jesus Christ."^ This doctrine of the Light shining in darkness was no later development of the Apostle's teaching. We find it in the first Epistle he ever wrote. " Ye are sons of light and sons of day," he tells the Thessalonians ; "we are not of night or of darkness."* Again, to the Ephesians, " Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord."^ He speaks to his Colossian ^ It is quite possible, though by no means certain, that the phrase €vayy€\iou rijs So|7js tov Xpiarov is a Hebraism. ^ The sense here requires us to abandon the idea of a Hebrew con- struction. 3 " Paul never says that God, being hostile to men, became reconciled to them through Christ, but that they, being the enemies of God, became reconciled to Him." — Neander, 'Planting and Training,' vol. i. p. 450. " In Cor. V. 20, St. Paul does not say amend yourselves in order that ye may bo reconciled to God, but rather, let not the grace of recon- ciliation be in vuin for you, because you have not appropriated it." — lb. p. 452. Wliat could be more minutely agreed than tliis doctrine and tliat of St. John in chap, iii., regarding the relation of the light to those who were in darkness ? * 1 Thess. V. 5. ^ Eph. V. 8. Compare chap. i. 18 ; iii. 9. 106 The Doctrinal System of St. John. disciples about " the portion of the lot of the saints in the light." ^ He reminds Timothy how Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light by means of the Gospel.^ In the two striking chapters with which tlie Epistle to the Romans commences we have a powerful description of the state of degradation and moral blind- ness^ into which all men, Jew and Gentile, have fallen, and of their utter inability to raise themselves out of it by their own power. But, like St. John, he is not content to describe the Life that dwells in Christ merely as a means of enlightenment to the darkened soul. He regards it, moreover, as the manifestation of an inward power which effects a new creation of the whole man. Does St. John enlarge on the antagonism between flesh and spirit, and does he describe man in his natural state under the one term and in his regenerate con- dition under the other,* St. Paul appropriates ihe phraseology,^ and makes it the groundwork of one of his most striking dissertations.® He speaks, it is true, in the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, as though the gift of righteousness which came by Christ were merely imputed to Christians, as a substitute for their own lack of righteousness ; and for many centuries theologians have been content to regard this as the main feature of St. Paul's teaclung, instead of, as it is in truth, a subsidiary statement, thrown out by the way in treating of a particular portion of the Old Testa- ment. This doctrine of the imputation of righteous- * Col. i. 12. T^v fiepiSa tov KXripov rwv ayiiDV iv t^ (pcori. ' 2 Tim. i. 10. ^ u xheir foolish heart was darkened." Kom. i. 21. * St. John iii. 6. * Kom. iii. 20 ; vii. 18. Gal. iii. 3 ; v. 16-25. * Rom. viii. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 107 ness is peculiarly St. Paul's own, and it is necessary to the full completeness of the Gospel scheme. But to represent it as the whole system of St. Paul with reference to the righteousness of Christ revealed from heaven, to explain his doctrine of justification as being summed up in this doctrine of imputed righteousness, would be entirely to misrepresent the Apostle. His doctrine of justification is indissolubly bound up with the idea of Christ's indwelling. It therefore includes a doctrine of Christ's imparted, as well as His imputed righteousness. The fact is often overlooked, by reason of theological prepossessions, that the original meaning of hiKaiow is " to make righteous," and in the Septuagint it usually has the meaning of declaring a person to be righteous who is already so.^ We cannot, therefore, insist upon restricting its meaning to the forensic sense of acquittal, unless the context actually obliges us to do so. But a careful study of St. Paul's writings leads us to precisely the opposite conclusion. Not only in one remarkable passage does the Apostle use the word BLKacoo) as a climax after dycd^co,^ thereby seeming to imply that justification is actually a completion of the work of sanctification ; but he gives an interpretation of the work done in us by the righteousness of G-od which completely negatives the idea of its operation being confined to simple imputation. The end of Christ's " being made sin for us, who knew no sin," is declared in a passage which is a valuable commentary upon the Epistle to the Komans to be, " that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."^ The com- » See Appendix II. ^ i Qqj. yi. ] i. 3 2 Cor. V. 21. 108 The Doctrinal System of St. John, ' munication of this righteousness of God to us by means of the Life which comes from Christ is the key-note of the system of St. Paul, as it is declared by St. John to be that of Christ Himself.^ We have stated the doctrine of St. John to be that Christ came to intro- duce a power on earth which should change the whole moral and spiritual condition of those who would receive it. Such is also the doctrine of St. Paul. If St. John says that the Logos was " full of grace and truth," and that " of that fulness " all His disciples " had received ;" St. Paul says that He came to "fill all things;"^ that He "filleth all in all ;"^ that the Church is His fulness, or the complement of Himself, because it is filled by Him.* That this, and not the imputation of righteous- ness, is the main doctrine of the Epistle to tlie Romans, will further appear from tlie following considerations. In the very outset of the Epistle the Apostle declares it to be power according to the operation of a Spirit of holiness, deriving its activity from the fact of the Resur- rection of Christ, which marked Him out as the Son of God.^ The passage may be obscure, but it is singularly * " BiKaioavvTi and (car] were always in his (St. John's) mind cor- relative ideas." — Neand. 'Planting and Training,' vol. i. p. 416 (Bohn's Ed.). I contend that they were so also in the mind of St. Paul. Neander elsewhere remarks that St. Paul's mode of approach- ing the subject was affected by his spiritual history. He had onc6 thought that he could become SiKaios by his own unassisted efforta. He now knew that he could only become so by the operation of a power external to himself. Hence his clear appreciation of the end served by the law. 2 Kph. iv. 10. ' lb. i. 23. * Ibid. Compare Col. iii. 11, '• Christ is all, and in all." * Tov opiaOevTos vlov 0eoG iv dwd/xei, Kara irvevfia ayiwavvTjs, i^ oj/acTdcrews viKpwv, Doctrine of the Incarnation, 109 in accordance with the statement, " as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God," as also with those which describe the Divine Life within us, as well as the gift of the Holy Spirit, to be the result of the Eesurrection and Ascension of Christ.^ Again, in ver. 16 St. Paul repeats the statement that the Gospel, of Christ is a "power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth."^ And it is such a pov\er "because in it God's righteousness is revealed" (ver. 17). That righteousness produces an entire change in the condition of the man. Not only is its possessor hence- forth *' accounted righteous " before God, but he has ac- quired peace with Him,^ and rejoices in the hope of the glory of God."^ For the love of God is not merely mani- fested to such a man ; it is " shed abroad in his heart."^ He is " reconciled by the death of Clirist, but saved by His life."® A moral and spiritual change has been wrought by the acceptance of salvation in Christ. Hence- forth a man is ^' dead to sin, and living to God."'^ And this because " the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." The antagonism between flesh and spirit, the cause of so much distress to the natural man and to the immature Christian,^ ceases to exist as soon as the 1 St. John iii. 13 ; vi. 62 ; xvi. 7. 2 The conventional ideas attached to words are a great hindrance to the right understanding of the Apostolic writings. Salvation means safety — and safety as much from sin as from anything else. Cf. St. Matt. i. 21 : " Thou shalt call Kis name JESUS, for He shull save His people from their sins" ' Kom. V. 1. * lb. V. 2. That is surely in the hope of possessing it. ' lb. V. 5. « lb. V. 10. ' lb. vi. 11, 13. ' The comparison of Eom. vii. with the remark addiessed to be- 110 The Doctrinal System of St. John, life of Christ, imparted by the agency of His Spirit,^ has obtained full dominion in the believer's heart. This change from the flesh to the spirit, this intro- duction of the Life of Jesus into the soul, is by St. Paul, as well as St. John, denoted by the term regene- ration. If St. John tells us in the words of our Lord that it is an essential condition of salvation that a man must be born or begotten again,^ St. Paul speaks of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost as one and the same thing.^ He tells us that if any one be in Christ " there is," or " has been," " a new creation : the old tilings (at his conversion) passed away, behold, everything has become new."* This " new creation " is the only thing that availeth anything " in Christ Jesus."^ The keystone of Gospel teaching, he tells us in another place, is the putting off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, the being renewed in the spirit of our minds, and the putting on of the new man, which was created after God " in righteousness and true holiness,"*^ or, as the companion Epistle to the Co- lossians expressed it, " is renewed unto thorough know- ledge (iTrlyucocn^) after the image of his Creator."' Nor are we left in doubt who this new man is. Exhorta- lievers in Gal. v. 17, proves that St. Paul's description in the former cliapter must not be entirely confined to the unconverted. 1 Rom. viii. 9, 10, 14. 2 St. John iii. 3. 3 The divines have been accustomed to distinguish between them, but see the significant absence of the article in Tit. iii. 5, as in St. John iii. 5. * 2 Cor. V. 17. " Omnia enim nova aderant. Verbo nova disponente carnalem adventura, ubi eum hominem qui extra Deum abierat, ad- scriberet Deo." — Ireuaeus, ' Contr. User.' book iii. 10, 2. ' Gal. vi. 15. « Eph. iv. 20-25. ' Col. iii. 10. Doctrine of the Incarnation. Ill tions to put on Jesus Christ,^ assertions that we have put Him on,^ are sufficient proof that He is the new man thus created by God in the full perfection of man's being. The conclusion of the last cited passage gives us the very words of Christ given by St. John : " Ye are all one in Clirist Jesus."^ Where did St. Paul find such a statement ? Where does it appear in the Synoptic narratives? AYhat could it be but an echo borne to his ears by the unwritten traditions of the Christian Church, of the words of that sublime prayer of Jesus to His Father that His disciples might be " one in us ?"* Nor is this a mere isolated passage in St. Paul. It is as marked a feature in his system as it is of that put forth in the fourth Gospel. The indwelling of Christ is the very heart's core of St. Paul's creed. There is no " new creation," except to him who is " in Christ."^ " Do ye not understand yourselves," he asks in the same Epistle, '* that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"^ It is needless to multiply pas- sasres. Assertions of the need and of the fact of the in- dvi^elling of Christ are to be found in almost every page.^ I will content myself with two — the passage where St. Paul tells the Colossians that "their life is hid with Christ in God,"^ and the eloquent description ^ Rom. xiii. 14. ■^ Gal. iii. 27. Compare Eph. ii. 10 : " We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." » Gal. iii. 28. * St. John xvii. 21. See note 2, p. 26. * 2 Cor. v. 17. ® lb. xiii. 5. ^ ovK eiTiyivcixTKeTe eavrovs, on 'Irjaovs Xpiarhs iv vfjuv iiTTiy, el /x-f} Tt aSoKifiol iare ; ' For instance, Eph. ii. 20-22; iii. 17, 19; iv. 6, 13, 15. Col. i. 27, 28 ; ii. 6, 10, 12, 13. The force of many of these passages has evaporated in our translation. 8 Col. iii. 3. 112 The Doctrinal System of St. John. of the condition of the Christian in the Epistle to the Galatians: "I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me ; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of Cod, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." ^ Is there no echo again here of a Divine saying not yet recorded, but which floated about the Christian Church, repeated by xipostolic lips, and caught up eagerly by their hearers as the secret of a Christian's hidden strength ? Are not these the appropriation by the disciple of the words of the Master, " My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world ?" And if St. John describes the communication of Divine Life under the beautiful figure of a vine and its branches, we find St. Paul clothing the doctrine in figurative language quite as expressive. He comes near the language of the Master in his warning to the Gentile Christians that if they were grafted into the good olive tree in the place of the Jews who had been cut off, and if they were now partaking of its root and fatness in the place of others who were no longer worthy of the privilege, it would be well for them to take heed lest a similar disobedience should insure to them a similar fate.^ In several passages he represents Chris- tians as the Body of Clirist, and Christ Himself as the Head, the source of all Life, nourishment, and support. They are not only members of Himself, but of one another, by reason of the Life which they have in common. And by another figure, to which we shall have to recur again, he represents them as the grains ' Gal. ii. 20. ^ Rom. xi. 17-24. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 113 which individually make up the one loaf, which is Christ. Where do we find teaching similar to this in the Gospels, unless it be in that attributed to St. John ? When we proceed to examine the mode in which this inward Life is communicated, the coincidences between the Evangelist and the Apostle will be found to be quite as numerous and as striking. We gather from the hints in the discourses recorded by St. John that the Third Person in the blessed Trinity was to be the medium of communication to mankind of the Life that dwelt in Christ. St. Paul repeats the statement with far more emphasis and fulness. We have seen how St. Paul regards the power of Christ as being manifested according to the operation of the Spirit of holiness.^ We have seen how regeneration is inter- twined in his mind with renewing of the Holy Ghost.^ We may further remark in the Epistle to tbe Thessa- lonians, to which we turn with peculiar interest as the first record of the epistolary teaching of the great Apostle, the recurrence of the same phrase which we have just noticed at the commencement of the Epistle to the Eomans. The Gospel comes to the Thessalo- nians "not only in word, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost."^ If we are told in the Epistle to the Eomans that " the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which was given us,"* we are afterwards carefully informed that this Spirit, who dwells in us, and in whom we are henceforth privileged to walk,^ is '* the Spirit of Christ."^ In the Epistles to 1 Eom. i. 4. 2 Tit. iii. 5. ^ j Tj^ess. i. 5. < Kom. V. 5. 5 lb. viii. 1, 11. « lb. ver. 9. I 114 The Doctrinal System of St. John. the Galatians and Philippians St. Paul repeats the statement.^ Moreover, if we are said by Christ's in- dwelling to be made members of that one Body which is Himself, St. Paul is careful to remind us that this is the work of the Holy Ghost, through whose agency we not only originally enter that one Body, but are continually retained within it.^ And if Christ be said to dwell in our hearts, it is because " we are strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man."^ We shall have occasion to refer again to the work of the Holy Spirit in our salvation. Under that head we will discuss the many passages in which that work is described. Here it is sufficient to have established the fact that there is a perfect agreement between the Evangelist and the Apostle in the somewhat intricate doctrinal principle which, while it attributes our salvation to the commu- nication to us of Life from Christ, yet points out the Holy Ghost as the agent through whose operation that communication of life is effected.* We now come to the outward means whereby the gift of Life is ordinarily conveyed. We have already seen that the salvation bestowed by Christ is spoken of by St. Paul as a " regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." The connection of this with the bap- tismal font is all that is necessary to make it correspond ' Gal. iv. 6, and Phil. i. 19. ^ i q^j.. xii. 13. 3 Eph. iii. 16, 17. * In 1 Cor. vi. 13, 6 Kvpios is clearly Christ, and he who is joined to Him (ver. 17) is One Spirit. In verses 15, 19, the body is the member of Christ and the temple of the Holy Ghost. See also 1 Cor. vi. 11. 2 Cor. iii. 3 {i-maToXTi XpiaTOV, kyyeypafxixivn) uv jxeXavi, dAAo Tn/evfian 06otJ). Also vv. 17, 18. Gal. iii. 5. In Heb. ix. 14, Christ is said to oflfer Himself to God, 5ta irueuixaTos alwvlov. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 115 exactly with St. John's expression, " born again of water and the Spirit." And this we find in the use of the word Xovrpov} It was hta Xovrpov irdXvy^evecrla'i Kol dvaKatvcocreco^ irvev^aTo<^ arjiov, that Christ, accord- ing to St. Paul, was pleased to save His people.^ In the waters of baptism, he tells us in another place, Christ was "put on."^ Therein does the Christian become partaker of the death and burial of Christ, and therein is he made partaker of His Eesurrection.* That St. Paul was fully imbued with the principles laid down in the discourse to Nicodemus, and that he fully recog- nised the necessity of a new birth of water and the Spirit as an indispensable preliminary of the work of salvation, will hardly be disputed. Let us see if he recognised a necessity of feeding on the Flesh and Blood of Christ as one of the requisites for the con- tinuance of that work. Turn we to the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Were this Epistle not included in the list of Apostolic writings, and were it not perhaps the very Epistle whose genuineness it was the most hopeless to contest, the opponents of St. John's Gospel might imagine they had detected a shadow of disagreement here. But the Epistle to the Corinthians emphati- cally endorses the teaching of St. John vi. Not only are the words of institution recorded, but they are brought into complete unison with the doctrine of that 1 This word, usually translated by the disused word " laver," would convey a clearer idea to the modern reader if rendered " font." 1- 2 Tit. iii. 5. ^ Gal. iii. 27. ' * Eom. vi. 3, 4, Col. ii. 12. I do not cite the well-known passage in Heb. vi. 2, because the word there is not fidirTKrixa, but fiairTKr/jLos, and because it seems extremely probable that no reference to Christian baptism is there intended. 116 The Doctrinal System of St. John. celebrated discourse. The cup is the communion^ of the Blood, and the bread of the Body of Christ.^ By partaking of the one bread, Christians are incorporated into the one Body f that is, of course, the Body of Christ; and when they drank of the cup, they drank into one Spirit.* When they partook of that bread and that cup unworthily, they were "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord."^ And none declined to partici- pate in that mystic feast, for the Apostle says, '' we are all partakers of that one bread."^ Can we suppose that Christ had never uttered the words, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you ;" '* the bread of God is that which Cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world ;" " I am the Bread of Life ;" and that St. Paul had never heard of them ?^ It is scarcely necessary to adduce any arguments to prove that St. Paul held faith to be a requisite on man's part for salvation. The doctrine of justification by faith is so identified with his name that it will be at once conceded to be a fundamental principle with * KOLvuvia. This word is hard to render into English. Derived from the adjective koiv6s, common, it here represents the common share which every Christian had in the Body and Blood of Christ, and perhaps also what we now understand by a communication of that Body and Blood. 2 1 Cor. X. 16. ^ lb. ver. 17. * lb. xii. 13. It is hardly possible to dissever this expression from the concluding pai agraph of chap. xi. ^ lb. xi. 27. ' lb. X. 17. ' M. Keville, in his above-cited article in tlie ' Eevue des Deux Mondes,' is driven by the diflBculty of his case to the remarkable con- clusion that the author of the fourth Gospel had access to some authentic traditions of Christ as yet unpublished ! It would have been interesting to have learned which portion of the Gospel embodied those traditions, and which the new and spurious matter. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 117 him. The only caution that is needed has been already- given, namely, that faith is a no less fundamental prin- ciple with St. John. But faith with St. Paul is no barren acceptance of facts or dogmas. It is the yivid realization of the truths of the unseen world.^ The Christian sees by it God the Father saving men, and bringing them into obedience to His law, by a Life from above which is given in His Son, and communicated to the heart by the Spirit. This faith is one which must necessarily " work by love."^ Love is the great end and object of the Christian scheme.^ It is to be put on in addition to, or above such gifts as kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbear- ance, for it is the very bond of perfection.^ The inat- tentive reader has not the least idea of the way in which St. Paul's Epistles are permeated with this word. Two-thirds of the whole number of times it occurs in the New Testament it is to be found in the Epistles of St. Paul. We shall therefore be ready to expect to find in St. Paul's Epistles, as in St. John's Gospel, a pic- ture of a Divine society, inhabited by Christ and His Spirit, and animated by this Divine principle of love. Such a picture is actually set before us there. It is put forward in theory, as when the Church is described as the " fulness," or " filling up of Christ."^ It is taught in all those passages which describe Christians ^ Heb. xi. 1. 2 (^al. v. 6. ■'' 1 Cor. xiii. We seem to be listening to St. John himself when we read in 1 Cor. viii. 3, " if any man love God, the same is known by Him." « Col. iii. 14. * Eph. i. 23. Compare Matt. ix. 16 ; Mark ii. 21 ; and observe that the Gnostic idea of the irK-fipcofxa as the complement of something else has more analogy with this passage of St. Paul than with John i. 16. 118 The Doctrinal System of St. John, as being members of Christ ; integral parts that is of His Body, identified with Him in the closest manner by the possession of one and the same life. It is incul- cated no less intelligibly when He is spoken of as the one loaf, and His disciples as the grains which compose it.^ In this mystic organism, Christ's Church, the Life flows from one individual to the other. From Christ, the head, the whole body fitly joined together and com- pacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.^ St. Paul adopts the very language of Christ as reported in St. John when he speaks of Christians as being grafted into the good olive tree, and partaking of its root and fulness.^ This communication of Life from one to another issues in two principles, love and holiness. From the beginning Christians are cliosen in sanctifi- cation of the Spirit, as well as belief in the truth.* It is God's will, we are told, from before the foundation of the world, that in Christ a people should be chosen to be "holy and without blame before Him in love."^ Thus it is that in each Epistle the Apostle addresses the members of the several Churches as '* called to be saints " (ouyioi), or as actually being such. This holiness is the work of the Spirit, and is the result of the possession of the Life which comes from Christ.^ But St. Paul, as well as St. John,' recognizes the possibility of resistance to the Divine life-principle at every stage of its progress within > 1 Cor. X. 17. 2 Fpi^ iv, i6_ gee p. 83. ^ jjojq_ ^i. 17-24. * 2 Thess. ii. 13. Compare St. John xvii. 17: "Sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy word is truth." * Eph. i. 4. « Rom. viii., &c. ^ See p. 84. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 119 the soul. We are exhorted to work out our own salva- tion, even though the fact is fully borne in mind that it is God who worketh in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.^ We are urged not to grieve or to quench the Spirit.^ We are described as engaged in an en- deavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.^ Exhortations to fight the good fight of faith/ to run as those who mean to win,^ to keep the deposit/ are clear proofs that St. Paul felt that God's work could be resisted by man's obstinacy, and the solemn exhortations in the Epistle to the Hebrews against those who turn back in the Christian course are a proof that he believed in such a thing as a ^' darkness " which refused to " receive " the Light of God. '^ Those, however, who received the grace of God in truth were collected into a society, whose unity, as has already been gathered from the fourth Gospel, was " no mere external unity of visible association, nor a mere agreement in any confession of faith,"^ but an " unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace ;" the coming " in ^ the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,"^" so that being imbued with truth in love,^^ they might grow up to Christ in all 1 Phil. ii. 12, 13. 2 ^pj^ j^ ^q 1 The&s. v. 19. 2 Eph. iv. 3. " 1 Tim. vi. 12. ^ 1 Cor. ix. 24. « 1 Tim. vi. 20, 2 Tim. i. 14. ' St. John i. 5, 11, 12. « See ante, p. 83. ^ Or " unto." " Eph. iv. 13. This expression can have no other meaning than that Christ inhabits every man, and that the perfection of each man consists in being identified with Christ. In fact, though the language is extremely different, the doctrine is precisely that of the sixth and seventeenth chapters of St. Johu. *' ahtlQ^vovTis iv hydirri. Eph. iv. 15, Observe the connection of 120 The Doctrinal System of St. John. things. Animated by such a spirit, the Christian need fear none of the enemies of his soul. He is endued with a power whereby he may rise superior to them all. "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper," is an echo from the Old Testament which returns to us with augmented force in the New. " Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loveth us."^ Nothing, how powerful soever it may be, can separate us from the love of Grod which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. He it is that giveth us the victory in the great and final struggle with sin.^ In Him it is that triumph is always a certainty for the Christian.^ And not only triumph, but the reward of victory is his. He who has " fought a good fight, has finished his course, has kept the faith," can look forward with certainty to a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to all who love His appearing.* Whence did this conviction that God was on our side, and that we need not fear what man, or man's enemy could do unto us, reach the Apostle, unless it derived itself from his knowledge that there was One who had said, "Be of good cheer, I have over- come the world ?" We come, lastly, to the powers of the ministers of Christ. We have seen that Clirist, as reported by St. John, describes them as, in a special sense, the representatives of the Most High, and urges that they love and truth as in St. John, passim. Is this, or is it not another of those "traditions" of Christ's teaching of which Neander speaks? Compare also Eph. iii. 16, 17. ' Rom. viii. 37. 2 j (Jq,. ^v. 57. 3 2 Cor. ii. 14. Cf. Eph. iv. 8. Col. ii. 15. * 2 Tim. iv. 8. See ante, pp. 84, 85. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 121 should be received as such. It is precisely in that light that St. Paul would have us regard them. They are not only the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God,^ but they are workers together with Hira.^ Not only did He appoint His Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the per- fecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ,^ but St. Paul claims for them the right of being ambassadors for Christ, as though Christ did beseech His people by them ; they were to pray them in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God.^ If he gives any directions for the well-being of the Church, he does it as possessing an authority delegated to him by Christ.^ And if Christ communicated to His ministers the awful power of re- taining and remitting sins, we find St. Paul not afraid to exercise that power. He " delivers men to Satan for the destruction of the flesh "^ when they are obstinate in error; he forgives them " in the Person of Christ"^ when they are penitent with a godly sorrow.^ » 1 Cor. iv. 1. 2 lb. iii. 9. 2 Cor. vi. 1. ' Eph. iv. 11, 12. * 2 Cor. v. 20. 5 2 Thess. iii. 6, 12. 1 Cor. v. 4. « lb. v. 5. 1 Tim. i. 20. ^ \v irpocrwirco Xpicrrov, 2 Cor. ii. 10. * The points of difference between the Apostles hardly come within the scope of this essay, except so far as they serve to illustrate the individuality of the authors of the various books of the New Testa- ment. But St. Paul's vivid sense of the failure of the law to make a man just in God's sight, of its usefulness in bringing men to acknow- ledge the necessity of a source of righteousness external to themselves, serve to bring into greater relief the absolute identity of his main doctrines with those of the fourth Gospel. In the latter case they are presented in their abstract form as proceeding from the mouth of Jesus Christ ; in the former they are accepted because of their entire harmony with the pereoual experience of the writer. 122 The Doctrinal System of St. John, We may sum up St. Paul's teaching in almost the same words as that of St. John. He regards mankind as lost in darkness, *' given over to a reprobate mind,"^ and as being rescued by the Light and Life that dwells in Christ our Saviour. This Life, breathed into them by the Spirit, and received by them through faith, communicates to them first the blessing of being ac- counted righteous on account of Him who dwells within them ; and afterwards, when His work is fully developed within them, the further blessing of being made "holy and without blame before God in love." The new existence from above, possessed by each Christian in himself, combines the believers into a society, which, by reason of each member of it being inhabited by Christ, and being thus renewed after the image of His humanity, is called the Body of Christ. Of this society faith is the fundamental principle, and love the perfection, and each of these', though required of man, are nevertheless the gift of Cod.^ Its outward badges of union, which are also means of grace when rightly used, are the two Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; the one the initiation of the believer into the privileges of the Christian Society, the other at once the pledge and the means of his continuation therein. The Life which is granted to each member of this society circulates through the whole, there being the same intimate connection between each member of Christ that there is between the parts of the human body. Nor have all the members of the Christian body the same office. There are some whose business it is to teach, others who are to be taught ; some whose ' €tj aZoKiiiov vovv, Kom. i. 28. 2 Eph. ii. 8 ; iii. 16. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 123 privilege it is to rule, others to be ruled ;^ some whose duty it is to feed and minister to the flock, others who are commanded to receive their ministrations ; some who are charged with the task of presiding over the discipline of the community, others who are bound to assist in carrying out the sentence of those who are invested with lawful authority in the name of the great Head of the Church. Is there anything here but an exhibition in practice of the principles laid down by our Lord in the Gospel of the disciple whom He loved ?^ Our examination of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. James, and St. Jude, will be brief. We can hardly expect, within the compass of those short compositions, to find more than a few hints on the subject of our inquiry. But it is important to find out how far those 1 1 Thess. V. 12. 2 Thess. iii. 6. Heb. xiii. 17. ^ Both St. John and St. Paul present to us the system formulated by Waterland in his treatise on Justification. The " meritorious cause" is in each declared to be our Lord Jesus Christ; the " efficient and operating cause," the Spirit of God, and " the instrumental rite of its conveyance," baptism. Nor is the " receptive cause," the condi- tion on our side, faith, nor the " final " or " original " cause, the love of God, absent from the mind of either writer. Dr. Keim, however, can venture to say, as if there could be no doubt about the matter : "• Christ was exalted [in St. John's Gospel] above the flesh and its lusts, which obscure the perception as well as the will, into the spirit, and spiritual worship, above the ways of darkness into the ways of light. He constrains men to believe in Him, and by faith to attain perfect knowledge, as one who is born again, is full of the Spirit of God, in whom' God is abiding and prophesying, though unseen and unheard, telling of the past and of the future, taught of God, and fulfilling the commandments of the Lord, a lover of the brethren, and a child of peace, of joy and love. Paul, and even the Epistle to the Hebrews, hive no analogy to this sphere of ideas" — Clark's Tr., p. 190. One is tempted to doubt whether Dr. Keim can have read St. Paul's Epistles. He writes like one whose impressions of an author are obtained at second-hand. 124 • The Doctrinal System of St. John. hints tend to confirm, or to weaken our belief in the authenticity of the fourth Gospel. We have already- referred to the peculiar character of St. James's Epistle. But the more we insist upon that peculiarity of cha- racter, the more striking are any tokens of agreement between St. James and the Gospel of St. John. The key-note of St. John, as we have seen, is the possession of a new and supernatural Life from above, whose cha- racteristics are, first, a revelation of the truth, and, secondly, the infusion of a spirit of love ; and so entire is the change wrought in us by the possession of this life that we are said to be born or begotten again. So far, at least, St. James is in accord with him. God is said to have "begotten us," or "brought us forth," by ''a word of truth;" and like St. John, he ascribes this regeneration to the will of God.^ This word is said to have been planted within us,^ and to be gifted with a power of saving the soul. In another place this word, or perhaps Christ Himself, is spoken of as the " wisdom from above,"^ and as producing " good fruits," which are " sown in peace." As to the requisite on man's part for receiving this implanted power, it is clear that St. James was well aware of its necessity. He com- mences his Epistle by assuming its existence as a matter of course, and goes on to represent it as indispensable ;* and if he takes up a great deal of time in rebutting a false » St. James i. 18. St. John i. 13. "^ St. James i. 21. or " connatural with us." Compare St. James i. 25 ; ii. 12. ^ j^ j. 20. Kather, " work out," /carep- yi^otiai. ^ Rom. X. 3. ■• St. James ii. 8. ^ Phil. iv. 13 : "I can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me." ^ St. James iv. 8. 7 ib. v. 13, et sqq. ] 26 The Doctrinal System of St. John. these last statements may, it is true, be held to negative any sympathy on St. James's part with the Gospel as taught by St. John and St. Paul. They may even be regarded as indicative of the intention of this Apostle to teach pure Pelagianism. But taken in connection with his doctrine of the engrafted word and the law of liberty, and wdth his clear assertion that man needs to be saved by the former, they are not a little significant. No Jew — and St. James was a Jew — could have spoken of the Jewish law in such terms. Nor could he have spoken thus of the still more rigorous law laid down by Christ,^ unless he bad known of some power given unto man whereby that law might be fulfilled, and any departure from its provisions atoned for. And if he believed that the mere promulgation of a higher and more searching law by Christ would, of itself, lead men to the fulfil- ment of that law by their appreciation of its innate excellence, he can only be said to be opposing himself to common sense, and to the w^hole spirit of Christianity, summed up in the significant words of Christ, "The things that are impossible with men are possible with God."^ The teaching of St. James then, little as it concerns itself with doctrine, is either capable of being reconciled with the system of St. Paul and St. John, or it is at variance with the facts of histor}^, and with Christianity itself. We must either reject the Epistle of St. James from the Sacred Canon, or admit that he says nothing on the point w^e are now considering which, rightly understood, is inconsistent either with * St. Matt. V. 48. Liddon, ' Bampton Lectures,' p. 431, remarks that St. James quotes our Lord's words, as recorded by tlie Synoptists, with remarkable frequency, and the Sermon on the Mount in particular. 2 St. Luke xviii. 27. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 127 St. Paul's Epistles, or with the words of Christ as handed down to ITS in the fourth Gospel. In the writings of St. Peter, and of St. Jude, who may almost be said to repeat St. Peter, we shall find much fuller corroboration of the system of the fourth Evangelist and of St. Paul.^ St. Peter, like St. John, holds that before the coming of Christ "the whole world lay in wickedness." They had received " a vain conversation by tradition from their fathers."^ In the time past of their lives they walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, and abominable idolatries, working the will of the Gentiles.^ They had been called out of darkness into God's marvellous light.* They have " es- caped the corruption that is in the world through lust,"* and from " those that live in error." ^ With St. Peter, as with the other Apostles, "that which was born of the flesh was flesh ;" " the natural man could not do the things of the Spirit ;" for natural brute beasts were destined from their birth to capture and destruction.'^ And if St. Jude does not assert the same truth in the same manner, he gives a very emphatic description of the state of those in whom the power of Christianity does not dwell. ^ The 2nd Epistle of St. Peter was long among the antilegomena in the early Church, and this circumstance has emboldened some to deny its authenticity now. The more I read it the more convinced I am of its genuineness from its simplicity, its absence of later allusions, its entire freedom from later developments of doctrine, from the occurrence of Hebraisms in it, and from its resemblance in style to tlie first Epistle. And the occurrence of several Pauline expressions in it, from which the first Epistle is free, are strongly confirmatory of the fact which we gather from tlie Epistle itself, that the writer liad just risen from a perusal of the Epistles of St. Paul. 2 1 Pet. i. 14, 18. 3 lb iv. 3. * lb. ii. 9. ' 2 Pet. i. 4. ^ lb. ii. 18. Also ver. 20. • (pvaiKoi, lb. ii. 12. See Jude 10. 128 The Doctrinal System of St. John. To such persons there was a dim light in the midst of darkness, even before Christ came — the light of prophecy.^ But a day was to dawn, and a Light- bearer'^ was to arise in their hearts, which should change their condition, and this was the power and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose Majesty the Apostle had seen with his own eyes.^ Christianity, we see, is still a power — a power to partake of the Divine Nature.* This power, available through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is once more a regeneration, the begetting of a new nature — the imparting of a new Life — and it takes place by no corruptible seed, but by the Word of a living and everlasting God.^ Through Him we obtain all things necessary to life and godliness.^ So far all agrees with what we read in St. Paul and St. John. When we proceed to ask whether St. Peter, like his brethren, recognises any intermediate means by which the blessings of which he has spoken are imparted to mankind, we find him still in perfect accord with the other writers of the New Testament. If we are called to sanctification through the Life that is in Christ, it is " sanctification of the Spirit."^ If our souls are purified to the obedience of the truth, it is " through the Spirit."^ The Kesurrection Life of Christ thus imparted is con- nected with the Sacrament of Baptism, "for even * 2 Pet. i. 19. Compare St. John i. 45 ; v. 46. - (pwa(p6po5. 3 lb. i. 16. * lb. i. 4 •^ 1 Pet. i. 3, 23. Observe that \6yos, in v. 23, becomes pij/j-a in v. 25. « 2 Pet. i. 3. ' 1 Ptt. i. 2. ^ lb. ver. 22. It is fair to admit, however, that in each of these passages the spirit of the believer may be meant. But St. Peter does at all events acknowledge the operation of a " Spirit of Christ." 1 Pet. i. 11. See below, Chapter v. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 129 baptism doth now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." And this salvation is not to be con- fined to a mere remission of sins, but it is intimated that the eflScacy of baptism depends upon the infusion of a principle which shall produce that which the can- didate for baptism is required to promise, namely, the answer of a good conscience toward God.^ There is but one single allusion to the other sacra- ment, and it is a very distant one. But it conclusively proves that 8t. Peter regarded the Life conveyed by means of baptism as requiring nourishment in order to bring it to perfection. The new-born babe must ear- nestly desire the reasonable milk of the Word, to the end that in it, or by it, he may grow.^ And by this means — by the continual absorption into himself by each member of the Christian covenant of the nourish- ment designed for him — the body of believers grows into " a spiritual house," where sacrifices acceptable to God are offered up.^ Christ is the foundation. Upon Him all the members of the Church are built.* In Him their actions are all performed.^ And thus they become the successors of the Jews, " wdiich in time past were not a people, but are now the people of the living God."® Henceforth they are the " chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the peculiar people,""^ whose business it is to set forth the praises of Him who has so called them. And of this society '' faith is the fixed, unswerving ' 1 Pet. iii. 21. ^ lb. ii. 2. eV here is probably a Hebrdism. ' lb. ii. 5. Compare Jude 20. ■• lb. ii. 7. 5 lb. iii. 16. « Hosea i. 10. J" 1 Pet. ii. 9. Cf. Exod. xix. 6. 130 The Doctrinal System of St. John. root."^ It is he who "believes in Christ" that ''shall not be confounded."^ Christ is found " precious " to those only who believe.^ If the Gospel with St. Peter, as with St. Paul, is the power of God unto salvation unto all and upon all, it is through faith that this power is available.* If Christ was manifested in the last times, it was for them that believe, that their faith and hope may be in God.^ This very faith itself was no work of man ; it was God's gift, obtained " through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."^ To preserve this faith it was necessary for them ear- nestly to contend'^, for this was the foundation upon which they had to build.^ This was the channel through which the rest of the Christian graces were to flow, the root from which they must take their beginning.^ And so was the holy temple, the habitation of God, to be builded.^" " The house of God, which is the Church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth,"^^ was, in St. Peter's view as well as that of St. Jude, to be built upon faith as its foundation, and to be permeated with faith as its essential principle. There is the same blending of the Divine and human element that we find elsewhere. Faith, as we have seen, is the gift of God, but its existence is indispensable in man. And the society so interpenetrated with faith as a living principle is bound together into a society whose ' ' Christian Year.' Hymn for Sexagesima Sunday. ^ 1 Pet. ii. G. ^ lb. ii. 7. I must regard Tifx-f) as the subjective realization by the believer of the \idos eurifMos in v. 6. * Compare Kom. i. 16 ; iii. 22, with 1 Pet. i. 5. =1 Pet. i. 21. •* Or, "our God and Saviour." 2 Pet. i. 1. - Jude 3. » lb. 20. " 2 Pet. i. 5. '" Jude 20. "1 Tim. iii. lo. Doctrine of the Incarnation, 131 crowning virtue is love. If faith, in 2 Pet. i. 5, 6, is the basis of all Christian virtue, love is its ultimate develop- ment. Those who have been "sanctified in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ,"^ who are "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obe- dience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,"^ are bid to ** see that they love one another with a pure heart fervently;"^ and that because they had "puri- fied themselves* in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren." Obedience, purity, holiness, were to be the distinguishing marks of a society of which love was the enduring bond. This fervent, intense, earnest love for one another was to be cultivated above all things f for the sum of the Apostle's teaching was that his disciples should be all " of one mind, sympathising, inspired by brotherly love."^ There is but one passage which refers to the outward government of the Church. We may remark, by the way, that it expresses precisely the same views on Church government as are put forth in the other books of the New Testament. But the most important feature in it is the manner in which it breathes the spirit of sayings ascribed to our Lord by St. John. If Christ ever uttered the words recorded by the Evangelist in his twenty-first chapter, we might easily believe that they would ring in St. Peter's ears to his dying day. It is strange that few, if any, have observed the coin- cidence that in the few words he addresses to the rulers » Jnde 1. 2 1 Pet. i. 2. ^ ji^, j, 22. * This expression confirms what we have said above of the same expression as used by St. James. ^ 1 Pet. iv. 8. ^ lb. iii. 8. J 32 The Doctrinal System of St. John. of the Church he employs the very word he might be expected to have employed if the twenty-first chapter of St. John be a genuine record of the acts and words of Christ. Tioi/jialve ra irpofiard /jlov, says the Master to the disciple. UoLfidvare rb ttol^vlov rov @eo{), says that dis- ciple, when handing on to others the commission he him- self has received. The expression is only once used by St. Paul/ numerous as are the occasions in which he exhorts the ministers of Christ, or describes their duties ; and even on that occasion we may believe his words to be founded on a tradition that Christ had once given such a command to an Apostle. But in the only passage in which we find St. Peter giving advice to presbyters he uses a word which Christ is said to have uttered under circumstances which, had they ever occurred, the Apostle could never have forgotten. Have we not here a striking testimony to the genuineness, not only of the Gospel of St. John, but of the fragment which many of those who defend the Gospel itself are inclined to give up? There is another utterance recorded in the fourth Gospel, and in it alone, which would seem also to have left a deep impression on the mind of the iipostle. " I am the Good Shepherd," says the Saviour, apply- ing to Himself one of the most beautiful images whereby God is depicted in the Old Testament ; and he pro- ceeds, " The Good Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep." Twice does St. Peter refer to it, and once, be it observed, at the end of a passage in which he has spoken at length, and with feeling, on the Passion of Christ.^ But the second reference, at the end of the ' Acts XX. 28. , M Pet. ii. 21-25. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 133 passage which treats of the duties of the elders, shows that, deeply as the former saying had taken hold of his imagination, the latter, which handed on the tender relation from the Ma'^ter to His servants, was yet more deeply graven on his mind.^ He had good reason to remember the occasion when the "Chief Shepherd" intrusted His erring but repentant follower with the solemn commission, " Feed My sheep." We have now entered at some length into the ex- amination of the most important principle of the Christian rehgion as presented to us by the various writers of the New Testament. We have found that there is a remarkable agreement on it among them all, and that though it may appear to have less stress laid upon it by one writer than another, it is very far from being proved that this was because a school of thought existed in the Apostolic Church which acknowledged no such principle. The fact is that the Synoptic Gospels, and the Epistle of St. James, being written for purposes severely practical, make but scant reference to the doctrinal principles upon which their ethical exhortations were necessarily based. They record Christ's precepts, and His example ; they commend them to our notice and imitation, but they are silent on the question whence the power to follow them is derived. Yet, though silent as to the source of this power, they clearly acknowledge the power itself, and, as we have seen, they recognize its results as facts of which they have no doubt whatever. A body of which the Holy Ghost is the inspiring soul, faith the condition of life, ' 1 Pet. V. 4. 134 The Doctrinal System of St. John. love the abiding fruit, Christ's Body and Blood — a Bread from heaven — the sustaining power; a body which has an organized form, a due principle of subordination — a kingdom of heaven, in fact, of which Christ is the Lord and King, and which witnesses to His power in the midst of a hostile world,^ is a fact as fully recognized by the Synoptists as by St. John. And when a Synoptist turns aside from his simple narrative of the facts of the life of Jesus to the history of the Church which Jesus founded, we find from hints which he lets drop that he was in full possession of that doctrinal system which is to be found in the fourth Gospel, and in the Epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul — a system which has ever since continued to be the heritage of the universal Church. While, when we turn to the writings of these two Apostles, with whom, let us still bear in mind, two of the Synoptists were in the closest and most affectionate intercourse, we find that their theological conceptions precisely agree with the teaching of Christ which the fourth Gospel presents to our notice. If, therefore, the theological ideas of its author were not borrowed from the writings of St. Peter and St. Paul — which has yet to be proved — there is the strongest pre- sumption that his Gospel is compiled by one who en- joyed the privilege of personal intercourse with Christ Himself. » St. Matt. xiii. ( 135 ) CHAPTEK IV. THE DOCTKINE OF PEOPITIATION. The doctrine of the infusion of a new Life into the believer's heart, and of its triumphal progress there until the whole man is reduced under its power, pre- supposes, by the very fact of its gradual rather than im- mediate operation, the existence of a disturbing force — an adverse power which will at least attempt resistance. We come next therefore to the inquiry, whether the fourth Gospel recognizes such a fact as sin, and if so, how is it dealt with ? The doctrine of the restora- \ tion of human nature through the implanting of a Divine Life, although, as we have seen, it is the central doctrine of our faith, becomes altogether useless to us if that most universal characteristic of human nature, the fact of man's universal transgression of the Divine law, be left untouched. For sin as a disease, the implanting of a Divine Life might be, and no doubt is, a remedy. For sin as an act of disobedience to a Divine Person, the fact of such an implanting is in no sense an atonement. Granted that man could be restored from the effects of] his fall by the infusion of a new Life from above, how would this meet the fact that each individual of the race was deeply stained with the commission of deliberate! and wilful offences against the Everlasting Kuler of the '. 136 The Doctrinal System of St. John. universe ? How, in fact, to use tlie vivid language of St. Paul, can God at once be '* just, and the jnstifier of every one who believeth in Him ?"^ Is there any hint that such a difficulty had occurred to St. John ? There can be no doubt of it. It would be a simple imperti- nence to take up the reader's time with the proof that St. John recognized the fact of sin. It is sufficient to inquire how he treats it. There are several significant passages in the Gospel in which the later theology of the Epistles is distinctly foreshadowed. Thus the first ] historical introduction of Jesus to the reader is in the words of the Baptist, " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world."^ Moreover, the ' Rom. iii. 26. 2 St. John i. 29. We might almost infer the identity of the author of the Revelation with that of the Gospel from this one passage. No writer of the New Testament is more impressed by the figure of the Lamb than he who wrote the Revelation, The writer of that book is admitted by many who dispute the genuineness of the Gospel and many other books of the New Testament to be the disciple of the Baptist. But if the fourth Gospel be genuine, he either heard with his own ears, or must immediately after have had reported to him by others, the striking words in which til at great teacher first pointed out Jesus to his disciples ; for St. John was the partner and friend of St. Andrew, and, as some have thought, his companion on this occasion. Is the continual recurrence of the figure in the Apocalypse no indication of the genuineness of the Gospel? The only other New Testament writer who speaks thus of Christ is St. Peter. The expression does not occur in St. Paul. And if it be urged that aixv6s is the word in the Gospel, and apviov in tlie Apocalypse, we may remember (1) that the only other place where the word apviov occurs in the New Testament is in the Gospel of St. John ; and (2) that it is the figure, rather than the precise word, which is the important point in this case. It has been disputed by commentators to which Lamb under the Jewish law the Baptist must be held to refer. We shall not perhaps be far wrcmg in em- bracing every leference which would be likely to occur to the mind of u Jew when listening to such a proclamation. For the different meanings of the word aXpwv, see Hengsteuberg in loc. Here, again, we The Doctrine of Propitiation. 137 Son of Man must of necessity {hel) be " lifted np," as the serpent was in the wilderness, and this in order that He may " draw all men unto Him."^ He " layeth down His life for the sheep," we are told,^ and the fact is again referred to as a proof of His surpassing love.^ He is pointed out to us as the Paschal Lamb,* whose blood, let us not forget, was to be sprinkled on the door- posts, in order to save the Israelites from destruction.^ And these prophetic hints of Christ and His forerunner are explained by the other writings attributed to the Evangelist. Christ, who is referred to twenty-six times in the Apocalypse as *' the Lamb," is there declared to have " washed us from our sins in His own blood,"^ and to have " redeemed us by His blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation."'^ He is described as a *' Lamb as it had been slain," and in His blood all the nations should wash their robes, and make them white.^ The Epistle, as might be expected, carries the matter further. The effects of Christ's death are formulated into a doctrine. He is the tXacr//-09, the propitiatory offering for the sins of the whole world.^ He was " manifested to take away sin,"^" and it is " His blood " that " cleanseth us " from it.^^ may venture to include all those meanings in the scope of this un- questionably pregnant declaration. ^ St. John iii. 14, 15 ; Cf. lb. viii. 28 ; xii. 32. In the latter passage the expression is explained to refer to the death of Jesus. 2 St. John X. 11, 15. 3 lb XV. 13. * lb. xix. 36. 5 Exod. xii. 13. ^ Rev. i. 5. ' lb. v. 9. 8 lb. V. 6, 12 ; vii. 14. » j joj^ jj 2 ; iv. 11. >» 1 John iii. 5. Observe here a confirmation of the argument respect- ing the identity of authorship of the Epistle as well as the Kevelation with that of the Gospel. The mind of the writer of the Epistle dwells particularly on the declaration of the Baptist. ^^ lb. i. 7. 138 The Doctrinal System of St. John, This cleansing effect of the blood of Christ is more- over symbolised by effusion of blood and water from the Saviour's side mentioned with such emphasis by the Evangelist as having been seen by him at the Cruci- fixion.^ That he held the circumstance to have had L^some symbolical meaning is sufficiently evident from the Gospel itself, but the reference to it in the Epistle ^ removes all possibility of doubt on the point. And if we couple this declaration with that concerning the new birth of water and the Spirit in the discourse to Nico- demus, we can hardly escape from the inference that some allusion was intended to the Sacrament of baptism, as one of the '' means whereby " purification by the blood of Christ was conveyed. Yet the words " not by water only, but by water and blood," must surely involve the doctrine of Propitiation to which we have above referred. It is difficult to attach any meaning to them unless we conceive them to imply that no purification could be effectual, but such as was obtained by means of the blood of a Victim, who was offered for the salvation of our souls.^ Turn we now to the Synoptists. We shall find them in perfect agreement with the fourth Gospel on this point. » St. John xix. 34. 2 1 jo^n y, g, ' It has been reserved for the later ages of the Church to systematise, to humanise so to speak, this Divine doctrine. The mingled simplicity and my&teriousness of the language of St. John and St. Paul is copied by the earlier Christian writers, with little or no attempt to shape it into formulas. Bishop Ptitteson, with that rare theological instinct with which he was endowed, has remarked on this. " The doctrine of the Atonement," he writes, " was never in ancient times, I believe, drawn out in the form in which Luther, Calvin, Wesley and others have lately stated it. The fact of the Atonement through the death of Christ was always clearly stated." — ' Life of Bishop Patteson,' vol. ii. p. 535. The Doctrine of Propitiation. J 39 All four narratives agree that significant hints were dropped by Christ and those who prophesied of Him, which were expanded by His followers into the theological system we find in the later writings of the New Testa- ment. Remission of sins is the key-note of the Gospel system, as the restoration of fallen humanity is its complete harmony. It was foretold by Zacharias,^ it was announced by Christ,^ it was preached to the world with one voice by His Apostles after His Ascen- sion.^ And that this was to be accomplished by His death we have a distinct declaration in the assertion that He would give His life a ransom (XvTpov avrl) for many.* The new covenant is instituted in the blood of Christ, which was shed for the remission of sins.^ And though it is remarkable how little stress is laid by the author of the third Gospel, in his treatise on the Acts of the Apostles, upon the effects of the death of Christ — though it is singular how he, or rather those whose speeches he reports, at once turn away from the thought of the Death of Christ to proclaim *' the power of His Resurrection," yet there is one passage in which the sacrificial aspect of that death is plainly, if inci- dentally, declared. St. Paul speaks of the Church of God® as "purchased with His own blood. "^ • But in the Epistles of St. Paul the doctrine of re- demption through Christ's blood is most prominently brought out. It is quite unnecessary to cite many passages, when the whole of St. Paul's writings are permeated with the doctrine. But some of the most 1 St. Luke i. 77. 2 ib. iv. 18 ; v. 20 ; xxiv. 47, &c. » Acts ii. 38 ; v. 31, &c. * St. Matt. xx. 28. * lb. xxvi. 28, &c. * Or, of the Lord. See above, p. 55. ^ Acts xx. 28. 140 The Doctrinal System of St. John. striking may be selected, in order to show the sub- stantial identity of the teaching of the two Apostles. Jesus is a " propitiatory offering " (IXaa-rripLov) through faith in His blood,^ and whatever theological difficulties the words IXaafjLo^ and IXaarrfpLov may suggest, theie can be little doubt of the similarity of the ideas they are calculated to convey.^ So again, '* Christ died for us," and we are justified by (or in) His blood.^ Through His blood we have redemption {airokvTpcoao^;) and ior- giveness of the transgressions,* and through it they who sometimes were far off were made nigh.^ By the death of the Son of God we were reconciled to God.® He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that were against mankind, and took them out of the way by nailing them to His cross.'' By it^ He spoiled princi- palities and powers, and displayed them as captives in His march of triumph.^ It \a as " in the body of His flesh, through death," that He " reconciled " mankind to God.^® But if we seek for a systematic presentation ' Kom. iii. 25. 2 lAaa-T-fjpiov is in the LXX. the translation of ri"lS3, a Hebrew word wliich seems to convey the double sense of " cover " and " propitiation." In our English version it is rendered " mercy seat," the symbol, as Philo teaches, pf God's mercy— the connecting link between God and man. Suidas, following Hesychius, explains IXaar/xos hy " meekness," or "re- conciliation," iKacTTiipiov, by " altar." Schlensner regards the former as properly rendered by " expiation," the latter by " expiation," or " expia- tory victim." With him agrees Bretschneider. Cremer, following more closely the derivative analogies of the words, renders the former by " ex- piation "=Heb. 0^53, and the latter by "place of expiation," i.e. mercy-seat, as the visible symbol of Divine forgiveness. ^ Eom. V. 8, 9. * Eph. i. 7. Cf. Col. i. 14. 5 Eph. ii. 13. * Rom. v. 10. 7 Col. ii. 14. * Unless we are to translate iv avrif, " in himself." « Cul. ii. 15. '" lb. i. 22. The Doctrine of Propitiation. 141 of this doctrine to our minds we find it in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is the formal treatise on sacri- ficial atonement in the Kew Testament, as the Epistle to the Romans is on justification. Here we have once more the expression IXdaKeaOav used of the work of Christ in His priestly office.^ And the whole Epistle explains how that propitiatory work was carried on. It was " through death that He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil."^ The " priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek "^ was ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices, as other priests* had been. But the sacrifice was the sacrifice of Himself. He " offered Himself without spot to God." By His blood our consciences are purged from dead works to serve the living God.^ By that blood He entered into the holy place, having found an eternal redemption.^ He " put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.'"^ By the offering of His Body once for all, we Christians have obtained sanctification.^ And through His blood an everlasting covenant^ has been established between God and His people. The absence of any distinct allusion to the Sacrifice of Christ in the Epistle of St. James confirms the view we have taken of that Epistle above. Unless we are pre- pared to contend that it represents an earlier form of Christian tradition even than that of the Synoptic Gospels, we cannot deny that the omission in it of all reference to a doctrine so clearly proclaimed by the Synoptists as the Propitiatory offering on the Cross I Heb. ii. 17. ' lb. ii. 14. ^ j^ y. 6 ; vi. 20. * lb. V. 1 ; viii. 3. * lb. ix. 14. « lb. ix. 12. ' lb. ver. 26. Of. chap. x. 12. » lb. x. 10. » lb. xiii. 20. 142 The Doctrinal System of St. John, weakens very much the force of any arguments which may be drawn from the silence of the Epistle on any point whatever. In St. Peter, however, we find the doctrine of redemption throngh Christ's blood unequivocally set forth. It is by " the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot," that we are " redeemed (\vTp6(£>) from the vain conversation handed down from our ancestors."^ He " bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead unto sins should live to (or in) righteousness." " By His stripes we are healed."^ He " suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God."^ And it was to this that we were chosen, namely, unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.* Surely no more words are needed to demonstrate the substantial identity of the teaching of the Apostles on this point. The detached hints of St. John the Baptist and the Saviour Himself, recorded in the Gospels, are ex- panded in the Epistles into precisely the same doctrine as that recognized by the Apostles Peter and Paul. It was necessary that the Son of Man should be lifted up ^ in order that He might be the propitiatory Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. This, and nothing less than this, is the doctrine not of Pauline, or Petrine, or Johan- nean Christianity, but of the New Testament. Taught by Christ Himself, it has been found singularly adapted to the needs of our fallen humanity. It has been the consolation of His disciples in all ages, and so it will remain until He comes again. * I Pet. i. 19. Observe the remarkable coincidence between the language of ver. 20 and that of Kev. xiii. 8. Compare also Eph. i. 4. 2 1 Pet. ii. 24. ^ i^. iii. ig. * lb. i. 2. ^ Se?, St. John iii. 14. ( i43 ) CHAPTER V. THE NATURE AND OFFICE OF THE HOLY SPIEIT. The doctrine of St. John concerning the Holy Spirit may be summed up in a few words. Yet in these will be concentrated the essence of the teaching of the rest of Scripture on this head. St. John alone, and the fact has not been unobserved by the assailants of the authenticity of his Gospel, has designated the Holy Spirit by the remarkable title of the Paraclete. But in that term, and in the manner in which it is used, there is a deep and pregnant meaning. The Com- forter is a Person. The threefold office implied by His title cannot be fulfilled by any other. He has to exhort and to comfort the people of God, and to be their advocate.^ He is sent by Christ from the Father.^ It is from the Father that He proceeds,^ and the Father Himself is said to send Him. He has a work to do, to convince men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.^ , His office is to teach, by declaring what He has heard, ; by taking of what is Christ's, proclaiming it to Christ's \ disciples, and thus enhancing the glory of Christ.'^ | And this He can do the more readily, in that He ! * It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the word is applied to Christ in 1 John ii. 1, and is tliere translated "Advocate" in our version. - St. John XV. 2G ; xvi. 7. ^ lb. xvi. 8. * lb. xvi. 13, 14. 144 The Doctrinal System of St. John, possesses one of the characteristics which Christ has elsewhere declared to he inherent in Himself. He is the Spirit of Truth, and by virtue of this He is enabled to guide the disciples of Christ into all truth, and even to impart to them the gift of prophecy.^ Through His indwelling the power of remitting and retaining sin was imparted. Whatever may be meant by this commission, and to whomsoever it was com- municated, this much is clear, that the commission was a solemn one, and that it was given through the agency of the Holy Ghost.^ His office, however, was not to commence until after the Ascension of Jesus.^ But then, we may gather, He was to be the medium of communication between Christ and His people. For Christ came, He says, to give unto His people living water,* which should for ever well up within their souls. And it was through His Spirit that this was to be done,^ by Whom the gift of Divine Lile was to be com- municated from them to others. " Greater works than these shall ye do, because I go to the Father,"^ says our Lord. x\nd we can attach no other meaning to His words than that suggested by another passage of the same discourse. If Jesus went to the Father, it was that He might send the Holy Ghost to His dis- ciples.' By His influence, and that alone, could they i St. John xiv. 17 ; xvi. 13. - lb. xx. 22, 23. ' lb. vii. 39; xvi. 7. It is impossible to conceive that St. John meant to declare the non-existence of the Spirit before Christ's Asc3 jb. y. 4. 148 The Doctrinal System of St. John. the Synoptists in the prominence he gives to the Holy- Spirit in the work of our redemption. Whatever is done by the Father or the Son in us is ascribed to the Holy Ghost as the agent. He is not only the Spirit of God, but the " Spirit of Christ,"^ as being sent by Christ from the Father. His influence is connected with the Kesurrection and Ascension of Christ.^ It is through Him that Christ has imparted to those who believe on Him ; for if we are an " habitation of God," it is *' through the Spirit,"^ and if " Christ dwell in our hearts by faith," so that we attain to the knowledge of His love, it is because we have been "strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man."'* By " the hearing of faith " all believers received the Spirit,^ who was the earnest of our future inheritance,® the seal set by God to the reality of His promises. Nay, even when Christ is said to have " offered Him- self without spot to God," it is " through the eternal Spirit " that He is said to have done so.' If St. John speaks of the teaching of the Holy Ghost as proceeding from what He heareth,^ so does St. Paul speak of His teaching as the result of his searching all things, yea, e-ven the deep things of God.® If, by the use of the term Paraclete, St. John speaks of Him as the Advo- cate of the people of God, St. Paul takes care to remind us that He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.^° If, by that same term, » Rom. viii. 9. Gal. iv. 6. Phil. i. 19. « Eph. iv. 8. Eom. i. 4. ^ gp^ ji. 22. Cf, 1 Cor. iii. 16 ; vi. 19. * Eph. iii. 16, 17. ' Gal. iii. 2, 14. « 2 Cor. i. 22 ; v. 5. Eph. i. 13 : iv. 30. ' Heb. ix. 14. * St. John xvi. 13. » 1 Cor. ii. 10-13. '» Rom. viii. 26. 27. The Nature and Office of the Holy Spirit, 149 St. Jolin would have us understand the mission of the Holy Spirit to exhort and to console, St. Paul, who speaks in one place of the consolation of the Holy Ghost, speaks in another of an everlasting consolation (7rapdK\r]cn<;) given by the Father and by His Son Jesus Christ.^ All the great spiritual works accomplished among mankind are ascribed to the agency of the Holy Spirit. He ministers the various gifts which are allotted to the members of Christ's Church.^ It is through Him that the quickening of our mortal bodies, promised by Christ in St. John's Gospel, is effected.^ By Him it is that we are set free from the bondage of corruption, and enabled to fulfil the pure law of Jesus Christ.'^ In obedience to His mandates we display our title to be called the sons of God.^ By Him we are changed from glory to glory until we reflect the image of Jesus Christ.® Oar unity with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ is the " unity of the Spirit."^ And if Jesus Christ came to make love the abiding principle of our souls through His indwelling, it is through ''the Holy Spirit which He hath given us" that this love is "shed abroad."^ Nor must we forget that, as we have seen above,^ the initial principle of the Gospel Life is attributed by St. Paul as well as St. John, but by the former with greater minuteness and particularity than the other, to the agency of the Holy Ghost.^*' It would only be wearisome to follow out in » 2 Thess. ii. 16, 17. ^ i Cor. xii. Cf. Heb. ii. 4. » Kom. viii. 11. ■• lb. viii. 2. 2 Cor. iii. 17. 5 Eom. viii. 14. « 2 Cor. iii. 18. ' Eph. iv. 3-6. « Kora. V. o. » Chapter iii. '0 St. John iii. 5. Tit. iii. 4-7. 150 The Doctrinal System of St. John. detail St. Paul's separate enunciations of his general principle that whatsoever is done by the Father and the Son in the work of our redemption is done through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Life in the Spirit ^ is as distinctly his doctrine as life in Christ. All holy deeds which result from crucifying the flesh as dis- ciples of Christ are attributed to the Spirit's influence.^ These principles, first clearly laid down in the Epistle to the Galatians, and again expanded and emphasized in the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Komans, permeate the whole of his writings. From whence did he derive them, if it were not from the words of Christ, well known and fully accepted in the Church, but not committed to writing until years after in the Gospel according to St. John ?^ We should not expect to find many allusions to the work of the Holy Spirit in the brief Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude. But what is to be found there is to our point, and far more distinct than anything contained in the longer Epistle to the Hebrews.* St. Peter attributes our sanctification to His influence.^ He asserts that the prophets of old derived their inspiration from the Spirit of Christ, and that it was by His in- spiration that the Apostles of Christ were enabled to 1 Gal. V. 25. ' lb. v. 22-24. * St. Paul never expressly affirms the divinity of the Holy Ghost, but in such passages as 1 Cor. iii. 16 ; vi. 19, 20, he implies it more unmistakeably than any passage of St. John does. * St. James does not mention the Holy Spirit, not, surely, because he was unacquainted with His existence. He could not have read the first verse of the Book of Genesis without hearing of Him. * 1 Pet. i. 2. This, however, may mean the spirit of the believer. But compare St. Peter's own words in Acts ii. 33. The Nature and Office of the Holy Spirit. 151 proclaim His Gospel.^ He regards our salvation as due to the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, thus sug- gesting, though in no way affirming, the connection of these events with the gift of the Spirit. He speaks of Him as tlie Spirit of Glory and of God, which rests on those who are enabled to glorify God by suffering.^ Is it fanciful to imagine that we see in this passage the reflection of those mysterious words, so dark to human apprehension until illuminated by the after-history of the Church, " He shall glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you ?"^ One brief allusion in the short Epistle of St. Jude must conclude this portion of our investigation. The wickedness of the ungodly is explained by the fact that they lead a natural (^/ru^t/co?) life, unaffected by the influence of the Spirit of God,* in a way which suggests to us the declaration of our Lord to Nicodemus, and the emphatic and reiterated utterances of St. Paul ; while the saints of God are recommended to preserve them- selves carefully in the love of God, by means of a steady ' 1 Pet. i. 11, 12. The allusion to the day of Pentecost here is in keeping with the allusion to the Transfiguration in the second Epistle. St. Peter's mind, unlike that of St. Paul, was pervaded by these memories. The events of the past were ever vividly present to his mind. Compare, too, the similarity in sentiment with the variety in expression in 1 Pet. i. 11 and 2 Pet. i. 21. 2 1 Pet. iv. 14. 16. ' St. Peter's death, it may be observed, was regarded by St. John as a means of glorifying God, chap. xxi. 19. Also, if the second Epistle of St. Peter be genuine, we derive from the allusion in chap. i. 14 to the saying reported by St. John an additional argument for the genuineness of the Gospel ; and even if not, it is clear either that we have here one of M. Keville's '■ authentic traditions " known only to the author of the Gospel and the Epistle, or that the Gospel was accepted in the Cliurch before St. Peter's second Epistle was composed. * Jude 19. 152 The Doctrinal System of St, John. growth in their most holy faith, and a continual prayer offered up through the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.^ It may be as well, before leaving this subject, to point out some remarkable features of agreement be- tween the doctrine of St. John and that of St. Paul which may have escaped the attention of the reader. They do not lie upon the surface, and for this reason they are the more important to our investigation. The first point is the connection to which attention has already been directed of the Descoit of the Holy Ghost with the Ascension of Christ. " If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you," says Christ in St. John's Gospel ; and not only is the Descent of the Holy Spirit, but the whole work of the Gospel declared by Apostles and Evangelists with one consent to clepend upon the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ.^ But before we can understand this spiritual necessity ; this utter impossibility that the Holy Ghost should descend to carry on the work of salvation until Jesus had ascended into heaven, we must turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews, an Epistle which, as we have seen, makes very little reference to the person or office of the Holy Ghost. There we learn that, since " every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices, it is necessary also that Christ should have something to offer."^ What that something is, we are also told. It was the blood of the Lamb slain from the foundation of ^ Jude 20. Little less than this can be implied by the words iv 2 See Acts ii. 33. Eph. iv. 8. Kom. i. 4. 1 Pet. i. 3. » Heb. viii. 3, The Nature and Office of the Holy Spirit. 153 the world/ wherewith God is propitiated. It was the " offering up of Himself, once for all,"^ whereby He '•' put away sin."^ As the victim, He was slain, but as High Priest He entered into the Holy Place with the blood of the sacrifice, and appeared in the presence of God for us. Not till then was the atonement made; the sacrifice, though offered, was not till then accepted ; but when Christ had once appeared in the presence of God, when He had passed through the veil of His own flesh into the Holy Place not made with hands, the work of redemption was complete, the reconciliation was effected, and the Spirit of God, who had been driven from His habitation among men by their wickedness,* could return and make His tabernacle among them. It is only by a comparison of the different books of the New Testament that we arrive at this conclusion. One book states the fact, another gives the reason ; bat the reason is not connected with the fact, nor the fact with the reason. That the coincidence is remarkable, few ' Kev. xiii. 8. - Heb. vii. 27. ' lb. ix. 26. The words of Christ in St. Jolm viii. 28 confirm the doctrine advanced in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In themselves they are obscure, but interpreted by the light of the other books of the New Testament, they are full of meaning : " When ye have lifted up tlie Son of Map, then ye shall know that I am, and I am nothing of Myself, but as my Father hath taught Me, these things I speak." * The descent of the Holy Gliost is the formal repeal of the decree of Gen. vi. 3, in which, according to the more probable translation, God's Spirit is withdrawn from His indwelling in man ''■because of their transgression." The form (K^) of the relative pronoun upon which the translation in our version depends is not found in the Pentateuch. It first appears in the Book of Judges. And the translation Karajx^ivri ia the LXX. leads to the supposition that the Greek translators read ]-1"?"» for jilV When reconciliation had been made, and not till then, the^ Holy Ghost returned. This view is adopted by Hengstenberg in his ' Commentary on St. John.' 154 The Doctrinal System of St, John. will be inclined to deny. But whether the statement of fact preceded the publication of its rationale, is a question which must be deferred to another chapter. Again, St. John certainly speaks with greater em- phasis than any other Evangelist of the promise of Christ to send the Holy Spirit. " I will send Him unto you," He says, " from the Father." It is remarkable how distinctly this promise is referred to by the Synop- tists. "I send the promise of My Father upon you," He says in St. Luke's Gospel ;^ and yet more emphati- cally in the Acts, "tlie promise of the Fatlier, which saith He, ye have heard of Me."^ When and where had they heard such a promise ? There was a hint, it is true, given by St. John Baptist, that He who should come after him " should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire."^ But these were no words of Christ Himself, nor does He, in the Synoptic narratives, say anything amounting to a promise of the Holy Ghost.* Yet this " promise " is dwelt upon with the utmost emphasis by Synoptists and the writers of the Epistles. It is hinted at in the narratives of St. Matthew and St. Mark. The Gospel of St. Luke refers to it in significant but not very definite terms. But all ambiguity is removed in the Acts, when the promise of the Father, made by Jesus on some previous occasion, is now de- clared to be the baptism of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost. Nor are these the only allusions we have 1 iirayy^xla, xxiv. 49. ^ ^cts i. 4. ^ g^. Matt. iii. 11. * Unless the exhortation recorded in St. Matt, x, 19, 20, where Christ foretells that His disciples shall receive the aid of the Spirit of their Father to defend themselves when apprehended by the powers that be. But this is a very different thing from the effects of the Descent at Pentecost. The Nature and Office of the Holy Spirit, 155 to such a promise. St. Peter, in his first sermon, calls the outpouring of the Spirit the promise of the Father.^ It will not be sufficient to explain this expression of the prophecy of Joel which St. Peter had just cited. " Christ had received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost," we are told. Yet, save in the Gospel of St. John, we do not find that Christ had made any such state- ment. And we may carry our argument yet further. Christ's promise must have been very weighty and solemn before it could have made so deep an im- pression even upon those who had not seen Him in the flesh. It is not St. Peter only, but St. Paul, who speaks of the Holy Spirit as " promised." He does so emphatically twice — in the Epistle to the Galatians, where he speaks of the "promise of the Spirit" being " received by faith,"^ and in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where he calls Him, yet more distinctly, *' the Holy- Spirit of promise."^ A more remarkable instance could hardly be given of the way in which St. John's Gospel is absolutely necessary to complete the history of Christ's life and sayings. There are many which do not come within the scope of this Essay ;* but it is impossible to treat of the teaching of » Acts ii. 33. 2 Gal. iii. 14. ^ Eph. i. 13. A Hebraism, most probably, for the promised Holy Spirit ; with more emphasis on the promise, however, than could be given by any other construction. * Such as, for instance, the account of the anointing at Bethany, which in the Synoptists is related in connection with the betrayal. St. John supplies the key to this by stating that the rebuke was ad- dressed to Judas : that of the raising of Lazarus, which supplies a reason for the enthusiastic reception of One who, as far as the Synoptist narratives go, had never been in Jerusalem since the com- mencement of His ministry : that of the words, " Destroy this temple," 156 The Doctrinal System of St. John, the New Testament Scriptures with regard to the Holy Ghost without adverting to the fact that He is said again and again in Holy Scripture to have been promised under the Christian dispensation, and that no record of such promise is to be found, save in the pages of the Evangelist St. John/ One more coincidence must be adverted to before we leave this branch of our subject. It is to be found in the harmony between the prophecy ascribed to Christ as regards the work of the Holy Ghost, and the subse- quent history of the Christian Church. Of course the prophecy may be attributed to the writer of the Gospel, but it must at least be admitted that such a view would give him credit for great grasp of thought and power of expression. The mysterious character of the passage, however, is surely more reconcileable with the idea of a prophecy on Christ's part, than with that of an epitome of the results of His doctrine, excogitated by a writer of the second century. Tiiey are the words of the Master rather than the scholar. The Holy Ghost was to act upon men's convictions. He was to prove to them the existence of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.^ One striking instance of the fulfil- recorded only by St. John ; but made the basis of one of the chief accusations against our Lord in the Synoptist narratives. So we have an explanation of Judas being able to find our Lord so readily in chap, xviii. 2, and how St. Peter gained entrance into the high priest's palace, in ver. 15. Another piece of confirmatory evidence has just Ibeen adduced in this very section, p. 151. * If this be another of the " authentic traditions " to which the author of the fourth Gospel bad access, it is singular that it should be found imbedded firmly in a mass of concrete of ''obviously later origin," such as chapters xiv. — xvii. 2 St. John xvi. 8. The Nature and Office of the Holy Spirit, 157 ment of this prediction at once occurs to us. Never before had a Homan governor quailed before a prisoner as Felix did, when Paul " reasoned with him of righteousness, of temperance, and of judgment to come." Never, again, had a curious and excited crowd been so pricked to the heart as when Peter's first attempt at preaching drew from his hearers the re- markable words, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Whether it were the conviction which worked " godly sorrow unto repentance not to be repented of," or the conviction which only hardened the impenitent heart, this same compunction was again and again the witness to the fact of such a work. As St. Stephen's speech revealed to his hearers the inner hollowness of their creed, they "rushed upon him with one accord, stopping their ears." One at least of that fanatical band could not drive out the recollection of St. Stephen's words, and the conviction of their truth suddenly came home to him when he was trying to conceal his inward misgivings by redoubled rage and fury. The same St. Paul, when he had fully grasped the Christian system, perceived how the revelation of the righteousness of God by Jesus Christ produced the double result of conviction of sin and of the need of a righteousness other than our own.^ Nor does he forget to give an edge to his preaching, to bring it home to the consciences of men, bv constant allusions to the certainty of a coming judgment.^ He appeals to the witness of their own consciences, informed and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, for the confirmation of what he teaches.^ In one remarkable ' Rom. i.— iii. 2 ^^ jj jg 2 Cor. v. 10, &c. 3 2Cor. iv. 2; v. 11. 158 The Doctrinal System of St. John. passage he analyses the work of the Spirit in producing that salufcary conviction of infirmity which leads to amendment of life. " For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge ! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." ^ Surely this is an example of the effect of the Holy Spirit in the heart, by manifestation of the righteousness of an ascended Lord, convincing His disciples of sin and stirring them up to conform themselves to the pattern of His Life. In fact, the whole after-history of the Church is a history of the acts of that '* Spirit of truth," arousing men's consciences, and "convincing them of sin, of righteousness and of judgment," being to some " a savour of death unto death," and to others "a savour of life unto life," but to all, whether sub- duing them to obedience, or rousing them into anta- gonism, in very deed the voice of God. ' 2 Cor. vii. 11. ( 159 ) CHAPTER VI. THE DOCTKINE OF THE RESURKECTION AND THE FINAL JUDGMENT. There are few points on which St. John's Gospel is more explicit than on that of the resurrection and the final judgment. As we shall see hereafter, the fact that he is so explicit on this head is an argument for the genuineness of his Gospel. At present, however, we will confine ourselves to the doctrines he unfolds. And first, as regards the resurrection. Our Lord, according to St. John, refers both to the fact and its cause. To the fact, in such passages as that in the fifth chapter : 1 " The hour is coming, when they that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God : and they that j hear shall live." ** The hour is coming, in the which they 1 that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall i come forth."^ " I will raise him up at the last day."^ \ *' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there shall My servant be."^ " I go and prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there shall ye be also."* " Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me^ • St. John V. 26, 28. ^ lb. vi. 39, 40, 44, 54. « lb. xii. 26. 4 lb. xiv. 3. 160 The Doctrinal System of St. John, where I am."^ To tlie cause, in mysterious language in such passages as these : " I have power to lay down My life, and I have power to take it again. "^ '' Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."^ " I am the Life : no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me."* And when the most advanced among His dis- ciples had grasped the truth of a resurrection of the just. He teaches them to connect it with Himself. He is no longer content with the words, " Thy brother shall rise again," but He utters once, and once only, as re- corded in the Gospels, the ever-memorable words, the ; foundation of all the after-teaching of tlie Apostles, " I am the Resurrection, and the Life : he that believeth on ] Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."^ ^ On the doctrine of future retribution, too, it is im- possible to misunderstand the doctrine of St. John. They who *' come forth " from the graves come forth to judgment : " they that have done good unto the resur- rection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."^ " He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My Words, hath one that judgeth him : the Word which I have spoken, the same shall judge \ him at the last day."'^ Nor is this all. The Evangelist '^represents judgment as already passed on mankind, and jthe only deliverance from that sentence of coiidemna- 'tion is to be found in accepting the salvation proclaimed by Christ. *' He that believeth on Him is not con- demned : but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of » St. John xvii. 24. ^ j^ x. 18. » n, xii. 24. * lb. xiv. (j. ^ lb. xi. 25. Cf. vi. 35, 48. ^ lb. v. 29. ' lb. xii. 48. Doctrine of the Resurrection^ ^'c. .161 the only-begotten Son of God."^ So had taught the Baptist before him. " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : but lie that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him."^ '* He that believeth on Me," again says the Saviour, " hath everlasting life, and shall not come into " (or rather, " cometh not un,to ") " condemnation, but is passed from death unto life."^ A similar doctrine is found in the Epistle. A day of judgment is spoken of wherein we need a boldness derived from God's in- dwelling,* otherwise we may have reason to be ashamed when He comes.^ And when He appears, His disciples will put on His likeness.^ It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the teaching of the book of the Eevelation. We are all familiar with the awful picture of judgment to come presented to us there, and with the bright visions of glory which were seen by the Apostle, when God should wipe away all tears from the eyes of His people, and when sorrow, and pain, and all the former things should have passed away;^ but it is only fair to remark that there is no apparent trace of the theological sys- tem of the fourth Evangelist and the majority of the Epistle writers in this book. There is no hint of judgment having been already passed, by reason of the introduction into the world of light through Christ. We read rather of life with Christ, than of life in Christ : in fact, we have the teaching of the Synoptists, rather ' St. John iii. 18. ^ lb. ver. 36, if the words are not those of the Evangelist. « lb. V. 24. •* 1 Johu iv. 17. ' lb. ii. 28. ^ lb. iii. 2. ^ Kev. xxi. 4, M 162 The Doctrinal System of St, John. than the more esoteric doctrines proclaimed by St. John,^ St. Peter, and St. Paul. For when we turn to the three former Gospels, though we have the clearest possible intimations of a future judgment,^ no kind of anticipation of the judgment is even hinted at; nor, though we read over and over again of the resurrection as an integral part of Christ's teaching,^ do we find it ascribed to any inherent union between the believer and Christ. The more we are inclined to remark on this dis- tinction between the teaching of the Synoptists and the other writers of the New Testament on this head, the more important become the hints incidentally dropped in the Acts, that such teaching as we find in St. Paul and St. John was of the essence of the Gospel. And such hints we find ; not, it is true, in great numbers, but sufficient to show that the doctrine of these latter writers was no innovation upon that of the earlier preachers of the Gospel. Not only is the prophecy of the Lord, that He would come again,* repeated in similar, but more emphatic terms by the angel,^ but we find St. Peter sanctioning the doctrine of an in- herent life in Christ, in the declaration that " it was not possible that He should be holden of death ."^ And when he proceeds to call Him the "Author of Life,"' he is but repeating the words of our Lord to Martha. We ^ Exception, however, may be made of passages such as Kev. ii. 7, 17 ; xxi. 6 ; xxii. 17. It is also noticeable how these passages presuppose such discourses of Christ as are to be found in the fourth and sixth cliapters of the Gospel. 2 St. Matt. xxiv. 31 ; xxv. St. Mark xvi. 16, &c. ' St. Matt. xxii. 23, &c. ■• St. John xiv. 3, 18, 28. ' Acta i. 11. ° lb. ii. 24. ' See note 4, p. 55. Doctrine of the Resurrection^ Sfc. 163 have already seen how the doctrine of a power inherent in Jesus pervades the Acts of the Apostles ; and if it be argued that this power is in no way specially con- nected with the resurrection of the dead, we may frankly admit that this is so. Our argument is not much affected by the fact. If repentance and remission of sins are given not only through, but by Jesus Christ ;^ if health and recovery be due to Him ;^ if the Holy Ghost be sent by Him ; if He be the worker of all that is done in His name by His Apostles f if He be ap- pointed to judge the world ;* if the faith which is offered to all men be said to be due to His Resurrection,^ it is at least hardly incompatible with these strong Expressions to suppose that the Eesurrection itself was His work. But when we turn to St. Paul, in whose company the Acts of the Apostles was unquestionably written, we shall see that St. Luke's silence on this point is not the result of ignorance or disagreement. That St. Paul believed in a future judgment there is no necessity to prove. The first two chapters of his Epistle to the Romans afford us abundant evidence that he did so; and it is the main subject of his Epistles to the Thes- salonians.^ But the whole argument of the first two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans proceeds on the as- sumption of the doctrine contained in the fourth Gospel. Judgment is declared to have been already passed by God upon the sins of men, both by the testimony of their own consciences and by His abandonment of them » Acts ii. 38 ; v. 31 ; x. 43. ^ j^^ ijj g . j^. 17, 34. • See Wordsworth. ' Introduction to Acts.' * Acts X. 42; xvii. 31. ' iticrTiv Trapaa-xiiv, chap. xvii. 31. 6 See also 2 Cor. v. 10, &c. 164 The Doctrinal System of St. John, to the evil which they had embraced, and which was desolating their whole moral nature. The righteous judgment of God is but a revelation of the wrath He ever bears towards sin/ That judgment is well known to themselves, if they only chose to acknowledge the fact.^ The law has already declared the guilt of those who lived under it.^ The salvation by Jesus Christ is a means of deliverance for all those who desire to accept it, but it is not a dispensation of wrath upon mankind. By the obedience of Jesus the many were to find their righteousness established, and in the place of the reign of sin, resulting in death, was substituted the reign t)f favour and loving-kindness unto eternal Life, by means of Christ Jesus our Lord.* Henceforth there is no condemnation for the Christian.^ He has been set free from the law of sin and death, which had been condemned by the mere appearance of the Holy Jesus in the likeness of humanity.® So, in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, men are described as perishing, because they did not receive the love of the truth, so that they might be saved."^ The expression in the Epistle to the Hebrews, drawing back unto per- dition f in fact, the very term salvation ^ involves the idea of a rescue from a state of things already existing — ft state most graphically described in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Komans ; and the whole tone of the Sacred Scriptures is in favour of the doc- trine enunciated in St. John, that he who will not accept 1 Kom. ii. 5. ^ jb^ i. 28, 32. ^ n, ^[i 19^ "^ lb. V. 19, 21. ^ lb. viii. 1. ^ ib. ver. 3. ■ 2 Thess. ii. 10. « Heb. x. 39. » And redemption also. See, for instance, Titus ii. 14. Doctrine of tlie Resurrection^ ^x. 165 the salvation offered to him by Christ, incurs, not a new condemnation, but one pronounced by God on all transgressors from the very first. That the rejection of Clirist may be an aggravation of such transgression is implied by St. John himself;^ but the Gospel is in no sense a proclamation of the wrath of God, but only of His infinite mercy: a fact implied by the continual repetition in the New Testament of that much-abused word grace. ^ St. Paul's doctrine of the Kesurrection, again, differs in no respect from that of St. John. Christ does not only proclaim. He is the Resurrection. Nowhere is this more clearly set forth than in the great discourse on that subject in the Epistle to the Corinthians. It is an elaborate commentary on the words, " I am the Eesur- rection and the Life." All hinges upon Jesus our Lord. If He be not raised, there is no resurrection for us. We are not delivered from our sins ; we shall sleep an ever- lasting sleep.^ Christ is not merely the '* first-fruits of them that slept :" we shall all be made alive in Him, that is, by participation in His nature.* He is the " corn of wheat," which by falling into the ground and dying shall " bear much fruit, "^ for He is the quickening Spirit by whom our bodies, sown in corruption, are raised in incorruption^ — sown in the possession of a mere natural and earthly life,' are raised with the Life of the Spirit fully developed within them.^ It is His image, that of the Lord from heaven, that we shall bear.^ It is through Him that we obtain this victory over our ^ St. John V. 40. 2 gee Appendix I. ^ i Qor. xv. 18. * lb. XV. 22. • * St. John xii. 24. « i Cor. xv. 42. ' (r(cf/.a ^vxiKov. * crioixa TTV^vjxaTiKdv. ^ 1 Cor. XV. 47, 49. 166 The Doctrinal System of St. John. mortal selves ; the corruptible putting on incorruption, and the mortal putting on immortality. To the same effect are other declarations of the Apostle. It amounts to the same thing when he declares that we shall be raised up from the dead by means of, or as some copies' of the New Testament read, in virtue of, the Spirit of Christ which dwells within us.^ It is by the power of Christ, whose members we are, that we shall be raised up.^ He it is who alone can " change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body ;"^ for if we " appear with Him in glory," it is because He is '* our life."* Nay, even in this life we enjoy the earnest of our future resurrection, for already we are quickened with Christ, and raised with Him, and made to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.^ This is Nvhy we are said already to possess in the heavens a liouse not made with hands.^ What is all this but an expansion of the doctrine of St. John, who tells us that Jesus is the Life, and that among the many powers derived by Him from His Father, is that of quickening whom He will ?' St. James is almost entirely silent on this head. Almost the only intimation of a future judgment to be found in his Epistle is in the passage where he tells us that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh, and that the Judge standeth before the door.^ Nay, so rigidly * Eom. viii. 11. 2 1 Cor. vi. 14, avTov surely refers to Christ. See 2 Cor. iv. 14. 3 Phil. iii. 21. 4 Col. iii. 4. * Epj^. n 5^ 6. •' 2 Cor. V. 1. ■ St. John v. 21. " St. James v. 8, 9. Cf., however, ii. 12, 13. We may perhaps be allowed to argue from cli. v. 20 that sentence of death had been already pronounced upon the world, and that the only way of deliverance was Doctrine of the Resurrection, c^x. 167 practical is his object, that he makes the very barest allusion to a future life. In this fact we may find the completest refutation of the theory that St. James was ignorant of, or opposed to, sundry doctrines of the Gospel which do not find a place in his Epistle. It is hardly to be supposed that he had little or no idea of a future state ; yet his only reference to it is in two brief sentences, in which he speaks of the " crown of life," and " the kingdom which God hath promised to those that love Him."^ The occurrence, however, of the expression, "the Lord hath promised," in the first of these passages, implies that Christ, to whom the title " the Lord " is usually given,^ contains, by implication, the doctrine of our resurrection in Christ, if even it may not be pressed so far as to indicate an equality with God, who is, in the other passage, spoken of as making the same promise. St. Peter is more explicit. Not only does he speak in the plainest terms in each of his Epistles of the coming of a day of judgment,^ but he declares the Resurrection of Christ to be the efficient cause of our own,* for we are not only " begotten " by it " unto a lively hope," but also unto " an inheritance incor- ruptible, un defiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved that revealed by Jesus Christ. There is moreover an allusion to Gehenna in chap. iii. 6, and to a lawgiver able to save and to destroy in iv. 12. ^ St. James i. 12 ; ii. 5. 2 ggg Acts, passim. ' 1 Pet. iv. 5. 2 Pet. ii. 9 ; iii. 7-12. It is worthy of remark that the conceptions of the second Epistle are less advanced than those of the first. We are therefore, I presume, entitled to conclude that it was written earlier. * 1 Pet. i. 3, 4. So also Christ's Resurrection gives to Baptism its saving efficacy. — Ch. iii. 21. 168 The Doctrinal System of St. John, in heaven for those who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation." Has not such a passage as this some connection with the declaration, " I am the Kesurrection and the Life ; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ?" The other allusions to Christ as the living and energizing prin- ciple of the Gospel have already been discussed.^ It is sufficient here to call attention to them, as affording additional proof that Christ, who is our Life, is also our resurrection. For as St. Paul reminds us, and as St. Peter more than implies, " He is before all things, and by Him all things consist ; and He is the Head of the Body, the Church, who is the beginning,^ the first- horn from the dead, in order that in all things He might have the pre-eminence,^ for it pleased the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell."* We have now passed in review the main doctrines of the Gospel. We have found nothing to justify the as- sumption that the Synoptists and St. John are at vari- ance with one another on the Gospel scheme, while, ou the other hand, we have found much to support the hypo- thesis that where the former were silent with reference to those important doctrines which St. John proclaims, it was a silence of intention, and not one either of ignorance or hostility. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that St. Peter, who was responsible, accord- ing to the best and earliest authorities, for the Gospel of St: Mark, and St. Paul, who was the " guide, philo- sopher, and friend " of the writer of the third Gospel, Above, chapter ii. apxv- Compare apxvy