THE FOURTH GOSPEL
THE
HEART OF CHRIST.
BY
EDMUND H. SEARS.
" It is seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, that is without a constant return to its fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most
perfect on account of its very perfection more even than others, suffers from its contact
with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of its being breathed."
MAX MULLER.
BOSTON:
NOYES, HOLMES, AND COMPANY.
II7 WASHINGTON STREET.
I872.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
NOYES, HOLMES, AND COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
MIVERStbE, CAM1BRIIffg:
ttEREOTYPED AND PRINT          D iY
H. O. HOUGHTOR AND COMiPAkY.




PREFACE.' THE fourth Gospel is the Heart of Christ," is the
enthusiastic language of Ernesti, from whom we
borrow the words of our title-page. Expositors both ancient and modern, who regard the four Gospels as veritable history, have generally manifested the same preference. " Written by the hand of an angel," says Herder;
and Schleiermacher, who with his school delighted in " the
mystic of the four Evangelists," says that his soul must
have been pervaded by eternal childlike Christmas joys.
But sentiments of admiration are not evidence to other
minds who do not find through John those depths of living
water which those who are more contemplative have ever
found. No book has been the subject of a more searching or a more adverse criticism than the fourth Gospel.
The history of the controversy, with the motives of it, is
exceedingly interesting and instructive, and I had sketched
it in two chapters of this work, but was obliged to omit
them in order to bring the volume within convenient size.
It is the controversy of half a century between some of
the ablest theologians and profoundest scholars. The historical evidence was first seriously assailed by Bretschneider in I820, who then published his " Probabilia,"
and who contended that the author of the fourth Gospel belonged to the first half of the second century, and wrote it




iv                  PREFACE.
with a dogmatic purpose, namely, to propagate the doctrine of the deity of Christ. He was ably answered, and
the only change which the whole discussion then produced
was a new value placed upon the Gospel of John. Bretschneider himself retracted his doubts.
But the Critical Philosophy, dating from Kant, and
running by a swift and irresistible logic into Pantheism,
gave birth to a new school of Biblical criticism; a criticism vastly more ingenious than the old rationalism, and
wrought of finer threads than it had ever spun. It finds
its ablest expounder in Ferdinand Christian Baur, an
Hegelian of the left wing, that is, the pantheistic, who
breaks up the whole New Testament Canon, and runs it
anew in pantheistic moulds, fortunately with the calmness
and the icy clearness by which his style is distinguished.
He furnishes Strauss, we think, with all the ideas and
arguments which a Christian believer would care to notice or answer. Whatever we say of his criticism, and
the philosophy that determines and inspires it, his three
works, the History of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, of the Atonement, of the Christian Gnosis, place the
student of Christian history under immense obligations.
Where learned men have disputed, unlearned men are
apt to think there must be hopeless uncertainty. They do
not remember that when learned men dispute with theories predetermined, their disputes are only the play of
hypotheses, and that the verdict of the common understanding is better than theirs. That the hermeneutics of
the Tiibingen School are a dance of this sort, is shown by
the constant shifting of its positions and its mutually
destructive theories. There was a pre-determination to




PREFACE.                    V
make Christianity serve as a mould of Pantheism with its
nomenclature unchanged.
Meanwhile as the dust of the controversy clears off, the
calm wisdom of Neander, who put in a plea for entire
freedom of debate, and who saw what the result must be,
becomes apparent. No one went into it with a spirit more
sweet and beautiful than his. To his name must be added
a list long and illustrious, to enumerate which would be
to suggest works of learning and scholarship, the most
profound and reverent of this age or any other, especially
in the departments of Christian history and evidence.
Never was it more signally shown how great is the service
of doubt and denial in rendering faith and affirmation
clear, pronounced, and intelligent. Not only the sand
was cleared away, disclosing the old foundations more
deeply and broadly, but new facts were brought to light,
and new fields discovered, running down like sunny glades
through opening mist to the Personality which the Christian ages date from. The result is that by the verdict of
the best scholarship of modern times not predetermined
to Pantheism, no facts of equal antiquity, judged by the
reasonable rules of historical evidence, stand out in surer
prominence than the fundamental facts of the New Testament narratives; no heights of history thus remote lie
on the horizon in mellower sunlight or clearer outline.
Among the names in this great debate of half a century,
whether disclosing the external grounds of Christianity
or its divine contents, are, along with that of Neander,
Ullman, Dorner, Tholiick, Schaff, Julius Miiller, Giesler,
Olshausen, Jacobi, Hengstenberg, Bunsen, and Tischendorf.




vi                  PREFA CE.
It is not in my plan to write a book of Christian evidences merely, but to evolve the contents of.the Johannean
writings, which clearly apprehended are their own evidence, and prove Christianity itself a gift direct from above
and not a human discovery. But the exposition would not
be at all satisfactory, especially after past discussions and
denials, if we left out the historical ground of the fourth
Gospel, or left it to be suspected that this ground had
been shaken or disturbed. We shall see that this has not
been the case. Indeed, it is very difficult to make a sharp
line of division between external and internal evidence,
and show where one shades off into the other, as much as
it is to tell where the soul and body are joined together.
Brought home to us in their all-reconciling power, the essential truths of the fourth Gospel imply and necessitate
the form and covering in which they appear; or conversely
beginning with their historic basis, the evidence grows and
brightens all the way inward to the central light which
shines out, encircles, and irradiates the whole.




CONTENTS.
PRELIMINARY.
PAGE
I. THE SUPERNATURAL.                          3
II. MIRACLES........       16
III. THE IMMANENCE OF GOD...... 32
PART I.
THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.
CHAPTER
I. GNOSTICISM.....       39
II. SAINT JOHN AT EPHESUS.....    51
III. THE JOHANNEAN WRITINGS.....   64
IV. THE SCOPE, PURPOSE, AND SPIRIT OF THE APOCALYPSE  91
V. THE WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY.    112
VI. THE WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY       13
VII. CHRISTIANITY AS A NEW INFLUX OF POWER..  165
VIII. THE PAUSE IN HISTORY....        184
PART II.
HISTORIC MEMORIALS.
I. THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY..  197
II. JESUS OF MATTHEW IS THE LOGOS OF JOHN.. 220
III. THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH....   226
IV. NAZARETH...... 239
V. THE FORERUNNER....      247
VI. THE HOMES OF JESUS....               255
VII. JESUS IN THE DESERT...               266
VIII. THE LAST MEETING BY THE JORDAN.... 285




viii                 CONTENTS.
PART III.
THE PRIVATE MINISTRY OF JESUS.
CHAPTER                                         PAGE
1. THE WEDDING AT CANA....            295
II. THE FIRST VISIr AT JERUSALEM..... 304
III. THE SECOND VISIT AT JERUSALEM...   319
IV. REMOVAL TO CAPERNAUM...... 328
V. THE THIRD VISIT AT JERUSALEM..           338
VI. THE FOURTH VISIT AT JERUSALEM....    352
VII. THE FIFTH AND LAST VISIT AT JERUSALEM..  370
VIII. THE NIGHT OF THE LAST SUPPER...     379
IX. CALVARY.........    387
X. THE REAPPEARINGS OF JESUS.... 394
XI. THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.....      404
PART IV.
THE JOHANNEAN THEOLOGY.
I. THE COSMOLOGY OF PLATO....  415
II. ITS CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE....    429
III. THE JOHANNEAN COSMOLOGY.....   442
IV. THE TRANSPARENCIES OF NATURE....    456
V. THE WORD MADE FLESH......     467
VI. THE LOGOS DOCTRINE....... 484
VII. THE JOHANNEAN ATONEMENT....   501
VIII. CONVERGING LINES.....         512
IX. THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. CONCLUSION..   525
APPENDIX.
A. THE EASTER CONTROVERSY....       537
B. THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.......   544
C. THE PREEXISTENCE...                    546
D. PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION.           550




PRELIMINARY.
"It has always happened that in the ranks of the scientific army
some have been found who refuse to credit the marvels which observation is continually revealing on every hand. Despite all the known
wonders of the universe the circumstance that the sole available interpretation of observed facts involves some surprising conclusion, is
held by such men to be a sufficient reason for rejecting the observations of the most trustworthy. The value of scientific observation
seems enhanced in their eyes precisely as its fruits are insignificant."
-R. A. PROCTOR.
I








THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
I.
THE SUPERNATURAL.
A  LL the great religions acknowledge at least two
ranges of existence. This material plane of
being which we apprehend by the organs of sense,
we must believe in, as it nourishes and enfolds us
from our cradles. No one ever denied it. Philosophers dispute about the essence of matter; about
what is behind these natural phenomena, and whether
anything at all; but no one denies that the phenomena themselves exist. Those who deny the existence
of matter only deny that it exists in itself, or in other
words that it has any substratum of its own. The
world of sight, sound, and fragrance that lies over
against the senses and through them becomes an
object of perception, is believed in alike by peasant
and philosopher, and this by common consent we call
NATURE or THE NATURAL WORLD.
In this natural world there is nothing stable. All
is mobility and change. Not only the animal and
vegetable life on its surface constantly disappear and




4            THE FOUR ZIT GOSPEL.
reappear, but the rocks become disintegrated and
enter into other forms of existence. Going back
through longer reaches of history we find that the
oceans and the mountains have been subject to vast
changes by subsidence and upheaval, and that the
aspect of the earth is transformed from one epoch
to another. The very same elements by changes of
combination produce the most diversified forms; and
the minerals, the waters, the forests, the flowers of
the field and the winds that blow over them, are those
same elements commingling by new affinities and
proportions, giving the endless ebb and flow which
we delight to witness around us in the sea of matter.
Man himself is involved in these perpetual revolutions. He appears on the surface of nature, is dominated by it through the stages of his threescore and
ten, and then melts into its bosom and disappears.
The order of sequence, according to which all these
changes take place, we call by universal consent THE
LAWS OF NATURE. To discover these changes and
recombinations by patient observation or by subtile
analysis is the business of science; to group them in
their class and order and so determine their law of
sequence is the business of natural philosophy.
The Christian believer acknowledges another and
higher range of existence. Nature, we said, discharges
man from her keeping and domination, and all that
the senses knew of him dissolves and recombines in
her earths and ethers and flowers. So one hundred




THE SUPERNA TURAL.             5
generations have passed away since Christ appeared
upon the earth. More than three hundred generations have come and gone since the creation of man,
all of whom nature nursed on her bosom and then
received back their crumbling forms and sent them
anew into her unending circulations. The number of
human beings then who exist at this moment on the
surface of the earth, compared with those who have
existed, is only an insignificant fraction of that whole
which we call humanity; only as a single page of one
great volume; only as the last cluster of leaves that
flutter in the great forest that has shed its foliage.
If man lives only within the conditions of nature
and is only returned into her endless circulations,
then the natural world is the only one that exists to
him, and he may expect to know of nothing beyond
its phenomena. But Christianity affirms that when
nature quits her grasp upon him, he still lives on, that
only his visible coverings dissolve and recombine
with the natural elements, while the man himself
emerges beyond her sphere, subject no longer to her
conditions and laws. It follows, of course, on the
Christian theory, that the three hundred generations
of human beings whom this natural world has discharged from its domination are still alive and active.
Hence Christianity affirms a sphere of life above
nature, more vast and more thronged with people,
and whose empire is ever enlarging, since the stream
of existence has discharged its immortal contents for




6            THE FOUR TI GOSPEL.
more than six thousand years into those endless
abodes.
This higher range of existence is called by common
consent THE SUPERNATURAL, because it is above the
dominion of natural law. This is what men generally
mean when they speak of a supersensible or supernatural world. This preeminently is the sense apprehended by Christian faith when it transcends the
sphere of natural change and sees the things that are
invisible. Every one has a right to make his own
definitions, but he is bound consistently to abide by
them when made, and not confound things eternally
distinct in themselves.
The word nature doubtless is made to have other
significations, and indeed passes through an extended
range of secondary meanings. We sometimes speak
of the nature of man as meaning the whole aggregate
of human qualities which make him what he is. Then
again we discriminate and speak of his physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures. One who is disposed
to play with words may call all beings and things
from the mineral up to the highest angel created
natures, and then by this definition he may deny that
there is anything above nature except God Himself.
Or he may follow up this game of words yet farther.
Cicero writes a treatise, "De Natura Deorum," and
we speak familiarly of the Divine nature, meaning the
sum of Divine qualities and attributes; and one who
should be so disposed, and could afford the time for




THE SUPERVA TURAL.             7
such logomachy, might place all beings and things,
including God Himself, under the category of nature;
and then of course it would be very easy for him to
prove that the supernatural has no existence.
Plainly nothing is gained by these tricks of language. The words nature and supernatural, or the
nature-world and the spirit-world, whether put in
contrast or correlation, have a meaning fixed and well
apprehended in the popular judgment, and we gain
nothing but confusion when we try to disturb it.
Herein moreover the popular judgment and the most
philosophical are in perfect agreement. With both
alike, the nature-world is this range of existence conditioned by time and space, and subject to the laws
of space and temporal change; whereas the range of
existence conceived as out of time and space, and
therefore beyond the dominion of natural law, is the
supersensible or supernatural world. Thus Kant uniformly discriminates these two spheres of being,
— nature, the realm of sensible phenomena conditioned by space; and a cogitable world above space
defecated of sense and free of natural law, and therefore supersensible and supernatural.1
Of these two ranges of being thus discriminated,
how they are related and how contrasted, which is
the substance and which the shadow, there is an
immense divergence of opinions and beliefs. By the
1 See chapter iii. of Semple's Metaphysic of Ethics; or see Kant's
kTritik of Practical Reason, passim.




8            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Christian theory man is the connecting link between
them. He lives in both. He is the child of nature, and
at the same time the heir of immortality. But that
is first which is natural, and afterward that which is
spiritual. He is born with only a natural consciousness, and the heavy wrappages of sense become the
first basis of his existence. He is involved in nature,
and he may even pass through all her transformations
from the infant to the man, with hardly a dream of
aught else than the natural life. Then the supernatural will be to him a phantasy and a chimera. He
may honestly deny its existence altogether. Dominated by sensible appearances what more strange
than to suppose a man can be alive after he is dead?
Beyond sense the imagination "stretches out the
stones of emptiness," and to think of that infinite
vacancy as our final abode, or as capable of yielding
a revelation to us out of its eternal silence, is to such
a man the most hideous of all absurdities. Men have
lived and passed away from this plane of being with
no belief in any other, simply because none other than
the natural consciousness was awakened within them;
or, in other phrase, because they only lived and died
as natural men.
Just removed from this state, and rising out of it,
are the first faint dawnings of the supernatural, the
first guessings and gropings towards it. But as yet
it is apprehended only as dim and spectral. Thus
the ghosts of Homer live in the underworld depleted




THE SUPERNA TURAL.             9
of all that fresh and throbbing life which they lived
on the earth, and are described as the fleeting shades
of what they were. What a contrast between the
Greece that flourished on the sun-bright hills and
plains and breathed her transparent ethers and developed into graceful and glorious manhood, and the
Greece of her spirit-world reduced to its pale and
ghostly existence, and pining for terrestrial air! Not
yet did the common mind or even the minds of the
poets themselves come to any practical faith in the
Supernatural. For with individuals and peoples not
yet evolved from the despotic grasp of nature, this
world is the substance and the other is the shadow.
Removed somewhat farther from sensuous unbelief,
and indicative of a higher intellectual culture than
blind instinctive gropings, is that faith which comes
from the deductions of the reason but which refuses
to affirm aught else than the simple fact of the supernatural. This is the position of Kant, who declines
to accept the doctrine as the gift of revelation, but
only as his own conclusion from a well-constructed
syllogism. He does not pretend to prove it with
"apodictic certainty," and he protests that we have
no right to envisage it to the eye of faith, for then
we fly off among the chimeras of the fabulists and
poets. We must cogitate the supernatural and describe it only by negatives. It is the absence of
nature; it is spaceless and timeless; it is the perfect
defecation of all sensuous life, and beyond this, says
Kant, the reason has no right to go.




10           THE FOUR TH GOSPEL.
A more full and affirmative faith than this is quite
conceivable. It is conceivable, that is, that the supernatural may not only be believed in as the result
of a syllogism and a balance of probabilities, but may
be envisaged to the eye of faith; that man no longer
involved completely in nature but evolved in part
from her despotic grasp, and having a higher consciousness clearly and divinely opened, may be so
brought front to front with super-sensible realities
that their gleaming ranks and far-dissolving perspectives shall lie on the soul as brightly and surely as
Nature does on the organs of sense, and that the
consummation of our religious faith and Christian
culture shall give us, the supersensible world the
eternal reality and Nature its feebler adumbration,that the sun-bright substance itself, and this the moving shadow projected on the dial-plate.
But is there any probability that such a disclosure
as this will be given to mortals? Let us see.
Once admit the simple truth of man's immortality,
and how vast and far-reaching are the conclusions
that flow from it! How dull and laggard are our
minds in coming up to the reality! There are to-day
about a thousand million human beings upon the
earth. At the end of a year, twenty millions will
have passed away from it and twenty millions newborn will have come in their places. Hundreds are
going and hundreds coming while I write these sentences. In less than fifty years, a number equal to




THE SUPERNiA'URAL.          I I
the whole thousand millions will have put on immortality, and an equal number will have filled up the
earthly ranks thus broken. The successive generations that have passed on within eight thousand
years, the time during which man has probably been
an inhabitant of the earth, would number by a moderate computation, one hundred times a thousand
millions of people. This great multitude, moreover,
are our own kith and kin; our brethren elder born,
whose hearts have throbbed with the same passions
and yearnings and aspirations.  And unless the
mighty prophecies that go up from our collective humanity are a mockery and a lie, unless the groanings of the creation and its travailings in pain fail
eternally of deliverance, then that great company of
these uncounted millions who aspired to a better
state, have had their hopes fulfilled; have risen to
an existence which has been brought into nearer
communion with the Divine, and been enriched and
ennobled by being freed from our earthly incumbrance. How immeasurably then in height, in
breadth, in dignity, and power, does the supernatural transcend the natural! And when we speak of
humanity only as pertaining to the race on earth,
how do we narrow down the conception and degrade it! If those uncounted generations of men
and women have not been disrobed of their humanity by death, but if on the other hand it throbs with
a diviner love, then the pulses of their being still




12           THE FOURTH: GOSPEL.
beat in harmony with ours as one family of the living
God, and like God Himself, are nearer to us on the
spiritual side, because there are no walls of flesh
between us.
"But then our concern is only with the practical;
with our duties here upon the earth, and our fellowbeings who share with us its trials and sorrows. We
must relieve the burdens which we can touch now
and here, and not follow our imaginations into realms
which are uncertain and remote."
Only with the practical! Do we become practical
only by bending prone and working mechanically
with our hands, without any faith to inspire our industries and turn them to works of love or alleluiahs of praise? Does the practical consist only in
finding the swiftest methods of locomotion in the
barter of commodities, in changing money, and in
handling dirt? And when you speak of our fellowbeings as part of the great orb of humanity in which
we are all insphered and involved, must we think of
it only as it rounds outward and downward among
Africans, Patagonians, the Chinese, and the Esquimaux; or must we think of it also as it rounds
upward into light, and expands in those continents
vaster and more densely peopled which lie in a
broader and warmer sunshine from the eternal
throne?
"The burdens which we can touch now and
here!"  What were the burdens which lay on the




THE SUPERNA TURAL.            13
minds of the two thousand of our fellow-beings who
have died since I began this chapter an hour ago?
What are the burdens on the minds of the three
hundred and fifty thousand whose feet are now
stumbling on the last verge of mortal existence
which they will quit forever before eight days have
elapsed; whose failing eyes look for the twinkle
of some star in the darkness of the infinite Beyond? What are the burdens on the minds of the
twenty millions who are crowding after them and
will follow them before the year has closed? What
are the burdens now and everywhere on our toiling,
hoping, and aspiring humanity, conscious of the
rapid changes of time, and groping for a foothold
on the solid floors of eternity? They are not burdens which any "practical" man can touch unless he
has stood himself where the clouds have been rifted
above him and disclosed those higher and broader
continents reposing in the peace of God.
" Our concern only with duties here on the earth."
Yes, - but very possibly a view from the earth's
illumined summits rather than its hollows and flats
will show us what those duties are. Some centuries
ago the philosophers thought that this earth was the
centre of the universe and the most important part
of it; the sun, moon, and stars being lamps for philosophers to see by. Even Plato thought the earth
was the first and oldest of the sidereal gods, and at
the centre of the axis of the Cosmos regulating the




I4     -     THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
movement of the whole. They did not imagine that
the earth, and the whole solar and planetary system
to which it belongs, were but the lackeys of vaster
systems which wheel them at will through the fields
of space, and that the radiance of our brightest summer's day would be but a dimly lighted candle in the
near presence of those monarchs of the skies whose
thousand-fold blaze would turn us to ashes if it were
not cooled and softened by distance. Very possibly
it may be found in like manner when the sphere of
our knowledge rounds upward as well as outward and
downward, that it will show us relations and harmonies of which before we had never dreamed; and that
we should find the supernatural realms of being running into the natural, and controlling the latter with
attractions and repulsions which we should be much
wiser and better for knowing. Who shall decide beforehand and deny the probabilities as to whether
the Divine Providence will openly disclose to us
those supernatural realms where our humanity is
glorified, compared with which all our little day on
the earth is but the prologue of a mighty drama!
Once admit that man is immortal, and that death
is only a physical change, and we shall find that
many of the fallacies of naturalism are speedily dispelled. Naturalism, for example, scouts the idea of
a " personal devil" as one of the chimeras of superstition. But personal devils have trod the earth for
ages. What is the essence of deviltry but the inver



THIE SUPERNATURAL.             15
sion of the powers of man, turning them against God,
against society, and against humanity. What but
this has gendered the wrongs, the murders, the cruel
oppressions which have afflicted the world? Men
who incarnate deviltry here leave this world by the
hundred every week simply by dropping their mortal
coverings. If death has not extinguished their being,
it follows by the plainest and shortest logic that the
personality of the devil, whether individually or in
the complex, is one of the stern facts of the universe
both on its mortal and immortal side, and that those
who deny it slide into the very superstition which
they charge upon orthodoxy, viz., that there is some
moral magic in death-beds to change sinners into
saints. Possibly when the supernatural shall disclose
itself as that other hemisphere of our humanity, where
it culminates continually, we shall find that our ascetic
and our blindfold theologies alike will have their superstitions sifted out of them; and that to split the
universe by a horizontal line and leave the natural
below to itself, is to leave it to bewildering fantasies,
or, what is quite as bad, leave it to gravitate heavily
into dust and mire.




II.
MIRACLES.
A   LIVING writer defines a miracle thus: " An
event inexplicable from the effect and concurrence of finite causes; which appears as the inworking of the supreme infinite cause, or God, for
the purpose of proving to the world God's nature and
will; especially of introducing a Divine Messenger,
of holding him to life, guiding him in his work and
authenticating his credentials with men; this divine
wonder-working so shaping itself as to operate through
the messenger as a power conferred upon him once
for all to bear witness concerning Him; its efficacy
connecting itself with an appeal to God on the part
of the wonder-worker, so that God Himself on his
account breaks through the chain of natural events
and lets the supernatural come in."'The writer cites
alleged examples of such Divine interference: the
miraculous birth of Christ, his exceptional childhood,
the scene at his baptism, and his ascension.1
A most lame and lumbering definition, implying
all through that miraculous power is one superimposed from without, standing apart by itself, as in
1 Strauss, Leben 7esu fur dar deitsch Volk bearbeitet, p. I46.




MIRA CLES.                17
some sense hitched on, not rather the exaltation of
the faculties themselves under the action of universal
laws, natural, spiritual, and divine.
We hold this definition utterly unwarrantable from
any claims which Jesus ever made in his own behalf,
no way applying to the events cited or to any facts
of the New Testament, practically false and philosophically absurd. If God is immanent in nature and
in man, and the supernatural is involved in the natural, there can be no such thing as "interference" or
"breaking through." Nature is the perpetual efflorescence of the Divine Power; the natural is the unbroken
evolution of the supernatural; history from the first
man to the last is the progressive unrolling of the plan
of the infinite Providence in which great events and
small are taken up and glorified. Who but an atheist
doubts " the inworking of the supreme infinite cause."
And who but those who ascribe the authorship of
nature to a mechanic and not a Creator, believes that
this inworking is exceptional and not universal, intermittent like the winding of a clock and not freshly
creative every hour? Who among the myriads of
messengers which God has sent into the world, ever
came without being "introduced" and "authenticated" by the Divine power operating through Him
and passing into works that bore witness to his
message?
A miracle, as we apprehend it, is exactly what is
implied in its etymology, - a surprise. It is an event
2




18        1 THE FOURTH' GOSPEL.
so unlike anything in our previous humdrum and
shallow experience that we cannot group it under
any law of sequence, and so it stands forth as a
wonder. If a child who had never heard the thunder,
were caught in the field by a tempest and involved
in a blaze of lightning, he would think " the chain of
natural events" broken through, and very likely believe as they did in the childhood of the race that
God had spoken from the clouds. The white men
told the Indians that on a certain day and hour the
sun would hide his face, and the earth at mid-day
be covered with darkness. The hour came- and the
darkness came; the Indians fell on their faces in
terror and worshipped the white men as endowed
with supernatural knowledge. A man who had
been dead four days opens his eyes and rises from
his coffin, and strikes dread into the standers-by.
A young woman dying at Naples, describes a wedding scene exactly to the life and at the moment of
its occurrence in the dear old home across the Atlantic, hears delightful music perceived by no one else,
looks up and exclaims, " How beautiful! " and passes
away from earth. What is the work of science but
to group all the miracles in the natural world under
the laws of matter, and what is the work of philosophy
but to group all other miracles under laws intellectual
and spiritual?
Law is simply the order of sequence which governs
all phenomenal changes, whether in the realm of




MIRA CLES.               19
matter or the realm of mind. When we say that the
laws of nature or of spirit are "uniform," we mean
not that they give a monotonous sameness through
all the centuries, but that the same antecedents being
given the same consequents will be given also. Like
causes under like conditions will be followed by like
results. If I planted corn last year and reaped the
harvest, I have a right to expect that the same seed
this year, in the same soil with the same culture and
the same climatic conditions, will produce the same
harvest again. But if the harvest should totally fail
this year while all the antecedents appeared the same
as the year before, it would be sheer stupidity in me
to imagine that the chain of natural events had been
broken through and not rather that some of the
antecedents had eluded my intelligence. The consequents I can cognize, for they stand out palpable
before me, but what conceit must that be which
claims to cognize all the antecedents which lie hid
in the secret laboratories of nature, which run back
to the birth of time and into the unknown eternities
themselves?
If by "the uniformity of the laws of nature " we
were to understand only an unchanging series of
phenomena repeating itself age after age, coming
round and round in the same cycles, we should have
a theory of the creation utterly belied by the facts
of the case. Looking out from our little moment in
time, and our little mole-hill in space, we might per



20              7HE FOURTH GOSPEL.
haps affirm this kind of uniformity, for the seasons
revolve, and even and morn alternate now just as our
fathers and grandfathers had described them. But
how was it in that period before the seasons began
their flowery circuit; before Day lit up its solar splendors, or Night quenched them with cooling shade?
How was it when our earth hung in space as a mass
of molten lava, or when the seas covered its whole
surface boiling hot and void of organic life, or when
the Laurentian hills peered above the surface and
lifted slowly their drenched and solitary heads above
the boundless waste of waters, the first born children
of this habitable world?1 Looking back, not through
our own little day, but through nature's periods and
cycles, we see her moving not in a " uniform series,"
but RISING WITH SPIRAL MOTION from'lower to higher,
never repeating herself, never completing one circle
except on a loftier plane than the previous one, and
toward which all previous ones were the prophecy
and aspiration. The Positivists will have it that temporal change succeeding to temporal change, phe1 What we call "the New World is in fact the Old World," says
Agassiz. " The Western Continent was the earliest upheaval; and the
first land that peered above the waters was not the highest mountains,
which are of later date. Along the northern limit of the United
States, bordering upon Lower Canada, there runs a low line of hills
known as the Laurentian Hills. They are insignificant in height, but
the earliest land that lifted itself above the waters. The earliest forms
of organic life may now be studied along what was then the beach of
an almost boundless sea." - GeoloZical Sketches, chapters i. and ii.




MIRA CLES.               21
nomenon antedating phenomenon, exhausts the idea
of causality, thus affronting our intelligence with the
doctrine that the effect can rise above the cause into
a new and loftier series. For if nature herself gives
us instead of a monotonous circuit in the same
grooves, a constant movement out of them into
higher ones from indistinguishable chaos through
the ascending scale of life and order up to man, the
majestic coronal of all, then when we speak of the
"uniformity of nature " we only talk foolishness for
the purpose of blinking the glories of the Godhead,
immanent in phenomena and authenticating all their
vanishings and reappearings.
A miracle is a surprise, - but to whom? Not to
higher intelligences who,see the interiors of nature
and know what is about to be from the unbroken
links of the ascending series; not to Him who fills
those interiors with reality and floods them with his
life; but to us who. see but one link of the chain; who
are ignorant of the long line of antecedents and who
stand where the result first breaks upon human sight.
An eclipse was a surprise till the laws of planetary
motion were discovered and revealed it in accord
with the harmonies of the spheres; the first advent
of man on the green earth was a surprise to the
brutes below him; the first angelophanies to men
were a surprise to the infant race, and every Divine
epiphany on a higher plane than a previous one,
which should date a new dispensation or a new




22           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
cycle of the endless years, would be at its commencement a surprise to the subjects of it, whether
angels or men. But what dullards must we be to
stare into the heavens and declare the laws of the
universe broken through simply because we could
not see those infinite antecedents and their unimaginable consequents, which make up the supreme
cder of the creation whereby it ascends and reflects
the Adorable Perfections with nearer and brighter
refulgence!
The changes of a single day are miracles to the
ephemera that swarm into existence and die between
sunrise and sunset. Supposing them endowed with
some sort of puny intelligence, what a surprise it
must be to them when they emerge from the surface
of the water and bathe their wings in light; when
the wind sweeps them from the air; when they expire in the sun's last rays and the three hours that
span their insect life are closing! The changes of
the four seasons are miracles to the tribes that live
and perish in their annual revolutions. The transit
of the earth from one epoch to another is miraculous,
seen from our finite or merely natural side of things.
Every new epoch transcended all the experience of a
former one, and came upon it as a surprise. The
shell-fish of the silurian beach, if they could have
thought and spoken as expounders of naturalism.
would have treated as incredible the first rumors of
four-footed beasts and creeping things, for would not




MIRACLES.                23
mollusks and bivalves have been to them the finale
of this lower creation, not buffaloes and stags with
antlers? And then the mammals of the tertiary
period, who inhabited the green earth and cropped
its herbage alone for unknown ages, would have
been equally surprised when man came as the lord
of all. As if quadruped existence and not biped were
not conformable to all experience, and the highest to
be conceived or desired! As if any other were not
anomalous and monstrous and a "breaking through"
of the laws of nature! And the new race of men,
looking from the natural side only, ignorant of aught
else than their own short epoch of a few hundred
years, might perhaps claim themselves as the last and
highest evolution of Divine energy; and if by some
new epiphany a style of life not animal, nor human
merely, but ESSENTIALLY DIVINE, should appear upon
the earth with attendants and environments transcending all past experience, and inaugurating a new
series of years and centuries, they might very likely
think the order of the universe disturbed and its
laws broken through, and try to sink the fact from
its appropriate rank, and shut out the solar splendors
of the Godhead.
What can be more childish than to make the experience of what has been the measure of all that
shall be? And yet this is the whole pith of Mr.
Hume's argument against miracles which Strauss
has served up anew as unanswerable. The alleged




24           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
facts of the Gospel narratives - the birth of Christ
from no human paternal line, his exceptional childhood, the angelophanies that attended him, his healing diseases by his touch, his raising the dead, his
own resurrection and ascension - are unlike any former experience, and therefore incredible. They are
violations of nature's laws, and cannot be proved by
testimony. The answer plainly is, How do you know
the laws of nature except from phenomena? And
whether such phenomena have taken place is the very
question in hand. If they did take place, they are
consequents palpable to the eye, but whose antecedents belong to the infinite laws of order which you
cannot measure, since they are out of sight. The
same consequents were never given before because
the same antecedents were never given. If we are
told that Jesus raised the dead, and restored the blind,
and walked the waves, the credibility of the alleged
facts will depend altogether upon the question, Who
was Jesus? and that again must be decided by the
amount and quality of moral and spiritual power with
which He moves upon the world, and possesses and
changes the heart of humanity. Behold the man, and
look before and after, and then say, Does he inaugurate a new epoch; is here a transition period in the
ascending Divine series? Is here a new Divine
epiphany through the interiors of nature whereby it
ever rises and becomes the more transparent type
and robe of the Divine Wisdom, Love, and Power?




MIRA CLES.               25
If so, we may well expect it will have some attendants and environments which belong not to any foregone history, -just as the sun new risen gives
shapes and colors to the breaking and purpling clouds
which they never had under the colder and feebler
lustre of the morning star.
If a miracle is that which "lets the supernatural
come in," what are all the on-goings of nature but
miracles, unless we take the position of blank atheism? They are the continuous enunciation of some
vast intelligence, which is a perpetual wonder, because it transcends our highest thought and comprehension. The highest significance of the miracles of
the New Testament consists mainly in the fact that
they show more entirely the control of mind over
matter, or the sovereignty of spiritual volition in natural things. The same is verified in our experience
every time a muscle moves at the touch of a human
will, and more divinely and grandly whenever a new
phasis of nature evolves freshly the volition of God.
The workl of Jesus which "let the supernatural
come in," are after the analogy of all human works
in which mind is plastic over matter, or in which the
higher subordinates the lower. The difference is that
in Jesus Christ, as the New Testament describes
Him, there was a degree and quality of spiritual
power, such as we do not find in ourselves nor in
people around us, and therefore the subordination of
external nature was more signal and complete, and
breaks upon us as a surprise.




26           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Law, seen from the Divine side of things, is not
the order of sequence which governs the phenomena
of days and years only, but of the ages and cycles
of endless existence. Even if it be true, as some
theorizing astronomers tell us, that the planetary
orbits are growing less, and that the travellers of the
heavenly spaces must one day mingle in the solar
fires out of which they came, who would doubt that
the grand winding up must be as much under the
laws of the supreme order as the folding up of a flower
at evening; preparatory for a new unwinding of the
system of nature; of its higher and sweeter efflorescence out of the immanent life of God and a more
sublime procession of the heavenly travellers on their
endless way?
A miracle is a surprise, - but to whom? To
those, of course, all whose habits of thinking have
been formed within narrower boundaries, or on a
lower plane of existence than the one which the miracle breaks open to their gaze. Plough into the earth
deep enough and turn over the furrows, and the
earth-worms writhe in their distress, brought too
suddenly into the light and air. So with us when a
higher realm of truth breaks upon us too suddenly.
There are habits of culture which only develop the
natural mind; that is to say that order of the faculties which hold us in close relationship with the natural world. Those faculties may be sharpened to an
indescribable keenness, till the intellect penetrates




MIRACLES.                27
outward into space and downward towards the
monads, and imagines that the mysteries of the universe are well-nigh solved. A man, perfected exclusively in this sort of culture, never thinks of the universe as more than one story high. A whole people
or a whole period of time may be educated mainly
to habits of natural thinking. The progress of the
collective human mind is not on a narrow and
straight line; its progress is like that of a noble ship
freighted with the wealth of all the zones, but which
tacks to every gale and makes a broad belt that
ripples the whole surface of the sea. The ancient
supernaturalism was without science, one-sided and
baseless, and so running into driveling superstitions.
It must always be so when the supernatural is not
complemented by the natural, or does not rest upon
its solid floors. For the last two hundred years, the
van of discovery has led the way down deeper and
deeper into sense, till the great verities of immortality seem like a floating and vanishing tradition, and
miracle is synonymous with monster. The supernatural, no longer evolved in the disclosures of an irresistible Providence, is left very much to those who
knock at the closed doors or rap out responses upon
tables. Meanwhile, it requires small gift of prophecy
to foretell the result. As surely as the supernatural
rests on the natural as its solid flooring, so sure
is it never to fall through, but gain security by all
the explorations of natural law.. As surely as body




28           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
involves spirit, and the natural world involves and
exfigures the spiritual, so surely is the most perfect
knowledge of natural law to become the ground of
a supernaturalism reformed, illustrated, and purified
of old superstitions and errors. The age has veered
so far senseward that we may conclude it has touched
its boundary line. There are indications that the
tacking and veering towards the opposite quarter
have begun already, and the only apprehension is
that the refluent wave may be too sudden and violent. That we are on the verge of a new epoch
when the Spirit of God will utilize the accumulated
knowledge of the modern age, taking up science, art,
philosophy into a higher unity, there to make them
resplendent with a light which is not their own, and
the servitors of a more comprehending and adoring
faith, there are tokens already both in the earth and
the sky. And in that day, when the supernatural
and the natural, no longer halved and sundered, are
harmonized in one, we shall find the latter the medium through which the other appears more perfectly; and then special miracles will cease only
because the whole cosmos is miracle, and more
intelligently and completely than to the eye and ear
of Plato reports the mind of the Supreme and the
music of the upper spheres.
The tendency of our modern thought has been to
narrow in the domain of miracle, and finally enclose
it by the boundaries of Palestine and the first and




MIRACLES.                 29
last decades of the first century. Within that little
province of earth and in that Long Ago you may believe miraculous power was adjoined to a few men so
as to enable them to prove certain doctrines of religion, and especially the resurrection and the future
life. Ever since all demonstrations from a higher
world are to be ruled out as pretense and imposture
touching on the special domain of the New Testament. Meanwhile the small space of earth and the
small fragment of time made sacred by miracle, recede in the dim and vanishing past, and become altogether spectral to the natural common mind; and so
the idea of the resurrection and immortality belong
to the speculations of ancient days. And in what
way has this growing skepticism been prevented from
eclipsing the faith of mankind altogether?
The personal history of those who have been
caught up nearest to the heart of God would perhaps
show that the disclosures which Strauss calls "interference," have never ceased in any age of the world.
Miracle, - regarded as that inner and open door
where "the supernatural comes in," -always has
been and always will be. Its form and its methods
may change as the world changes, but the substance
and reality are preserved. Just in the degree that an
age becomes shut in by sense, the sphere of miracle
is withdrawn from the gaze of the street and the
market-place, and from all physical demonstration,
to that realm of spirit, where only the heart of God




30           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
beats audibly to the heart and ear of our redeemed
and regenerate humanity. He will not strive nor
cry amid the coarse dissonance of earthly sounds,
only to be rejected and scorned. But the work of
the Holy Spirit in the spiritual nature of man,
melting through its depravities and evolving a new
creation out of its primal chaos, giving to it ever
clearer openings, —this has been the miracle wrought
ever anew through all the Christian ages.  Said
Jesus to the people who were amazed at his power
of healing the sick, Greater works than these will
the Father do that ye may marvel; referring to that
life whose throes were already commencing in the
spiritual graves. Those who have been caught inward by the Spirit of God and sealed by its power,
will often tell us, not aloud, but in tears and in tremblings, lest the world outside should hear and laugh,
of the guidance of a Divine hand never out of sight,
and the mouldings of a Divine power more wonderful than that which projected the forces of nature.
The moral creation, though rising unseen to carnal
eyes, is quite as miraculous as the natural. It is very
interesting, sometimes, to hear not only individuals,
but families, recount their history; how events have
been shaped and unified by tractations which none
but they could see; how mountains have been removed, and brazen bars cut in two, and victories
achieved in answer to the prayer of faith; how amid
conflicts'and temptations and the clouds of dust




MIRA CLES.                31
which have risen over them in the race of life they
have had tokens of the power that insphered them,
tenderly moving behind a veil lest its too great glory
should drown their human personality, yet making
rents here and there where watching faces looked
through; above all, in those hours of supreme trial
when families break up and the last adieus are
spoken, seeing the gates flung wide, where the steps
lead away from earth and mortality into climes where
death shall be no more. When science looks upward
instead of downward, and becomes transfigured in a
light higher than its own, and sees all its facts taken
up and rearranged under laws of a wider and more
comprehending unity, the earth will reflect the peace
of heaven and mirror its verities anew, repeating,
though on planes of existence vastly broader and
more secure, the times of which Wordsworth sings,
when the Divine Messengers crowning the sovereign
heights of the world -
"Warbled for heaven above and earth below,
Strains suitable for both."




III.
THE IMMANENCE OF GOD.
IF, as Christianity assumes, man while involved in
nature and clothed in its forms, is at the same
time intrinsically immortal, and as such is to be
evolved out of nature and rise above it, it follows
that he is the subject now and here of both ranges
of existence. He is natural and supernatural. By
his natural organs he is placed in open and necessary relations with time and space; by his immortal
faculties he is placed in necessary relations with a
supersensible world. He is not always conscious of
these higher relations. The babe is locked fast in
sense and knows only of sensuous things. There
are those, we have said, who scarcely in this life get
released from this despotic grasp. But a spiritual
nature with its unmeasured possibilities, is in abeyance, securely enfolded, and ready under the appliance and culture adapted to it to open down into the
consciousness and arouse the soul to aspirations and
reachings towards what lies beyond nature and is independent of her growths and decays. Hence the
involution of the supernatural in the natural and the
immanence of God in humanity. On the first awak



THE IMMANENCE OF GOD.           33
ening of a consciousness, higher than that of mere
natural life, all men have intuitive notions of spiritual and divine things. Then into every soul comes
an influx of the supernatural, and breathings from
the Lord, which are deeper than all human teachings,
and without which all human teachings were in vain.
Our minds open inward as well as outward, and
thence run along into our souls as on electric wires
the tidings that are not of earth; inspirations of God
of a moral law and of a life to come. Were it not for
these inspirations, the eternal life might as well be
preached to trees and animals as to human beings.
Granted Mr. John Stewart Mills' theory of " association" and cumulative traditions; they must have
had a clear solid ground to start from, a native stock
to be grafted upon, or they might just as well have
started from the coral or the oyster as from a human
soul. There was at the beginning the involution of
the supernatural in the natural, else we might teach
and preach to all eternity and get no evolution;
there must be the immanence of God in man, and he
must be capable of becoming conscious of it, else we
might just as well offer symbols of worship to the
bats and owls as to men and women. With all alike
this is the prime ground of culture, from the first
bishop of Christendom to the half idiot savages of
Sidney Cove. These divine instincts, therefore, possible or actual, are in every man; for every man as
to his interior mind belongs to a spiritual world and
3




34           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
is capable of being placed in communion with eternal
things. But let us discriminate. When we say that
God is immanent in humanity, we do not mean that
the DIVINE SUBSTANCE is included in man. The
Christian conception of God, as we apprehend it, is,
that from the Divine Substance and personality are
the forthgoing energies that fill the circuit of his
universe, so that all things in their inmost nature are
receptive of them and exist by them. This influx
from the Divine Personality is not to be confounded
with that personality itself. If God were present personally in nature and not by influx, then nature itself
were one great Fetish, and, the idolaters were right
who worshipped the sun and the stars. If God were
in man personally or by his own essence, man himself would be God, and not his dependent creature,
receptive of Divine inspirations. In man and in nature alike, in the child at play and in the flower
which he plucks from its stem, there is the unceasing influx of the Divine, and out of this they draw
their breath, and suck the life that warms and feeds
them. But nature is not conscious of this Divine life
out of which it grows and blossoms; man, when his
higher consciousness is opened, has convictions, desires, and aspirations, which he knows must come
from Divine imbreathings and urgencies; and so he
bows and worships and returns to God the love
which he receives. This distinction between influx
and personality, between the Divine immanence and




THE IMMANENCE OF GOD.            35
the Divine essence, though sometimes lost sight of,
we think is plain and obvious. It should be kept
steadily in view, as we shall see by and by, if we
do not see already in the naked statement itself
that the distinction saves us from fetishism when we
make God immanent in nature, and from pantheism
when we make Him immanent in both nature and
man.
It hence becomes very plain, too, what we mean
when we speak of intuitions of God, or inward beholdings of the Deity. Construed literally it has no
meaning whatever, except to the pantheist himself.
Intuition is simply the survey which one takes of the
contents of his own consciousness. It is to the internal phenomena of mind, what perception is to the
external phenomena of nature. Perception, if it be
clear and accurate, gives you what lies without you
in sharp outline and just perspective; intuition, if it
be clear and accurate, catalogues aright the facts of
consciousness in your experience, intellectual and
spiritual, and gives the soul's perspectives to itself.
Of course there can be no intuition of God, since He
is not included in the contents of consciousness, and
could not be, without the destruction of the human
identity and personality. Our mental perspectives,
present or possible, opened already, or which may be
opened, give us our own, and the limit where they
fade off and dissolve in darkness, is precisely where
our identity and personality terminate.




36           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
But though God Himself can never be the content
of the human consciousness, his highest and best
work can be. My consciousness at one time may
give me an inward scene of moral ruin and disorder.
I may see a creation rise out of this chaos more
goodly and fair than the order of external nature;
changes may be going on within, more auspicious
than all the ongoings without; experiences more rich
than the regalements of sense; a sunshine from the
divine face more bright than summer glories; a peace
more sweet than the tranquillity of the morning; affections purged of self and enlarged to universal love;
calls to duty more loud and clear than matin bells;
strength to suffer and to do that comes by prayer; a
power back of my personal volitions, transfusing my
whole being and creating it anew; convictions of
truth growing bright to the perfect day; all these may
come within the range of my intuitions, and beget a
faith in God which nothing can shake, and a knowledge of his goodness and power worth more than all
the deductions of the understanding. It comes not
from inward beholdings of the Deity, but of what He
does; beholdings of such work of grace and power
as I can ascribe to neither man nor angel, and which
bring repose under the shadow of his wings.




PART I.
THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.
"One do I see and twelve; but second there
Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one;
Not for thy nobler port, for there are none
More quiet-featured. Some there are who bear
Their message on their brows; while others wear
A look of large commission, nor will shun
The fiery trial so their work is done.
But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer,
Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips
Seem like the porches of the Spirit-land;
For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by
Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye
Burns with a vision and apocalypse
Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand."








CHAPTER I.
GNOSTICISM.
T   HE problem of evil has always been the most
stubborn and difficult, whether without Christianity, or within it, and under its resolving light. No
Pelagian theories can relieve the burdened consciousness from the fact of inhering corruption. It has
existed under every form of religion, from that of the
Hindus down to the last modification of New England Calvinism; and the wit of man has been taxed
to the utmost so to dispose of the fact as to clear
the divine character of all responsibility about it.
It was this laudable motive which gave rise to the
most daring system of speculation known in the history of opinions. That system began to appear soon
after the ascension of Christ, and grew into gigantic
proportions by the middle of the second century.- It
was the most formidable heresy that threatened
Christianity, and overlaid its first purity; and though
finally thrown off, and left behind, it imparted to
Christianity a direction and coloring which it had for
centuries, and of which it is not wholly relieved to
this day. There are unmistakable allusions to it in
Paul's epistles; it is a clearly established fact that




40    TTIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the Apostle John came in contact with it; it is openly
assailed in the epistle which bears his name; and
portions of the fourth Gospel, quite unintelligible
otherwise, are tolerably well understood when we
know that they were written with the haunting presence of this growing heresy. The argument for the
genuineness of the fourth Gospel cannot be seen in
its entire force without some knowledge of the contemporaneous Gnostic opinions.
Gnosticism was a composite of at least four other
religions, - Parseeism, once the dominant religion of
Persia; Hellenism, as modified by Plato; Judaism;
and Christianity. These four were variously combined; and, according to the proportions of the mixture, the new compound very much resembled Christianity, and did not greatly obscure its essential
truths; or it so distorted and annulled them that
their native simplicity, power, and beauty, were entirely gone.
Gnosticism was an attempt to combine Dualism
with Christianity. Dualism asserts the doctrine of
two original eternal principles of good and evil;
hence two primal uncreated realms of Light and
Darkness, of immaculate purity and essential depravity. One was the realm of pure spirit, at the
head of which was God Himself; the other was the
realm of matter, - dark, chaotic, and evil. These
two eternal, original principles lie at the foundation
of the Parsee religion; and with equal distinctness,




GNOSTICISM.               41
though with less active antagonism, they are the
basis of Plato's philosophy as developed in the Timaeus. This Dualism invaded Christianity, —from
Persia through Syria and the Syrian Theosophists;
from Plato's philosophy through Alexandria and its
Platonizing Jews and Christians. They formed a
composite which we will briefly describe, inasmuch as
it has an important bearing on the exposition and
evidence of the fourth Gospel.
For a long period the boundary line between these
two kingdoms of Good and Evil had not been passed
over. Each existed apart in its own isolation, -one
in its transcendent excellence and glory; the other
as the outlying chaos, conceived sometimes as inert
and dead, sometimes as seething with corruption,
always as disorderly and wild. But it was inevitable
that the kingdom of light should approach nearer and
ever nearer the kingdom of darkness. For Godthe primal infinite good - was ever sending out
emanations from Himself. These at length hypostasized in the angelic powers that circled Him about
and stood nearest to his throne. But out of these
highest and nearest of the heavenly powers came
forth emanations in turn, and these hypostasized farther out and lower down. From these latter came
forth other emanations; and, with every remove from
the infinite original source, the eternal perfections
were reflected more dimly. Of course these waves of
emanation can be extended indefinitely; and you can




42           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
cogitate any number of heavens to suit your fancy, -
from the inner circle, most resplendent about the
throne, to the outermost limit, the Chinese wall of
the upper celestials that bounds them from chaotic
darkness and death. These powers thus created successively were called LEons, and the whole realm,
from the centre to the circumference, was the Divine
Pleroma, because within these limits God reigned in
the fullness and completeness of his perfections.
Thus far there was no mixture of the two realms.
But at length the emanations streamed over the Chinese wall into the realm of dark, dead, chaotic matter. The angel on the outermost limit rayed into it,
and fructified it. Hence a new world arose, -this
world we live in of mingled good and evil. It was
not created by God, the supremely good, who never
appears directly and openly in it; it was formed by
the angel who was lowest down and next to it; whose
emanations streamed into it, and took on a covering
of matter. Hence this angel was called the Worldformer. Or, again, he was called the Logos, or Word,
because a ray from his reason pierced the realm of
matter, and took its clothing thence. Hence the
complex nature of man. His most external nature is
material. It is the hylic coat which he wears, always
corrupt and poisonous, the seat of all his temptations.
and woes. Within this is his soul, which is an emanation from the angel World-former, and therefore his
psychical or soul-nature is a ground of communion,




GNOSTICISM.               43
not with the Supreme Good, but only with the Worldformer who made him and ranks just above him.
There is in man, however, as in the ALons or angels
above him, an inmost principle of the supremely good
and perfect. Because every tier of being which creates a next lower one is a medium, though unconsciously, of the infinite and primal life, and that life
therefore is immanent in all created things. But,
before it has reached man, it becomes imbedded under so many strata that it comes not generally into
the consciousness. Hence the Logos, or Worldformer, who made us and all terrestrial things, and
who is the immediate ruler of this lower sphere, while
he thinks he made it and rules it from himself, is
really and unconsciously the organ and instrumentality of the Supreme Divinity. Hence man has a
threefold nature, - the hylic or fleshly one, which is
outermost; the soul-nature, which is next inward,
and which is an emanation of the World-former; and
the deepest and inmost of all, buried far beneath the
consciousness of common men, the spiritual or pneumatic nature, which is the pure emanation of God
himself.
The sum is, this is too bad a world to be regarded
as the handiwork of a perfect Being. The essential
evil of matter, and hence the utter depravity of the
fleshly nature, lie at the foundation of all the Gnostic
systems.
It will be seen at once how Christianity, on the




44           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
side of Judaism, holds out an irresistible lure to the
first theosophist who might choose to dovetail Gnosticism into it. The wonder is that they did not interpenetrate sd tenaciously as to defy the wit of the
Church fathers to break them off from each other
and keep them asunder. The problem of evil, if not
solved, was at least artfully dodged, at a time when it
was the hardest and the sorest; when the whole creation was groaning and travailing in pain. The Divine character stands clear of all responsibility touching its origin. Not only so, but the Old Testament
history, and the whole dispensation of Judaism, the
stumbling-block of the Christian believer, can now be
fitted in with Christianity with marvelous symmetry.
Nothing is easier. The God of the.Old Testament,
sternly just, sometimes with changeful passion and
consuming anger, was not the God of Christianity,
but the World-former himself, ruling his own kingdom and trying to hold it in its wild disorder. Confessedly, the Being who fashioned this world, and
governs it, is the Jehovah-angel of the Old Testament. See thus how the threefold nature of man is
marvelously displayed! The heathen - lost in thick
darkness, and worshipping devils - are those on
whom the hylic coat of sense and matter hangs thick
and heavy; and the soul-nature, even, is lost under
it, and comes not into consciousness. Only a few
chosen people have had this consciousness awakened
and so brought into acknowledged relations with the




GArOSTICISM.              45
World-former who governs them. These are the
Jews,-not the chosen people of the Supreme God
but of the World-former, who has parted them off,
and, with constant watching and sore trials of his
patience, keeps them in external order by rigorous commandments and temporal judgments. The
World-former, with his Jews, expected a Messiah;
but it was only a temporal one, who was to extend,
not his own reign, but that of the World-former himself. The Messiah was to be his subject and conquering vicegerent.  A few, however, there were
whose pneumatic or deepest natures had been touched
and vitalized. Beneath the covering of flesh and
sense, beneath even the soul-nature itself, a chord
was touched in their profounder contemplations
whose vibrations thrilled beyond the World-former,
even up to the First Good, First Perfect, and First
Fair, and gave them communings with the Highest.
Such minds were choice and few; but they waited
and watched for the true Christ, and they indicated
his possible achievement in human nature. By this
clever dovetailing, Christianity is relieved of all difficulty arising from its connection with Judaism, and
Judaism adjusts itself easily in a grand system of the
Universe.
The World-former does not know that there is a
sovereign hand that uses him and turns him whither
it will. He thinks he is acting only from himself and
for himself, and never dreams that he is preparing




46           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the way for a higher /Eon to come and supersede
him. But such is the fact, and in the fullness of time
the pneumatic Christ appears. But He must not take
upon him our flesh and blood. Nothing could be
more abhorrent to Gnosticism than to bring the
Highest in contact with corrupt and poisonous matter. His immaculate purity must be kept clear of its
stains. How, then, can the Christ, either as the
Highest himself, or as his first LEon, get introduced
into this bad world to save it? In either of two
ways.
Jesus Christ was, in fact, two persons in one.
Jesus was a mere man of Jewish descent, born like
any other man. But he was of pious disposition,
and went to the Jordan to be baptized. Then the
AEon Christ descended, and entered him, and acted
and spake through him; and so from that period his
marvelous history unfolds, and the wisdom of God
drops from his lips. The Jews arraigned and crucified the man Jesus. They thought to have killed the
Christ, but him they could not touch. Before the
crucifixion the LEon Christ re-ascended to his skies,
and only a man like us died upon the cross. Hence
his exclamation in that awful hour after the God had
gone up and left him, "Why hast thou forsaken
me?"
Or there is another way by which Gnosticism,
always abhorring the touch of matter, eludes the
difficulty. Some Gnostics held that Jesus Christ was




GNOSTICISM.               47
one person, but that there was no incarnation at all;
that He did not come in the flesh, but only in divine
shapes that took its image and likeness. The angelophanies of the Old Testament, they said, were not
material forms, but celestial substances taking on
the appearances of the human figure. Even so the
Christ that appeared in Palestine was not clothed in
veritable flesh and blood, but only in its semblance
and effigy; for it is in the power of God at any
time to evolve this appearance out of Himself, and
project it into this lower world. The Jews thought
they crucified a man: but therein were they deceived, and their impotent rage defeated; for the
agony and the death were only phantasmic, while the
real Christ within the outward semblance was untouched by the spear and the nails.
Not all men can rise out of hylic darkness, or out of
the hard service of the World-former, to the knowledge of the pneumatic Christ and communion with
the Highest. It is only those whose inmost natures
have been quickened and unfolded. These can appeal to their highest consciousness.  They have
done with the poor outward letter of the Jewish
World-former, and have intuitions of the supreme
Deity. They look down with pity upon those still
held in bondage, whether to the Jewish letter or to
the poisonous coverings of flesh and sense.
Gnosticism prevailed extensively during the second
century, and did not become extinct before the mid



48           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
die of the fourth. Men of wealth, nobility, and intelligence, embraced Christianity under some Gnostic form; for it fostered mightily that serene selfcomplacency which makes men well-pleasing to themselves, and lifts them above their fellows. It exerted,
however, other and more lasting influences.  Its
prime article, the essential evil of matter as the deadliest foe of the internal man, led on to asceticism and
the maceration of the flesh. It made marriage odious,
and all sensual pleasure corrupting and vile; it made
all nature but a blight, an incumbent curse upon the
spirit; and either its direct influence, or the ground
principle out of which it grew and flourished, sent the
monks into the monasteries or the deserts, doomed
the priests to celibacy, and wrenched human nature
itself into frightful distortions. The Church excluded
Gnosticism, but not till its virus had entered her
veins and exerted a potent influence in shaping both
her theology and institutions. Augustine, her greatest theologian, came into the Church out of one of
the forms of Gnosticism, and through him it flings
its long shadow down the centuries, even over the
theology of the modern age.
Not only the orthodox, but the heretic theologies
were sometimes determined either directly by Gnostic influence or by the fundamental principle from
which it comes. Arianism is not a system of dualism: it does not assert an eternal primitive matter;
but it abhors to bring God in contact with matter,




GNOSTICISM.              49
and so makes Christ a sub-deity or AEon under him,
created out of nothing, that he in turn might create
the world and become incarnate in time. Therefore
nature would not lead us directly up to the supreme
God, but to the sub-deity who created nature, who
became incarnate within it, who intercedes for us,
while the Supreme himself dwells apart, never passing over into the finite except through the mediating
Christ and his angels.
The Gnostics began to appear soon after the ascension of Christ, and during the second century their
spread was rapid and wide. Gibbon says they "covered both Egypt and Asia." They were polite, learned,
and wealthy, and highly self-exalted. They had their
congregations, their bishops and doctors, and sometimes mingled imperceptibly and extensively among
the congregations of the faithful. They condescendingly accepted Christianity in full; but, as they drew
it up and absorbed it in their own pneumatic consciousness, they held it sublimed in a higher Gnosis,
-a very different religion from that of the vulgar
Christian multitude around them. They were shy of
martyrdom, and could evade the authorities. They
could not always be distinguished from the Catholic
Christians, with whom they had no hesitation to commune and worship; but there was one subject by
which they could generally be discovered and sifted
out. If questioned touching the resurrection of the
dead, they would "look foolish," says Tertullian, and
4




50           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
finally disclose themselves. The resurrection of the
material body was abhorrent to their whole system
of faith.
Of course such a system, ramifying into the most
vital part of Christianity, adhering as a parasite,
and threatening to suck its life-blood, was not extruded and left behind without sharp and persistent
controversy. The controversy begins with Paul, who
gives a side-blow here and there at the incipient
heresy; John stops in his exhortations of brotherly
love to launch his anathemas against it; Polycarp,
the disciple of John, and the saintly martyr, ascribes
it to Satan; Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, wrote
to refute it; and Tertullian, at the close of the second century, employed his rough and fiery eloquence
to denounce it.




CHAPTER    II.
SAINT JOHN AT EPHESUS.
P ERHAPS no country on the face of the earth
has been the centre of influences more subtile
and pervading than Ionia, so far as those influences
have been extended by means of literature. It shaped
the intellect of the world in its finest moulds, for it
was plastic over the mind of Greece; it has determined most profoundly its religious culture, for those
writings of the Christian canon which appealed to the
deeper consciousness were produced within its transparent and inspiring ethers. In our gross and sleepy
occidentalism we constantly lose sight of the educative power of nature under conditions such as we
have never experienced and hardly imagined, over
those minds which have produced the master-pieces
in art, in literature, and in religion. This little Greek
province of Ionia has given us Homer and the Iliad,
and made all other poetry but a broken strain; it
has given us the fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse,
which find us at the close of eighteen centuries
veiling our sight before the too burning disclosures
of the Godhead. It has given us a language whose
sound is music and whose touch can bring the




52           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
subtlest thought within its soft and delicate shadings.
If it is bad philosophy to say with Mr. Buckle that
man with his culture and his religions is the mere
product of his environments, so it is equally bad
to say that God is only a great Magician, who works
without means and without law, and not the Infinite
Providence who works both within man and around
him by his immanence in both nature and humanity.
*Ionia lay upon the western coast of Asia Minor,
mainly between two rivers, though extending a little
beyond them; the Hermus on the north and the
Meander on the south. It was about one hundred
miles in length, and less than half that average distance in breadth, therefore comprising less territory
than the little State of Massachusetts. Two beautiful islands belonged to it, separated from it by narrow
straits; Chios towards the north, and Samos towards
the south. Besides the two rivers already named,
there is a third, the Cayster, which flows between
them, at whose mouth stood the city of Ephesus.
These three rivers find their way to the sea through
valleys of surpassing fertility, and the coast from
river to river is skirted by a belt of land, winding
with the winding coast, fronting the islands which
lie off as gems upon the sea, teeming with luxuriance
and gleaming in the gorgeous beauty of an oriental
clime. Its climate, though the most charming in the
world, is not one which melts and debilitates. Its
brilliant atmosphere taken into human lungs, is a




ST. yOHN AT EPHESUS.           53
perpetual stimulus, sparkling through the blood and
through the brain, and thence through the soul itself,
to sharpen its faculties and inspire its imaginative
powers..
This was Ionia; colonized from the selectest portion of the Greek race, a thousand years before
Christ. Twelve Greek cities rose along the coast,
and upon the two islands, confederate for the purposes of government and religion, and the common
life and culture which give birth to art and literature.
Architecture attained here its finishing grace in the
Ionic column. Genius not only sung its sublimest
epic in the Iliad, but language itself, newly modulated, had a breezy lightness and softness in the
Ionian lyrics which became the models of Greece.
Mark the indentation of the coast and the islands
by which Ionia opens towards the AEgean, and invites the commerce of the world! Mark the three
rivers winding through fertile meadows by which it
opens into the interior of Asia. By a magnificent
Roman road which crossed the table-lands of Phrygia,
and passed over the ridge of Taurus even to the river
Euphrates, the cities of Ionia became the marts of
an immense trade which set from the interior towards the Mediterranean sea.  Consequently this
little Greek confederacy, though small in territory,
became the centre of a widely-extended influence
upon oriental life, religion, and manners.
Ephesus was the metropolis of Ionia, and under




54           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the Empire was the chief city of proconsular Asia.
It stood at the mouth of the Cayster, on the southern
bank of the river, extending over a wide plain and up
the slopes of a mountain ridge called Coressus,
which shut it in from the south, and up the slopes of
another ridge on the right, called Mount Prion,
which shut it in from the east. Within this brief
space the oriental Greek wantoned and reveled, as
if life were given for a perpetual holiday, and its main
business were to enjoy the charms of earth and sky,
and breathe the exhilarating airs. Near the banks
of the river northeast of the city, rose the temple of
Diana, one of the seven wonders of the world, with
its one hundred and twenty-seven columns sixty feet
high, each the gift of a king, and in which the Ionic
style of architecture culminated in its highest perfection. On the side of Mount Prion was the theatre,
with its immense circular rows of seats rising one
above another, open to the brilliant sky, crowded
often with the vast multitudes, not always like the
mob who shouted " Great is Diana of the Ephesians,"
but answering with acclamations to music and song,
sometimes perhaps to works of genius in a language
whose vowel sounds made it the softest and sweetest
that ever fell upon human ears. Southeast of the
city and between Coressus and Prion was the gymnasium, where the exuberant life overflowed in athletic
games. The annual festival held in honor of Diana,
exhibited the rites'of the Greek oriental religion.




SAINT JOHN AT EPHESUS.           55
What a contrast to our Puritan solemnity and sobriety! It was called " the common meeting of Asia."
It was held through the month of May, and it drew
throngs of devotees with their wives and children,
not only from along the coast but from far away in
the interior, who came for dance and song, for the
amusements of the theatre and the gymnasium, for
the rites of Diana, whose image was enshrined within
the long, brilliant rows of colonnades, where came the
vast and winding processions of joyous worshippers.
The Asian Diana personified the all-fructifying and
nourishing powers of nature, and hence her festival
was held in the vernal season, when all nature was
storming into life, and it made the days and nights
of the month of May " one long scene of revelry." 1
Partly within the limits of Ionia, partly just beyond in the neighboring provinces, were the cities
which were to contain the seven churches, holding
"the seven golden candlesticks," to bear aloft the
light of Christianity to this portion of the eastern
world. Not very far off is the little island of Patmos, unlike the others which gem the waters with
green, but rising as a bald and barren rock out of
the,Egean sea.
We have said enough fully to -possess our readers
with the idea of the vast importance of Ephesus as
one of the strongholds of the pagan religion, one of
the keys of its position which Christianity would be
1 Conybeare. and: Howson's Life o:St. Paul, vol ii; p. 79.




56           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
likely to take and hold. Notwithstanding the stimulating powers of nature amid which they lived, and
the glorious traditions that urged them from behind,
and the models of intellectual beauty which charmed
their imaginations, the Asiatic Greeks sank into degeneracy and decay. An effeminate and voluptuous
race read of the heroes that thundered through the
Iliad without a spark of heroism in themselves. Religion itself became to them, not a light which leads
upward into life, but which lured them downward into
death. It was made to throw its consecrating veil
over the most brutalizing sensuality, and the sacred
groves concealed abominations which would bring a
blush upon the face of the open day. We do not
know that the groves of Mount Prion, like the groves
of Daphne near Antioch, were consecrated to lust,
but it is very certain that manhood and womanhood
in the oriental Greek cities were infected with the
common leprosy and sank down in Asiatic effeminacy and corruption. The cities of lonia were not
an exception.  Their history illustrates the great
truth that without a religion which brings life and
health to the soul, the most illumined page of nature
will grow dark to it and the most brilliant atmosphere, though drank as a constant elixir out of
heaven, will not save it from consumption and death.
It is certain that the Gospel was preached at Ephesus by Paul soon after the middle of the first century, and that a church was gathered there whose




SAINT rOHNV AT EPHESUS.         57
influence extended rapidly through the neighboring
country. Its converts were drawn first from the
Jewish synagogue, but afterwards and mainly from
the Greeks and orientals, more curious to know and
more quick to receive and understand the truths of
the new religion, and doubtless yearning towards the
light out of the depths of their own degrading superstition. At the end of three years even the magnificent temple of Diana began to be deserted of its
worshippers, its long processions to be thinned out,
which shows how deep was the hunger of the multitudes and how directly Christianity went to their
sorest needs.
We find the Apostle John, as early as A. D. 60,
according to the New Testament narratives and
epistles, a colaborer with the Apostles in or near
Jerusalem. He then vanishes from history; but he
reappears at Ephesus towards the close of the century, where memorials of unquestionable authenticity
fix the last scenes of his life. We cannot mistake
the exigency which brought him hither. Christianity had broken away from the synagogue, had shivered in pieces the Jewish shell which sought at first
to confine it, and thrown itself on the vast floating
waves of gentile peoples as a religion for humanity
itself, which it was to renovate and redeem. It had
already penetrated far beyond the limits of Ionia, and
its leaven was fermenting and heaving the masses
with life. "The seven churches that are in Asia"




58           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
had arisen and were flinging their constellated light
through the darkness. We knew from the letter of
Pliny to Trajan, written soon after the close of the
century, how wide and deep throughout this region
the influence of Christianity had become.  "The
contagion of this superstition," says he, "has not
only seized the cities but the villages and open country. The temples are well nigh deserted, the sacred
rites for a long time have been intermitted, and victims for sacrifice are rarely purchased." But just in
the degree that Christianity extended its influence
would its native purity be liable to be over-clouded
and its sharply cut lines of demarcation to become
wavy and dim. This was the case among the Asiatic
Greeks, and especially at Ephesus, the heart of the
country whence the tides of life were constantly
flowing, and into which they constantly returned.
Metaphysical, subtle, curious, both analytical and
constructive, and imaginative in the highest degree,
with a language flexible to all the ranges and reaches
of thought, the Greek mind was now to receive and
act upon Christianity, and give it all its possible
changes and combinations. Gnosticism was already
at Ephesus. Cerinthus, a Hellenistic Jew, had come
from Alexandria and adopted Christianity into his
all-absorbing system of belief. Judaism had before
been received into it. He made Jesus and Christ
two persons. Jesus was a man like other men, with
a human father and mother, but at his baptism the




SAINT 70HN AT.EPHESUS.          59
higher tEon, Christ, descended and entered him as
the Holy Spirit, but ascended again and left him
before his crucifixion. Cerinthus would hear and
know nothing of a suffering and dying Messiah, but
only of a heavenly one whose splendor was undimmed and untarnished by flesh and sense, and
of whom the man Jesus was not an incarnation but
only the passive organ and vehicle. This man was
at Ephesus in the last decade of the first century.
Almost everything else was there at this conflux
of the Eastern religions and superstitions. The arts
of magic which are always in vogue where there is
no enlightened faith in the supernatural, were prac
ticed by strolling astrologers who infested every principal city from the Euphrates to the Tiber. They,
too, were at Ephesus, exorcising demons by charms
and incantations.  The worship of Diana of the
Ephesians had become a species of sorcery. The
silver shrines bearing the image of the goddess with
magical letters - the famous "Ephesia grammata"
- were worn as charms and amulets by votaries
from all the provinces of lesser Asia. Moreover, a
more fantastic Gnosticism than that even of Cerinthus had been imported and diffused from Syria.
Abhorring the idea that God could appear in this
bad world directly and thus stain with matter his
immaculate purity, it made God himself a great magician who could bejuggle the senses of men by projecting appearances upon them, which appearances.




60           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
though not matter, were the semblance of it without
its substance.
It is certain that John was in Ephesus in the last
decade of the century presiding over the constellated
churches of that region, purging them from corruption and guarding their purity. It is certain that he
here met Cerinthus and opposed him. The immediate disciples of John so reported, and there is not
the least reason to question their truth. Many anecdotes are told of him; of his meeting Cerinthus at a
bath and fleeing instantly away from it; of his apostolic watch and tender care over the churches of Asia;
of his going into the fastnesses of the mountains to
reclaim a young man who had apostatized and joined
a gang of robbers - such as is well-known infested
the provinces when fleeced by the Roman proconsuls;
of his serene and beautiful old age, when too weak to
walk alone he was borne into the assembly and out
of it with exhortations to brotherly love ever upon
his lips till the monotony tired them; of his banishment to the island of Patmos in the persecution
under Domitian, and his return thence in A. D. 97;
of his death about the close of the century when
past the age of ninety; of his burial-place which
Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, towards the close of
the second century, speaks of as a sacred spot well
known in his day to the Christians of that region
who cherished tenderly the local traditions of the beloved disciple. The anecdotes are strikingly charac



SAINT 7OHN AT EPHESUS.           61
teristic, allowing in the details for some additions
and colorings, just such as a fond and gossipy tradition would be likely to give.1
That the Apostle was called to a post where Christianity was centralizing its forces at the most fearful
crisis of its history, -a post which needed the personal presence and commanding authority of one
who had not only seen and heard the Lord Jesus in
the days of his earthly life but who held open converse with Him still; that not only the exigencies of
the times called him there, but the Divine Providence openly manifested to protect the nascent
church and the rising faith, - is perfectly plain, we
think, from all the memorials of this period both sacred and profane. It is convincingly evident when
you study the Johannean writings and character and
regard them as a collective force, thrown in at one of
the most perilous conjunctures in human development to control it and guide it and hold it under benign spiritual laws.  Christianity had escaped one
danger and had fallen upon another vastly more
threatening, and was in the breakers already. It
had broken the bondage of Judaism, thanks to the
intrepid power and inspired logic of Paul; and the
poor and vanishing sect of the Ebionites which the
Church had fairly thrown off was the last fragment
of the broken chain. It had cleared the synagogue
completely, and on the side of the Jew the peril was
1Eusebius H. E. iii. 23, 3I; iv. 14.




62           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
past. Not so on the part of the Greek whose nimble
intellect and soaring imagination could put all the
philosophies and religions of the world together and
fuse them through every changeable and gorgeous
shape which could captivate the fancy of man, inflame
his passions, or flatter his pride. Christianity, left to
its natural course as a mere human system evolved
out of the common and seething mass of opinions,
would not have brought down the proud imaginations
and humbled the philosophies of this world at its
feet. It was in imminent danger now of being drawn
up and absorbed by them; of serving as the fringe of
a new Pantheism, or having a place in a heathen Pantheon enlarged and decorated for its reception. Such
plainly was the crisis when John went to Ephesus.
John lived "to the times of Trajan," says Eusebius; and others say more definitely that he died in
the third year of that emperor's reign, that is, in the
year 1oo, at or near to its close. His death at least
could not have been earlier. This does not rest on
any uncertain tradition. We know it from other data.
Polycarp, a disciple of John, who had drank deeply
of the same spirit, was placed by him over the neighboring church at Smyrna, one of "the seven churches
in Asia," the light of whose golden candlesticks the
Apostle watched from Ephesus and labored to keep
undimmed. There Polycarp lived and preached ever
after, and there he suffered martyrdom in the year
167. He was then eighty-six years old, as he says




SAINT 7OHN AT EPHESUS.            63
to his persecutors when they urged him to abjure his
Saviour: "Eighty-six years have I served Him."
This is contained in the letter of the church at
Smyrna, written by eye-witnesses describing the
beautiful and triumphant death of that aged bishop
and reporting his words.1 This would give barely
twenty years of his life as falling within the first century. He could hardly have been younger than that
when John placed him over the church at Smyrna,
and it becomes more probable that the Apostle lived
past the century than that he died before its close.
We know from Pliny's letter to Trajan already referred to, written close upon this time, that Christianity had then become widely diffused in Asia
Minor, and that the heathen temples were becoming
deserted of their worshippers.
1 This letter has some marks of embellishment from a later hand,
but we regard its facts and dates as authentic. It is given by Eusebius.




CHAPTER III.
THE JOHANNEAN WRITINGS: THEIR CONGRUITY, INTERIOR RELATIONS AND IDENTITY OF AUTHORSHIP.
T   AKING    for our present purpose the fourth
Gospel, the Catholic Epistle, and the Apocalypse, and the memorials of John found in the synoptics, a character rises before us sketched and
shaded with marvelous symmetry, consistency, and
grace, and a class of writings present themselves,
whose interior relations are of a most extraordinary
kind. The character is such that no writer of that
age would have created it as fiction, and the relations
of these writings are not only impossible, but unimaginable on any theory which does not make them
the production of one mind and genius.
To suppose a set of myth-makers of opposite opinions and tendencies, scattered through half a century
and half of the then civilized world, to have left a
mass of documents, partly forged, partly compiled from
uncertain tradition, partly made up of imaginations
taken unconsciously for facts; that these were thrown
hap-hazard together, and that out of them emerges a
character of such freshness and originality as that of
John, of tints so rich, and varied, and delicate, and




7HE yOHANNEAN WRITIznGS.         65
yet so harmoniously blended, -to suppose this would
be supposing no less than a moral miracle. We are
not saying that this character is unimaginable or
beyond the reach of creative art under a single and
very skillful hand; we are saying that such compilers
could no more have produced it, and that by accident, than a hundred Greek slaves could build the
temple of Diana by throwing down at random their
cart-loads of stone and mortar.
The character of John is composed of two vastly
differing elements, rarely found in such combination
except under the transfusing power of the Christian
spirit, but found there in its perfection and consummation. These two elements are very great masculine strength, joined with affections so overflowing
and tender, that the strength is concealed under their
profusion, except when occasions and emergencies
bring it to the test. The granite is hidden under the
tendrils that overhang it with flowers. It is only by
assuming that these two elements are inconsistent
with each other that the critics have raised their objections against the congruity of the canonical Johannean writings, whereas to blend them together is
the great achievement of Christianity in human nature, and the blending is most perfect when the disciple leans most intimately on the bosom of his Lord.
The combination does not impair the masculine intrepidity, but preserves it and tones it, though concealing it sometimes under the mildest of womanly
5




66           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
gentleness. That there was this native hardihood in
the favorite disciple, intensified even to savageness,
there are indications which cannot be mistaken. The
two sons of Zebedee were called "thunderers," and
that the surname was descriptive of natural traits, is
shown by the fiery zeal which prompted them to invoke the lightnings to blast the Samaritan city which
refused them hospitality. This, it must be remembered, was in the first stages of discipleship, while as
yet they understood the Messiah's kingdom to be one
of temporal power and magnificence, and aspired to
its chief honors and rewards. Not yet had the deep
and abundant fountains of love been called forth to
their overflowing. But even when this is the case,
and when they trickle forth in all their tenderness,
spreading everywhere the most delicate verdure and
bloom, we are never allowed to forget the rock-ribbed
back-ground which supports the whole. Something
reminds us even in the softest refinement and spirituality of the favorite disciple that these come not out
of weakness and shallowness. When Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, the disciples dispersed and
fled for their lives. But there was one exception.
We follow on, and in the open court of the High
Priest's palace where Jesus is brought for insult and
mockery, appears the youthful John who had kept
close to his Master. Peter follows cautiously at a
distance, and is let in through John's intercession;
but Peter's courage soon-gives way amid the appal



THE yOHANNEAN WRITINGS.          67
ling scene.  At the cross again, under the storm of
rage, and amid the scoffs and wagging of heads, Jesus
looks down and sees a single disciple standing close
by. It is John again, - the same who drank in the
divine love on his breast with a tenderness which
was more than woman's, and who when the storm
came which sifted his followers like wheat, evinced a
greatness and strength of character beyond that of
common men. It shows us, what history and experience teach alike, that in the most trying emergencies, the gentlest natures are the strongest, provided the divine gentleness has made them great.
There are three principal documents extant which
the churches ascribe to the beloved disciple,-the
fourth Gospel, the Catholic Epistle, and the Apocalypse. That the first two were written by the same
hand, is shown from internal evidence which cannot
be resisted. An imitator or forger might have strung
together phrases culled out of the fourth Gospel such
as occur in the Epistle, but he never could have so
made it live as to preserve the spirit that breathes
through it spontaneously and gives fragrancy to the
whole. The theology of the fourth Gospel, the doctrine of the Logos, is here set forth, not only in the
terms but with the unction known only to the beloved disciple. But this is not all. The very atmosphere of Ephesus is felt in every chapter of the Catholic Epistle. Through every one there is an outlook
upon the Gnostic heresy confronting us in some




68           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
shape. In the opening passage we have it full in the
eye, as if in the first stroke of his pen the writer was
refuting the false teacher who turned the Christ into
some intangible unreality or phantasm, "that which
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon, and OUR HANDS HAVE
HANDLED of the Word of Life." Every sense that
can testify is appealed to. Not only so. We have it
asserted and reiterated that " Jesus is the Christ," and
he who denies this is a "liar."  This finds its point
and burden of meaning when we have Cerinthus
in full view, asserting that Jesus was not the Christ,
but that He was one person, and Christ who never
came in the flesh was quite another person. By this,
says the writer of the Catholic Epistle, ye shall try
the spirits and distinguish them. " Every spirit that
confesseth that yesus Christ is come in theflesh/ is of
God, and every spirit that says Jesus Christ is not
come in the flesh is not of God, and this is that
spirit of anti-Christ whereof ye have heard it should
come, and even now already is in the world."
That " sin is a transgression of the law," and that
"he that doeth righteousness is righteous," sound
very much in our modern ears, like saying sin is sin,
and virtue is virtue. Not so in presence of a heresy
which allowed men to grovel in the stye of sensuality,
and yet promised to keep their inmost souls separate
and immaculate before the Highest. In the whole
cast and style of this Epistle we not only know that




THE yOHANNEAN WRITINGS.           69
the spirit that gave form and coloring to the fourth
Gospel is with us, but that the very same moral atmosphere which lay upon lesser Asia at the close of
the first century, is all around us.
But the commingling of the two elements in the
Catholic Epistle is such as nature and not art must
have given them. Through the abounding tenderness, whose language is ever reiterated, breaks the
most severe and wrathful denunciation. Almost in
the same sentence come the blessings and the curses.
The words "little children," which should rather be
rendered " my dear children," with fond allusions to
the divine love and fatherhood, alternate with " murderer," "liar," and "anti-christ," and " children of
the devil," applied to the heretics of his day. In the
disciple leaning on the divine breast and drinking its
love, we never quite lose sight of the darker background of character in the man who invoked lightnings on the Samaritans.
But more remarkably and unmistakably do we find
all this in the Apocalypse brought out in such wise
as no human imagination could have invented. It is
no part of our work to expound the Apocalypse, but
we affirm that its congruity with the other Johannean
writings is most remarkable, and they run into each
other by relations exceedingly subtile and pervasive.
This fact we kniow is not generally acknowledged,
but it will be obvious to the reader the longer he
studies the contents and interior relationships of
these writings.




70           THE FO URTH GOSPEL.
The Apocalypse as is now generally conceded is
the writing of John the Evangelist. Doubts, it is
true, were entertained on this point in the third
century, and there were some Greek churches which
did not receive it. But there were obvious reasons.
From the nature of its contents it was not read in
the churches, and therefore was not so publicly
known as the four Gospels. But it was early attested
and commented upon; and modern investigation and
criticism render a verdict in favor of its genuineness
which is emphatic and substantially unanimous.
Perhaps, however, the Tiibingen critics would not
have been quite so swift in claiming the Apocalypse
as the work of John, had not its contents on superficial examination indicated a different hand from the
one which wrote the fourth Gospel, and afforded
therefore new ground from which to assail the genuineness of the latter. Both, so we are told, could not
be the productions of the same mind, so totally
diverse are they in matter and style. One has an
artless or else exceedingly artful simplicity; the other
an unwonted gorgeousness and grandeur; one is in
comparatively pure Greek; the other is in bad Greek,
and constantly violates the structural rules of the
language.
A comparison of these two works reveals some of
the most profound and subtile of psychological phenomena, and those which are the most infallible of all
circumstantial evidence. When we open theApoca



THE yOHANNEAN WRITINGS.           71
lypse, we are called upon to recognize at once a new
mental condition and one professedly abnormal. It
is the state of seership, out of which some of the old
prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel for example, and David
sometimes, prophesied and wrote. It was produced
from a state described by the author himself as ev Trvev-,aT&. No critic who refuses to take this into the account can say anything of the Apocalypse, whether
of its form or essence, which is of the least value
whatever. No critic, we think, who does take this
into the account and understand its bearings, will
rise from his investigation with any doubt that the
same hand wrote this book that wrote the fourth
Gospel and Catholic Epistle, and that the same personality and lines of character which appear in the
latter two, are intensified in the former to their sublimest consummation.
Says Mr. J. J. Tayler in his treatise on the fourth
Gospel, "No living writer has exhibited a more remarkable change of style in the course of his literary
career, than Mr. Carlyle; yet if we compare his' Life
of Schiller' with his'French Revolution,' or his'History of Frederick the Great,' notwithstanding
the great disparity of form, every reader of ordinary
discernment will recognize the same fundamental
characteristics of his peculiar genius in his earlier
and his later works." The same, he says, is true of
Milton. "Apply this standard to the two books now
under consideration, and the conclusion," he says,




72           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
"will be irresistible, that if the Apostle John be the
author of the Apocalypse, he cannot have written the
Gospel; if he wrote the Gospel, he cannot be the
author of the Apocalypse."  Hie then goes on to
prove that the Apostle John did write the Apocalypse, the early testimony being nearly unanimous on
that point, and therefore he did not write the fourth
Gospel. Theodore Parker, and more recently, Professor Davidson, come to the same result, and they
echo the Tiibingen critics generally.
It never seems to enter the conception of any of
these writers that there is any such condition of the
human faculties as seership, or if they do that it is
anything else than a normal exercise of the imagination, as in the case of Milton and Carlyle. The very
stand-point from which John says he wrote the.Apocalypse, and which determines the very nature and
style of his production, they ignore altogether, or
have not the remotest idea of, and so their volumes of
criticism are not worth the paper they have wasted.
There are three modes and degrees of apprehending truth. It may be reasoned and proved argumentatively by strong intellection like that of Paul; it
may be perceived intuitively under the inspiration of
the heart, or it may be visioned objectively by representatives and symbols, when the prophet becomes a
seer. The deepest and clearest intuition is nearest to
the state of the highest seership, and if John drank
1 Pages 13, 14.




THE 7OHANNEAN WRITINGS.          73
the deepest and clearest draughts of the divine love
he would be the one of all the twelve on whom the
Apocalypse would open its magnificent scenery.
We do not say this, believing that the seership of
the Apostle was a natural development of his faculties, but simply supposing that the Divine Providence never acts by magic; that the Spirit does not
select its instrumentalities arbitrarily, but those best
prepared naturally and psychologically for its highest
inspirations and disclosures. The evidence we are
about to unfold, however, is all the same, whatever
view we take of the inspiration of these writings.
When the mind of a speaker or writer passes from
its normal state to that of seership, two things are to
be observed. He speaks thereafter not from himself,
not according to his own tastes and models. His
will no longer determines either his style or matter,
but both are determined by the uncontrolled spontaneities within him. Hence the higher prophetic
style is never that of simple narrative or voluntary
utterance.
But neither again is it a style arbitrarily induced
upon the writer, and altogether foreign to him. Because in the seer his subjective state becomes objective. The truth that lay in his mind, or was bodied
in his speech in the form of metaphor, now passes
out of his mind, and the metaphors become the living
beings and the moving panorama of an objective
world. Therefore, while the seer does not speak from




74           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
his own personality but from a consciousness deeper
than his natural one, his personality, nevertheless,
does not disappear. Rather it reappears, though
changed and sublimed, in a higher order of mental
and spiritual phenomena. The Spirit that breathes
through him and makes him its organ, takes the
things of his memory and the whole treasury of his
imagination and experience, and recombines them
with the figures of its own more vast and illuminated
perspectives. Consequently, the idiosyncrasies, mental, moral, and spiritual, the characteristics of the
individual in his normal condition, are to be traced
always in the seer, though heightened and intensified.
Ezekiel is not Isaiah, and neither of these prophets
retain their simple narrative style when they rise
into the heights of seership, though their characteristics are sublimed without being lost. David passed
the years of his youth tending his father's flocks on
the plains of Bethlehem, and so afterwards in his
highest moments of inspiration his figures of speech
are drawn from a shepherd's life and from pastoral
fields. If his inspiration had become vision, unquestionably his figures of speech would have taken
form and coloring,'and unrolled to his eye an objective world showing in mystic light "the green pastures " and "the still waters."
Now let any one compare the fourth Gospel with
the Apocalypse, and he will be surprised to find how
constantly the metaphors of the former pass into the




THE JOHAANEAN WRITINGS.           75
latter and become the living figures of its ever shifting panorama. This is the more remarkable as these
figures of speech are altogether peculiar and strictly
Johannean. The fact is illustrative of a profound
psychological principle, but it is a principle which no
fabricator of that age would ever have dreamed of
availing himself of. We will give some very striking
examples.
The first chapter of the fourth Gospel, in that portion of it which opens the personal biography of
Jesus, describes a scene which evidently glowed vividly afterwards in the imagination of the Evangelist.
The Baptist, seeing Jesus coming, waves his hand,
and says to his disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God
that taketh away the sin of the world." The mind
of John dwelt fondly upon the image, for the same is
repeated soon after and graphically described. The
next day the Baptist stood, and two of his disciples,
one of whom was evidently the Evangelist himself.
On looking on Jesus as He walked, he saith, "Behold
the Lamb of God." By none other of the Evangelists is Jesus ever called the Lamb, and with a single
exception the figure is used by no other writer of the
New Testament. It occurs in I Peter i; 19. But at
the beginning of the fourth Gospel, it evidently describes Jesus as the coming sacrifice, and implies as
well a certain grace of person and charm of manner
which had won at first sight the heart of John.
A lamb offered in sacrifice is a beautiful figure of




76           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
self-oblation, but not likely to be selected by any
writer under ordinary conditions, as the symbol of
regal power and authority. But we open the Apocalypse, and lo! the image of the Lamb reappears, not
now as a figure of speech, but in living objective
form, and around it all the figures of the moving
panorama are grouped in their rank and order. And
when the ritual of heaven is described, and we look
up through "the ten thousand times ten thousand
and thousands of thousands," and the angels about
the throne, and'the four-and-twenty elders that cast
down before it their crowns of gold, and the eye at
last sees the central figure of this ascending homage,
it is not an oriental monarch sitting in regal splendor,
but A LAMB AS IT HAD BEEN SLAIN. The figure occurs more than twenty times in the Apocalypse, but
now always hypostatized. The figure stands conspicuous at the opening of the fourth Gospel, and
tones it throughout; the figure hypostatized determines the whole drama of the Apocalypse, and draws
around it the heavenly alleluiahs.
The doctrine of the Logos, or Word, is not peculiar
to the Johannean writings, but its form of statement is.
Nowhere else in the New Testament except the
Johannean writings, nor indeed in any writing of the
first century is Jesus Christ called the Logos. In the
proem of the fourth Gospel the Logos is distinctly
personified, and in such wise that it has baffled
the commentators ever since; and in the very first




THE 70HANNEANA WRI'TINGS.        77
verse of the Catholic Epistle it is personified again
in like manner. It ceases to be an abstract term, and
is something which men have "seen" and "handled."
This is specially and emphatically Johannean, and,
as we shall see by and by, was designed to turn
the divine truth with its boldest and brightest front
against the Gnostic heresies.
We should naturally expect that the Logos would
reappear in the Apocalypse. It does; and it is not
only hypostatized, but dramatized, and goes forth as
a fierce warrior and an almighty King, armed against
the enemies of truth, and riding them down with
garments crimsoned with their blood.
" I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse;
and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and
True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make
war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his
head were many crowns; and he had a name written
that no man knew, but he himself. And he was
clothed in a vesture bathed in blood: and his
name is called the LOGos OF GOD. And the armies
in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed
in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth
goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the
nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron:
and he treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and
wrath of Almighty God. And he had on his vesture
and on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and
Lord of lords." 1
1 Rev. xix. II-I6.




78           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
It is alleged by some of the critics that the Logos
doctrine was borrowed from the later Platonists, and
that it fixes the date of the fourth Gospel towards
the middle of the second century. Here in a work
acknowledged to be John's by these same critics, the
Word is not only hypostatized already, but clothed
with Divine attributes like the Word of the Golden
Proem.
Our next illustration is of even more remarkable
significance.  The opening chapters, both of the
fourth Gospel and of the Catholic Epistle, describe
the Word as the Beginning and the Ultimation; as
existing v apx, — in the prime central principles of
Divine being; and again as the Word made flesh 
raps E7yeEro, —as existing in the lowest and outermost
things. In the Catholic Epistle it is, " That which
was in the Beginning," and, " That which our eyes
have seen and our hands have handled."  This goes
to the profoundest metaphysics of the New Testament. Moreover it is in a form exclusively and
intensely Johannean. The thought may be gathered
and deduced elsewhere, but it never runs into this
peculiar mould. But open the Apocalypse, and this
profound metaphysic becomes the grandest objective
reality, rising on the sight in glorified form and with
overwhelming power and effulgence. The Beginning
and the Ultimation, the Alpha and the Omega, appears as one like unto the Son of man, his countenance as the sun shining in his strength, his hairs as




THE yOHANNEANV WRITINGS.         79
white as wool, and his feet like brass refined and
burning, -that is, He is divine not only ev apXrj -
in first things, but in their lowest natural forms and
ultimations. The conception was not only above the
age, but above all the ages. Its formulation, as found
in the Johannean writings, is not only original and
peculiar, but it transcends the profoundest deep of
Greek metaphysics and the loftiest flights of poetry.
Another figure which has become common currency in the speech of Christendom, but which is
altogether Johannean in origin, is that of water not
used as the symbol of baptism, but as representing
the power of truth to refresh the soul and slake its
thirst; and of bread to satisfy its hunger; making
Jesus Christ, by a bold metaphor, both water and
bread from heaven. There is nothing of this in the
synoptics, but it characterizes the fourth Gospel
throughout. The imagery clung delightfully to the
mind of the beloved disciple, and those discourses and
conversations of Jesus in which it abounds are fondly
remembered and reproduced in all their tenderness.
In the conversation with the Samaritan woman, the
Christ is "living water," or, again, a fountain of
water in the believer bubbling up unto everlasting
life, - that is perpetually, and diffusing verdure and
bloom over all the scenery of the soul. He offers
Himself as food and drink, and so merges the literal
sense in the spiritual, that some of his followers misunderstand Him and go away. "Who can hear such




80           THE FOURTIH GOSPEL.
sayings?" And in the last jubilant day of the
Feast of the Tabernacles, when the long winding
procession brought water from the springs of Siloam,
circling the altar and pouring it out as they chanted,
"Behold, we draw water from the wells of salvation,"
a loud voice startles the crowd and commands them.
Evidently there was a prophet-tone in the words that
broke in upon the ceremony and arrested it. Jesus
"stood and cried," "If any man thirst let him come
unto me and drink. He that believeth on me out of
his heart shall flow rivers of living water."
Turn to the Apocalypse, and what before was bold
metaphor and graphic description passes into the
objective scenery of the seer. It is no longer in the
mind, but visioned as out of the mind; unrolled as
the land of Paradise through which crystal streams
are flowing, between rows of trees, margined with
eternal green. The streams flow out of " the throne
of God and of the Lamb," along the streets of the
New Jerusalem, and on either side are rows of the
tree of life. The figure often recurs, but now as
actual water visioned and flowing clear as in the last
fervent invitation, "Let him that is athirst come,
and whosoever will let him take the water of life
freely," reiterating the very invitation of Christ in
the Gospel, "If any man thirst let him come unto
me and drink." The whole is intensely Johannean,
and could no more have been fabricated by some
writer of the next century than Lear's jester could




THE  OHANN EA   WRITINGS.       8 
have fabricated a second Iliad. It is beyond the
range of poetic imagination, and beyond Homer
himself.
The GOOD SHEPHERD, and the flock as the sheep
of his pasture, have been the favorite imagery under
which the Church in all ages has delighted to represent the relation of Jesus Christ to his followers.
But whence is this imagery derived? Not from the
twenty-third Psalm, though it occurs there, David
himself having been called from pastoral life. The
Church derives it from discourses of Jesus reported
in the' fourth Gospel, and which are not found in
the synoptics, not merely because they were most
congenial with the Johannean spirit, but because
John only of the evangelists was an ear-witness of
their utterance. The parable of the good shepherd
was not one of the public proclamations of his ministry in Galilee; it was uttered in the more private
colloquial intercourse which he had with the people
that gathered around him in and about Jerusalem,
whither He had gone up to attend one of the festivals.
The Jews were watching Him, and seeking cause for
arresting Him. "My sheep," said He, "hear my
voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I am
the good Shepherd, and know my sheep, and am
known of mine." And at the next festival He repeats
what He had said before: "Ye believe not because
ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My
sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they fol6




82           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
low me. And I give unto them eternal life, and they
shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out
of my hand." And again, as the door or gate of the
field, he says, " If any man enter in he shall be saved,
and shall go in and out, and find pasture."
The appendix to the fourth Gospel - for such we
regard the closing chapter -was probably added by
John's personal disciples from traditions of his discourses preserved at Ephesus. In it the same imagery occurs again with the injunction of the Master,
"Feed my sheep, feed my lambs."
It is easy to imagine why this imagery passed thus
fully and spontaneously into the discourse of our
Saviour. He was brought up at Nazareth; and the
vast plain of Esdraelon, with its brooks murmuring
towards the sea, dotted over with flocks of sheep, the
shepherds going before them, calling the leaders by
name, carrying the lambs in his arms, conducting
them to green spots by the brook-side, or into the
sheep-fold by night, and into the cool shade at sultry
noon, must have been the most familiar scenes which
Jesus looked upon through his youth and opening
manhood. They arrest the notice of the traveller
to-day, and bring the peaceful imagery of the fourth
Gospel freshly to his mind.
It would be very strange if we did not find it reproduced in the visions of the New Jerusalem. It is
there; thevales of Esdraelon idealized and glowing in
mystic light become the fields into which the Christ




THE yOHANNEAN WRITINGS.          83
as the Shepherd of the fold shall lead his flock washed
in his blood and made white and clean. " They shall
hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither
shall the sun light on them nor any heat; for the
Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed
them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of
waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes."
Light, as the symbol and representative of truth,
is a figure of speech found in almost all classes of
writing, but it is found in the fourth Gospel as nowhere else. Jesus Christ is there presented, not
merely as a teacher to enlighten the minds of men
with his doctrine, but He becomes the impersonation
of Light itself, and the very sun of the moral universe. This mode of speech characterizes the entire
fourth Gospel to such an extent that it has seemed to
many to give it a Zoroastrian tinge, and it is difficult
to avoid the inference that it has not some tacit reference to the Gnosticism of that day. The Baptist
is a light local and temporary, but the Logos which
was in the beginning with God, and was God, comes
into the world as The Light to enlighten every man,
and John and all other lights pale before it. The
figure used in this way occurs nowhere in the synoptics, and nowhere in the Epistles, except in the first
Epistle of John, where God Himself is "Light in
whom is no darkness at all." 1 In one of the most
1  John i. 5.




84           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
striking passages of the fourth Gospel the personification is employed early in the morning as Jesus was
teaching in the temple. At the hour when the sun
was just rising and flinging his beams aslant the
gilded dome and roof, and the white marble columns
possibly suggesting the figure, Jesus declares, " I AM
THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD." 1
We open the Apocalypse, and in the very first
chapter we find that the figure of the Proem is hypostatized as the sun itself of the higher mystic world.
The Logos which came before as The Light to enlighten every one, appears now as one like unto the
Son of man, his countenance as the sun shining in
his strength, standing in the midst of the constellated churches, which like golden candlesticks, borrow their light and trick their beams from Him.
The figure recurs again and again, but it is no longer
metaphor. It becomes the central luminary itself,
diffusing warmth and glory throughout the New
Jerusalem, which needs no candle, no sun, and no
moon, because "THE LAMB IS THE LIGHT THEREOF.2
We cite one more instance of a most remarkable
kind. John alone of all the twelve followed Jesus to
the cross and stood under it to witness its agonies.
Therefore he gives details which all. the others omit.
None of the synoptics mention the piercing with the
spear, but John does it with asseverations which
show how deeply the sight affected him.
1 John viii. 12.     2 Rev. i. 13-16; xxii. 5.




THE _O HANNEAN WRITINGS.          85
"One of the soldiers with a spear pierced His
side, and forthwith came thereout blood and water;
and he that saw it bare record, and his record is
true; and he knoweth that he saith true; that ye
might believe," -evidently referring to the doceticism of the Gnostics, who denied the real suffering
of the Christ. And then follows the citation of the
prophesy, "They shall look on Him   whom they
pierced." 1
This quotation is from Zech. xii. io, and the language, as there applied, has no direct reference to
Christ, but to the enemies of Jerusalem in her conflict with the heathen nations. John applies it in a
secondary and mystical sense to the men who crucified the Lord.
In the reappearings of Jesus, in two successive
scenes, John alone remembers what had so vividly
impressed his senses, and through them his imagination at the cross. "Jesus showed them his hands
and his side."
Turn now to the Apocalypse, and the same thing
reappears in the vision of the seer, sublimed and
intensified. The fact, of which John alone of the
twelve was the eye-witness, is recalled. Not only so,
but the same passage from Zechariah is cited in the
same secondary and mystical sense, and the imagery
and language of the passage are employed with
greater fullness and amplitude. "Behold He com1 John xix. 34-37.




86             THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
eth with clouds and every eye shall see Him, and
they also which pierced Him, and all kindreds of the
earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen."
Both quotations from the same prophecy, made with
such peculiarity, point indubitably to one and the
same writer.1  The fact which had impressed the
senses of John so deeply and tragically, passes into
the imagery of the seer, where that same Christ
coming to judgment shall compel those who pierced
his side to look upon Him in his open and overwhelming majesty. Dr. Davidson tries to parry the
force of this point in a course of remark which we
can regard as little better than puerile.
The personal characteristics of the favorite disciple are portrayed not less in the Apocalypse than
in the other Johannean writings. Both the prime
elements of his character are strongly contrasted, but
exalted and toned beyond the power of any human
imagination  to  commingle   and   harmonize.   No
chambers of imagery ever opened such treasures
of wrath, such storm-clouds, forking lightnings, or
showering down fire and hail and bloody rain. The
destruction, not of a Samaritan city, but of all the
enemies of Christianity, both Jewish and Roman, is
seen through the opening ages, and the New Jeru1 The quotation is doubtless from the Septuagint, - cal efrLSAXEov,Trat rpos /fE avO' &tv KacTwpXo'arYTO, — " they shall look on me whom they
have pierced." In both cases, in the quotation in the fourth Gospel
and in the Apocalypse, the original is changed from the first person
to the third.




THE yOHANNEAN WRITINGS.          87
salem descending beyond adorned and beloved as a
bride. The grand and terrific heightened to superhuman intensity, set off in contrast with images of
peace more sweet and lovely than the earth alone
can furnish, all are there. But the critics mistake,
we think, when they suppose the personal feelings
and passions of the writer are in the Apocalypse.
In the seer they have passed beyond that stage altogether. His personal genius is there superhumanly
exalted and idealized, for he speaks not himself but
is spoken out of; and the divine pencil takes its colorings from a human treasure-house, where they had
been abundantly stored up, and paints the realities
which were to be, and whose future the course of
Christian history has ever since been filling up.
The style of the Johannean writings,  a subject
on which the critics have grievously stumbled, - is
exceedingly variant. But it varies as the psychological condition of the historian differs from that of the
seer. One writes from his own natural consciousness. The other writes from a profounder consciousness than the natural one, and the style is not his
own, though colored by his native genius. One may
be perfectly simple and prosaic; the other, when essentially prophetic, is raised to a sphere of thought
where the wing of imagination never dares to play,
and his style may assume a mystic grandeur beyond
that of ordinary poetry.
But we come to another peculiarity of the Apoc'a



88            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
lypse, and one which seems at first to distinguish it
strongly from the other Johannean writings, we mean
the "bad Greek," which the critics have made so
much account of. This, too, when narrowly scrutinized, remands us to one of the profounder principles
of mental action.
When men pass from a normal to a trance condition, or one essentially abnormal, and speak from
pure spontaneity, they almost always speak in their
vernacular tongue, seldom in a language which has
been acquired later. If a German who had acquired
English should somnambulize, he would inevitably
fall back upon the speech which he learned from his
mother's lips, and to which his organs and his interior thought had always been attuned. The reason
is plain. In these abnormal moods the voluntary
powers are in abeyance, and the involuntary are in
full play, and will determine to no speech which is
foreign to them and artificial, but only to their own
native forms and idioms.l
It is a very remarkable fact that the bad Greek of
the Apocalypse is Greek which has been Hebraized.
It is full of Hebrew idioms, which has led the critics
strongly to suspect that it was composed originally
in Hebrew. Bishop Middleton says that if this could
1 Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, who practiced among the German
population, said that people who had not spoken their native tongue
for thirty years, on their death-beds, with the eternal scene drawing
nigh, would talk and pray in the language of their childhood.




THE yOHANNEAN WRITINGS.          89
be admitted all the difficulties on this score would
vanish at once.
It may not only be admitted, but assumed as exceedingly probable, that the Apocalypse, if written
by John Ev 7rwvEv'art, was produced in one of the Hebrew dialects. The Syro-Chaldee was his vernacular, the same which he spoke on the shores of the
Galilean lake, and associated with which all the
memories of his childhood, youth, and early manhood, and the natural imagery which enshrined them,
were stored away in the treasuries of his mind. All
his intercourse with Jesus had been in this language,
and all the discourses he had ever heard from Him
were in the same dialect. It would be strange indeed
if after the ascension of Jesus, when intercourse with
the beloved disciple was renewed, it had been in a
foreign language, and not in the one which they used
together when he leaned on the Master's bosom.
Inevitably, and by psychological laws, when he wrote
Ev 7rvEvuarL, that is, not by his own will, but out of a
profounder spontaneity and under the dictation of
the very lips that charmed his younger manhood, the
Divine influx would not flow into Greek forms, but
into the forms of his native tongue.
The congruity of the Johannean writings with each
other and with the character of the favorite disciple,
is important not merely as a most decisive argument
for the genuineness of these writings, but as helping




90o          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
greatly in their mutual interpretation and in that of
the whole New Testament. For it cannot well be
denied that the Johannean theology is inmost like
the soul in the body, being the central light which
penetrates, involves, and transfigures the whole.




CHAPTER IV.
THE SCOPE, PURPOSE, AND SPIRIT OF THE APOCALYPSE.
W\   E reserve for a separate chapter a difficulty
raised by modern criticism pertaining to the
congruity and identity of authorship of the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel. It is this: The temper
of the one is wholly unlike that of the other. The
temper of the fourth Gospel is sweet and beautifully
Christian; the temper of the Apocalypse is fierce,
vindictive, and Jewish. Baur sees in the Apocalypse
abundant evidence for his theory of two hostile parties in the primitive Church,- the Jewish party, at
the head of which was Peter; the Gentile party,
at the head of which was Paul; and of course John
wrote in the interest of the Jewish party, recognizing
throughout the Apocalypse only twelve Apostles,
ignoring the thirteenth, telling the churches that
Paul claimed to be an Apostle when he was not,
and was a "liar" (Rev. ii. 2). We enter not into any
examination of Baur's theory, which a late writer we
think has put forever at rest,1 but the purpose and
temper of a writing, which comes to us from the man
1 Fisher's Essays on the Origin of Christianity, specially Essay IV.




92           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
who shared most fully the confidence of the Lord
Jesus Christ, becomes to us a subject of the deepest
interest.
At what time was it written? is a question of some
importance, and bears incidentally on its interpretation. On this point the traditions of the primitive
Church are all in one direction: the Church, that
is, of the century succeeding the apostolic age; traditions so early that they almost become the testimony of ear-witnesses. It was written, according to
the earliest testimony, during the reign of Domitian,
or about A. D. 96. Irenaeus, a contemporary of
John's disciples, says the Revelation " was seen not
long ago, almost in our age, at the end of the reign
of Domitian." Melito, bishop of Sardis, one of the
churches to whom the Apocalypse was originally addressed, writes as early as A. D. I77, and receives
the Apocalypse as that of John; and Justin, writing
in 140, and at the city of Ephesus, the scene of
John's last labors, and when hundreds were alive
who had seen and heard him, refers to the book, and
quotes it. Tertullian, about A. D. 200, says, "We
have churches which are disciples of John;" and referring to the Apocalypse, " The succession of bishops
traced to the original will assure us that John is the
author." Clement's testimony is to the same purpose.
The churches which had the best means of knowing,
not only testify unanimously to the Johannean authorship of the Apocalypse, but also to its date; and




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.     93
the testimony begins so early that it is virtually that
of men who had seen the beloved disciple, hung upon
his lips, welcomed him home from his banishment in
Patmos, and saw him laid in his final rest at Ephesus.
It is concurrent to the same result. - John's banishment was in the persecutions under Domitian, at
which time he had his visions; that is, about A. D.
96, the last of that tyrant's reign.
Why have subsequent criticisms, some of them
ancient but most of them modern, endeavored to set
aside this early testimony? Almost solely for the
reason that the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse
is supposed to refer to Jerusalem and the temple as
if they were yet standing. Jerusalem was destroyed
A. D. 72. Therefore- such is the logic,- the book
must have been written before that time. The banishment to Patmos must have been during the persecutions of Nero, or about A. D. 66.
We shall see that the supposed reference to Jerusalem and the temple is an argument which has not the
least validity. Aside from this, it is to be observed
that the persecution under Nero was local, and there is
no historical evidence that it extended to Asia Minor.
Then there is no probability that John was at Ephesus so early as 66, or that the seven churches, with
the exception of the church at Ephesus, had even an
existence. Paul preached at Ephesus A. D. 55, and
gathered a church there. About three years after (58),
on his return to Jerusalem from Corinth, he meets at




94           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Miletus the elders from Ephesus, when occurred that
scene of tenderest pathos which Luke has described.
In the year 62 Paul writes his letter to the Ephesians
from Rome. In the year 67 he is at Ephesus again,
and writes thence his letter to Titus. In the year 68
he is in prison again at Rome, where he was beheaded
under Nero. These dates may not all be exact. We
take them from the careful chronology of Conybeare
and Howson, and we have no doubt they are approximately correct. Through the whole there is no allusion to John at Ephesus or to the constellated
churches of Asia Minor. We hold the supposition
utterly baseless that so early as the year 66 Christianity had thus spread through Asia Minor; that
seven churches had been founded there and passed
through stages of growth, corruption, and declension,
like some of the seven churches to which John first
published his revelations. The internal evidence, as
well as the historical, point to the close of the century as the true date. When John wrote the Apocalypse, therefore, Paul had been dead twenty-eight
years. John, at the time of writing, was placed over
a church which Paul had founded and nourished with
vast sacrifice and toil. John had entered into his labors and built on his foundation. Even allowing there
might have ever been any division between them
of which we have not a shred of evidence - the
notion that John would go twenty-eight years out of
his way to shout "liar," over the grave of the great




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.      95
martyr, is rather too absurd for refutation. In the
passage cited reference is made not to one man but
to a class of men. " Thou hast tried them," he writes
to the church at Ephesus, "which say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars." That
the Cerinthian Gnostics, who we know were at Ephesus, and who pretended to have revelations from
the Christ which superseded the apostolic Christianity, are the persons here alluded to seems beyond all reasonable question.
To estimate aright the scope and temper of the
Apocalypse we must have some adequate conception
of the state of seership from which it professes to
have been produced. Professor Davidson, who writes
learnedly about this book, has no other notion of that
state of mind than the natural faculties excited to
unwonted fervor and ecstasy. That "the visions and
their coloring were given, is an assumption," he says,
" which deprives the author of consciousness, and is
contrary to the analogy of prophecy." It no more
deprives the author of his consciousness, than the
scenery of nature given every day to our natural
vision, deprives us of our consciousness; and it is not
only in analogy with prophecy, but it is prophecy
itself in the exercise of its highest function. The
seer has opened within him a more interior consciousness, to which the scenery of a higher world
is unrolled. That scenery he can describe, and its
changes he can note and chronicle, while his con



96           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
sciousness may be as vivid and more so than that
of the astronomer when looking at the stars. He
sees events in their causes; in those spiritual states
and conditions that lie behind and within all material
phenomena, and out of which material phenomena
are evolved. Those states and conditions he sees
represented by appropriate symbols. Those symbols
may be given entire, or they may be in his own
memory, the treasures of his own imagination; as
in the case of John, whose mind was aglow with the
imagery of the Savior's discourses fondly preserved
and dwelt upon. In either case they are no longer
his own, after they have passed into scenery which
symbolizes the spiritual truths and realities of which
all earthly realities are only the outcome and ultimation. To illustrate: the seer beholds in vision the
sun in sackcloth and the moon turned into blood.
Does this foretell an eclipse of the sun and moon in
the natural world? Nothing of the kind. It represents the divine light and love extinguished in human souls, and the woes and calamities that are sure
to follow. He sees a conqueror, whose name is Faithful and True, riding upon a white horse with a sharp
sword issuing from his mouth. Does this mean that
we are to look in the natural world for a man on
horseback with the same appearance and name?
Nothing of the kind. It represents plainly Divine
Truth in its triumphal power. He sees a city lying
waste, and the temple in it about to be thrown down.




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.      97
Does this mean that some city answering to it in appearance is to be destroyed? Nothing of the kind.
It means that a system of religion is to be overthrown whose worship has become false, and whose
unitizing life has gone. In short, the psychological
condition of the seer is such that he sees SPIRITUAL
THINGS REPRESENTED BY NATURAL THINGS. We shall
turn his vision into delirious nonsense when we, interpret him as representing natural things by natural
things.
And yet this is precisely what a long series of interpreters, ending with Professor Davidson, have been
trying to do. Swedenborg is the only interpreter we
have ever met with who does not flounder in this
interminable slough. He keeps consistently on the
spiritual plane, and though we do not pretend to understand his entire exegesis, we believe his method
is the only rational one for interpreting a purely
symbolical book, and that in the work under consideration, it unfolds some of the profoundest truths
that ever searched the nature of man.
The eleventh chapter speaks of "the temple of
God," as seen in vision, and which the angel was to
measure with a reed, and of the great city which
spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where the
Lord was crucified. This, say the critics, must mean
Jerusalem; therefore Jerusalem and its temple must
have been standing at the time. Why do not these
critics keep on with this style of exegesis instead of
7




98           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
playing fast and loose with it? What do they make
of the two witnesses in this self-same city, which
were also "the two olive-trees and the two candlesticks which stand before the Lord," and which have
power to shut heaven that it rain not for a thousand
two hundred and sixty days; whose mouths emitted
fire that devoured their enemies, and who have power
over the waters to turn them into blood? Were these
two remarkable persons living in Jerusalem in the
days of Nero? And if the Jerusalem of the eleventh
chapter with the temple therein, was the veritable
stone-mason work which Titus captured and destroyed in A. D. 72, pray what was the masonry of the
New Jerusalem of the twenty-second chapter which
was to succeed it and stand upon its ruins? Most
remarkable mason-work indeed!   A  city coming
down ready built out of the sky, exactly cubical in
shape, its length and breadth and height equal each
to twelve thousand furlongs! A city, whose walls
and buildings were fifteen hundred miles high, must
have had a very wonderful and original style of architecture.
There is no end to these bewildering fantasies
when we try to follow the method of these critics,
and find in the Apocalypse literal cities and temples,
or such people of flesh and blood as Nero, Titus,
Vespasian, and Napoleon Bonaparte; or Roman,
Parthian, Saracen, and French armies in full costume. When we make the natural imagery in it rep



SCOPE, ETC., OF TILE APOCALYPSE.     99
resent natural persons and things, the confusion becomes worse and worse confounded. When we make
natural things represent spiritual things, and those
only, light and order will begin to appear.
After the prologue or address to the constellated
churches, the Apocalypse naturally falls into three
divisions.  There are three successive revelations
and scenic representations of things that were to be.
In the first revelation the Jewish religion is the
theme. The quality of its interior life, of its entire
system of faith and worship, is explored and laid
open; its consummation and dissolution are described, and the quality of that remnant which are to
be saved out of it and given to the Lamb. The
preparation for judgment, and the execution thereof,
are symbolized in successive groups of sublime and
terrible imagery. This occupies the book as we read
it from the fourth to the twelfth chapters inclusive.
The Jewish ecclesiasticism, which had become corrupt and apostate by the sensualization of its faith
and worship, is typified by Sodom or Egypt, in which
the Lord is crucified; that is, in which the Divine
Life is extinguished.
In the second revelation the Roman religion is
evidently the theme. It is the city of Babylon, in
which the Great Harlot sits upon seven hills. The
perversion of all faith, the falsification of all truth
used for self-exaltation and arbitrary power; its cruel
and depraving influence; the divine judgment that




ICO          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
explores and lays open its hideous qualities and
dooms it to hell, we understand to occupy the book
from the thirteenth to the twentieth chapter inclusive.
These false religions, being adjudged and cleared
out of the way by the conquering power of the
Divine Word, the hindrances are removed for the
New Jerusalem to descend. The Old Jerusalem has
vanished, and Babylon has fallen, and now Christianity, the reign of peace and brotherhood, the visible
presence of God with men, is to succeed them. It
appears to the seer objectively, symbolized by the
same sweet and beautiful imagery which glows in the
discourses of the fourth Gospel, and in the language
of the old prophets; only what the old prophets saw
in twilight, John sees in serene and mellow noontide
falling down from the throne of God and of the
Lamb.   The New Jerusalem   has its length and
breadth and height exactly equal; its system of truth
and doctrine, that is, neither perverted, nor distorted,
nor corrupted, is perfectly symmetrical; and the city
depends not on the lights which men kindle, nor on
the light of nature, for "the Lamb is the light thereof." The whole scenery bathed in mystic splendor,
is beyond the reach of art, beyond anything which
human genius ever produced from its richest treasuries.
Such are the three divisions of the Apocalypse,
though the first and second interblend imperceptibly




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.    101
with each other, for the reason that systems of false
religion which are there explored and adjudged, have
much in common that is corrupt and bad. In the
first division the baleful consequences of separating
religion from life are described as they never were
before or since. The religious faith which has no
love in it, in which the last throb of humanity has
ceased to beat, leaving it hard, cruel, and deformed,
has lost the human features and the human shape,
and has become a Great Dragon, drawing the stars
from heaven, putting out the benign lights in the
firmament of the soul. The worship without faith,
rehearsing its dreary litanies, parading its gorgeous
forms after they have been emptied of all divine
meaning, after all true knowledge of God has leaked
out of them, and contempt and denial have come in
the place of it, to which the sun becomes black as
sackcloth of hair and the moon becomes as blood,
has ceased to bless and to save; and the moral and
spiritual chaos that follows is imaged in the falling
stars, and the mountains moved from their places.
All shades and degrees of the faith in which there
is no love of man, and the worship in which there
is no knowledge or love of God, are laid open and
described. And last of all the religion whose doctrines and forms are used for self-aggrandizement and
self-exaltation, in which human ambitions and hatreds
are enthroned in the place of God, is explored, and
its interior quality disclosed. It is the ecclesiastical




I02          7HE FOURTH GOSPEL.
power which blasphemously usurps the seat of the
divine judgment to tyrannize over the minds and
bodies of men, always full of abominations and drunk
with the blood of the saints and the blood of the
martyrs. This is the great harlot of Babylon sitting
on her seven hills. It is the love of power subsidizing the religious sentiment to its infernal ends,
and using its machinery not to bless but to oppress
mankind, - the worst of the seven plagues that have
fallen upon them.
That the Jewish and Roman religions are here
explored, and their interiors exposed and adjudged
under the "seven trumpets" of God, has been the
opinion of Protestant expositors generally.  The
Jews had crucified the Lord spiritually before they
nailed the Lord Jesus to the cross. Within their
gorgeous ceremonials the Divine Life was extinct,
and charity and humanity had ceased to pulsate
through them. Pagan Rome was sitting on her seven
hills drunk with the blood of martyrs, and a paganized. Christianity was to succeed her with like power
over the souls and bodies of men. It is important
to observe, however, that not persons nor places,
not Jerusalem and its pharisees, nor Rome with its
emperors, nor the Roman Church with its papal
tyrannies, are to be looked for exclusively in the
Apocalypse. Not persons, but states of mind and depravities of heart infesting our human nature universally, are described in the symbolization of the seer;




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.     103
depravities of which all the Neros and Napoleons are
the visible incarnation, and all ecclesiasticisms, used
to serve the ends of human ambition and pride, are
the body and form.
Faith severed from life, dogma hard and frozen
with no pulse of charity in it, worship, whose form
stands forth as a gorgeous shell emptied alike of
the knowledge of God and the love of man, - these
are the same in quality, whether we call them by
Jewish or Christian names, and the hatreds and
strifes which they engender in the name of religion,
are the plagues that fall upon men; out of these
comes the pale horse, and the name of him that sits
thereon is Death, and hell follows with him, and power
is given him over the earth to kill with sword and
with hunger and with death and with the beasts of
the earth.
Babylon is Rome; -human pride and ambition
usurping the seat of God, and blasphemously sending
forth anathemas in his name.  But every church
which has done the same is also Rome, and is apostate. The fires of Smithfield are not more lurid than
the fires of Geneva; and the plagues that fall on the
bodies of men are not worse than those which blight
the soul. Not anything in the natural world, whether
of men or cities, appears in the vision of the seer.
But the infernal depravities, born of our uncleansed
human selfhood, latent alike, reader, in your nature
and in mine, subsidizing even the religious sentiment




104          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
to the service of its own lust, aggrandizement and
glory, and pouring out the seven plagues on the
earth and on the sea, are the Apocalypse of woe irrespective of person and time; and if we read it, more
willing to be searched beneath it than to judge others
by it, no book that ever was written would open into
more startling sunlight the pages of our book of life.
There is no priesthood, Roman or Protestant, which
does not need betimes the exploration of its trumpet
voices, to show them whether they are using the
forms of Christianity for their own power and glory,
or only to bless and save mankind. There is no
church, Roman or Protestant, which does not need
to have its ruling motive and that of all its members
revealed to its consciousness; and if religion is something apart from life, if faith is divorced from works,
held and professed only for a man's personal salvation,
and not made warm and radiant with all the charities
and humanities, they should find themselves revealed
in this book quite as much as the dynasties that have
passed away. Not material weapons, not flesh and
blood, but evils and delusions of the heart and mind,
hinder the descent of the New Jerusalem.
And the New Jerusalem is neither a lo! here nor a
lo! there. It is not an ecclesiasticism, but a form of
faith, of doctrine, and of worship, so warm with the
love of the Lord that He abides in the soul, the river
of its peace, the fountain of its charities, the inspiration of its tender humanities, after all the old Juda



SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.    105
ism and Romanism have been adjudged and cast
away. It is Christianity unitizing God, man, and
nature; making our cleansed and renovated humanity the tabernacle of God with men, and thence
turning the earth into Eden, and making it the reflex
image of the skies. It descends into all minds, and
thence into all the ecclesiasticisms, as we renounce
our Judaism and our heathenism for the spirit of universal brotherhood, and then "the nations of them
that are saved do walk in the light of it, and the kings
of the earth do bring their honor and glory into it."
The worship and ritual of heaven, and thence of
the New Jerusalem descending out of it, in contrast
with the worship whose interior truths have been
falsified or lost, is set forth in one of those chapters
which open into the serene vistas of the higher
world. The heart becomes tender and warm in the
light which comes down through it from the central glory. "God and the Lamb" is the twrofold
designation of the object of the Christian's supreme
worship and love. This does not imply any divided
homage, but the Lamb is a predicate of the one
divine Being, and sets forth his relations to the creatures He has made. Its essential meaning is sacrifice, and coupled with the divine name it signifies
that God himself is one great sacrifice for man. Not
alone in the sacrifice on Calvary He gives himself
away for the expiation and forgiveness of sin. Beyond its solemn heights and away through the door




0o6          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
opened into heaven, He appears as the essential sacrifice given hourly for the redemption of the world.
Ever going out of himself, and coming down to our
lowly condition, underlying all our weaknesses, and
helping us bear up our weary burdens, present in all
our sufferings and suffering with us, sinking himself
out of sight beneath our mortal infirmities, clothing
himself with them, as it were, that He may help us
the more; rejected, injured, wounded, grieved away
by our hardness of heart and blindness of mind, his
very life killed out of us when striving most to enter
and save us, - such is the eternal sacrifice of God;
and so when we look up to the throne with eyes made
wet with repentance, we see not the thunder-clouds
of wrath but a lamb as it had been slain.
Truth, as seen by the pure intellect, is white and
silvery; but truth transfused and made chromatic
with the divine love is golden; and when it rules
right royally over the conscience and the life, it
crowns us, and we wear it as our diadem of praise.
But how prone we are to wear it as our personal
adornment; as something which we have wrought
out and perfected, and so make it our crown of pride,
to draw with it the admiration and applause of the
crowd! Hence all our priestly ambitions and all the
selfish motives by which the rites of worship have
been made aglow with strange fire. Hence the controversies that have been waged only for personal
victory. Hence our pulpit eloquence is so prevail



SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.    I07
ingly an exhibition of self-love or the love of popular
applause, and hence our churches are gathered admiringly around the preacher who expands so largely
with the breath of praise, that the Lord Jesus Christ
is not seen at all, but is kept behind him out of
sight. But when we get gleams of the ritual of
heaven, the elders who wear crowns of gold cast
them down at the feet of Him that sitteth on the
throne, saying: "Thou, 0 Lord, art worthy." The
whole scene, both in the description and the symbolic meaning, is impressive and grand beyond all
human conception, and we never read it without
being ashamed of the strut and vanity of our ecclesiastical pomps so faintly chromatic with the divine love,
nor without an aspiration that the crowns we wear of
so lurid and fiery a lustre may be exchanged betimes
for the crowns of gold, fit to be cast down in that
beautiful ceremonial which ascribes "blessing and
honor and glory and power unto him that sitteth on
the throne and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever."
How stands the question, then, as regards the spirit
and temper of the Apocalypse? Is a book which
describes the consequences of divorcing religion from
life, and worship from humanity, and dogma from
charity, foreshowing the states of mind which ultimate in baleful results by a symbolization, compared
with which Homer's battle-pictures are feeble and
tame, - written in the interest of humanity or not?
Is the book Jewish in spirit which depicts what was




Io8          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
false and evil in Judaism, and doomed the Jewish
Church to its downfall? It is vain to cite its imagery of retributive wrath, such as "the wrath of the
Lamb," "the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath
of Almiglty God," as if this were descriptive of the
temper of the Divine mind, and not rather the results
of retributive law in complete operation. That is not
a clear and healthful, but rather a confused and weak
moral sentiment which revolts against the most thorough exploration of the hiding-places of sin, and the
most faithful portraiture of its nature and consequences. All that the Apocalypse described in the
realm of causes has had its fulfillment in history. All
the thunder-clouds which it painted as hanging over
the future Church, have broken upon it with their
burden of plague and lightning and great hail. And
beyond those thunder-clouds, and only as they clear
the horizon, has the New Jerusalem been seen to
descend. If it is cruel and vindictive to lay open to
our gaze the virus that lurks in false religion or in the
uncleansed human heart, and thence poisons the relations of life, making the sweetest fountains run gall
and turning the rivers into blood, then the spirit of
the Apocalypse is bad. But if it is good for men or
for a church to see as in a mirror, the evils that lurk
within them, and if unresisted shut them off from
heaven both here and hereafter, then the Apocalypse
is one of the most humane in spirit of any book that
ever was addressed to the human conscience.




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.          I09
Long before our civil war, caused by the rebellion
of the slave power against the American government,
some of our poet-prophets foretold the conflict and
the calamities which it would involve. In the evils
of slavery, and the states of mind which it engendered, they saw an Apocalypse of woe, and described
it in appropriate imagery. Herein they prophesied
not from a spirit of cruelty or vindictiveness, but
from a spirit of humanity and mercy. No strains
more tender and humane can be found in the compass of modern literature, than the strains of Whittier and Lowell; and yet both prophesied against our
modern Babylon in types which come as near to
those of the Apocalypse as they could well do without passing into the objective scenery of the seer.
Take the following examples from Whittier: —
"Take your slavery-blackened vales,
Give us but our own free gales
Blowing on our thousand sails.
"Live like paupers mean and vile
On the fruits of unpaid toil,
Locusts of your glorious soil.
"Live if it be life to dwell
In your tyrant citadel,
Mined beneath by fires from hell.
"Our bleak hills shall bud and blow,
Vines our rocks shall overgrow,
Plenty in our valleys flow.




110             THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
"And when vengeance lights your skies,
Hither shall ye turn your eyes,
As the damned on Paradise."
"Hold while ye may your struggling slaves, and burden God's free
air
With woman's shriek beneath the lash, and manhood's wild despair;
Cling closer to the cleaving curse that writes upon your plains
The blasting of Almighty wrath against a land of chains..
Or this from Lowell: -
"Out from the land of bondage'tis decreed our slaves shall go,
And signs to us are offered as erst to Pharaoh;
If we are blind, their exodus, like Israel's of yore,
Through a Red Sea is doomed to be whose surges are of gore."
The inspiration of prophecy, and of poetry which
becomes prophecy because the voice of the divine
justice speaks through it, approximate both in style
and spirit. They divine by a more unerring vision
the malign nature of moral and spiritual evil, and
select by the same vision the things in nature most
fit to represent and shadow it forth. Hence the poet,
who is not a mere sentimentalist, approaches the
state of seership and sees nature, both in her baleful
and benignant phases, the exponent of man in his
infernal or his heavenly states; humanity, in fact,
turned inside out; and, in the symbolism which he
employs, representing    spiritual  things by natural
things, he only gives to the human soul, and thence
to churches, societies, and communities, which are
the collective man, the mysteries that lie within




SCOPE, ETC., OF THE APOCALYPSE.     I I I
them; warning them of evils which have not yet
passed into history and had their ultimations in
heaven or hell. "The wrath of the Lamb poured
outwithout mixture from the cup of his indignation,"
describes not the essence of the Deity but the aspect
of his nature towards men in those false religions
which quench his mercy and love; even as the poet
who sings of the Eternal Goodness as few poets have
ever done, sings also of "the blasting of Almighty
wrath against a land of chains."




CHAPTER V.
THE WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
T becomes important to survey one moment the
theatre over which Christianity extended its
sway during the first two centuries. The Roman
empire was bounded by the Euphrates on the east
and the Atlantic ocean on the west; by the Danube
on the north and by the African deserts on the south,
while in the northwest it crossed the channel and included Britain then sunk in barbarism. The peoples
were separated by vast varieties of climate, manners,
language, local governments and religions. There
were the voluptuousness of the East and the hardiness of the West. There were the hot blood of the
South and the cold blood of the North. There were
the languages of Demosthenes and of Cicero; there
was the Hebrew and its cognates heard throughout
the East in the worship of the synagogues and in the
marts of trade, and there were the horrid gutturals
of the savage in the groves of Germany and on the
banks of the Rhine.
Before the close of the second century, Christianity had penetrated this vast region so as to streak
the darkness everywhere with light. Churches had




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 1I3
sprung up east, west, north, and south. It had even
passed over the Euphrates into the great Parthian
empire. It had become firmly fixed in nearly all the
great cities and centres of population, and thence
ramified through the surrounding country.  The
magnificent Roman roads, radiating from the eternal
city throughout the empire over which the life of the
world poured its turbid streams, wonderfully facilitated this early diffusion of Christianity. By the
year 175 it had spread through Syria, through lesser
Asia, through Greece and the islands of the Mediterranean, and entering Egypt it had travelled up the
Nile. It was established at Rome, and thence it had
gone south and skirted the southern shores of the
Mediterranean even into the heart of Mauritania. It
had entered Gaul, and had flourishing churches at
Lyons and Vienna. Churches had sprung up in all
these provinces, sundered some of them from each
other by the space of two thousand miles, sundered
too by diversities of language and manners, but
united internally by a spiritual bond, and having
common traditions whose lines converged towards
one majestic person who had appeared in Palestine.
Starting now with the last quarter of the second
century what do we find? We find A CANON OF
SCRIPTURE received and established in all these
churches without exception. We mean by this that
certain books, regarded szi generis, elevated far above
the level of common literature, were universally ap8




I14           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
pealed to as commanding authority in all matters
of life and doctrine, and read as Holy Scripture in
the churches when they came together for worship.
Prominent in this canon of Scripture were the four
Gospels, as we have them, and in the order in which
we have them received as authentic and genuine, and
as a legacy to these churches from the hands that
wrote them. It is the testimony not of an individual
here and there. It is the unanimous testimony of an
entire generation. Clement of Alexandria in Egypt,
Tertullian at Carthage, Irenaeus at Lyons in Gaul,
Polycrates at Ephesus, and Theophilus at Antioch,
either quote the four Gospels, or refer to them, not as
describing their individual faith, but the faith of the
churches throughout the then civilized world. Their
testimony is not their own merely, but that of the
churches thus scattered and separated, whose lines
of tradition are unbroken, and all converging to a
common centre.1
How long must these books have been in circulation to be thus unanimously and universally received? It will flash upon almost any man's common sense that they could not then have been recent
and modern, that they must date back more than
twenty-five or even fifty years, and that the notion
that any one of them originated or took its final
1 Read Norton's work; Fisher's admirable Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity, Essay ii.; or see the evidence concisely put in Tischendorf's tract: Wfnn wurden unsere Evangelien
zerf-asst?




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY.      15
form after the middle of the century, and thus suddenly found its way as Holy Scripture into churches
of different languages, and a thousand miles apart, is
one of the wildest absurdities.
But look at the matter in something more of detail. Who and what were the generation of Christian believers living in the last quarter of the second
century? Many of them were men and women who
received their Christian faith and nurture from the
men who had seen the Apostles themselves and sat at
their feet.
The churches at Lyons and Vienna in Gaul in the
year 177 were called to endure a persecution so cruel
and vindictive, that it seemed not to have been inflicted by men but by wolves in the shape of men.
After the storm had spent its rage these churches
sent a letter to the churches in Asia Minor describing
the calamity that had come upon them. Eusebius
preserves copious extracts from this letter. It is in a
triumphant strain, and rises sometimes to a fervid eloquence. This letter quotes the fourth Gospel, once
a whole passage verbatim, and it quotes the Apocalypse not less than three times. But more than this.
Not only the language of the Scriptures enters largely
and spontaneously into it, but their very life throbs
through the sentences and compels the conviction
that these people had the New Testament, and read
it as we read it, and bathed their inmost souls in its
spirit.




I 6          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Who were the teachers of this church at Lyons in
177? One was the aged bishop Pothinus, passed
now his ninetieth year with his streaming gray hairs,
led forth to death for the faith he loved. He was a
boy twelve years old while John was living at Ephesus; he had lived in Asia Minor through his boyhood and younger manhood; he must have seen and
conversed with the companions of the Apostles, and
he was old enough to have seen and conversed with
the beloved disciple himself. Another teacher of this
church was Irenaeus, the associate of the aged Pothinus. Irenaeus says the Gospel was transmitted to
them in writing and he goes on to specify the fourth
Gospel as published by John "while he dwelt at
Ephesus in Asia." He cites the four Gospels as we
have them, and calls them "the pillar and support of
the Church and the breath of life."
Who was Irenmeus? Look over the map and you
will find the city of Smyrna a few hours' journey
from Ephesus. There at Smyrna was one of the
constellated churches, and over it presided the saintly and venerable Polycarp, the disciple of John.
Polycarp sat at the feet of the beloved disciple and
others who had seen the Lord Jesus, and he heard
them recount over and over the works which Jesus
did and the speech which fell from his lips. Irenaeus
was a disciple of Polycarp, and heard the same things
over from him, and he tells us how they agreed with
what yohn had written in that self-same gospel which




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. II17
the churches had received. Says Irenaeus in a letter
to Florinus, his friend and former fellow pupil with
Polycarp, "I saw thee in my youth in lower Asia
with Polycarp, - for I remember the events of those
times much better than those of recent occurrence;
what we learn in fact in our youth, grows with our
soul, and grows together with it so closely, that I can
even yet tell the place where the holy Polycarp sat
when he discoursed, his entrance and exit, the peculiarities of his mode of life, his bodily figure, the discourses which he addressed to the people; how he
told of his familiar intercourse with John, and with
the rest who had seen the Lord; how he narrated their
discourses, and what he had heard from them in regard to the Lord about his miracles and doctrine, all
of which, as Polycarp had received it from those who
were eye-witnesses of the word of life, he narrated in
harmony with the Holy Scriptures; these things by
the mercy of God then granted to me, I attentively
heard and noted down, not on paper, but in my
heart, and by the grace of God I continually repeat
it faithfully." Irenmeus, who brings us thus near to
the beloved disciple, wrote with considerable ability
against the Gnostics, and other heretics of his day,
all of whom he says appealed to the four Gospels
and acknowledged them as authority. He cites in
this treatise not less than four hundred passages
from the Gospels and more than eighty from the
Gospel of John. Would he not be likely to know the




Ii8          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
origin of the book which he quotes as undoubted,
having been thus brought almost within hearing
where the contents of the book fell fresh from the
writer's lips?
There was a man whose birth dates about the year
125, when a great many were yet living who had
known John and his fellow disciples. He was educated in a Christian family. Moreover his family
was directly connected with John's contemporaries,
and seven of its members had held the office of
bishop or presbyter. This man was Polycrates. At
the date we have assumed, 175, he was fifty years
old. A few years later, during the last decade of the
century, he became Bishop of Ephesus, and there on
the scene of the labor and death of the beloved disciple, he dwells complacently upon his memory, and
refers to the place of his sepulture as well known to
the Church. He describes himself as "having conferred with the brethren throughout the world, and
studied the whole of the sacred Scriptures."  There
with the fourth Gospel in his hand, transmitted in
the church at Ephesus, where it was read and had
long been read as the writing of John, having known
the men who knew the Apostle, -he uses it as the
unquestioned work of the man whose name it bears.
In the church over which John himself presided,
the custodian of the writings he left, and among
which they were read as Holy Scripture when assembled for worship; at a time when his memory




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 119
was fresh and vivid; when there were men yet living
who had seen and conversed with John's disciples,in this church would John's own successor, who was
born near to his times, know what he was doing
when he studied the fourth Gospel as the record
direct from the hand of the beloved disciple? 1
Follow another line of tradition remote from Ephesus, but leading up directly to the same source. We
have named Clement of Alexandria in Egypt. Who
and what was Clement? If we place ourselves in
that seat of culture, philosophy, and learning we may
be able to appreciate his word and testimony. Here
at Alexandria was a Christian church which dated
from the times of the Apostles, founded, tradition
says, by Mark the evangelist, and destined to exert a
wide and plastic power over the opinions of Christendom, indeed, to furnish the moulds in which its
theology was to be shaped for eighteen centuries.
Here, too, was a theological school where teachers
of the keenest insight, of the most affluent learning,
enlarged both by study and travel, and of the warmest Christian devotion, prepared their scholars for
their future work. Three of these men come within
the second century, and, viewed in succession, they
1 That Polycrates includes the Gospel of John when he says he
studied " the whole of the sacred Scriptures," is the inevitable inference from the fact that he not only refers to John as authority in
the controversy about Easter, but refers to John xiii. 25, and xxi. 20,
where he is described as "he who leaned on the Lord's breast."Eusebius, H. E., L. v. c. 24.




120          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
extend nearly through the latter half of it in a continuous line of light, brilliant yet mildly beautiful.
Fifteen years of the life of Origen falls within this
period. They were years of youth and childhood,
but such childhood as might well be called the fatherhood of the man, for they controlled and directed
the man that was to be. He was born and nurtured
in a Christian home. Leonides, his father, made the
boy commit daily portions of Scripture to memory.
It was no irksome lesson, but the boy's untasked and
inexpressible delight. The questions he asked were
beyond his years and beyond the father's scope altogether, but the father so rejoiced and thanked God
for this early promise, that he would kiss the boy's
breast when asleep as the temple where the Holy
Spirit was preparing to dwell. The fourth Gospel
became Origen's special study, and the theology of
the Proem was with him not only the prime moving
power of Christianity, but it explained and unitized
the whole system of the universe. As yet, however,
it had not opened upon him thus grandly, for he says
that in his youth he only knew the Logos according
to the flesh. We see him as yet only in his boyhood,
committing to memory the Christian Scriptures with
the keenest relish under the guidance of a pious
father. Who was this Leonides who at the year 185
had a son born in his family whose mind opened with
such brilliant promise? He was a man of unusual
gifts, and of marked intelligence; probably a rheto



WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTUR Y. 121
rician, and withal so imbued with the ideas and the
spirit of the four Gospels which he taught to his children that a few years later he suffered martyrdom
for the love of Christ. He had a wife and six other
children besides Origen. When the father was
thrown into prison, the boy wrote to him: " See
thou change not thy mind on our account." He
did not change, but cheerfully and nobly died. His
property was confiscated, his wife left a helpless
widow, and his seven children distributed among the
Christian families of Alexandria as a martyr's legacy.
What a picture of Christian domestic life in the last
half of the first century, and of the power of the
Christian Scriptures as then used in families! The
birth and education of this pious Leonides must have
been some twenty-five years earlier, and they carry
us up well-nigh towards the middle of the century.1
Origen was the pupil of Clement, whom in the last
decade of the century we find at the head of the theological school at Alexandria. How much Origen
owed to his master we do not know; only it is certain
that Clement, too, delighted supremely in the fourth
Gospel, and found in it the central glory of Divine
revelation. "The Logos" which was in the beginning with God, "by which all things were made," and
"which now has taken the name of Christ," is called
by him a New Song. This Logos is "the Sun of the
Soul," its informing and indwelling light, the inspirer
1 Eusebius, H. E., vi. 2.




122          THIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
of all the truth to be found in the old philosophies,
the guide of the Christian not only because it has
become incarnate, but because its inward shinings
bring the disciple to behold its glory in the face of
Jesus Christ.  He quotes largely from the other
Scriptures, but the fourth Gospel with him is the
heart of Christianity, and his thought, though expressed more crudely and irregularly than that of
Origen, is precisely in the same line of development,
and shows that the leading idea of the teacher lived
and glowed in the mind of his pupil.
Clement not only quotes the same Gospels which
we possess, but assures us that they were handed
down to the churches of his day in unbroken line;
he gives abridged accounts of all the canonical
Scriptures, and particularly one pertaining to the
composition of the four Gospels "received from the
oldest presbyters." 1
It becomes a very interesting question, who in turn
was the teacher of Clement, and who introduced him
to this intimate knowledge of Christianity and the
Christian Scriptures? Happily, he has told us in
the language of enthusiastic admiration, and this carries us back one step further towards the middle of
the second century. The predecessor of Clement in
the theological school at Alexandria was Pantaenus,
who left a name behind him not only distinguished
for learning, but fragrant with the Christian graces
1 Eusebius, H. E., vi. 14.




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 123
and virtues. Disciplined in the Greek schools of
philosophy, but fired with zeal respecting the divine Word, he preserved "the salutary doctrine as
given by Peter and James and John and Paul."
Clement found Pantaenus in great eminence at Alexandria presiding over its theological school. He had
wandered over the earth hungry for the true doctrine; he had found teachers from Greece, from Italy, and from Syria, but not till he found Pantenus
was his hunger satisfied. "He was in truth," says
Clement, "a Sicilian bee, who, cropping the flowers
of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, caused a pure
knowledge to grow up in the minds of his hearers."
The prophetic and apostolic meadow, whose flowers
Pantsenus gathered and charmed his hearers withal,
was evidently none other than the Old and New Testaments which he expounded to his pupils; which
Clement expounded in turn after him, and which
Origen in turn expounded after him, and edited in
his famous "Hexapla," fragments of which have
come down to us, and which was one of the greatest
achievements of learning in ancient times.
But who preceded Pantaenus in this same theological school? We do not know. But we are told by
Eusebius that it had been established at Alexandria
from ancient times, and had a reputation for teachers
"able in eloquence and the study of divine things." 1
The " ancient times " of the age of Pantoenus carry
1 Eusebius, H. E., v. Io.




124          THE FO UR T  GOSPEL.
us across the middle of the century and up towards
its beginning. They bring us near or into the times
of the beloved disciple himself.
Skeptical modern criticism has assumed that the
fourth Gospel was forged by some unknown writer in
the last half of the second century. We ask our
readers here to sum up the facts we have given, that
at or near the time when we are told it was thus
fabricated, it was universally read as Holy Scripture
in the churches, dotting the Roman Empire from the
Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the British
Channel to the African desert; and last, not least,
that it was expounded in a theological school which
could boast of teachers imbued with all the learning
and philosophy of the times, with minds enriched by
travel and the study of God's Word; whose special
and chosen work was historical investigation; who
delighted in John's Gospel as the very heart of Christianity and of all divine revelation; whose succession
of teachers ran up in continuous line near or into the
days of the Apostle himself; who preserved the accounts of old men who told them how and when it
was composed; who gloried so much in its doctrines
that they declared them in the face of death; and
after all this same fourth Gospel was then a new work
foisted surreptitiously upon the Christian public, received universally and suddenly like a flash of lightning, and without a breath of controversy, while the
churches that received it, the bishops that read it in




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 125
the assemblies, the families where the children committed it to memory, and the learned theological
school that expounded it, were all innocent as babes
of any knowledge respecting its origin! Such are
the reasonings of skepticism. It might just as well
cut the threads of history from behind us every hour,
and make the world of yesterday and the world of
to-day disjointed fragments that float at random in
the river of years!
We have followed the converging lines of tradition
from Lyons in Gaul, from Ephesus in Asia Minor,
and from Alexandria in Egypt. We might go to
Carthage in Northern Africa, and cite Tertullian
with a like result. But let us go east to Jerusalem,
where a church existed from the beginning, amid
the scene of the Saviour's life, death, and resurrection, and whose first bishop was one of the twelve, -
the Apostle James. Placing ourselves at the close
of the second century, what do we find? The metropolitan churches, especially those founded by Apostles, very carefully preserved the names in succession
of their bishops inscribed on tablets and laid up in
their archives. These were diligently examined by
Eusebius, and he enumerates in his history the
names of all the bishops of the Church at Jerusalem,
from the close of the second century up to the Apostle James himself. A fact like this goes to show that
tradition, with these churches, was not so loose and
floating as is sometimes supposed, especially when it




126          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
pertained to things held dear and sacred like their
canonical books and consecrated names. Moreover
Jerusalem was the resort of Christian pilgrims as
early as the close of the second century; and yet earlier it is more than probable, and while disciples were
yet living who sat at the Apostles' feet and heard their
story. Thither they went to see with their own eyes
the places trodden by the Redeemer's feet, and to gain
knowledge of the localities referred to in the New
Testament, that they might read it with better understanding.l It is easy to conceive with what avidity
a teacher who expounded the New Testament would
seek the geography of Palestine, and read it as a living book. Thither went Clement of Alexandria;
and we find him there just after the close of the
second century. Whom did he meet at Jerusalem?
He met Alexander, bishop of the church there, between 193 and 211, who has told us of Clement's
visit in episcopal letters, fragments of which Eusebius has preserved. In one of these letters Alexander speaks of Clement as "the blessed presbyter, a
man endued with all virtue and well approved, who
coming hither by the providence and superintendence of the Lord, has confirmed and increased the
Church of God." 2
But there was another man whom Clement met
also at Jerusalem. Alexander was not sole bishop,
1 Neander's Church History, Torrey's edition, vol. i. p. 69I.
2 H. E., vi. II.




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTUR Y. I27
but colleague with the venerable patriarch, Narcissus, who had held the Episcopate of Jerusalem for
about twenty years. His name breathed the odors
of piety down even to the times of Eusebius. He
lived to an extreme age.  Alexander says in one
of his episcopal letters, " Narcissus salutes you, the
same who was bishop here before me, and is now
colleague with me in prayers, being now advanced to
his hundred and tenth year, and who with me exhorts
you to be of one mind."  This was in 2II. Here
was a man whose life spanned almost the whole of
the second century; whose scene of active labor and
care was the very place where Jesus taught, died,
and rose again; who must have been familiar with
many who had seen and heard the Apostles; who
lived when the fourth Gospel was read in his church
and in all Christendom, as holy Scripture, and who
began to live when the man whose name the fourth
Gospel bears went to his earthly rest. His life fills
up the whole space between John and Clement, with
not more than the gap of a single year, and probably
not even that. He must have known familiarly
scores of persons who knew John before he left
Jerusalem for his charge at Ephesus. This man,
Clement communed with at Jerusalem. We can understand how much his language signifies when he
gives us traditions about the four Gospels " received
from aged presbyters."  The assumption that John's
1 H. E., vi. It.




128          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Gospel first saw the light after the year 150, or during
the second century even, becomes, if possible, still
more absurd.
We ascend the stream. We come into the third
quarter of the second century. We can hardly say
that the historical evidence grows stronger as we
ascend, which were scarcely possible, but it thickens
and becomes multiform.
And here at the opening of this quarter we meet
with a professed canon of Scripture carefully arranged. We find a list of canonical books dating
from about 170, discovered by Muratori, and probably written at Rome, and in this list, Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John, stand in the order as we have them
now, and as they had then been universally adopted.
The four Gospels were originally composed and
published in the Greek language; that of Matthew
being possibly, though not certainly, an exception.
It was the vernacular speech of many provinces of
the Roman Empire. It had been diffused throughout the East by the conquests of Alexander. The
Old Testament had long been popularly used in a
Greek version. Greek was the language of scholars;
it was to a large extent the language of commerce,
and it was preeminently adapted to clothe the ideas of
the New Testament and depict the doctrines of Christianity in their minutest and most delicate shadings.
But Christianity soon transcended the bounds of
Greek culture, and it became necessary that the New




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURI Y. 129
Testament should be rendered into other tongues.
Of course it would be translated very early into the
language of Rome, which was spoken throughout the
West. It would be translated into Syriac, which was
spoken in the East. Accordingly we have a Syriac
version called the Peschito, generally acknowledged
on good evidence to have been made before the close
of the second century; and we have a Latin version
well known under the Itala, made still earlier; for
Tertullian used it, as is known by his quotations, and
the Latin translator of Irenaeus' great work against
heresies also followed it. These translations both
contain the four Gospels substantially as they have
come. down to us. Here then is the important fact.
The four Gospels before the close of the century,
were held as preeminent authority, and translated
into other tongues to be quoted and used as such in
other communities. But suppose we had the very
Greek text from which these translations were made,
we should then be carried back still farther towards
the beginning. Well, that very text has lately been
found. We have in the lately discovered "Codex
Siniaticus," the identical Greek text out of which
those translations must have been made, for the
"various readings" of the latter are found in the
former, and correspond thereto. This carries us back
inevitably to the year I50, and shows that a Canon
of Scripture was then firmly established. All the
theories recently blown up, assuming the later origin
of the fourth Gospel, vanish like bubbles that break
9




130          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
in air. We shall see by and by that we are carried
back by these ancient documents, not only to the
middle of the century, but past it, and up to its very
beginning.
Not only translations, but harmonies of the four Gospels were made during this period, in which the fourth
Gospel was included, and this forms an independent
and most conclusive ground of evidence. The city
of Antioch, the capital of Syria, received Christianity from the hands of the Apostles themselves.
Here in the year I68, we find Theophilus, bishop of
the church in that city. Only five pastorates had
preceded him in that church, since the times of Paul
and Barnabas, who started from Antioch on -their
missionary journey. It was in the vicinity of Jerusalem and in frequent communication with it, and its
bishop must have known familiarly many who saw
and heard the personal disciples of Jesus. Theophilus wrote several works, which were extant in the
times of Eusebius, who describes them. In one of
these he names John's Gospel as a part of the Holy
Scriptures, and John himself as a writer guided by
the Holy Spirit. But more than this, Theophilus
wrote a commentary on the Gospels, including John,
showing not only the estimation in which he held
them himself, but in which they were held by the
churches themselves. His testimony is that of the
Christian communities separated by only a single
generation from those who had consorted with the
Apostles, and received the Gospel from their lips.




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTU'Y. 131
Contemporary with Theophilus was Tatian, who
flourished as early as 150, a disciple of Justin Martyr,
one therefore, who learned Christianity of a teacher
whose life began in the first century, and was ten
years a contemporary with John. Tatian relapsed
into Gnosticism, but he wrote an exegetical harmony
of the four Gospels, including the book of John,
which he quotes, and which also was extant in the
times of Eusebius. His testimony also is that of
his times, showing incontestably that in the middle
of the second century the four Gospels belonged to
the Canon of Scripture, so universally received in the
churches that they were translated and expounded
even as now, as the rule of faith and of life. HIow
long must they have existed to have acquired, by the
year 150, this universal and undisputed authority in
the churches, East and West, in at least three languages, from the Euphrates to the Rhone, and from
the English Channel to the deserts of Africa? That
commentaries were written upon the four Gospels,
and harmonies made of them, and that they were
bound together as a separate and exclusive whole, is
a fact of weightier significance even than individual
citations.  "These enterprises," says Tischendorf,
"fall soon after the middle of the second century,
and consequently we must assume that the use and
acknowledgment of all four Evangelists, in a far
earlier period, is fully determined." 1
1 Wf7nn wurden unsere Evangelien vorfasst? pp. I I, I2.




CHAPTER VI.
THE WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY.
STILL we ascend the stream. We come into the
first half of the second century and among a
generation, many of whom were contemporaries of
the Apostles or of their companions, and co-laborers. Here we find the historical evidence coursing
through various channels, yet converging to its single
source.
I. The first class of men whom we meet here are
those Christian fathers in full reception of the faith
of the Church, whose vigorous manhood falls within
the second century, but who were born before the
close of the first, and whose childhood therefore was
contemporary with the later Apostles and their companions. Some of them had seen the last of the
Apostles and hung upon his speech. All of them
belonged to a period when tradition was fresh, frequent, and direct; when the minds of new converts
were eager and inquisitive, and when the times of
Christ, and the scene through which He moved, must
have been produced in their minds with most vivid
and uncoloring sunlight.
First, we meet with Justin Martyr, the teacher of




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 133
Tatian. Justin was born not far from A. D. Ioo. He
was a native of Shechem, in Samaria, the Sychar of
the New Testament. lie was not born, however, in
a Christian family, and knew nothing of Christianity
till his early manhood. Then in his hunger for divine knowledge, he met a serene old man, of aspect
grave and meek, who directed him to Jesus Christ
and the Hebrew prophets. He had witnessed the
tranquillity of the martyrs and their triumph over
torture and death. He became a convert to Christianity. How genuine his conversion was is shown
by the fact that he publicly defended it in his Apologies, when he clearly foresaw that the defense would
cost him his life.
His pupil Tatian called him "a most wonderful
man." Judged by the standard of his own times, his
acquirements were remarkable, and by the standard
of any times his moral greatness and Christian heroism are worthy of warm admiration. He is an important and most unexceptionable witness to the four
Gospels, not only as to how they were regarded by
himself, but how they were received and held in all
the churches of his day. He gives us an interesting
and somewhat graphical view of these churches assembled for worship: "On the day which is called
Sunday we all, whether dwelling in the cities or in
the country, assemble together, when the memoirs by
the Apostles, or the writings of the prophets, are read
as long as time permits." Again, he characterizes




134         7THE FOURI7W GOSPEL.
these memoirs as written by " the Apostles and their
companions," thus clearly designating the synoptics
and the fourth Gospel. He quotes them so much
and so familiarly as to show that his mind was imbued with their spirit, and that their language flowed
spontaneously from his pen; and the main facts
could be reproduced, says Mr. Norton, from Justin's
writings alone, and the passages referred to the places
from which they were severally drawn. But the evidence in respect to the fourth Gospel is very striking
and doubly significant. Justin delighted in the Johannean theology. It colored his whole mind, and
thence flowed into his speech. "The making over
of the Logos to Christ," says Tischendorf, "is a deduction from John in many passages of Justin, of
which no trace in the synoptics nor in the oldest parallel writings ever occurs to us. So, too, the answer
of the Baptist to the inquiring messengers of the
Jews is given by Justin word for word as only John
reports it; as also he gives the very searching passage respecting the second birth," found only in John
iii. 3. These citations compel those who deny the
genuineness of the fourth Gospel, to take refuge in
the theory of a lost writing which contained a passage
as it stands in John.  This is the desperate shift
of the skeptical criticism. To measure its enormous
absurdity requires but a moment's reflection. Justin's first Apology was published A. D. 138, in which
he says the Gospels are read in the churches in city




WITVESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 135
and country with the prophets; read, that is, as Holy
Scripture. These were the Gospels as he quoted
them, - memoirs of Christ written by Apostles and
their' companions, including, therefore, the book of
John as he knew it. Twelve years later, as we have
seen, the four Gospels, as we have them, were read in
all the churches east and west, in Syria, in Rome, and
in Africa, and one of Yustin's own pupils had made
a harmony of them which was extant in the times
of Eusebius.  These critics then would have us
believe that within this interval of twelve years, one
book of John dropped out of use all over Christendom, covering now its thousands of square miles, and
including its peoples of various tongues; and a new
and spurious book of John in at least three languages, went into its place, simultaneously and universally, and with the silence of night, as not a lisp
of controversy was ever heard about it. This, too,
during the lifetime of Justin, - for he lived and
wrote past the middle of the century, and when
men were giving up their lives for the ideas which
these books embodied as the Rule of Faith. It has
been said that the science of historical criticism was
not understood by these people. We shall see. But
granting they had not the keenness of critics they
certainly were not fools.
We come next to a very important witness, who is
always named as "the blessed Polycarp."  We have
already referred to him in connection with Irenaeus




136         7THE FOURITH GOSPEL.
his pupil, but he is too important a witness, not to be
evoked in his own name. He not only lived through
his youth and younger manhood in intimate and
loving intercourse with John, and other Apostles and
disciples who had seen and heard the Lord Jesus,
but he was installed as bishop over one of the constellated churches - the church at Smyrna, near
Ephesus —by apostolic hands. The mantle of the
beloved disciple fell gracefully upon him. The sweetness and benignity of spirit largely imbreathed on
the bosom of Jesus, exhaled in its benignity and
gentleness around "the blessed Polycarp."  The
same influence inspired him with the intrepidity
of Christian heroism.  It will be readily understood how by his intercourse with John, not merely
the contents of the fourth Gospel, but also some
of "the many other things" which Jesus did and
said, and which "are not written in this book,"
entered largely into the memory and the very being
of Polycarp, and that he would preach Christ to his
flock, not so much from written documents as from
this living gospel in his soul. This indeed was the
case. It is plain, from the account of Irenaeus who
heard him, that this was the burden of his discourse
and conversation with the people whom he drew
around him; and so vividly did he reproduce to them
the life and teachings of Jesus, "his miracles and
doctrine," as he had "received them from the eyewitnesses," that the picture of the man, and the room




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 137
where they met, lived afterward in the memory with
unwonted brightness, - "the place where he sat, his
bodily form, his entrances and walks, and the complexion of his life." Long afterwards Polycarp was
quoted as a kind of living Bible, to show what Jesus
would have said and taught. Ireneus cites him in
his controversy with the Gnostics as " a man who had
been instructed by the Apostles, and had familiar
intercourse with many who had seen Christ, and had
also been appointed bishop by the Apostles in Asia,
in the church at Smyrna; whom we also have seen
in our youth, for he lived a long time and to a very
advanced age, when after a glorious and most distinguished martyrdom he departed this life. He always taught what he had learned from the Apostles,
what the church had handed down, and what is the
only true doctrine. All the churches bear witness to
these things, and those that have been successors to
Polycarp to the present time, a witness of the truth
much more worthy of credit, and much more certain
than either Valentine or Marcion, or the rest of those
perverse teachers." 1
Polycarp suffered martyrdom at Smyrna A. D. 167,
being then eighty-six years old, as already stated.
We have a full and detailed description of his sufferings in a letter from his church at Smyrna to the
churches in Pontus, and which Eusebius mostly preserves. It is written by eye-witnesses, and describes
1 Eusebius, H. E., iv. 14.




138          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the heavenly bearing of the venerable martyr, "filled
with confidence and joy, and his countenance brightened with grace." 1
A single writing of Polycarp has come down to
us,- his letter to the church at Philippi. It is written with unction and dignity, and is worthy of its
author's fame.  It affords evidence moreover the
most full and pointed, that when it was written there
was a canon of Scripture corresponding to our own,
well known and established in the churches. He
quotes the New Testament again and again. He
quotes Paul's Epistles by name, and quotes them as
canonical. "Do we not know, he says, that'the
saints shall judge the world' as Paul teaches?"
Again, " I trust ye are well versed in THE SACRED
SCRIPTURES, and that nothing is hid from you. It is
declared in these Scrzitures,' Be ye angry and sin not,'
and'Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."'
But what is directly and forcibly to our purpose, he
quotes the first epistle of John expressly to refute the
Gnostics, showing not only that it was then in the
canon, but also how John himself understood and applied it. Referring to those "false brethren," who
"in hypocrisy bear the name of the Lord and draw
away vain men into error," he says, "Whosoever
does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is antichrist (I John iv. 3); and whosoever does
1 It was evidently interpolated by later hands, but its main facts
are regarded as authentic.




WITNEiSSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 139
not confess the testimony of the cross is of the
devil, and whosoever perverts the oracles of the
Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither
a resurrection nor a judgment, is the first-born of
Satan." Every sentence here sharply distinguishes
the Gnostic heresy. The disciple of John quotes him
to rebuke this haunting and hated error. That the
same hand wrote the Catholic Epistle, and the fourth
Gospel, is to our minds an undoubting conviction, and
proof for the genuineness of one is good for both.
But Polycarp nowhere quotes the fourth Gospel,
and for obvious reasons. His intercourse with John
took place before the fourth Gospel was written, and
before that time he was not only possessed with its
contents, but the life of Jesus, in ampler scope and
more minute detail, filled his memory and glowed in
his mind and heart. It is well known that the recital of the events in the life of Christ made up the
substance of the preaching of some of the Apostles,
and we can well understand with what hunger it
would be received, and how fondly it would be treasured up.
But Polycarp is a witness to the fourth Gospel, in
a way far more complete and satisfactory than a few
quotations could possibly be.  Irenzeus not only
quotes it, but he quotes it as Holy Scripture; and we
know both from him and his translator, that the same
work which has come down to us, was the one which
he had in his hands. But Irenaeus sat at Polycarp's




140          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
feet in Smyrna, heard him recount the narrative and
conversation of John and of others who had seen the
Lord, the "discourses " of Jesus, "his miracles and
doctrine."  These, he says, were "in consistency
with the Holy Scriptures"; that is, with the fourth
Gospel which he held in his hand, and which we have
now. The fourth Gospel becomes not merely the
testimony of John. It is as if a whole company of
eye-witnesses rose up from amidst the constellated
churches over which he presided, saying over again
the closing adjuration of John's Gospel, "this is the
disciple that testifieth of these things and wrote
these things, and we know that his testimony is
true."
The next witness is Papias, who was Bishop of
Hierapolis in.Syria, about the year II6. He was a
weak, but pious and learned man. He wrote a work
in five books called "Interpretations of our Lord's
Declarations," which.Irenaeus had seen, but of which
Eusebius evidently had only seen the preface. In
the fourth book, as Irenseus read it, Papias says he
was an associate of Polycarp and a hearer of John.
In the " preface," as Eusebius quotes it, Papias represents himself as an eager and inquisitive hearer of
old men who knew the Apostles, and reported largely the discourses of Jesus. The "Interpretations"
were evidently expositions of these traditional sayings. He not only knew the Gospels of Matthew and
Mark, but tells us how and why they were composed,




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 141
and he assures us that he had this account of them
from John the presbyter, who was a hearer of John
the Evangelist and other Apostles. Whenever he
met with any of these old men who had sat at the
Apostles' feet, he made it a point, he says, to inquire
" what was said by Andrew, Peter, or Philip; what by
Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any other of the
disciples of the Lord, for I do not think I derived so
much benefit from books as from the living voice of
those that are still surviving."  He does not quote
the Gospels, and he does not mention the book of
John. Nothing seems more perfectly natural. Let
us place ourselves in his position with all the fresh
awakened interest in the wonderful events which had
taken place, and which were still shaking the fabric
of society. The men were yet alive who had conversed with the twelve that gathered about Jesus in
Palestine; old men like Polycarp and John the Presbyter, whose memories brooded tenaciously over what
they had heard, and whose souls were ripening for
immortality under its' hallowing sway. How eagerly
and fondly should we have turned from the synopsis
of books to the conversation of those living men!
How inquisitive should we be about all the gossipy
details of circumstance; how Jesus looked and how
he dressed; what were all his private haunts; what
other things he said and did; what were the shinings of his face and what the tones of his voice!
This is precisely what Papias evidently did; and he




142          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.,says naively, "I do not think I derived so much benefit from books." He may have referred to the fourth
Gospel in the body of his work, for we have only
short quotations from its preface. For quite obvious
reasons, however, he would not be likely to do so. It
was then fresh and recent, and in the hands of those
that knew all about it and knew John himself. Not
so of Matthew and Mark. Their books were already
sixty years old, and had become ancient documents,
and the way Papias speaks of them, shows not only
that they were well known, but that an interest attached to them as sacred writings, and that how and
why they were composed were questions of exceeding interest. "John the presbyter, said this. Mark
being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he recorded he wrote with great accuracy, not in the
order, however, in which it was spoken and done by
our Lord." Again, " Matthew composed his history
in the Hebrew dialect, and every one translated it as
he could." He speaks of these precisely as of writings which had become venerable and canonical.
But his testimony for Matthew and Mark is good for
that of John also. How preposterous the supposition
that the churches which held in their hands the very
writings of the Evangelists, and could prove them as
such by living men, and the very details of their composition, would throw them away and receive in their
place forged or second-hand documents; or that a
spurious Gospel of John could have been got up and




WI77ESSES OF THE SECOND CENTTURY. 143
foisted upon the churches while the persons could be
appealed to who sat at his feet! Schenkel fixes the
date of the fourth Gospel in the times of Papias,
about the year I20: that is, it was got up by some
forger, while hundreds were alive who had seen John
and drank his discourse; while the writings which
came from an apostle's hand were matters of keen interest and inquiry; while John's own church at Ephesus held the legacy of his spoken and written words
as sacred treasures, remembered the tones of his
voice, and pointed pilgrims to the sepulchre where
he slept.
The next witness to the canon of Scripture is the
author of the "Letter of Barnabas," probably the
same Barnabas who was the companion of Paul,
though this is not entirely certain, and is not essential to the present argument. The history of this letter is curious. It was quoted as early as the last
decade of the second century by Clement, and quoted
as genuine as we would quote one of Paul's Epistles.
It was quoted afterwards by Origen, and as the work
of Barnabas. It disappeared, and was wholly unknown in modern times till about 1645, when it was
discovered, and an edition published at Paris. It was
variously regarded. Some thought it genuine, some
not. Rosenmuller received it. Mr. Norton rejected
it. But thus far in modern times it was only known
in a mutilated copy, partly in the Greek original, and
partly in an old Latin translation, and a very bad




144          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
one, the beginning of the former and the end of the
latter, being lost, and the text of both being corrupt. Its antiquity, however, was indisputable, and
it quoted Matthew's Gospel as Holy Scripture, under
the formula "as it is written," under which only canonical Scripture was ever cited. Here was a hard
fact to be disposed of somehow, or we must admit
that early in the second century there was a New
Testament canon of Scripture. It was evaded in this
way. The quotation occurs in the Latin translation,
and is a gloss.. It could not have been in the Greek
original. "The quotation-form'as it is written,"'
said Credner, " used for the New Testament books,
is for that time unheard of, and without example.
On internal grounds we must question the correctness of the text till the contrary is proved to us."
The contrary is now proved. In the " Codex Siniaticus" we have the oldest Greek manuscript which
the world possesses. It has just been discovered,
and lo! the Epistle of Barnabas reappears entire,
not in a mutilated copy, but the whole Greek original. That the work cannot possibly date later than
the year Ioo, the contents, says Tischendorf, unexceptionably show. Others carry the date back as far
as the year 80. Turning to the disputed formula,
there it is in the old Greek parchment manuscript
"AS IT IS WRITTEN," and the smell of gloss all disappears. Tischendorf does not conceal his delight
and exultation. "Surely the fact that at the opening




WITNESSES OF TIE SECOND CENTURY.      145
of the second century, proof that the existence of an
evangelical canon has been found, is a crushing
weight against the boundless play of hypothesis in
which during the last ten years the history of the
New Testament canon has been involved."l
Finally, the authors of the Appendix to John's Gospel, furnish, we think, an indisputable proof of its genuineness. The critical reader sees at once that the
concluding part was written by another hand. By a
still more careful criticism he sees that John's Gospel
proper ends with the twentieth chapter, where the
writer thus closes and sums up the whole, "And
many other miracles truly did Jesus perform in the
presence of his disciples which are not written in
this book. But these are written that ye might know
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that
believing ye might have life through his name."
Then follows the twenty-first chapter, beginning as a
separate piece, not at all continuous with what goes
before, having throughout the air of tradition, in a
different style, and closing with two passages written
professedly by another person with idioms and turns
of expression which John never uses. It refers to a
rumor which had become quite current, that Jesus
had told John that he should not die but should sur1 Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? p. 45. It is very doubtful whether Barnabas, "the companion of Paul," wrote this epistle.
It contains many silly things, as it needs must, in attempting to allegorize the Old Testament.
10




I46          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
vive the rest of the disciples till his second coming.
It is perfectly plain, from the writings of Paul and
Peter, that the expectation was quite general of
Christ's second personal coming; and that the time
was so near that some of the Apostles would live to
see it, and so would be translated without seeing
death. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed." They seem to have construed the language of Jesus to John as a direct promise that this
would be so. It is easy to see that John dying and
no Christ appearing, the word of Jesus would seem
to be compromised. From this as from other tokens,
we think the evidence conclusive that the last chapter is an appendix written after John's death. It
undertakes to show that Jesus did not give any such
promise, and deeming it important to make known
just what he did say, it repeats his exact language,
and repeats it twice over: "Then that report went
abroad among the brethren, that that disciple was
not to die; yet Jesus said not unto him that he would
not die, but If it be my'will that he remain till I
come, what does it concern thee?" Then follow these
words: "The person (to whom this rumor referred)
is the disciple who wrote these things and testifieth
of these things, and we know that his testimony is
true."  No one ever speaks of himself in this way.
Then follows the extravagant statement of the closing passage, as remote as possible from the simplicity
of John's narrative, and containing Greek idioms




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 147
which he never uses. "And there are also many
other things which Jesus did, which, if they should
be written in detail, I suppose that even the world
itself could not contain the books that would be
written."
We have seen how eagerly and fondly the first
hearers of the Apostles hung upon their speech, and
how they would ask for the details in the life of Jesus.
That this was so at Ephesus, Polycarp and Papias
are unexceptionable witnesses as cited by Irenaeus.
Their reports coming only at second hand, we
should receive with much interest, but we should
not expect to see things through their eyes in the
severe uncoloring daylight as seen through the eyewitnesses themselves. Things would appear very
much as in the closing chapter of the fourth Gospel,
and their excited wonder and admiration might well
dictate the closing passage.
But this appendix becomes a most important and
independent testimony to John's record itself. It is
wanting in none of the manuscripts, and it becomes
extremely probable that it went forth in the first
copies from the Church of Ephesus or the constellated churches over which he presided, as their testimony both to the known authorship of the fourth
Gospel and to the truth of its contents which they
had heard from the writer's lips. We know from
other sources that while the hearers of John were
yet alive, that is, in the first decades of the second




148           THE FOUR7H GOSPEL.
century, the fourth Gospel with its appendix were in
the canon of the New Testament, and it becomes
almost certain, therefore, that no copies were in circulation without it. The solemn averment, " This is
the disciple who testifieth of these things and wrote
these things, and we know that his testimony is true,"
becomes that of the Church at Ephesus which had
heard year after year the details of the life of Jesus
from his lips; which had received the legacy of his
written narrative, indorsed it as genuine, and sent it
forth to the Christian world.1
II. The enemies of Christianity, during the period
under review, furnish the same conclusive argument
for the fourth Gospel. Conspicuous among these is
Celsus, its bitter antagonist, who wrote about the
year 150 to refute it. Origen answered him, and has
preserved some things which he wrote. Celsus refers
to scandalous reports and traditions; says he could
bring forward many things which have been truly
written about Jesus of a very different character from
the writings of his own disciples. These, however,
he says he will forego, and proceeds to make use of
the four evangelists as the public and sole authority
acknowledged by the Church. He refers to all the
four Gospels, and quotes them; tries to show their
inconsistency with each other, dwells upon the dis1 Norton considers the last chapter of the fourth Gospel as John's
writing, except the last two verses. Neander ascribes the whole to
another hand. Both consider the whole chapter an appendix.




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. I49
crepancy between Luke and John, and Matthew and
Mark, touching the appearance of the angels at the
sepulchre; quotes the synoptics repeatedly, and John
several times; seizes upon John's designation of
Jesus as "the Logos; " ridicules the idea that blood
and water flowed from his side at the crucifixion,a fact found only in John's narrative. "All these
things," he says, "we have taken out of your own
Scriptures, we need no other witness, for you fall
upon your own sword." 
There were two classes of Gnostics: there were
those who broke with the Church and rejected its
Scriptures, and there were those who kept within it
and perverted them. Of the former class was Marcion. He flourished between the years I40 and 150.
He was the son of the Bishop of Sinope in lesser
Asia, was educated in the Christian faith, but fell
away from it, and was excommunicated. He rejected
the Old Testament as being only the work of the
Demiurgus; he rejected John's Gospel, and probably
Matthew and Mark, not because he disputed their
authorshzpt, but because he held the Apostles themselves to be corrupters of the true faith. He retained
Luke's Gospel, which he undertook to alter and expurgate, to make it conform to his views. That he
was acquainted with John's Gospel is abundantly
clear, and has been vainly denied. Tertullian, who
writes to refute him, says, " Marcion having got the
1 See Tischendorf's tract, pp. 27, 28.




150          THE FOURTIH GOSPEL.
Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, who blames the
Apostles themselves as not walking uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel, and also charges some
false apostles with perverting the Gospel of Christ,
sets himself to weaken the credit of those Gospels
which are truly such, and are published under the
name of Apostles or apostolic men."  The fourth
Gospel is here clearly referred to, and afterwards by
name; and Tertullian states the reason why Marcion
rejected it. " The Gospel of John would convict him
of error." This shows, beyond any reasonable question, that in the year I40 the four Gospels, and John's
especially, were universally ascribed by the Church,
and its enemies as well, to the men whose names
they bear, and that the former held them as sacred
and canonical authority.2
III. We come next to a very interesting and important mine of evidence which has lately been
explored by a highly competent and skillful hand.
Every one knows how exceedingly concise are our
canonical Gospels; how rigidly they hold the reader
to the prominent facts pertaining to the life and
public ministry of Jesus; how little they gratify mere
curiosity, and how free they are from gossiping
details. Their majestic simplicity is strong evidence
under the circumstances of a controlling and shaping
Providence, for these are very different productions
1 Ad Maarcion, lib. iv. c. 3.
2 De Carne Christi, c. 3.




WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTUR Y. 151
from those which would naturally have been dictated
by the private taste and judgment of their authors.
But herein was a most tempting opportunity offered
to pious fraud to try its hand in filling up the supposed gaps in the narratives. This was attempted
very early, and hence arises a New Testamnezz apccryphal literatztre  forgeries got up by pretended'friends of Christianity which they tried to circulate
under apostolic or highly honored names. Tischendorf, the prince of scholars in the history and purification of the true text, has made this apocryphal
literature the study of years, and they furnish, he
says, the completest proof for the earliest reception
of our evangelical canon. This holds especially true
of two writings: the "Gospel of James" and the
"Acts of Pilate."
The spurious "Gospel of James" stands in such
relation to our Gospels, which it tries to supplement,
that the latter must have been a long time in circulation before the forgery was attempted. There are
passages in the writings of Justin Martyr, whose
first "Apology" dates as early as 138, which can only
be traced to the " Gospel of James," and which show
clearly that the work was in his hands. This being
so, it must have -been written in the first decades of
the second century, and therefore Matthew and Luke,
which it tries to supplement in matters pertaining to
the birth and parentage of Jesus, must fall, beyond
question, within the first.




15           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
The "Acts of Pilate " refer not only to the synoptics, but to John's Gospel. For this also our oldest
witness is Justin. In his first "Apology " he refers
to various things foretold concerning the crucifixion,
and of Christ's miraculous healing. He gives an
account of the trial, death, and resurrection of Christ,
and adds, "All this has Pilate, driven by his conscience to become a Christian, reported of Christ to
the emperor Tiberius." We have the same in Tertullian given in more detail.
A writing answering entirely to these ancient citations, and bearing the same title, has come down to
our time in many old Greek and Latin manuscripts
which Tischendorf identifies as the very work quoted
by Justin and Tertullian. The work presupposes the
records of our first three Gospels, and that of John
beyond all question; for while the report of the crucifixion and the resurrection refer to the former, that
of the trial of Christ is essentially the report of the
latter. An apocryphal book then was in existence
in the year 138, based on the synoptics and the book
of John. It must have been written some time before to have obtained credit with such a man as Justin. It carries us up towards the beginning of the
second century, and therefore the Gospels on which
it was based must have originated in the first. "It
falls," says Tischendorf, "not as the lightning flashing through impervious darkness, but it is one of the
clearest among many rays of light out of the post



WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENTUR Y. 153
apostolic age streaming down to us over the weightiest question of Christendom." 1
But in quite another way these apocryphal gospels
furnish evidence of the true ones. The true ones in
their more than Doric simplicity and divine pathos,
in moral dignity and ethical tone, and in their direct
appeal to the inmost consciousness of human nature,
stand forth in contrast with the spurious ones even
as God's work in nature stands in contrast with the
contrivances of men. This is not a matter of individual taste and judgment. Individuals, as Tertullian and Justin, were deceived. The churches were
not, and in no case can it be shown that a forged
Gospel was foisted into the canon of Scripture to be
generally received. The same spirit that breathed
through the letter of the Word breathed also through
the heart of the Church, and made its faculty of
recognition in the main unerring and its vision
clear. The apocryphal Gospels show us indubitably
what our New Testament writings would have been
if they had been the productions of the second century. All that gave the spurious ones local and temporary currency was the grains of gold filched from
the evangelic narratives to incorporate with their
tinsel and sand. An epistle, if very brief, might possibly escape detection. But when forgers undertook
to write gospels, though they borrowed from the true
ones, their own despicable puerilities showed more
1 WIn vutrden unsere Evamgelien verfasst, pp. 29-40.




154          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
surely in the contrast. They tried the experiment
repeatedly. They invented their " Lives of Christ,"
and these compare with the simple, sublime conceptions of our Gospels, and especially the fourth, as the
murky bonfires of midnight compare with the stars
that shine in eternal serenity and beauty above them.
IV. The heretics of the Church are a company of
important and independent witnesses. There was a
class of Gnostics, as already intimated, who did not
take their position outside the Christian Church and
assail it, but claimed their position within it. They
might the more easily have maintained it after the
death of the Apostles if there had been no Canon of
Scripture by which their notions were to be judged,
but only loose and floating traditions. But if there
was such a canon of Scripture, of course their first
object would be to pervert it and bend it to their
purpose. We know just what they did since Irenaus
wrote to refute them; and Hippolytus who wrote
towards the beginning of the third century has
given an account of their opinions, and how they defended them, and the works of both these fathers are
in our hands. Irenaeus says, "So firmly are our
Gospels established that the heretics themselves bear
witness unto them, and appeal to them to confirm
their own doctrine." These heretics belonged to the
first half of the second century. Irenaeus wrote
about twenty years after their time. His words give
the pronounced judgment of the second half of the




WVITNESSES OF THE SECOND CENVTURY.    155
second century on the first half; and more than this,
we have detailed accounts of the writings of these
heretics which confirm the judgment.
Among these heretics Valentine stands conspicuous. He came from Egypt to Rome before the year
I40, and passed some twenty years in that city.
Throughout his whole system he borrows his terminology from the fourth Gospel. Irenaeus expressly
asserts that the sect used this Gospel to the fullest
extent, and grounded their doctrines upon the proem.
The Word, the Only Begotten, Life, Light, Fullness,
Truth, Grace, were the train of hypostatized ~Eons
which, with God, made up the famous octave of Valentine. That the author of the fourth Gospel borrowed from Valentine is fantastically absurd. That
Gnosticism should try to get the fourth Gospel out of
its way by taking it up into its omnivorous receptacle and translating it, somewhat as the ass translated
Bottom the weaver, comports with its whole genius
and history.
Hippolytus confirms Irenxeus. He gives several
instances where Valentine had quoted John's Gospel,
always perverting it and trying to dovetail it into his
own system.
The disciples of Valentine followed up the work.
Ptolemeus was one of them who quotes Matthew several times, and once the fourth Gospel, naming it as
the work of an apostle. "The apostle says, that all
things were made by Him, - the Word, - and with



156           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
out Him   nothing was made."   Heracleon was another disciple and a distinguished one. He was contemporary with Valentine. He did not merely quote
John, but wrote an entire commentary upon the
fourth Gospel, fragments of which are preserved by
Origen, in which it is plain that he sought ingeniously
to gnosticize the whole book from beginning to end.
But Valentine's school had a still earlier founder in
Basilides, who also comes from Alexandria in Egypt.
He flourished as early as I25. He wrote twenty-four
books on the Gospels; and that our four Gospels are
the ones thus designated as a whole is nearly certain. He quotes Luke and John word for word, and
tries to bring their expressions into accord with his
system.  He also refers to the star of the Magians in
Matthew. Moreover the divine octave, named from
the principal terms of John's Proem, is at the basis
of Basilides' whole scheme, and Valentine must have
found it there.1
Here then we have a false and fantastic theory
of Christianity elaborated by its authors, all through
the second quarter of the second century, appealing constantly to the four Gospels as authority,
specially anxious to subsidize John and bend that
to their purpose, and for that end writing a whole
1 For these citations by the Gnostic heretics read Tischendorfs
Wed wurden, etc., pp. I9-23. For other citations see Bunsen's Hippolytus und seine zeit, vol, i. pp. 63-66.
For quotations of Basilides, and of his heresy generally, see Euse.
bius, H. E. iv. 7.




WITNESSES OF 7HE SECOND CENTURY. 157
commentary upon the book; involving so vitally
the themes of that book, that sharp and bitter
controversies took place between two parties in
the Church, - the Orthodox and the heretics of,
that day, -and which continued down to the close
of the century. Both parties appeal to one canon or
rule of faith in which the Gospel of John is conspicuous, for in its interpretation its grand themes were
vitally concerned. There are men who try to make
us believe that right in the midst of this debate,
when appeals were made by keen-eyed controversialists to canonical Christian Scriptures, a new and
spurious book, involving more than all the others the
very matter in dispute, was foisted upon the Christian public, received by everybody without a murmur
of dissent, elevated to a place in the sacred Canon,
and spread through various languages into all the
Christian communions as of like authority.
We will put a parallel-case. We are separated
by nearly one hundred years from the declaration of
American independence, and the stirring events
which led to the formation and adoption of the Constitution of the United States, the political canon of
the country. After its adoption parties grew up, both
appealing to its authority, both grounded on opposite
interpretations. Suppose that just before our civil
war broke out, the State Rights Party, not finding
secession in the Constitution so plainly as they wished,
got out a new chapter, added it to the old Constitu



158          7WTflE tO UR 71T GOSPEL.
tion, and proclaimed it as a genuine portion of the
fundamental law; and forthwith, and without dissent
and simultaneously throughout the country, it is so
regarded by all parties, quoted as such in Congress,
cited in the courts of justice, and no trace of controversy about it was ever known or heard of. A more
monstrous violation of all the laws of historical evidence and probability, and even of the first principles
which determine human conduct, could not well be
conceived. And yet the parallel fails in two particulars
to give the argument in its unconquerable strength.
We are one people, and speak and write in the main
one language.  The early Christian communions
were separated by the barriers of dialect and nation
which would render a simultaneous or general reception of a forgery a more violent impossibility. Our
fundamental law concerns us only in our temporal
affairs. Their fundamental law concerned them, so
they thought, in their eternal well-being, and determined the conditions of heaven and hell.
V. We come to a species of evidence already indicated, which Tischendorf gives as the crowning
portion of his argument for the New Testament
canon. We have said that translations of the New
Testament were made into other languages, for the
use of the churches, and that these translations were
the identical old Latin Ital and Syriac Peschito which
have come down to us. They must have been made
soon after the middle of the second century. This is




IITNVESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 159
certain from the quotations of Irenaeus and Tertullian. How is this ascertained?
The manuscripts of the New Testament were
copied and recopied for the hundredth time, and it
was inevitable that some mistakes would creep in.
The mistakes do not affect the main substance and
doctrine of the New Testament, but they run down
into countless minutiae, such as the variation or
omission of particles. Sometimes a word or a whole
sentence has fallen out; sometimes a word or sentence, which might have been originally a gloss in
the margin, has crept into the text. Not ten years
would have elapsed after a manuscript had been dismissed from the hand of an apostle or his amanuensis
to be copied and recopied, before these various readings would begin to appear. Of course the nearer we
get towards the autograph of the writers the purer
our text will be. Moreover it will be easy to see that
this department of investigation furnishes the most
absolutely certain of all circumstantial evidence to
identify the received canon of any specified period,
because the evidence branches into such delicate and
interminable veins. The prince of scholars in this
department is Tischendorf, who has made the exploration of it the main business of his life.
We have said that the Greek text which preceded
and formed the basis of the translations of the second
century is clearly identified in the Codex Sinaiticus,
including our New Testament with its four Gospels.




i6o          THE FOURlTH GOSPEL.
We identify it, therefore, as the New Testament of
the churches in the year I50; not of one church but
of all; not alone at Rome but at Carthage, where
Tertullian used the Latin translation made from it:
at Lyons in Gaul where Irenaus used the same
thirty years before him; at Antioch in Syria, where
Theophilus must have used the old Syriac version
or its basis in the year I70; at Alexandria in Egypt,
where Origen wrote, whose quotations are in striking.
agreement therewith.
But the argument does not stop here. The Greek
text in general use in the year 150, thus clearly identified, though the purest we have is not absolutely
pure. It had already been a great while in use, for
it is clearly demonstrable that A RICH TEXT-HISTORY LIES BEHIND IT. There is unmistakable evidence that it had already been copied and recopied
and long passed from hand to hand. Tischendorf
claims this as one of the most important and certain
of the results of his labors. "If this is so," he says,
" and there lies a long course of the text-history of
our Gospels before the middle of the second century;
before the time when canonical authority, along with
a settled church order threw up a strong barrier
against private modifications of the sacred text,and I pledge myself to give complete proof of this in
its proper place, -then we must demand for this
history the space at least of half a century. Must we
not date, then - I will not say the origin of the Gos



WITNESSES OF THE SECOND CEiVTURY. 16
pels, - no; but the beginning of the evangelical
canon about the end of the first century? And is
not this result so much the more certain because all
the historical facts of the second century which we
have brought forward are in harmony therewith?"
We have exhibited in the two preceding chapters
an outline of what is known as the historical or external evidence of the four Gospels. If the reader has
imagined that it depends on uncertain traditions he
will probably be surprised, if he has now surveyed it
for the first time, at its cumulative and irresistible
strength. He will ask, if there is not another side to
the argument. There is undoubtedly another side,
but there is none that we know of which can change
the aspect of the case unless we say that all history
is baseless and fabulous. We notice briefly two
objections which may be supposed to break the force
of the historical argument as we have stated it.
i. The Alogians, a small and obscure sect, appeared in Asia Minor soon after the middle of the
second century, who rejected the fourth Gospel and
the Apocalypse. Montanus and his followers who
claimed the special gift of the Holy Spirit, and announced the coming of the millennium, had appealed
to John's Gospel to support their fanaticism, claimii




162          THE FOUR TH GOSPEL.
ing for themselves the promise of the Paraclete and
its realization. This extravagance the Alogians opposed. They met it with a denial that John wrote
the fourth Gospel, asserted its inconsistency with the
other three, and ascribed it to Cerinthus, the contemporary of John. Baur makes much of this fact.
What does it really prove? Two things: -
First, that the Gospels were generally appealed to
as canonical authority in the Church at the middle of
the second century, and that the fourth was universally received as genuine, - a small sect who could
not believe its doctrines because of their own rationalizing tendency being an exception to a general rule.
Second, that the fourth Gospel as then known and
received, was not a recent book, for the very men
who seek to set aside its authority, assign its origin
to the times of John, though most absurdly to Cerinthus, whom John opposed.
The fact argues not against the genuineness of the
book, but strongly in its favor, and absolutely annihilates the pretension that it could have originated after
the middle of the second century.
2. Another ground of objection is as follows: The
verdict of the second century touching the genuineness of historical works, cannot be accepted as final,
because the laws of historical evidence were not then
understood. Learned men even were credulous and
easily imposed upon. Works were then received
which we know now to be forgeries, and quoted by




WITRESSES OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 163
such men as Justin and Tertullian; and there are
writings in our Canon at this time, such as the Epistle
of Jude and the Second of Peter, which were not
written by the men whose names they bear.
There are two plain answers to this. One may
be as completely disqualified by skepticism as by
credulity for applying the laws of historical evidence.
The habit of doubting, caviling, perverting, and
emptying words of their meaning, in order to suborn
the facts of history to suit our theories, may even
bring mist and darkness over a whole province of history which lies else in peaceful sunlight. We have
no right to assume as a foregone conclusion, that the
supernatural can only appear in the natural, as we
have seen it, and then make our assumption an axiom
of universal criticism. Yet this is what Strauss expressly and Baur impliedly have done. Allowing that
there is a spiritual world, and therefore that the
class of facts which the New Testament records, is
possible, writers of the second century may be vastly
better qualified to judge the record of them impartially, than those of the nineteenth, whose minds are
darkened by a narrow or one-sided philosophy. Writers of the Alexandrian School, to name no others,
such as Origen, Clement, and Pantaenus so far as he
is known to us, were learned men, not unskilled in
historical criticism; and added to these qualifications
were intuitions made quick and clear by the breathings of the Holy Spirit to discern the Scripture that
throbbed freshly with its life.




164          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
But in addition to this, there was the communis
senszis of the Christian Church when its glory was
unstained by worldly ambitions or sectarian strifes.
The Christ of Scripture then glowed warmly as the
Christ of consciousness. Spurious documents might
obtain temporary or local currency. But they would
differ from the genuine as a daub from a landscape,
and though individuals might be deceived, the Church
Catholic would shed them off by the Power that
reigned alike in its Bible and in the souls which it
had redeemed and purified.
But the argument does not proceed solely under
the authority of these writers of the second century,
nor that of the church to which they belonged. It is
various and cumulative, gathering strength and volume with every new investigation and every new
discovery of documents. Our supposed better knowledge of the science of history, and more sure application of the rules which apply to it, do not bring
the subject of the New Testament canon into greater
doubt and difficulty, but bring it rather within the
resolving power of a surer and more enlightened
criticism.




CHAPTER VII.
CHRISTIANITY AS A NEW INFLUX OF POWER.1
F   ROM   the close of the second century up to
about the year 50 there is an order of phenomena not dwelt upon in profane history, nor much in
popular histories of any kind; not because they are
less authenticated than any other class of events, but
because historians writing from the view-point of
naturalism do not know what to make of them, and
ignore them. They are not confined to the period
above indicated. They belong in some sort to the
more interior history of the Church in all ages. But
during the period indicated they are marked and
palpable, and unmixed with papal legends and impostures; for the hierarchy had not then arisen, and
the Church was in her bridal robes.   They were
then new, taking the Church itself by surprise, unknown to the old effete religions as then existing,
whether Jewish or Pagan.
This new order of phenomena may be described
1 The principal authorities for this chapter beside the New Testament are Origen, Tertullian, and Justin.- They are cited and enlarged upon by Neander in the first section of his Church History,
and in his Memorials of Christian Life, Part I. ch. I.




I66          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
as a disturbance everywhere of the old equilibrium
of forces, social, moral, and spiritual. There were
perturbations in the old system of statics like those
which the astronomers observed among the planetary
bodies, while yet the orbit of Uranus was supposed
to be the boundary of our solar system. There must
be the proximity, said Leverrier, of some body or
system of bodies which we have never taken into
the account; and so marked and decisive was the
influence that he directed his telescope with the utmost confidence that the unknown disturber would
swim into its field. The disturbance, however, in the
field of history is so great as not only to produce
irregularities of motion but to break up the old system of forces altogether and direct them anew.
We get a very poor and inadequate conception of
the introduction of Christianity into this world when
we imagine its Apostles going about and making an
exhibition of miraculous performances as proofs of
their message. The miracles did not cause the spread
of Christianity, but were simply its outcome on the
plane of nature. Christianity came only when the
spiritual heavens were brought in closer and more
naked contact with the human mind, and hence produced a NEW INFLUX OF POWER in human nature
itself.
In comparing two coterminous periods of history,
it is easy sometimes to see the second in the first,
and to regard one as simply a development of the




CHRIIS7IANi7TY A NEW INFL UX OF POWER. 167
other. Thus the Protestant reformation was heralded
a century before it came by signs which announced
its approach, - to use the rhetoric of Coleridge, - as
clearly as the purple clouds of the dawn announce
the approach of morning. It is the past developing
into the future. Let the historian scan the age of
Augustus Caesar and he will find there the science,
the philosophy, the jurisprudence, the natural culture,
and the religions, Hellenic, Jewish, and Roman, of
the two centuries following; to be modified as they
might be by the ordinary forces of human development. The cause of the disturbances which we are
about to notice he will not find; and unless he resorts to celestial observations he will set his glass in
vain.
The new influx of power is traceable as one of the
divine signatures of Christianity generally, but is
found all through the second century, and always in
connection with and within the circle of Christian
ideas and the Christian communions. We mean by
the influx of power, not the voluntary and normal
forces of education and culture, but a new force, and
one before unknown in the world, lying back of all
human volition, producing a new creation out of the
old chaos and transforming human nature itself.
This is manifest in various ways.
i. First and on its lowest plane of operation, there
is a new power of mind over matter, of the spirit
over the body, found principally in a healing and




I68          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
cleansing divine life, flowing downward and outward
into its lowest forms. Of course this would be seen
first in the cure of nervous diseases, because the
nerves are the inmost texture of the physical body
and join it with the spiritual, but it is seen in a restorative hand laid on all the diseases of the human
form. This was called "miracle" in the language of
the times, because it came as a surprise, but it was
in conformity with universal spiritual laws operating
within the natural as the heavens were pressing anew
into the affairs of earth. For these phenomena we
depend on no uncertain and private testimony, and
they are altogether different in kind from the lying
miracles of the monks of the middle ages. Origen
appeals to them as matters of common experience.
Grievous diseases and states of insanity, which had
withstood all other means of the healing art, disappear when the subjects of them are brought within
the circle of Christian truth and influence. No tricks
of jugglery were used, but healing power ran down
through the mind and the nerves and the whole physical frame, the entire outward man being recreated
from within. Tertullian and Justin Martyr make the
same appeal. They cite these facts as notorious.
"That the kingdom of evil spirits," says the latter,
"has been destroyed by Jesus, you may even at the
present time convince yourselves by what passes before your own eyes; for many of our people, of us
Christians, have healed and still continue to heal in




CHRISTIANITY A NE W INFLUX OF POWER. I69
every part of the world, and in your city of Rome,
numbers possessed of evil spirits, such as could not
be healed by other exorcists, simply by adjuring them
in the name of Jesus Christ." Irenzeus says the same,
and declares that many came into the Christian profession because the evil influx which we call insanity,
and which then held so many minds in baleful eclipse,
receded and went out before the reviving glory of the
inflowing Christ when the subjects came to themselves and rejoiced in their right minds.
So full and vital was this new influx of power that
sometimes the apparent dead were brought back to
life. We say apparent dead, for we will not assume
as yet to know the exact line which divides the mysterious realms of life and death in putting off mortality, or that turning back and recrossing the line is a
possibility within the supreme divine order. We
only say that those who to the common apprehension
had died, sometimes had a reviving consciousness
within the sphere of Christian influx, and lived years
afterwards as well known witnesses of it in the Christian Church. To this fact Irenaeus bears unexceptionable testimony. But it is only one class of facts
among others, notorious and well attested through
the whole period in review, showing that the healing
and restoring mercy was not only in first things but
last things, not only ev apXi, but in the ultimations of
the natural world.
2. A quickening of the interior perceptions re



170         7THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
suiting frequently in open spiritual vision, is another
remarkable phenomenon of the period under review.
It is found as late as the times of Origen, but it is
continuous and more intense as we ascend the
stream. As we find it in this period it has nothing
in common with the visions of the monks, real or
pretended, of a later age. It often came unsought,
and to those outside the communion of the Christian
Church, and ignorant of its system of faith, yet bearing in upon them gleams and intuitions of the same
truths that lie at the centre of the Christian system.
We mistake altogether when we suppose that a few
unlettered men, merely by means of personal persuasion and eloquence, spread the Gospel laterally from
Palestine throughout the Roman empire, as we find it
in the second century. No wonder that Mr. Gibbon
is nonplussed when he tries to account for its rapid,
almost simultaneous diffusion, as if it had spread of
itself. There is a large class of facts perfectly well
attested, even while we keep within the track of common history, showing that the descending heavens
were urging their transcendent realities into all receptive minds, sometimes with power so great that
their scenery lay visibly upon the opening soul.
Tertullian says the majority in his time came to a
knowledge of the true God by visions (e visionibus);
that is, they came into the Christian Church not because its truths had first been urged upon them from
without, but because they had been borne in from




CHRISTIANIT7Y A NE W INFL UX OF PO WER. 171
above. Tertullian probably exaggerates, as he was
wont to do, but Origen affirms the same class of facts
not only as well known in the Christian communions,
but as within his personal knowledge and experience, and calls God to witness the truth of what he
says. These testimonies are important, not only as
accounting to us for the rapid diffusion of Christianity in this early time, but for its invincible grasp
upon the common mind, showing it a religion which
prevailed, not so much by propagandism as by its
outcome from the heart of God into the heart of
humanity, prepared by some new agency for its reception.
3. Closely connected with the order of phenomena
just named was another not less remarkable. The
realities of a super-sensible world through all this
period within the Christian communions are not so
much matters of faith as of knowledge. Lying on
the general face of society throughout the Roman
empire there is darkness on this subject that might
be felt. The philosophers did not believe their own
speculations, nor the poets the creations of their imaginations, much less did the common mind have
any intelligent convictions whatsoever. The Roman
Senate might be said to represent the best culture
and intelligence pertaining to religion, philosophy,
science, and morals, which their times afforded. In
the'debate as to what disposition should be made of
Catiline's conspirators, Julius Caesar, then the High




172          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Priest of the national religion, rose and opposed capital punishment, on the ground that death was the
extinction of conscious existence, and therefore was
not so much punishment as a release from it, thus
publicly in the face of the Senate denying the immortality of the soul. Cato was there; and Cicero, who
wrote the Tusculan Questions, was there. Both replied, and their replies are reported, but on this all
important point they made no distinct issue with
Caesar, showing that even with the best minds the
doctrine of immortality was only an airy hypothesis.
There had been no change in this respect in the
times which we have under review, except that they
present the following remarkable phenomena. In the
dense and general darkness we see little communions
called churches, dotting the regions of night like
spangles of gold and silver, gradually enlarging their
circuit, while into each the heavens were open, and
tidings of God and immortality were flowing free.
Here was something which the age itself could not
understand, and which we shall understand just as
little if we suppose that this new faith subliming into
knowledge was merely wrought by preachers who
proved their assertions by miracles, or by reading the
New Testament documents. Any one must see that
such causes merely operating ab extra, were quite inadequate to produce such results.
4. But perhaps more remarkable yet was the new
transforming power over human nature, everywhere




CHRISTIANITY A NE W 1NFL UX OF PO WER. 173
lifting it up and cleansing it. It is not merely the
reformation of manners that now meets our observation.- It is the new and original TYPES OF CHARACTER, and what is quite as remarkable, they were
evolved out of the very material which a philosopher
would have passed by as worthless. And more remarkable yet, they were evolved very often without
the will, and even against the will of the subjects
themselves, when those subjects were brought within
the circle and operation of the new influence. There
was some power lying behind all personal volition,
and choice, transfusing the subject's whole being and
bringing a new creation out of it which astonished
himself as much as any one. Undoubtedly there
was some preparation in the experience of such men,
which made their natures ductile under the new supernatural influence; they were not made subjects of
it by arbitrary selection; what we mean to say is, it
came to them without their seeking; they did not go
after it and find it, but it came and found them, and
lifted them out of the grooves they had moved in,
with a force they no more thought of resisting than
the sea-weed torn up by the roots would resist the
swellings of the tides.1
Celsus, who wrote against Christianity, evidently
1 Origen says in his treatise, Contra Celsus, "Many, as it were,
against their will, have been brought over to Christianity; since a
certain Spirit suddenly turned their reason from hatred against Christianity into zealous attachment even at the cost of their lives, and
presented certain images before the soul either awake or in vision."




174          THE FOURTHZ GOSPEL.
with great subtlety and acumen, makes it one of his
sharpest points of objection that it professes to accomplish impossibilities; that the idea of changing
huzman natzure, and making it over is utterly absurd.
"It is manifest to every one," says he, "that it lies
within no man's power to produce an entire change
in a person to whom sin has become a second nature,
even by punishment, to say nothing of mercy, for to
effect a complete change of nature, is the most difficult of things."  To this the Christian apologists
replied in substance: Come and learn for yourselves.
Come into our assemblies and see what and who we
are, and from what ranks and conditions we have
been gathered. See how the old savagery and hate
have been expelled from us, and how we can now
love our neighbors as ourselves, and forgive our
enemies and render good for evil, and blessing for
cursing.
We have two scenes presented to us: one in Lyons,
and one in Smyrna of lesser Asia, in which the new
type of character is brought in vivid contrast with
the depravity of the age out of which it had been
won. We mean the persecutions and martyrdoms
described in the letters sent out by those churches
making known their calamity to sister churches. We
make all due allowance for the enthusiasm inspired
by Christian faith, but even then we witness virtues
and graces of character and examples of a renewed
and sanctified human nature wrought out of the low



CHRIS77ANITY A NEW INFLUX OF POWER. 175
est and roughest material, far more illustrious than
any other miracles that we know of. It is magnanimity, faith, love, patience, heroism, and the sweetest spirit of forgiveness appearing like an " orb of
tranquillity " in a general storm of hate, revenge, and
cruelty. To their tortures by racks, by pincers, by
faggots, by the tossings of wild beasts, by being
seated in burning chairs that the fumes of their
roasting flesh might come up about them, amid scoffs
and jeers from the rabble and when a word of retraction would have saved them, "They went on joyful,
much glory and grace being mixed in their faces, so
that their bonds seemed to form noble ornaments,
and like those of a bride adorned with various golden
bracelets, and impregnated with the sweet odor of
Christ, they appeared to some anointed with earthly
perfumes." 1
These great changes were not developments out
of the age, but of a Power which was reversing its
tides. They were wrought everywhere in the name
of Christ, and within the influence of Christian ideas
and the Christian communions; very often the new
influx from within meeting the presentation of truth
from without as by a stroke of God. Thus from the
ruins of a reversed and degraded humanity as a
background they bring out these portraitures of an1 For an account of these martyrdoms given in the Letters of the
Churches of Lyons and Smyrna, see Eusebius, lib. iv. c. 15; also lib.
v. c. i.




176          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
gelic life and beauty. The change in these persons
could not be better described than by saying "the
Holy Ghost fell on them;" for not any voluntary
agency had wrought the change, but a sudden income of power through the consciousness. These
phenomena occur as you ascend along the second
century into and towards the middle of the first, and
they appear in the moral world like those you would
witness in the natural if you went out at mid-winter
when the ground was covered with snow and the
forests tinkled with ice, amid which a few trees scattered here and there were appearing in the bloom
and the greenness of their summer glories. Any
mind of the least philosophical bent and untrammeled by false theories, ascending the stream of history, would conclude that " something had happened,"
and that this something was of a very extraordinary
character thus to turn the stream out of its course.
Ascending through this series of phenomena we
come to the times embraced in our New Testament
canon. The reader will see that the earliest of our
ecclesiastical history does not stand forth as exceptional; that the annals of the Church for more
than a century afterward, to come down no further,
give us a continuation of the same order of events
described by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles,
and of the dispensation of the Spirit inaugurated on
the day of the Pentecost. The current of history as
we ascend, prepares us for the events they record




CHRISTIANITY A NEW INFLUX OF PO WER. 177
so that they break upon us without surprise. We
ascend and note the perturbations with expectant
minds, -like Dr. Kane's men travelling northward
and watching the flight of summer birds and the
growing evidence of some mysterious and warmer
clime, till the open Polar Sea broke on their sight,
its waters shimmering in the sun and its waves dashing at their feet.
Ascending this stream we come to a literature unquestionably genuine, bringing us into the very atmosphere of the warm open sea. There is one man
who appears as the central figure of this literature;
whose writings and personal history, while they are
entirely congenerous with the history we have been
now tracing, fling a light over the whole, disclosing
the causes, and the only adequate ones, of these mysterious perturbations.
There was a man who started from Jerusalem
towards Damascus on a mission of persecution,
proud, cruel, and vindictive; he came from Damascus with a heart yearning towards all mankind, with
the humility of a child, and with affections as tender
as a woman's love. He went towards Damascus
with an intellect narrowed down to a rapier's point
and harder than its steel; he came from Damascus
with an intellect broadened and fused with divine
fire, and with a logic so invincible, and with its links
so warm with the Holy Ghost, that it moulded the
thought of the world for eighteen centuries. What
12




178          THIE FOURIH GOSPEL.
does his change date from? Epileptic fits, says Dr.
Strauss.1 I met Jesus Christ on the way, says Paul,
in a.light from heaven which dimmed the Syrian
noon.
We are brought to the earliest literature of the
Church in the authentic letters of this most distinguished among the converts to the Christian faith.
Some of them were written not more than twenty
years after the death and ascension of Christ. Four
of them, - and those the most important, - the
most exacting criticism has never called in question.
Nine of them are conceded as genuine in the criticism of Renan, who is sufficiently exacting and fastidious for the most refined scepticism.  Thirteen
we regard as genuine beyond all reasonable doubt or
cavil; and only the Epistle to the Hebrews, so called,
popularly ascribed to Paul, has been shown very
clearly from evidence internal and external to have
emanated from some other source.
Later than these letters, we have the history ascribed to Luke, —the Acts of the Apostles, about
half of which is a record of Paul's life and labors.
The first chapters Renan considers as legendary because of the supernatural events there narrated,
which by his theory cannot come within the range of
authentic history. The "tendency theory" of Baur
makes the whole book a compilation of the second
century. The critics of the anti-supernatural school
1 In his last Leben yesu, p. 302.




CHRISTIANIT'Y A NEW INFLUX OF PO WER. I79
agree together as to the status of Paul.  "The
Christ," says Renan, who gives him personal revelations, "is his own phantom; it is himself he hears
while thinking he hears Jesus."1
Their criticisms of the book of Acts are futile so
far as designed to shut out and keep out the supernatural. Those letters which Renan concedes were
written by Paul beyond all reasonable question, contain the essential elements of the book of Acts, include in their range the most important events which
it records, while at the same time leading us up to
the very spot where the gates open and the new influx of power comes in to sweep down the Christian
ages and carry the old land-marks of history before it
as drift wood upon the waves. If you tamper with
the book of Acts you may just as well keep on and
tamper with all the history that follows in continuous
stream for more than three hundred years. It were
as if Dr. Livingstone, in following up the Nile to its
origin, should come to a thicket out of whose shadows a copious flood of waters is swelling free, and
should say, Here, I think, we have found its source.
We will go no farther, for the river has come to an
end.
Paul had never seen the Lord Jesus Christ in the
flesh. He tells us, too, that he conferred not with
flesh and blood; he did not receive Christianity from
any other persons who had seen the Lord Jesus in
1 Life of Saint Paul, ch. xxio




180          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the flesh. How then did he receive it? He says
that after his conversion he went into Arabia, and
thence returned to Damascus, and only after three
years went up to Jerusalem.l Meanwhile he gives us
to understand that the Christianity he was to preach
and expound he received by direct revelation from
Jesus Christ, and in such completeness and integrity,
and with such grasp on its interior truths, that some
who had been with Christ all the days of his mission
on earth were left far below him, sticking as yet in
the mere letter, and only to be released from its
scales as he had been, by the new influx of power
from the risen and glorified. This Jew, imprisoned
of late in the hardest Jewish shell, appears suddenly
with the shell shattered in pieces under his feet,
looking down upon it in triumphant scorn, much as
we may suppose the immortal spirit new-risen in
glory looks down on the body which lately incumbered it. Moreover, a whole system of truth, diviner
and lovelier than he had ever dreamed of, he now
holds and expounds as a concrete reality, involving a
new doctrine of God, of man, of justification and
redemption, of the resurrection, of the Church as a
universal brotherhood, and the kingdom of Christ as
the universal reign of righteousness on the earth.
All this, he says, " I neither received of man,
neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus
Christ." Not only so, but the ordinances of Chris1 Gal,. 11-24.




CHRISTIANITY A NEW INFLUX OF PO WER.     8I
tianity which were to symbolize its truths forever, he
says, were given him direct from the Lord Jesus, and
the scene of the Last Supper is described, and the
language repeated by which the ordinance was first
established, coinciding substantially with the account
which the synoptics gave some time afterwards from
their own memory of the scene.'
Moreover, in times of perplexity and fierce opposition from unbelievers when difficulties seemed to
close him round as a wall of adamant, he says the
Lord Jesus stood by him to cheer him on, or his
angels encircled him in bright array, and an open
path was then made for him, or the prison doors
opened and he went triumphant on his mission.2
Not by seductive eloquence, not by human logic
alone, often by simple prayer and the laying on of
hands, came the influx of power involving all present
in a sphere of new life and of transforming grace, and
lifting up their interior minds to quick-coming conceptions of truth that shamed all the philosophies of
the age. Moreover, this Paul, once so hard and bitter with theologic hate, becomes under the new influx as tender hearted as a child, and writes that
chapter on charity which has been a sweet lyric of
the heart, and tongued its highest inspiration to the
present hour.
1 Compare I Cor. xi. 23-26 and Matt. xxvi. 26-29; Mark xiv.
22-25; Luke xxii. 17-20.
2 Compare Romans xv. I8, Ig; 2 Cor. xii. 1-12; Gal. ii. 2; Acts
xvi. 25, 26.




182          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Those things in the book of Acts at which the
skeptical critics boggle most, the speaking with new
tongues, the visions of supernal realities, the miraculous healing, the incoming of the Holy Ghost at the
name of Christ, are all found in Paul's unquestioned
letters to the churches, and we are cornered up to
two alternatives in tracing Christianity to its origin.
The system of truth and influence which in its broadening course raised Europe out of barbarism, found
England a horde of savages, and made it the England
of to-day, shattered the Roman empire, and on the
ruins of the old paganism to which the heavens were
nearly closed, formed the Christian communions, into
which tidings of immortality came full and free, -
this system, followed up in history to the earliest
literature which attempts to account for its origin, is
found in the writings of a man who had epileptic fits,
or swoons, in which he saw a phantom which he
called Jesus, - or else to a real Jesus Christ, through
whom the heavens were opened, and swept the inmost chords of our human nature with the sovereign
grace and transforming power-of Almighty God.
It has become fashionable of late to decry Paley
and "the Paley men." His unpardonable sin is the
perfect transparency of his style and thought. What
he saw he saw in sunlight, though he did not see
very deep and far; and he had the rare faculty of
making his reader see exactly what he saw himself.
HIe never pretended to tell what he did not see, and




CHRISTIANITY A NEW INFLUX OF PO WER.                I83
call his subjective fog-shapes the advanced thought
of his   age.   Hence    his  offense   to  theology.    He
wrote a little book, which may still be found on the
neglected shelves of old libraries, which is a masterly
demonstration through internal circumstantial evidence and mutual corroboration of the authenticity
of the book of Acts and the Pauline letters. It has
never been answered, for the excellent reason that
it does not admit of any answer. As respects the
Epistles and the book of Acts, Mr. Andrews Norton
very well says Paley has "put the matter at rest." 1
1 Paley's argument in the Horce Paulintz, and the kind of evidence
which he exhibits, may be illustrated in this way, -
A piece of paper was once found which had served as the wadding
of a musket. Unrolled, it was found to be part of a newspaper which
had been torn in two. If the missing portion could be found in the
possession of certain parties certain facts of great local interest could
be established. Another piece was found, but how could it be identified as the missing one? Why, the torn edges fitted exactly together. Not only so, but the torn words also came together so as to
make sense and meaning along the whole line of separation. Nobody
doubted, of course, that the two pieces made originally one whole.
This gives some idea of the way in which the facts and allusions of
the book of Acts and the Pauline letters fit together and interpenetrate, as belonging to one historic whole. They run into minutiae
and delicate coincidence which no forger would have dreamed of and
no mere compiler could have happened upon. Paley's argument
must be read to be appreciated, and when read it gives the go-by to
the boundless guessings of Baur's "tendency theory and" the critique
of Renan on the four letters which he rejects as spurious.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE PAUSE IN HISTORY.
N the last chapter we ascended the stream of
Christian history through the two first centuries
of the Christian era. Let us reverse this process.
Let us come down from the other side and see what
forces there were out of which Christianity could
have been developed in the natural course of human
progress.
The Greek culture and philosophy had their consummation in Plato four hundred years before Christ.
We should anticipate were we to describe here that
marvelous achievement of human genius. We will
only say now that nowhere else do we find a system
wrought out by the human intellect which anticipates
so nearly the truths of Christianity. Nowhere before
or since that we can discover has human culture advanced so far or caught brighter gleams of the higher
realities. If humanity was to come by development
into the open light of a spirit-world, it should have
been from  the Hellenic religious consciousness.
Hence onward, however, its course in this line of
development is ever downward.
At about I50 B. c. Greece was merged in the




THE PAUSE   N HISTORY.         I85
Roman empire and became a part of it. In the widespread servility of the empire there is a dreary desert
varied only by changes from unbelief to superstition,
and from blank despair to a kindling hope that some
divine interposition might be nigh. From the Academy to the Lyceum, from the Lyceum to the Porch,
and from the Porch to the New Academy, the gravitation is sure and continuous towards Nihilism, - the
crumbling away of all the foundations of faith and
knowledge. Plato lived in the future; he was the
child of hope and aspiration. He saw an interior way
which led the soul upward to God, and to a personal immortality in her native star where once more
she shall hear the music of the heavenly spheres.
All. this is fantasy to the intensely logical and practical mind of Aristotle. He scouted the ideals of
Plato. He started from sensuous phenomena as the
prime grounds of human knowledge, and from this
the steps of his logic did not conduct him to the immortality of the soul. Aristotle acknowledges the
Supreme Reason, the God of Plato; God and the
World have had an eternal co-existence. But they
have no such inexistence as Plato had taught. The
Cosmos has a potentiality of its own, and God is in
it only as a foreign element. Its changes are not a
continuous progress'from lower to higher towards
some goal of ideal perfection, but oscillations back
and forth within its own limitations. With Aristotle
there is no ever-brightening future for the world or




i 86         THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
for humanity. The stoics who build upon him do
not like him separate the world from God. They
sink God in the world. They identify them as body
and soul, as essence and form; God the essence
being a divine fire, and matter being an evolution
out of it, to undergo periodic involution, - that is, be
consumed and taken back into the divine essence
again. This periodic evolution and involution make
up the grand aeons of the universe, its conflagration
and recreation. They are what always has been and
always will be, the eternal round and round of the
Divine activity, according to the laws of fate, which
man can neither escape nor change. Man is the
plaything of this eternal gyration, appearing one moment on the phenomenal surface, to disappear the
next and be sucked back on his way to absorption in
the eternal essence. This stoic fatalism inspired the
patience of great minds, accepting the inevitable,
putting on the pride of a godlike courage that could
scorn alike the pains and pleasures of the hour, and
like Lear meet the winds and the thunderbolts with
kingly defiance. Nevertheless, in this amazing descent from Plato to Zeno it is remarkable how humanity, divested of immortal life, has retired into the
background, and in the alternate rise and subsidence
of the tides of being and non-being, man belongs
ever to the latter division, and is the froth on the
highest curl of the waves.
From Zeno to Arcesilaus, the founder of the New




THE PAUSE It HISTORY.          I87
Academy, the strenuous opponent of the stoic philosophy, the transition is natural and easy enough.
It is natural, that is, to distrust the grounds of knowledge when knowledge leads to the brink of despair.
Arcesilaus, planting himself on the doctrine of the
old masters, Plato and Aristotle, denied the validity
both of sensuous reason and intellectual intuition.
For denial of the first he had abundant authority in
Plato; for denial of the second he had abundant authority in Aristotle. They cancel each other like
positive and negative; each is positive where the
other is negative, and each is negative where the
other is positive, and the result is NOTHING. The
disciples of the New Academy can defend with equal
eloquence any proposition and its opposite, and prove
both sides true and false at the same time. Carneades, once a stoic himself, but afterwards a zealous
convert of the New Academy, came to Rome with
great affluence of learning and a most bewitching
eloquence. He was sent thither by Athens as her
ambassador because of his persuasive oratory. There
he delivered his famous discourses for and against
justice; speaking first in support and then in opposition to the same doctrines both in philosophy and
morals. The young men were enchanted; and Cato
insisted that the ambassadors from Greece should
be dismissed with all possible despatch lest their
prolonged stay should corrupt the youth of Rome.
But Rome was already corrupt, for faith was every



i88          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
where dead, and the flooring of all knowledge had
fallen through.  The Greek religion had spent its
force. It had awakened aspirations which it could
not satisfy. It had caught gleams of beautiful ideals
which it could not incarnate. It had found rents
through the mist into a golden age of the past and a
golden age of the future. But that future was an
enchanted island across stormy waves. It might be
a dream and not a reality, and the darkness had come
down again like a cover and shut it clean out. There
was nothing in the Roman religion which could take
the place of the Hellenic or was fit to supersede it.
It had no prophets nor seers; no openings upward
or forward; only a heavy ritual to be worked mechanically by priests and haruspices. Its mysteries were
not those of Apollo and his choir," Who hymn the great Father
Of all things; and then
The rest of Immortals,
The actions of men;"
but they consisted in the shape and appearance of the
entrails of animals, in the flight of birds to right or
left, or in the alternatives " whether the sacred chickens ate greedily or hung their heads!" As religion
sank down into sense the worship of the gods was
superseded by the worship of the Emperor. Their
statues were decapitated, and the head of the Emperor placed upon them. The Jupiter Olympus of
Phidias ending with the bust of Caligula, represents




THE PAUSE IN HISTORY.                  189
pretty well the change of faith from its heavenly
idealizations to the ugly features of the time. Of
course sensible men had no faith in the fooleries of
the haruspices, and only believed in them as having
some influence over superstitious and vulgar minds.
Cicero, who wrote the "Tusculan         Questions" and
"De Natura Deorum," accepts, nevertheless, the conclusions of the New Academy; and declaring it impossible to rise beyond the probable, and deploring
the sad necessity of renouncing the discovery of
truth, he cries out bitterly that he doubts of all, and
of himself. Seneca relapses into the stoic pantheism,
declares God inseparable from nature, and divinizes
the sun. Caesar we said, proclaimed from the Senatehouse that death is the extinguishment of all conscious existence, and nobody seriously disputed him.1
1 The Roman Senate were convened December 5, B. c. 63, in the
Temple of Concord, to decide on the fate of the fellow conspirators of
Catiline who had been arrested and were held in custody. At no
time was the civil and religious character of the Senate more conspicuously represented. The proposition is before them to put the
prisoners to death. Caesar opposed the motion on the ground that
death was an end of all consciousness and therefore too mild a punishment. Cato and Cicero were in favor of it. The debate constitutes one of the curious passages of history. Caesar was Chief Pontiff, the highest functionary of the State Religion.
Sallust thus reports Caesar:"1 ge poena possumus equidem dicere id quod res habet; in luctu
atque miseris mortem aerumnarum requiem, non cruciatem esse; earn
cuncta mortalium mala dissolvera; ultra neque curze neque gaudii
locum esse."-Bell. Cat., ch. 51.
"In grief and misery death is not torture but a rest from troubles;




I90               THE FOURTH       GOSPEL.
Magicians and fortune-tellers stroll about everywhere,
and   these   mercenary     vagabonds    become     the  selfassumed interpreters of the mysteries of life. In the
dumbness of the oracles and the awful hush on the
minds of men, we can easily believe Plutarch where
he says that a voice, -"Great Pan is dead!" seemed
to come from the sea, articulate in the booming of
its waves.
Two results follow inevitably the decay of faith
and the paralysis of the religious faculty. Sorrow is
without consolation, and cries into vacancy; morality
is without support, and human nature relapses frightfully into its native savagery. How piteous are the
plaints of bereavement and how barren the topics of
it dissolves all the ills of mortals; beyond there is no place either
for sorrow or joy."
Cato replied, following closely and refuting generally all Coesar's
political arguments; but coming to this he bestows on it a single
sentence which sounds very much like delicate satire of the popular
faith. He says, -
"Bene et composite, C. Caesar paulo ante in hoc ordine, de vita et
morte disseruit; falsa, credo, existimans, quae de inferis memorantur; diverso itinere malos a bonis loca tetra, inculta, foeda atque
formidolosa habere." - Ch. 52.
"Very well and in good order Caesar a little before in this connection, discourses about life and death; thinking, I really believe, those
things to be false which they tell us about Hades; that the wicked
go a different way from the good into places that are foul, rough,
fetid, and fearful."
What Cato thought himself on this point he leaves us to doubt.
Cicero, in his fourth oration against Catiline, refers to Caesar's assertion without assent or dissent. The whole shows how little practical
faith there was in the Hades of the poets.




THE PAUSE IN HISTORY.          191
consolation in this pause between the death of the
old religions and the incoming of the new! Cicero
has lost a lovely daughter, and his friend Sulpicius
Severus writes from Greece thinking to soothe the
anguish of the father's heart. The letter has often
been quoted, and its import is, - Why bemoan the
death of a girl, when she and all of us, together with
cities and empires, are passing down the throat of
everlasting oblivion?
This affectation of comfort in despair, indicates
the want which uttered itself louder and louder from
minds whose sensibilities had not been quenched in
the wide-spread sensuality, or where the human had
not merged in the brute. Clemens, a noble Roman
who lived about the time of the first diffusion of the
Gospel, thus gives voice to these wants of the heart,
this very orphanage of human nature. "I was from
my early youth exercised with doubts which had
found entrance to my soul I hardly knew how. Will
my existence terminate at death; and will no one
hereafter be mindful of me, when infinite time sinks
all human things in forgetfulness? It will be as well
as if I had not been born. When was the world
created and what existed before the world was? If
it has always existed it will always continue to exist.
If it had a beginning it will likewise have an end.
And after the end of the world what will there be
then? It may be the silence of death, or it may be
something: of which no conception can be formed.




I92          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Incessantly haunted.by such thoughts, which came I
know not whence, I was sorely troubled so that I
grew pale and emaciated, - and what was most terrible, whenever I strove to banish this anxiety as
foolish, I only experienced the renewal of my sufferings in an aggravated degree. I resorted to the
schools of the philosophers, hoping to find some certain foundation on which I could repose; and I saw
nothing but the building up and pulling down of
theories, nothing but endless dispute and contradiction; sometimes, for example, the demonstration triumphed of the soul's immortality, then, again, that
of its mortality. When the former prevailed I rejoiced; when the latter, I was depressed.  Then
was I driven to and fro by the different representations; and forced to conclude that things appear not as they are in themselves but as they happen to be presented on opposite sides. I was made
more giddy than ever, and from the bottom of my
heart sighed for deliverance." In this distress of
mind Clement resolved to visit Egypt and hunt up a
magician to summon a spirit from the other world,
but some sensible philosopher dissuaded him.
Such was the hunger of human nature in 4fi_!>:
solemn pause of history. The wide spread decay
of the moral sentiment and the frightful corruption of manners, were a necessary consequent of
the paralysis of the spiritual faculties. The amusements of Roman ladies were the cruelties of the




THE PAUSE IN HISTORY.          193
amphitheatre, and the shrieks from rows of crucified slaves fell on the iron ears of spectators with
whom the throbs of pity were a childish weakness.
If the moral sentiment found cheap utterance in
poetry, or in moral codes, it was where the rights of
humanity were trampled out without remorse. "I
am a man and anything pertaining to man concerns
me," brought down the applause of a Roman theatre,
where the day after the groans of the dying gladiator
might have been applauded with equal glee. Applauding noble sentiments in the theatre was the
cheap commendation of virtues which only lived in
history. A play of Atticus was brought out during the games, and some passages which expressed
hatred of tyranny were loudly cheered. This was
when the very spirit of liberty had departed and the
gloom of despotism was thickening to its midnight;
and Cicero remarked that it gave him sorrow that
the people employed their hands in clapping at a
theatre instead of defending the Republic. Seneca
could write charmingly in praise of poverty and
self-sacrifice. "What have you done with the tons
of gold piled up in your cellars?" came back to him
i mie jeers of the multitude.
i'acitus, who saw only the ruin and desolation,
stands as one under a midnight sky, whose darkness
has fallen as a continuous blot upon the landscapes.
Human nature itself is in decay; virtue has died
out; servility and rapacity are universal; despotism
I3




194          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
has become a necessity; and he describes the face of
things as if he were the last man who stood self-contained, wrapped in his mantle and surveying the
ruins. "What is unknown," he says, "is thought
grand and mighty; but no longer is there any tribe
beyond us; nothing but waves and rocks, and Romans fiercer than they, whose unrelenting cruelty
you would vainly escape by obedience and good behavior. Plunderers of the world, after the land fails
from their ravage, they grope into the sea, being
greedy of his wealth if the enemy be rich, imbibing
his servility if he be poor; men whom neither East
nor West can satiate. Alone of mankind they covet
alike men's affluence and men's indigence. Theft,
butchery, and robbery, they falsely name empire, and
where they make a desert they call it peace."
On such a field as this Jesus Christ appeared,
some say the product of his times. He must have
been the product of the times, very much as a Lapland spring bursting from the bosom of an arctic
winter, is the product of its ice and snow. Christianity appears in the next century in the form of
little communions called churches, emerging as a
thousand glittering islets out of this sea of blackness,
the islets enlarging their area till they touched each
other; very much as the geologists say Europe rose
from the deep, first in spots of emerald that lay as
scattered gems on a wilderness of waters, but which
grew towards each other till they formed a great continent clothed in luxuriant green.




PART II.
HISTORIC    MEMORIALS.
"We regard them as a child might regard the stars, as chance
sparks of heavenly light, because we have not observed the law
which rules their order. However far one evangelist might have
been led by the laws of his own mind, it requires the introduction of
a higher power that four should unconsciously combine to rear from
different sides a harmonious and perfect fabric of Christian truth."WESTCOTT.








CHAPTER I.
THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY.
T   HE New Testament has four classes of writings
which we must carefully distinguish: the biography of Jesus; the history of the churches founded
on his life and word; letters to those churches formulating the Christian doctrine; and prophecy, which
forecasts the final triumph of Christianity. Every
one must see, however, that the biography contains
the revelation.  The history, the letters, and the
vision of prophecy, are commentaries upon it, and illustrations of its divine power in its operation upon
human nature. It is not necessary to suppose that
the commentaries, however important, are final and
exhaustive, or that its operation may not still be
variant and progressive. Indeed, if the four Gospels
embody a Divine Life, and the Divine Word made
flesh, no exposition of their contents can be taken as
final and exhaustive.
The relation of these four remarkable biographies
to each other, and especially of the first three to the
fourth, is a subject which has been investigated with
a thoroughness worthy of its exceeding interest.




198             THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Before we speak of their connection we wish to say
a few words of them separately.'
The order of time in which they were written, in
the opinion of most critics is the order in which they
stand in our Canon. Some place Mark first, but generally both in the ancient canon and the modern, not
only the four Gospels but all the books of the New
Testament fall into the order as we have them, or
nearly so, as if by some intuitive      discernment of
their pervading and organic unity.2
We place the date of the Gospels of Matthew       and
Mark not far from each other, and not much before
the year 60. We place Luke's Gospel later, and not
far from the year 65. These dates are not merely
conjectural. We can see no reason, after the most
searching criticism, for adopting any statement essentially different from  that of Ireneus (A. D. I70),
which agrees in the main with that of Papias (A. D.
1 It is no part of our plan and purpose to exhibit at large the historical evidence for the synoptics. We give what we consider the
fair results of investigation. For the process the reader who chooses
may read Norton, Fisher, Tischendorf, and the popular work of
Westcott on The Study of the Gospels, and on the skeptical side
Davidson's Introduction, and the last Leben yesu of Strauss. It will
be seen, however, that to establish the genuineness of the fourth
Gospel is to prove the genuineness of all the others, inasmuch as it
supplements and so far indorses them. Lange's learned and exhaustive work gives the matured results of investigation from the
orthodox point of view.
2 See this subject finely treated in Bernard's Progress of Doctrine;
Bampton Lectures, pp. 231-236, note.




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 199
I6), and with Clement (A. D. 200), and with Origen
(A. D. 225). John's Gospel must be placed in the
last quarter, and probably in the last decade of the
first century.  All its contents confirm the statements of Irenaeus and Clement, that John wrote it at
the solicitation of his friends to supply a growing
want in the Church of a more full knowledge of the
earlier life and miracles of Jesus, and of what pertained less to the "body " and more to the spirit of
his religion.
That the original Matthew's Gospel was written
in Hebrew, and that ours is a Greek translation of
the same, is generally admitted in accordance with
the early tradition, and with internal evidence in
the Hebraisms which are found in it. Mr. Norton
gives cogent reasons for believing that the first two
chapters in the received version were no part of
the original Hebrew Gospel, but were compiled
from tradition, and given first as a preface to the
Greek translation, to satisfy a natural craving of the
reader for some knowledge of the birth and childhood of Jesus, and that the preface found its way
afterward to the body of the narrative, as it inevitably
would do. The flight into Egypt and return seem
inconsistent with Luke,; the intended return to Bethlehem as if that were His home and not Nazareth,
seems out of keeping with both Gospels. The whole
cast of the narrative up to the third chapter, has not
the usual traces of Matthew's pen, which, as we read




200            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
him, has a rare gift for historical narration. We cannot agree, however, with Mr. Norton, that the preface,
even though not Matthew's, is to be set aside as of no
value.  We think it has very great value, and has
just the authenticity which such a preface, if made
soon after, would be likely to possess. The miraculous conception and birth agree with Luke's history,
and with what seems to have been the uniform belief
among the personal disciples of Jesus while his
mother was yet alive.   The story of the Magians
might have been a variation of that of the shepherds mentioned by Luke, or it might have been
real history; for numerous instances might be cited
to show that angelophanies were described under
the image of a guiding star. The alleged murder
of the children by Herod might have had some
ground of fact. It was preserved long afterwards in
the traditions and even the histories of his bloody
reign, for a pagan writer of later date plainly refers
to it in a passage in which it is manifest that the
writer had not found his authority in the New Testament but somewhere else.1
Assuming that Matthew's Gospel proper begins with
the third chapter, and with the words, " In the days of
1 The passage is from Macrobius, a writer whose date is not far
from the close of the third century, and is as follows: " Cum audisset
inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes, rex Judoeorum, intra bimattum
jussit inzlefeci, filium quoque ejus occisum, ait: Melius est Herodis
porcum esse, quam filium." - Satlurnalia, ii. 4.




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 20I
Herod appeared John the Baptist," 1 it proceeds with
a unity and power swelling on to its close, unmatched
in all literature for its simple majesty. We cannot
understand the state of mind that genders such criticisms as those of Strauss and Schenkel. Nothing
shall convince us that here is not an eye-witness of
the events he describes, and an ear-witness of the discourses he reports; whose mind has been lifted up
and greatened by the subject-matter beyond all ordinary inspiration. It is the highest inspiration where.
the writer entirely disappears in his theme, and such
a theme as this. We do not remember a personal
allusion or the expression of a personal feeling of
grief or admiration thrown in by the writer himself,
as if such things were profane in the awful hush of
emotion produced by his narrative. The discourses
are often reported at length, and generally in their
natural connection with the events that are grouped
so as to synchronize with them.     The opening sermon on the mount inaugurates formally the public
ministry of Jesus as the multitudes thronged about
1 The third chapter of our version opens: "In those days came
John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judaea." In what
days? The text just before relates to the infancy of Jesus. A writer
like Matthew would hardly leap a chasm of thirty years in a single
paragraph after that fashion. It ought to be said, however, that the
Greek e'v e rais q/edpais has in narrative more latitude of construction,
and may only mean " in course of time." Supposing that Matthew
compiled rather than composed the preface, and afterwards added it
to his history, all difficulties would vanish.




202          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
him throbbing and swaying with excitement, expecting the first summons of the wonder-worker to battle
for his temporal kingdom, when the words, " Blessed
are the poor in spirit" broke on the ears of his disciples. The discourse that followed is plainly the
report of an earwitness, and none of it could have
been invented afterwards and put into the mouth of
Jesus unless human wit had attainments then never
reached before nor since. The hush of the soul becomes more profound, as the narrative moves on, with
almost insupportable grandeur towards the consummation. It is plain that the order of events is here
preserved, for one scene leads on to another and prepares the way. Who that did not hear the sentence
of doom pronounced upon the " Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," in the last discourse of Jesus that
rang through the temple courts, could ever have reported it as Matthew has done? And who that did
hear it and have those words burned into his memory
would ever forget it? And who that did not hear the
discourse that followed on the slopes of Olivet, where
the scene opens up to the eternal judgment, could ever
have imagined it? And with what natural sequence
do the scenes of Gethsemane, of the trial, and of Calvary hasten on! "The fragmentary character of these
narratives!" If that means that they are fragments
out of the whole life of Jesus, it is doubtless true, but
we cannot imagine a work better arranged for unity
of impression growing deeper to the end, producing




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 203
without any art the effect of the highest art, than we
find in Matthew's Gospel.     There is a point wvaere
human passion and emotion, having gained their
height, go down again and give place to the noon-day
stillness inspired by the divine presence. That state
must have been gained by Matthew when he wrote
his description of the crucifixion. All of fear and
agony that can wring human hearts he had experienced as an eye-witness of the scene; he totally disappears from it in his narrative. To call his history
dramatic would be borrowing the language of the
stage. It is dramatic only as nature is in those
awful moods when man seems as nothing before the
on-goings of Omnipotence.1
The Gospel of Mark we regard as in fact the Gospel of Peter, bearing the impress of what may well
be supposed to have been the features of his mind.
Papias, Clement, and Origen are excellent authority
for ascribing the second Gospel virtually to this
Apostle. Papias knew and conversed familiarly with
the personal followers of Jesus.  " I made it a point,"
1 Mr. Norton rejects from Matthew's Gospel a passage in the description of the crucifixion found in chap. xxvii., verses 52, 53, but
without a shadow of external authority. "Many bodies of the saints
that slept arose." If, as was certainly the case at and after the resurrection of Christ and long after his ascension, the inner sight of his
followers was touched, and opened, there would be appearances to
them, not of Christ alone, but of some of his disciples lately deceased,
not in their natural, but spiritual forms. In the darkened pneumatology of the times they would inevitably have been reported as
"coming out of their graves."




204           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
he says, " to inquire what was said by Andrew, Peter, or Philip, what by Thomas, James, John, Matthew,
or any other of the disciples of our Lord." He says
he was informed by John the presbyter that Mark
wrote as the interpreter of Peter; and Clement says
further that, being the companion of Peter, he was
moved by the hearers of the latter to write out the
substance of Peter's sermons, and leave them a monument of the doctrine thus orally communicated.
This agrees with the traditions of the Church so
early, direct, and universal, that they would not be
mistaken, and it agrees with the contents of the
second Gospel.  Papias says, "Mark wrote with
great accuracy," but not "in the order in which it
was spoken and done by our Lord;" and Clement
says it had Peter's authority for being read in the
churches.1
The second Gospel, then, is a faithful report of
Peter's historical discourses. Of course, the first
preaching would be fundamentally historical. Mark
wrote down the most striking and important things
he had heard in Peter's narratives, and strung them
together separately without any single continuous historical thread. This we conceive is sufficient to account for the character of the book and for its abrupt
close, without resorting to Mr. Norton's extraordinary
and improbable hypothesis.2 For there can be no
1 Eusebius, H. E., ii. I5; iii. 39.
2 Mr. Norton imagines that Peter might have been preaching dur



THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 205
reasonable doubt, we think, that the best critics are
right - among which are Norton and Tischendorfin saying that the genuine Mark closes with the
eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter, and that the
following twelve verses are an appendix by some
later hand.
Conformably to this early history of the second
Gospel we find it a series of most vivid historical
pictures, such as none but an eye-witness ever could
have given. It has no such majestic sweep and flow
as we find in Matthew, and while it gives fragments
only of the discourses, and those often out of place,
it details matters of fact with minute and graphic
delineation, but with no subordination of parts to one
great idea. Little details are often thrown in found
nowhere else, which could not possibly have come
from imagination, but from reality alone. Peter's
narrative - for so we have a right to call the second
Gospel- has two characteristics which are quite
peculiar. It gives us glimpses, which are sometimes
exceedingly vivid, of the personal manner of Jesus and
the expression of his countenance. Again, incidents
are thrown in, very homely and almost unseemly in
their nature, which others leave out, and which no
romancer would ever have inserted; for instance, the
poor demoniac whom Jesus was to cure lay on the
ground gnashing his teeth, and "wallowed, foaming at
ing the persecutions of Nero, and that Mark stopped short in his
report when Peter was arrested.




206           THE FOUR7H GOSPEL.
the mouth." The whole seventh chapter is intensely
Petrine, both in its report of what Jesus said to the
Pharisees and in the explanatory passage concerning
their customs in baptizing, cups, benches, pots, and
kettles.1 The second Gospel shows that the narrator
had not the deepest spiritual insight of the meaning of his own story, but it gives us the most external life of our Saviour with every mark of downright
and sturdy honesty. We say, with every chapter,
these things were seen and heard on this earth, and
are matters of fact, and not of imagination.
Luke was not an eye-witness of what he relates,
but his narrative is doubly interesting from his
having been the companion of Paul. There was an
early tradition that he was one of the seventy, which
is confirmed by the fact that he alone has recorded
their mission and work. There is evidence, too, that
he had the confidence of John, and that he relates
things upon John's authority. This evidence is so
strong, that we shall consider portions of his history
as substantially that of John. We will state the evidence and the reader can judge.
i. No historian, of the rare qualifications which
Luke certainly had, would be likely to undertake
such a work as the third Gospel without availing himself of the best sources which he could command.
But there are portions of his narrative, as we shall
see, where John certainly was the only eye-witness,
1 ix. 20; vii. 1-23.




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 207
and there are other portions where this was probably
the.case. It is tolerably certain that John had not
left Palestine when the third Gospel was written, and
we positively know that Paul met him at Jerusalem
and found him a " pillar of the Church " very near
the time when Luke became a companion of Paul.1
It is hardly conceivable that Luke should not have
been brought into personal intercourse with the
disciple who had the most intimate relations with
Jesus.
2. Luke in his preface, more than intimates that
he wrote on the authority of eye-witnesses, and did
not receive his facts at second hand. "Since many,"
he says, "have undertaken to arrange a narrative
of the events accomplished among us, conformably to the accounts given us by those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning, and have become ministers of the Word, I have determined also, having
accurately informed myself of all things from the
beginning, to write a connected account that you
may know the truth concerning the narrations which
you have heard." 2 The conclusion is tolerably certain that he wrote on the testimony of men who
heard and saw.
3. John heard and saw a great deal which the
other writers did not. He was a disciple and intimate friend of Jesus, as we shall see, for a year or
more before the twelve had been chosen. He trav1 Gal. ii. 9, Io.     2 Luke i. I-4.




208          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
elled with the Master, stayed with him at Nazareth,
witnessed his miracles, went up with him to the Jewish festivals, and heard his conversations and parables,
some time before Jesus took up his abode at Capernaum. Any writer who undertook "accurately to
inform  himself of all things from the beginning"
and report thereon, would be strangely incompetent
if he did not resort to John, a living witness close at
hand.
4. Mary the mother of Jesus, was the adopted
mother of John, and a member of his household from
the day of the crucifixion. The main facts in the
first chapter of Luke could come only from two
possible sources: direct special revelation or the
word of Mary. Luke's own statement precludes the
former and necessitates the latter, and strongly implies his intercourse with John and his family. His
entire introduction relative to the birth of Jesus and
the Baptist has an air of historic certitude in details
which Matthew's preface has not. The visit of Mary
to Elizabeth, their conversation together with the
whole subject-matter, are what women who had been
mothers, and such mothers, would have fondly kept in
memory and related afterward, but what would have
originated in the head of no man to put into history.
The chapter is intensely natural; the angelophanies,
under all the circumstances, are not unnatural or
incredible; and John in his introduction, gives the
spiritual and divine side of the same series of facts




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 209
as if complementing what Luke had already written.
Moreover, Luke's account of the childhood of Jesus,
including his dispute with the doctors in the temple
and the search for him by his parents, could only have
come from his mother. Mary might have been living when Luke wrote; but whether so or not, John,
adopted as her son under circumstances of bereavement unparalleled in any story of human sorrow, would
be the person to whom she would have confided such
facts as are detailed in Luke's first chapter; and any
writer must have been strangely remiss and careless
if writing on such subjects he would not eagerly avail
himself of such authority.
5. Luke in portions of his narrative is intensely
Johannean. Where he relates things in common
with Matthew and Mark, there is a general indefiniteness, and except towards the close a want of historical order. The great discourses are broken up,
and striking passages from them combined and distributed anew, and without any reference to the time
and place of delivery. Important sayings are reported
as being in " a certain place," or "a certain village," or
"one day," or " one of those days," or " one day as
he was teaching." Things are inserted in the forepart of his Gospel which belong to the latter part
in the order of time.1 But in one kind of narrative
Luke is unrivalled. Those parables which search
the inner life most thoroughly and go to the deeper
1 See chap. ix. 44, 51.
14




210          THE FOURTIH GOSPEL
hunger and thirst of the soul, are reported by Luke
alone; and some of them plainly, all of them possibly, belong to that section of the ministry of Jesus
which antedates the residence at Capernaum, but
includes the sole discipleship of John and one' or
two others along with him. There are five of these
parables preserved only by Luke: the Prodigal Son,
the Unjust Steward, Dives and Lazarus, the Good
Samaritan, the Pharisee and the Publican. They
differ from the parables properly so-called and freely
reported by Matthew, inasmuch as they are not
drawn from the analogies of nature but from human life, sometimes in its dearest and sweetest relations, and touch a tenderer chord of sympathy
and love. They symbolize a more intimate relation
between the heavenly Father and the human child,
and they represent the universal brotherhood of the
race. The beggar in Hades resting in Abraham's
bosom; the publican justified above the pharisee; the
man robbed and half murdered in the city of priests,
to be cared for by the despised Samaritan, show unmistakably the Saviour in conflict with Judaism in
its own capital, where his ministry commenced with
John and one or two others as his fellow disciples.
They show Christianity thoroughly cleared of Judaism. These parables, where it is divinely embodied,
could have come only through an eye and ear witness, and they are most congenial with the spirit of
John.




TH-E FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 211
6. There are events of which John of all the
twelve was the sole spectator or presumptively so,
and which Luke reports; and though elsewhere he
is often vague and fragmentary he is wonderfully distinct and graphic here and has the scenic minuteness of an eye-witness. We cite two of these instances; one given by the other synoptics in more
general terms, the other omitted altogether.' Again,
there are cases where Peter, James, and John were
the only spectators and where Luke's narrative is
much more graphic and detailed than that of the
two other synoptics and, twice at least, lets us more
interiorly into the spirit of the scene in the very
style and method of the favorite disciple.2
The relation of the first two Gospels to the third
and the first three to the fourth, becomes a subject
of exceeding interest and importance. It has been
the common method to study these four biographies
as parallel. How much we may be confused and
nonplussed by any such attempt, those who have
used the "Harmonies" can bear witness.    The
Harmonies leave us with a painful impression of
fragments jumbled together, but not joined. The
truth is, these narratives are not parallel, and cannot
be made to appear such, and yet taken together they
have a unity which is not fortuitous but providential
and vital. It is like the unity between the body and
1 See Luke xxii. 63-7I, and xxiii. 6-II, and 26-44.
2 See Luke ix. 28-36, and xxii. 41-46.




212           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the soul that warms and inspires it. They are not
parallel but introjacent, and the more we study them
as such the more shall we see that organic completeness and correlation. One lies within another. We
begin with the most external, - the sheer natural life
of Jesus, - and we are carried successively to the
heavenly and thence the divine heights of his being.
Matthew and Mark dwell upon the ultimate facts,
describe the outward life, the physical sufferings and
death of Jesus. They do it with graphic power and
more than Doric simplicity, as only an eye-witness
could. It is true they do more than this. But the
humanity of Jesus is put foremost and made intensely real, and the first two Gospels seldom tell us
anything which an outside looker-on could not have
reported.l  Luke, on the other hand, relates with
much detail his supernatural conception and birth;
and he reports sayings of Christ without regard to
chronological order, often with reference to some
other series of doctrine or some other province of
duty. And he gives us entire discourses and parables, as we have shown, which reflect the mind of
Jesus in more spiritual hues, and the relation of all
men to God in a more intimate and filial communion.
But in the fourth Gospel we are carried up to the
divine heights of the being of Jesus. We enter
the "circle within the circles."  Things are related
1 The account of the temptation, and the agony in the garden, are
exceptions, Matt. iv. I-II, and xxvi. 39-45.




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 213
which serve to complement what had gone before,
supplying from the divine side of his being, that which
gives congruity to the whole. It is not credible that
a child should be brought into this world without
any human father, and the statement of Matthew's
preface or Luke's genealogy standing alone is beyond the grasp of rational thought. John's Proem
gives us, however, the same fact seen on the thither
or divine side, and if one is true the other must inevitably be. One is only the basis or earth-side of a
transcendent divine reality which alone can glorify
it, and make it a perfect living whole, only to take on
the ghastliness of death by being picked in pieces.
There is a wonderful Providence in the formation
and development of the Christian canon of Scripture.
What the nascent Church needed first of all things to
know was the fundamental facts, the natural life, so to
say, of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the earliest preachers would at first be at pains to present.
Little else would then be likely to be understood.
The Apostles would not begin the grand fabric of
Christian doctrine at the top and build downward to
the ground; they would begin at the ground and
build upward into the skies. Hence the striking
verbal coincidence between Matthew and Mark, as if
the Apostles had been accustomed to recite to their
hearers over and over again the fundamental facts in
the biography of Christ, until the very words had become stereotyped in their memories. The new con



214          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
verts, whether Jewish or heathen, would need at the
start to be thoroughly possessed with that biography
as exhibited to the senses, "what the eyes had seen
and the hands handled of the Word of Life."  How
absolutely necessary this was is shown by the baseless and fantastic speculations of Gnosticism which
soon followed, which ignored the natural life of Jesus
altogether, and which would have made Christianity
only a gorgeous and ever-shifting cloud-castle floating in air. That the Church should have begun with
the fourth Gospel, and ended with the first, is not
conceivable. That it should have begun with the
first, and from its secure foundations been drawn up
to the celestial and divine heights of the third and
fourth, accords with the facts of the case and the
nature of things.
And it accords with our individual experience.
We learn Christ after the flesh before we learn him
spiritually and divinely. We must see him and
know him on the side of his natural humanity, a
partaker of our nature, a sharer of all our woes and
sufferings, or he will not touch our human sympathies and our tenderest love. But we are not likely
to rest here. That it is not merely the carpenter's
son who has found us and melted the flint from our
hearts by such friendship and philanthropy, and such
self-abnegation as the world had not known, we begin already to perceive, and when the fourth Gospel
draws us upward to a vision of his unveiled divinity,




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 215
and oneness with the Godhead, we are made conscious of no incongruity in his life and character,
but rather of their majestic proportions and harmony.
How utterly futile the objection becomes, that the
fourth Gospel omits things which are contained in
the first and second, and contains very important
matters which we miss in the others, must be obvious
from these considerations. Why should John repeat
what he knew the churches already possessed, unless for the purpose of showing its relation to a
higher series of truth and doctrine, which he sometimes does; or why should Matthew, or Peter through
Mark his amanuensis, undertake to pour all the treasures of the new revelation upon minds just opening
towards it out of Jewish formalism and heathen superstition? The objection too that each of the four
Evangelists has his own peculiar style, and that the
fourth Gospel throughout is chromatic with some
mind and genius altogether foreign to the other three,
not only is without validity, but suggests a most wonderful and providential guidance. Each writer, of
course, would select and give forth that in the life of
the Master which was most in adaptation to his own
mind and capacity to receive and reproduce, - and
Peter of all others would be the man to set forth the
ultimate facts and physical environment; the life of
Christ as addressed to the senses of men. Hence
his Gospel has such an air of reality that Schenkel,




216          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
who sees Christ only as a man of natural growth and
development, receives only Mark as an authentic
book, though the external evidence is not a whit
stronger than that of the fourth Gospel. John of
all others would be the man to set forth the inmost
series both of fact and doctrine pertaining to the life
of Jesus; to describe the new temple of truth, not
in its outer courts and granitic foundations, but in
the holy of holies, where the glories of the Highest
are without symbol and veil.
The writer just referred to, in his attempted " portraiture of Jesus," rejects the fourth Gospel as unhistoric. In that shuddering dread of supernatural
light which characterizes minds of his class, he rules
out this book as the work of some fabricator of the
second century tinged with the Gnostic theosophy.
Only Mark is authentic.  But the writer becomes
conscious that his portraiture must be incomplete
from Mark alone. He sees even from his point of
view that here is a foundation whose superstructure
towers into the tranquil heavens beyond the clouds
that hide it, and quite beyond his view, and he is
compelled after all to resort to a book which he had
rejected as unhistoric and spurious, in order to present the life he is depicting in its symmetrical and
crowning perfections. He says of the writer of the
fourth Gospel, "He has elevated into the region of
eternal thought, and invested with the transfiguring
glory of a later century, a selection of reminiscences




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 2I7
from the Christian traditions, taken out of the framework of their history in time. He has done this
with an understanding of the interior being, and the
loftiest aim of the life of Jesus, as it could not have
been done at an earlier, and morally considered, narrower time. The fourth Gospel, therefore, serves as
a really historical authority, for the representation of
the moral being of Jesus, but in a high and spiritual
sense of the word. Without this Gospel, the unfathomable depth, the inaccessible height of the idea
of the Saviour of the world, would be wanting to us,
and his boundless influence, ever renewing our collective humanity, would ever remain a riddle. In
the several particulars of his development, Jesus
Christ was not what the fourth Evangelist paints
him; but he was that in the height and depth of
his influence; he was not always that actualized,
but he was that in truth. The first three Gospels
have shown him to us still wrestling with earthly
powers and forces. The fourth Gospel portrays the
Saviour glorified in the victorious power of the spirit
over his earthly nature. The former show us the
son of Israel, struggling in his humanity up towards
heaven; the latter the King of Heaven, who descends full of grace from the throne of eternity into
the world of men. Our portraiture of him must
not disregard the natural, earthly foundation of the
first three Gospels if it aims to be historically real;
but it can be an image of Jesus, eternally true only




218          7HE FOURTH GOSPEL.
in the heavenly splendor of the light which streams
from the fourth Gospel."
This writer will not believe that John, who leaned
on the Saviour's breast, has described most perfectly
"his interior being, and the loftiest aim of his life,"
but that some writer not yet released from heathen
superstitions, living nearly a century afterward, has
done this out of the legend and fable that came down
to him. The Christ that changed the course of history, and that moves the heart of the world in its
profoundest deeps, is not the Christ as he lived and
acted in Palestine, but as an unknown writer of the
second century has produced him from unveracious
traditions and from his own ideals!
This is the miracle we are to believe in order to
void the miracles of the New Testament. This undesigned and unconscious homage to the overwhelming internal evidence of the fourth Gospel, and to its
essential place in a seamless whole, is vastly significant. We shall be relieved of much needless difficulty when we are willing to think that an interworking Providence had something to do in the
canon of the New Testament, in the order of its formation, in the constitution and arrangement, especially of these four wonderful biographies, and their
growth into organic unity in such wise that each demands and complements the others; one within another, like circles convergent towards an illuminated
centre.




THE FOUR GOSPELS IN ORGANIC UNITY. 219
It is often said that the four Gospels do not contain any system of theology, and that Jesus never
taught any. If this means only that he did not draw
up a set of articles, it is certainly true. But the system is there, too vast for us to make a model of for
exhibition, and all the more impressing us with a
sense of the divine order that reigns through it.
You might as well say that there is no system of
nature, because the ocean-shores are not geometric curves; because the rivers are not canals; or because the constellations are not grouped in regular
figures, which children can count off or copy in their
diagrams. It is a fact exceedingly suggestive, that
those who have attempted to make out a life of Christ
and reduce him to our human proportions, sifting out
everything which cannot be accounted for after the
fashion of our common experience, or leaving out
everything which cannot be defined in human creeds
and propositions, make their readers painfully aware,
if they do not become so themselves, that Christianity in its subtile and vital essence has eluded their
analysis; that the Christ of their books is one of
their own invention.




CHAPTER II.
JESUS OF MATTHEW IS THE LOGOS OF JOHN.
MA    ATTHEW   and Mark dwell primarily on the
humanity of Jesus; but his natural life is not
described as unfolding under conditions which are
merely normal. It is described as the ground and
the ultimate manifestation of a life which is more
than human. Not only in what Jesus teaches but in
his manner of teaching this is always to be observed.
He speaks with that tone of command and authority
which, with men giving their natural intuitions or
the deductions of their private reason, would be
intolerably offensive. The sermon on the mount
amazed his hearers, not so much on account of its
subject-matter, as on account of his method and
tone, for he appealed not to the law and the
prophets for his proof-texts, as the scribes were
wont to do, but made his utterance out of that
original divine sovereignty whence law and prophets
derive their authority. What to him were Moses
or Solomon, -"a greater than Solomon is here."
Mark dwells less than either of the synoptics on the
prope: divinity of Christ; but all through his narrative there is an air and manner on the part of the




7ESUS OF MATTHEW THE LOGOS OF yOHN. 221
subject of it which would be intolerable self-assumption for Moses or Solomon, or for any prophet or
lawgiver, and which presuppose a divine epiphany
in Jesus.1 We can cool down these passages by a
process of criticism into figure and rhetoric, but the
whole air and method will remain, and they are
such as fit in with the natural coursings of no
human biography before or since.
But we come now to remark another of the boldest characteristics of Matthew's Gospel. If we imagine that because Matthew was concerned primarily
with the humanity of Christ, he was forgetful of his
divinity, and presents him to us as a fine specimen
of the best culture of his times, we shall not read
far before we find our imagination melting away.
Not merely Jesus but the Christ - the Christ of authority from above - is presented with a sharpness
and boldness made more uncompromising by the intense realism of the first Gospel. Many illustrations
of this fact are crowding upon us, but we will select
only three.
I. The doctrine of John's Proem is explicitly asserted in Matt. xi. 27. After rebuking the cities
where his Word had been delivered and his works had
been done, Jesus tells them that their guilt in rejecting him was greater than the guilt of Sodom, and
that it would be more tolerable for Sodom in the day of
1 Read, for instance, Mark i. 7-II; ii. 10, 28; viii. 38; xii. 35-37;
xiii. 26, 27; xiv. 62; xv. 2.




222          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
judgment. Then falling into a strain of indescribable
tenderness, he subjoins: "All things are delivered
unto me of my Father, and no man knoweth the Son
but the Father, NEITHER KNOWETH ANY MAN THE
FATHER, SAVE THE SON, AND HE TO WHOMSOEVER
THE SON WILL REVEAL HIM. Come unto ME all ye
that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest." It has been asserted that the Logos-doctrine
is peculiar to John. We find it not so, but only its
metaphysical form of statement. It is set forth here
in Matthew, with a clearness which no human language can improve upon, coupled with invitations
out of the very heart of the Divine mercy which no
fabricator would invent or imagine.
2. Christ, as the judge of men, is unquestionably
the burden of the fourth Gospel. But if found in
John asserted in more metaphysical language, it is
found in Matthew drawn out with more than dramatic power, and with a sublimity unsurpassed anywhere in the New Testament. And it is not found
in Matthew as exceptional as if some interpolater had
put it in. It is found at the conclusion of the discourse from the heights of Olivet, when, as the
doomed city lay at his feet, the vast future opened to
the eye of Jesus, even to the retributions of an eternal world. The discourse rises in grandeur to the
final announcement, "When the Son of Man shall
come in his glory and all the holy angels with him,
then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And




yESUS O' MATTHE'W THE LOGOS OF yOHN. 223
before him shall be gathered all nations, and he
shall separate them one from another as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from the goats." There is no
such passage as this in the fourth Gospel. The same
doctrine is variously asserted. The incarnate Word
is to be the Judge of men. "All who are in the
graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth."
But it is stated in a more colloquial and supplementary way, and is no more than a commentary on the
grand and sustained utterance from Mount Olivet
*reported in the first Gospel.
3. But there is another passage, if possible still
more significant, in the first Gospel, asserting the
Divinity of Christ with a power to which neither
John nor any other writer has given any additional
strength. It is the final charge of Jesus to his disciples, involving the formula of baptism. It was given
as Matthew reports, at the last post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to his disciples. "All power is
given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo! I am with you
alway, even to the end of time." (roV alavos.)
The passages we have cited are not exceptional in
Matthew's Gospel, but with others of similar import
they connect themselves organically with the whole
narrative. The fact then stands thus: that the first




224          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Gospel dwells primarily on the humanity of Jesus, for
it comes first in the order of time. The whole doctrine of the incarnation is baseless without it, and
would only be a Gnostic theosophy floating in air.
But Matthew, in consequence of those very qualities
of his mind and style which give his narrative this
intense and uncompromising realism, has also made
the Divinity of Christ stand out with corresponding
distinctness of outline.  John writes thirty years
afterwards with the synoptics before him, professedly
to complete them. He does complete them, not undertaking to lay the foundations anew, but telling us
a great deal about the Divinity of Christ, which explains, illustrates, and enlarges what the others had
reported, showing the sublime peaks of doctrine
which they had left in rugged outline, bathed in a
sweeter and softer splendor from the morning sky.
If the reader, however, is in any doubt as to
whether the Jesus of the first Gospel is the Christ
of the fourth, if he thinks the first may be a man developed like other men out of the culture of his times,
while the other was the factitious invention of a later
day, he can easily bring this matter to the test.
Summon the best man you can find, the most advanced prophet of to-day, and let him stand in the
position of this same Jesus, the mere man of the first
Gospel. Let him see if he can grasp his thunders.
Let some prophet of to-day who ought to have grown
up to the stature of Jesus, -the mere human devel



yESUS OF MATTHEW THE LOGOS OF yOHN. 225
opment, declare in the face of the world that no
man knoweth the Father but himself, and those to
whom he shall reveal him; let him assume to sit
on a throne of glory with all the holy angels
around him, and part the nations to the right hand
and the left, to everlasting.punishment or to life eternal; let him announce that all power is given to him
both in heaven and earth; let him put his own name
into a formula of baptism, and charge his followers to
make disciples, in the name of the Father and the
Holy Ghost, and - himself. Would the world be converted by such preaching at the rate of three thousand in a day; or would they regard it as self-conceit
and self-assertion, passed into the stage of monomania, and fit only for an asylum for the insane?
15




CHAPTER III.
THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH.
IRTHI, from any view we can take of it, is a profound mystery. There are two kinds. There
is the birth of species, or ascent from a lower plane
to a higher one; and there is the propagation of the
same species successively on the same plane of existence. In the former, the Divine power operates
immediately through the matrices of nature; in the
latter, through finite parentage. That any new species or new style of life was started mechanically by
the Creator, or "made out of nothing," not only
shocks the reason, but lacks all confirmation in
any known facts of natural history.  Theology is
strangely fearful lest the Darwinian hypothesis of
development should sink us in atheism. Should it
ever be verified it would only be to write out a chapter of a new book of Genesis, wonderfully confirming
the old one, showing in succession the birth of species, and the ascent through six days of creation till
man appeared upon the earth.
Nature only affords matrices for the all-fructifying
spirit. If we attempt to trace to its beginning a new
type of life we find, of necessity, that it abuts upon




THE MYSTERY OF BIR T.          227
something both higher and lower than itself. On the
natural. side it has been produced from something
lower; animal life, for instance, has been evolved
from vegetable. But to suppose that the vegetable
kingdom mounted up of itself into the animal, would
be to shock the reason more violently than the most
mechanical and potter-like theology has ever done.
The same is to be said of the assumption that animals climbed up into manhood, the monkeys rubbing
off their tails, and otherwise improving their condition,
till they found themselves spiritual beings possessing
immortal souls. But the idea that the human species
at its origin abuts upon something both higher and
lower than itself, seems almost a necessity of the
reason; upon the matrices of a lower life in its selectest forms on the natural side, and on the paternal
side on nothing less than the brooding Spirit of God.
Development from lower to higher species is not selfevolution. Every creation of a new type of being is
a conception and a birth, having only nature on the
maternal side, and the immanent Deity on the paternal necessitating no finite fatherhood between.
Suppose, then, it should turn out as one of the
discoveries of natural science that man was not
manufactured de novo by direct interposition of God,
but that there is a vast system of evolution climbing
upward, from the nebula to the mineral, from the
mineral to the plant, from the plant to the animal,
and from the animal to man, - the glorious flower of




228          THIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the whole opening upward into the light of immortality, for whom everything beneath serves only as
root and stem, I can conceive of nothing more worthy of the Divine wisdom and omnipotence. And
that wisdom is none the less adorable that its creation
rises not through breaks and divisions where we can
insert our dissecting knives, but in unfolding grace
and order as the seed rises up into the palm tree,
and then flowers forth towards the sunbeams.
Every new type of life draws up into itself the next
lower one, including that and —SOMETHING MORE.
The mineral is not the nebula, but it takes the nebula into its organic structure; the plant is not the
mineral, but it draws up the mineral into its composition; the animal is not a vegetable, but he takes up
the vegetable, and decomposes it in a higher vitality;
man is not an animal, but he must take up and include the animal as the basis and background of
spiritual existence. Each includes what is below it
and something more, and that something more comes
from above nature, unless the stream can mount
higher than its source, and unless all our talk about
the nexus of cause and effect is without meaning.
And if it be true that man was not extemporized by
his Creator, but that a million years were employed
in making him, we do not see that the workmanship
is any the less wonderful and superb on that account,
for what are a million years but as the tick of a watch
in the eternity of God?




THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH.          229
Climbing up from these analogies we are ready to
say that if a higher type of life than the human, including that and something more, is to be produced
upon this earth, it will not probably descend externally out of heaven, and stand among us in its insulation. Neither again will it be manufactured. It
will be born. And it will be born of the brooding
Spirit of God on the paternal side and of our human
nature on the maternal, with no finite fatherhood intervening, and the product of such conception and
birth would be a style of DIVINE LIFE into which
men do not develop by natural progress and selfimprovement, but which would express to them more
completely and openly the moral perfections and glories of the Godhead.
This is precisely what three of the New Testament
writers affirm respecting the birth of Jesus Christ.
Two of them affirm it mainly from the natural or
maternal side, one of them from the supernatural and
divine. It is easy to do this. Other writers had
done like things before, putting in the claim of supernatural parentage and birth for the heroes of their
narratives. But they do it at their peril. The progress and the ending of such a life must answer to its
beginning, and be congenerous with it. He who puts
up such a porch as this imposes upon himself the
task of making the building correspond to it. If he
resorts to invention and imagination at the beginning, so he must in the progress and the ending, and




230         7TIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
he is perfectly sure to overwhelm himself with confusion and disgrace. For a man can no more imagine
and depict out of his own subjective state a style of
life organically above it and divinely human than he
could himself beget it or create it. To say that he
could pre-determine and describe the hero of such a
narrative, would be saying that he was himself the
hero, or else that he occupied the same plane of
existence with him. An elephant or a monkey could
have just as easily imagined what was to be the style
of human life before man existed on the earth. And
so we find that before the birth of Jesus Christ all
the stories of heroes with pretended superhuman
birth and origin make their lives and characters
more decidedly sub-human than those of common
men. The very effort to make them more than human, or more than natural, renders them all the more
inhuman, unnatural, fantastic, and absurd.
The commingling of the two streams of life, maternal and paternal, and the divine life within them both,
is one of the inscrutable mysteries. The laws which
govern it are as yet very imperfectly understood. The
paternal life is wrapped within the maternal, the latter - the maternal - prevailing through the years of
infancy and on into childhood, and serving to weave
the garments of flesh and blood and the exterior
qualities of mind and soul; all, in fine, that goes to
make up the external man. The maternal life is
sometimes vigorous and dominating to such an ex



THEZ MYSTERY OF BIRTH.         231
tent that the paternal never appears externally, or, if
at all, only feebly and dimly. It is held within the
other, and held in abeyance. Unless, however, it is
dominated in this way, it appears, though later than
the other; the paternal qualities coming forth with
greater and greater fullness, while the maternal retire before them, and sometimes disappear altogether,
having served as the scaffolding of the intellectual
and spiritual man. Hence we often find that while
the resemblance to the mother at first is very great,
in mind, feature, and disposition, it grows less and
less with increasing years, while the features and the
mind and passions of forefathers, sometimes for generations back, break through and become envisaged
in all their strength and brightness. Our paternal
humanity is within our maternal, sometimes never
invading the consciousness or shaping our exteriors
till infancy and childhood have had their day, but
nevertheless prevailing in the end, and descending
through lines of ancestry for hundreds of years.
Within our entire humanity, deeper than all its
wrappages and layers, is the immanent Deity himself.
But He never invades our consciousness as God. He
never is within us as any part of our proper selves.
Behind and within our voluntary powers He is the
inspiring energy on which we ever draw, and out of
which we breathe the breath of life; but the limit of
our self-consciousness is precisely the limit where
humanity ends. When his life becomes our life it is




232          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
no longer Divine but human, and within the reach
of our voluntary agency, to give back to Him in selfrenouncing service, or pervert to selfish and ignoble
ends.
Supposing it possible, however, for a being to be
born into our earthly degree of existence with a finite
maternal humanity on one side and the Divine Spirit
on the other, with no finite fatherhood between, then
it is conceivable that as the maternal humanity waned
and the paternal dawned and brightened through the
consciousness, it would image forth to us the Divine
perfections on a loftier plane of existence than man
and nature had ever done. Such a person would not
speak and teach and act merely from a finite and fallible intelligence, but as the inmost Divine waxed and
the outward and finite waned, he would speak and teach
and act from the Divine reason itself. Such would
not be a case of mere prophetic inspiration which is
temporary and vanishing, but of Divine incarnation,
in which the voice of the Divine Reason is the
normal dictate of the soul. It would not be right to
say that such a being is God, if you mean that God is
limited to any outward symbolization, but it would be
true that the finite maternal humanity, waning and
disappearing, God would be revealed to us in a higher
degree of life, and in more perfect and unclouded
glory than inanimate nature or sinful men could ever
reveal Him. And though what is called "the hypostatic union" is beyond our comprehension and anal



THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH.         233
ysis, so also is any union of the infinite with finite
natures. In man God is one degree nearer to us than
in the animal, but in a Divine Humanity he would
be nearer still, and with a personality more openly
brought to view. In a person divinely human there
would be nothing unnatural, but something more than
natural; there would be nature transfigured and exalted. There would be nothing inhuman, but something more than human; humanity made divine, and
therefore the most clear and spotless mirror through
which the divine attributes shine forth upon the
world. We can conceive that there might be a necessity in the course of human advancement for such
a revelation of the Divine Perfections; that sinful
men, however developed, are no adequate representatives of God; that there was an appropriate time for
some knowledge of Him above the light of nature,
above depraved human instincts, above legal codes
and verbal declarations; that these instincts themselves might have been yearning forward in expectation of a nearer divine epiphany, as when men watch
the reddening streaks of twilight; until God should
appear as a new sunrise, to light up the dark annals
of the earth with diviner glow.
We are assuming nothing here. We are only describing the rational possibilities and probabilities of
the case. Men might find God partially in nature
and in themselves, for He is immanent in both, but
in such a divine epiphany He would be revealed in




234          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
a higher DEGREE OF LIFE and illustrate both nature
and man more perfectly from the divine side of all
created things. By the immanence of God, in us,
we might surely recognize such an advent of the
Lord when it takes place. But we should not be
likely to master its psychology, since we know it
so little in the lower degrees of life, where infinite
and finite interpenetrate in nature and in ourselves.
We have three narratives which describe the birth
of Jesus Christ, those of Matthew, Luke, and John.
The first, describe the human, the last the divine side
of this one event, from which a long and marvelous
history was to take its rise. Matthew, or whoever
wrote his preface, says He was born of Mary, a Jewish virgin, and was begotten of the Holy Ghost without any intervening human paternity; and he shows
the lineage of Joseph, afterwards her husband, in its
descent through David from Abraham, the father of
the Jewish nation. Mary's line, though not traced,
runs into that of Joseph, as she belonged probably to
the same tribe; so that although Jesus had no human
father, yet on the side of his maternal humanity he
would inherit the proclivities of the Jewish race from
Abraham downward. Luke also gives the birth of
Christ without any human or finite fatherhood, tracing the line inversely from Joseph to Abraham and
beyond him to Adam, the son of God. Both these
genealogies were probably copied from public records.
The names in the two genealogies do not coincide,




THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH.          235
and much criticism has been brought to bear upon
the supposed discrepancy. But there is no discrepancy that can be discovered. These names do not
stand for individuals merely, but many of them for
houses or families through a long lineage, the head
of the line being preserved where it runs into
another line, several intervening links being left
out.  Jewish genealogies were recorded in this
way.  Thus Matthew says, Joram    begat Ozias.
But Joram was. not the father of Ozias, but his ancestor removed four degrees from him, as any one
will see by tracing the genealogy in the books of
Kings and Chronicles. Three links are there recorded which Matthew leaves out. All that can be
said is, the missing links of Luke's genealogy do not
synchronize with the missing links of Matthew's.
There might have been reasons which do not appear
on the surface. The only reason for giving the genealogy at all was to represent the qualities in its
several degrees upward of the humanity inherited
and impersonated in Jesus Christ. So, too, the objection that Mary's genealogy, not Joseph's, ought
rather to have been given, has no validity. Men, not
women, represented tribes and lines of descent, and
Joseph's name probably stood in the tribe to which
Mary belonged and through which came all the ancestral blood that coursed through her veins.
Matthew's account, as we have said, has been chal1 Chap. i. 8.




236          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
lenged as no part of the genuine first Gospel. But
the genuineness of Luke's narrative is unquestioned.
The most fastidious criticism does not attempt to
mutilate the record. Still its story of the conception
and birth of Christ is called "legendary" by easy
assumption on the part of that class of writers who
arbitrarily sift the record till the residuum leaves only
a man of natural birth and endowment. We show
elsewhere, as we think, excellent reasons for regarding Luke's account as coming direct from the lips of
Mary, or at most with only one intervening witness,
that of John her adopted son. John's testimony is
at one with that of Matthew and Luke, and only
rounds and complements it. His record assuredly
of the birth of Jesus interpenetrates their's from the
divine side of things. They had described from the
earthly side and from Mary's point of view, the maternal humanity with all its inheritance of Jewish
proclivities, and of human proclivities from Adam
down. John supplements them by saying that the
Word, which was iv apKf with God, and in its first
principle divine, descending into this world to subdue and save it, took this humanity for its clothing and was the soul of its soul and the life of its
life.
Legendary! A legend is a cumulative accretion ot
hearsays around a nucleus of common fact, clothing
it in the garb of fable; and the common fact here
was the birth of Jesus Christ, the son of Joseph and




THE MYSTERY OF BIRTH.         237
Mary.  Legendary! the story might appear so, if
you isolate it and make it stand alone. But why do
you isolate it? Read on, and at the farther end of
the biography we come to the death of this person
quite as exceptional as his birth. The flesh thus assumed as the investiture of a divine life did not
become a corpse, like the bodies of other men to see
corruption in the grave. It was extruded by a living
process, through the abounding energy within, where
the divine man it had served ascended to his place
on high. If you make his ingress into this world as
here given legendary, why not reduce his egress from
it into the same category? If you shut the divine
portal through which He came in, why not also the
divine portal through which He went out? Then
just sit down and scan the facts that lie between and
see what can be made of them. The life between
constantly forecasts just that exit from this world; it
courses its way on planes of being far above those
on which we walk, and subsumes just such a birth
and death.  You must run the legendary theory
through that also, till all the history-is disorganized
and tumbles into chaos. And even then you have
only just begun. This life of Christ on earth was
preliminary and preparatory to a deeper and broader
life in humanity, coursing through the history of
eighteen hundred years. The record goes on to say
that he appeared after his resurrection as the guardian of those communions called churches, and that




238           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the Holy Ghost through him "fell on them " and gave
them their conquering power. The Christian Church
ever since, conscious of his presence and inworking
divine energy, has originated, led on, and inspired all
the advanced civilizations of the world, and is leading them still. Legendary! Why not make all the
after-history legendary too, and the world's progress
starting from fiction and always proceeding under it!
This life, dating from that birth at Bethlehem, has
continued ever since, and it spans our lowly history
and floods it with more than rainbow glories, one
foot of its celestial arc resting at the manger where
Mary lay, and the other on in the future, for aught
we can tell at the end of time. Legendary! Is it
necessary to abstract such a birth from its relations
and reduce it to the conditions of our own babyhood? 1
1 See the Appendix B, on the Birth of Christ.




CHAPTER IV.
NAZARETH.
WY   E have only one chapter in the childhood of
Jesus, and that is Nazareth. This, however,
is an exceedingly important one, and better probably
than any accounts which his mother or his teachers
would have given us of his education. The only
written statement which we have respecting his childhood is given by Luke, and seems to have come
from Mary his mother, perhaps through John who
became her foster-son. It is exceedingly general;
and after relating the journey to Jerusalem and his
staying behind to converse with the doctors of the
law, we are told that He returned to Nazareth, was
subject to Joseph and Mary, and that while he grew
in wisdom and stature he grew also in those divine
affections which won the favor of God and man.
That Mary had much more to relate respecting
the childhood of Jesus is an unavoidable inference
from our knowledge of the instincts of maternal
love; that the evangelists have treated it with a
most severe reticence shows how providentially they
were guided. They might have gratified our curiosity; but it is not likely the childhood of Jesus




240           THE FOUR TH GOSPEL.
differed greatly from that of other children; and
probably Luke tells us about all that is to be said
when he implies this increasing grace of person and
behavior with the increasing wisdom that shone
through it.
But all about Nazareth lay the open book which He
read, and it lies there yet. Paul went up from Tarsus to Jerusalem and studied Jewish lore at the feet
of Gamaliel, in the most famous theological school of
his times; and his writings bristle all through with
Jewish terminologies. Jesus was soon to have the
thick-coming thoughts, for which no human school
could furnish adequate language, but only the types
and images in the infinite treasuries of nature.
Nazareth, though a despised country town, was of
all places the most propitious for an education of this
kind. It lies in a small basin of northern Palestine
imbosomed in hills. The basin extends about a mile
from west to east, and about half as far at its greatest
width from north to south, narrowing toward the east
into a deep ravine, giving the basin the shape of a
pear with a long stem. This ravine leads out into
the noble plain of Esdraelon, which spreads out so
far below that a transparent mantle of sky-blue is
resting upon it. The hill at the west end of the
basin rises abrupt and precipitous; along the northern side the ridge is depressed somewhat, and along
the south and east it sinks still lower. The town
itself lies at the western extremity of this basin,




NAZARETH.               241
cowering under the bluffs or clinging to their feet and
sides. It has three thousand inhabitants, about the
same number probably as in the days of Joseph and
Mary, and presenting a similar external appearance
of low houses with flat roofs, looking like cubes of
stone. As you enter the basin through the narrow
opening on the east and come into the town, you are
greeted at this day with a more friendly welcome
even from the Jewish population than is usual in Palestine. A fountain, whose waters percolate through
the veins of the western hills, is conducted into one
of the streets of the village, and falls into a stone
reservoir. Over the fountain itself stands now a
Christian church consecrated to the Virgin, because
monkish legends will have it that her house was near
by. With more probability and with tolerable certainty, they might say that here she was wont to come,
with the other women of the city, bearing their
pitchers on their heads. You would see at this day
a crowd of women around the reservoir each waiting
for her turn, and you would notice among them a
peculiar native beauty after the Syrian type, and a
peculiar gracefulness and friendliness of manners,
partly owing to the buoyant health they breathe in
among the mountains.
But as you ascend "the brow of the hill whereon
their city is built," and which in one place breaks off
in a perpendicular wall forty or fifty feet in height;
as you gain the summit of the ridge that curves
16




242         7TIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
round it on the west like a protecting arm, a most
enchanting panorama is unrolled suddenly to your
view, every fold in it being a rich historic page. On
the west stretches the long line of Carmel, beginning
far away south towards Samaria, but extending northwestward to where he seems to plunge suddenly into
the sea. This ridge is not bald like some of the
mountains of Judaea, but crowned with forest, over
whose depressions the Mediterranean gleams here
and there in silver curves. All the history of Elijah,'the Tishbite, is given back to your memory as you
gaze, up to the time when he disappeared in his
chariot of fire. Look northward and the scene varies. Near by stretches one of the most beautiful
plains of northern Palestine, watered by a stream
which divides it like a glittering thread on its way
to the Kishon, where Elijah slew the false prophets.
Beyond this plain northward the ridges rise one beyond another like ascending stairs, each taking on
a deeper tinge of blue.  The mountains of Safed,
twenty miles away, overtop all between, and there,
lifted up into the sky, you see the place itself, "a city
set upon a hill." But Safed is backed by still higher
ridges, and they roll in ascending billows sixty miles
away up to Mount Hermon himself, who looks down
on the whole in cold and scornful majesty from under
his crown of snow.
If you turn towards the east and southeast, another
plain, the magnificent plain of Esdraelon, spreads out




NAZARETHA.               243
its long level floors of green, under their mantle of
sky-color, sprinkled more sparsely with signs of population, with valleys winding like dissolving views
among the hills.  Out of this plain rises Tabor,
rounded like a hemisphere, little Hermon, and Gilboa, where " the shield of Saul was vilely cast away;"
and through a depression north of Tabor you look
into the valley of the Jordan, and over the high
plains away beyond to the hills of Per2ea which
shade off into the Orient. South towards Jerusalem
rises a spur of the ridge of Carmel, and over it loom
up Ebal and Gerizim, from which the curses and the
blessings answered to each other. Nearer by, and
forming the heart of Palestine, spreads out the vast
plain of Esdraelon with its gentle undulations;
fields covered over with corn, interminable flocks and
herds ranging in luxuriant pastures; - the granary
of the surrounding country, rich in natural productions and voluptuous beauty; rich, too, in historic
memories, as the scene over which the most decisive
battles had rolled back and forth. Such is the horizon of Nazareth, more crowded with life and industry when Joseph and Mary lived there, but whose
paradisical enchantments have not yet faded out. To
know all its loveliness and magnificence you should
see it in the morning as the sky reddens beyond the
hills of Permea, till the sun crimsons the snows of
Hermon and then lights up peak after peak below
him as with a torch; or you should see it at even



244          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
tide, as the sun drops behind Carmel and dissolves in
the sea, turning Kishon and its affluents into burning threads, turning the vapors of the Mediterranean
into new " chariots of fire and horses of fire" for other
ascending Elijahs, and thence diffusing over the broad
panorama of the Galilean hills and valleys a purpling
softness like the more tender and brooding mercy of
the Lord.
And why do we open these beautiful pages? Because it is certain they were the study of Jesus for
thirty years; because the infinite Word that was already dawning through his higher consciousness was
here to find its language. This vast treasury of type
and imagery was to be drawn up into discourse and
parable, as the embodiment of truths for which no
language of books could furnish an appropriate setting. Not only nature in all her lights and shadows,
but human life in all its busy ongoings, was outspread within the horizon of Nazareth. The keepers
of vineyards pruning their vines; the shepherds
leading their flocks a-field; the husbandmen sowing
their grain; the plains over which the breezes as
they swept made waves in the fields of wheat and
tare; the reapers at their work over the vast surfaces,
of Esdraelon and El Battauf; the prognostics of
storm coming up from the sea, or of fair weather
when the sky at evening reddens over the ridges of
Carmel; the Light of the World coming out of the
east to enlighten every man;  all these and much




NAZAR ETH.                       245
more were daily in sight over that "brow             of the
hill" whereon the city of Nazareth was built. Two
processes were going on in preparing the Christ for
his work, - one of Spirit and one of sense. Higher
truth than men had received or known was coming
down through the heaven of his mind; better and
more universal types were drawn up from earth
through the senses to meet it and body it forth.
The Son of God was also the son of Mary; the Word
was made flesh to find a dwelling-place in the midst
of men.1
I Renan's description of the scenery of Palestine is picturesque,
though distinctness of feature is often sacrificed for brilliancy. Robinson is both picturesque and exact as line and compass. After an
excellent description of the horizon of Nazareth he thus indicates the
associations of the place, looking from the plateau above the town:
" Seating myself in the shade of the Wely, I remained for some hours
upon this spot, lost in the contemplation of the wide prospect, and
of the events connected with the scenes around. In the village below the Saviour of the world had passed his childhood; and although
we have few particulars of his life during those early years, yet there
are certain features of nature that meet our eyes now, just as they
once met his. He must often have visited the fountain near which we
had pitched our tent; his feet must frequently have wandered over
the adjacent hills, and his eyes doubtless gazed upon the splendid
prospect from this very spot. Here the Prince of Peace looked down
upon the great plain, where the din of battles so often had rolled, and
the garments of the warrior been dyed in blood; and He looked out,
too, upon that sea over which the swift ships were to bear the tidings
of his salvation to nations and to continents then unknown. How
has the moral aspect of things been changed! Battles and bloodshed have indeed not ceased to desolate this unhappy country, and




246              THE FOURTH       GOSPEL.
gross darkness now covers the people; but from this region a light
went forth which has enlightened the world and unveiled new climes;
and now the rays of that light begin to be reflected back from distant isles and continents, to illuminate anew the darkened land,
where it first sprung up." - Researches, vol. iii. pp. I90, I9I,




CHAPTER V.
THE FORERUNNER.
HERE was nothing in the established ceremonies of the Jewish national religion which was
worthy of the name of preaching. That religion was
administered mainly in the temple, the synagogues,
and the theological schools. The synagogues were the
parochial churches. They existed in every town in
Judaea. The most elevated sites which could be obtained were chosen for them, and it violated all sense
of Jewish propriety and sacredness to see any other
building overlook the synagogue. Ten men were
considered a sufficient but indispensable number to
organize a synagogue, which word, like our word
"church" came at length to signify either the ecclesiastical organism, or the building in which they assembled for worship.
In any principal town or large city these buildings
were multiplied indefinitely, all of them constructed
after the same pattern. We may form some idea
of their number when we consider that there were
twelve in Tiberias; and since the erecting of synagogues was a mark of piety and passport to heaven,
we need not be surprised that there were no fewer




248          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
than four hundred and sixty in Jerusalem alone.
They were long rectangular structures, and always
consisted of two parts. The ICEL, or sanctuary, by
way of eminence, was in the most westerly part, corresponding to the most holy place in the temple, and
in it was placed the ark or chest which contained the
Book of the Law and the Sections of the Prophets.
The other part was the body of the church, where the
congregation assembled. At one extremity of this
department was an elevated platform, on which sat
the officers of the synagogue, facing the congregation,
and on which was a desk or pulpit for the readers
and the minister. The congregation sat facing the
officers. They did not sit promiscuously, but the
men were separated from the women by a screen
which divided the body of the church lengthwise as
far as the elevated platform.
The chief officers of the synagogue were three
rulers, the readers, and the minister. The rulers
had a general care and direction, told the leaders
when to begin and the people when to say amen.
The readers were seven in number, and took turns
in reading the lesson of the day. Any one in the
congregation, however, could be called to this service. How important and laborious it was may be
judged from the fact that the Law and the Prophets,
comprising the bulk of our Old Testament Canon,
were required to be read through once a year in the
public ritual, and for this purpose were divided into




THE FORERUNNER.             249
fifty-two portions, one of which must be despatched
every Sabbath-day. It must be read in the original
Hebrew, and therefore there must be a translator to
render it verse by verse into the language of the people, which in our Saviour's day was the Syro-Chaldee. Besides this, several prayers must be recited.
If we may credit Buxtorff, there were not less than
eighteen belonging to the regular service, which fact
gives us a vivid apprehension of our Saviour's words
denouncing the greater damnation against men who
for show make long prayers. After the prayers came
the repetition of their phylacteries, which was done
mentally and individually, out of regard for the law
of God and as a guard against evil thoughts and evil
spirits. These were texts of Scripture attached to
their garments and worn generally near the heart.
The synagogues were opened not on the Sabbath
alone but on two other days during the week, which
were regarded as a kind of fast-days, but the same
lesson which was droned on these week-days was
repeated on the Sabbath following for the benefit of
the laboring class who could only attend during holy
time. The superlative merits of the young ruler
who fasted twice a week, can hence be estimated.
He despatched one fifty-second part of the Law and
the Prophets three times during every seven days,
to say nothing of his phylacteries and the eighteen
prayers which swelled still further the amount of his
meritorious works. The readers, who were selected




250          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
for their devotion or intelligence, were at liberty
to throw in running commentaries of their own,
though the stated duty of expounding the Scripture devolved upon the minister, otherwise called
the Angel of the Synagogue. This was done after
the readers had got through, and with how much
unction and enlargement may be judged from the
fact that he generally spoke sitting in his seat.
What torpor and spiritual death must at length
overtake a people buried under such a load of ritualism as this! We may well imagine how the startling
news broke in upon the everlasting droning of the
synagogue, when a man suddenly appeared of such
fiery eloquence that he shook the whole valley of the
Jordan from one mountain range to the other. Such
was John the Baptist. The memorials of him, though
few, bring him before us with great distinctness.
The account given of him by Josephus, harmonizes
remarkably with all that is said of him in the New
Testament. His mother and the mother of Jesus
were cousins-german, and John must have known
something of his great kinsman by personal acquaintance; but they did not reside near each other, and
there is no reason for supposing that his inspiration
came from  that intercourse.  His education was
mainly in the desert. That is to say, like the
Essenes, he withdrew in disgust from the hollow
ritualism of the synagogues and the pedantry which
loaded down the theological schools, and away in the




THE FORER UA. NER.         25 
silent places of contemplation, the power of God
came upon him in over-measure, and clothed him as
with a robe of flame. He must have known the Essenes, as we said, for they were close by him on both
sides of the Dead Sea, with the same doctrines of
righteousness, the same disgust of Jewish hypocrisy,
and the same baptism by immersion symbolizing repentance and newness of life. But John, in spirit
and method, differed vastly from the Essenes, and
did not belong to them. They were quietists aiming
only to keep their own garments white, and to get to
heaven by a secret way. John was aggressive, as the
fire on a prairie swept by a mighty wind. Up and
down the valley of the Jordan, where the desert
skirted the line of cities and towns, he went in the
power of the Lord, and poured his denunciations
against hypocrisy and injustice. He was clothed in
the coarse garb of the old prophets, with a leathern
girdle about his loins. He lived in the very haunts
where Elijah had lived, and ate the food of the desert.
No greater man, said our Saviour, had been born of
woman, and though the last of a long illustrious line
of prophets, their moral power and grandeur culminated in him. The Jews of his day had seen and
heard nothing like him. Of course it was not long
before the sleepy synagogues waked up and emptied
themselves into the desert. They came at first, doubtless out of curiosity, to see a seven-days' wonder, but
the truth shivered through them like the lightning,




252          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and converts were multiplied. People came not only
from Judaea, but from remote Galilee. "What shall
we do? " said they, searched by the preacher's words.
"Let him who has two tunics give one to him who
has none, and let him who has food, do likewise," was
the answer, rebuking the prevailing covetousness and
rapacity. It was a time of war between Herod and
Aretas, King of Arabia, and soldiers were quartered
in the land. These, too, came under the strokes of
the preacher, and asked, "What shall we do?" " Be
satisfied with your wages, and stop plundering the
people." Tax-gatherers came, a hated and pestilent
class of men, to whom some patrician in his palace at
Rome committed the farming of the revenue, with
unlimited license to peel the people of his province.
"And what are we to do?"    "Exact nothing but
what is your due." Jerusalem itself was shaken.
The travelled'road through Jericho from the capital
was choked with a living stream emptying itself into
the desert. John himself seems to have been surprised to see them. " Have you come, too, you brood
of vipers, out of your serpent's nest? Bring forth
fruits worthy of repentance. Boast not of your descent from Abraham, for I declare to you that God
out of these stones could make better children of
Abraham than ye are." His fiery rebukes, however,
not only smote the heart, but melted it. He made
disciples, and founded a school, which survived long
after his death, He impressed his great and earnest




THE FORERUNNEER.            253
mind upon the mind of his nation, and the whole
people cherished his fame as theirs. He was more
than prophet; as we shall see presently, he had the
gift of seership beside. He was one of those great
minds like the Grecian Demosthenes, in which the
national life gathered intensity for a last effort, and
flamed up with expiring brilliancy. Coming at the
approach of a great crisis, and elevated far above the
plodding interests of the hour, his ear heard distinctly
the steps of the coming doom. Within the wider
horizon which he swept with his eye, a great woe was
in sight, and hourly drawing nearer. Hence his " cry
in the wilderness" to repentance, as an escape from
the wrath to come. But he belonged to the old dispensation and not the new. He was Hebrew through
every fibre of his being. His call was to repentance,
to the unchangeable morality, to the eternal justice
which had been set aside for a pompous ecclesiasticism that filled itself with inhumanity and self-conceit, as a sponge imbibes water. But repentance and
reformation were all he could preach. That opening
of the heavens through which the Spirit was to come
for a new creation and a new consciousness of God
in human nature, was not given to him, and he knew
it. But he knew that this, too, must come, and he
watched for its prognostics in the faith that he was
sent to prepare the way.




CHAPTER VI.
THE HOMES OF JESUS.
THE idea we get of Jesus from a cursory and
superficial reading of the Evangelists, of a
homeless wanderer, with no place of permanent
abode, roaming about Palestine with twelve men, living by miracle, or claiming the hospitality of strangers, soon melts away on a more careful study of the
records. He had his abiding-places, whence he went
forth on his mission, and into whose shadows he ever
returned either from the glare of notoriety, from the
heat and burden of the day, or from the threats and
persecutions of those who sought his life. Indeed,
much of his time was passed in this retirement in
preparation for his public work, which seems to be
the reason of a common mistake, —that this work
was all crowded into the last two or three years of
his life.
The homes of Jesus were three. These are very
distinctly traced. It is necessary always to keep
them in mind if we would contemplate his life in its
unity, and understand the coherence with which the
Evangelists have described it. It is from want of
attention to this subject that some writers talk of




THE HOMES OF jESUS.          255
discrepancies, especially between John and the synoptics, where they only interlock each other in a consistent whole.
The home of his childhood and earliest manhood
we have already described. That Joseph and Mary
belonged neither to the highest nor the lowest rank,
but to the robust and healthful middle class of Jewish
society, is abundantly evident. There was a school
attached to the synagogue, in which Jewish children
were taught to read and write, and also instructed in
the canonical writings of the Old Testament. Jesus
must have been educated in this school. That he attended any higher one, is very improbable; indeed,
it is implied in the narratives, that he did not. " Having never learned," means that he never had been
a scholar in those higher schools of the Rabbins,
where he would only have imbibed the intolerable
pedantry embodied in the "Talmud" at a later day.
The law and the prophets which he learned to read
at the synagogue, and the great book of nature spread
out gloriously from the plateau just above, must have
been the sources of the lore which he acquired at
his home in Nazareth.
There was another home which he occupied afterward, and during a part of his public ministry. It
was at Capernaum, on the northwestern shore of the
lake of Galilee, some seventeen miles from Nazareth.
The narrative warrants the inference that acquaintances and kinsfolk of his mother's family resided




256          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
there, as they went thither on a temporary visit before a final removal of residence.1 It is certain that
a married sister of his mother resided in Galilee, the
wife of Alphaus, otherwise called Cleopas, two of
whose sons, Jude and James the less, afterwards were
numbered among the chosen twelve. She might
have resided at Capernaum or its neighborhood, as
she is found afterward associated with women who
belonged there.
The Sea of Galilee has been called the Geneva of
Palestine, on account of the picturesque beauty and
sublimity of its scenery. It is about sixteen miles in
length, and half as many in breadth, deep set within
a cordon of lofty hills. Through these hills there are
two openings, one on the north for the ingress of the
waters of the Jordan, another on the south for their
egress. They make a current through the middle of
the lake, but elsewhere lie in their deep basin, still as
glass, and giving back as truly the skies above them
and the scenery around, except when some sudden
gust finds its way over the hills, which is very seldom. The hills are now brown and stripped of forest; but if we may trust Josephus, this region, in the
times of our Saviour, was so luxuriant, that nature
seemed to work here a perpetual miracle. Fruits
which required a hot climate, and others which required a cold one, grew and flourished side by side."
"One may call it," he says, "the ambition of Nature,
John ii. I2.




THE HOMES OF JESUS.           257
where it forces those plants that are naturally enemies to each other, to agree together.1 On the western side of the lake the hills trend away from the
shores, and along its margin stood five cities, or
towns, whose names have become immortal. Near
the head of the lake stood Bethsaida and Capernaum,
which had become noted stations for fisheries; farther south, probably, were Chorazin and Magdala,
and farther still, Tiberias, built by Herod the Tetrarch, the murderer of John the Baptist, and often
occupied by him as one of his capitals.
Along the shores of this peaceful lake, Jesus went
forth from his home in Capernaum, on his heavenly
errands.  Here he found most of his twelve disciples. Here he wrought those wonderful cures which
blazoned his name through the country, so that the
crowds flocked about him whenever he appeared
abroad.  Galilee contained a mixed population, not
Jews only, but people of heathen religions and of no
religion, Greeks, Syrians, and Phoenicians, and though
more ignorant and boorish than the pure orthodox of
Judaea, they had much less of the flint of Jewish bigotry and pride. Almost the whole narrative of the
synoptics is taken up with the work of Christ in Galilee, as it radiated from his home in Capernaum.
There were personal reasons for this, as we shall
see. Matthew and Peter, who were eye and ear witnesses of what they relate, resided at Capernaum,
1 Wars, iii. x. 8.
17




258          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and their own work as missionaries was mainly in
Galilee.
But there was another locality which was also
one of the homes of Jesus. It was such before he
went to Capernaum. To understand this portion of
our Saviour's life, we must divest ourselves at once
of a good share of our occidental notions about religious culture. We are the least given to contemplation, solitude, and introversion, of any people on
the face of the earth. We rush into crowds, hold
meetings, din each other with sermons and exhortations, which sermons and exhortations are generally
the common places of the sect we belong to; and the
shallow draughts from each other's well-nigh empty
pitchers, we call getting religion. It was not so in
the East. They drew from deeper wells. All but
the book-men and the pedants who only reproduced
each other in geometrical progression till the traditions were too heavy to bear, drew their deepest
draughts from the springs of divine grace in the
meditative soul.
Long before Jesus appeared, what was best in religion, what was highest and purest in morality, was
withdrawn from public view. The Essenes, if we
may credit Josephus and Philo,- the former of whom
dwelt among them three years to learn of their doctrine and manners, - preserved about the only cultus
which existed in the East, purified from idolatry, superstition, and hypocrisy. Near the western shores




THE HOMES OF JESUS.          259
of the Dead Sea, a community of these people existed in seclusion, disgusted'with the knavery and
petrified selfishness which lurked under all the forms
of the popular religion, and there they maintained a
lofty devotion, a pure doctrine of God, immortality,
and retribution, with an unselfish morality and uncorrupted manners. They had all things in common.
They had ramified into other communions of like
faith which existed in the deserts and sometimes in
the cities and towns, receiving the books of Moses,
which they interpreted allegorically, never going up
to the Jewish festivals, nor appearing in the temple, but "gazing on the bright countenance of Truth,"
in their own quiet contemplations. They dwelt on
the love of God, denounced every kind of dishonesty,
and insisted on justice, piety, and neighborly love.
Baptism by immersion was a common practice among
them, not only for keeping the body chaste and
wholesome, but as the symbol of a clean heart.
Their constancy was brought to the severest trial;
for Herod put them to cruel tortures, which they
would not only meet with serenity, but with a smile
of triumph over pain and death, radiant with the
hope of immortality.
There is no evidence that either Jesus or John the
Baptist ever visited these people, but there is abundant evidence that both of them combined the rites,
the morality, and some of the doctrine of the Essenes
with their own. John must have known of them, for




260          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
he preached and baptized in their immediate neighborhood, where he thundered forth their maxims of
truth and justice.
Admitting that Luke's Gospel and Matthew's preface give us the true account respecting the conception and birth of Jesus, it must be obvious that there
were twofold reasons for his withdrawment betimes
from the disturbances of outward things. The Word
that was to be given him was to come neither from
human teachers nor from the external world. It was
to come down through the opening heaven of his own
mind as soon as the sensuous nature which he received through the maternal humanity had drawn up
from earthly things the types and images which were
to serve as the prints and copies of the heavenly.
Necessity was, therefore, laid upon him by the constitution of his being, to pass away from the outward
till the heavenly realities filled and possessed his
consciousness. The whole nights spent in prayer,
away from his disciples and on the lonely mountain
heights, must not be understood as time occupied in
verbal petitions to God. We shall see presently that
nothing of the kind is signified.
The great Ghor, or valley of the Jordan, extends
from the lake of Galilee to the Dead Sea, through
some seventy miles. Throughout it presents the
same phenomena.. Two ranges of hills and bluffs
bound it on either side, -that on the west skirting
Galilee, Samaria, and a part of Judaea; that on the




THE HOMES OF JESUS.           26I
east skirting the land of Persea, the country beyond
the Jordan. From the summit of one of these ranges
you look across to the other. Sometimes they approach each other to within five miles, sometimes
they trend away to eight or ten. They are rocky and
precipitous, and rise over two thousand feet above
the bed of the river. This great valley is cut by the
Jordan unequally. As it issues from the lake of
Galilee it leaves most of the valley on the east, but
before entering the Dead Sea it leaves two thirds of
it on the side of Palestine, creeping nearer the Peraean
hills.
The great valley itself is composed of two plains,
an upper and lower one. The lower one is a mile in
width, making the bed of the river itself, filled to the
outer edge when the river is swollen, but offering
quite a margin when, in times of drought, the river
shrinks within its channel. This margin of the lower
plane, therefore, being alternately wet and dry, is
covered with reeds and bushes, and sometimes with
tall trees, which harbor wild beasts of prey. Here
lurked the lion who "came up at the swelling of
Jordan" from his lair. The upper plain, extending
from this reedy margin to the bluffs, is a barren waste
of marl and ashy soil, presenting a scene of awful
desolation. It is from two to four miles in breadth
on either side. Sometimes, where the upper plane
terminates with the bluffs, springs of water percolate
through the rocks, making little oases, as is the case




262          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
opposite Jericho. Sometimes the bluffs are rent by
steep gorges which are the beds of rapid rivers in
wet seasons, and in dry become cavernous and shaggy
ravines.
What we have now described was known as the
Desert or the Wilderness. The valley "on this side
Jordan" from Samaria to the Dead Sea was "the
Wilderness of Judaea," some twelve miles in length.
As soon as you enter these profound solitudes you
leave man behind, and the blandishments of his
hypocrisy and the noise of his battles are heard no
more.
The exceptions to this solitude are only found
where springs and rivulets trickle through the mountains and make oases at their base.   Most famous among these are "The Fountains of Jericho."
Jericho is gone, and only dirty Arab hovels now
occupy its site. But the fountains are still there;
and what would be an oasis is there if it did not run
to bushes and sedge. But here in our Saviour's day
rose the goodly city itself, called sometimes the City
of Palms. It stood within the great valley, but hugged
the base of the mountain, commanding a fertile plain
covered with groves and gardens which the fountains
had rescued from the desert. Through a gorge of
the mountain lay the road to Jerusalem twenty miles
off, leading around splintered rocks and through
gloomy and shaggy defiles, the haunt of thieves and
robbers. Jericho was a city of priests and Levites,




THE HOMES OF JESUS.           263
it being a favorite resort of the officials at Jerusalem
when not on duty in the service of the temple.
Passing through this road from Jerusalem and entering the desert through Jericho, the traveller, in our
Saviour's time, would soon leave the palm groves and
gardens behind. As he travels towards the Jordan he
passes over five miles of desert and comes to a ferry,
by which the Jordan must be crossed. If he is in
quest of a solitude still more profound, or an isolation
from Jewish priestcraft still more perfect, he will cross
over by this ferry into Peraea beyond the Jordan.
There is no village on the opposite side, but only a
ferry-house, with perhaps a few buildings. This is
the place anciently called Bethabara, which means
simply the ford, or place of passage, but which seems
afterwards to have taken the name of Bethany-overthe-Jordan. Coming hither, the traveller has put both
the Jordan and the wilderness of Judaea between himself and the busy Jewish world. But he has only
come into a remoter solitude and into wilderness still.
It is desert for two miles between the Jordan and the
mountains of Peraea and all the way up and down
the river. Opposite are the hills from whose summit
the promised land broke on the rapt vision of Moses,
and this Bethabara is the identical ford which his'knights of the Ram's-horn crossed over to take
Jericho.
And in this vicinity was one of the dwelling-places
of Jesus for some time before he went to Capernaum,




264              THE FOUR THZ GOSPEL.
and to which he resorted again and again, both for
the opening of the inner heavens and for escape from
the snares of men.1 He did not merely come hither
to John's baptism; he was dwelling here while that
great preacher was declaring his message. He came
hither from Judaa when tired of Jewish bigotry and
hypocrisy. He made this his abiding-place till replenished anew from the Divine armory, when he
went forth for fresh strokes on the flint of Jewish
malice and hate. Up to the time of John's arrest
and imprisonment, when he left for Galilee, this was
his most frequent place of retirement and abode, and
this was his starting-place for new journeys into
Judaea. His ministry began at Jerusalem agreeably
to the theory of Scripture that salvation should come
out of the heart of Judaism and thence extend over
the world. After John's arrest, and his ministry had
changed its circuit for Galilee, still he came hither to
his retreat in the valley of the Jordan, asif its springs
1 See John i. 38, 39; x. 40; xi. 54. Compare Matt. xix. 19; Mark
x. I, 46. In the passage (Matt. iv. 13) where Jesus is said to dwell in
Capernaum, we read, Kary'carev, -- he housed there. But where he
is said to dwell in the desert we have (John i. 39), /PVEL, -he rezained
there, suggesting a less fixed abode, perhaps in movable tents. The
town called Ephraim, near the desert where Jesus went and dwelt
(SLerpltE, spent the time) to conceal himself from the Jews, is of uncertain locality. Perhaps it was the ancient city of that name near
Jericho. It would seem that he spent the time, not in the city, which
would be no place of concealment, but in the desert near by, and that
in emerging from his concealment he passed through Jericho. See
Mark x. 46.




THE HOMES OF 7ESUS.           265
and rocks and solitudes had been made sweet by
angel ministries and the communings of sabbatic
hours. In these solitudes the inner heavens first
opened on his sight; and in these again they opened
in yet more solemn grandeur, and over long reaches
of prophecy just before he started on his last journey
to Jerusalem; for it was from these retreats, where
he had remained for some time, that he went up to
the last Passover, knowing that he went as the Lamb
of God for sacrifice. After finally breaking away
from his home at Nazareth, Bethabara, or some spot
near this ferry of the Jordan, was his point of departure for his mission into Judaea, as Capernaumwas his
point of departure for his mission in Galilee. Even
when passing from Galilee into Judaea, his route often
lay through these profound solitudes, and there he
would abide for a time before committing himself
anew to that hot-bed of sanctimonious iniquity at
Jerusalem. Sometimes in these retreats the people
followed him and sought him out to be cured of
their diseases or to hang upon his speech.




CHAPTER VII.
JESUS IN THE DESERT.
OHN had stationed himself by the ferry, beyond
the Jordan, and near the great thoroughfare
through the Desert. Thither the people streamed in
crowds from both sides of the river to the scene of
what in modern phrase would be called the Great
Revival of the time. John's was the first word since
the days of the old prophets which had thoroughly
shattered the crust of the Jewish formalism, thrilling
the masses with an agonizing consciousness of spiritual want. In the natural language of hyperbole used
by the New Testament writers,." Jerusalem and all
Judzea, and all the country adjacent to the Jordan,"
came to his preaching and were immersed by him in
the waters of the river as the symbol of their repentance and reformation.
Jesus came also to Bethabara from his home in
Nazareth, not, as we shall see, merely to receive baptism from John. The Divine Idea, for whose realization he came into the world, must have grown urgent
within him by this time, and he must have seen that
the word of John, which had shaken all the synagogues out of their sleep, was preparing the way for




yESUS IN THE DESER T.          267
the new kingdom of God to be ushered in. Hence
he gave his sanction to John's preparatory work, and
his personal compliance with it, as if saying, "This
is not the work of one who hath a demon and is mad,
as some of your magnates affirm, but work which
comes in the orderly course of Divine Providence."
He left Nazareth and appeared at Bethabara.
It is necessary here to unfold a principle of interpretation, without which we shall find ourselves
stumbling at every step, not only at the beginning
here of our Saviour's public life, but through every
stage of it to the close. We must forget here again
and leave behind us our cold and sensuous occidentalism and enter largely into the thought and the faith
of the Orient. Language which with us has sunk
into the baldest materialism, or else has been frozen
into the coldest and the hardest of philosophical abstractions, to the spiritualized Hebrew mind, much
more to the mind of Jesus, was preserved from all
such perversion. For instance, our words heaven,
hell, angel, demon, Satan, and their correlates, mean
with us localities in space and beings of material corporeity; or if we say they cannot mean that, we proceed to discharge them of substantial realism, leaving
nothing but a nominalism that floats vague and
empty in the air. The New Testament writers and
speakers fall into neither of these errors, but are clear
alike of both.
We are to remember here -and we only restate




268          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the principle of our opening chapter -that there
are two orders of existence, -one natural —and on a
level with the senses; the other supernatural and
beyond their sweep and range. Men hold commerce
with the first through their material organism; they
hold commerce with the second, if at all, through an
interior and higher one. Death discharges immortal
beings from their material coverings, but it does not
extinguish their personality. They are men still, and
not abstract ideas of men existing only in the generalizations of human thought, and the corruption of
the sepulchres.
To understand the Realism of the New Testament,
we must remember that its supernatural world is not
one of abstractions. It is one of forms and substances not less than this; and for the very reason that it
is not material and subject to hard material law, it is a
more perfect symbolization of Divine truth, and more
pliant to envisage the supreme excellence and beauty.
The words "heaven " and "kingdom of heaven" describe, it is true, a state of the purified soul here in
its' earthly condition; but if we suppose that in the
New Testament realism they mean nothing more,
but therein are shriveled to an abstraction, there is a
great gulf between its realm of thought and ours.
Involved essentially in the conception is the idea of
the supernal abodes, the angelic societies above us
and yet near us when we become like them, and
whether visible or invisible, imparting to us or sharing with us the shinings of the eternal peace.




yESUS IN THE DESERT.          269
"Heaven opened," therefore, does not mean merely,
in the language of those times, a more vivid apprehension, mentally, of abstract truth. That may be
included and implied; but a great deal more is also
implied. It means that the inner sight has been so
touched and clarified that the heavenly scenery lies
objectively around it; where the prints and copies of
that truth itself image it forth more perfectly and
divinely, just as they do to those who have passed
out of time and space into the open prospect of the
eternal realities. We may say that this is imagination, and we shall say so if we believe with the Sadducees that there are no tiers of substantial being
above the flats of nature; but we must not project
our philosophy into the New Testament and freeze
down its language into figures of speech, when it is
plain from its whole pneumatology, that the writers
do not intend a mere play with rhetoric, but a description of things heard and seen.
There were two classes of Hebrew prophets. There
were those who simply uttered the word which came
to them with a "Thus saith the Lord," and there
were those whose inspiration passed into seership or
open vision. Elijah was not only prophet but seer.
John, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, but
was greater than he, was also both prophet and seer.
He was such, according to the narrative, by the divine
gift which commissioned him for his work; but his
ascetic and contemplative mode of life would tend




270          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
inevitably to reveal it strongly and clearly to his consciousness.
The world was expecting a deliverer. Not the
Jews only but the devout of all nations believed that
a great crisis was near, and watched with aching eyes
for the tokens of the coming man. The influx from
the higher world of causes, prognostic of great
changes, was urgent now. But in the mind of the
Baptist it took voice distinct and articulate and came
as the voice of the Lord. He knew Jesus well but
he did not know him as the Messiah. He only
knew him as a man wonderfully endowed, in whose
presence he felt overshadowed and subdued. But he
knew and felt that his own work was only external
and provisional, and that a Power which wrought
deeper and more universal than his baptism of water
must melt down the heart of the world and shape
it in heavenly moulds. The impression upon his
mind, divinely given, had become so full and overpowering as to become languaged in the depths of
his soul. It was in substance this, "The man for
whom the nations wait will be signalized to your
apprehension. You will know him, for to your vision
the Holy Spirit will descend and abide upon him.
Understand then that the person who will thus be
designated is the expected Messiah, who will take up
the work which you have only begun, and baptize the
world with fire. He will not only reform its manners
without, but purge it of evil within." Of course the




JESUS ZiV THE DESERT.               271
Holy Spirit working subjectively in the mind of Jesus
would have been no token to John. What John was
looking for was an open vision of that Divine Sphere
above and within the sensuous and earthly, which
would infold the Son of God, and in which the power
of the Holy Spirit to give purity and peace would be
imaged forth by appropriate signs.
John was burdened with this thought when Jesus
appeared through the crowd before him on the banks
of the Jordan. But Jesus, as we have said, had not
travelled sixty miles from Nazareth merely to receive
baptism from John. It is plain from the whole connection that his dwelling-place in the desert was
near by; the Proseucha     to which he had already
withdrawn amid the profound solitudes of the valley,
where the din of human society was unheard and
nature itself no longer wooed     the soul outward
through the senses; where "the weary weight of all
this unintelligible world" was lightened    or rolled
away; and the higher world emerged through the
rifted and scattering clouds. After such ascent into
heaven as this, Jesus appeared before John. Evi1 A Proseucha among the Hebrew people was simply an oratory, or
place of retirement for thought and devotion. Sometimes they were
on mountains; sometimes by the side of rivers. Sometimes they
were artificial, simple structures open at the top to the sky; sometimes only an embowering shade. In Acts xvi. 13, we are told that
Paul and his companions on the Sabbath " went out of the city by a
river side where prayer was wont to be made " (o~ eiYot~IEro 7rpooa-evX
ESlar), literally, " where he understood that there was a Proseucha."




272          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
dently heaven itself was insphering Him and beaming from his face. John is overcome with reverent
emotion: " I have more need to be baptized by thee."
Jesus replies, " It becomes us to fulfill all righteousness." Your baptism of reformation comes first in
the Divine order and has its rightful place.
"And while all the people were receiving baptism,
Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heaven
was opened, and the Holy Spirit in a bodily form,
descended upon him like a dove, and a voice came
from heaven saying,' Thou art my beloved Son, with
thee I am well pleased.'" Luke iii. 21, 22.
"Being baptized and prayingz," the heaven was
opened. Let us not mistake. Prayer with Jesus was
not simply a verbal petition. It was passing inward
and upward out of the realm of sense into the broad
disclosure of eternal things. He has described it as
" ascending into heaven," and his teachings and revelations out of that high state as "coming down
from heaven," and the normal elevation of his soul
amid the eternal serenities and perspectives of immortality as being or dwelling "in heaven."  The
heaven was opened, to whom? Clearly to the mind
of Jesus into which the Divine influx came with
such fullness and power as to take voice and articulation, and over whom the white wings hovering
dove-like symbolized its all-cleansing and peacegiving work through a Saviour's mediation; and
to the mind of John brought into this open vision




7ESUS IN THE DESERT.          273
and communion where the promised tokens were
disclosed to him. " I saw and I bear witness that
this is the Son of God."  He knew him not as the
Messiah until then. Now his tone changes towards
his own followers. I am not the coming Deliverer,
but He is already among you. I have seen Him
though you cannot. He must wax and I must wane.
Once in his lonely prison hours, weary with what
seemed the long delay, doubts flitted over the mind
of John and he sent to Jesus for further evidence. It
may be hoped that the answer he received reassured
him of the divine authentication in the heavenly
vision by the waters of the Jordan.
The Spirit remanded Jesus to his solitude. A great
conflict was inevitable. Such incoming of the Divine
truth, glory, and power through the inmost consciousness towards their ultimations in the outward life
could not be without meeting and waking into armed
resistance all the hereditary tendencies of the Jewish
mind. All these had been subsumed in the maternal
humanity received through Mary. They had grown
with the growth and strengthened with the strength
of the sensuous nature which for thirty years had
drank in the glories of this lower world. The hereditary proclivities of a long line of ancestry running
away up through Jewish kings and priests yearning
for worldly empire and ecclesiastical rule, looking
towards a Messianic kingdom, which, beginning at
Jerusalem, should overspread the earth and absorb all
18




274          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
other kingdoms into itself, all these were waked up
as if by a voice sweeping down into the soul as the cumulative urgencies of a thousand years. The possession of superhuman power had now come to Jesus, no
longer in the dim twilight of consciousness, but in its
noonday brightness. It was power, compared with
which that of David and Solomon, the pride and boast
of the Jewish annals, was contemptible. We do not
know of any chapter in history more true to nature
and bearing more indubitable marks of reality than
that of the temptation of Jesus. It never could have
come within the experience of feeble and shallow natures, but only those which are deeply and broadly
representative, and which take up and compress vast
provinces and ages of history into their own. In
such as these the influx of heaven becomes strong as
it meets and conquers the efflux of hell.
Let us pause a moment at the words "devil" and
"satan." They never mean, in any canonical Scripture, a fallen angel. Nor again do they mean "the
abstract principle of moral evil."  Neither Jesus nor
his biographers know anything of these philosophical nonentities. To them the demon-world, no less
than the angel, was real, active, and personal, imbreathing through the souls of men and projecting
infernal sorceries through their minds and imaginations. It was composed of the spirits of bad men
who had lived in the flesh, and were, therefore, human, like ourselves, but unregenerate. Like the




JESUS IAr TIE DESERT.          275
angel world, it lay proximate to this, but on the side
of our lusts and evils, which it breathed upon and
fanned into flame. The words devil and satan described originally the supposed prince of this kingdom of evil; but they ceased to become mere proper
names, and stood simply for the impersonation of all
the seductive influence from the realm of darkness;
and on the other hand such proper names as Gabriel
and Michael might denote perhaps the influx of the
angel-world itself. But the New Testament writers
give no sanction to the childish superstition of devils
assuming material bodies, and in that shape set free
on the earth for temptation and mischief.
The Spirit remanded Jesus to his solitudes. Heights
of exaltation and depths of depression and trial are
u lavoidable i minds whose range is large enough to
include the profoundest workings of God. Having
just now become conscious of most divine endowments, the whole spirit of Judaism, from Abraham
down to Mary, rose up in his soul to clutch these celestial weapons, and wield them only for Jewish ends.
Yes, farther, the awakened selfhood of human nature,
including its hereditary proclivities from Adam down,
sought to bring these endowments into the service
of self alone, and so place the son of Mary in conflict
with the Son of God, and, if possible, subject the
latter to his will.
We follow Matthew's order. The first temptation
came in this form: "Turn these stones into loaves




276         7TE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and live by them alone." Or, dropping the language
of parable, Be satisfied with the lowest and most external life of sense, and with that alone, for stones are
the lowest grade of external things. What visions
of ease and self-gratification are here comprehensively
described! all of which could pass at once to their
realization if the divine power newly-awakened could
be subsidized to such an end. Such a course were
compatible with all the pride of life, including the
pride of knowledge, the pride of philanthropy, all
tending, however, to exalt self and surround it with
worldly decorations. Such was the tempting path
now obvious, and it led to no cross, no conflict, and
no sacrifice.
The next temptation was deeper and more subtle.
It placed Jesus in the Holy City and on the pinnacle
of its temple; in other words, at the very summit of
the Jewish ecclesiasticism. The highest exaltation
to which the Jewish religious system could elevate
him now rose upon his view. All the honors of its
high priesthood, enlarged beyond its ancient pomp
and splendor, were within his grasp. Already he had
confounded the Doctors in the temple by his precocious wisdom, and now a wisdom more pervasive and
comprehending than that of the whole Sanhedrim, or
all the scholars of Hillel, was his. It lay in his power
to raise Judaism to a fame which would outshine its
brightest days in the past, if, instead of breaking its
forms in pieces, he would throw his Spirit into them




yESUS IN THE DESERT.          277
and make them more glorious than ever. Its priesthood would renew its fading lustre, and all its honors
would cluster around his person. No conception of
ours at this day is adequate to the fact which is here
tersely set forth; a temptation that winds into the
most hidden recesses of human nature. Ecclesiastical ambition is the most devilish of all, for it perverts
a more interior and more sacred principle than any
other, appears always in sanctimonious guises, and
secretes a more specious and deadly poison. But
Jewish ecclesiasticism excelled all others in this respect; and now the pride and conceit of a long and
splendid priestly line, swelling and gathering force
with every new generation, was sending its last efflux
into the mind of Jesus. Had it prevailed it would
have placed him in Moses' seat, the most authoritative, the most accomplished, the most honored of all
the Pharisees.
The remaining temptation, though not so subtle,
appealed to an instinct more universally dangerous.
It placed Jesus at the summit of Jewish national renown. It showed him all the kingdoms of the world,
and he at their head as the long looked-for temporal
Messiah. The magnificent national dream could now
be made actual. It had become an essential of Jewish
faith engrained in the heart of every loyal man and
woman, that the boundaries of Judea were to widen
and widen over the earth, and over the isles of the
sea, and over all peoples, till Jerusalem should be the




278          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
capital of the world, till "the Gentiles should come
to its light, and kings to the brightness of its rising."
The grand old spiritual promises had sunk from their
meaning into the grossest literalism, and pampered
the national pride with the expectation of unbounded
empire. It was kept alive continually as they answered "Amen" in the synagogues to the ancient
prophecies. "The sons of thine oppressors shall
come bending before thee: they that despised thee
shall fall down at thy feet."1 How this vision flamed
up to its highest grandeur as it took body and shape
in a mind like that of Jesus, till "all the kingdoms
of the world in a moment of time" were seen crowding to his standard in endless ranks; how the stream
of national pride pouring through the hearts of all the
Jewish kings into his was urgent to grasp the divine
weapons now fairly in his hands, subjugate the Roman oppressor, and inaugurate the universal reign
which all the prophets had foretold,- all this we
may faintly imagine from our knowledge of hereditary
proclivities, which set in strongest and swiftest tides
through the largest and most receptive natures.
Forty days, say the records, these temptations
continued, or, as Luke says, till the devil, "having
come to an end of every temptation," left Him.
Forty days, in Scripture usage, is an indefinite number, and means simply, as Luke intimates, a time,
whether longer or shorter, during which the thing
1 Isaiah Ix. I4.




yESUS rN THE DESERT.          279
appointed to it is accomplished and complete. "The
forty days' temptations," as we understand, are the
terse and graphic summing up of the whole conflict
up to the time of the public ministry of Jesus, - the
conflict in which the descending heavens met and
subdued the principles of earth and hell, and thus
found their unobstructed ultimation in his mind and
in his life. The abounding peace which followed,
where, we are told, that as Satan left him, angels
came and ministered unto him, is also strictly
accordant with all our human experience. Those
blessed ministries come like tranquillity after storms,
consequent on all our moral and spiritual victories.
They come to us in the mellow sunshine of the heart,
flung from the face of God and the invisible presence
of those who reflect his beams; they came to him
not only in the peace within, but in the "heavens
opened," amid whose visible serenities he won his
abiding-place.
It is plain that the narration of these conflicts
comes originally from the lips of Jesus in that comprehensive language of parable which he was wont
to employ. They have the air of most intense reality;
they were witnessed by no mortal eye, and they are
the last things which his disciples afterwards would
have invented or imagined with the intent of glorifying their Master. Mark puts the whole in, but very
concisely, evidently not knowing what to make of it.
John omits it, for the plain reason that he wrote




280          THE FO URTH GOSPEL.
with a full knowledge that the other three Gospels
were in possession of all the churches, and that this
history already had been thrice told. John, of all the
others, would have entered most profoundly into its
vast spiritual import. Luke seems to have done this
more than either Matthew or Mark, and.Luke was
probably in communication with John. Portions of
Luke's Gospel- are essentially the narrative of the
beloved disciple.
Up to this time we have been following Jesus in
the common and blending light which the four evangelists have thrown upon his path. We now come
to a point where the synoptics leave us, and where
for some time, and for the most part always in his
more private walks, John is our only guide. We ask
the reader's attention now to the following points,
which, if carefully observed, will verify to him as he
reads on how these biographies interlace each other
with most remarkable congruity.
I. The distinctive Messianic work of Jesus begins
at the close of the temptation scene. The Word had
not merely glimmered in his consciousness; it had
not merely emerged into full intellectual brightness,
but it had "become flesh." It had cleared off all the
hindrances of hereditary and Jewish selfhood, and
now not only in the inmost but the outermost life, in
mind and will and action so far as concerns his mission, Jesus is the Wisdom and the Power of God.
From this complete Messianic consciousness, his




yESUS IN THE DESERT.           281
special work begins, and it divides itself into two
portions: into his ministry, which was more private
and personal, and his ministry, which was more public and organized.
2. His private and personal ministry began first, as
of course it would. It was for some time informal
and tentative. It was mainly in Jerusalem and its
environs, in that yearning toward his own people to
save them first from the wrath impending over the
nation. This personal ministry covers, at least, the
first year of his Messianic work. During this time
he had no organized band of followers. A few intimate friends who believed in him, were generally
with him, and travelled with him, and among them
and most cherished of all, was the beloved John.
In this personal and mere informal ministry in and
about Jerusalem he encountered always the bigotry
of the ruling ecclesiastical power, and acted under
threats against his life. There was no possibility
here of any organized public work. His home, thus
far, was partly at Nazareth, partly in the desert,
whither he would withdraw for concealment.
3. Soon after the arrest and imprisonment of the
Baptist, he removed to Capernaum.    There his
public ministry commenced. He was thronged by
the multitudes, and out of these he selected and organized two separate bands of disciples, the Twelve
and the Seventy, whom he indoctrinated more thoroughly, and on whom he conferred miraculous pow



282          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ers.  Through these he evangelized the whole of
Galilee. But even here we must not imagine him
travelling about with twelve men. They dispersed
over the whole province, appearing generally in the
synagogues. The Twelve went, it would seem, individually; the Seventy, two and two. The latter was
a temporary, the former a permanent organization.
Both would return to Jesus and report the fruits of
their mission, but only on special occasions were the
Twelve together with Jesus. So much we gather
clearly from the account given of this organized
work without knowing the minute details. Two of
the synoptics confine their narrative almost entirely
to the public ministry in Galilee, till they come to the
tragic consummation at the last Passover, for the simple reason that here, with his public ministry, they
were personally concerned, and here only were eye
and ear witnesses.
4. But we must not imagine that while his organized missionaries were at work, Jesus was idle at
Capernaum. His work in and around Capernaum
was notorious, and the synoptics have detailed it.
But this was not all. He did not abandon Judaea,
but his private personal ministry he prosecuted there
still. People were there who believed in him, whom
his first ministry had deeply moved, who had clung
to him with devoted love, and several times from his
home at Capernaum, as before from his home at
Nazareth, he went up to the capital. But he always




yESUS IV THE DESERT.           283
went privately and cautiously, often withdrawing of
a sudden either to the desert or back into Galilee.
He went up to the festivals, but except at the last
and fatal Passover, he went after the crowds had
gone, and followed on with the least possible demonstration. We must not imagine him marching up to
Jerusalem with the Twelve, but appearing with one
or two friends, among whom always was the beloved
John. These were episodes in his public ministry in
Galilee, grateful to the heart of Jesus, and doubly
grateful to some homes in and about Jerusalem, which
received and welcomed him with blissful and tender
recollections of his first private and personal ministry
there.
5. These points, carefully kept in mind, will reveal
an organic unity in the narratives, and in the life of
Jesus: and they will demonstrate a design which
runs through the whole of the fourth Gospel. They
will plainly show that the author of it wrote with the
other three open before him, and with the intent
always to complement them. The fourth Gospel thus
becomes an indorsement of the other three. Any.
fabricator would have drawn upon the synoptics, or
imitated them in some way. But there is not an instance, as we shall see, where this has been done, and
the early tradition of the Church - hardly a tradition,
for it is so early and fresh that it amounts almost to
personal testimony- has the fullest internal evidence
of its truth running sometimes into delicate threads




284          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
of circumstantial proof- that John, seeing what the
synoptics had written, approved of it, but wrote a
fourth Gospel to supply what they had left out of the
early ministry of Jesus, and what pertained more exclusively to his Divinity.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAST MEETING BY THE JORDAN.
T   HE conflict was over. The forty days of temptation were accomplished, and the first dawning heaven had broken through his soul with its
angelic peace, and with the clearness and the fervors
of noonday. Now that the victory of the inward
over the outward was accomplished, the Word was in
last things as well as first, and the Messianic consciousness was plenary and complete. It is easy to
imagine what peaceful majesty and command this
must have given to his personal bearing.
The " forty days " of conflict may have been many
months, for aught we know, of high communings and
victories. They denote the closing period, " the end
of every temptation," when Jesus reappeared on the
banks of the Jordan where John was still prosecuting
his ministry with a school of disciples gathered about
him. Some of them evidently had become temporary
dwellers in the desert, with their tents pitched along
the shores of the Jordan; for men were there from
remote Galilee, seventy miles away, drawn and subdued by the electric power of the Baptist, and numbered among his personal followers. Among them




286          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
were two brothers, Simon and Andrew, and two other
brothers, James and John, the fathers of whom were
partners in the fisheries at Bethsaida, on the northeastern shore of the Galilean lake. Philip also was
there from the same place, also a disciple of the Baptist.
John had stirred the country so deeply, that when
he was organizing a school of followers, some anxiety
was felt at Jerusalem by the proper authorities as to
what the issue would be. Who was this wild prophet
of the Desert, and was he going to subvert the old
order of things? A delegation was appointed, probably by the Sanhedrim, to go and sift the matter and
report. They appeared before John, and put him
under examination.
John remembers the descending vision which a few
months before had illumined the desert: but the delegation of Pharisees could not have been much enlightened by the final answer: —
"I baptize in water unto repentance, for whether
Jew or Gentile, you all need it alike; but there is One
among you whom you do not know; who is coming
after me, and whose sandals I am not worthy to unbind, and who will baptize you in the fires of the
Holy Spirit."
The day after this interview, Jesus, emerging from
his solitude, appears a second time before the Baptist. We infer that the delegation from Jerusalem
were still present. John sees Jesus coming, and says




THE LAST MEETING BY THE yOlRDAN. 287
to them: " There is the man I spoke of yesterdaythe Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world. I know this by tokens which cannot deceive.
He who sent me to preach and baptize, had said to
me:'The Man on whom thou shalt see the Spirit
descending and resting, is he who will baptize in the
Holy Spirit.' And I have seen it and bear testimony
that this man is the Son of God."
The delegation have gone home with their report
to the Sanhedrim. Jesus reappears the next day,
from which we infer that his home in the desert was
not far off. The Baptist, with two of his disciples,
John and Andrew, are standing together as Jesus
approaches. "And looking at Jesus as he was walking, he said:'See the Lamb of God!' And the two
disciples heard what he said, and followed Jesus.
And Jesus, turning about and seeing them following
him, said:' What do you desire? And they said to
him,'Rabbi (which means teacher), where do you
dwell?' He said to them,'Come and see.' So they
went and saw where he dwelt, and remained with
him that day. It was about the tenth hour."
What marks of truth and nature do we find in this
description, so very brief and elliptical! Any romancer, at least of these times, would have employed
pages of rhetoric to express what is here only implied. The personal appearance of Jesus, the divine
life flowing in like a peaceful river after temptation
overcome, making the sphere about him radiant




288          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
therewith, his majesty of mien in the newly awakened
consciousness of divine power, giving grace to his
motions as he walked along, the attractive spiritual
force which drew the two disciples irresistibly after
him, so that they followed him to his home in the
desert, - all this we are left to infer; but any writer
at pains to exalt the subject of his story, would have
described it in full. How the words, " Lamb of God,"
with the imagery which they evoked, clung ever after
to the mind of John, we have already seen, and it
shows how beyond any power of description was his
first impression of Jesus.
"It was about the tenth hour." What if it was?
Why record a fact sixty years after it had transpired,
of so little consequence as that they arrived at the
dwelling-place of Jesus at four o'clock in the afternoon? Here is one of the inevitable touches of
nature. Great and pregnant moments which seem
the turning points of destiny, or in which the life of
years seems gathered up, we fix instinctively as a
date to start from, and such was the meeting of John
with Jesus. The light of memory thrown back over
this auspicious hour, was so concentrated and unfading, that the smallest things stand out on its canvas sixty years afterward, and especially that hour
of the day when they entered the dwelling-place of
Jesus.
In the meeting of Jesus at this time with three of
the other disciples of the Baptist, Peter, Philip, and




THE LAST MEETING BY THE 7ORDAN. 289
Nathanael, we remark. that mysterious gift which
appears frequently afterwards; the power not only
of discerning character but of reading individual history and turning backward its pages, even the secret
record of mind and heart which the subject supposed
locked up in his own bosom. Nathanael, known
afterwards among the twelve as Bartholomew, was
now a disciple of John. His home was in Cana of
Galilee only a few miles from Nazareth. He knew
nothing of Jesus; but he had come up to John's baptism. He had his place of retirement and secret
prayer. Such places were furnished by the hand of
nature in the embowering shades on the lower banks
of the Jordan.
"The fig-tree - not that kind for fruit renowned,
But such as at this day to Indians known
In Malabar or Decan - spread her arms
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother tree, a pillared shade
High over-arched, and echoing walks between."
Philip had been drawn to Jesus, and he hastens to
find Nathanael and tell him, We have found the promised Messiah in Jesus from Nazareth. Nathanael lived
in the neighborhood of Nazareth and knew it as a
poor town of no repute. That he had never heard of
Jesus shows that the childhood and youth of the
latter had been retired and noiseless. Very naturally
he is slow to believe that any one of great fame is to
come out of Nazareth. In the interview with Jesus
19




290          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
it is evident that we have only brief hints or topics
of the conversation. Nathanael finds to his amazement that Jesus already discerns him and reads him
through, and he asks, " How came you to know me?"
And when Jesus replies, "I saw you under the figtree, I knew your place of prayer, and the thoughts
and aspirations and purposes that have hallowed it,"
recounting to him we know not how much of his
secret history, Nathanael confesses himself convinced,
and exclaims, " Thou art indeed the Son of God and
the expected King of Israel." Jesus promises evidence to him still more complete: "Hereafter you
will have prophetic vision of my mission from above,
in which, as to John at my baptism, its divine agencies
and attestations will be openly revealed."
Soon after this Jesus returns to Nazareth, in company with three disciples. We infer at least that
John, Philip, and Nathanael, whose minds had now
been freshly opened to the evidence of his Messiahship, went with him to Galilee. John keeps himself
out of sight here as elsewhere, but he writes afterwards as an eye-witness. That Philip went is plainly
implied; and that Nathanael went with them is also
implied, his home being in Cana only nine miles from
Nazareth.
The relation of the Baptist to Jesus and the nature
of the mission of both, are shown in the alacrity with
which the former gave up his disciples to the latter.
No founder of a sect, no theologian ever did the




THE LAST MEETING BY THE yORDAN. 291
same before or since. Unless their mission had
been from heaven and not from men, we should have
seen some tinge of earthly ambition, or disappointed
hope. There is not the slightest, but a burst of gladness as the Baptist sees his light flickering and going
out in the glories of the new day.








PART III.
THE PRIVATE MINISTRY OF JESUS.
"The soft evening cloud, and behind the cloud the great full moon
bodily! Something so contemplative, so sublime, and so full of presage that one can never weary of it! Every time I read John it seems
as if I could see him before me at the Last Supper, leaning on his
Master's breast; as if his angel at certain passages held a light in his
hand, embraced me, and spake something in my ear. There is much
which I do not understand as I read, and John's meaning floats away
before me in the distance; but even then when I look into a place
altogether dark, I have a prescension of a grand royal meaning which
some day will be revealed to me. Therefore I grasp eagerly at every
new exposition of the Gospel of John. Alas! most of them only
ruffle the evening clouds and the moon behind them is left in peace."
CLAUDIUS OF WANDSBECK.








CHAPTER I.
THE WEDDING AT CANA.
WTSE have distinguished between the private and
public ministry of our Saviour. The distinction must be steadily kept in view if we would understand the unity of the four Gospels and see how
John's lies within the other three. Jesus returned
from the Jordan to Nazareth in his full Messianic
consciousness. But he did not proclaim this publicly nor organize a school of followers.
His first private ministry was an exploration of the
mind and heart of Judaism to see if it had any place
for the reception of the new faith. It is a most interesting feature in the philanthropy of Jesus that
its universality, the absorption of his love for the
whole race, took nothing from the fervor and tenderness of his private friendships or his love of his own
people and nation. The hereditary proclivities which
made him susceptible of temptation from the passions
and ambitions of the Jewish mind would at the same
time give to that passion which we call patriotism an
intenser glow. How intense it was we shall see
not only from his persistent efforts to save his own
people first of all, but the depths of anguish when the




296           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Jewish mind had been fully explored and revealed
and the final disappointment came. In this respec,
John, even more than the synoptics, reveals the full
humanity of Jesus; humanity, that is, in the entire
range of its affections.
It will be obvious at once that this private ministry,
as revealing the heart, mind, and life of the Saviour, is
quite as important to us and as full of interest as his
public proclamations of his mission. It will be obvious too, that in his private walk and intercourse he
would not be seen with a band of followers. We
should rather find him with one or two men, the
sharers of his most familiar thoughts and tenderest
personal love. That this was the case, and that John
was the companion of this private ministry, there is
most unquestionable internal evidence.  The presumption is very strong of the truth of a very early
tradition, that the family of John on the mother's side
had kindred relations with that of Jesus.
It will be seen at once why the fourth Gospel
should differ so much from the first and second both
in matter and style. It abounds in reports of colloquial intercourse, sometimes of intercourse so confidential and sacred that the report of it could not have
been placed on public record without manifest indelicacy and impropriety until some of the parties had
passed away. These serve as delicate finger-marks
in determining the date of the fourth Gospel.
John, therefore, not only complements, but interlaces




THE WEDDING AT CANA.           297
the synoptics, generally with a clear and beautiful
consistency. He never in a single instance relates
what they had reported except to show its essential
connection with something which they had omitted.
A special as well as general purpose is evinced in
the narrative from beginning to end. It must have
been written by one familiar already with the synoptics, and by an eye-witness of what he relates, for no
one else could- have so dovetailed the narrative as to
make it fit into theirs so delicately and with such
marks of reality.
Jesus returns to Galilee with three disciples, and
now his private ministry begins. There was a wedding in Cana, nine miles from Nazareth, and the
mother of Jesus was there. She would not probably
have been there unless she had kindred relations with
the bridegroom or the bride. That the bridegroom
was John himself cannot be affirmed with absolute
certainty; but if any one will take pains to group
all the facts which bear upon the subject he will
hardly escape the conviction that this was so; that
Salome, the mother of John, was the sister of Mary,
and that the early tradition is right which makes
John the bridegroom of this marriage feast.
Immediately after the wedding Jesus with his
mother and brethren went to Capernaum on a visit
of a few days, at or near which place the family of
Zebedee lived and where John subsequently resided.
Recall the scene at the cross where Mary and Sa



298          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
lome stood side by side, and from which time John
took Mary to his own home; recall, too, the special
intimacy which ever subsisted between Jesus and
Salome and her two sons, and the family connection
becomes still more probable. And if John was the
bridegroom at the wedding he describes, the manner
in which he has kept himself in the shade is highly
characteristic of his whole style and method.
Jesus and his disciples were invited to the festival;
that is to say, Philip and Nathanael who came with
him from the Jordan, the latter of whom was already
at his home in Cana. John is at pains to tell us that
here was the first miracle which Jesus wrought.
The whole scene is of vast significance. What Jesus
would do when the complete Messianic power had
come into his consciousness to be ultimated in his
works, would give shape and color to the new religion now descending upon the world. He comes
from the desert, from long fastings and solitudes,
from the baptism of John the hermit, bringing three
of the hermit's disciples with him, and in the natural
course of human development his religion would
have taken a tinge of moroseness and gloom. But
its first office was to fling light and gayety over the
common paths of life and a charm and consecration
over its most delightful joys. The "beginning of
miracles" was an entire breaking away from the
asceticism of John; and Christianity at her very inauguration has no leathern girdle, nor raiment of




THE WEDDING A TCANA.          299
camel's hair, nor food of locusts, but comes garlanded with festal flowers and with cups of innocent
pleasure in her hands. The miracle which changed
the water into wine was not more wonderful as the
exercise of new-given power than for its beautiful
significance.
The details of the narrative are such as no fabricator would be likely to invent. The ideals of the
next age began to have a coloring of asceticism, and
would not probably have made Jesus the chief figure
and purveyor at a marriage scene, and such a marriage scene as was made conformable to the ideas
and customs of Palestine. We have nothing like it
in the marriage customs of our freezing occidentalism. It was a prolonged festival of eight days with
gay processions and rejoicings. Marriage was held
by the Hebrews in supreme honor. The espousals
were made early, generally in childhood, that the
mind and imagination might be kept pure and loyal,
and the marriage scene was the consummation of
the fond hopes and aspirations of years. The bride
in her chamber was decked by her maids and veiled,
like Rebecca, amid festal songs. When the hour of
marriage arrived, a procession came with the bridegroom, usually in the night and by torchlight, and
under a canopy supported by four attendants, the
bride's party exclaiming as they approach, " Blessed
is he who cometh!" The marriage was consummated amid the pouring and drinking of wine  If




300          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the home of the bridegroom was near, the procession returned to his house with the bride and her
maidens, the latter conveying nuptial lamps while
their rich attire reflected the dazzling lustre. They
walked under a silken canopy, hence the figure,
"Thy banner over us is love." Arrived at the bridegroom's house, the festivities were continued with
dance and song. Amid a festal scene like this Jesus
appears in the first miracle which signalized his
divine mission to mankind. There was no return
procession, however, in this case, if our conjecture
is right, the home of the bridegroom being, not in
Cana, but in Capernaum, whither his friends attended
him with his bride, as indicated in the sentence following, "After this, Jesus and his mother and his
kinsmen, his disciples (guests at the wedding), went
down to Capernaum, but continued there not many
days."
The spontaneous touches of truth and nature contained in the narrative are inimitable. How much is
unconsciously implied in the conversation of Jesus
with his mother! Mary must have long seen and felt
the growing and overshadowing power of Jesus, and
now more than ever on his return from the Jordan
after the new immersion into the depths of the Divine
Love from which he comes beaming forth. Mary is
no such person as the Catholic Church would make
her. She has a mother's fondness, with all its foolish
pride. She importunes Jesus to make a display of




THE WEDDING AT CANA.           301
his astonishing power. The wine failed, and she said
to him, "They have no wine."  She said a good deal
more, as the reply indicates. The reply is not harsh
and cold, as our common rendering would make it,
though it contains a mild rebuke. The rebuke is not
in the address, " Woman," which was one of honor
and reverence, but in what follows, and whose sense
is, "Do not be troublesome; the time has not come
for me to make a public proclamation of myself."
She would have had him make such a blazon of his
miraculous power as to fill the guests with admiration, and he refuses. The way in which its beneficent exercise is veiled and the miracle wrought,
through private directions to the servants, is in
keeping with the whole bearing of Jesus during his
private ministry. Any forger would have shown it
paraded foremost, and not held in reserve. The way,
too, in which Mary is introduced upon the scene, and
a delicate veil thrown over her weakness, so as to
hide it as much as possible, has the spirit of John in
every line and word, and his tender regard for the
adopted mother of his household. Mariolatry began
very early, but we have no trace of it in her own
family, and the record herein has one of the plainest
marks of genuineness.
The rationale of what we call miracles will elude
our philosophies, but no more than the whole power
of spirit over mind and matter, or of the will over the
body, which we exercise every day and hour. The




302            TITE FOURTH GOSPEL.
theory, from the stand-point of supernaturalism, assumes that, from this time forth, Jesus was in open
communication with both the spirit world and natural, and in larger and more vital communication with
them both than any other person before or since; in
more ample endowment of that Creative Word, out
of which all things were evolved, and of which nature
itself is only the leaf and flower. That being so, the
control of his will not only over his own bodily motions, but over natural processes beyond his immediate personality, is not to be reckoned as belonging
to magic or prodigy any more than ours is when it
controls the muscles of our frames. One is as mysterious as the other, and the "Word made flesh"
being once assumed, one is as credible as the other,
since both are through the influx from the higher
planes of being into the lower ones, the former, however, under conditions more enlarged and comprehending. This "beginning of miracles " attests the
newly opened divine consciousness in Jesus, and the
proof thereof is to be found afterward, when in him
and through him the heavens are nearing the earth,
and the spirit-world pressing into the natural to make
the latter more entirely its healthful and beneficent
body and robe.1
1 The six water-jars mentioned in this narrative were vessels kept
in a back room for the washing of hands before meals. The urgent
importance of this will be seen from the fact that the Jews in those
days used at their meals neither spoons nor knives and forks, but only
their hands and fingers. Dr. Clark writes: " It is worthy of note that,




THE WEDDING AT CANA.                     303
walking among the ruins of Cana, we saw large mossy stone waterpots, answering the description given of the ancient vessels of that country; not preserved nor exhibited as relics, but lying about disregarded
by the present inhabitants as antiquities with whose original use they
were unacquainted. From their appearance and the number of them
it was quite evident that a practice of keeping water in large stone
pots, each holding from eighteen to twenty-seven gallons was once
common in the country." Travels, vol. iii. part ii. ch. 14. It will be
seen how the miracle at Cana was performed in a retired part of the
house where only the servants could be witnesses of it, and where
display could be carefully avoided.




CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST VISIT AT JERUSALEM.
N   OT a great while after the wedding at Cana,
occurred the annual Passover festival at Jerusalem.  It appealed with stirring associations to
every Hebrew family, for it was the day of national
deliverance from Egyptian bondage. It occurred in
the new moon of the month Nisan, answering in part
to our month of March. Great care was taken by
the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem to proclaim the exact
moment of its commencement through all the tribes
of Israel. They watched for the first beam of the
silver crescent in the sky, and the moment it appeared a man went to the top of Mount Olivet, kindled a torch, and waved it aloft, backward and forward through the air. It was answered forthwith by
torch-lights from the immediately surrounding hills.
These again were answered from the hills farther
outward, and so the wave of fire enlarged and extended on and on till every Hebrew family had
greeted the summons. It went south towards Egypt
till it touched the desert; westward, till the range of
Carmel flung it to the sea; northward, till it blazed
from Libanus and Antilibanus; eastward, even into




THE FIRST VISIT AT JERUSALEM.      305
Babylonia, till it gleamed on the waters of the Euphrates. Subsequently, after hostile Samaria had
broken the wave by false signals, or perhaps by refusing to give any at all, the torch-lights were superseded ~by swift messengers, who went forth to
proclaim the festival.
Every Hebrew male, circumcised, of adult age and
able-bodied, was bound to go up to Jerusalem at the
Passover festival, either in person or by some representative of the family to which he belonged, and
offer sacrifice. Women and children were not required to go, though they often did; and so the ways
converging to the capital were thronged with people,
generally travelling in groups, and chanting select
psalms of David. They crowded into the capital by
the hundred thousand, and it was one of the beautiful
features of the occasion that private houses now became public, and sacred to its hospitalities. Not
every individual of this great multitude was required
to offer sacrifice in the temple. They organized in
groups or companies, each company offering its lamb
or its bullock, for which purpose they were admitted
into the court of the priests, three companies at a
time. Vast numbers of animals were required for
sacrifice, and the festival was the grand market time
for the shepherds and graziers of Judzea. They had
their pens and stalls about the temple, and those
more eager and unscrupulous pushed them into its
sacred precinct, and invaded its outer court. The
20




306          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
court of the Gentiles covered about fourteen acres of
ground, and it now became thronged with great
crowds, speaking in various provincialisms, with the
obscene spectacle of bleating sheep and lowing herds;
the herdsmen at the stalls chaffering for the best bargain; Jewish avarice making the most out of Jewish
piety. A very lively and promiscuous scene!
We must suppose that Jesus had often attended
these festivals, but John describes his presence at the
first after his Messianic consciousness had changed
from twilight into noonday. That John was with him
seems certain. That Nathanael and Philip were also
with him seems probable. His first act on entering
the temple was to purge it of the unclean nuisances,
-the sheep-pens, the cattle stalls, and the traffickers.
The wonder is not that they were driven out in confusion and dismay, but that they had ever been permitted to come in, and that the police regulations
had become so lax and sleepy under a decay of reverence for sacred places and the ideas which they
represent. To enter into the spirit of the scene we
must remember that the men knew they had no business there, that the crowds knew it and were glad to
have them driven out, but had not sufficient command
to effect it. Jesus assumed the command in that
conscious power of control over men which had now
become clearly his. To understand how intolerable
was the nuisance, it must be remembered that the
temple in all its courts had a representative signifi



THE FIRST VISIT AT JERUSALEM.       307
cance. It was regarded as copied from the courts
of heaven, and so again represented humanity itself
regenerated and made the shekinah of the living
God. Hence, when the spectators asked him why
he assumed this lordship over the temple, he made
immediate reference to the temple of his body about
to be glorified as the fullness of the indwelling Godhead, - a reference which, of course, they could not
understand.
Skeptical writers stumble at the fact that a similar
transaction is related by the synoptics, but by them
at the last Passover of his ministry instead of the
first; that is to say, two years later. There is no
discrepancy. Almost inevitably the nuisance would
be repeated at subsequent Passovers in the absence
of police regulations to prevent it, and if repeated it
would be likely again to be abated under the same
authority with severer denunciations against the traffickers as a pack of thieves driving their business in
a house of prayer.
Many believed on Jesus at this festival from " seeing his miracles." The evangelist does not specify
them, and the inference is that they were now his
familiar and spontaneous actions in his walk amongst
men, and especially amongst the sick, who became
well in the radiant sphere of his life and under his
healing hand. His ministry was altogether personal
and conversational, and the most important and significant incident related was,



308          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
THE INTERVIEW WITH NICODEMUS.
John reports the conversation as if he were present and heard it. The first remarkable fact connected with it is one which we shall find evermore
repeated and which characterized our Saviour's intercourse with men.  Nicodemus begins with a
remark which he intends shall be introductory to
further inquiries. Jesus does not reply to anything
he had said or was going to say, but directly to his
inmost thought and state of mind. He searches
him with a glance and knows that his whole conception concerning the Kingdon of God now approaching, is sensuous and worldly, and no more corresponds to the truth of things than that of the babe
before birth corresponds to the world of light and
colors. A new range of senses must be touched and
opened; he must be born into a new world before
he can know what the Kingdom of God is. Jesus
wastes no words in exhibiting his credentials or
appealing to his miracles to authenticate his claims,
which were sure to be misunderstood. He describes
the change from a natural to a spiritual state of mind
as a first essential condition. Nicodemus sits bewildered and suffers the heavenly discourse to flow
on. We shall fail to enter fully into its import unless we construe it in the light of the scene a few
weeks before on the banks of the Jordan. When
Jesus avers that he speaks what he knows and testi



THE FIRST VISIT AT JERUSALEM.      309
fies to what he has seen, he means plainly that he
holds the truth which he teaches not as opinions,
and reasonings about them, but as seen in the higher
range of existence out of time and mortality and
above their sphere. " If I tell you of those heavenly
things you will not believe them, for you do not understand the earthly things that represent and image
them forth. You stick in the letter and you cannot
rise out of it. And no man hath ascended up to
heaven but him that came down from heaven, even
the son of man who is in heaven." Let us not sink
the strain of this high utterance to a lower key, for
only by rising to its level we get an adequate idea of
that state of mind out of which Jesus spake, taught,
and acted from the first opening of his ministry;
which made him speak, not from tradition, but from
original and inexhaustible fountains, when he surprised his hearers by his commanding tone, or smote
his enemies as by electric power. In the language
quoted, he is not claiming a separate, personal preexistence and personal descent from heaven, - conceptions we think entirely foreign to the New Testament, nor yet is he using an extravagant oriental style
which we must freeze down into mere rhetoric to find
the meaning of. By "ascending up to heaven" he
means, as the scene at the Jordan shows, the opening
of his mind through all its ascending degrees even
up to the central Light and Life of all, so that the
heavenly worlds as they'exist beyond sense and mor



310          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
tality lay on his perceptions more unerringly than
this world of matter lies obvious to the senses of
men. By " coming down out of heaven," he means
passing from these high frames into conditions which
were earthly and mortal, that those immortal realities
might have clothings and representations on the
plane of sense and matter. By dwelling in heaven,
he means that these high states were normal and not
exceptional, so that while he had intercourse with
men through these bodily organs, in his inmost being
he had open cognizance of the heavenly orders of
existence, and lived amid their eternal serenities.
To fail of following Jesus in thought to these celestial
heights, is to fail of understanding both his character
and message. But hearing and seeing him as thus
"coming down from heaven," we shall appreciate in
some measure his tone of authority; shall see why
he never reasons out the truths of his religion but
simply reveals them; why he says nothing about
"the evidences " of immortality, since he lived amid
its scenery and had only to announce it; why he
often speaks of future events as if already transpiring, including his own death and resurrection, and
the passing away of the Jewish Church and nation,
since he lived in the realm of causes whence he saw
into the heart of things and the germs of all history.




THE FIRST VISIT AT rERUSALEM.      311
JESUS RETIRES FROM JUDIEA.
He saw the state of the Jewish mind, and that
here there could be no general reception of his message, but that it would provoke open and intense opposition and hate. Many believed in him seeing his
miracles. " But he did not trust himself to them for
he knew them all, and had no need that any one
should tell him what men are, for he knew what was
in man." 1 He withdrew, at first, into the country of
Judaea, away from the glare and notoriety of the city,
and many resorted to him, were taught by him and
were baptized by his disciples. This excited the jealousy of John's disciples. The Baptist had come over
from Bethany, beyond Jordan, and was preaching
and baptizing near Salem on the border of the desert. By the laws of mere human growth and development, the schools of Jesus and of the Baptist
should now have become rival sects, with the usual
envyings and recriminations of ecclesiastical strife.
That they did not, affords a strong confirmation of
the averment of the Baptist, that he had seen Jesus
from a higher than a mere earthly point of view. His
answer to his own jealous disciples who came to him
with manifest alarm, is one of the sublime passages
of history, -" Lo, Jesus is baptizing, and all men are
going to him," say they. The answer of John is
found in chapter third, from verse 27 to the end of the
1 Chapter iii. 23-25.




31I2         THE FOUR TH GOSPEL.
chapter. Expositors have been in doubt where the
words of the Baptist end and where those of the
Evangelist are resumed. We understand this whole
passage to be the utterance of the Baptist, showing
the heighth and breadth and clearness of his illumination. That alone accounts to us for the grace and
even exultation, with which a man of his wonderful
power, with converts flocking to him from every side,
was content to see himself superseded in the breaking glories of a new day.
Jesus was making disciples now more rapidly than
the Baptist. The authorities knew it, and Jesus was
aware that the eye of the Sanhedrim was bent keenly
upon him. He knew that his own doctrine was to
be tenfold more revolutionary than that of the Baptist, and that his immediate arrest would follow if
he remained in Judaea. He returned to Nazareth by
the shortest route, which was through the heart of
Samaria.  The "disciples " who were now with him,
were probably the same men who followed him from
the Jordan, and who went up with him to the Passover festival, -John, Nathanael, and Philip. It was
a quiet and private journey on foot, made for the purpose of avoiding publicity or getting away from it.
It was with two or three intimate personal friends.




THE FIRST VISIT A7' 7ERUSALEM.    313
CONVERSATION AT THE WELL.
They passed through Sychar, the ancient Shechem of the tribe of Ephraim, lying between Mount
Gerizim on the left and Mount Ebal on the right,
both of them clothed to the Hebrew mind with the
most sublime historic memories; facing each other
with a sort of grim horror which contrasts with the
rich valley between, where the city lies embedded in
green gardens and olive-grounds, rendered more verdant by the lengthened shade which they enjoy from
the mountains. The city is in the heart of Samaria,
being forty miles from Jerusalem, and as many more
from Nazareth. This journey of eighty miles, travelled on foot by Jesus and two or three intimate
friends, holding converse by the way with persons
whom they met or with whom they tarried, gives us
a very distinct and vivid idea of the private ministry
of our Saviour. Jacob's well was near the city, just
outside its walls as you approach from Jerusalem.
It is there yet, near the point where the narrow
valley of Shechem, which is the modern Neapolis,
opens into the wider field. It is a permanent landmark, being an excavation thirty-five feet deep out
of the solid rock. The wells were places of public
resort, and this one was peculiarly so, being near
the city walls and on one of the thoroughfares, where
women morning and evening would be seen coming
from the city gates, waiting their turn and filing away
with their pitchers on their head.




314          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
We know of no composition pervaded more thickly
with threads of historic reality than the fourth chapter of John. The air, the scenery, the manners, and
prejudices of the people, are before us in the spontaneous allusions of the narrative. Every word is
fragrant with them and with the spirit of history running back more than a thousand years. All that can
be gathered from Josephus is only a verification
of this chapter. "The journey of our Lord from
Judaea to Galilee" says a traveller writing from the
spot, "the cause of it, his passage through the territory of Samaria, his approach to the metropolis of
this country, its name, his arrival at the Amorite
field which terminates the narrow valley of Shechem,
the ancient custom of halting at a well, the female
employment of drawing water, the disciples sent into
the city for food, by which its situation out of the
town is obviously implied, the question of the woman
referring to existing prejudices, which separated the
Jews from the Samaritans; the depth of the well,
the Oriental allusion contained in the expression'living water,' the history of the well and the customs
thereby illustrated; the worship upon Mount Gerizim,-all these occur within the space of twenty
verses."1 The incidental and cumulative evidence
becomes well-nigh irresistible that the writer of the
fourth Gospel is an eye-witness of what he records,
as none else would catch with such precision and
spontaneity the minute features of his pictures.
1 Dr. Clarke's Travels, p. 517. Robinson's Caalzet, p. 845.




THE FIRST VISIT AT rERUSALEM.      315
"It was about noon," an attention to precision of
date purely incidental, and a further indication of historic reality. More than all, the conversation with
the woman is in striking accord with what the writer
had previously told us concerning the methods of
Jesus, and his power over the minds of others. The
woman understands not a word of the discourse about
"living water," sinking the spirit in the letter all the
while; but when she finds not only her own mind and
soul laid bare under a perfect diagnosis of her spiritual condition, but the pages of her memory read backward through all her personal history, she springs to
the conclusion that not only a prophet but the very
Messiah has come. It seems probable that John has
only given us here the heads of conversation, and that
when the woman said he told her all she ever did, it
was not such sheer exaggeration as might at first
appear. She runs back to the city, forgetting her
pitcher and leaving it, and brings out her acquaintances to see the wonderful man. He converses with
them in turn, enters the city along with them, and
remains there two days engaged in personal intercourse with these people, many of whom believed
"through his own teaching."  No " miracle" is recorded of him here, nor are we led to suppose that
these Samaritans were initiated very far into a knowledge of the mysteries of the new kingdom of God.
But the power of Jesus in sounding the depths of
the human consciousness, and reproducing the past




3 6          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
on the living canvas of the soul, and thence speaking
to its condition, is here brought freshly into view as
it characterizes his method through all his subsequent
ministry.. It was a power higher in degree than that
over outward nature or over the physical body, for it
involved such a knowledge of the hidden past and
present, that the future about to be evolved therefrom
lay before him already as in sunlight.
THE SECOND MIRACLE IN CANA.
Jesus returned to his home in Nazareth. Before
his arrival, reports of what he did at Jerusalem had
preceded him. Of course a great many persons from
Nazareth and its vicinity were at the Passover festival, witnessing, not without some complacent pride,
the wonder and admiration produced there, by one
from their own humble and despised town. They
welcome him home. He remains at Nazareth now
nearly two months, or until the next Jewish festival,
evidently in the exercise of the offices of his private
ministry. He revisits Cana, where his miracle at the
wedding-feast had become known and had placed the
minds of the people in receptive attitude towards
him. Herod Antipas was now tetrarch of Galilee,
with his residence at Tiberias, on the shore of the
lake, a few miles south of Capernaum. An officer of
his court was at Cana, who had a son sick at Caperna.um. He had heard of the mysterious power of
Jesus, and besought him to go down to Capernaum




THE FIRST VISIT AT 7ERUSALEM.       317
and heal his son who was dying.  "Go," said Jesus,
"your son is well." Capernaum was fifteen miles
from Cana. This case in some of its features resembles so much that of the servant of the centurion narrated by Matthew that skeptical writers assume that
Matthew and John give contradictory accounts of the
same transaction.  It is sheer assumption.  They
both belong to a class of miracles distinct from those
of ordinary healing by the touch of the hand, but no
more difficult to account for under the action of spiritual laws. In all these instances of the restoration
of vital power, it is the mind of Jesus flowing into the
mind of the sufferer, and thence throbbing by a new
influx of life through the whole physical frame. The
only essential condition was that Jesus should be
brought into such relation to the sufferer, that the latter could be ensphered within that restoring love and
mercy. Personal presence, or physical contact with
words surcharged with electric sympathy, we know
from common experience are sometimes worth more
to the patient than any medicine in the world to
make the languid or freezing currents of life to start
anew. There was no other magic in the hem of
Jesus' garment or the touch of his hand, than the
magic of this creative and healing sympathy. But
who of us shall say that there is no access of mind to
mind and of soul to soul except through these fleshly,
clumsy instrumentalities? Who shall say this, especially of one who "dwelt in heaven" while yet in




318          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the flesh, and thence came down with the divine
restoratives among the woes and agonies that flesh is
heir to? The Spirit knows nothing of space and
distance as we measure them, and we can well conceive of it in such power and fullness that distance
vanishes before it, so that the feeble partitions of
sense and matter are no hindrance to the healing
balm of mind over mind, and thence over all the functions of the body in which it dwells.




CHAPTER       III.
THE SECOND VISIT AT JERUSALEM.
IFTY days after the festival described in the
last chapter there was another, called the Feast
of Weeks, or Pentecost.       This also summoned every
adult male to Jerusalem, and Jesus went up thither
from Nazareth.1     The inference is that the intervening seven weeks had been spent in the discharge of
the benign offices of his private ministry, and that
the second miracle at Cana was only one of them.
It is not likely that John was with him during the
whole of this interval. He would naturally return to
his home on the lake of Galilee. But he would be
1 It is a question, however, among commentators whether this second visit related by John was the Feast of Pentecost. Many of them
make it another feast of the Passover. This is highly improbable for
many reasons. It would make a whole year interspace the events of
chapter fifth and those of the preceding ones, with the exception that
we are told " He remained in Judaea baptizing" after the first Passover. But the whole connection indicates that this was a short sojourn. Again, the Passover festival continued eight days, and, being
the principal one, is always elsewhere mentioned by name. The Feast
of Weeks was a shorter one, and would be less likely to be specially
designated. For these and other reasons, we take this second visit at
Jerusalem to have been at the Feast of Weeks, conformably with the
opinions of the earliest fathers, though, it must be confessed, the
whole question can be decided only conjecturally.




320          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
likely, on going up to the Feast of Pentecost, to take
Nazareth in his way, and go in company with Jesus,
with whom the most intimate of friendships had
been formed; and that he did so we have confirmatory evidence in the fact that he alone has told us
what Jesus said and did at this second visit to the
capital, and told it with the air and the detail of an
eye and ear witness.
The Feast of Weeks commemorated the giving of
the law from Mount Sinai. It was also a feast of
prayer and praise, in acknowledgment of the God
of the harvest, the people bearing the first fruits to
the temple as an earnest of the looked-for bounty of
the season. Unlike the Passover festival, this lasted
only a single day, and required only one night in
Jerusalem. Nothing could be more picturesque than
their journeyings to the city. Neighbors and friends
would form into companies of twenty-four each.
They lodged in the streets or the open field the
night before starting, for fear of pollution. This,
under the soft vernal skies of Judcea, was attended
with no exposure. On the morning of the following
day the president of each company called them betimes with the salutation, "Arise, and let us go up
to Zion! " They set out on the journey preceded by
a bullock intended for sacrifice, whose horns were
gilded and whose head was garlanded with olivebranches. A person playing on a pipe went before
them to cheer them on their journey, while bursts of




THE SECOND VISIT AT 7ERUSALEM.      321
religious fervor were frequently heard from the people, chanting from the Psalms, "I was glad when
they said unto me, Let us go up to the house of the
Lord." They avoided fatigue, travelling only morning and evening, and when nearing the city they sent
a messenger to announce their arrival, whereupon
some of the priesthood went out to meet -them. Each
carried his basket of wheat, grapes, figs, apricots,
olives, or dates, waving it anon as his offering to the
Lord. The baskets of the rich were of gold or silver;
those of the poor, of wicker work, fancifully adorned
with flowers. As they entered the city the artificers
in the shops rose to salute them while they passed,
and the inhabitants of the city cheered them from the
house-tops. Some of the Psalms seem to have been
written expressly for these occasions, and to have
been chanted in responses between the people of the
city and the companies of the tribes crowding through
its streets towards the temple.
Such was the Feast of Weeks, which occurred in
the season answering to our month of May. Jesus
went up to these festivals, as we learn elsewhere, not
in one of these companies, but in a private way, and
now especially, during his private ministry would he
avoid the glare of notoriety. But he would find the
city alive with the pilgrims, and the courts of the
temple and the ways leading thereto densely crowded
with people.
Only a single incident is related of this visit, which
21




322            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
is remarkable as having led on to the colloquy with
the Jews, and that utterance of more than human
eloquence contained in the fifth chapter of the fourth
Gospel, whose single annunciation, says Paley, is
worthy of all the splendid apparatus of miracle which
the New Testament records.
Near one of the gates of the temple was a reservoir,
probably fed by a stream which ran near the templewalls, and was imagined, for that reason, to have some
mysterious power of healing. This virtue was supposed to be intermittent, owing, perhaps, to the intermittent flow of the waters. Very naturally, porticoes
had been built around the spot for the reception of
the sick. Hither the blind, the lame, and the paralytic were in the habit of resorting, each waiting his
turn to try the virtue of the waters.1 Hither our
Saviour bent his footsteps. A crowd of diseased persons, blind and cripple, were here before him. That
he did not work at once a wholesale miracle, and restore all this withered humanity, and cover it with the
bloom of health, is sufficient evidence that his power
was that of mind over mind, and not arbitrary and
magical, as we are too apt to imagine. He walks
among these wrecks of men, and selects one who
1 We understand the last clause of the third verse and the whole of
the fourth verse to be a gloss, placed originally in the margin, and that
the original text gives no sanction to the popular superstition respecting these waters. The passage thus included lacks support from the
best manuscripts, and has the air of a commentary.




THE SECOND VISIT AT 7ERUSALEM.      323
answers to him with gleams of intelligence and confidence. He enters familiarly into conversation with
him, evidently for the purpose of bringing the man
within his own interblending and life-giving sphere.
Through the man's own mind and memory Jesus
read backward the history of the long thirty-eight
years of disease and suffering. It was not that this
case was milder than the others, and easier to cure,
physically. It was one of the most obstinate, but
easier to take hold of spiritually, because Jesus found
somewhat responsive in the spirit of the patient, so
that when he tells him, " Rise, take up your couch,
and go home with it," the deep fountains of life
gushed forth afresh, flowing from within outward,
and with instant creative energy through the whole
physical man.
Other cures might have been performed, but this
evidently was selected because it served as the text
of a conversation on the Sabbath, and of an all-revealing discourse on death, life, and resurrection. Fancy
the long, hard faces of the puritans of the law as they
meet the man with his couch thrown over his shoulder walking with the rejoicing step of his freshly flowing energy. " It is the Sabbath-day: it is not lawful for you to be carrying your bed!" When they
sought out the author of the cure, and laid a snare for
his life as a Sabbath-breaker, the answer of Jesus
bears us, though with few words, into the very heart
of the Divine Beneficence: "My Father works CON



324           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
TINuOUSLY,1 and so do I." He does not stop his
work on the Sabbath; for life every moment is a
fresh gift from his hands; in the hearts of men that
beat on that day as on all days, and in all nature, that
blossoms as brightly on the seventh day as on any
other. If the Sabbath does not interrupt his mercy,
why should it mine? This is the meaning of the
reply, and nothing could illustrate more benignly the
new religion now coming direct from the heart of
God.
"MY Father works continuously, and so do I." The
possessive pronoun is emphatic. Jesus means to say
that now, in his plenary Messianic consciousness, his
words and deeds are no longer his own, but the
unbroken outflow of the Divine wisdom, power, and
love. This is what offended the Jews. It was not
that he asserted in general the Divine Fatherhood,
but that Fatherhood was impersonated in himself so
unreservedly that it spake directly as of old from Sinai,
overriding all other authority and sweeping it clean
away. It was not that he, the finite human being,
was "making himself equal with God," but that in
him the finite was being held in such complete stillness and abeyance that the Divine wisdom and truth
were coming forth with unmingled clearness. "Verily I say unto you, the Son does nothing of himself,
1 So the words ews 9prT should be rendered. They mean the unremitting exertion of the Divine governance and preservation for the
safety and welfare of the creation.




THE SECOND VISIT AT 7ERUSALEM.      325
but only what he sees his Father doing, for what the
Father does the Son does likewise. For the Father
loves the Son, and shows him all that He does, and
will show him greater works than these, to your astonishment." If you are surprised - such is the burden
of his meaning-that my Word, through my complete oneness with the Father, has sent life through
the mind and the limbs of this cripple, much more
will you be surprised at the wider and profounder
miracles about to be wrought by it. I see thewrecks
of humanity strewn all about me, the death and ruin
of which these blind and withered specimens give
only the outward form and semblance. And the
Father commits all judgment unto the Son to discern
and distinguish this spiritual death and ruin;- how
much of it is the sad inheritance of the past, and how
much of it comes of individual guilt and voluntary
depravity? Verily I say unto you, the hour is coming, yea, is now come, when those who have gone
down into this death shall hear the voice of the Son
of Man, and they who will listen to it shall live. For
the Father has self-subsisting life, and that life flows
through the Son, unchanged and continuous, into
these places of decay and death. Marvel not at this,
for the hour is coming when not those only who are
willing to hear my Word shall awake, but when all
who are in these sepulchres of spiritual death shall
hear it also; the grace hardened and impenitent to
have their quality searched out and shown, and their




326          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
guilt made blacker in the light of a more intolerable
day. There is to be both a resurrection of life and a
resurrection of condemnation. That this last passage
was a denunciation of the Jewish state of mind, is
evident both from what is before and after, - a state
in which spiritual death, ruin, and darkness come
upon men not as an involuntary inheritance, but under light and privilege, on whom therefore the light
will break, not to save, but to condemn.
This was the last visit of Jesus to Judaea previous
to the opening of his public ministry. If he had
once entertained the desire or the thought of inaugurating the new kingdom of God at the capital
its impossibility was now fully demonstrated. Twice
had he come there after his Messianic consciousness
had grown to its noon-day power and clearness, and
twice had they reviled him, rejected him and sought
to put him to death. At this last visit they charge
him capitally, first as a Sabbath-breaker and then
as a blasphemer. With that divine vision through
which he saw into the heart of things he now reads
them through and through, and then leaves them to
themselves. It must have been an enterprise congenial with his fondest desires, perhaps with early
cherished hopes and imaginations, to begin at Jerusalem, and let the light of the new revelation spread
in successive waves, till his own people and nation
were first involved in it and saved by it, and thence
the outer heathen darkness penetrated by it and at




THE SECOND VISIT AT 7EA'USALEM.     327
last completely illumined. We know, indeed, that
all the urgencies of a tender and brooding patriotism
had kindled these desires, and hopes of inaugurating
his ministry at Jerusalem and first gathering its people, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.
But this was not to be. His first ministry there was
tentative and personal, and proved that this was not
to be. And now in the full opening of his Messianic vision the whole future lies before him. The
path of triumph is not less sure, but it lies across
Calvary. Henceforth the cross was never out of
sight. The closing words at this Feast of Weeks are
a farewell to Jerusalem, as far as these first hopes and
purposes may have been concerned. There is, even
in his denunciation, an undertone of deeply grieved
and disappointed love: "I know you that you have
not the love of God in you. I have come in the
name of my Father and ye receive me not; if another
shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
Think not that I shall accuse you to the Father.
There is one who is accusing you, even Moses in
whom ye have trusted. For if ye had faith in Moses
ye would have faith in me, for he wrote concerning
me. But if ye believe not his writings how should ye
believe my words?"




CHAPTER IV.
REMOVAL TO CAPERNAUM.
THE people of Galilee differed vastly in character
and susceptibility from those of Judaea. They
were not such simple children of nature as Renan
describes them, but bold, hardy, and brave, and with
the inspiration of liberty thrilling through their veins.
The best soldiers came from Galilee, and the most
dangerous insurrections had their origin among its
hills. In our Saviour's day it had a dense population, but the Jewish element was not the principal
nor dominant one. Though there were Jewish synagogues in all the cities and larger towns where
native Jews and proselytes worshipped together, yet
Phoenicians, Syrians, and other pagan Asiatics, mingled largely in the population. The northern portion
of the province was called specially, " Galilee of the
Gentiles."  Rough and primitive in their manners,
in mind, character, and religion they were yet fluid
under any hand strong enough to impress them with
the divine signature.
Towards the northeastern border of this province
the river Jordan on its course southward, spreads out
into the Lake of Galilee, described on a preceding




REMOVAL TO CAPERNAUM.           329
page. On the western side of the lake the hills
trend away from it, leaving a plain which curves
round the water's edge the distance of about eight
miles. Along this plain and creeping sometimes up
the hill-slopes, were the five towns already named,
humble and obscure, but soon to become famous.
Their names are preserved, but their locality now is
in part only conjectural. Bethsaida and Capernaum
were situated towards the northern head of the lake,
and were fishing villages of considerable thrift. Capernaum was not at the water's edge, but climbed up
the bank and looked away over a prospect of mingled life and beauty, and especially over the lake
itself, whose surface, except when broken by storms,
was rippled only by fishing-boats and flocks of swimming birds; or, touched and changed by the magic
light of even-tide, the water seemed to lie on the bottom of a cup of gold.1
All hope of inaugurating the new religion at Jerusalem was at an end. Jesus removed from Nazareth
and came to Capernaum, making that place his home.
It is only a conjecture, but under all the circumstances the conjecture rises to strong probability
that his home was with John or with Salome, John's
mother, the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Here, among these protecting hills and among a
ruder population, largely heathen, and when Jewish,
1 The figure of Renan. We follow principally Josephus and
Calmet.




330          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
yet sometimes without the iron encasings of Jewish
bigotry, the new kingdom of God was to have its
first public proclamation. Jesus proclaimed it to the
populace till they were shaken by it as the leaves
of a forest in a mighty wind. He proclaimed it on
the mountains, by the sea-side to the fishermen in
their boats, in the synagogues, and to the multitudes
who pressed around him in throngs. His Word went
to spiritual natures which were starving, and which
were born into a new consciousness of life, that
thence had its outflowing into the lower sphere of
sense. Paralytics, maniacs, cripples, and blind men
were restored under his hand, and the dead came
back to life. Though his home was at Capernaum,
to which he ever returned, he went through the
neighboring towns and cities, crossed over the lake
into Peraea, and made journeys beyond Galilee into
Phcenicia.  None opposed him, except here and
there a few Pharisees who came as spies and informers.  "Truly," he exclaimed, on seeing these
multitudes ready to perish with spiritual hunger,
"the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few."
He organized two select bands or companies, one
of them permanent, the other temporary, and made
them the heralds of the new kingdom of grace.
They could not have entered fully into his thought,
but his mantle of power rested upon them as they
spake and acted in his name. The first need was
not so much truth in the understanding as a quick



REMOVAL TO CAPERN AUM.         331
ening power over the will and such cleaving through
the encasings of sense as to reach the spiritual nature and bring its wants distinctly and urgently into
the consciousness. The company of twelve was soon
found and organized.  Six of them  had been the
disciples of the Baptist, and Jesus had met them at
Bethabara. Two, and probably three of them, as we
have already seen, had been his personal followers;
had been with him in his private ministry in Judaea
and around Nazareth, and been drawn into the tender intimacies of personal friendship. Most of them
dwelt on the shores of the lake, were fishermen, unlettered and rude, but with natures earnest, hardy,
and glowing with health. Matthew and the sons of
Zebedee seem to have been men of more education
and culture than the rest. John, already the companion of Jesus, had friends and acquaintances at
the capital. It is remarkable that all the twelve
were Galileans except one, and that was Judas, who
was a Jew and who betrayed his Lord.
Taking into account the time and the occasion,
the charge of Jesus to these twelve men after they
had been gathered and organized for their work, is
most wonderful, and seems more than the language
of inspiration. The synagogues had become places
where much freedom of exhortation was allowed.
Any one who had a word to say was at liberty to say
it, provided, of course, it did not break the decorum
of the place; and it must have been a great relief




332            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
sometimes from the monotonous droning of the readers. Into the synagogues Jesus often went to speak,
and into these he charged his missionaries first
to go. It shows how deep and persistent was his
yearning towards his own countrymen and people
that, notwithstanding his recent rejection at Jerusalem, where his words fell on their hearts like strokes
upon an anvil, he will not yet give them  up. Still,
up there in Galilee, they shall have the first offers
of the divine mercy: "Go not away to the Gentiles
nor enter any town of the Samaritans, but go rather
to the wandering sheep of the house of Israel."
And yet he knows what commotion this will make
in the synagogues; and that while a few will welcome
his heralds and believe, the many will drive them
away with cursings and buffetings; and he forewarns and forearms them against the whole.   "Lo, I
send you out as sheep into the midst of wolves: be
ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves."
The other company consisted of seventy men, and
they went out in pairs. These were not directed to
go first to the synagogues. They went wherever
there were ears open to hear them. It is evident
that these two bands of missionaries evangelized the
whole of Galilee, and that its stagnant sea of spiritual
death was shaken into surging waves.1
1 Luke, in all probability, was one of the seventy. So say the early
traditions, and he alone gives the history of their mission, with the
charge given to them as they were going forth, and he gives it with
the graphic details of a personal witness.




REMOVAL TO CAPERNAUM.           333
The public ministry of Jesus in Galilee, has been
described by the synoptics; for Matthew and Peter
were eye-witnesses of it, and their personal experience was mainly with it. We should hardly
know from their narrative that Jesus had been much
out of Galilee. They were not with him ordinarily
in his private walks. They were abroad on their
journeyings doing the work which had been committed to them, though at stated times " they gathered
themselves together unto Jesus, and told him all
things, both what they had done and what they had
taught." Mark vi. 30.
It does not come within our plan to follow the
course of this public ministry, but rather the private
ministry, as John has described it. The evidence is
constantly cumulative that the fourth Gospel was
written by an eye-witness with the synoptics before
him.
We will give an instance which comes appropriately in this place, where the fourth evangelist has
repeated the first two, plainly to supply something in
close connection which they had left out entirely.
Soon after the execution of John the Baptist, the
people were pressing after Jesus in throngs, some of
them bent on making him a temporal prince. Herod
had already taken the alarm. Jesus retires from the
scene by taking a boat with his disciples and crossing over into Peraea, seeking concealment in an uninhabited place on the sides of a mountain, probably




334          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
at that time covered with forest. But the people see
the boat put off from Capernaum, and they follow on
to the number of five thousand, walking on the shore,
and keeping the boat in sight. They seek out the
place of retreat, and Jesus, soon after coming to the
spot, finds again a multitude around him. He does
not repulse or rebuke them, but teaches them still.
They hang upon his lips till towards evening, when
the disciples remind him that they are in a desert
place and without food. The disciples had taken food
only for themselves. Now follows the narrative of
Matthew and Peter, of the miracle of the loaves; of
recrossing the lake by night, leaving Jesus behind; of
the storm which overtook them; of Jesus coming to
their relief, walking on the sea; of Peter rushing out to
meet him on the water, and sinking in it; of the calming of the storm, and the safe landing again on the
shore near Capernaum; of the people bringing their
sick on beds, when they heard that Jesus had returned; and of the multitude who recrossed the lake
and sought him again. All this is detailed by Matthew and Peter (through Mark), the latter with lively
and graphic touches, for he was telling his own strange
experience. But we never should have known from
either of these writers that all this was only the external setting and frame-work of the highest truths,
serving merely to embody and preserve them for all
ages. We never should have known that the miracle
of the loaves was merely the text and the occasion of




RE1MO VAL TO CAPERNAUM.         335
one of the most heavenly discourses that ever fell from
human lips. All that teaching which comprises most
of the sixth chapter of the fourth Gospel, respecting
"the bread which came down from heaven," whereof
if one eat he shall never hunger, and which rises and
flows on till it unfolds the doctrine of atonement, of
resurrection from the dead, of a blissful immortality,
of an interworking providence assuring them that all
whom the Father gives to the Christ, shall come to
him, since he will raise them up at the last day, -
all this was the sermon for which the miracle of the
loaves furnished the text and the imagery. It flowed
on until Jesus merged his own personality in the
truth which he revealed to the world.  The scene
of the cross ever before him, is now transfigured
and the body to be rent upon it, and the blood to
be poured out, are taken up and transfused in the
glowing language of analogy. So completely is he
identified with his cause, that he acknowledges no
personal existence, except as the very form and body
of the truth he brings. "I am the living bread
which comes down from heaven. Let men break
my body and eat my flesh and drink my blood.
Whoever does this hath eternal life, and I will raise
him up at the last day."
All this was preached to those people who ate of
the loaves and were filled, partly on the shore after
recrossing the lake, and partly in the synagogue at
Capernaum, close by. Matthew and Peter make no




336          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
report of it, for the obvious reason that they did not
understand it, and it did not live in their memories.
They were "hard sayings" to most of the twelve;
and many of the other disciples "fell away" after
hearing it, for they stuck in the letter and could not
ascend so high. Matthew and Peter were greatly impressed with the miracles and all the external phenomena, and were rapt in wonder by them at the
time. These they describe with scenic power anct
vividness. But the doctrine of which all else was
only the type and symbol, and which, in the mind of
Jesus transcended all the rest in importance, was congruous with the very mind and genius of the favorite
disciple who had long shared the familiar thoughts of
the Teacher, and been drawn up towards the heaven
in which he lived. John makes mention of the miracle of the loaves, but goes on straightway to report
the divine discoursings, for which the miracle served
only to furnish the text and the imagery.  It is
another illustration of a fact which will meet us continually, that the four Gospels are not parallel, but
convergent, and that the fourth lies at the very heart
of Christianity. That Matthew and Peter should have
been impressed mainly with the miracles and the
physical concomitants, accords with all that we know
of the character of their minds especially, at this stage
of discipleship; that John alone, who had now been
in intimate communion with Jesus for a whole year,
should have been drawn up into its spiritual signifi



REMO VAL TO CAPERNA UM.        337
cance, is most natural. It entered deeply into his
thought, so that he not only reports the discourse at
length, as if that were more important than anything
else, but its imagery glows afterwards in the scenery
of the Apocalypse. Other disciples thought such
discourse fanatical, and fell off. " How can this Man
give us his flesh to eat?"  Some of the twelve
wavered. "Will ye also go away?"   Only John
drank in the whole of it, and has given a full report.
22




CHAPTER V.
THE THIRD VISIT TO JERUSALEM.
HILE Galilee was moved through its breadth
and depth, and Jesus was drawing the gaze of
all ranks upon himself, another festival supervened
which summoned all the Jewish adult males to Jerusalem. The Feast of Tabernacles occurred in September, and was attended with much peaceful pomp
and ceremony. It commemorated the sojourn of the
children of Israel in the desert where they encamped
in movable tents and tabernacles. It was also a festival of thanksgiving for the ingathering harvest. It
lasted eight days. The streets of Jerusalem and all
the environs were crowded with arbors woven of
evergreen boughs. These were reared, too, on the
flat roofs of the houses, so that the city presented the
appearance of being almost buried in a mighty forest,
gleaming out here and there through the darkly embowering foliage. In these arbors the people lodged
during the festival; every loyal Jew deserting his
house for these temporary dwellings. The people
formed processions, when each held in his hand
branches of palm, myrtle, and willow, waving them
and singing hosannas to the Lord of the harvest.




THE THIRD VISIT TO JERUSALEM.        339
The eighth day of the festival was called "the grand
day," because the rites were specially imposing.
Close by the temple walls was the fountain of Siloam,
a spring which bubbled up and became a little brook
that channeled its way into the Cedron. A procession was formed, reaching continuously from the
fountain into the temple courts, carrying pitchers of
water, winding round the altar, waving their palms
and shouting hosannas, pouring the contents of their
pitchers down at the foot of the altar, and singing,
"With joy we draw water from the wells of salvation." The rite was attended with dancing, and the
festival closed with an illumination of the courts and
porches of the temple. It was celebrated with so
much of picturesque pomp that it drew the admiring
notice of heathen nations.
There was a pause in the public ministry of Jesus,
as the people of Galilee were wending their way
towards Jerusalem  to attend this Feast of Tabernacles. Some of his kinsmen urged him to go up to
the capital, and there proclaim himself, not believing
that the Messiah was to break upon the world from
an obscure corner of Galilee. Go, they said, to this
great feast and publish your claims. Jesus replied
to them as we construe his words: " You can go
without me. I am not to celebrate this feast,' for
1 John vii. 8. There is some doubt as to the true reading of this
text, and whether ouc or oi7rw should be preferred, i. e., whether Jesus
said, " I am not going," or " I am not going now." Griesbach adopts




340           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the time is not yet come for me to be sacrificed.
You can go in safety; I cannot. The world does not
hate you as it hates me." He means, "I am not
going to keep this festival." Its legal observance
would have required him to be at Jerusalem at its
beginning, to go up in one of the processions and
in a public manner. So he says, I am not going to
observe this feast; and he waited till the crowds
had gone up, and the public ways were still, and
Jerusalem was in the midst of its rejoicings, before
he started.  He knew that in that city he stood
charged with two capital crimes: Sabbath-breaking
and blasphemy. He knew that the stir in Galilee
had alarmed the Sanhedrim, and that if he appeared
now in his public character at the capital his arrest
and execution were certain. So he tells his kinsmen:
" Go up yourselves, I am not going to celebrate this
festival." And yet with what unspeakable tenderness does he yearn towards the devoted city! There
are his own people and they of his own lineage; there
too he has made many disciples during his private
ministry and among its humbler classes, and they will
look with longing eyes for him at the festival. The
crowds gone, and the ways still, he goes up in a
private manner, though he comes into the very jaws
of danger and death.
Of course he would not appear there as in Galilee,
the former, and we think rightly. Either way there is no room here,
as Porphyry pretends, for impeaching our Lord's veracity.




THE THIRD VISIT 7'0 T  ERUSALEM.   341
at the head of twelve organized followers. The festival was half over when he arrived. There is evidence, as we have said, that John had friends and
acquaintances in the city, and we infer that during
this third visit he was there with his Master, as he
reports minutely the incidents and conversations
of which he must have been an eye and ear witness.
True enough, the old charge of Sabbath-breaking
comes up again. The case of the cripple cured at
the pool of Bethesda is remembered, and there are
whisperings among the crowd, " Where is He? " He
ventures into the temple and teaches by personal
intercourse and conversation, and he is making converts from among the common people. The Sanhedrim are eagle-eyed, and watch all that is going on.
They appoint police-officers to arrest him as a Sabbath-breaker, which under Jewish law was punishable with death by stoning.  These police-officers
lurk among the crowd, and wait their opportunity,
but Jesus discerns the fact, and is acquainted with
all their wiles.
Chapters seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, as far
as verse twenty-second, of the fourth Gospel, describe
what took place at this festival and soon after, in the
intercourse of Jesus with the Jews at the capital.
He remained after the festival was over, holding colloquies with the groups that gathered about him;
mixed companies, some of whom scoffed and caviled;




342          THE FOURTHI GOSPEL.
some of whom were receptive under his teachings,
but timid and reticent, knowing that an overwhelming odium from the ecclesiastical authorities was resting upon him. No less than seven of these personal
colloquies are described by John, who evidently kept
with Jesus both in his retirement at night and in
his walks by day. These conversations are exceedingly characteristic. They are not given evidently
in the order of time, but they are photographs of the
temper of the times, of the Spirit of Jesus, and of
well-known traits of human nature; and have that
air of reality which no romance ever succeeds in
imitating to entire perfection. Sometimes the hearrers and spectators are charmed, and half convinced
by the speech and bearing of the wonderful man.
Then they bethink themselves. The Messiah of their
imaginations was to come in some supernatural and
unaccountable way: " We know whence this man is.
When the Messiah comes no one will know whence
he is." "The Messiah was to break upon us out
of some splendid supernatural halo; but we know
all about this man, and just the place he comes from
up there in Galilee, and there is no great mystery
about him." John would not have reported such
talk as this unless he had heard it. No romancer
would have done it, bent on glorifying his hero.
That Jesus, after the full opening of his Messianic
consciousness, foresaw and forecalculated his own
death and resurrection, is not inferred from any ob



THE THIRD VISIT TO 7ERUSALEM.      343
scure intimations which might have been afterwards
exaggerated and misapplied by his fondly mistaken
disciples. These form the burden of discourse, conversation, and prophecy, and his forecast of these
events shapes the whole plan of his ministry. Leave
out the discourses, conversations, and plans of action
in which his death and resurrection are presupposed
and necessarily involved, and there is nothing left in
the life of Jesus which has any coherence or significance.  In this third visit to the capital, his own
death, and the manner of it which he forecasts so
persistently and clearly, is a subject of constant reference, his mind being full of it, and the minds of his
hearers being of course utterly incapable of taking in
the meaning of it. To the men who he knew were
plotting for his arrest and execution, he said, " I shall
be with you but a little while longer. You will seek
me, but you will not find me, and where I shall be
you cannot come." They thought he was planning
an escape out of their hands. "What can he mean?
Will he go to the Greeks and teach the Greeks?"
But again afterward he speaks more openly and explicitly, "I lay down my life to receive it again. No
one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own
accord. I am commissioned to lay it down and I
am commissioned to receive it again. This charge
I received from my Father." Some, very naturally,
thought him insane. " He is mad, why do you listen
to him." Others, charmed by his words and amazed




344          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
by his miracles, are simply perplexed and bewildered.
" Can a maniac speak like him and cure cripples and
blind men?" To suppose that Jesus had not this
clear supernatural forecast, is to assume that these
details of conversation were invented afterwards;
and this is to assume that some dishonest forger,
a century after the events, photographed the living
manners of Jerusalem and the inmost life of Judaism
with a subtle genius transcending that of Scott or
Dickens; and in addition to this put into the mouth
of one of his characters discourses so much more
divine than any which ever fell from human lips, that
they have been bread from heaven to our hungering
humanity for eighteen hundred years!
CURE OF THE BLIND MAN.
The cure of the blind man, and the incidents and
conversations which followed thereupon, are transactions as full of nature as they can hold. Here was
a miracle right under the eye of the Sanhedrim, and
in the temple-court, and the people have seen it. It
will not do to arrest and execute this man unless the
fact can be accounted for or explained away. They
appeal to the parents, hoping the parents will deny
that there was any blindness in the case. They
evade most ingeniously, and are non-committal: "All
we know about it is that he was born blind and that
now he sees."
" Who opened his eyes?"




THE THIRD VISIT TO J7ERUSALEM.     345
" He is of age, ask him? "
Then follow the cross-examination of the young
man himself, and his excommunication and the rebuke of Jesus to the Pharisees for their own incurable blindness, ascending as usual from natural
things to spiritual. The miracle is only the nucleus
of a whole texture of natural events, and the discoursings which proceed from them, which are indissolubly bound together with the plainest marks of historic certainty, and the most subtile shadings of
human character.
SERMON AT THE POURING OF THE WATER.
Once, however, at this festival, Jesus broke from
his reserve and proclaimed himself in tones that
pierced the crowd and held them in the stillness
of profoundest awe. It was under circumstances
where it is hard to conceive it possible that his divine
eloquence should have been either repressed or resisted. On the last day of the feast, "the grand
day," the long procession was streaming up from the
spring of Siloam, winding through the courts and
circling the altar, pouring out their pitchers of water,
waving their palm-boughs, and chanting, "With joy
we draw water from the wells of salvation." The
court of the Gentiles would be thronged with sympathizing crowds through which the procession
would wend its way. The rite commemorated the
miracle in the desert, when Moses smote the rock




346          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
with his rod and the water gushed out of it. The
people must have had some perception of the spiritual significance of the event they were celebrating
with joyous hosannas.  The police-officers were in
the crowd, watching for what they might deem the
last opportunity to arrest the Sabbath-breaker and
blasphemer.  But Jesus knew the men, and in his
hour of divine exaltation was conscious that he held
them and the crowd at his command. The rock,
smitten by the prophet's rod and turned to a spring
for the thirsting travellers; Siloam, gushing forth and
flowing on into the Cedron, become the text and
imagery of his discourse. "He stood and cried,"
says the record; implying that his voice broke on
the crowd above the murmurs and the hosannas with
such startling power and clearness that it arrested
them and held them. "If any man thirst let him
come unto me and drink. Verily I say unto you if
anyone have faith in me his heart shall be a spring
out of which shall flow rivers of living water." It
is plain that John only reports the topic and heads
of discourse, and that it flowed on till it unfolded the
truths of the new reign of God, and a new dispensation of the Holy Spirit.
The Evangelists do not describe our Saviour's
manner, from which we infer that he had none which
drew attention to it. They describe his power by
the effect his words produced in searching out the
secret of the soul, and subduing it under a supernat



THE THIRD VISIT TO J7ERUSALEEM.    347
iral awe. This convinced and conquered more than
my external miracles could do which were only incidental to it, for it struck on the deeper chords that
thrilled through the more mysterious realms of consciousness. So now many believed simply from hearing his discourse, and only because his words smote
them as with supernatural power. " Surely," they
said, " this is the Prophet."
The seventy judges, which constituted the Sanhedrim, held their session in a room at a corner of one
of the courts of the temple, and it was not far off.
The police-officers slink away from the crowd and
report themselves to the judges.
" Why have ye not arrested him and brought him
hither?"
"Never man spake like this man."
HIS EXISTENCE BEFORE ABRAHAM.
At another of the seven colloquies which John has
reported on this occasion, they attempted again to
take his life. It was also in one of the temple courts,
probably in the court of the Gentiles, under whose
open porticoes the devotees of the temple were accustomed to assemble and hold converse, as in a kind
of theological exchange. Here Jesus had gathered
around him a group of sympathizing friends and
believers, and was exhorting them to be steadfast.
"My truth shall make you free," - referring to the
Roman subjection under which the Jews were chaf



348          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ing, and the higher than civil freedom which was
now within their reach. But the cavillers were present, and Jesus sees the eyes of the police-officers
gleaming through the crowd. The cavillers boast of
their descent from Abraham as conferring a higher
freedom and nobler pedigree than Jesus could give.
Jesus charges them with their murderous intent:
" Ye are seeking to kill me, which Abraham would
not have done. Your father is the Devil, for you are
ready to execute his purposes, and he was a murderer
from the beginning." Then alluding to the eternal
life which was beyond their reach, he says, "Verily I say unto you, whoever obeys my teaching will
never see death;" meaning, though you kill the
body, you cannot touch the life within. This they
cannot understand. "Abraham died, and the prophets died, whom do you make yourself?" Jesus replies, " Your father Abraham exulted that he might
see my day, and he saw it and rejoiced." Sticking in
the letter they rejoin, " You have not yet reached the
fifty years which is the average length of human life,
and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus replies, in a
passage which has been made famous by the controversies Which have proceeded from it: "Before Abraham was born I AM." Notwithstanding the controversies, we can find but one meaning to it: Jesus is
claiming that God in a peculiar sense is his Father;
and for this reason they are charging him with blasphemy. We must remember that his Messianic




THE 7TIRD ViSIT TO 7ERUSALEM.      349
consciousness is now at its meridian fullness and
power, and that he claims that he is not speaking
from himself, nor from any dictates of finite intelligence; but that the Word, or the Eternal Reason, is
speaking continuously through him, as much so as
when it spoke from Sinai. He claims that his own
finite personality is lost in these revealing annunciations, or is held in perfect abeyance. It is not a
mortal man that is speaking to you, he would say,
but the Logos himself It is one with me and my
Father. Passing into this divine consciousness and
speaking from it, he uses the first person singular,
claiming that the Logos has become incorporate with
his own being and substance. On any other theory
the language of these discourses is very often utterly
unwarrantable, and would have furnished the Jews
with just ground for their charges of blasphemy.
When he declares, then, " before Abraham was I
am," he means to say, the Eternal Word from which
I speak is not like Abraham and the prophets, who
grow old, or to whom you can apply the measure of
your mortal years. It has no past, and no future, for
it is without beginning or end or succession of days.
To these cavillers, boasting of their ancient and honorable descent, comes the annunciation: The Being
who is speaking to you is the Eternal Now, who is
timeless, - cutting short their driveling logic; and
it could not, as we conceive, have been more concisely and sublimely done.




350             THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
They understand him, evidently now, for they regard this as blasphemy. They take up stones to cast
at him, and would have murdered him, but Jesus
suddenly withdrew and concealed himself, and passed
out of the temple by a private way.'
THE FAMILY AT BETHANY.
Whither did he go? Luke-who as we have seen,
must have obtained much that he has written from
John and his household —has told us of one place
where Jesus went at this time; and the fact indicates
what were his resorts and private communings when
he withdrew from the strife of men. He sought the
soothing intercourse of personal friendship in the retreats of social and domestic love.     How   many of
these friendships must have been formed among the
families in and around Jerusalem who had become
receptive of his Word and believers in his Messiahship! They would be mostly if not entirely among
the common people, who would conceal the fact from
the respectable dignitaries at the capital.
1 So we read the passage, John viii. 59, which has been variously
interpreted.  Some render eipv8rlj-, "made himself invisible," by
which the advocates of the genuineness of the fourth Gospel understand a miracle; the opposers a trace of Gnosticism. Neither is
found in the passage, unless by being first put into it by the expositor.
The latter clause bLeA0&v.... oTorws, "going through the midst of
them and so passed by," is rejected by Griesbach on external grounds
as a gloss, as also by some of the best expositors. It probably got
into the text as a gloss copied from Luke iv. 30. The whole passage
would read, fairly rendered, " He concealed himself from them and
passed out of the temple."




THE THIRD VISIT TO R7ERUSALEM.      351
About two miles east of Jerusalem, beyond the
Mount of Olives, near the foot of the mount, and on
the road to Jericho, was one of these families, evidently in middle or humble life, to which Jesus resorted for safety, repose, and the intercourse of personal love. Lazarus and his two sisters not only had
faith in him, but had become endeared to him by
offices of hospitality and affection. They must have
been among his earlier converts and disciples, for
when Luke introduces them to our notice at this
time, we find their intercourse to be of the most
sacred and confidential nature. The characters are
individualized by a few unconscious strokes of the
pen. Mary sits at his feet, lost to everything beside,
as she drinks the wisdom from his lips. Martha is
the more anxious and careful, lest the comfort of a
guest so honored and beloved will not be attended to.
Jesus puts them both at ease by a few words characteristic of his religion and of himself. A delightful picture of tranquillity and rest after the stormy
controversies at the temple!
So ended the third visit to Jerusalem. These journeys to the capital were plainly episodes during his
more public ministry in Galilee, and while his organized followers there were achieving their great success. Thither he would return, and at his quiet home
in Capernaum, and amid a people receptive of his
Word, receive the reports of his evangelists as they
came back with tidings of their mission.




CHAPTER VI.
FOURTH VISIT TO JERUSALEM.
ALL this while both the Seventy and the twelve
were evangelizing Galilee, and probably regions
beyond its limits. They were amenable only to the
Roman power, and not immediately under the shadowing and oppressive authority of the Jewish Sanhedrim.
We have no intimations that as a body, either of
these organizations attended upon the Jewish festivals, or that their work extended within the limits of
Judaea. But they were to return to Jesus at Capernaum, and bring to him a report of what they had
done. The Seventy did so, it would seem, about this
time, when Jesus returned again from Jerusalem and
its vicinity, and escaped from the snares which were
there involving him, to this quiet spot among the
sheltering hills of Galilee. The Twelve, ere this, had
reported to him; but the mission of the Seventy was
more general and more remote.1
The whole province of Galilee had been shaken as
1 "And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and
told him all things, both what they had done and what they had
taught." Mark vi. 30. "And the seventy returned again with joy,
saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name."
Luke x. i8.




FOURTH VISIT TO yERUSALEM.        353
from the slumbers of death. The words of Jesus to
the Jews when he cured the cripple, had become
verified, - "The time is coming, and is now come,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God, and they that will listen shall live."
There was a class of men very common in'those
days, called demoniacs.  They were not ordinary
cases of insanity, but cases in which men's voluntary
powers had been overlaid and possessed, even to the
bodily organs, as if the unseen world of evil was
breaking visibly into the world of matter. They
were the most difficult of all cases to cure, requiring a stronger and more pervading influx of power
through the whole organism of mind and body, and
the disciples were not always equal to the work.
But the Seventy returned with the joyful report of
their success: " Even the demons are subject to us
through thy name." Jesus is rapt into the highest
ecstasy on finding the success of his Word so widespread and complete. "I see Satan falling from
heaven like lightning." "I see the Evil Power, so
long enthroned over the minds of men, vanish like
a meteor trailing down the sky." And then contrasting his repulse at Jerusalem with his reception
among these rude and simple-hearted Galileans, he
breaks out in a glad strain of thanksgiving: "I
glorify thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because though thou hast hidden these things from the
wise and prudent, thou hast revealed them unto
23




354          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
babes." It is impossible to understand this lofty and
exultant strain, except as we figure to ourselves the
Saviour escaping barely with his life, from his personal ministry at the capital, and seeing the result of
his public ministry at Capernaum, which shook all
Galilee from the slumbers of spiritual death.
Within two years after the removal to Capernaum,
the change had become so great in Galilee, that the
authorities at Jerusalem saw the revolution rolling up
to the capital, and they saw that unless it could be
arrested, they must inevitably go down before it.
Unquestionably they were so far right. From any
possible view which the ecclesiastical powers were
capable of entertaining, there was now nothing for
them to do but to put out of the way the author of
the new movement, which was already shaking the
ground beneath them. How insecure they were in
their seats, we shall readily imagine when we call to
mind the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem at
the last Passover festival, with a throng of people,
many of them from Galilee, shouting hosannas and
strewing his way with palms.
He must have remained several months in Galilee,
seeing and hearing the results of his organized ministry and inspiring it with his presence. His next
visit to Jerusalem was at the " Feast of Dedication,"
which took place in December. This festival did not
claim any divine authority, nor did it require the
presence of Jewish believers at Jerusalem. It was




FOU'RTH VISIT TO 7ERUSALEM.      355
appointed by. Judas Maccabmeus as a new dedication
of the temple and altar after they had been polluted
by Antiochus Epiphanes; and the festival down to
the time of our Saviour had been kept with rejoicings and illuminations. Jesus is drawn again from
his work in Galilee. It is apparent, too, that only
John, his most intimate disciple, went with him from
Capernaum.
JESUS WITHDRAWS TO BETHABARA.
He appears again in one of the porticoes of the
temple, and holds conversation with the people who
gather there. But he is more reticent than at his
last visit, for he knows that the plottings are thickening and ripening, and he will not surrender his life
till his work in Galilee is complete. He comes to
the capital now, evidently not so much to make new
converts there as to hold communings with those who
already believe on him, and make them strong for
the trial hour. Observing this reticence and caution,
the Jews came around him, and said, " How long will
you hold us in suspense? If you are the Messiah,
tell us plainly?" He reminds them that they are not
of his fold and will not believe; that he has come to
find his own, and does find them; that no robber can
pluck them out of his hands, because they were given
him by the Father, and he and the Father are one.
This revives the old charge of blasphemy, and kindles, as with a spark, the rage which since the last




356          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
encounter had been gathering strength and determination. They take measures for his immediate arrest, and he withdraws both from the temple and the
city. His purpose in coming hither to strengthen
those who secretly believe on him, cannot be accomplished in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and he
retires to the desert, away beyond Jordan, drawing
them after him into those profound solitudes. It was
the old familiar place where John had first baptized,
where Jesus had made his desert home while his Messianic consciousness was coming on with power, and
where, emerging from the water at John's baptism,
the heavens up to the central throne, had opened
upon his mind. Hither he came now, and abode for
some time; and how consecrated must the spot have
been! And here his own people came to him, and
gathered around him for those communings which
could not be had under the scowl of Jewish authority.
John implies that they continued for some time in this
delightful intercourse, in those far-off solitudes. " And
many came to him who said, John, indeed, performed
no miracle, but all which John said of this man is
true. And many believed in him there." I They were
choice Sabbatic hours where no police-officers were
watching in the crowd. It was across the desert,
some twenty-five miles from Jerusalem.
1 John x. 40-42.




FOURTH VISIT TO JERUSALEM.        357
LAZARUS DIES AT BETHANY.
But a family of these disciples whom Jesus had left
Galilee to strengthen and support, was in affliction.
Lazarus was sick. The sisters know the place of
Jesus' retreat, and disciples of the neighborhood of
Jerusalem were going over to Bethabara and returning. By some of these they sent word to Jesus, confident that the news would bring him at once to the
friend whom he loved. He was not ready to leave
his retirement at once, but lingered there till after
Lazarus had died.
It is impossible to enter into this scene, if we regard the "miracle" which restored Lazarus, an arbitrary display of divine power. It is none the less a
miracle for being in accord through,all its processes
with the highest and inmost laws of our human
nature, but whose action is here sublimed and intensified by a love such as never throbbed before
through the heart of man.
Bear in mind that our knowledge of the process
of death is for the most part a very superficial and
outside knowledge. Swedenborg says, that the final
extrication of our immortal being from its mortal
envelopments, does not generally take place till the
third day after death has transpired. That it does
not take place instantaneously, is reasonable in itself,
and facts are abundant which go to prove it. We
ought to infer from all the analogies and all the divine




358          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
dealings with us, that death is no such change as the
frightened imaginations of our childhood have made
it; that it is not a sudden and violent wrenching of
the soul from the clasp of the flesh to the giant wonders of eternity. Not so did we come into this world;
not so shall we go out of it; not so are the births of
nature when in all her embryonic cells she feels the
troubled life that calls for a new stage of development, when the tender germ is breaking from its
capsula into bud and flower. Death is birth in its
ultimation, the final unclasping of the bands of
nature that held us. There is an interval,longer or
shorter, between the last streak of our earthly twilight
and the first gleam of the new morning sky. We
know this, for hundreds have passed into it without
touching finally the shore beyond, and come back to
this natural life again. It is longer or shorter, according to precedent conditions physical and spiritual.
It is a total suspension of all the voluntary and involuntary powers. It is where our whole being is bathed
in the most soothing of Lethean waters. Instances
are reported where this interval has been prolonged
through several days.  In what we call death the
spell of total silence is laid on all our fluttering pulses,
lest any of our struggles and outcries might hinder
the divine process of resurrection. The mother's
caress, when she stills the wailings of her infant on
her breast, represents but poorly the unequaled tenderness of the Divine Father when He hushes his




FOURTH VISIT TO yERUSALEM.        359
babes to sleep, that their waking in the air of immortality may be orderly and serene.
It is also true that the process of death is prolonged and even postponed by the clinging sympathies of friends. This law of sympathy sometimes
acts disastrously, lengthening out the last agonies
when those we love ought to be given up on their
part and on ours, with an unreserved resignation to
the Divine Will. That there may be a sympathy so
divinely strong as to postpone the final extrication of
the spiritual body from the natural, is certainly conceivable under the same law of mental and spiritual
action.
Bear in mind, too, that the sympathies of Jesus
were so pervasive and strong that space and distance often vanish, and the sorrows and pains of
those who were miles away, are drawn up into his
heart, and healing power sent forth to restore them.
Analogous cases have been known where hearts, sundered by wide spaces and even by ocean waves, have
so throbbed into each other as not only to beat consciously together, but to impart some knowledge of
their mutual joys and sufferings.l We get hereby
some dim intimations of what our mysterious nature
might be without the clogs and limitations of sense,
and of what the nature of Jesus actually was when
sense was becoming the transparency of the spirit,
within.
1 The case of the Buckminsters, father and son, will occur to some
of our readers in this connection.




360          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
HE IS RAISED TO LIFE.
In conceiving the resurrection scene which now
follows, the English reader must carefully eliminate
from it the idea suggested by our word "grave."
The tombs in the vicinity of Jerusalem were chambers excavated in the sides of limestone rocks.
Around the sides of the chamber were placed stone
tables, and back of these were niches, or narrow cells,
sunk farther into the rock. The tables were first occupied with the corpses, and when the tables were
full, the bodies were laid away in the cells beyond.
We must dismiss the notion of coffins and of our
modern funeral paraphernalia. The bodies were embalmed, but the balming varied according to the rank
or vanity of the deceased. The usual way was to
anoint the body with odoriferous drugs, and swathe it
with linen bands; and so prepared, it was laid tenderly
away upon one of the tables at the side of the sepulchral chamber, the door closed which opened laterally
into the recess, and a stone rolled against it.
We are now prepared to understand the resurrection scene at the tomb of Lazarus. The friendship
of a soul like that of Jesus, the personal ties that
held others in the embrace of his love, are a most
essential element in the interpretation of this whole
chapter,- a chapter which quivers with a pathos, as
fresh, when we read it now the thousandth time, as
if the whole scene were enacted but yesterday. We




FOURTH VISIT TO 7ERUSALEM.        36 
must think of the mighty power, even of our poor
human affection over those who are near to us when
struggling in the grasp of death; how it holds them
in the body and will not let them go; how sometimes, after the eyes are closed and the pulses are all
still, and the shroud has been put on, affection will
hold them in ties that cannot break, and in some
cases well certified, has divined the fact that the
spirit was still there, and called it back to life.
Think, then, what the power of the Saviour's love
must have been when acting under like conditions!
The miracle began two days before, and it was a
miracle of all-knowing and all-conquering sympathy.
Jesus was twenty-five miles off beyond the Jordan,
when Lazarus sickened and died. He was so rapt in
communings with his followers, and so intent in preparing his flock against the wolves that would scatter
them, that he remained there two days after the
afflicted family sent for him. But in heart and spirit
he is at Bethany also, and knows the progress of the
disease by those throbs and disturbances, which a
heart both great and tender, feels along its hidden
chords, and which draws up the sufferings of others
into itself. How naturally he discerned, or rather
felt the hour when all was over! " Our friend Lazarus sleepeth and I go to wake him." He would not
call it death, for he was still conscious that he held
him in his power and held him to this world in the
mighty embraces of his love, and only for the dull




362          THE FO UR TH GOSPEL.
perceptions of his disciples he says, "Lazarus is
dead." When all this is kept in mind, the scene at
the tomb almost ceases to be a wonder, for it is
hardly strange that the spirit came back to its consciousness in the flesh, when it had been held to this
world and within its fleshly organism by sympathies
so divinely strong. We cannot read patiently the
sermons of the commentators on the words "Jesus
wept," as if here was something unaccountable.
How perfectly do they bring him before us, burdened
with the feelings caused by drawing all the pains and
sorrows of the family, and the dying man into himself, pent up before, but now convulsing his breast
and brimming over in drops of tenderness! And
how entirely in keeping is the scene that follows,
which we are let into in a way that no forger would
ever have thought of! As the tenant of the tomb
rises from the stone table on which he had been
lying, and struggles with the linen bands that impede his movements, and the lookers-on are fixed in
wonder and awe with no offer of assistance, Jesus,
who alone was self-possessed, says to them with a
wave of the hand toward Lazarus, " Loose him and
let him go."
Then the characterization of the narrative is so
plainly unstudied and undesigned as to render it
morally certain that the whole scene is real and not
imaginary. How perfectly, though incidentally, are
the two sisters individualized! It is Mary and not




FOURTH VISIT TO 7ERUSALEv.        363
Martha who sits in the most retired part of the
house, given up to tender sorrow, and does not know
that Jesus is coming. It is Martha and not Mary,
still " cumbered with much serving," who sees his approach and rushes out to meet him. One repeats
after the other, the same words which they must
have said over and over together. It is Martha and
not Mary who makes the coarse remark respecting
the state of the body. Any forger or romancer could
have imagined a resurrection scene, and we have
abundance of them in the legends of the saints. No
forger or romancer of these times, or of any times,
could have made the central fact the heart of a narrative like this, threading the whole body of it with
veins into which beats the finest life-blood of our
human nature.
A late writer objects to the prayer at the tomb
as dramatic, in the clause "because of the people
that stand by I said it, that they may believe that
thou hast sent me."  If it was dramatic, then all
prayer is except secret prayer, for all other prayer
is specially "for the sake of the people that stand
by," they being supposed either to join in it or be
brought more directly under its influence. It is to
be presumed that John has here given only the
summary of what Jesus prayed for, and which was
mainly for faith on the part of the people who were
with him. His desire was that they might not stupidly wonder at the miracle he was about to work,




364          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
but be helped by it to an apprehension of the Divine
doctrines which he taught.
On a careful study and review of this resurrection
scene, I want language to express the conviction of
its historic certitude in all its particulars. The narrative is beyond the highest reach of art, in those
delicate touches of nature which are plainly unconscious, and therefore the indelible marks of reality.
A forger would not have brought Jesus to the grave
" weeping," nor would he have described a scene of
such thrilling import without betraying some effort
to be dramatic, nor without weaving in elements in
disharmony with the naturalness and tenderness of
the scene. It is objected that such a miracle as this
could not possibly have been omitted by the synoptics. The objection is futile. Whenever Jesus approached Jerusalem he came under the frowns and
threatenings of the authorities. To come up with
twelve organized followers, would have been madness.
He never did, except at the fatal Passover, foreseen
and intended to be the last. But he knew how many
hearts and homes were yearning towards him in and
about Jerusalem, how much they needed strength, and
how soon they would need consolation. These more
private visitations give us gleams far into the more
interior life of Jesus; and whoever reads the fourth
Gospel with care, must see that they are described by
an eye-witness who keeps himself out of sight. Let
the reader note carefully the time of the resurrection




FOURTH VISIT TO JERUSALEM.        365
scene at Bethany. Jesus had come up privately to
Jerusalem for the last time before the fatal Passover;
he had escaped for his life and gone over the Jordan
into the desert; he had drawn after him disciples
from the city, and was communing with them there;
he goes back to Bethany to raise up his dead friend,
though against the remonstrance of those disciples
who fear he will be arrested; he leaves immediately
after, and returns to Galilee by an unfrequented way,
where we find him again with the twelve. It is pretty
certain that the twelve were not with him at Bethany;
it is exceedingly probable that John would be there,
and taking the whole evidence, we think it morally
certain that he was there, and that his pen has described the scene.
JOHN INTERLACES THE SYNOPTICS.
We have observed how constantly he supplements
the synoptics and fits into them. Sometimes the
interlacings are exceedingly delicate, and where he
disagrees with them in details, the disagreements are
confirmatory evidence of genuineness. We cannot
avoid the conclusion, that we have an instance of this
in the history of the resurrection scene at Bethany,
and one of a very remarkable kind. The characters
are introduced in this way:"Now a certain man was sick named Lazarus of
Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha."
Then we have this explanatory sentence, thrown




366          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
in parenthetically: "It was the same Mary which
anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet
with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick."
Why this reference to Mary as one whose deed was
already famous? We cannot mistake the prominence
here given to her. Martha is only known as Mary's
sister, and Lazarus as Mary's brother, and she is
spoken of as if her good deed had somewhere else
been described without being credited to her by
name. " This Mary was the person who anointed the
Lord with precious oil." Turning to the synoptics
we find this deed of tender friendship described by
Matthew and Mark in a strain of the highest commendation, with the assurance of Jesus that its fragrance should yet fill the whole world.1 But the name
of the woman thus highly praised is kept back, for
when Peter preached, and Mark and Matthew wrote,
she was probably living. How natural for John writing later, when he came to speak of Mary to say,
"This is that person who anointed the Lord with
precious oil," in tacit reference to the well-known
and remarkable eulogium which the first two evangelists had recorded.
But this fragrant deed of Mary, John himself describes afterwards; and as we are persuaded, with a
delicate reference to the narratives of Matthew and
Mark. We have it in the fourth Gospel on this
wise: -
1 Matt. xxvi. 6-13. Mark xvi. 3-9.




FOURTH VISIT TO 7ERUSALEM.        367
"Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to
Bethany, where Lazarus was whom he had raised
from the dead. And supper was made for him there,
and Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at
table with him. Then Mary, taking a pound of pure
oil of spikenard, very precious, anointed the feet of
Jesus and wiped them with her hair, and the house
was filled with the perfume of the oil. Then said
one of the disciples, Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon,
he who was about to betray him:'Why was not this
oil sold for three hundred denarii, and given to the
poor.' This he said, not because he cared for the
poor, but because he was a thief, and had the moneybox and what was put in it was in his hands. Then
Jesus said,'Let her alone; she has kept it for the
day of my burial. The poor ye have always with
you, but me ye have not always.'" 1
This is the same scene which Matthew and Mark
describe. The details and the language ascribed to
the interlocutors are such, that it cannot possibly be
any other. The time is the same, it being just before
the last Passover, when all the disciples attended
him, and when his nearing death so filled his contemplations, that the ointment had the odor of the tomb.
The place is the same. Why then has John here departed from his rule, and told over again the story of
the synoptics. Plainly, because their narrative had
inaccuracies which John would naturally wish to set
1 John xii. I-8.




368          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
right. John's memory would be more minutely accurate than Peter's or Matthew's, for John had intimate
relations with the family at Bethany; had been there
again and again with Jesus, while Peter and Matthew
had not. They tell us vaguely that it was at the
house of "one Simon."   How fondly does John
recall the scene, in order to name the guests and put
in the names of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha! But
Matthew had said " the. disciples," and Mark still more
generally " tey" rebuked the woman for wasting the
ointment, and that it was poured upon the head of
Jesus. John says with indignant accuracy, that it
was Yzdas Iscariot who uttered the rebuke, and that,
not because he cared for the poor, but because he was
a thief and kept the money-box, and wanted to put
something into it; thus exonerating the other disciples. He is careful even to give all the additions
of Judas, and make him stand out from all the rest,
-   the son of Simon, who was about to betray him."
He also says with more minuteness and as a more
interested observer, that it was the feet of Jesus
which Mary balmed, - the feet of the weary traveller,
-and that she wiped them with her hair, thus giving
to the incident all its touching significance.
These corrections of the other narratives so delicately done are indubitable marks of truth and genuineness. No fabricator would have thought of supplementing the synoptics in this way.  He would
have dealt in generalities, instead of going down into




FOURTH VISIT TO 7ERUSALEM.        369
details which photograph the scene with such sharpness of outline as to correct the more vague and inaccurate statements of observers, who must have witnessed it with an interest not near so tender. He
would have had no motive to depart at all from the
synoptics in such matters as these, but every motive
to keep in harmony with them. But how fondly has
John supplied these details in scenes over which his
memory was brooding, putting in all the names of
the dear family which the others had left out! And
while he corrects them with sharpened accuracy he
puts in the hated name of Judas with a tone of his
ancient anger and scorn. The evidence is irresistible,
because so perfectly artless, that the author of the
fourth Gospel is writing of scenes and characters
endeared and long familiar, and to which Matthew
and Peter were comparative strangers.
24




CHAPTER VII.
FIFTH AND LAST VISIT TO JERUSALEM.
E went back to Galilee, not publicly, but by way
of the desert, lingering for awhile at a town
called Ephraim, on the borders of the desert, there
drawing his Judzean disciples to him in his last private ministry. Returning again to Galilee, his intercourse with the twelve from this time forward seems
toned with an indescribable pathos in a constant endeavor to prepare their minds for the impending
blow. The synoptics describe the teachings and
events of this interval with graphic detail. We have
them in Matthew, from chapter xvi. to xx. 28. Now
Jesus speaks constantly of his death at Jerusalem,
for he knows that the plot there for his destruction
is fully prepared and ripened. Now occurred the
scene of the transfiguration, which drew up his most
intimate disciples to a vision of immortality and of
the spiritual body, which was above the power of
Roman crucifixion. Now were given the most urgent lessons of self-sacrifice, to cutting off the right
hand or plucking out the right eye, that the spiritual
body might be kept whole and not perish in hell.
Now come the most impressive rebukes of all their




FIF7TH AND LAST VISIT TO 7ERUSALEM. 37I
sensuous ideas and ambitions, telling them again and
again that the baptism in his kingdom is one of blood,
and the cup to be drank is the cup of trembling. The
next festival is that of the Passover. He is going up
to it, not privately, but with his whole organized
band, and he knows what the result will be.
A question will naturally arise here. Why did
Jesus go up this last time to the capital, when he
knew he was walking into the jaws of death? The
vicarious theology, of course, has a ready answer;
but it is too technical, and it does not satisfy us.
And yet it is the husk of a truth most profound
and comprehending.  Jesus might have avoided
this martyrdom, but it could only have been by the
abandonment of his work, and by escape from Palestine. He was no longer safe within its borders.
The revolution beginning in Galilee had rolled up to
Jerusalem, and under it, pervading the minds of the
masses, till the Sanhedrim felt that the whole ground
was tremulous beneath them. And yet it is plain,
from any human point of view, that the movement,
left to itself at this stage, would soon have subsided,
and nothing would have come of it. Neither the
twelve nor the masses which they had moved upon,
had as yet any adequate conceptions of its nature.
One of two things was inevitable now, - failure or
martyrdom. Even on the well-known principles of
human nature these had become the fatal alternatives.
Death at Jerusalem, in the lowest view that could be




372            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
taken of it, was a sublime testimony to the doctrines
of self-abnegation and sacrifice which had made up
the very body and substance of our Saviour's discoursings. To escape out of Palestine would have
been to turn them   into empty words; to "go up to
Jerusalem" now, was to render them fragrant through
all ages with the inspirations of a Life which for the
first time was to make the most splendid visions of
moral perfection a fixed reality on the earth. Therefore when Peter remonstrated, saying, "This shall
not be unto thee," Jesus turned upon him with what
seems at first a sharp rebuke, " Go from my sight,
thou Satan! thou wouldst cause me to fall, for thou
carest not for the purposes of God, but for that
which pleases men." X
But from a point of view vastly higher than this,
death had now become an adamantine necessity. He
had taught his disciples the highest truths of heaven,
but they had entered scarcely deeper than their
memories. Jesus saw what none of his disciples
could, that death was only the reverse side of resurrection; and, that accomplished, he should have
access to their minds on the purely spiritual and
immortal side, with an influx of power that would
1 This, however, was not a rebuke of Peter, or even addressed to
him. Jesus evidently felt a temptation assailing his own mind, suggested by Peter's words, -a temptation to avoid death and abandon
his cause. The words are aimed directly against the tempter, as they
were in the early scenes of temptation,' Get thee hence, Satan,"
and Peter, unconscious of blame, is lost sight of.




FIFTH AND LAST VISIT TO JERUSALEM. 373
stream through their memories and thence through
their whole being, making the truth which now lay
cold and dead to burn like fire, and melt them down
and purge their dross away.  It was necessary,
then, that Jesus should now die, in order that "the
law might be satisfied," if we mean by law not an
abstract or arbitrary rule, but those eternal principles
of being through whose fulfillment alone our fallen
humanity could be laid hold of, and renewed, and
lifted up to the Divine embrace.
This interval, apparently of about three months,
seems to have been passed in Galilee in these communings with the twelve, who had accomplished their
mission in that province, and returned to Jesus with
its tidings for the last time. Matthew and Peter,
through Mark, make full reports of these last months
in Galilee, for they were conspicuous actors in them.
John says nothing about them, for the good reason
that they had already been narrated. The Passover
at hand, they go up now in company, and there is no
longer any effort on the part of Jesus to elude the
toils of his enemies. The hour has come, and it
would be talking very tamely to say that he meets it
with courage. Courage is required when we walk
partly blindfold into danger. Jesus, from his height
of transfiguration to which the three disciples were
drawn up for an hour, but where Jesus was standing
serenely all the while, has a forecast of the track of
history, including his death and resurrection and




374          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the destruction of the Jewish state, and the new
kingdom of God rising on its ruins and radiating to
the end of the earth. All this was before him, and
must account to us for the entire change of tone and
manner, now that " the hour is come," and which are
a challenge flung down from aloft to the authorities
at Jerusalem to do their worst, and fulfill their hour
of darkness.
The Passover festival took place from four to five
months after " the Feast of Dedication " at which we
last saw Jesus in the temple, soon to be driven from
it and from the neighborhood of Jerusalem. Not
then was he ready to die. His followers were to be
strengthened for coming events, his organized twelve
were to be gathered around him again in Galilee for
a similar purpose. All this has been done, and Jesus
makes ready to go up to Jerusalem openly and eat
the Passover with the twelve. They seem to have
gone, not through the heart of Samaria, but through
the desert, or near it, skirting its western border, and
entering Judaea by way of Jericho. At the beginning
of the journey, Jesus took the twelve apart, telling
them explicitly that he was going up for the last time,
and was now to be crucified. They fell behind him
in that perplexing dread produced partly by his words
and partly by the coming calamity whose shadow already involved them. Before reaching Jerusalem,
however, his way was thronged with people. Doctors
of the law came to dispute with him. Mothers came




FIFTH   AND LAST VISIT TO JERZUSALEAf. 375
with infants in their arms to get his blessing upon
them, making their way through the ring of doctors
for this purpose, showing how deeply and fondly the
heart of the masses had been stirred, and how it
throbbed at his approach. Blind men stationed themselves by the way, and cried for his healing power as
he passed.     As he neared Jerusalem, he applied for
an ass, and rode upon it, probably to prevent the
crowd from    thronging him.1     He makes no effort to
repress the enthusiasm      which breaks spontaneously
from the lower ranks of people, and comes up around
him in shouts. They strew his path with palmbranches, and throw down their garments for him to
1 Strauss has this criticism on this passage, as near as we can quote
it from memory. Matthew mistook the passage in Zechariah, which
really speaks of only one animal, and should be rendered, " Behold,
thy King cometh sitting upon an ass, even a colt the foal of an ass."
Matthew thought there were both an ass and her colt in the case, and
so he makes the disciples bring two, and makes Jesus ride on both, -
showing that the whole is a myth put in to fill out a Jewish preconception. The writers of the second and fourth Gospels, not falling into
Matthew's blunder, mention only one animal, - the colt. This is a
very subtle and ingenious criticism. But the author of the first Gospel, who probably wrote it in Hebrew, would be quite as likely to
understand Zechariah, either in the Hebrew or Septuagint version, as
Dr. Strauss would. The inference most natural to our minds is, that
Matthew mentions two animals because he describes the fact as he
saw it, albeit the prophecy names but one. They found the colt with
the dam, and so both were brought; but as Jesus rode only one of them,
the garments being placed upon the other, Mark and John only mention the colt. Matthew does not necessarily imply that Jesus rode
both, and one reading of Matthew of considerable authority (err' abuTbv)
makes him ride only one.




376          7iE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ride over. Little children even join in the throng,
and cry, " Hosanna in the highest! " and he enters
Jerusalem, not as a malefactor under sentence of
death, but as a hero returning from his conquests.
He must have known what all this portended. He
must have known how these acclamations would
strike on the ears of the ecclesiastical authorities.
"All the world has gone after him," they said. The
conclusion, in their logic, could not be avoided.
This entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, strikes us at
first as having an air of eccentricity, and it is just one
of those incidents which, when narrowly scanned, are
found in such close and logical connection with other
events and circumstances, that its first apparent singularity avouches its reality the more. The evangelists put it forward as if it were solely from a predetermination to fulfill an old prophecy, but incidentally
and unwittingly they disclose quite other reasons,
and reasons which show that it was the wisest and
most natural thing which Jesus could have done. Remember that all Galilee had been deeply moved, and
was crowding in long procession after him to the capital. Another throng comes out from the city to join
it. What was the thought which ran through the
crowd from mouth to mouth? Luke has indicated it:
"Because he was near Jerusalem they thought that
the kingdom of God would immediately appear."
They thought he would put himself at the head of his
followers, as the temporal Messiah, commence his




FIFTH AND LAST VISIT TO yERUSALEM. 377
reign with Jerusalem for his capital, and subdue the
world to himself by miraculous physical power. He
must ride, into the city, or be overrun by the-throng.
But he chooses the humblest way. He comes not
with horses and chariots, but sends for a beast of burden never used in war. The ass, though of more
spirit and mettle in Oriental countries than the one
which goes by the same name amongst us, was nevertheless used only in peaceful industry. The act was
plainly intended to proclaim distinctly to the Jewish
authorities, and his own followers as well, that he was
no insurrectionist, and that his kingdom was to
extend only by peaceful methods. He was really
fulfilling the prophetic words quoted by Matthew
from Zechariah.
Why does John repeat the story? Because he
alone sees its connection with the miracle at Bethany.
The raising of Lazarus some months before must
have excited curiosity and wonder in and around
Jerusalem. Any writer bent on making a sensation
with his readers, would have enlarged upon this, and
brought multitudes to see the risen Lazarus, and talk
with him, and see the man who had called him back
from the tomb. There must haye been much of this
kind of excitement, supposing the event to be real;
but John gives us an idea of it naively, and in a few
lines. Jesus enters Jerusalem riding upon the ass;
and John too makes prominent the prophecy which
was fulfilled, charging himself and the other disciples
with stupidity for not understanding it sooner, while




378           THE FOUR H GOSPEL.
rather incidentally he tells us that a throng went out
of the city to meet the throng coming in, "because
they had heard that he performed this miracle."
Thus while the evangelists make the entry to Jerusalem appear like an eccentricity by their mystic
theory concerning it, they supply incidents unconsciously which show its natural connections, and give
it the indubitable marks of reality.
It is remarkable that while the synoptics up to this
time tell us little or nothing of what occurred at Jerusalem during the ministry of Jesus, they now become
very full, and report minutely and with graphic power,
showing that while before this they had only been
eye-witnesses of the work of Christ in Galilee, after
this they are eye-witnesses of the events at the capital. All the twelve are now there. John's narrative
and that of the synoptics now flow on together. Still
the narratives are not parallel.  Though John narrates much in common with them, he is supplementing them all the while, and introducing us to an interior range of fact and of experience to which they
were partial or total strangers. Still the disciple
nearest to the Lord was a sharer of his thoughts, his
works, and his perils, to an extent which they were
not; and we shall find that while Jesus now had his
public work to do, and his messages to deliver, among
which was the denunciation of woes against the enemies of his truth, he had also his private and personal
ministries, and that they belonged to the inmost
ranges of his tenderest love.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE NIGHT OF THE LAST SUPPER.1
HEN we read of the private communings of
Jesus with his disciples, at the home of the
sisters in Bethany, or in the depths of the desert beyond the Jordan, or again in the secluded places "near
Ephraim," the heart naturally yearns to be drawn into
the confidence of those quiet sabbatic hours. What
did Jesus say to them to strengthen their souls and
bring them out of the shadows of doubt, distress, and
fear which were falling upon them from the clouds
which thickened and grew black around them? What
did he say to them to prepare them for the impending
woe? We know tolerably well what he said. The topics of discourse at the Last Supper, in which he
sought to draw his disciples upward towards the serene heights on which he stood, must have been those
which he urged repeatedly upon his followers in his
last personal ministry with them, whether near Jerusalem or in the seclusion of the desert. His oneness with
the Father that they may be one in Him, and with
each other; his promise of the Comforter; his exhortations to steadfastness as he described the trials that
1 See the Appendix A.




380           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
awaited them; his prayers to the Father in those
states of exaltation in which "the Son of man was
glorified," that is, when the Spirit within so irradiated the whole outward man that the body lay upon
the soul as a garment of light; his rebukes of all
personal ambition and rivalry with lessons of selfforgetfulness and self-sacrifice; these are the topics
of the strain at the Last Supper which runs through
five consecutive chapters, unparalelled for its celestial
beauty. John must have heard it often, varied in its
adaptations, as he attended Jesus privately in those
personal ministries on the approach of the final catastrophe; and this doubtless is another reason why he
was the sole reporter of it. He had heard it so often
that it dwelt in his soul as a strain of heavenly music, one note of which called up all the rest.
In his narrative of the tender scenes of the Last
Supper, John supplements the synoptics, and in one
instance fits into Luke's account with such delicate
connections and shadings that they become the
strongest of circumstantial evidence. Apart, there
are things not easily understood. Compare them, and
we have the interblendings of a picture recognized at
once as a perfect copy of nature and reality.
The washing of the disciples' feet, mentioned by
John alone, seems in his narrative to be ill-timed and
out of place, and a piece of downright eccentricity.
Jesus in the midst of the Supper, rises from the table,
girds himself as a menial, takes a basin of water, goes




THE NIGHT OF THE LAST SUPPER.      381
round and washes their feet, and that done returns
to finish the meal. No wonder they were surprised,
and remonstrated. Turn to Luke, and we find the
reason of it. The disciples were engaged at table in
a most unseemly dispute of personal rivalry, and the
symbolical act of Jesus was an interruption and hushing of this noise of tongues. They were immediately
shamed into silence and humility, and it was to the
state of mind thus prepared and made receptive that
the discourse of those five wonderful chapters was
addressed, immediately afterward, and out of which
the prayer must have been breathed: "I in them
and thou in me that they may be made perfect in
one, that the world may believe that thou hast sent
me."
Some one has undertaken to criticize the prayers
reported in these chapters, as partial and lacking the
comprehensiveness of humanity, because Jesus included principally his own disciples. "I am praying for them; I pray not for the world."  But his
whole purpose in gathering them about him was to
create an organism to receive and embody his Spirit,
and which after he had passed from sight should embody it with progressive power and be the fulcrum
on which Omnipotence would raise humanity itself
to the Divine embrace. "As thou hast sent me into
the world, so I send them into the world. Nor do I
pray for these only, but for those who may believe on
me through their teaching, that they all may be one,




382          THE FOURTI! GOSPEL.
as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee." Never was
prayer more comprehending and efficacious, for it requires the breadth of the world and the remaining
ages for its fulfillment.
The discoursings and colloquies of these five chapters were not all at the Last Supper. Chapter xiv.
closes with the words, " I shall not talk much more
with you. The prince of this world is coming, and in
me he has nothing in common with him.... Arise,
let usbe going hence! " He knew that the police of
the Sanhedrim were on his track, and to prolong his
intercourse with his disciples somewhat farther he
walks with them to the Garden of Gethsemane. On
the way the contents of the three following chapters,
commencing with the beautiful figure of the Vine
and its Branches, seem to have been uttered familiarly in the ears of the eleven, with short prayers and
communings with the Father as he saw the great
crisis at hand.
As we come to the closing scenes, three very general facts are most strikingly manifest: that the third
and fourth Gospels give us a whole congeries of
events running into graphic detail chromatic with
the inmost life of Jesus, which the first two Gospels
leave out altogether; that John is an eye-witness of
what the others were not, and that Luke reports
things upon John's authority.
The open triumphal entry into the capital, with
the retinue from Galilee shouting hosannas, hastened




THE NIGHT OF YTHE LAST SUPPER.      383
the catastrophe. But it was finally precipitated by
that discourse of Jesus in the temple courts, reported by Matthew alone, where members of the
Jewish priesthood had gathered as usual around him
to question and cavil. The style of speech, on the
part of Jesus, is no longer colloquial and reserved.
It rises to sustained and continuous discourse, and
though inspired with tones of grieving mercy, is nevertheless the most awful denunciation that ever rang
on the iron casings of the human heart and conscience. As he closed with the words, " Lo! your
house is left you deserted I" and went out of the
temple, knowing he was never to enter it again, it
must have sounded like the last sentence of doom
through its corridors. The quick determination of
the plot, the brutality and maddening rage at the mock
trial and the crucifixion, follow in natural sequence,
but else were hard to understand.
The scene in Gethsemane is given by each of the
Evangelists. But Luke and John become minute
and graphic in the extreme. In the last grievous
temptation, when the flood of agony became overwhelming, they alone unveil to us the inner sanctuary. Luke, elsewhere vague, here becomes exact,
telling us that in the terrible wrestling, when Jesus
took the three disciples apart to watch with him, he
had withdrawn from them " about a stone's throw;"
that is, he was still within sight and hearing. He
alone describes the sweat falling thick and heavy




384            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
like drops of gore, and the appearance of the strengthening angel.l The contrast between the exaltations
of the Last Supper, and the abyss of woe in Gethsemane, is striking indeed, and it is alleged by objectors that other martyrs have exhibited a greater measure of fortitude.  Such critics lose sight of the fact
that fortitude does not consist in meeting suffering
without sensibility, but in spite of it, and that the
largest and the deepest natures rise the highest and
sink the lowest through the ranges of bliss and woe.
Susceptibility to pain is in exact proportion to the
wealth, abundance, and fineness of the material it
consumes. An American savage would meet death
by slow torture almost without emotion, because his
nature lies proximate to the animal; but he would
judge very poorly of the anguish whose nerves run
not through the animal tissues alone but through the
textures of a humanity so angelic and divine that its
sympathies drew up into itself the sufferings of a
race. The alternative is now upon Jesus in more
awful force than in the temptations of the desert,the sacrifice on the morrow, or escape out of JudLaa.
The latter is still within his choice, for the twelve
legions of angels, if invoked, will guard him invisibly
through the danger and out of it. But the sacrifice
1 We do not understand Luke to say that the sweat itself was
blood. The word aeel, "as it were," implies the contrary, so that
Mr. Norton's objection to the passage vanishes, for the external evidence against it is inconsiderable.




THE NIGHT OF' THE LAST SUPPER~.     385
is already chosen, and the anguish of it is not physical merely. It is heart-anguish the most terrible, for
his own people and nation are to put him to death,
whom he has yearned to gather under the wings of
Mercy, as a bird gathers her brood, but whose sun
has now sunk behind the thunder-clouds soon to go
down in a sea of blood.
It is one of the beneficent and compensating laws
of suffering, that it becomes shorter as it becomes intense, and hastens the sufferer into the sweet refuge
of death. The death of the cross was a prolonged
agony of days and weeks in ordinary cases. The robbers crucified with Jesus were alive on Friday evening, and unless the execution had been hastened by
other means, would have lived much longer, whereas
Jesus expired at the end of three hours. It astonished the insensate soldiers, even as the agony in the
garden does the commentators; but both the sufferings of Gethsemane and Calvary come under that
great and merciful law which governs all suffering,
that Life, which is the highest and most finely organized, is most fiercely rent and lacerated by it, and for
that very reason its organism soonest gives way and
refuses to be the inlet of pain, but shuts it off through
the insensibility of death. The process began in the
garden, where the sufferer exclaimed as he fell under
it, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful even to the verge
of death, - and only three hours of agony remained
for the cross.
25




386           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
It would appear that while Jesus fell prone under
this load of anguish, only a stone's throw from Peter,
James, and John, they were heavy with sleep.' This
should not surprise us when we remember that it was
now far into the night. It is not implied, however,
that none of them were witnesses of this last and
most overwhelming of all the Saviour's temptations.
The sleep seems to have been fitful and broken, and
heaviest on the part of Peter. John, who describes
the scene most vividly, if Luke's narrative be his,
entered most fully into its meaning, and knew the
influx of Almighty strength represented by the helping angel. John alone tells us of the awe which came
over the minds of the police, who at first fell back as
Jesus appeared before them, declining to arrest him
as once before, till he told them to do so and let his
disciples go.
1 It will be observed, that when Jesus returns to rouse the disciples, he addresses Peter only.




CHAPTER IX.
CALVARY.
T   HE place of crucifixion must have been just
north or northwest of Jerusalem, not far beyond
the city walls, on one of the mounds which rise up
from the undulating surface, and which probably on
account of its shape was called the " Skull." A throng
of spectators followed the cohort of soldiers who had
the prisoners in charge. Each, according to Roman
custom, was compelled to carry his own cross. While
the two robbers were bearing theirs, Jesus fainted
under the burden, because the sufferings already endured had prostrated his strength, and the soldiers
compelled a man from the crowd to carry it after
him.
In this crowd two classes of persons are to be
distinguished.  There were the enemies of Jesus
whose rage was now to be glutted in full. These
followed near at hand and gathered close around the
cross, feasting their revenge upon sight of its agonies., But the personal friends and disciples of Jesus
followed afar off, keeping in sight but hovering at a
distance, probably on some neighboring mound that
commanded a view of the scene.   In this far-off




388          THE FOUR 7T GOSPEL.
group were friends which had come from Galilee.
Among these are four devout women,- Mary the
mother of Jesus; Mary her sister, the wife of Cleopas; Salome, the mother of James and John and a
kinswoman of these sisters; and Mary of Magdala.
Probably most of the twelve were also in this far-off
group. They dispersed and fled when Jesus was
arrested, but we infer are included among the friends
now hovering cautiously and tremblingly within distant view of the crucifixion. Close about him Jesus
sees only the brutal soldiers, now leisurely sitting down
by the cross as a guard, and the more cruel men who
pass by with scoffings and gibes. But there is one
exception. John is there. He was the only one who
did not " forsake and flee " at the arrest in Gethsemane, except to follow close on the heels of the police
and come in with them at the mock-trial. He was
in the procession that kept close to the soldiers when
Jesus was led to execution, and now he stands alone
under the cross where the storm of hate is fiercest
raging, and he gives us again an inside view; the
lines of light athwart the blackness, the undertones
of mercy within the storm. He alone of the disciples
hears the prayer of the sufferer: "Father, forgive
them for they know not what they are doing." We
do not think this refers any more to the savage soldiers who drove the nails, but could not understand
how piercing was the torture they made, than to the
men who set them on, passing to and fro with fiend



CALVARY.                389
ish glee. But John does not long continue there as
a solitary disciple. Three persons of that group
looking on afar off, break away from it and come
nigh, drawn by the awful fascination of the scene.
These are the mother of Jesus and her sister, the
former leaning upon the latter and clinging to her
with maternal anguish. The third is one who had
been healed of disease, Mary of Magdala. She, too,
ventures nigh, and all three find their way to the
cross and come up and stand with John. Jesus looks
down upon them; and now follows the tender colloquy in which He commits his mother to the care of
the favorite disciple. There are writers who discredit this account, because they think the women
could not have endured such a sight. Strange that
any man who ever had a mother could write such a
criticism; could believe that one mother in ten thousand would have kept afar off and not come nigh for
the last benedictions and farewells, or could be ignorant of the fact that in such hours as these the
gentlest natures are the strongest, and that woman's
affection is the mightiest power on earth, and inspires her courage after it has failed from the souls
of men.   The alleged discrepancy here between
John and the synoptics is altogether specious, for it
is only another instance where John interlaces them
with such touches of nature as to make the harmony
more pervading and complete.
There is another colloquy at the cross, which is




390          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
reported by Luke alone, but which, without reasonable doubt, comes originally from John, who stood by
the cross and heard it. Two men called "thieves "
were crucified with Jesus, and to one of them Jesus
gives the assurance, "This day shalt thou be with
me in Paradise." This passage, we think, has been
signally misinterpreted; and a supposed discrepancy
has been alleged between Luke's (John's) narrative
and Matthew's.
We get a very inadequate notion of these men
called "thieves," if we are thinking only of those
who steal their neighbor's goods in peaceful and
civilized communities. The word is rendered well
enough, though it includes, further, the idea of robbery or violent seizure of the property of another.
Who these men were, or to what class they belonged,
there is not much doubt from the circumstances
of the case. Josephus describes them. The Roman
provinces, of which Judaea was one, were placed, as
we have said, under proconsuls and governors, whose
main object was to gather a revenue from the people
from which to enrich themselves, and then return to
Rome and live in luxury and splendor. These exactions were sometimes exceedingly oppressive, - were
excitements to insurrections, concealments, and reprisals. Some of the more daring and reckless among
the oppressed would band together and seek the fastnesses of the mountains. There they would conceal
their goods, and thence issue by stealth and make




CAL VARY.               391
reprisals on the power that oppressed them, - perhaps make assaults on the unwary traveller. They
sought the wild coverts of Judaea, leading a life of
irregular warfare, always objects of dread to the Roman governors, and subject, when arrested, to execution under Roman law. They answered in part to
the clans of the Highlands, the Dreds of the Great
Swamp, or the John Browns of our border warfare.
Probably Barabbas was one of these men, for whose
release in the place of Jesus the Jews clamored at the
trial. They might include men of a vast range of
character, from the very worst to men of natural humanity, pursuing a good end by unlawful means, and
roughened and made grim in the irregular strife.
They would be very likely to come from the rude
heathen population of Galilee.
Two of these men have been arrested, and are to
be executed under Roman law. Amid the darkness
and convulsion, Matthew describes the demeanor of
both the robbers, -how, in the frenzy of pain, both
joined with the Jewish scoffers, and taunted the Divine sufferer with the invitation to come down from
the cross. But when we open Luke and see the
spectacle from John's point of view, a new scene
opens upon us, and one of so much moral beauty
that it flings a gleam of sunshine across the horrors
of Calvary. It is a scene of penitence, forgiveness,
and triumph over death. One of the malefactors,
Luke says, railed on him, but the other rebuked him,




392         71TWE FOURTH7 GOSPEL.
saying, " Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in
the same condemnation; and we justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath
done nothing amiss?"
On the surface there is a discrepancy between
Matthew and Luke. It is only apparent, and because
the harmony is so profound and complete.
When the crucifixion commnenced, the two robbers,
thinking Christ was a malefactor, joined the Jewish
rabble, and reviled him. Matthew tells us so much,
and leaves us. But John takes us farther inward.
The crucifixion proceeds through the weary hours
from morning till afternoon. Within the sphere of
grosser vision, within the tumult around and the anguish of mortality, one of the malefactors sees Christ
as he is, himself as he is, hears him and understands
him, and turns to him for salvation and pardon. How
all-revealing is the hour!- passed the sphere of carnal perception, passed the maddening paroxysms and
the torture of the nails, passed the sound of passion
and hate that were raging around the cross into that
still haven where all is calm and clear, under the
nearing immortality and the subduing spirit of the
Lord. In that undertone of indescribable tenderness,
which few could have heard who stood amid the storm
of rage and the wagging of heads, he says, " Lord,
remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom."
And Jesus replies, "To-day shalt thou be with me
in Paradise."




CAL VARY.               393
This narrative affords no ground for the belief that
a prevailingly bad life can terminate in a happy and
triumphant death. But the narrative does give us
some prevision of the inversions of the spiritual world,
where judgment is not according to appearances, but
according to intrinsic realities. What a contrast have
we here between this wild bandit from the mountains
and the Jewish Sanhedrim, which condemned and
crucified the Lord! -they the most outwardly religious men, grace-hardened in long years of light
and privilege; he garbed in the grimness of strife,
but preserving a more honest heart and more susceptibility to the Divine mercy: they the heirs of all
God's revelations, whose light they never followed;
he the heir of small light and privilege, following, very
possibly, righteous ends by unlawful means. We get
some idea of that state of being to which this tends,
and in which it consummates, where splendid externals and grim and horrid coverings are both removed, and man's hidden and intrinsic life is brought
out and robed anew. How much susceptibility to
the Divine mercy is preserved under heathen darkness, to be awakened under the dawning light and
grace of immortality, and how much of impenitence
and inhumanity have been confirmed under church
privilege, till the Divine grace rebounds from it as
from a rock of flint!




CHAPTER X.
THE REAPPEARINGS OF JESUS.
T   HAT Jesus reappeared to his disciples after his
crucifixion, and that his ministry was continued
to them with tokens of yet more searching and irresistible power, we may regard as the fundamental fact
of the New Testament history. The language and
the very life-plan of Jesus prophesied of his resurrection, and the whole subsequent history refers back to
it and takes its significance therefrom. Leave this
out and the whole record falls into an inexplicable
jumble and loses its unity, and Christianity, as a
transforming power in human affairs, is a most unaccountable phenomenon.
But it is not strange that a fact of such vast significance should have been apprehended by the first disciples with considerable variations, and that after a
short time had elapsed there should have been traditions and rumors concerning it which were very imperfect reflections, if not absolute refractions of the
great reality itself. It was a fact partly natural and
partly spiritual, partly that is in both worlds, and liable to be misapprehended. We should distinguish
the statements of eye-witnesses whose testimony is




THE' REAPPEARINGS OF' ESUS.      395
first hand, or nearly so, from those which are plainly
legendary; and we should distinguish the pre-ascension appearances, or those of the "forty days," from
the post-ascension which continued for some time
afterwards.
There are reasons, as we have shown above, for
regarding the twenty-first chapter of the fourth Gospel as an appendix not written by the same hand, but
subjoined after John's death.
We have two other witnesses at first hand beside
John, - Matthew and Paul.   The genuine Mark
closes with the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter,
the last twelve verses having been proved by the best
evidence, external and internal, to be additions made
by a later hand. So that the genuine Mark only
gives us the second-hand reports of the women.
Luke is a second-hand witness, though nearly the
same as first hand if, as we believe, he writes from
John's authority.
Paul testifies to a general fact of the utmost significance. According to him, the reappearings of Jesus
to his disciples were of a very frequent and familiar
character, and a subject of common remark with each
other. He appeared to Peter and James individually,
and twice to the twelve together, as John has related:
facts which Paul must have derived from the Apostles
themselves in his intercourse with them; and he appeared to five hundred brethren at once, most of
whom were alive when he wrote. Elsewhere Paul




395          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
refers familiarly to the same general fact. Not long
after the vision from whose overpowering glory he
was led blind into Damascus, a man came to him on
an errand of love, saying that Jesus had appeared to
him and given him the message. Paul says nothing
of the women who saw the angels, but appeals to
Apostles and to living men too multitudinous to call
by name. The genuineness of Paul's record the most
skeptical have never called in question, and it enables
us to understand why the evangelists have not dwelt
more at length upon a fact which must have been of
universal notoriety among the early believers in Palestine, and therefore did not need repetition.
Among all the witnesses at first hand there is entire agreement, some supplying what others omit;
but the general fact rises and rounds upward in congruity, and in its stupendous import under that blending testimony, both on the natural and the spiritual
side. None of them tell us that Jesus ate with his
disciples after his resurrection. All those accounts
are legendary, and they might easily date from the
fact that he appeared to them, as he most naturally
would, at those sacred social hours when they ate together with tender memorials of his love. None of
them tell us that they saw angels; these accounts all
come at second hand from the women, and we believe
them to have been true, with just such variations as
would be made under the excitement of fear and surprise, and which the evangelists have most faithfully




ZHE REAPPEARIZNGS OF JESUS.          397
recorded as they heard them. All of the accounts are
totally inconsistent with the idea that Jesus rose in
the unchanged natural body, for then he would have
lived over with them the natural life as Lazarus did
with his family at Bethany and been subject to death
again.1 He only appeared at intervals of time, never
to the Jews who had crucified him, always to his
friends and followers when their minds were held
under a supernal influence and awe. But up to the
time of his ascension he appeared to them in natural
form, as one who had been crucified, and showed them
his hands and his side, as if in accommodation to
their carnal conceptions and sensuous faith. Two of
these reappearings are recorded by John, an additional one by Matthew; all three were to the eleven
assembled privately together, Thomas only being absent from one of them. This is the sum of the direct
testimony. Paul supplies the added information that
the reappearings were not confined to the eleven,
but were vouchsafed to multitudes who were living
when he wrote.
Such were the pre-ascension appearances.    But
after forty days and after the ascension, there were
other reappearings, and they were made with a more
overwhelming power and from amid insufferable splen1 We say the znchanged natural body without denying that Jesus
rose in the natural body. What the change is, from natural body to
spiritual, is a subject beyond our grasp till we know better what matter
itself is. On this point read the chapter on the " Transparencies of
Nature," in Part IV.




398:   TIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
dors. All the communications to Paul were of this
kind. They were not from one who wore a body
which had been crucified, but from a glory above the
brightness of the sun at noon-day. He reminds us
again and again that his intercourse and communion
with this glorified Being was so frequent and of such
a nature, that he received from him direct the whole
body of Gospel truth which he was to preach, so that
he had no need to consult the other Apostles or confer
in any way with flesh and blood. He was their peer
as much as he would have been by following Jesus
through the track of his earthly life. He gives the
best evidence of what he says in the broad Catholic
Christianity, replete with the life and inspiration of
its author which glows through his pages.
John's record,in the Apocalypse is similar. The
post-ascension appearances were from amid the same
overwhelming glory out of the midst of which he
received his message to the constellated churches.
The reappearing which Matthew describes, though
not post-ascension, was yet, as we infer, near the close
of the forty days, and as one period was melting into
the other. Not now as at the first two meetings does
he stand among them showing them his wounds.
He appears far above them and they fall on their
faces doubting and afraid, till he comes near and
assures them, giving them his final charge with the
declaration, " All power is given me in heaven and
on the earth."




THE REAPPEARINGS OF 7ESUS.        399
Such is the report of the eye-witnesses, made with
some variations, but the variations are mutually and
strongly corroborative. But there is evidence of another kind. It is the common consciousness of the
first Christian Church and the first Christian age of
the new Power moving upon human nature and rapidly
transforming it, as the risen Christ, both in his truth
and his spirit, was melting through its depravities and
errors. It will not do to ascribe this consciousness to
fanatical imagination and allow to it no objective reality.  Neither fanatical imaginations nor epileptic
swoons change men from the dominion of lust, hatred, deceit, and demoniacal passion to that of love,
purity, meekness, and the peace of God; and from narrow and selfish ends to the most heroic self-sacrifice and
the highest moral energy the world had ever known.
Dreams and visions which are generated of morbid
conditions, and are only subjective, never bring new
clearness and vigor to the wasted faculties, never
evolve a more perfect manhood from under the old
decay. But all this was done, and it was done with
the common consciousness that the risen and glorified Christ was in the work as its inspiring life, and
again and again was this corroborated by a parting
of the clouds, between which he appeared to them
from his nearing heavens to guide them. The inauguration of a new era of history in connection
with this common consciousness is the complete
confirmatory evidence of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.




400          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
We should apply our philosophies with great modesty and reserve to such facts as are reported by these
witnesses. Difficulties occur. Deny the facts and
the epoch which dates from them is wholly inexplicable and the greatest life ever lived on the earth is
without unity. Admit the facts and there are difficulties still, but they are of another kind. They are
such as are resolvable into our ignorance, into our
crude and clumsy pneumatologies or our very superficial knowledge of laws which are subtile and all
pervasive, and which we only see as fragmentary
now. Touching the resurrection of Christ we look
from below upward. We stand'gazing into heaven,
and so we look at the clouds on the darker side; when
we look from heaven downward the same clouds will
be illumined wreaths lying off on the world below.
In the death and resurrection of Christ the natural body saw no corruption.  In this mainly is his
transition distinguishable from ours. But there are
considerations connected with it of vast significance.
The transforming power of our own interior life over
the natural body which is its clothing and exfiguration continues up to the moment of death. There
it ceases, and the immortal being must be extricated
from his mortal coverings. He has no power to extrude them and return them uncorrupted to their native elements and so he leaves a corpse as his legacy
to the earth. But the Life made flesh in Jesus
Christ is not to be measured by the weak and lan



7TE REAPPE'ARINGS OF J7ESUS.         40 
guid pulses of ours. It was nearer the infinite source
and was the fullness of the Godhead bodily. That a
Spirit like his should not need extrication from the
bonds of death but should rapidly transform them
and turn them by a living process into their native
ethers, leaving no corpse to see corruption, is consonant with all that is told us of his birth, of his Divine Life transfiguring the natural form that invested
it as that Life was growing deep and full and too resplendent for its earthly foliage.
What is the change signified by the ascension of
Christ?.A higher and more perfect pneumatology
will show, we doubt not, that death is something very
different from what our childish imaginations have
made it; that there are no breaks and chasms in our
continuous being; that, therefore, the first condition
after death is in some sort of congruity with the
condition before death; that the spiritual body
evolved from the natural does not put off at once
all its natural appearances and adaptations.'  Hence
the pre-ascension appearances of the "forty days,"
when Jesus showed his disciples his hands and his
side, saying, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as
ye see me to have." But when the Divine Life from
1 Swedenborg in his very rational pneumatology illustrates this at
large, showing that the changes from an earthly to a heavenly condition through death are not made by crossing over chasms, but by
the life within, unfolding in an orderly way and robing itself anew, so
that the natural appearances just before death and just after may be
similar.
26




402          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
within was ultimated in its full power and brightness, all the remnants of the natural life disappeared, and Jesus was only ensphered with the celestial glories. And this was the ascension of Christ!
Type and representation of our own transition, if we
follow humbly through his upward and radiant pathway! After the ascension his disciples only saw him
in their more heavenly frames and beholdings.
There are those who talk of intuition as the surest
and highest evidence, but who do not seem to be
aware of the application of the truth which they invoke. All other intuitions pale into dimness before
those which attest the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
All other revelations of God in humanity compared
with this are as starlight which precedes the dawn.
Not the vision of apostles alone, not the word of eyewitnesses on the great morning and during the " forty
days;" but the consensus of Christendom for eighteen hundred years is cumulative evidence for the
reappearings of Jesus. The highest experiences and
profoundest introversions of the purest and healthiest
minds along this whole track of the centuries bring
them into correspondency with the risen and glorified Saviour; not by open vision, but by signs and
tokens quite as trustworthy. When men have been
turned from darkness to light, from the slavery of
lust and sin to the joyous service of the living God;
when the Divine Voice has come down upon the
stormy seas of passion in the soul commanding au



7HE REAPPEA.RINGS OF yESUS.      403
dience, "still as night or summer's noon-tide air;"
when all its higher powers have been waked into
life; faith, sympathy, disinterested love, tenderness
towards God and towards everything that breathes;
when the peace has come at last where storms and
conflicts are no more; it has all been with the profoundest consciousness of a risen Saviour near at
hand, with his assurance, "All power is given me
both in heaven and upon the earth." If the intuitions of the soul are to be appealed to, what are its
shadowy gropings compared with these sun-bright
beholdings of so many of the best and healthiest
minds through a period of eighteen hundred years?




CHAPTER XI.
THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
T     tE four biographers of Jesus have given no description of his person, such as his form, figure,
features, expression of countenance, walk, gesture,
tones of voice and style of speech or eloquence. The
reason is partly that moral painting after the modern
style was remote from their thought and purpose,
simple narrative being all they aim at; and there
was a further reason, for the subject-matter of the
divine message so controlled and subordinated the
manner as to blend with it and become a part of it,
and they never thought of separating one from the
other.
In reading these biographies, however, it must occur
to any one that such things could not have been
done nor such words spoken in a way comporting
with our ordinary methods of utterance. There is a
class of writers who, looking at Jesus only from the
natural side, and ignoring or denying a large portion
of the record, find in him an amiable young man, of
sweet and winning manners, almost feminine, which
endeared him to his followers, and gained the affections of little children and Syrian maids;-a remark



THE PERSONV OF yESUS CiRISS.       405
able and promising youth cut off by an untimely
death. Herein they discern those traits of moral
beauty which cannot be mistaken, and which beam
forth along the whole pathway of Jesus of Nazareth.
But let any one take this portraiture as expressing
his entire character, and go through his history with
it, and he will find a whole range of facts which are
utterly inexplicable, and that he has not yet seen the
person of Jesus Christ. Though his biographers
attempt no such portraiture, it comes of itself, and
gathers consistence, clearness, and brightness in the
imagination, as we read their story. It is that of
supernal power and majesty, always in reserve under
these lineaments of moral beauty and gentleness.
This comes to us from casual expressions which they
let fall here and there, and more yet from the impression which his person and manner made upon their
minds, and the minds of the multitudes. We are to
remember that they seldom understood the import
of his doctrine, while their sensibilities were stirred
sometimes to their lowest depths; and that this
effect, therefore, must be ascribed to the tone and
manner of its utterance. At the close of the Sermon
on the Mount, crowds were struck with astonishment
because he taught as one having authority, not as the
teachers of the law. To get the whole meaning of
this, we must reproduce the scene to ourselves.
Moses was the supreme authority in all the teaching
of that day; as binding and as sacred as if they




406          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
heard it audibly from Mount Sinai. Here is a man
who quotes no precedent, acknowledges no authority, but standing up before the people, pushes Moses
and all his special code clean out of the way, and
with only the formula, "I say unto you," legislates to
the world from the immediate conceptions and revelations of his own mind. What amiable young Jew
could have done this? What man of ordinary presence could have done it, without raising a shout of
derision from the multitude? This man did it in
such wise as to fill them with a sense of wonder.
And it shows that they had some vision, however
dim, of a moral power and majesty towering above
Sinai itself.
It is no explanation of the authority of Jesus over
the crowds that came to him, to ascribe it to the
miracles which he wrought. If the miraculous power
was merely something adjoined to him as a common
man, he would have excited the same curiosity as the
wonder-workers and jugglers of his day. His miraculous works were plainly the emanations of his own
being, the forthgoing of that Divine force which gave
command to his words. Not merely the works themselves, but the mind and grace beaming through
them so as to determine their manner and adaptation,
impressed the multitude and held them as with a
spell. Hence people approach him as one clothed
with royalty. They come "worshipping," that is,
bowing in adoration, or they come "kneeling," or




THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.       407
they come "falling at his feet," or "trembling and
falling down to him." 1 Remembering the air of command and authority, felt always in his presence, and
its subduing power over the minds of men, many passages in his biography otherwise inexplicable need
no explanation, - the money-changers vacating the
temple courts at his word; the police officers going
to arrest him, but cowering before him as they come
into his presence; his walking unharmed among the
enraged multitude, as at Nazareth, where they were
prompted to throw him down a precipice but did not
dare to lay hands on his person; the fear and vacillation of Pilate in the palace at his final examination.
Often he speaks to the people and holds them by the
power of his words when it is plain that his meaning
is quite above their range, and that it is the manner
not the subject-matter that amazes and even convinces
them. On the great day of the Feast of the Tabernacles, for instance, when they were pouring out
water around the altar, Jesus arrests the ceremony,
standing above it and calling aloud, "If any man
thirst let him come unto me and drink." " He that
believeth on me, out of his breast shall flow rivers of
living water." Not a word of this could his hearers
have understood as to its interior meaning. But
many of the crowd said to one another on hearing it,
"This is certainly the Prophet."  "This is the
Matt. xv. 25, xvii. 14, xx. 20; Mark i. 40, x. I7; Luke viii. 41, 47.




408          THE FOURTH' GOSPEL.
Christ." And his enemies present, and wishing to
arrest him, did not dare to lift a hand against him.
Even after his arrest there was a lingering fear in
the minds of his enemies, lest some supernatural
agency should take him out of their hands, for even
at the cross when the drugs were brought to him to
drink, some of them said, " Hold! let us see whether
Elijah is coming to take him down."
Though his biographers do not describe to us the
expression of his eye and countenance, they more
than intimate their efficacy and influence. Sometimes when his hearers were astounded at his words
the Evangelist says he spake "looking around" or
" looking at them;" or again, when the cavillers came
to ensnare him, he "looked at them with anger;"
or again, when the young ruler came kneeling to him,
he loved him, "looking upon him," - passages which
plainly imply that power and grace went out from
him, not merely in his words, but in the beamings and
flashings of his countenance.l
In the walk of Jesus with his disciples, we find
none of that kind of intercourse which they had
with each other. There is confidence, love, tenderness; none of that entire interchange of mind and
lighter sentiment which we find among familiars.
True they stand with him on the common ground of
humanity and friendship, but they are conscious all
1 Mark x. 23-27, iii. 5.




THE PERSON OF 7ESUS CHRIST:      409
the while of a Divine sphere of Being rising above
them and beyond their sight and comprehension, beneath which they are held in mysterious awe. This
feeling seems to have grown deeper and stronger
after his transfiguration. It was their sense of his
power and majesty, always felt but never understood,
which drew them to him at the first in the bonds of
discipleship, made them forsake their business at
once and follow him, and held their minds in daily
expectation that, in some way unknown to themselves,
he was to break upon the world as the conqueror of
the Roman power. No personal attractions or amiability of deportment could have thus wrought upon
the minds of the people; no power of working
miracles could have invested an obscure peasant of
Galilee in those attributes which so separated him
from all other men as to inspire a reverence and fear
more profound and pervading than any inspired by
the glare of earthly royalties.
The tones of voice in which a man's words are
spoken, generally measure the extent and the depth
of his moral power and influence. They are the soul
of all speech. The grandest speech without them
may fall frigid and powerless, whereas truths which
had seemed commonplace and worn out, may be so
reinspired with them as not only to become new, but
pierce the soul with depths of meaning never before
dreamed of, and fill it with tremblings of hope and
fear. Tones can neither be assumed nor imitated;




410          THIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
nor can they be reported.  Their power can only
be represented by the effect which they produce.
Whitefield's preaching which so shook the crowds
and swayed them, owed its power primarily to the
tones that inspired it, for his printed sermons contain
nothing but the commonplaces of the received Christianity.
We may faintly conceive, but we cannot adequately
represent how truths new-born in such a nature as
that of Jesus would be toned and uttered; nay, how
the most common and familiar speech of a nature so
inspired would vibrate through the hearts of his
hearers. If we take into full account this element of
moral and spiritual power, we shall be saved a great
deal of futile criticism pertaining to the miracles
wrought by "the voice of the Son of Man." His
manner evidently was simple and undemonstrative,
but the tones of his voice searched the very centres
of being, melted their frozen springs of life, and set
them free. Iow careful the evangelists are to preserve the very words he spoke, to which such wonderful effects were traced; rather how the words
clung to the memory, and would not go out of it, and
though common words were untranslatable into any
other language! The little girl who had expired, he
takes by the hand, with the words, " Talitha czmi,"
and the little girl came back to life and rose up. To
the deaf man he says, "Ephatka," and his ears are
opened. These were Syriac words; the language




THE PERSON OF 7ESUS CHR[ST.       411
spoken by our Saviour in his intercourse with men.
They were common words. Why does the Evangelist retain them when writing in Greek?. Because, as
Dr. Furness has said, "they were severed as by a
stroke of lightning from all other words," not merely,
however, because the disciples saw the effect which
they produced, but because the tones in which they
were uttered made them untranslatable; tones which
so searched the very life-centres as to touch the fountains of existence, and make them flow with healing
power through the physical frame. These tones, not
because of their loudness, but because a divine compassion more pervading and far-reaching than ever
vibrated in a human voice was thrilling through them,
found Lazarus in his death-sleep. Jesus "cried with
a loud voice," says the Evangelist; literally with a
great voice ({ovj' /EyXaA), great because of its power
to reach the seat of consciousness and make the
frozen currents of life to melt and start anew. And
in that cry upon the cross, " Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani," there seems no other reason for preserving
the original words, unless it be that the tones, not
the words, shivered through the hearts of the standers-by, and startled them with thoughts of a suffering
that was more than mortal, as if the heart then breaking had drawn into its divine recesses the woes of a
whole race, which found utterance in its expiring
wail.
With these conceptions of the power and majesty




412           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
of Jesus, we cannot look with satisfaction, or even
patience, on those paintings and engravings designed
to represent his person, and which are put into so
many picture-frames, and so many " Lives of Christ."
The features of some of them are feminine, some of
them Jewish, all of them the feeble conceptions of
artists who ought to keep their poor ideals out
of sight. The only portraiture, it seems to us, which
any earnest believer can regard with satisfaction, is
the one which dawns upon his rising faith; nor will
that satisfy him as anything which he can fix and
frame, for it will change as he changes, and as the
Christ of consciousness grows into the image and
likeness of the living God.




PART IV.
THE JOHANNEAN THEOLOGY.
"It breathes the air of peace, yet sounds at times like a peal of
thunder from the other world; it soars majestically like the eagle
towards the uncreated source of light, and yet hovers as gently as a
dove over the earth; it is sublime as a seraph, yet simple as a child;
high and serene as the heaven, deep as the unfathomable sea."
SCHAFF.








CHAPTER I.
THE COSMOLOGY OF PLATO.
T     HEOLOGY is the knowledge of God. Religion
is that knowledge so used and applied, and so
entering into human experience and the personal life
that it draws man to God and binds him in loving
fealty to the throne. There may be theology without
religion, for God may be apprehended by the intellect
alone, and then the idea of Him floats idle as a speculation and is never converted into conduct. There
cannot be any true religion without theology, for
where there is no knowledge of God there is either
atheism or blind superstition. And just in that degree that the knowledge of the Divine becomes clear
and sufficing is human nature swayed and renovated
by it and drawn upward into the Divine communion.
The Christology of the New Testament and that
of the fourth Gospel preeminently, has for eighteen
centuries brought men into conscious relations with
God, more filial and tender than any other work has
done. This undoubtedly is the highest and the ultimate evidence both of its authenticity and genuineness; for any work which opens in human nature the
deepest fountains of devotion and joy comes to it




416          THE FOUR7H GOSPEL.
with the most authentic tidings of the divine nature
and name. But what is to be said if there are very
good and capable persons, and very keen critics
withal, whom the book does not affect in this way?
Why, there is nothing to be said. But it is an urgent
motive to study a book with expectant minds, when
men like Clement, Origen, Augustine, Chrysostom,
Neander, and Schleiermacher have found in its theology the key-note of all the harmonies divine and
human, and the open entrance to the knowledge and
fruition of God.
After all, however, let us confess that none of our
statements are likely to be exhaustive. None of our
creeds have crystallized the whole Johannean theology, or probably ever will. When we have put every
thing visible and tangible to us into our formulas,
there is still a divine atmosphere which infolds us,
and which we breathe and live in though unseen,
and there are clefts in the heavens still higher, suggesting fields of truth not yet open to our gaze.
The theology of the New Testament, and of the
fourth Gospel especially, took peculiar form and determination, because it collided with preceding or contemporaneous systems of belief. There are in the
New Testament traces of Platonism, and of systems
into which Platonism developed, and which, in the
time of Christ and for more than a century afterward,
were in constant flower and fruitage. No exposition
of the Johannean theology can be made tolerably




THE COSMOLOGY OF PLATO.         417
intelligible without some clear apprehension of the
leading features of the philosophy and the cosmology
to which it stands contrasted, and which consciously
or not determined the moulds in which it was cast.
It is not necessary to reproduce the whole system
of Plato; and the best scholars who have attempted
it have found it no easy task.  It is to be gathered
from the Platonic dialogues whose interlocutors conflict with each other, and which of them are personating Plato himself it is very difficult sometimes to
decide. But two of his latest and most elaborate productions were the "Republic" and the "Timaeus,"
and there is no doubt they give us the ripened wisdom of the master-mind of antiquity. They were written after he had completed his travels, and gathered
and compacted the highest truths of the Grecian and
Oriental philosophies, and fused them into a system
of his own; and the workings of his genius in their
reproduction come the nearest to divine inspiration
of anything we know of within the compass of what
is absurdly called profane literature. True, he leaves
the inductive method and breaks away from sense
altogether, and his science would provoke the derision
of any sophomore; but his undazzled imagination
quickened by a pure moral instinct gives him a vision
of divine truths which science had groped after in
vain.
Timxeus, the chief speaker in the dialogue that
bears his name, is a Pythagorean; but he is giving
27




418          IHE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the thought of Plato colored deeply with the Pythagorean philosophy. We may leave out the physiology,
as not necessary to our purpose. Its cosmology becomes important, and with collateral lights of interpretation from the other dialogues is capable of being
clearly evolved and described. It is the highest utterance that comes to us from the ante-christian ages,
and has been called, not inaptly, "The Hymn of the
Universe." It did not claim to be the absolute truth,
but the most rational probability which the human
intellect was able to achieve.
Three postulates are assumed. First a Demiurgus, or divine artificer. This is not an unconscious
force, but a being of personal attributes. He is the
Supremely Good. But lest the Good should be mistaken for an abstract quality, or a mere dynamic
force, it is described also as a Divine Intelligence.
It is the Nous, or Supreme Intellect; under which
designation the Good is conceived as determined
by an infinite REASON, and so giving its impress
upon all things where it operates, of the highest
order and beauty. Thus the Agathon and the Nous
are names which are used interchangeably. It is
important to bear in mind this two-fold designation
and to remember that in the Platonic hypothesis
not the Good merely, but INTELLIGENCE or MIND
was in the beginning of things and was the presiding and constructive force in the architecture of the
universe.




TI1E COSMIOLOGY OF PLATO.       419
The second postulate of the Platonic cosmology is
the ideals or archetypes, after the model of which
all things were to be made. They were co-eternal
with the Demiurgus, existing not within his mind but
objective to it, apart in their own heavenly locality.
They were the patterns of all beauty and perfection.
They were timeless, for time implies succession and
change; but since the archetypes were unchangeably
perfect, they had no past and no future, and so were
without'time. Some writers, it is true, have tried to
make these ideals to exist only within the divine
intellect, its ideas or subjective states. Herein they
modernize Plato, for he makes them separate entities occupying their own intelligible world, no more
existing within the divine mind than the stereotype
plates of the printer exist within his mind. The
ideals are objectively things of the divine contemplation though subject to the divine control. They
correspond in some sort to Kant's things-in-themselves, - primal essences, that is, which exist within
and beyond phenomena, and which remain after phenomena have passed off and left them bare. Only
Kant denied that we could ever shake hands with
them, or know the least about them in this life, and
across the gulf of phenomena. Plato, we shall see,
contrived wings on which to cross the chasm and
soar, with his All-hail, into the midst of them.
These archetypes existed as both general and special; as one perfect eternal whole, subject to no




420           THE FOURTHI GOSPEL.
increase or diminution, but comprehending in itself
all possibilities of class, order, genera, and species.
The third postulate of the Platonic cosmology is
a primitive chaos which had existed from the beginning. It is first described as wild and disorderly
matter, containing the prime elements of earth, air,
fire, and water, subject to no beneficent law, but eternally discordant and surging only by indeterminate;hance. But in the latter portion of the Timaeus
Plato corrects himself, and renders this primitive
chaos not as visible and disorderly matter, but a wild
fundamentumz of existence, the womb of some priman
mater, dark and evil, but still an outlying chaos of
indeterminate chance.
Such being the postulates and antecedent possibilities, the Demiurgus proceeds to the architecture
of the universe. He constructs the best possible
from the material at hand. He takes the eternal
and perfect patterns, the ideal earth, air, fire, and
water, and dips them down into chaos, where they
become clothed in visible and tangible body, -become material, earth, air, fire, and water, - and hence
arose this Cosmos of beauty and order. The whole
realm of ideals thus became incarnate or clothed
upon, and so to the primal chaos succeeded the
vast system of sun, moon, and stars, with the earth
at the centre of the whole. In this constructive
process all the contents of the primal chaos were
used up, so that nothing was left outside to act upon




THE COSMOLOGY OF PLATO.         421
the new order of things. The primal chaos, however, though wrought into the Cosmos, was never
entirely subdued, but was always a disturbing element. The Demiurgus did the best he could with
it by incarnating the ideals within it, but it still remained an evil and deceptive covering, so that phenomena or sensuous appearances are not realities,
but ever-changing phantasms, not the perfect envisagement of the eternal ideals, and therefore not the
ground of knowledge but of opinion only.
So the Cosmos arose. But as yet it was only a
beautiful corpse. It must have a soul and be alive.
This soul the Demiurgus proceeded to generate. It
was constituted in a threefold proportion. It consisted of the harmonic, pure and simple; the discordant, pure and simple; and the harmonic and discordant mingled together. The soul thus constituted
he infused through the Cosmos, stretching it from
the centre through all its remotest parts, giving to
the whole a communis sensus running throughout as
on living nerves. Thus endowed the Cosmos became an animated being, though of many members;
a visible god, the most beautiful image of the invisible, having the impress of the Nous, the Divine
Reason itself. Then began its motions and revolutions and the endless processions of Time.
The Cosmos was constituted a perfect sphere, and
with the exception of the earth, which is fixed near
the centre, it turns perpetually on an axis or spindle




422            THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
that passes through it, and sweeps round in one
circular motion the planets and the stars, which are
portions of it. But though the Cosmos itself was an
animated being and a visible god, the Demiurgus
constituted within it other gods, the Cosmos being
the genera of which the others were species. The
earth, the planets, the sun and moon and the fixed
stars, were endowed severally and specially, each with
a soul and consciousness of its own, so that each of
them became an animated being eternal and divine.
Let not the reader be puzzled with this Platonic
conception of gods special, existing within another
god which is generic and all-comprehensive. Plato
conceived of it, we presume, somewhat as we conceive
the life of the plant determined from that of nature
in general, or as we represent to ourselves angels and
men existing within the all-pervading Deity, their
consciousness flowering out individually from one
broader and more generic, which is the ground of
them all and underlies them all.
The earth was the first-born of these gods individually constituted; was placed stationary at the centre
of the Cosmos to preside over its axial motions, and
thus made the ruler of Night and Day.1    Next were
1 We generally follow Mr. Grote's exposition of the difficult passages in Plato, but here we cannot. It is a question whether Plato
teaches that the earth rotates on a common axis with the planets,
the sun, and the stars, that is, on the spindle on which the whole
Cosmos turns; or whether it is fixed at the centre while the others
move round it. Grote thinks that in the Platonic astronomy it ro



7tHE COSMOLOGY OF. PLATO.                  423
the fixed stars or stellar gods, which were placed on
the extreme circle of the Cosmos; and last, the planetary, which constitute our solar system with its revolving   orbs.    But in the    bodies of our solar and
planetary system the discordant soul was largely
infused.    Hence    their irregular    motions.     Besides
their revolution on the cosmic axis towards the
right, they have a counter revolution of their own
towards the left, though not rapid enough to overcome the other in which they are always borne along.
But in the sidereal circle the harmonic soul inspires
tates with the rest. How then could it be the ruler of night and day,
since it would always expose the same hemisphere to the sun, while
the other hemisphere would be in perpetual night? Grote thinks
Plato did not see the inconsistency. The following is the passage
in the Timoeus: rIv s     p TpoOv 3Y ET'rpav, EloAAOtIv7r b5e 7rEpl rbv
alt 7ravAbs 7rXov TEratJaFvov, vuXaKa Kal 8/lttovpy^v VUKT^b rE Kal f'JLpas
4arYcKavocra'o, 7rpdcT7v iKal 7rpErfiVTr7dTv OEOv i0boi vrTOis ovpavov yeydvaOl.
" Then he made the earth our common nourisher, which being crowded
round the axis which extends through all things, is the keeper and
artificer of night and day, as well as the first and eldest of the gods
that have been generated in the universe."
Mr. Grote understands el\AXol7rVv to mean "pacled round," so as
to be fixed fast to the axis and move with it. It is not necessary to
suppose this. The axis was like a spindle through a series of spools,
some of which might be stationary while the others rotate. But
Plato must be held no way responsible for our laws of gravitation,
nor any of our modern physics. His worlds are all gods alive and
conscious, and the earth is the elder born, ruling from the centre like
the commander of an army, not by physical laws but by moral, so
that under this ruler they dispense night and day by moving in
majestic order and with rhythmic melodies. Even the spindle at the
centre we imagine was an ideal one.




424          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
every motion; hence the stars of the upper firmament move with the most perfect rhythmic order,
discourse the most heavenly sphere-music, and sing
together their everlasting song.
Thus the gods were generated by the Demiurgus,
the only gods towards which Plato seems to have
had any faith or reverence. For the polytheism of
his times, copied from Hesiod and commonly received, he has evidently a profound contempt, thinly
veiled, however, and insinuated rather than expressed,
as the fate of Socrates warned him of the consequences.
Having formed the Cosmos, and all the stellar and
planetary gods that live within it and make a part
of it, the Demiurgus next proceeded to the formation
of man. But man was to be mortal; therefore the
Demiurgus, who was essentially immortal, does not
create man directly and in his own name, but he
commits the work to other and inferior hands. The
gods whom he had formed are assembled, and to
them is confided the construction of the species next
below them. He tells them  that they (the gods)
will be immortal, not in their own nature but by his
appointment; that the Cosmos, however, is not complete; that other and lower races are to be constituted; that he -cannot undertake their construction,
because they would thereby be rendered immortal;
but that they (the gods) are to undertake the work
in imitation of the power which had just been exer



THE COSMOLOGY OF PLATO.         425
cised in the formation of themselves. The Demiurgus supplies an immortal element, to which the gods
are to join bodily and mortal elements to be drawn
from the body of the Cosmos.
There was a remnant left of the cosmical soul, an
over-soul which had not been used up, but greatly
inferior in excellence and purity. This remnant the
Demiurgus compounds anew, and then divides and
distributes into a number of souls equal to the number of the fixed stars. Each soul previous to its
mortal incarnation was to be sent to its own congenial star, there to be carried round in the cosmic
revolutions, and enjoy the contemplation of supernal
wisdom, and hear the sweet music of the harmonic
spheres. In this pre-natal state the destiny of each
soul in the long future was to be unrolled to it, the
mysteries of the universe explained, and the heavenly
knowledge drank in, afterwards to be overlaid and
buried under the swathings of mortality. In this
pre-natal state it was to learn that at an appointed
hour it must be joined with a mortal body, and with
two inferior and mortal souls along with it; that
it must descend into this earthly incarnation, be subject to pleasure and pain, and fear and anger; encounter the irrational enemies of the lower souls and
the mortal body; that these enemies must be overcome and subdued as a condition after death of reascending to its native star. But if it was itself
overcome and failed in the combat, it would descend




426          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
after death into lower conditions; into the body of
some inferior animal, would continue to sink into
lower and lower animal natures, until its victory had
been -achieved. That done and not before, it could
reascend to the enjoyment of the supernal wisdom
and the music of the harmonic spheres.
The gods having received these instructions, proceeded to carry out this plan of the Demiurgus. The
human souls were first distributed each to its congenial star, and then born into bodies which the gods
constructed from the body of the Cosmos, that is,
from the four elements, of fire, air, earth, and water,
to be returned to the Cosmos again. But into this
body they placed also two mortal souls, there to be
the accompaniment of the immortal soul descending
from its star, and to antagonize it in the combat of
life. The immortal soul they placed in the head;
one of the mortal souls they placed in the thorax, and
made it the seat of passion, anger, and rage; the other
and still baser one they placed below the diaphragm,
and made the seat of sensual and beastly appetites.
Such in the Platonic philosophy was to be the conflict between the higher and lower natures of man.
At birth, and for some time afterward, the celestial
nature - the soul descended from its star, -is completely dulled and muffled, and does not report itself
in the consciousness. Gradually, however, it makes
itself to be felt and heard; and when its behests are
obeyed, gleams of its pre-natal condition and knowl



THE COSMOLOGY OF PLA TO.        427
edge, and murmurs of the sphere-melodies like
snatches of far-off music, come over the inward sense
and draw it upward. By contemplation of the glories
of the Cosmos, not through sight alone, but through
the rational and immortal soul, passion and appetite
are held subordinate and become its lackeys; the
celestial nature triumphs in the conflict, and the soul
reascends at death to its congenial star. Not so if it
basely yields and the battle goes against it. Then it
descends by a series of degradations through lower
and lower natures, -the Pythagorean doctrine of the
transmigration of souls.
Plato reverses the steps of modern naturalism. It
develops man out of the polypus or the oyster
through all the ascending grades of reptile and quadruped, till the human form rises erect and looks into
the skies. Plato sees in all animal natures a reversed
and degraded human nature, where the victory had
been lost in the triumph of the mortal and bestial
souls over the celestial, or of sense over reason.
Originally, at the first formation of man, there was
no division of sex. Pure manhood was the primitive
shape of our unfallen humanity.  But men who
became cowards transmigrated after death into the
forms of women, and thereafter the race was bisexual. Men whose minds were only speculative, light,
and fantastic, transmigrated in the form of birds that
flit through the air. Men who became enslaved to
bestial appetites, in whom the star-soul was overlaid




428           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and lost, bent earthward lower and lower, their heads
elongated downward till they were prepared for the
bodies of quadrupeds, in which they walk on all-fours
and look earthward and feed from the ground alone.
Some become still more bestial, cleave closer to the
earth and become reptiles. Those who are buried
still deeper in sense, become too stupid to live in air,
and transmigrate as fishes of the sea, or as oysters
that live in mud. Thus the range of animal existence
is not an original creation. It is man fallen from his
primitive state into forms of degradation of remoter
and remoter resemblance to the form of his celestial
manhood till it is almost lost and disappears. It is
the mirror in which man may read in the long and
ever-darkening imagery the effect of the slavery of the
celestial nature to the irrational and the bestial.
This is Plato's Book of Genesis. Its darker pages
he hurries over, charmed with its brighter ones; and
he ends in a strain of exultation and delight: " Our
discourse about the universe is ended. It has received its complement of animation, mortal and immortal; it has become greatest, best, most beautiful
and most perfect: a visible animated Being comprehending all things visible, a manifest God, the image
of the cogitable God; this Uranus, one and only-begotten."




CHAPTER II.
CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF THE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.
T   HE Platonic Cosmology was prophetic of some
of the highest truths of Christianity. All the
Greek and oriental religions which had preceded it,
not grossly polytheistic, broke down in materialism,
pantheism, or atheism.  Plato's system  may have
found its root and stem among them, but it rises out
of them and above them into a clear and positive
monotheism. It anticipates the first grand annunciation of the Christian revelation, by placing the Word
at the beginning and not at the end of creation.
Reason and intelligence were coeval with primal
being. At the end was the Word, says Pantheism.
Reason and intelligence are the last evolution of
natural forces, whose beginnings were unintelligent
and unconscious matter quick with life at some unknown centre; developing outward into the various
forms of vegetable and animal, and last of all developing a human brain. This fine secretion, deposited in
a skull, is the last and best organized essence, and out
of this come reason and thought. Reason first appears at the outermost limit of the Cosmos, and flashes




430           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
forth as a pale fringe of light on the circumference.
That is the logos of pantheism. And such with
insignificant variations were the antecedent Greek
Cosmologies, not polytheistic, from Thales to Plato.
The only apparent exception is found in Anaxagoras,
and this is hardly more than apparent, for the Nous,
says Mr. Grote, which figures in his philosophy, scarcely rises above the rank of material agencies.
In the beginning was the Word, says the cosmology
of Plato, postulating the prime truth of the highest
theism. The Nous, or Divine Reason, was at the
origin of things. It preceded all development, presided over it and gave to the Cosmos its own divine
beauty and order. His system clears itself alike of
polytheism  and pantheism. He sees the infinite
mind in its unity; differenced from the universe, yet
ruling over it and through it and constructing all its
forms after the patterns of the supreme perfection.
Except in the Mosaic writings there was no higher
and purer theism.
Plato does not grasp the Christian doctrine of Providence, but he approximates and foreshadows it.
The Cosmos is all alive. The smallest part is related
to every other part and to the whole. It has a conscious soul that pervades every atom, and brings
tidings from its outmost limit to its centre. The
smallest star, as it goes round in its radiant circle, adores its Maker, and like an angel sings. The
highest soarings of modern poetry, in Plato, are sober




77HE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.        431
prose. What in Shakespeare and Coleridge are momentary flights of imagination, in Plato are symmetrical truths wrought by splendid mosaic in a system of
the universe. The mere scientist can afford to laugh
over the Platonic physiology and astronomy; but his
analysis accomplished, dead matter is all which he
has left. He cannot join the severed members again
so as to make a living whole. He is like the boy
who hacks the bird in pieces, but thereby loses its
warble forever. Plato, with all his mistakes of analysis, more than atones for them in his majestic
synthesis, which gives us not a dead but a living
universe.
His doctrine of human nature on one side is not
only beautiful but divinely true. The immortal soul
that is in man opens by an internal way towards the
soul of the Cosmos, and through that towards its divine Maker. It never loses the first imprints of the
supreme perfection stamped upon it from the ideals.
They may be obscured and overlaid by mortality and
corruption; they may recede from the consciousness
altogether, but they are never lost. Some day they
may come out again in radiant outline. Some day
the star-music of a pre-existent state may wake in the
soul its sweetest memories, and breathe through it the
lost harmonies again. Even on its downward course
through the animal degradations, it is possibly careering towards its aphelion, where it may turn and on a
brightening pathway regain the heaven it started from.




432          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Plato's doctrine of the animal kingdom, though false
in form, has yet substantial truths, truths which even
under the light of the Christian revelation sometimes
get loosed from our grasp. The meanest animal has
not an isolated and altogether forlorn existence. The
brutes are kith and kin to the human beings that
rule over them. They are not original creations, but
the outcome of our fallen humanity in lower forms.
They reflect back upon us its woes and sorrows, and
touch a chord of tenderness, like the human grove in
Dante's hell, which must not be rent too rudely. At
the same time they hold up to man the mirror in
which he sees, in the long and ever darkening perspective, the penalties of subordinating his higher
nature to the lower, and suffering the celestial soul
to be trodden down out of sight under cruel passions
or swinish appetites.
The defects and the inhering vice of the system
seen under the light of Christianity must already be
obvious to the reader. Its dualism works mischief
from centre to circumference, and is destructive of
any real unity between God, the world, and humanity.
The divine Nous was not alone in the beginning.
An outlying chaos was also in the beginning; a viXq
of disorder, essentially evil, coeval with God and coeternal. This with the ideals is the material already
at hand out of which the Demiurgus must build the
universe. Hence he is never a creator but only an
architect. He builds as best he can, but some of




THE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.         433
his material is bad and continues bad when wrought
into the building, an element of unsoundness and
destruction. Matter, the element drawn from the V'kn,
is essentially evil, but forms the outward body and
enrobement of the visible Cosmos and all which it
contains. Though compelled to an external and apparent order, it is the corrupt and poisonous garment
of the soul and the lying element in all material phenomena. Hence nothing is as it seems to be. External nature only presents to us a troop of apparitions,
always coming and vanishing. but giving no solid
foundation for human'knowledge. The perfect ideals
are behind them and in them as their soul and
essence, but they get no adequate expression or incarnation. The Nous, or Divine Mind, is in first
things, but never in last. He is the Alpha but never
the Omega; in the beginning but never in the ultimation. God is at the centre, but the hylic covering
of matter is on the circumference,- the evil garment
in which all essences are enveloped. Hence there
is no pathway through Nature up to God.   The
universe can never be known through the senses.
The immortal soul in man must ascend by an internal
way to the soul of the Cosmos, quitting sense as
much as possible, which is always dragging it towards
the brute and the reptile. The Demiurgus affords
no direct access to himself from his human subjects,
but one indirect and circuitous through the Cosmos, - his first and best image and manifestation.
28




434          TlHE FOURTH GOSPEL.
In the Platonic philosophy sin is not an intrinsic,
but an extrinsic evil. It comes from without, not
from within. It belongs to the sensuous coat, which
the soul, descending from its native star, is compelled
to put on and wear through its earthly existence.
Moral evil is removed not by an inward divine cleansing, but by being shelled off through the long and
dreary process of transmigration. Why the soul was
not kept in its native star, there to move through its
celestial circle forever, instead of being muffled and
smothered in these poisonous coverings, Plato does
not tell us, for it was evidently an ugly mystery in
his own contemplations.
Since the Platonic theology does not bring man
into direct relations with God, it could not search the
deeper mysteries of human nature, and reveal them
to its own consciousness. This is nowhere more
manifest than in Plato's estimate of woman. The
feminine element in humanity, which is the interior,
higher, and more divine, Plato makes exterior, lower,
and more bestial. The masculine element, which is
exterior, coarser, and lower down, he makes first
and highest. By this indecent inversion of the two
essentials of humanity he makes woman only a
degradation of the species, a connecting link between
man and the animals, drawing him down towards the
reptiles, not between men and gods, drawing him
upwards towards the celestial abodes.
Platonism could be a religion for the philosophic




THE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.         435
and contemplative few, but offered no boon to the
toiling multitude buried under hylic coverings too
deep to become conscious of their celestial lineage.
The parting of the ways right and left satisfied no
principle of divine justice, for on the right were only
a few men of asthetic culture and civil and social
privilege, who drawing inward and upward from all
mundane things and all sensuous influence sought
communion with the soul of the Cosmos and thereby
found pictured within them the ideals of the First
Perfect and First Fair; while on the left were the
mass of mankind immersed in sense and in affairs
on their way downward through the dreary road of
transmigration. The inevitable result of the Platonic
cultus was ascetic communions, separated from the
world to the solitary and lazy intuitions of their own
souls.
It had a twofold development, in both directions
sinking down from the high level of Plato. In one
direction it sank to the Nihilism of the New Academy.l In the other direction it sank into Gnosticism,
which was only saved from Nihilism by coming in
contact with the Jewish and Christian religions, which
it sought to take up and transform in its omnivorous
receptivity. It furnished Gnosticism with the prime
material out of which all its systems arose and flourished. We have already displayed the outline of
these systems. In the present chapter we will show
1 See Part I., chapter viii.




436          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the historic connection between them and Christianity, and especially with the Johannean theology as
formulated in the fourth Gospel.
Alexandria in Egypt, at the advent of Christ, was
next after Rome the most flourishing city in the
Roman Empire. It was the centre of commercial intercourse between the east and the west. Moreover,
it was the centre whence learning and philosophy
were diffused throughout the then civilized world.
Its population was largely composed of Jews and
Greeks, not the Jews of a despised race, as they subsequently became, but a people distinguished for wealth,
learning, and refinement. Philo, writing at or near
the Christian era, says that two out of the five divisions of the city were occupied by Jews; and that in
Alexandria and the other cities of Egypt they numbered one million inhabitants. The Greek language
had become the language both of learning and commerce, and was spoken in the principal cities of the
east and the west. It was the language of Alexandria,
and opened to the Jewish population the treasures of
Greek literature. The city became a second Athens,
from whose schools and libraries the Greek philosophy had a vastly wider reach and influence than in
the times of Plato four hundred years before. Here
Plato lived again, and for more than one hundred and
fifty years had been moulding the thought of the
most enlightened and contemplative minds.  His
works were studied and commented upon as a divine




THE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.         437
fountain of truth. His language became the language of the Jewish Scriptures in the famous Septuagint version, and it was the language of worship
in the synagogues of Alexandria. Jewish writers
endeavored to adapt Judaism to the Greek mind by
making Moses talk like Plato. They imported the
Genesis of the Timaeus into that of the Pentateuch,
and then charged Plato with borrowing from Moses.
Philo breaks away from the rugged and narrow literalism of Judaism by assuming that the letter, like the
hylic covering of the Platonic cosmology, is only for
ignorant and sensuous men, who can only be governed through their fears; that God is far within
and above, whose true sons find Him by an internal
road away from the letter and from sense into the
heart of the Divine love. There are two Jehovahs,
he says in the Old Testament; one of them is presented as a man with human form and passions as the
governor of ignorant masses; the other is not a man,
and is only to be known by the wise and virtuous
few. The Logos, or Creative Word of the Jewish
Scriptures, he subordinates to the Supreme Deity.
He calls it a second god, king, angel, high-priest, firstborn son of the Highest, and to this sub-deity he
ascribes the creation of the visible universe and the
promulgation of the law from Mount Sinai. In this
Logos he says the ideals, or patterns of visible things,
preexisted, a perfect intelligible world from which
the visible was copied out. We agree entirely with




438          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Mosheim and Dorner that Philo in his own thought
did not herein make the Logos a second person in the
Godhead, and that he only lugged in Plato and made
Moses talk like him as much as possible in order to
recommend Judaism to the Greek mind. But the
Jewish Hellenizers went farther than Philo. The dualism of Plato they imported completely into Judaism.
The Jehovah of the Old Testament was not the
Supreme God at all. Philo's rhetoric hardens into
dogma. The all-pure and perfect one did not create
this bad world, and never comes in contact with it.
The Word which created the world and governs it
was only one of his angels. In this milder form of
Gnosticism we have Plato's dualism over again with
very insignificant modifications.
The development did not stop here. Platonism, by
borrowing an element from the Parsee religion, made
the God of Judaism and the creator of this world not
one of the higher angels, but an evil demon; so that
Judaism becomes not angel worship but devil worship. The dualism is still more fatal and hopeless,
and the chasm between God and the world yawns
wider and deeper than ever.
How Platonism garbed as Gnosticism collided
with Christianity at its earliest formulation, and
sought to absorb it, we have already described.1 The
Christ, it said, comes into this world not through
Judaism but from above it. He is a higher angel
1 See Part I., chapters i. and ii.




7'HE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.        439
than the Demiurgus, the best and most immaculate
of that celestial hierarchy which they call the Pleroma. His ingress was at the scene of the baptism,
and his egress was just before the crucifixion, so that
the Christ was never born nor crucified. This was the
Christology of Cerinthus, who was now at Ephesus.
The Syrian Gnostics went farther than Cerinthus,
and turned the whole Jesus Christ into an apparition.
The scandal of the cross, the prime difficulty, as it
was thought, in commending the Gospel to the cultivated Greek mind, was hereby removed out of the
way. The most devoted disciple of Plato could find
room for Christianity in the unbounded hospitality of
the Academy.
That the Apostles, during the first half century
after the ascension of Christ, were well acquainted
with both these forms of Gnosticism, the Alexandrian and the Syrian, we regard as an established
fact of Christian history. To assume that Gnosticism
was a heresy which dates from the second century, is
preposterous. True, it was then first known by this
name, and had crystallized into a perfect system.
But for one hundred and fifty years before Christ,
that is, from Aristobulus down to Philo, Judaism in
its cross with Platonism had been giving birth to
these forms of thought. They were as widely diffused as the Jewish-Greek literature; that is, through
the principal cities of the Roman Empire.  The
pages of Philo are colored with it. A community
existed in his day which had cleared itself of the




440              THE FOURTH77    GOSPEL.
hard rind of the Jewish ritual, and found their way,
as they thought, directly to the heart of the Divine
Love. There was every shade of hellenizing Judaism between the rugged literalists and this offshoot
from them at Alexandria.1
That Paul would know the Gnostic tendencies of
the Jewish religion, which he had professed in its
most rigid ceremonials, is more than probable, even
if we had found no indications of this knowledge in
his writings. Apollos his fellow worker, had been
a Jewish Hellenist, and was fresh from Alexandria.
Paul quotes the Alexandrian version of the Old Testament, in which the Apocrypha was included, a work
full of Hellenisms, and in which the Logos as Wisdom
was strongly personified, if not already hypostatized.
There was a Hellenist synagogue at Jerusalem, of
Alexandrians and Jews from the Egyptian province
of Cyrene. It must have been crowded with wor1 Aristobulus was an Alexandrian Jew, and peripatetic philosopher,
who lived B. C. I70, and undertook to interject the Greek philosophy
into Judaism, pretending that it was borrowed from Moses. Commentaries on the Pentateuch were forged in his name for the purpose
of commending Moses to the Greeks. Some account of him may be
found in Cudworth's Intellectual System, i. 504. The Egyptian
Therapeutae, once regarded by some writers by an absurd anachronism as Christian monks, were, as later writers have shown, contemplative Jews of the Philo-platonic school., They only indicate a
general tendency here run to its extreme. Philo himself refers to
them in his book De Vita Contempliva. They tried to find God after
the Platonic and Gnostic method, by withdrawing from sense through
an interior and secret way. They formed a community on the shores
of Lake Mceris near Alexandria.




THE PLATONIC COSMOLOGY.          441
shippers during the days of the Jewish festivals when
the Jews, scattered abroad, came up thither through
all the thoroughfares of the Roman Empire. Hence
on the day of Pentecost we find among the multitude
who composed the audience of Peter, "Jews from
Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene."
Basilides, one of the early systematizers of Platonic
Gnosticism, pretends he borrowed his doctrine from
Matthias the Apostle. Hippolytus is authority for
this.1 Moreover, Basilides produced an elaborate
exposition of his system, a refutation of which was
made by Agrippa Castor in the reign of Hadrian
(117-138).  It is certain then that one of the distinguished apostles of Gnosticism had published his
principal work soon after the close of the first century. He was in the flower of his age wher John
died, and was for some thirty or forty years a contemporary of that Apostle.
That John met the Gnostics at Ephesus, that they
were there in considerable numbers and influence
when he wrote, the evidence both external and internal, is abundant and convincing.2  That the fourth
Gospel, the Catholic Epistle, and the Apocalypse, set
forth a cosmology and Christology calculated to disperse its shadows in a warmer and clearer illumination, in the Epistle with a direct and conscious
purpose, will we think, be apparent.
1 See Binsen's Hippolytus uznd Seine Zeit, i. p. 65.
2 Eusebius, H. E. iii. 26. Read also in this connection, Polycarp's
Epistle.




CHAPTER III.
THE JOHANNEAN COSMOLOGY.
T   HE Logos or Word, the term used by Philo and
his Gnosticizing successors to designate the
creative power, is found in the Septuagint. It corresponds in part to the Nous of Plato, though it has
a more full significance. The Nous of Plato is reason, simple and self-contained; the Logos is reason
in the process of self-revelation. The former may
or may not, according to its connection, involve the
idea of manifestation; the latter necessarily implies
a Being of whose mind it is the utterance and disclosure.
" IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD," is the first
postulate of the fourth Gospel. Reason was at the
origin of things, and intelligence was coordinate with
being. "And the Word was with God."      There
never was a time when God was inclosed within himself; never any epoch of silent eternities when God
was in repose; never a state of inaction, or mere selfcontemplation, out.of which He had to rise and break
silence. "And God was the Word." He could not
be God except as one speaking, or imparting himself,
and lavishing the wealth and glory of his own nature.




THE 7yOIANNEAN COSMOLOGY.        443
A God silent or self-inclosed were no God at all. He
is only God as He is the Word, or in self-revelation.
"The same was in the beginning with God." The
writer evidently reiterates this truth to give it emphasis, as if it had been travestied or denied. If
Reason were a co-essential of primal being, then the
first evolution from the central life was not through
an unconscious force, but a self-conscious Divine
Intelligence. "All things were made by him," that
is, by the Word. The Greek term, here rendered
"made," does not mean constructed out of preexisting material. It involves the idea of original creation.
All things by Him came into existence (e,'yETo). The
Cosmos is the language of God speaking. Nature
through her infinitely varied forms is the forthgoing
and exfiguration of the Divine reason in self-manifestation. "And without him nothing was made that
was made." The Greek is still more emphatic.
Without Him not one thing (ovE (v) existed that came
into existence. The same was asserted in the foregoing clause affirmatively. Here it is declared negatively, and the notion of an outlying chaos is
repudiated and thrust off by a double emphasis.
Christianity at its inauguration rises pure from the
least taint of dualism. " And the Word was made
flesh." It was not only in the beginning or in highest and first things, but in last and lowest things
It was in nature and in humanity, yea in humanity
as its outermost form, here on the earth, where we
gazed on its glory full of grace and truth.




444          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
The introduction to the fourth Gospel, comprising
what Chrysostom calls the Golden Proem, announces
the prime doctrines which the narrative following is
designed to establish and illustrate. They interpret
the whole book, which keeps up to the high level of
the introduction. Forms of speech are constantly
occurring which would be entirely dark and enigmatical, were they not held steadily in the resolving
light of the opening chapter. We do not believe this
chapter was written with any direct reference to
Gnosticism, or that it had any polemic purpose whatever. That would have given it the coloring of the
place and the time, whereas it formulates a cosmology
which clears itself of all places and times, and of
difficulties which baffle the wit of men in all ages of
the world. We only say that these difficulties were
rife when the fourth Gospel was written; that the air
was burdened with the fog of human speculation on
these very themes; that John must have known it;
that indirectly the whole Johannean theology stands
negatively related to those speculations, and is more
clearly understood when compared with them; for
they were the earliest mist which Christianity cleared
from its way as its first beams shot through its morning sky. Let us now endeavor to bring out, and
place in comparison with them, the features of this
divine Cosmogony.
I. The Supreme Divinity is here declared as never
hidden, but always manifest. There is no secret way




77E 7OHAANNEAN COSMOLOGY.          445
into the divine love which only a few choice spirits
can find by introversion, painful and difficult.  It
belongs to his essential nature to go out from himself, and there was no antemundane period when He
was not a creator. Hegel's doctrine that a God not
creating is no God, was eighteen hundred years old
when he announced it. The idea of a God existing
alone through the cycles of revolving eternities, till,
tired of the awful solitude, He rose out of it and produced something which He could love, is one of the
-dismal conceptions of our finite understanding. In
the beginning, at the point beyond which human
thought is barred from going, the Divine was not
separated from his Word; He is not to be conceived
except as going out of himself in creative speech replete with creative love. A being, employed through
unimaginable years in the selfish pastime of inspecting his interior glories, is excluded from Christian
thought, and a being who never was without his selfrevealing Logos, is the first affirmation of Christianity.l
II. As clearly, we conceive, does it affirm that
this Logos is not a second god or sub-deity, but
co-essential with the One Divine Nature. There is
no Demiurgus to whom the work of world-making is
delegated. That was the heresy of the time, de1 It does not follow that God from eternity was creating human
beings, or that the present system is coeval with Him, -a doctrine
which Dr. Bushnell has pretty thoroughly refuted.




446          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
signed to relieve God of being contaminated with
the contact of matter, and at a later day the heresy
of Arius, leaving God on the further side of an unknown gulf and making nature stop short of Him as
leading upward only to a finite intelligence. God
was himself the Word-or, if we choose to make
the subject and predicate change places, the Word
was God. There is good authority, exegetical and
grammatical, for reading the sentence either way.
Either way it affirms the same thing,-that the
divine Reason, which is essentially creative, is no inferior Demiurgus, but the Supreme Divinity. This
same disciple says, in another connection, God is love.
He means plainly that love is his essential nature;
He cannot exist without loving, for if He could He
would not be God. He means here, we think, just as
plainly, that Reason in self-manifestation is also his
essential nature. He would not be God without his
Logos. He is not bare goodness. He is not a mere
fountain of life that flows blindly on and on. He is
Reason as well, that guides it to ends supremely wise,
and determines it in moulds of infinite beauty and
order.
III. The notion of a divine carpenter or architect,
an essential feature of Platonism, is excluded from
the Johannean Cosmogony. God does not build nor
manufacture. He creates. There is no preexistent
material which He works into his universe.  It is
all the forthgoing of his own nature. The Cosmos




THE JOHANNEAAN COSMOLOGY.        447
is a divine speech that never breaks off into silence,
and so nature is the daily thought of God in concrete forms, the print and copy of the eternal mind.
By making the Nous, or mere Intellect, the author
of nature, God is only a contriver, a master-builder,
whose plans are executed by inferior agents; and
the Platonic theism never gets out of this clumsy
carpenter-work in constructing the universe. The
first word of the Christian theism, the Logos, gets
us rid of it, for the universe is now the language of
God speaking; and the old psalm only rounds out into a sublimer strain, "Day unto day uttereth speech,
and night unto night showeth knowledge of thee."
IV. Hence dualism is an impossibility. It had
been the besetting vice, not alone of the Platonic
system and of those which were built out of its material, but of every religion which had not swamped
in Pantheism and found its unity there. Here it is
announced that everything was spoken forth out of
the Logos, which is none other than God himself in
the act of speaking, and otherwise than by this process
not one thing ever came into existence. Hence nature is sweet and clean, for it is God's thought in
visible and concrete form, and it can have no taint
unless man taints it with his own moral evil. The
coverings of matter are not corrupt nor poisonous,
but swathings that come fresh from the hand of the
All-pure. Sense does not lure away from God, but
wins us toward Him through avenues that open up



448          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ward into the wealth of his own being. The flesh is
no corrupt envelopment of the soul to smother and
extinguish its divine ideals; the Logos itself assumed
it as its material clothing, and in it, and through it,
the divine glory most truly and gracefully appeared.
All this is involved in the propositions of the Golden
Proem which the history following is to demonstrate.
God is in Last things as well as First; in the End as
in the Beginning; on the outermost limits as at the
divine centre, filling all things; and the unity of God,
nature, and man is to be consummated in Christianity.
V. No MAN HAS EVER SEEN GOD. The infinite
depths of divine Being are not merely beyond our
comprehension, they are beyond the reach of objective thought. God as the absolute, as sheer Noumenon, is a word that presents no image to any
finite mind. He is only to be apprehended through
his attributes, for by these alone He comes into personality. Inevitably, by the laws of thought and
of speech these attributes must become personified
when we think and speak of God. Qualities or
attributes are what alone personify anything. Think
away these attributes one by one, Love, Justice,
Mercy, Wisdom, Truth, Beneficence, and the idea
of God shades off till it vanishes from thought
altogether, and only a vast vacuity remains. You
may believe it contains something, and you may call
it the Absolute, but the word answers to nothing
in your own mind. The vacuity there has become




THE  OHAzNNEAN COSMOLOGY.         449
complete. Hegel is right, therefore, so far as our
own minds stand affected; when after thinking
away all the qualities of Divine Being to find the
essence within them, he comes at last to nothing,
and makes zero the ground of all existence. Only
we should have the grace to acknowledge, after this
process is accomplished, that we are the vacuum, and
that the zero is only in ourselves.
Hence there is not an attribute which in the Bible
is not made to image forth the divine nature, and
which for the time being is not made to stand for the
person of God. It is God himself, as if for the end
in view the whole Deity were there. He is Wisdom.
It is not enough to say He is wise, for Wisdom is his
eternal essence. But again, Wisdom is his daughter;
she was with Him when He prepared the heavens,
she was " as one brought up with him, his daily delight
rejoicing always before him." 1 As the daughter of
God, she is described at large in the apocryphal
writings as doing what elsewhere God is declared
to have done himself. But again, God is Light.2
Because all our illumination is in Him, Light for this
end expresses the whole Deity, as we say the sun is
the light of the world. Again, He is Love; 3 for to
say only that He loves, does not affirm sufficiently
his eternal essence. And yet again as to his retributive justice, he is a "consuming fire." 4
1 Proverbs viii. 30.  2 I John i. 5.  3 Ib. iv. I6.
4 Heb. xii. 29 quoted from Deut. iv. 24.
29




450          7HE FOURTH GOSPEL.
But when it is said that God is the Word, or the
infinite Mind, in the act of revelation all the other
personifications are comprehended in one.  For
everything that can be known of Him comes through
the Logos, -God speaking, - the Divine Reason in
manifestation. All the riches of his nature, love,
justice, truth, tenderness, grace, beneficence, must
come through his Word, for it stands as the forthgoing of all that is known or knowable of the Divine
perfections. Hence it is described as " dwelling on
the bosom of the Father" and alone revealing Him,
just as the photosphere on the sun's disc,'ever generated from its unknowable deeps, floods our universe and warms it with solar day. Hence the Word
is the only-begotten of the Father, and it was no
paradox of the Christian fathers when they called it
eternally begotten; for they only say over again in
different phrase that it was "in the beginning," and
that God never insulated himself in dreary solitude.
Hence in the New Testament the word is the son of
God and in the fourth Gospel the only son. He is
never spoken of as made, or created; he is always
born or begotten; not born in time, but born eternally and always out of the infinite deeps of divine
Being, and thus ever becoming to our finite minds
the resplendent Person of the Godhead.
A question here very naturally occurs: How
came these divine metaphysics to be first enunciated
by a fisherman of Galilee? All that has been told




THE yOHANNEAN COSMOLOGY.         451
us of the Platonism or the Gnosticism of the fourth
Gospel turns out the most baseless of all assumptions. If you except Plato's monotheism, the fourth
Gospel sets aside those systems as to their distinguishing features, cuts its way through the fog
which they had diffused, and rises above them into
the clear sky like one of those peaks of light, that
first catch the day-spring and fling it down on the
shadows below. A distinguishing feature of Platonism is its dualism, and this became more hopeless
the longer it developed, till finally it turned God out
of his universe, and shut the door. Take dualism
out of Plato and he is no longer Plato. His carpenter-work falls in pieces and vanishes from sight, and
leaves the Demiurgus without a stone or a timber to
build with. Put it never so slightly into the Johannean cosmology and the whole system would be
changed and corrupted as if poison had been diffused
through a living organism to dissolve its tissues.
There never was the least color of it in any of those
theologies which were wrought from the fourth Gospel, not even in the Alexandrian school, which was
thought to Platonize the most; for neither Clement
nor Justin nor Origen have the least smell of it upon
their garments.
If we turn to the opening chapter of the Apocalypse, we shall be at no loss in ascertaining the
source of the Johannean cosmology. It is all there,
but in different form, given not in metaphysical prop



452          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ositions, but in the glowing symbols of an objective
world. Here the disciple who had leaned on the
breast of the Master says he was in spirit, as the old
prophets were when they saw truth in its representative imagery; that he heard a voice saying "I
am the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the
Omega, the First and the Last -not only iv apiK,
that is, in the prime principles of being, but in their
lowest and outermost ultimations. At the divine
centre as at the utmost circuit of a living universe,
I fill all things with myself." The writer says he
turned and looked and saw what afterward he called
the Logos represented as a human form entirely
glorified; "his hairs as white as wool and his feet
as if they burned in a furnace "- glorified, that is,
even to its ultimations. The unity of God nature
and humanity is the one comprehensive truth, given
in one case as divine metaphysics, given in the other
by prophetic vision and symbol, whose overwhelming
brightness was as the sun shining in his strength.
The Logos-doctrine was not first enunciated in
the fourth Gospel. It only received here its final and
most perfect formulation. The substance of it under
different phraseology was evidently in possession of
the earliest Christian communions, and they grasped
it as the prime essential of Christianity itself. It
is implied, as we have shown, though not given in its
completeness, in the discourse of Christ, as reported
by Matthew, where instead of the Word "the Son,"
is the phraseology employed.




THE yOHAINNEANs COSMOLOG Y       453
Paul was in full possession of the doctrine twentyfive years at least before the fourth Gospel was written. His letter to the Colossians, whose genuineness
is admitted even by the doubting and fastidious
Renan, and asserted by all the ancient authorities
without exception, must have been produced not far
from the year 65. It is so full of nerve and so robust
with the Pauline spirit, that Baur's reasons for setting
it aside we must regard as entirely baseless. It was
written to chide the heresies which were plaguing the
church at Colosse, among which were angel-worship
and false asceticism-the doctrines of which had
long been gendered in the cross between Judaism
and Platonism, and which entered so largely into the
Gnostic systems' of a later day. It is plain that he
alludes to their celestial hierarchies and worldmakers, when at the name of the " well beloved Son "
the mind of the Apostle takes fire in this burst of inspiration -" Who is the image of the invisible God,
the first-born of the whole creation; for in him were
all things created; things in the heavens and things
on the earth; things visible and things invisible;
whether they be thrones or dominations, or principalities or powers; in him and for him were all created. And he is before all things, and in him all
things hold together (Co-vvETKE). And he is the head
of the body, the church, for he is the beginning, the
first born from the dead, that in all things he may
be preeminent. For the Father was pleased that in
him the whole pleroma should dwell."




454          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
To say that the Apostle is here only describing a
moral creation would be to sink the passage far away
from its full meaning. It is plain that he had obtained some vision of the truth which John saw in
serener light. The Christ represents to his mind
not merely a man born in time, but the creative
Word, the divine Reason in manifestation, and as
such he opposes it to the angel-worship of an incipient Gnosticism which made the creative Word one
of the pleroma, an angel of the heavenly hierarchies.
There is no reason to doubt that before Paul's day
Jewish Platonism had ripened into just that result.
We waive for the present the question of identity
between the Christ and the Word, and why these
two terms became perfectly interchangeable. Such
certainly is the fact which meets us in the earliest
symbolization which sets forth the sublime theism of
Christianity. Paul perfectly anticipates the theogony
of the Golden Proem. The Word here called "the
well-beloved Son" is the first born of the whole creation, the primal emanation or offspring of the Eternal
Mind to image forth its invisible deeps; through whom
the heavens in all their ranks were constituted, and
all things of time and sense —all things visible and
invisible. And in him all things stand together, or
are held in order. Not only the universe visible and
invisible is created in and through the Word, but all
its parts are held to each other in harmonious relations. It is the same as if the Apostle had said - All




THE yOHANNEAN COSfOLOGY.             455
things visible and invisible are instinct with the living mind out of which they came, and they are held
to one divine purpose and end. The all-creating
Word is behind and within the shifting panorama of
nature and of history, making all things and all
events stand together as held in unity.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is beyond all reasonable question a production of the apostolic age, and
probably written by a cotemporary of Paul. We
think it antedates the fourth Gospel by nearly a
quarter of a century. Its introductory chapter asserts the Logos doctrine with the clearest emphasis,
and as we read it is exactly parallel with the utterance of Paul just quoted.  "The Son" is above all
angels, and by him God " made the worlds." 1 And
the Father addresses the Son in the words, "Thy
throne, O God, is forever and ever," and again " Thou
Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the
earth (Tr.v yrv ) and the heavens (ovpavot) are the works
of thy hands."  The Word here called "the Son" is
invested with the same attributes as in the proem of
John.
1 That rovs acdlvas, here rendered "the worlds," means the whole
creation, may be seen by reference to Heb. xi. 3, where the same
word is used. It may mean "the ages " or the whole flow of time.
But see as decisive the tenth verse of Chapter first. We are perfectly aware of a different application of these texts made by one class of
expositors, but it strikes us as entirely arbitrary.




CHAPTER IV.
THE TRANSPARENCIES OF NATURE.
ATURE, as we have defined it, is the material
plane of being which we apprehend by the
organs of sense, and the order of sequence in its endless changes and recombinations we call natural
laws. To ascertain these laws and group them is
the business of natural science. And it is only
science pretending to knowledge beyond its discovery
that antagonizes the truths of revelation. The best
scientific research and progress do not tend downward towards a grosser materialism, but away from it
towards the highest spiritual philosophy, and the line
becomes almost tremulous, which distinguishes the
discoveries of science from the disclosures of revelation, where the light of the one is merging in the
clear blaze of the other.
No such elements of nature exist as the ancient
philosophers built their systems with; none such as
entered into the cosmology of Plato; no such fixed
primordial elements as earth, air, fire, and water; no
ultimate particles of matter, out of which Leibnitz
and others of a later day wrought their atomic theories of the universe. Nature presents to us her ever




THE TRANSPARENCIES OF NA TURE.      457
shifting phenomena; a new phasis every day and
every hour, through which something benign and
lovely is looking out upon us; and what that something is becomes a question, in answering which religion and science were never so much in accord as
now.
Our text books told us not many years since that
material substances were classified as those which
could be weighed, and those which could not be.
The imponderable substances were light, heat, electricity and magnetism, whose particles were exceedingly subtile, and travelled with immense velocity.
It is now perfectly well demonstrated, that no such
substances exist in nature. They are only the equivalents of forces producing motion; and the light, the
heat, the electricity, and the- magnetism measure by
their degrees of intensity the amount of force which
has been resisted and deflected. If you stir the atmosphere by the vibratory motion of your vocal
organs, or of a stringed instrument, or by the
concussion of bodies with each other, you produce
wavelets of air, which striking the ear produce the
sensation of sound. Sound is not a material substance, but motion resisted. The subtile ethers pervading all the spaces between us and the sun are
acted upon by some force in that central orb, and the
motion touching our eye-balls produces the sensation
of light, or touching the surface of our bodies the
sensation of heat. Light and heat are not material
substances, but motion resisted.




458          THIE FOUR TH GOSPEL.
Or let the resisting medium be varied according to
laws well ascertained, and the heat becomes electricity. This change in the resisting medium may
be effected by an artificial electric battery, or by
states of the atmosphere which is one of the electric
batteries of nature. Or vary the resisting medium
yet again, and the electricity changes back into
light, shown either by sparks from the electric wires,
or by flashes of lightning through the air. The
impact of homogeneous bodies by friction produces
heat, that of heterogeneous bodies produces electricity, and two currents of electricity meeting at
right angles, produce magnetism. What were once
called imponderable substances therefore are simply
motion resisted; or force changing its form of manifestation according to the method or medium by
which the resistance is made. So much heat, or so
much light, or so much electricity are the equivalents of so much force arrested; and so subtile and
exact have been the experiments, that the equivalents
are weighed and noted down. Joule, an English
chemist, by a series of exceedingly delicate experiments, tells us by his calorimeter what quantity of
heat is produced by a given mechanical action; and
he demonstrates he thinks that the fall of 772 pounds
through the space of one foot is able to raise the
temperature of one pound of water through one
degree of Fahrenheit's thermometer.
The analysis does not stop here. The heat, elec



THE TRANSPAJRENCIEV S OF NA TURE.   459
tricity and magnetism of our own bodies, all, in fine,
that we call the vital force, are resolvable into the
same general law. So much bodily temperature is
so much force whose motion has been arrested; so
much nerve-power or brain-power is so much electricity or magnetism, the equivalent of so much
motion converted into the vis vite of our physical
organism. Our activities either of mind or body are
just so much heat, electricity, or magnetism converted back into motion. Touch the nerves of a
corpse with the galvanic wires, and you produce the
same motions of the body that the will produced
in the living man. The difference is, that the brain
of the living man, which was the electric battery before, has now failed of its supply, and an artificial
battery has been substituted in its place. The emotions and passions of the living man moved the
muscles of the face so as to express fear, anger, or
rage, and this was done by the electric action of the
corresponding nerves: touch the same nerves of the
corpse with the electric wires, and the same muscles
will move again into the same expression. Vital
heat like all other heat is the exact equivalent of so
much motion; nerve power and brain power are the
same equivalent converted to electricity or magnetism, the power on which we draw in all our thoughts,
emotions, intellections, and imaginations. Organic
life is the equilibrium of these equivalents, and to
break down and destroy the equilibrium is -death.




460          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
So, therefore, what were called the imponderable
substances, are not substances at all, but simply force
changing its mode of manifestation; first into motion, then into the equivalents of motion, heat, light,
electricity, magnetism, vital power. These in turn
change back severally into motion again. The evolution of force by heat and electricity converted again
into motion by the telegraph, the steam engine, muscular action, or on the more magnificent scale of
nature, is only the illustration of a general law which
science now holds to be perfectly demonstratedthat force once exerted never ceases and is never lost.
In some of its equivalents it is always preserved, and
produces the endless phases in the cycle of life that
ever returns into itself, and constitutes the activities
of a living universe. This is THE CORRELATION AND
CONSERVATION OF FORCES; in other words, their
equivalence and eternal continuance, whose discovery
and demonstration is the auspicious achievement of
modern science.
So much of what were called imponderable substances. But what are called the ponderable or
solid substances, the rocks, the minerals, the earths
and the flora that grow out of them - are resolvable in the last analysis into FORCE changing the
form of its manifestation. That is the last boundary
of science, and beyond this as mere physicists, we
cannot go. Matter has no ultimate units, but is
divisible to the point where it vanishes from human




THE TRANSPARENCIES OF NATURE.      461
perception. All the properties of matter, primary
and secondary, are but the manifestations of force,
and we know of no such entity as the essence of
matter. The most solid and ponderable substances
are resolvable, the solids into fluids, the fluids into
vapor, the vapor into gases, and the gases into ethers,
and the ethers into those more simple and elementary, and very possibly a finer and more complete
analysis will some day resolve all the ponderable
substances into the imponderable. What we have
called matter, is composed of no fixed and final
atoms that we know of; it is a coordination of forces
which may be recombined or changed into their
equivalents. Thus the most enlightened materialism tends to spiritualism and almost merges in it.
But come to the last analysis. These coordinate
forces are resolvable one into another and all of them
abut upon a PRIME FORCE which lies within and
behind them all; of which they are only the ever
changing phases and out of which all phenomena
are evolved. The single question, which now concerns us is - What is the nature and quality of this
Prime Force, towards which all the others are resolvable as only the forms and methods of its activity?  Herbert Spencer says it is unknowable,
and that Science is here brought up to its impassable boundary.  But why unknowable?   The
question is, does it act unintelligently, like brute




462          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
matter, or does it not? The answer is - it acts as
a vast and all pervading INTELLIGENCE, SO comprehending and stupendous that we must call it infinite. Take as an illustration the planetary motions.
It is demonstrable that if the force which holds the
planets toward a common centre and the force which
projects them from it, were not kept in equipoise
within assignable limits, the whole system would
tumble into chaos. It is demonstrable that if their
periodic revolutions had been coincident, so as to
arrange them on the same side of the sun, that
is to bring them in conjunction, the whole system
would break up in a common disaster. It is demonstrable that the whole system is one of the
most delicate balances and compensations, so that
seeming temporal disturbance preserves an intrinsic and eternal harmony. Some of their compensations and balances forecast periods of thousands of
years. For example the orbits and periodic times
of Jupiter and Saturn are such that they may be
in conjunction and send disturbance through the
whole planetary system.  But every third conjunction falls in advance of a former one and the conjunction point is carried round the entire orbit in 2,648
years, at the end of which time the exact condition
will be restored and all the perturbations will have
completely neutralized each other.  Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely, so as to show
how this Prime Force into which all other forces




THE   TRANSPARENCIES OF NATURE.             463
resolve themselves, is an all-seeing intelligence.' It
answers precisely to the Logos of Scripture, the Divine Reason in the act of manifestation. The light
of science tending upward meets that of revelation streaming downward and they blend together.
Matter, the more we analyze it, loses its grossness
and becomes transparent, showing the motions uncovered of Him who works in us and around us;
and nature is only the veil with which we cover our
eyes, that we be not too much dazzled or overawed
under the open face of the Godhead.
Consider one moment another point. Science, we
said, demonstrates the conservation, or, as Herbert
Spencer calls it, the PERSISTENCE of force. This
means that, so far as science knows, the same amount
of force now in the universe always has been and
always must be. It is constantly changing in form
but never in quantity.2 Motion arrested changes into
heat; but if you could utilize all the heat you could
produce precisely the same degree of motion again.
1 See Mitchell's Popzlar Astronomy, especially chap. xv.
2 Professor Yeomans thus states concisely the same law: "The
movements we see around us are not spontaneous, or independent
occurrences, but links in an eternal chain of forces. When bodies
are put in motion it is at the expense of some previously existing
energy; and when they come to rest, their force is not destroyed
but lives on in other forms. Every motion we see has its thermal
value, and when it ceases its equivalent of heat is an invariable result. Should the motion of the heavenly bodies be arrested, it would
produce a conflagration of the universe." -Chemistry, p. I74.




464          THIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Solid matter changes into gases and ethers; but
condense the gases and the same amount of matter
returns and nothing has been lost. There is the
same now, no more no less, that there was when
the morning stars first sang together; and the same
would continue though the world should be "burned
up." The only changes have been in the combinations, each combination offering a new phasis of
the vast primal force of all. The annihilation of
matter is impossible, for no such substance in se
exists or was ever created. The destruction of the
world is both scientifically unthinkable and theologically monstrous. It is saying, to state it otherwise, that the ground force which comprehends all
the others, and from which phenomena are evolved,
could cease, or is not "persistent," and that is saying theologically, that the Logos was not in the
Beginning, or is not born eternally, but is only
finite and temporal; that it began to be, once on
a time, and that it can cease to be or can die out
again; that God could be without it; that the essential divine attributes, those which make him God,
could be abolished; that the Divine Mind could
introvert within itself in the lonely and selfish contemplation of its interior glories; nay, farther, that
its interior glories could themselves be quenched,
for it is precisely their lavishment that makes them
beneficent and therefore essentially divine.
Such, then, are the symphonic affirmations of




THE TRAASPARENCIES OF NATURE.       465
Theology and Science. Theology declares that God
is essentially the WORD, was ever in self-manifestation that is, and always must be; that there was no
primordial material outside of him, but that all
things came into being by the Word; or in other
phrase, that the Prime Force of Nature is God in the
act of speaking. So John announces from above.
Science begins from below, and reasons up towards
the same truth. Nature is some vast Power in action; its phases change constantly, but it is only a
change of equivalents, the sum total is the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever. Nothing can be taken
away. Creation was not an act which was accomplished centuries ago, but is an ever fresh evolution
of the central power of the Universe, acting not
blindly, but as the utterance of an Eternal Reason.
Creation is a grand epopee, a song which has no beginning and no languishing, but whose notes, running through an infinite range of keys, make the
harmonies of the universe. "The discoveries and
generalizations of modern Science," says Professor
Tyndall, "constitute a poem more sublime than has
ever yet been addressed to the imagination," and he
sums up his conclusions in a noble passage which
we quote as a fitting close to this chapter: -
"We pass to other systems and other suns, each
pouring forth energy like our own, but still without
infringement of the law which reveals immutability
in the midst of change, which recognizes incessant
30




466          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
transference or conversion, but neither final gain nor
loss. The law generalizes the aphorism of Solomon
that'there is nothing new under the sun,' by teaching us to detect everywhere, under its infinite variety
of appearances, the same primeval force. To Nature
nothing can be added; from Nature nothing can be
taken away; the sum of her energies is constant, and
the utmost man can do in the pursuit of physical
truth, or in the applications of physical knowledge, is
to shift the constituents of the never-varying total.
The law of conservation rigidly excludes both creation (temporal beginning) and annihilation. Waters
may change to ripples, and ripples to waves; magnitude may be substituted for number and number
for magnitude; asteroids may aggregate to suns;
suns may resolve themselves into flora and fauna,
and flora and fauna melt into air, - the flux of
power is eternally the same. It rolls in music
through the ages; and all terrestrial energy- the
manifestations of life, as well as the display of phenomena-are but modulations of its rhythm."




CHAPTER V.
THE WORD MADE FLESH.
T   HAT Jesus Christ was a man, finite, tempted,
suffering, having the same propensities and
weaknesses, the same wants and sympathies that
other men have, is manifest through the whole
evangelic narrative. He was more of a man than
any other person of whom we have any history; for
nowhere else do we read of a humanity where the
compass of its powers and attributes was so full and
complete. Its sublimest heights of moral grandeur,
and its most delicate shades of moral beauty are all
here. The manhood of other men, even the best of
them, is somewhat distorted or defective. There is
strength without tenderness, there is breadth without depth; there is intensity without catholicity;
there is clear, intellection without the sweet and
fervent sympathies of the heart. The peculiarity of
the manhood of Jesus consists in the union of qualities found elsewhere incongruous and in separation;
union in such majestic and delicate proportion as to
give the impression of perfect symmetry and harmony. It requires not only a life-long study, but
a heart open to all that is grand and lovely in nature




468          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and in man, to be brought into full correspondency
with the humanity of Jesus. This constitutes the
charm of the writings of Dr. Furness, through whom
the natural life and character of Jesus become to us
a new revelation of moral beauty and perfection.
Some of the critics have assumed that the fourth
Gospel denies, or at least ignores the humanity of
Jesus; that it has a Gnostic tinge, and imports that
his relations to space and time, to sense and matter,
were.apparent and not real. Every candid and
careful reader we are persuaded will come to just
the opposite conclusion. More plainly and persistently than the synoptics, do the fourth Gospel and all
the Johannean writings, set forthf the Incarnation as
a stubborn and fundamental fact, for the plain reason
that when John wrote, the fact had been denied;
and in the Gnostic metaphysics, the essential humanity of Jesus had exhaled in gilded mist and become
spectral. In the proem the fact is made prominent;
and John even goes out of his way to put in his own
personal attestations as an eye-witness. " The Word
was made flesh and dwelt among us and WE BEHELD
IIS GLORY." He puts this in the foreground as a
postulate which the entire history following was to
establish. When he comes to narrate the sufferings
and death of Jesus, he purposely gives his readers to
understand, that he of all the twelve was an eyewitness, standing under the cross while the others
were standing afar off. Hence he supplies facts




THE WORD MADE FLESH.           469
which they had left out; and he not only supplies
them, but interlines his personal affirmation, as if
making oath to what somebody had denied. " One
of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and
immediately blood and water came out. And he
who saw bears testimony, and his testimony is true
and he knows that he speaks the truth." 1 He seeks to
confirm this in his description of the post-resurrection appearances, when Jesus came among his disciples, and showed them his hands and his side. The
Catholic epistle opens with the same attestations, and
it is one of the proofs of identity of authorship, that
all the Johannean writings lay special emphasis upon
the proper humanity of Jesus down to its outermost
clothings of flesh and sense. The ears, the eyes, and
the touch are the threefold witness summoned to
bear testimony to the fact that the incarnation was
not spectral, but actual.  "That which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we
have looked upon, and our hands have handled we
announce to you." He denounces as antichrist those
who deny that "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,"
and. he makes acknowledgment of this truth a test
of genuine discipleship.2 The "liars" who denied
that Jesus was the Christ, or who called themselves
apostles and were not,3 were, in all probability, the
followers of Cerinthus, who made Jesus one person,
i John xix. 34, 35.      2 i John iv. I-3.
3 I John ii. 22; Rev. ii. 2.




470          THE FOUR TH GOSPEL.
and the Christ another person that merely spoke
through him as a higher angel, but whose immaculate garments of light had never been soiled by the
overlayings of mortal and corruptible flesh. If the
Johannean spirit rises, on the one hand, into the
more celestial ethers, it descends on the other hand,
into a realism as crass and solid as we find anywhere
in the New Testament history. Jesus Christ on the
side of his humanity, is a partaker of flesh and blood,
and through that of the weaknesses, the temptations,
and the woes, which beset the race of Adam, even
to its humblest and most forlorn child of sorrow.
In the fourth Gospel, as nowhere else, Jesus is described as in constant peril of his life, and evading the
snares that would bring it to a close before his time
had come. He begins his ministry at Jerusalem,
evidently in the expectation that his own people
would be the first to receive the new revelation, and
that the light of the New Jerusalem would radiate
from the old, and thence roll back the pagan darkness. But he is opposed, thwarted and threatened,
and a plot laid for his life, which he is obliged continually to evade; and he finally leaves Jerusalem,
ceases to make it the centre of his plans and operations, retires to the obscure province of Galilee for
personal safety, organizes his ministry there, and
only goes up privately to Jerusalem, the focus of
danger. All this we have in the fourth Gospel with
fullness of detail; while in the synoptics we only




7IHE WORD MADE ILESH.          471
have it in hints and fragments. How baseless is the
theory which regards it as a Gnostic production designed to show that Christ was not really incarnate
and subject to suffering and death, when the whole
narrative represents that the plan of his ministry was
constantly varied lest he should meet death prematurely! Then the assertion, that in the fourth Gospel he breaks suddenly upon the reader as superhuman or superangelic, is entirely unfounded, for no
Scripture shows more plainly and constantly than
this book, that his Messianic consciousness came like
the dawn of the morning, that it had to break through
clouds of temptation and of ignorance; through
alternations of doubt, of hope and of fear; through
all the limitations of the finite understanding, before
the.unfluctuating noontide flooded his consciousness
with the wisdom and the peace of God. The fourth
Gospel shows preeminently and in the lowest degree
the human phasis in the life and character of Jesus
Christ.
But it contains also another range of fact and doctrine pertaining to that life and character which we
cannot reduce within the dimensions of our finite
nature. The synoptics rise sometimes to the same
height, but they only rise to it occasionally. It appears with them in solitary peaks, far off beyond the
clouds; whereas in John it is a continuous range,
always bathed in the mellowing glories of the heavens. In the proem, Jesus Christ is the Word, and




472          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the Word is God himself. He is not an angel or
aeon, but the Being who creates the universe. This
might perhaps be explained as a rhetorical figure, were
it not that a whole range of fact and doctrine, through
the fourth Gospel, and through all the Johannean
writings, keeps up to the same level, showing plainly
that the proem was given as a key for the interpretation of the whole. Jesus asserts repeatedly his preexistence. "I came down from heaven" is the annunciation which startles his hearers and excites the
Jews to anger and charges of blasphemy; but he
repeats it in its sharp significance, and will not explain it as metaphor.  He asserts an existence of
his own before that of Abraham; and the connection shows that he does not mean merely that he
was the Messiah in the counsel and foreknowledge
of God, but that he had an existence which was without time, and therefore was before Abraham.  In
those communings with God, which Jesus had at the
last supper, communings of indescribable tenderness,
where no factitious self-assertion is even conceivable,
he speaks of his preexistence as a familiar fact, but
now glowing more vividly and gratefully in his consciousness, "I have glorified thee on the earth, I
have finished the work which thou gavest me to do,
and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thyself,
with the glory which I had with thee before the
world was." 1 "Father, I would that those which
1 John xvii. 5.




THE WORD MADE FLESH.            473
thou hast given me be with me where I am, that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast given
me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation of
the world." 1 To say that an order of events was
established from all eternity in the decrees of God,
is only to assert the common dogma of predestination. Jesus does more than this, unless he asserts
the baldest truism, for every Jew who took up the
stones to stone him for blasphemy, might have
claimed such preexistence as that. That which he
calls repeatedly hinself, - which was so far forth his
own being, that he applies to it the personal pronoun, - I, he says, was with the Father before time
was; and when death was near, he said he was going
back to merge again in the glory from which he
emerged when he took on the clothings of our finite
humanity. " I have come forth from the Father, and
come into the world: again I leave the world and go
to the Father;" and his disciples said on hearing
this, "Now speakest thou plainly, and art speaking
no parable."2 Passages may be quoted which fall
upon the ear at first as like forms of speech, such as
"the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
Even there, other preexistence is supposed than one
merely in the foreknowledge of God.3 But the pas1 John xvii. 24.            2 John xvi. 28-29.
3 This passage imports as we interpret it, that God did not merely
provide a sacrifice in time and once for all, but that eternally, he sacrifices himself for his creatures; that such is his nature always, and
the cross only symbolizes it in time.




474          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
sages are not parallel.  When Jesus persistently
asserted his preexistence, and was charged with
blasphemy, and his life was imperiled because he put
forth so hard a doctrine, he yet refused to retract it,
but asserted it over and over till the last. Coming
forth from the Father into the world he places in
antithesis with leaving the world and going to the
Father. One member of the antithesis is placed in
balance with the other; preexistence is asserted in
the same sense as his post-existence, and if one was
real, the other must also be.
But why go into any verbal interpretations? The
egoism of the Johannean writings is so stupendous
and persistent, that we are shut off to the conclusion
that if Christ was a "mere man " though a sage or
prophet, he was a man whose self-assertion transcended all the bounds of reason and modesty. For what
is the bearing of sage or prophet who have any just
apprehension of their function and calling? According to the depth and fullness of their wisdom and
inspiration, so will the entireness of their self-abnegation be. As the divine mind and message roll in
upon them, their own nothingness becomes more
complete; they keep themselves out-of the way lest
they sink under the awful burden of the Divine
Word. "Woe is me for I am undone; because I am
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a
people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of hosts."  No mere man can bear




THE WORD MADE FLESH.           475
the weight of the infinite without being crushed and
consumed under it. Even the sage who comes into a
larger discourse of reason bows before it in profound
acknowledgment that it is not his reason, but a loftier
and diviner intelligence, and he shrinks from projecting his little ego into it, to darken its lustre. But
much more will the seer keep himself out of sight
before the incoming of the Lord, for he sees and
speaks from a more profound and irrepressible spontaneity, and he is more ready to "fall as dead " than
to see his own fantastic figure outlined on the heavenly vision.
Nor would it make any difference in this respect,
though the messenger who speaks in the name of
God, were angelic or superangelic. If greater and
wiser than men, so much more perfect would his
self-abnegation be. The highest angels (so we interpret the Saviour's words), those who are nearest the
Lord and refi'ect most brightly the glories of his face,
are the guardians of little children, because they are
most childlike and are brought more directly and
entirely into sympathy and correspondency with the
little ones. And so to become great or greatly angelic is not to rise into greater self-assertion, but to
rise to such a consciousness of God, that when made
the minister of his truth and will, all selfhood - the
I-vanishes and disappears.
But what have we here as we open the Johannean
writings? We have an egoism for which the synop



476          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
tics had in some sort prepared us, but which is consummated in the book of John. Matthew reports
Jesus as saying: "No one knoweth the Son but the
Father, neither knoweth any man the Father save
the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him."
"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy
laden."  But in the fourth Gospel the proem  is
pitched to this high strain, and the discourse of Jesus
rises up to it even to the close. He tells his dis.
ciples that to see him is the same as seeing God, and
instead of abnegating himself he puts himself in the
foreground continually. He does not tell his hearers
that simply to receive his message will be enough.
He tells them that "all men should honor the Son
even as they honor the Father," for "he that honoreth
not the Son honoreth not the Father who hath sent
him." He does not say, I bring you the true doctrine which is bread from heaven, but rather " I am
the bread which came down from heaven." " I am the
bread of life." He does not bring news merely that
there is to be a resurrection of the dead. He proclaims rather " I am the resurrection and the life." He
does not tell his disciples as any mere preacher would
have told them, - If you are obedient to the truth,
God will vouchsafe to you a resurrection among the
glorified; he tells them as to every man who is a true
believer, " I will raise him up at the last day." He
does not say in prophetic style, - I proclaim truth
which is to enlighten mankind; he proclaims rather




THE WORD MADE FLESH.           477
" I am the light of the world." Instead of withdrawing his own personality, that the light may shine unbroken from the mind of God, he interposes his person
as if there alone the light was inorbed, and became
the sun of the moral universe.
These stupendous claims are made not in exteptional and rhetorical phraseology, but they are based
on the alleged prime facts of the gospel history. The
last festal discourses abound in promises of the Holy
Spirit that was to comfort, enlighten, and sanctify the
disciples of Christ. But who is this man who claims
that he is the dispenser of this sovereign agency of
God, and that its coming depends on his own personal agency? " If I go not away the Comforter will
not come, but if I depart I will send him." Yet again
the Father is to send him, but it is to be only through
the intervention of Christ, and in his name. What
these promises imported, and how the disciples understood them, we learn by the subsequent fulfillment.
The time and place where the new dispensation was
to be inaugurated was Jerusalem, at the feast of Pentecost - and there it came, the imbreathing of heavenly airs transforming the whole inward and outward
man, and creating him anew in the radiant image
of his Lord. And Peter, standing up to explain the
new phenomena, rehearses the facts pertaining to the
death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and says,
" HE hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear."
Saul, the hardest of the Pharisees, fell under the same




478          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
influence. The steel of the Pharisee melted, and
was moulded in gentler forms, and he tells us that
when he had open vision of the source of the power
that subdued him, he found himself ensphered in
light from the face of Jesus Christ, above the brightness of the sun. The whole history of the primitive church only repeats these facts in fulfillment of
the promise of the Comforter, and in full explanation of the nature of the promise. The primitive
church, do we say? We might just as well say the
whole church for eighteen hundred years. For ever
and everywhere under the administration of Christianity, when the Holy Spirit comes with the most
of its cleansing, subduing, and transforming power,
though not with the open vision of Christ, it is with
the unquenchable consciousness of his presence and
his insphering light and love; and where this is
denied, the power of Christianity wanes, its ordinances become meaningless, and the Holy Spirit
pales its ineffectual fires.
Such self-assertion was never heard of before nor
since except among men of disordered intellect. Why
do we read it in the evangelic narratives without
being shocked with it? Plainly because of its place
and setting in a biography which is unlike any other,
and which none of our scales of human grandeur are
competent to measure; and the entire harmony and
proportion are not broken but preserved. But take
out this egoism and try to fit it into the life of any




THE WORD MADE FLESH.            479
other great man, prophet, apostle, or sage. Isaiah,
as we have seen, when the vision of God broke upon
him and the burden of his message was laid upon
him, did not challenge his adversaries. " Which of
you convinceth me of sin?" " Ye are from beneathI am from above," but cried aloud from a profounder
consciousness of mortal infirmity and weakness.
Nor did John and his fellow apostles when a like
mission was given them, and the " Woe is me if
I preach not the gospel" came upon them. They
resolve themselves into nothingness as fast as possible, and are more conscious than ever of an uncleansed selfhood which must not fling its shadow
across the sunlight of God. If we think this was
owing to any usages of speech peculiar to the men
themselves, we have only to take any of our modern
apostles of truth and try to fit such egoism into the
frame of their history.
I do not know of any man whose message to this
age has been of more deep and solemn import, than
that of William Ellery Channing. His word, probably more than that of any other man, has broken
the fetters of the body and the mind, and prepared
the way for a new coming of the Lord. In the delivery of his message he uses very freely the first
person singular, not in the way of self-assertion, but
rather to set forth his individual convictions in such
wise as not to invade the freedom of other minds.
But if this great prophet of modern freedom had an



480          THLE FOURTH GOSPEL.
nounced himself as "the Light of the world," as
"come down from heaven," as the Judge of the earth
who was to sit on a throne of glory, summon the nations to his bar and part them to the right hand and to
the left, to eternal punishment or eternal life; if when
his hearers had asked the way to the Father, he had
said to them - Look upon me, that is the same as
looking upon God; if he had promised when dying
to send them the Holy Spirit, or if he had told his
followers to put his name into a formula of baptism
along with that of God and the Holy Ghost to be
used in proselyting to the end of time, who does not
see that he would have been answered with a universal shout of derision, and'that the report of his
hearers would have been "No man ever spake like
this man, because no man's ravings were ever half
so wild?"  Put any other great historic name in the
same connection and you have the same result: their
genuine manhood forthwith is sifted out of them and
the only residuum is human pretense and vanity
puffed out to their least attenuation.
If the argument of the foregoing chapters has failed
to convince any reader that John wrote the fourth
Gospel, and if there is any lingering suspicion that
its theories of Christ belong to the second century,
let him turn to the Apocalypse, the conceded and undoubted production of the beloved disciple.
We have shown in a preceding chapter that the imagery of the discourses of Jesus as deposited in the




THE WORD MADE FLESH.            481
mind and memory of John, are in the Apocalypse unrolled as the heavenly landscapes, and so representative of the angelic life and worship. All that we
have described as the stupendous egoism of Jesus
in the fourth Gospel appears in the Apocalypse in
another form. What Jesus had asserted of himself
in his discourses, as John reports them, what the
Golden Proem had claimed for him as the eternal
Word, appears in the Apocalypse as conceded to him
by the ascending ranks of the heavenly world. In the
Apocalypse the metaphysics of the Proem and the discourses that follow and illustrate it, are seen objectively as concrete forms and personalities. Like the
diagrams of the mathematicians who put abstract
reasonings into shapes palpable to sense; or like the
chromos of the traveller which translate his words
into scenery that glows upon the canvas, the Apocalypse translates the doctrines and theories about
Christ found in the Gospels and in Paul's epistles
into the ritual of heaven, heard and seen. " I heard
behind me a loud voice," says the seer; and turning
he saw one like unto the Son of man - Jesus Christ
in glorified form, who said, "I am the First and the
Last and he that liveth; and I was dead and behold
I am alive forevermore and have the keys of death
and the underworld." 1 Jesus Christ, in the fourth
Gospel, is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
of the world. In the Apocalypse the Lamb is coupled
1 Revelations i. Io, 17, I8.
3I




482          THE FOUR TI GOSPEL.
with the name of God as designating the object of
supreme adoration and love.  "The twenty-four
elders fell down before the Lamb, having each one
a harp and golden bowl full of incense, which are the
prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song
saying, Thou art worthy to take the book and to
open its seals, for thou wast slain and hast redeemed
to God by thy blood, men out of every tribe and
tongue and people and nation, and hast made them
a kingdom and priests and they reign on the earth.
And I saw and I heard the voice of many angels
around the throne and the living creatures and the
elders, and the number of them was ten thousand
times ten thousand and thousands of thousands: saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain, to receive the power and riches and wisdom
and strength and honor and glory and blessing.
And every creature which is in heaven and those who
are on the earth and under the earth and on the sea
and the things in them, I heard them all saying, To
Him that sitteth upon the throne and to the Lamb
be the blessing and the honor and the glory and the
dominion forever and ever. And the four living
creatures said Amen, and the elders fell down and
worshipped."1
Not any man however great, or greatly inspired,
could be thus exalted so as to receive joint honors
and worship with the Supreme, in any system of
l Revelation v. 8-14.




THE WORD MADE FLESH.           483
pure theism. Not any angel or archangel could be
thus exalted; nay, the higher his exaltation the farther away would he be from such homage, for the
lower down and the farthest from sight would be all
that is himself when ascriptions of glory and dominion were ascending "to Him that sitteth on the
throne."  And if Christianity has thus exalted a
mere man, however great and good, if it has thus
exalted any created being whatever, it is as gross
a system of idolatry as can be found among any of
the religions of the earth.
Is there any other range of fact and statement,
complementary of that which we have here given,
whereby a pure monotheism is preserved to us, and
the Johannean Christology along with it, and made
bread fiom heaven for the hunger of the soul?




CHAPTER VI.
THE LOGOS DOCTRINE.
T   0 void this idolatry from the cultus of Christianity, two ways are open to us. One is, to
apply to the record such destructive criticism as will
cut out from it all that asserts the essential divinity
of Jesus Christ. Such criticism assumes that this
supposed divinity is a factitious halo which has been
thrown about him from the warm and idolatrous imaginations of his followers. Take all this away, and
we should find a remarkable preacher and reformer,
a man developed probably from the best spirit of his
times, who was born and who died like other men,
but who like some other men received an apotheosis
after death. He was divine, says Baur, speaking
from the stand-point of his Hegelian theosophy, only
as all human nature is divine; and the doctrine of
the incarnation is passed over to the interest of the
race, serving only as a type of the divine incarnation
in all humanity, evolving the Christs of every age,
according to the nature and fullness of its inspiration.
Try this theory and see how it applies. Beginning with Matthew and ending with the Apocalypse,
go through and sift out from the record everything




THE LOGOS DOCTRINE.           485
which imports the superhumanity of Jesus Christ.
Go over those passages which we cited in the last
chapter, and all the Scripture essentially involved
with them, including the discourses of Jesus, which
put forth claims such as no prophet or sage could do;
go over these and eliminate them all, and what have
we left? We have not a "mere man "left, nor the
ghost of a man which can be outlined to any rational
criticism, however microscopic and keen. The Johannean writings must be voided almost entire, as the
German critics very well see. So much of the synoptics as constitute the very frame of their history,
must be ignored (for example, Matt. i. 8-25, xi. 27,
xxv. 31-46, xxviii. I8-20). The Apocalypse must be
rejected,-a book whose genuineness is past all
reasonable question, -as a vision which has no
objective reality answering to it.  Whatever is
merely natural and human in the life of Jesus as
given in the New Testament, so interblends with the
supernatural and superhuman, and makes so complete a whole, that if you pull away the latter, the
former comes with it, or else gives a remainder of
shreds which belong to no history human or divine.
For instance, the birth accords with the resurrection
and ascension; the incarnation with the excarnation,
the ingress into the world with the egress from it.
These mutually explain each other, and explain the
miracles as well. Again, the discourses of Jesus constantly forecast just such a death and coming again,




486          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and imply their necessity, and they give tone to his
divine eloquence and to that inimitable and tender
pathos that swells through every sentence of his
later utterances. And those are the very utterances
which a forger could no more have invented and put
into his mouth, than Titian could have invented the
landscapes which he copied upon his canvas. Then
the history of the Church, and that especially of the
first two centuries, as already shown, grounds itself
on just such facts as the New Testament records,
such a birth,. life, death, resurrection, and second
coming in the Comforter.
We must seek some other and more rational
method to clear away this supposed idolatry from the
cultus of Christianity. We must find it in the key
of interpretation offered to us freely and constantly
in its own unmutilated records. The proem taken
as the grand postulate of Christianity, and not resolved into mere rhetoric, gives us an open way
into the heart of the divine revelations, and justifies the egoism of the fourth Gospel. The Word,
the Divine Reason itself, which is God in the act
of utterance, God coming into personal manifestation, was incarnate in the Lord Jesus Christ. It was
not an inspiration merely, it was not a vision of God
like that of Isaiah or of St. John. It was a more interior union of natures, the divine within the human.
By conception and birth the divine was nearer in
degree to the human, and dawned through the con



THE LOGOS DOCTRINE.           487
sciousness more clearly until Jesus speaks from it
and acts from it as the normal condition of his own
being. Then it is not the finite, tempted, suffering
man who speaks; it is the Divine Logos itself, God
revealing himself with no admixture of our mortal
fallibility and infirmity. Jesus in his full Messiahship has passed into this consciousness of the divine
and speaks from it, and the I is no longer the man
Jesus, but the Word that existed before Abraham
was, which was always with God, which always was
God in the act of self-revelation. Even so would the
Word ever speak of himself as derived from the
Father, as less than the Father, as begotten, of the
Father, and his only Son. Because the Father is the
infinite deeps of Divine Being; in its infinitude unrevealed and unrevealable to any finite mind. The
Word is God so far forth as He is revealed; forthgoing from the depths of his infinitude; eternally
born of the divine nature, and bringing God into
personality and into blissful relations with the creatures He has made.
Let no one say that this is Sabellianism or Arianism, or Trinitarianism, if that means the worship of
three persons. The well-informed reader knows it
is neither. It is THE LOGOS-DOCTRINE of the primitive church, found roughly in the synoptics and in
Paul's fervent metaphysics, but found in the Johannean writings in a continuous blaze of light, the
central sun of the whole system of Christian doc



488          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
trine whence all its other truths are harmonized. It
affirms an essential distinction in the divine nature
of Father and Son; that these are not merely modes
of manifestation in time, but were " in the beginning," and therefore timeless and eternal.  God as
the Father is the infinite deep of divine being,
beyond finite apprehension, beyond the reach of
human thought; what "no man hath seen or can
see." But left here we are in blind worship, and
can only build an altar to the Unknown. Left here
we should not know God as a self-conscious intelligence, or as a being who felt the yearnings of an
unchanging and tender affection. But the Word is
God speaking, the divine Reason in self-revelation,
ever on the bosom of the infinite deeps, and bringing
forth their treasures of truth and love. This is the
Logos-doctrine. We grope towards it in nature, for
nature, the more its forces are analyzed, resolves
itself into one primal force, a supreme intelligence
with unknown depths beyond. The nature-religions
groped after it and sometimes saw it in dim twilight. But not. till the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us in Jesus Christ, full of grace and
truth, did this benign personality of God appear in
its unclouded splendor and break as a new sunrise
upon the world.
We see no possibility of missing the doctrine the
moment we listen to Jesus as his own interpreter.
When the Jews charge him with making himself




7HE LOGOS DOCTRINE.           489
God, he meets their accusation by saying, "Believe
the works, that ye may know and believe that the
Father is in me and I in him;" and to one of his
own disciples, as if guarding him from a like misconception of making the Christ a God exterior to
another or a higher one, he says, " He that hath seen
me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that
I AM IN THE FATHER, AND TH] FATHER IN ME? The
words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself,
but the Father that DWELLETH IN ME he doeth the
works." The preexistent sub-deity of Arianism, we
do not find here. The coeternal second person in
the Tritheism of the modern church, we find not here
nor anywhere.   Personal preexistence, claimed by
Jesus, construed as of another person exterior to the
Father, is a doctrine rigidly excluded by his own
explanations of his own language. But the churchdoctrine, ancient and modern, of "the hypostatic
union," an interior UNION AND INEXISTENCE OF
NATURES, we do find such as justifies language on the
lips of Jesus, which on any other lips, angelic or human, would be insufferable, and would be blasphemy
indeed. And so, in his full Messianic consciousness,
the Divine Word so possessed his being, that he
could identify himself with it and say, " I came down
from heaven, — I am the Word."  Or again, the Absolute Truth was inorbed within him so complete,
the truth that was to feed the world forever, that he
could speak as the absolute Truth itself, and say, " I




490          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
am the bread that came down from heaven."  Tripersonality, we do not find. But the three central
doctrines of Christianity, -the uncomprised Oneness
of God, the essential divinity of his Christ consubstantial with Him, and the complete humanity of
Jesus, making all humanity sacred,-we do find in
their full consistency and harmony.1
The Eternal Word, which was in the beginning
and in which God ever is, was so embodied and impersonated in the Christ that in his full Messianic consciousness he calls it himself. As such he came
forth from the Father, and returned to the Father;
as such he comes down from heaven, ascends to
heaven, and is the Son of Man in heaven; as such he
created the world, and judges the world; as such he
raises the dead; as such he was before Abraham,
and as such he promises, " Lo! I am with you
always." This we understand to be the doctrine
of the Logos which, carried through the Johannean
writings, and the whole New Testament as well,
makes a continuous line of light.
There are two objections to the Logos-doctrine.
One is metaphysical, the other practical. The first is
the argzonenutzl ab zigoranztia. We cannot understand how there could be two natures in Christ, the
divine within the human. What is human is finite;
what is divine is infinite, and they cannot be conjoined
in one person. It is a self contradiction. The answer is, it may be a mystery; it is so more or less,
1 See the Appendix C.




THE LOGOS DOCTRINE.          491
but it is no self-contradiction. And it is just the
same mystery, which we find in ourselves and in all
nature, - the union of the infinite with the finite,
in such wise, that the latter is not abolished and lost,
but ever remains. The objection sounds strange
enough on the lips of a philosophy which asserts
the essential divinity of all humanity; which has no
trouble about the deification of every child of Adam,
and sees no self-contradiction there. How God can
be in man, how man can be his absolute subject, a
fresh creation of omnipotence every hour, and yet be
a self-conscious responsible moral agent, is a mystery
which has not yet been resolved. How God can be
in nature, where the infinite is ever becoming finite,
is a mystery which has never yet been resolved.
The line where one passes over into the other eludes
our clumsy analysis.  Pantheism  denies the fact,
and resolves the finite in the infinite. Atheism denies the fact, and resolves the infinite in the finite.
Herein they rush into mysteries just as inscrutable,
and make the verdict of the human consciousness
a lie. In the humanity of Jesus Christ, a humanity
sinless and complete, there is also the union of the
infinite and the finite, but a union in such degree as brings God vastly nearer to ourselves than
in a human nature depraved and darkened by sin,
and vastly nearer than in dumb nature around us;
a union in which the finite is so turned into living
transparencies that herein the Word becomes the




492           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
perfect image and manifestation of the Godhead. In
the Johannean speech and imagery it is God not
only in first things but in last things; not only
in the centres of infinite being, but in the lowest
degree of the finite, even to the material clothings
of our human nature which were lighted up with
the transfigurations of his glory. God in nature,
is power, majesty, beneficence; God in our sinful
humanity is conscience with trembling apprehensions of the divine justice. God in Christ is Fatherhood, justice, mercy, love, tenderness, forgiveness,
sacrifice, the inmost heart of God lavished on the
creatures of his hand. It is a revelation which the
world waited for and needed to be prepared for. It
unitizes its history and lights up its annals to-day.
It meets science in its gropings upward at the
vanishing point of its discoveries, and transfigures
nature in a light which is above nature, turning it
into living types of the same spiritual realities which
revelation had brought into more open view.
But there is a more practical objection often urged
against the Logos-doctrine. It takes Christ out of
our human sympathies and loves. He ceases to
be our example, our brother whom we may follow
through like temptations and victories. Make him
like one of ourselves, a development of our,own
human nature, under like conditions of trial, suffering, and help from God, and how encouraging to follow in his steps! Make him divine, as no other hu



THE LOGOS DOCTRINE.           493
man being ever was or can be, and how vain must
all our efforts be to imitate his virtues and put on his
perfections and graces!
We should be very sorry to abate the admiration
of any one who has been smitten with the loveliness
of the character of Jesus, seen merely on his human
side. That it has vastly exalted the ideals of the
world, as to what constitutes the worth and glory of
a perfected manhood, and the direction toward which
we must strive for its attainment, is certainly true.
That class of the virtues which are hardest to practice, and which, in the world's estimate, were scarcely
reckoned as virtues at all, -forgiveness, meekness,
love of enemies, love of man as man, complete selfconsecration in the service of the race, -are manifest in Jesus Christ, not only as the loftiest ideals,
but as the most concrete realities, clothed in flesh
and blood like our own, and as such, flinging perpetual rebuke on all our selfish strifes, angers, and
enmities, and in some degree charming them into silence and peace.
But if Christ is our pattern, so is God in precisely the same sense, and as He is revealed in the
Christ himself: " Be ye perfect, as your Father in
heaven is perfect." " Be ye followers of God, as dear
children." Must God, too, be brought down within
our finite proportions, in order that we may follow
Him? Or shall we not gratefully acknowledge, rather,
that the ideals which shine down upon us from the




494          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Divine Perfections, are all the more worthy of our
aspiration and love because no dimness has come
over them from our corrupt earthly exhalations?
And how true it is, that these ideals never would
have been furnished us through sheer development,
and that they come down to us out of heaven, as
imaged in a humanity in which dwelt the fullness of
the Godhead bodily! And if eighteen hundred years
of culture and progress, with all the added appliances
of education and philosophy, still leave those ideals
burning far above us in their solitary splendor and
beauty, away in the depths of infinite space, Christ
as a mere example which I am to follow and overtake,
is no such vast encouragement after all. There it
shines,- a star in the heavens of royal brightness
and magnitude, but I cannot reach it.
If Jesus Christ, as he beams upon me from the
only biographies which we have of him, taken in the
whole range of his nature, and the whole height of
his excellency, is a model which I am expected to
imitate and translate into my daily life, then he is no
encouragement to me, but condemnation and blank
despair. How long must I attain before, standing up
to challenge the world, I can say, "Which of you
convinceth me of sin?" How long before I can tell
my hearers, " Ye are from beneath; I am from
above?" How long before I can announce to them,
"All that the Father hath is mine," or " No man knoweth God but me, and he to whom I shall reveal Him?"




THE LOGOS DOCRIzNE.           495
At what stage of my moral progress may I become
so at one with Almighty God, that I may consider
myself his purely embodied reason, and speak in my
own name, and from my-own self-consciousness as
from God himself, and bend his bow and launch his
thunders? "The hour is coming when all who are
in the graves shall hear my voice, and shall come
forth -they that have done good to a resurrection
of life, and they that have done evil, to a resurrection
of condemnation."  Or when from my super-angelic
acquirements may I announce —" I am the Alpha
and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first
and the last, and I hold the keys of hades and death?"
To make Jesus Christ my model throughout, would
not crown me with all human graces and excellences.
but would place me a fantastic figure on the heights
of heaven, gesticulating in its lightnings and outlined
for a moment on its thunderclouds, the next moment
to disappear in its consuming fires.
And if this majestic and beautiful life is not to be
taken as the biographers have made it, if they have
interjected imaginary facts and discourses, and I must
carve it and reconstruct it in order to make it sheerly
human, and bring it so near to my own condition as
to make it easy for me to copy, what becomes of its
value to me as an example? I can make it then just
what I please. I shall leave out what I think unattainable, very likely the excellences and graces after
which I ought to strive with prayers and self-denials,




496          THE FOURITH GOSPEL.
and the model of perfection which I shall construct
will not be an ideal let down to me complete out of
heaven, but one which I have made out of my own
preconceptions, and which, in some sort, will be a
pattern of my own contrivance. Jesus Christ as the
perfect example, subjected to such a process as this,
is not the humanity ever shining above us, but constructed after our own notions, and brought near to a
level with ourselves.
An example to imitate is not my primary and
sorest need. I can find plenty of good examples when
I want them, scattered along the ages, much nearer
to me and more easy of imitation than the example
of Jesus Christ. I can find enough of them which
are not altogether out of my reach, and I should
doubtless apply myself to copy them, if the main
business of life consisted in plagiarising the virtues of
dead men. Indeed I have altogether too many good
examples already for my peace of mind. They are
all about me, flinging a lustre across my path at
every step and rebuking my low attainment. They
are in my own community, in my own household;
examples of royal men and women, the beauty of
whose daily lives makes us ugly. Thank God for
these, but our deepest necessities are not in this direction. Models of behavior for one man, will not
serve for another; his environment, his duties, and
the sweep of his inward life being altogether different. We want God. Our deepest hunger and thirst




THEE LOGOS DOCTIvNE.         497
reach thitherward. We want Iim both within and
from above. Within He comes to all, but with a vast
difference as to distinctness and clearness, as the
shinings of his presence struggle through the chaos
of our evils and passions. We want Him from above
also, in the unclouded glory of his attributes, across
whose serene disk no spots from our own depravity
are passing to bewilder and darken our judgment.
We want Him from above to flood our consciousness
with light, uncolored by our own passions and false
conceptions, to make clear our inward beholdings,
and bring the subjective consciousness into correspondency with the eternal objective Reality. For
want of this, what deities have men conceived out of
their own lusts and fears, and then grovelled before
them - the reflex image of themselves! For want
of this how have men sought out of their own emptiness deities shadowy and unthinkable-the reflex
image of themselves! We want God revealed from
above, not less than from within, that his image
within, overlaid and darkened with corruption, both
hereditary and actual, may be cleared and made
bright. We want God from above, unobscured by
the guessings of any human theosophies, to melt the
ice out of us, to warm our frozen affections, and enlarge them to universal love. And with this the true
ideals of manhood will come also; come to every man
according to the sphere of duty he is to act in, with
inspirations and impulsions to follow them, and fill
32




498          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
that sphere with a fragrancy and light which are the
breathings and shinings of the Lord. Then the
ideals we are to follow will not be some good example
of sainthood, after the pattern of which we must be
stretched or trimmed; they will be given every hour
to our clarified reason; the pillar of flame that always
goes before us, the heavenly vision that always leads
us on.
The strictly human virtues of the man Jesus Christ
are not more valuable to us as examples of a fullorbed humanity, than as revelations of the Divine attributes. Nature reveals God only on the lower and
outer planes of existence. Man, sinful and unregenerate, is at best his distorted and broken image.
But a humanity perfected under his hand, and in
which He dwells in fullness, is the complete thought
of God as to what moral perfection truly is. Whether
God's justice, mercy, tenderness, forgiveness, compassion and love, are the same in kind with those
qualities as we find them in the characters of the
best men, or whether as Mr. Mansel says, they stand
like algebraic signs for unknown quantities when we
talk of the awful and infinite One, are questions
which are painfully oppressive, till the Deity shines
upon us in the face of Jesus Christ. Herein we
know that God is not only divine but human as well.
Because all the virtues of Jesus are human virtues,
we know that the attributes of God are human attributes, for the former are the unobstructed creation




THE LOGOS DOCTRINE.          499
of the latter and therefore their direct and resplendent image, and so the open revelation of a Divine
humanity. Thus the union between God and all his
human children as they become one in Christ is intimate and full; they are partakers each of the other's
nature; the Divine of the human, and the human of
the Divine, and the relation is all-sufficing and indescribably sweet and tender. " I am the Vine, ye are
the branches," unfolds all its beautiful significance.
We want God not alone in our darkened intuitions, but from the cloven heavens. Other religions
abound in both precept and example. There have
been good men, thank God, under all forms of faith
and codes of morals that have anticipated some of
the divine sayings of the Sermon on the Mount. The
best men of all nations and ages have seen in some
degree, at least in their most lucid hours, what they
ought to do and what they ought to be. Buddhism,
Parseeism, and Judaism, as the Essenes received it,
had their lofty ideals of moral perfection, and their
strivings after it.  God has never been without a
witness, for the Word has ever knocked at the door
of the human heart, and sought to enlighten every
man that cometh into the world. But in the Lord
Jesus Christ the heavens indeed are cloven, and not
only our ideals of perfection are exalted and purified,
but God is yielded to us with transforming power to
cleanse from evil, to energize, to create anew, to
bring the ideals which He gives more rapidly to their




500          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
realization, and to glorify himself in a human nature
redeemed and sanctified. Do you say that after
eighteen hundred years the work is not yet done, and
very imperfectly done in Christendom itself? But
what are eighteen centuries in the cycles of God, for
bringing such a world as this to such a pitch of
glory and of experimental knowledge of himself? It
was longer than that before the world discovered that
the nearest fixed star was any thing but a twinkling
point in the firmament. But Herschell says that
when he turned his glass in that direction, the star
changed to a sun and came on like the dawn of the
morning, and he had to turn away from the beautiful
sight. What wonder that God, revealed in Jesus
Christ, should not be seen at once and alike by all;
yea, that He only seems far off like a shimmering
star! What mercy is it that this is even so! and that
only so far forth as the heart is renewed and the vision clarified and enlarged thereby, He comes nearer
and nearer, till He warms and fertilizes our whole
being, and fills our whole life with the day-spring.




CHAPTER VII.
THE JOHANNEAN ATONEMENT.
T   HE Christian atonement may be contemplated
from two very different points of view. It is
a doctrine of philosophy, or it is a doctrine of the
Christian experience. The former we grasp with
the understanding only, as we attempt to fathom the
reasons and methods of the Divine government; the
latter we know, as its manifest results are achieved
and as they glow in the consciousness of the believer.
As a question of the understanding, it is a matter of
indefinite controversy, inasmuch as all the reasons of
the Divine government involve the knowledge of all
the laws both of the spiritual and the natural world.
As a question of consciousness it admits of no controversy, for the atonement of the Christian experience is the believer himself brought into harmony
with the Divine mind, purpose and will, through the
Mediator; and it involves a knowledge of the love of
Christ, and its exceeding and abounding peace.
This is the atonement as a doctrine of individual
faith. Stated at large and as the final achievement
of God in this world, the atonement is the union of




502          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
God, man, and nature; so that disharmony between
man and nature, and between both and God, shall
cease altogether, and God become all in all; or in
Johannean phrase, He shall be not only ev apKi, in beginnings, but o'o-Xraos, the consummation; glorified
in lowest forms of nature and humanity.
The Pauline writings treat this doctrine as one of
the understanding. But they do this almost exclusively, as regards Jews and Jewish converts, and to
silence objections which come from that quarter, and
which were temporary and local. When Paul leaves
them he rises to the heart of the doctrine. But John
did not write for Jews. Jerusalem had fallen, and
with it Judaism was passing away, and Christianity,
as the New Jerusalem, had come in its place. John
throughout gives the atonement purely as a doctrine
of the Christian consciousness, and as it came from
the lips of Jesus in those Sabbatic hours, when his
disciples were drawn nearest to him, and his heart
opened out to them its inmost treasures of truth and
love. How this doctrine of his religion was then
declared and explicated, becomes a question of supreme interest, for we shall be sure to have its essential contents as concerns the salvation of the Christian
believer.
In one of his latest discourses, which seems to
have been uttered in colloquial intercourse with the
disciples on their way from the last supper to Gethsemane, the oneness of the disciple with his Lord,




THE yOHANNEAN A TONEMENT.              503
and the means of it, are set forth by imagery of great
significance and beauty.
"I am the true Vine and my Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and
every branch that beareth fruit he cleanseth, that it may bear
more fruit. Ye are clean already by reason of the word which
I have spoken unto you. Abide in me and I will abide in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the
Vine, so neither can ye unless ye abide in me. I am the Vine,
ye are the branches. He that abideth in me and I in him, the
same beareth much fruit; for separated from me ye can do
nothing. If any one abide not in me, he is cast forth as a
branch, and is withered; and men gather it, and cast it into the
fire, and it is burned. If ye abide in me and my words abide
in you, ask whatever ye will and it shall be done for you.
Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit. So
shall ye be my disciples."
Neither man nor angel could avow himself an original fountain of life unto others, so as to tell them,
"Separated from me ye can do nothing;" or "ye are
cast forth as a branch cut from   its parent stem, to
wither and die."   Least of all, could any man say
this on the eve of his death, when the total and final
separation was to take place. Jesus plainly is speaking here as the Word; God revealing himself in all
his human attributes, so that the believer could lay
hold of Him by a clear-and living faith, and thereby
the Divine Life flow down through all his nature,
as the juices of the Vine flow down through the
branches, till the grapes hang in clusters on the




504          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
stems. This is the true oneness with Christ. Salvation in him is not by an imputed righteousness,
but by a righteousness imparted and inwrought;
manifested in the fruits of righteous living; in the
clustering charities of a life always replenished and
flavored from its Divine fountain. It will be seen
by this that the Johannean theology is the farthest
possible from any form of Antinomianism, and the
farthest possible from teaching a dreamy and lazy
devotion. True, it is profoundly contemplative; but
to the end of being more intensely practical, and producing fruit more abundantly, and of more heavenly
quality; and any member of the Christian organism
that is not thus receptive of the Christ, both in faith
and in practice, is a withered branch to be pruned
away, cast into the fire and burned.
How the believer is to abide in Christ and receive
life from him as the eternal fountain, we learn more
fully and further on in these last divine colloquies
with the disciples. The Holy Spirit as Teacher,
Comforter and Guide, is promised as the gift of
Christ, as coming through faith in him, and obedience to his word. The Holy Spirit is the forthgoing
sphere of the Divine light and love, finding the believer and infolding him in its celestial airs; hence
the Father and the Son - God through his revealing
Word -coming to him and making their abode with
him. It is the opening down of the Divine Nature
to transform the human, and take up the burden of




THE yOHANNEAN ATONEMENT.           505
its sins and sorrows, and bring man into fellowship
with God. But this could not be unless man was
first brought into true fellowship with man. It would
not have availed to reveal God unless states of reception had been wrought in men fitted to receive Him.
Oneness with the neighbor is a prime condition of
oneness with the heavenly Father. Man must stand
right towards his brother, or he never can stand right
towards his God, and be receptive of Him, and a partaker of his nature. Hence the new code of human
fellowship which Jesus labored to inaugurate and
exemplify in his'own life on the earth. Every man
is a part of every other man - this is the sum of the
new doctrine, and on this was founded the society of
believers called a church.  Until that were done,
there was no organic form for God's reception and
indwelling amongst men. Until that were done, men
individually were so many repellent forces, every
man's life antagonizing the life of God. But Jesus
left eleven disciples, recipients of his word, and the
first organized form of his kingdom of universal love.
What followed? The God who had been revealed,
had now a place to come in. As soon as man was
put right towards his fellows and towards his God,
the Divine love and blessing came and swept his soul
like a lyre. THE PROCESSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
followed in the logical sequence of events. God newly revealed as'divinely human, began to flood our
wasted nature with his life and power, and hence the




506             THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
new dispensation of the Spirit as the inheritance of
after ages.  Bear this in mind, and we shall have a
full explication of the atonement, or the doctrine of
man made at one with God in Christ as enunciated
in the following language: 
" And now I am coming to thee; and these things I speak in
the world, that they may have thy joy complete in themselves.
I have given them thy word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, as I am not of the world. I
ask not that thou take them out of the world, but that thou keep
them out of the evil. They are not of the world as I am not of
the world. Consecrate them in the service of thy truth; thy
word is truth. Since thou didst send me into the world, I also
sent them into the world. And in their behalf I consecrate
myself, that they also may be consecrated in the service of
truth. Yet not for these only do I pray, but also for those who
believe in me through their word; that they all may be one, as
thou Father art in me and I in thee, that they may be in us,
that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the
glory which thou hast given me I have given them, that they
may be one because we are one.1 I in them and thou in me,
that they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know
that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast
loved me. Father! as to those whom thou hast given me, I
desire that they also be with me where I am, that they may
behold my glory which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst
me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father!
1 KaOdWs has considerable range of meaning, and is used either in a
comparative or causal sense; and when in the latter means according
as, or because that. So it is used in this same chapter (verse 2), and in
the passage cited we understand Jesus to be setting forth his oneness with the Father as the ground, or procuring cause of oneness
with the disciples.




THE yOHANNE4AN A TONEMENT.         507
though the world knew thee not, I knew thee, and these knew
that thou didst send me. And I made known to them thy
name and will make it known; that the love wherewith thou
hast loved me may be in them and I in them." 1
Such is the Christian atonement, as set forth in the
divinest language that ever fell upon human ears. It
is God in Christ, and Christ in the disciple, so far
forth as he yields himself to Christ, and is brought
into union with him in obedient and childlike faith.
The Church in formulating the same doctrine, emphasizes the requirements of the Divine Law, which
Jesus came to cancel and satisfy, and hence dwells
primarily, and sometimes too grossly and exclusively
on his sufferings and death. Let us not ignore or
undervalue the great truth involved in this formulation, which even in its grosser apprehension has
brought to so many minds a sense of the divine forgiveness. It is all true that the sufferings and death
of Christ were necessary to satisfy the requirements
of the Divine Law. Who can follow on through
Gethsemane to Calvary, and believe that such a sacrifice is merely to pay the debt of our common mortality; that there was not demanded in fundamental
reasons of the Divine government, "the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world?"  It is not, going
beyond the letter or the spirit of Scripture to say
that the death of Christ was an irreversible condition
of human redemption and salvation. In this sense
his sufferings and death were vicarious.
1 John xvii. 13-26.




508           THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
But what do we mean by the laws of God, which
this great sacrifice was to satisfy?- Not any written
statutes or parchment regulations, except so far forth
as these are transcripts of the eternal principles of
being. The laws of God are the inherent conditions of the supreme order of the universe, as they
pervade all worlds and all ranks of existence. That
order is such arrangement and such subordination of
lower to higher, of special to general, of evil to good,
of the less good to the greater, of natural to spiritual,
as shall insure the highest and widest beneficence.
If any jot or tittle of these laws of the supreme order
were to fail, no one can tell the consequent ruin and
suffering, for the universe is conjoined part to part,
the whole to each, and each to all, by sympathies and
relations finer and more pervasive than any analysis
of ours can show.  These laws - not any police regulations of Moses - Jesus came not to destroy but
to fulfill. The sighs of the creation, and the deepest
undertones of nature, and if we may believe the
record, the urgencies of the angelic worlds themselves, forecast an epiphany of God in humanity at
the time it came, and they felt when they could not
articulate the exigencies of the hour. The benefits
of that coming, for aught we know, might extend to
other worlds as well as this. It might have been
necessary in order to subordinate hell, in order to
preserve the heavens and keep them clean, not less
than to redeem the earth, which is the substructure




THE yOHANNEAN A TONEMENT.        509
and support of the heavens themselves, that God
should be in Last things as well as First things, and
so become all in all. The Word become man in
Jesus Christ. His life on the earth, his death, resurrection, ascension, and coming again in the Paraclete,
with new regenerating power, were alike the fulfillment of these laws of the supreme order, through
which alone God could yield himself to his creation,
and redeem it and glorify himself in it, while the
essential principles of our manhood are still preserved. An angel might have descended and proclaimed the abstract truths of the Gospel from the
tops of the mountains, and then disappeared with
dissolving views into heaven; but who does not see
that the truths, like the lovely vision, would have
melted away. God must come into this world in such
wise as to take hold of it and save it, the elements of
human nature and the laws of action upon it being
such as we find them; and this could not be unless
He made himself a partaker of our nature, drawing
up into his consciousness by divine sympathies the
wants and sufferings of ours.
All this we get gleams of as this great subject of
the atonement unfolds its mysteries, and we learn it
in all its relations. Undoubtedly my intellect would
be gratified if I could see those relations all complete,
and know the Lamb as " slain from the foundation of
the world." Here, however, is not where this subject
touches me savingly and vitally. That is through




510          THE FOUR THT GOSPEL.
my relations to the Christ, received not as a mere
man but as God with us, so as to make me a branch
of the Vine into which the Divine Life perennially
flows. When I have this I have the daily fulfillment
of the promise, "Thou Father art in me and I in
thee, that they may be in us, that the world may
believe that thou didst send me." By this I may be
brought into such daily communion with God, and
fellowship of his Spirit, that it shows me what I am
and what I need; shows all my sins in contrast with
his own dazzling purity, helps me to acknowledge
and repudiate them, and lay their whole burden upon
Him as his care and no longer mine. Then comes
the assurance of forgiveness, and the peace of God
flows in like a river clear and tranquil. For it is one
of the paradoxes of the Christian experience that the
more fully our sins are revealed within us, the more
perfect and well assured is the peace that comes; and
when they loom blackest and most sharply defined
against the clear blue of the heavens beyond them,
we know that a power mightier than they is working
in us and taking up our burden for us, that they may
not trouble us any more.  What multitudes have
found not only rest but everlasting joy at the feet of
Jesus Christ, simply by giving themselves away to
him in an unbounded trust, who never tried to excogitate the methods of the atonement, or those eternal laws of being which it fulfills! In spiritual things,
as in natural, the law of demand and supply is sure in




THE 7OHANN4EAN A 7ONEMEN7        511
its operations and its last results. What we want
in Christ we always find in him. When we want
nothing we find nothing. When we want little we
find little. When we want much we find much. But
when we want everything, and get reduced to complete nakedness and beggary, we find in him God's
complete treasure-house, out of which come gold and
jewels and garments to clothe us, wavy in the richness and glory of the Lord.




CHAPTER VIII.
CONVERGING LINES.
MORE than fifty years of controversy have been
waged in New England between Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, as if they were two conflicting forms of Christianity. In this warfare Trinitarianism has been opposed as if it were both tritheism
and idolatry; and Unitarianism has been opposed as
if it were a denial of Jesus Christ and a rejection of
his authority. That these mutual charges and imputations are both true and false, could be proved
abundantly by citations from the writings on both
sides. Trinitarianism may be held and explicated as
the worship of three gods, or it may be held as the
purest theism. We believe it has been held as both.
Unitarianism may be held as conserving both the
unity of God and the divinity of Christ, or it may
merge both these doctrines in sheer pantheism, and
lose the historical Christ altogether. It has had all
this range, and has it to-day.
At the same time Christianity, as God's all-revealing Word and his final achievement in human
nature, has a unitizing power more manifest from
age to age. The Paraclete which it promised and




CONVERGING LINES.            513
which it ever brings, ought to melt down artificial
distinctions, and develop amid all this diversity an
increasing and controlling Catholicity. Christianity
was given to mankind in a state not much removed
from barbarism; and to say that clouds gathered
about it, drawn from human conceit and earthliness,
is only saying that it did not turn the earth by magic
into Paradise. At the same time we should expect
the obscuring clouds to grow lighter, and finally dissolve. And so they do. Two great facts are noteworthy. Jesus Christ, as given in the New Testament, and in the consciousness of the Church, ever
growing deeper and clearer, is the guide of the nationis to-day. The statistics show it.'The denominations which receive Christ, not as the self-development of human nature, eighteen hundred years ago,
but as the opening down of God to man, and of
heaven to earth, at this hour, are spreading and growing, and their ratio of increase is higher than that of
the population. Faith in Christ, as the great want of
man and the renewing power of a fallen world, waxes
but never wanes. This is one fact, we say, which the
statistics of the denominations carefuly collated clearly
reveal. And there is another, which may not be
within the reach of statistics, but concerning which
we presume the reader will have no shadow of
doubt. It is this: -the denominations are becoming more fully possessed with the mind and spirit of
Christ. If you doubt it compare the present century
33




514.         THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
with the last, or compare the modern with the mediaval ages as pertains to the golden fruits of a true
faith, righteousness, charity, brotherhood, and universal love. The beatitudes of the Sermon on the
Mount, the humanities of the sermon on Mount Olivet, and the love that breathes through the Johannean discourses, never beat with more tender pulses
than now, to move and inspire all the ecclesiasticisms of the Christian world. Worthier and lovelier views of the divine character and attributes; zeal
for Christ purged of all bitterness from the gall of
the unregenerate heart; tolerance of error in opinion;
intolerance of wrong to any child of God, or of cruelty to any creature He has made; better theories of
human nature and destiny; and better feelings of
human fellowship that make every man, not only the
image of God but the image of every other man,these mark the advent of Christ, as John foresaw it,
- Christianity displacing at length the old Judaism
and heathenism, as the New Jerusalem coming down
from God out of heaven. The unbelievers who assail
Christianity now must go back into the centuries,
where they find it as corrupted and overlaid by the
Judaism or Paganism, through which it was melting its way, not as it breaks through them from the
face of the Christ himself True, it is not yet entirely cleared of them, for they are " the old man with
his lusts" that lurks in all our hearts, but the missions, the charities, the self-sacrifice, the faith in God,




CONVERGING LINES.            515
the hope of man, and the deeper tenderness that
beats through them all, are the inspiration of the
Christ always coming in his kingdom. If you doubt
this, strike out that name and the faiths organically
connected with it; faiths which make man an immortal being, to be cared for as such, and not an animal,
to be fed and dressed for this world only; faiths which
give the Paraclete as the inspiration of our work-day
songs and our visions of heaven at the dying hour,
-strike these out and leave every man to his own
guessings and intuitions, and how speedily would our
beneficent Christian enterprises collapse and die!
The living Christ, we say, leads and inspires the
thought of all our advancement to-day. Any reform
that meets with tolerable success, succeeds, because
the Christ is in it, showing the worth of man as an
immortal being, the child of a universal Father and
the member of a universal brotherhood, his fellowship being not of earth and time only, but of the
glorified in heaven as well, whose sympathies draw
us mightily upward, and whose "Come up hither!"
ever falls down to cheer us. There is not a denomination of Christendom, whose literature we are acquainted with, which does not show that the Spirit is
coming within them with greater fullness and tenderness, making their theologies fluid in the love of
Christ, as they reflect from his face in softer light
the'Beatitudes which he spake and lived.
All this being so, another consequence inevitably




5I6          7HE FOURTH GOSPEL.
follows. We cannot move towards the Christ without coming closer to each other. Leave out him and
his unitizing Word, and let every man strike out for
himself, and we tend to a crumbling individualism, to
endless distraction and confusion.  But those who
acknowledge Jesus Christ as the supreme authority
and guide, and enter more into his all-revealing mind,
are making progress towards the harmonizing truths
which he represents. However wide apart they may
be at the start, their progress is ever on converging
lines. Essential truth becomes more and more central
and manifest, the non-essential falls away to its subordinate place, and orthodox and unorthodox move
alike towards a higher and higher unity. It is not
that any one sect is making a conquest of the others,
but Jesus Christ is making a conquest of us all.
Some time ago Professor Stuart declared in the
name of Trinitarian orthodoxy, that it did not teach
three persons in the Godhead, in the sense in which
Unitarians interpret that phraseology; that Trinitarians did not use the word person in its modern
acceptation, but to indicate a distinction in the
Divine Nature, which they did not pretend to understand, and that the word " person " was only employed
on account of the poverty of language. And because
of this liability to misconstruction, the word has been
dropped from many declarations of faith. Several
orthodox creeds are before us, some of them of large
representative churches, which read, " We believe in




CONVERGING LINES.           517
one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," leaving the
interpretation of these Bible words to the Christian
believer, as God shall reveal himself in the clarified
consciousness, so that the divine threeness shall not
conflict with the divine unity.
That the worship of Christ may be and often is
idolatrous worship; that it is the exaltation of the
creature to the place of the Creator, of a finite suffering man to the place of God, we are by no means
disposed to deny. We suppose it inevitable that
many minds cling to the mere finite without rising
clearly out of it. But we have no right to bring this
as a sweeping charge against the orthodox denominations, as many persons do. Those who make these
charges ignore the distinction which orthodoxy has
always made in its doctrine of "the hypostatic union,"
the more interior union in Christ of the infinite and
the finite.  Christ as an object of prayer and of
divine honors, stands for nothing finite and mortal to
the mind of any intelligent worshipper, but rather for
the Divine Logos, of which the finite suffering humanity was but symbol and scaffolding. To bring
down the Christ within our human dimensions, and
then project our shriveled conception into the creeds
of our neighbors, and charge them with worshipping
the Christ as we have constructed him, is not the
device of truthful and honorable controversy. As the
Mediator through whom alone the soul has been
drawn up into the embrace of the divine love, what




5 18          THE FOURT 7 GOSPEL.
multitudes there are, both Trinitarian and Unitarian,
who would say with tearful thanksgivings, "All I
know of God is bound up in that name."
There is no ground for the charge of idolatry
against those who worship God under the name of
Christ, from that fact alone, any more than there is
against the Naturalist, who sees God through the
symbols of nature. The Naturalist, if a theist, sees in
Nature God revealing himself, and he stands amid
her blaze of magnificence, and adores. Am I to turn
upon him, and charge him with Fetishism, with worshipping stones, and trees, and mountains, and not
rather enter into his thought, in which stones, trees,
and mountains, and the whole range of finite objects,
are seen as the exponents of forces that lie within
them and behind them, and these again resolved into
the ground-force of all which is the adorable and
eternal One. No catalogue of finite objects, however
classified, exhausts your conception of Nature. It
implies some power that lies within and behind them.
If you ascribe to this power self-consciousness and
personality, you are a theist and worship this power
as God. But I should grossly belie your thought if
I charged you with making deities of finite objects,
whether stones and trees, or suns and stars, or
men and women. Just as grossly do you misrepresent the Christian theist, when you charge him with
worshipping a creature when he worships God in
Christ. He forewarns you that while he sees Jesus




CONVERGING LINES.           519
the perfected man, finite, suffering, dying, he sees
also the Eternal Word, that same Power which you
see in nature. He sees it as he believes no longer
dimly, but clothed in all the attributes of Divine
Fatherhood, and of our own humanity in infinite degree; coming into the world through a more perfect
and open way than that of nature, in order to take
man's spiritual burdens upon himself, purify his child,
and raise him up to the Divine communion. This is
what he worships in Christ. He no more worships
a finite and suffering man when he worships God in
Christ, than you worship stones, trees, and mountains when you worship God in nature. But in a
man though finite and suffering, yet unstained by sin,
in a humanity not partial and one-sided but in complete and majestic proportions, and in which the Eternal Word is become man, he thinks he has access
to the Godhead in his warm glories, and his forgiving and cleansing love, such as you can never have
through material nature, nor yet in a humanity foul
with the stains of moral corruption.
Between Unitarianism as Channing held it, and
Trinitarianism, as Stuart held it, plainly the controversy ought to cease, as regards this single doctrine
of the Divine Unity. In other respects, in details of
doctrine, doubtless, the two systems greatly differ;
but both tend to a sublimer unity in the Christ where
artificial distinctions have fallen down. Channing's
prime objection to creeds was that they come between




520          TIlE FOURTH GOSPEL.
the disciple and his Lord, and so are a hindrance to
progress. He believed that Christianity as yet had
been but half apprehended; that orthodox and heterodox alike were in the beggarly elements, and
that their true progress lay not away from Christ, but
towards Him. He seems to have worshipped God
in Christ, at least, in his latest meditations, as much
as any orthodox monotheist could consistently do, for
in his last public utterance, which has been called the
Swan-song of a Son of Light, he shows clearly that
he had faith in what orthodoxy calls the "hypostatic
union," though he believed it a doctrine too vast
and mysterious to be packed into our human formulas.
"All the doctrines of Christianity," he says, "are
more and more seen to be bonds of close,, spiritual,
reverential union between man and man; and this is
the most cheering view of our time. Christianity is
a revelation of the infinite, universal, paternal love of
God towards his human family, comprehending the
most sinful, descending to the most fallen, and its
aim is to breathe the same love into its disciples. It
shows us Christ tasting death for every man, and it
summons us to take his cross, or to participate of his
sufferings in the same cause. Its doctrine of immortality gives infinite worth to every human being,
for every one is destined to this endless life. The
doctrine of the' Word made flesh' shows us God
uniting Himself most intimately with our nature,




CONVERGING LINES.             521
manifesting himself in a human formn, for the very
end of making us partakers of his own perfection." 1
When the denominations have done with the human creeds, and trust alike to the Word made flesh,
they will meet together not by any compromise of
opinions but in due course of Christian progress;
not on any field of past controversy, but on those
higher planes of thought where the beams of truth,
once refracted and separated, are gathered and reunited into one ray of white light which reflects the
sun in his original brightness. Theologians are evanescent and soon pass away. But the Word of God
remains. A church founded upon it, such as Channing dreamed of and prayed for, fettered by no human interpretations but gathered only around him, in
whom, to quote Channing's words, "the fullness of
Divinity dwells," has all the future for its inheritance
with none of the effete dogmas of the past; it may
grow forever into the more perfect form and body of
Christ till he lives in all its functions; its differences
will be only as surface waves, while its unity of spirit
will be as the deep, still currents beneath.
Experience thus far has shown that all attempts
at progress by leaving out the Christ, have resulted
1 This is from Dr. Channing's address at Lenox, his last public
utterance. But it must not be inferred from this emphatic language,
that he had adopted any received theory of the nature of Christ. We
gather elsewhere from his writings that he considered himself a
learner to the last.




522          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
in retrogression, not in a new unfolding of the wealth
of the Gospel; that all movement out of the circle
and beyond the influence of the personalities of the
Bible, is not into the light that burns warmer and
clearer. No foothold, that we can see, has ever been
found, but one exceedingly slippery, between the naturalism that makes Christ a normal development of
our nature, and the supernaturalism that asserts his
essential Divinity. If we deny the latter, the whole
New Testament must be reconstructed and vast
portions of it expunged, and the Tiibingen critics are
right. Their method is the true one, and it depends
on individual taste and idiosyncrasy, how much shall
be expunged and how much shall be left, and whether
anything. Not only so, but Christian history for
eighteen hundred years has been developed from
shadows, and the glorified company of saints have
fed on husks that had no corn within them.
But why not teach the great truths of universal
religion, God and the Holy Spirit and immortality
and the duties of love to God and love to man without any other authority than the truths themselves?
Because these words, - GOD, the HOLY SPIRIT, and
IMMORTALITY, - within the circle of Christian ideas
and personalities are fraught with a meaning which
they can never lose, but which grows more full and
sufficing with all Christian progress; whereas outside
that circle the meaning leaks out of them all the while,
till they hang empty and float in air. No one who




CONVERGING LINES.            523
receives the Christ of the New Testament history,
can lose faith in the personal fatherhood of God,
in his universal providence, in the Holy Spirit as an
effusive energy coming from above man to find him
and renew him, in the existence of an angel-world,
and in man as created for its abodes. Not only so,
but these truths grow upon him and become the ever
brightening scenery of his mind. On the other hand,
outside the circle of Christian ideas and personalities, they freeze into abstractions, or fade off altogether, till God sinks into an impersonal force, and
the spirit-world is swamped in the natural. If the
idea of God, as held by such men as Herbert Spencer, and by men of equal ability nearer home, gets
the essential qualities of a Divine Fatherhood strained
out of it, leaving only an unknowable force for the
evolution of phenomena, what reason have we to
suppose that churches, founded not on Jesus Christ
but on individual intuitions, may not exist with all the
forms and titles of Christian theism, while all Christian thought is leaking out of its words and rituals?
There are "liberal Christians " among all sects;
those, that is, who believe that Christianity is not yet
learned out, that it is to have an auspicious future,
since the hard features of the old creeds are softening
and the old lines of division grow indistinct. These
changes, as we read the signs, come not mainly from
our controversies, nor from any visible appliances
whatsoever.  They come from the profounder cur



524          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
rents of the Spirit within, which is bearing all of us,
Trinitarians and Unitarians alike, towards higher
realms of truth, and towards a more comprehending
unity. This current sets not away from Jesus Christ
and his Word, but toward larger views of both. The
yearnings of this age, as we interpret them and as
uttered out of the deepest wants of human nature,
reach in this direction.
In America, the great denominations that move
on with renewed vigor to the work of Christian civilization and education, do not make their theologies
less Christian but more so, and the Christ in them
gives to them both their aggressive power and their
inspiring song. The antichristian Rationalism has
not shown itself the advanced thought of the times,
but the very smallest among the reflex eddies under
the lee shore, while the vast current of the world's
progress is sweeping grandly by.  We can be set
back on one of these side-eddies if we will, and
then the other Christian bodies, advancing with the
ideas which we shall have abandoned, will do the
work which we ought to have done, - or as we pray
and believe will be the case, we can be true to our
historic urgencies and pledges, and then it is plain to
see there is a point not far off in the distance, where
we shall see the triumph of the divinest of all Unitarianism: " I in them and thou in me that they may be
made perfect in one, and that the world may believe
that thou hast sent me."




CHAPTER IX.
THE THRONES IN HEAVEN. - CONCLUSION.
SAW thrones," says the seer of the Apocalypse
when describing the ritual of heaven.  They
appear in gradation rank above rank; and three grades
are distinguished. There is the throne of the Supreme, who sits thereon encircled with rainbows, and
the worshippers rest not day and night, saying, Holy,
holy, holy Lord God Almighty, which was and is and
is to come." There is the throne of the Lamb, who
receives homage almost as great, who draws around
him the alleluiahs of every creature which is in heaven
and on the earth and in the under world and in the
sea, whose name is coupled with that of God in receiving adoration; who sitteth down on the throne
of God, or who is "in the midst of the throne; " so
that the same throne is called "the throne of God
and the Lamb." The same divine predicates are applied to him as to the Almighty, " Alpha and Omega,
the Beginning and Ultimation, the First and the
Last," and he feeds the saints from the midst of the
throne, and judges the sinners who hide under rocks
from  "the wrath of the Lamb." There is a third
and lower rank of thrones: those of the twenty-four




526          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
elders, thrones of judgment for the redeemed who
are to reign with Christ; and the promise is given
that as Christ sits down with the Father on God's
throne, so the saints shall sit down with Christ on
his throne.
The reader knows very well what the literalists
make of all this. It is the worship of a created being,
so great and so exalted, that he sits on the throne
of the Almighty, and receives a worship such as no
enlightened pagan ever gave to inferior divinities.
But it is not supreme worship, they say, but analogous to the homage paid to sovereigns and magistrates, only more magnificent, as to one more worthy; for does he not promise the same in kind to his
saints who are to sit with him on thrones of judgment?
And what is the judgment-seat of Christ to which
his saints are invited? Turn to Matthew, twentyfifth chapter, and we shall see. The Son of Man
comes in glory to summon all peoples to his bar,
sits on the throne of his glory, and separates the
saints from the sinners, -those to eternal life and
these to eternal punishment.  A singular judicial
process, if the saints themselves are on the throne of
judgment and not at the judgment bar!
This imagery of the Apocalypse only puts into
concrete and objective form the figurative language
of Christ in the Gospels. When events were moving
on to their crisis, Peter came to Jesus with the question, "Behold, we have forsaken all and followed




THE TItHRONES IN IHEA VEIV. - CONCLUSION. 527
thee, what shall we have therefore? " Jesus assures his
Apostles in reply: " When the Son of Man shall sit in
the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve
thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." The ambition of two of them took fire at the prospect. They
wanted the hiZgizest thrones, one on the right and one
on the left of Christ; and soon after this they came
with their mother secretly and applied for such promotion. What was the answer of Jesus?  One of
the most solemn rebukes of human ambition which it
ever received, and one of the most touching lessons
of humility and self-sacrifice: "Whoever will be
chief among you let him be your servant. Even as
the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto but
to minister." Has Jesus left these lessons behind, and
gone into the heavens, thence to address a more potent stimulus to our mean selfishness or our pompous vanities, than the empty grandeurs of earth
could ever give?
When we undertake to interpret a symbolical book,
we should not mix up symbol and letter into a jumble.
We have seen into what a slough of insane nonsense
the Apocalypse may thus be turned. But keep constantly to its symbolic meaning, and though we may
not be drawn up to its sublime heights of vision,
we shall have the same serene and blissful openings,
that are given us in the fourth Gospel.
Persons in the Apocalypse, and the imagery amid
which they appear, very often symbolize truths in a




528          TIHE FOU'RTH GOSPEL.
connected series; even Christianity, as a system of
truth, in its power of judging, regenerating, and
saving mankind. What are the apostolic thrones?
Seats raised aloft with the fishermen of Galilee robed
royally and sitting thereon, as the judges of their
fellow men, they to whom the injunction first
came, - Judge not that ye be not judged?  Not
at all; but the apostolic truths which they represented, applied in their royal power to subdue and
save, and beneath which those twelve men have
learned by this time to bring themselves in lowly
self-surrender. And what is the worship of " God
and the Lamb?" Is it the worship of a created, dependent being, receiving the alleluiahs of the universe while seated on the throne of God? Is this the
worship received by a man who came to teach humility, and whose last office on earth was washing his
disciples' feet? Is it the kind of worship we render
to sovereigns, magistrates, and prophets? How John
himself was taught to regard such worship, rendered
not alone to magistrates and prophets, but to an angel
of heaven of large commission, he has told us, for
when he fell down to worship at the feet of the angel,
though not rendering supreme worship, - for there is
no intimation that he mistook the angel for the Almighty, - he was promptly rebuked, " See thou do it
not, for I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren
the prophets, - Worship God."
I can worship neither sovereign nor prophet, nor
archangel nor any created being whatever, placed on




THE THRONES IN HEA VEN. - CONCLUSION. 529
the throne of God and " in the midst of the throne,"
and my conviction is still the same, that if Christianity demands this of me it is as gross a system of
idolatry as can be found among the religions of the
earth. The Greeks who worshipped Apollo under
Zeus did not place their sub-deity so high as this;
did not make him the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, the First and the Last. No; I
believe all this worship is rendered to the Logos of
God who appeared as the Son of Man; to God speaking, or humanized to our finite conceptions and our
deepest spiritual needs.  It is the Word which was
in the beginning with God, which is God in self-revelation, which is ever on the throne of judgment, and
which by his unerring truth will judge the world at
the last day; and who moreover ever brings forth to
us the wealth of the Divine Nature, and its deepest
and tenderest love. Does any enlightened person
need to have it proved to him, that "the Lamb as it
had been slain," appearing in the midst of the throne
of God, and thence feeding those who hunger, and
leading those who thirst by living waters, is neither a
lamb literally, nor a man who had been put to death;
but the Divine Logos rather, revealing the Eternal
Father as Sacrifice, Mercy, and Love; love so tender
that like our human love it can be wounded, can bleed
for us, can give itself away for our redemption, yea,
can be crucified or killed out from the impenitent soul;
love of which the sacrifice on Calvary is only an out34




530          THIE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ward sign, but the best, the truest, and the tenderest
which our earthly annals can afford?  We talk of
the Fatherhood of God, and make it a cold and sounding generality, while God is far off in the unknown;
and we might add mother and nurse or any other words
of endearment from our human relations, without coming anywhere near to that experience of the divine
love which the disciple finds in Christ as the Lamb
of God who taketh away the sin of the world; which
made Faber exclaim in excess of emotion," I thrill with painful joy, to find
God's fatherhood so nigh."
I can see no reason why those Unitarians who
receive the Gospel message in its integrity should
forego the power, the inspiration, the renewing grace
which the Logos doctrine has ever had among the
followers of Christ. As held by the early Church it
does not impinge in the least on the prime doctrine
of Unitarian theology,- the essential oneness of the
Divine Nature.1 It has commended Orthodoxy to
myriads of hearts and minds which draw this from
it as its central and vital power; and I doubt not
multitudes who are not called orthodox are in tacit
acknowledgment of the same truth, but who would
shrink from any fixed formulation of it, because human symbols are too poor for it. Between orthodox
and unorthodox alike, it would be a bond of vital
fellowship, giving them beneath all other forms and
1 See the Appendix D.




THE THR ONTES IN HEA VEN. - CONCL USION. 53I
theologies, however diverse, a common experience of a
Saviour's deepest and tenderest love. It would, as we
believe, invest every communion table with the almost
visible presence of a Divine Redeemer and with the
very fragrancy of heaven, for its worship would blend
joyously with the worship around " the throne of God
and the Lamb," and the church on earth and the
church above would join in the music of one coronation song, - "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to
receive power and riches, and wisdom and strength,
and honor and glory and blessing." For only when
we can see " the Lamb in the midst of the throne,"
have we come into the heart of the Divine Mercy,
where the throne is no longer invested with the thunderings and lightnings of Sinai, but clothed in rainbows in token that the storms are over.
THE DIVINE INCARNATION in the Lord Jesus Christ,
we conclude to be the distinguishing doctrine of
the Johannean theology. The other New Testament
writers forecast it or reach towards it, and sometimes
grasp it, but it beams forth in John as the sun of the
whole Christian system, showing all its other truths in
organic relations with it. Shall we not say too that
all the other great religions prophesy towards it and
find in it their fulfillment?  Could Judaism have
found its consummation in anything short of such a
Divine Epiphany, revealing God not only as the Beginning but the End and Ultimation? What but this




532          THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
was to bridge the awful chasm between the world
and Jehovah: He dwelling apart in his lonely solitudes, imposing law on his subjects and enforcing it
with his thunders? Could a mere prophet, coming
only in the line of the old ones, and saying their message over again, have given any culmination to the
Jewish history?  What would he have been but an
earlier Mahomet with his endless iteration of " God
is God," but with this other truth, GOD IS HUMAN, still
withheld, instead of being given to the heart to soften
its savagery and melt it down in the Divine Love?
What but this truth was Judaism, as we find it represented in Philo reaching after and trying to clasp
with its finest tendrils where Philo makes out two
Jehovahs, and is feeling after the Logos as the Son
of God and the angel of his nearer presence?
The two other great religions of the world, the
religions of the Orient, have spent their force and
have no future. Brahmanism is all centre. God is
everything, and man and nature nothing, and belong
to the world of illusion. God is the Alpha but never
the Omega. Buddhism is all circumference. It affirms nature and humanity, but God is lost from both.
Its Nirvana, though it promises eternal rest as the
reward of self-renunciation, still leaves a vast lacuna
as pertains to a spiritual world. Its morality, so near
that of Christianity as to anticipate its entire moral
code abuts upon nothing to give it support and inspiration; and as pertains to the truths that inlay the




THE THRONE'S IN HEA VEN. - CONCL USION. 533
Christian revelation, it is only the deep-drawn pensive
sigh of human nature, towards the Word made flesh;
toward the Christ emerging out of the painful void,
and lighting up both the spiritual world and the natural
with the glories of the Godhead. Buddha only saw
nature as a burden upon the spirit, to be denied and
repudiated; he never saw nature and spirit in harmony, one to be glorified by the other; the natural, the
clothing of the spiritual, and God pervading them
both and making them sweet and sacred, by his transfigurations. Hence Buddhism was only a prophecy
and preparation for that coming which should give
it centre as well as circumference, and fill its painful
chasm with divine reality. Its morality, sweet and
pure as it is, has nothing behind it, and so lacks
any impletion from the Divine Energy; and though
numbering nearly one third of the human race among
its votaries, it has never organized any form of society
which is really progressive. As applied to the wounds
and sufferings of human nature, it is not a healer
but a narcotic, to drown for the time being the consciousness of pain. "In the plan of the world's
order," says Bunsen, "it seems even now producing
the effect of a mild dose of opium on the raving or
despairing tribes of weary-hearted Asia. The sleep
lasts long, but it is a gentle one, and who knows how
near may be the dawn of the resurrection morning?"
And if the Divine Incarnation, which reveals God
not only as the Beginning but the Ultimation, is a




534             THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
truth towards which all the old religions prophesy out
of the deepest wants of human nature, so again the
modern religions which lead the world's progress, date
from it and draw from it their impletion of life and energy. It is the focal centre of the world's history and
unitizes the whole. Yea more; Origen is not only
grandly comprehensive but strictly Johannean, when
he makes Christ as the Logos the mediating and atoning power of the whole universe, angelic as well as human. Everything beyond the sphere of the Divine
Existence is separated from God, and impure in his
sight, and so Christ, the Eternal Word, is ever mediating to bring the universe into harmony with Him and
fill it with Himself. This atoning work, says Origen,
goes on in the heavens and upon the earth, and the
cross is only its outermost earthly sign.1  The Word
becoming flesh puts him as never before in fellowship
and correspondency with all mankind, and his atoning
work in this world was not accomplished by a sacrifice
made once for all, but is ever widening and will keep
on till it fills the whole orb of humanity. In more
inspired language than Origen's, John describes the
one event in the world's history, which was to fulfill
1 Kal yap ro07rov, virep avOpowrlvwv oeAv avrrbv (apdIrLv a&apTrrl/daTTr
yeyevoOat'Oava'cov, OVKC ETL rE Vrep &AAov TIrvbs Trapa TrbV &vOpwwrov ev
a/LapT'IfLuac ye yevVyAevvoOV, otov vi7rp &aYTpwz, oV8  i Trv &o0rpwv -ravTcs
KaOapv Ovrwv ev7rtiov roO Oeov, I&s ev rT'I',3 a&ve'yvWW/ev (25, 5,) ELJ L/
&pa v7rep3ohAK1ws Tro/TO elp7TLat. - Corn. iv Yoh.
The passage is quoted by Baur, Versoiinung, p. 65; and absurdly
criticized, pp. 66, 67.




THE THRONES. IN HEA YEN. - CONC'LUSION  535
its prophet yearnings and assuage and finally banish
its woes: " Behold the tabernacle of God is with men,
and He will dwell with them, and they shall be his
people, and God himself shall be with them, and be
their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither
sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more
pain; for the former things are passed away."








APPENDIX.
A.
THE EASTER CONTROVERSY.
IT becomes necessary here to notice an alleged discrepancy between the fourth Gospel and the synoptics, touching the time of the last supper and the crucifixion of Christ. The synoptics such is the objection
-make the last supper fall on the' I4th of the Jewish
month Nisan, or on Thursday evening of Passover week,
and the crucifixion on the i5th, or Friday; whereas the
fourth Gospel makes no mention of the pascal supper at
all, but describes an ordinary meal 6n the evening of the
I3th, and makes the crucifixion fall on the I4th, the day
following. That is to say, the fourth Gospel describes a
supper on the evening of what we call Wednesday, which,
therefore, was not the Passover, and places the crucifixion
on Thursday, in entire inconsistency with the first three
Gospels.
This supposed discrepancy would be of less consequence, even if it had turned out a real one, had not a
controversy in the second century brought it to bear fatally, as some think, against the genuineness of the fourth
Gospel. The controversy was this: The churches of




5 38                APPENDIX.
Asia Minor held an annual festival on the I4th Nisan,
established, as Baur holds, in commemoration of the last
supper, -the Passover meal of Jesus with his disciples.
At Rome, on the other hand, the festival was held on
Friday of paschal week, without any reference to the day
of the month on which it might fall, and the churches of
Asia Minor were blamed because they would not conform to the Roman custom. A warm controversy arose.
The churches of Asia Minor appealed in behalf of their
observance to apostolic tradition, and especially to the
authority of Yohn himself, then freshly preserved among
them. Therefore, - such is the argument, - they could
not have regarded the fourth Gospel as written by John,
since its authority is directly against them. The fourth
Gospel, say the critics, makes Jesus eat for the last time
with his disciples, "before the feast of the Passover"
(chap. xiii. i), and describes him crucified on the next
day, before the time of the Passover meal. It is palpable
evidence that, on the very scene of John's labors, and
near to his times, and among his own followers and
churches, our fourth Gospel was not known, or if known,
was not named as genuine.
We have stated the objection succinctly; but the reasonings which have grown out of it, the arguments and
the answers, would make a small library. It has employed the time of such writers as Baur, Neander, Bleek,
De Wette, Schneider, and Tholiick, in Germany; of the
best English theological writers; and Mackay, in a late
treatise assailing the genuineness of the works of the New
Testament, and the fourth Gospel in particular, fills page
after page with this controversy, and closes in a tone of




APPENDIX.                  539
exultation that here is an argument which, if all others fail,
puts the spuriousness of the fourth Gospel beyond debate.
This controversy makes it expedient that we give a few
pages to it; and there need be but few indeed.
The whole apparent discrepancy grows out of a confused rendering or reading of the introductory verses of
the thirteenth chapter of John. They are as follows in
our English version: —
"Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus
knew that his hour was come,-that he should depart
out of this world, -having loved his own, who were in
the world, he loved them unto the end. And, supper being ended, the devil having put it into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus knowing that
the Father had given all things into his hands, and that
he was come from God and went to God, he riseth from
supper and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and
girded himself" (xiii. I-4).
Though a tolerably literal rendering, the passage as it
stands, is obscure and ungrammatical. The important
question is, Does the clause, " before the feast of the Passover," refer to the supper described soon after? The
Tuibingen critics say it does. Therefore it must have been
a supper of a private nature, and not the Passover meal
which it preceded. Therefore, according to the fourth
Gospel, Jesus never ate the Passover at all, but only a
private meal beforehand, and being crucified the next day,
it must have been on Thursday, thus directly contradicting the synoptics, who make it fall on Friday.
Plainly this is a forced construction., The clause, " before the feast of the Passover," does not refer to the sup



540                 APPENDIX.
per mentioned in the second verse, but to what immediately follows, namely, "Jesus knew that his hour was
come."  He knew it beforehand. It is in accord with all
thathe said and reiterated while in Galilee, and all the
way thence to Jerusalem, that at the passover his hour of
departure was to come. The whole passage, clearly rendered, is this: -
" Now Jesus, before the feast of the Passover, knew
that his time to pass out of this world to the Father had
come, and having loved his own, who were in the world,
he loved them to the last. And when supper was proceeding, - the devil having put it into the heart of Judas
Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, - Jesus, knowing
that the Father had given all things into his hands, and
that he came from God and was returning to God, arose
from supper, and, putting off his mantle, took a cloth
and girded himself."
The objection that the fourth evangelist does not say
that this is the paschal supper, and go on to describe it
as such, is trivial in the extreme. He is writing with the
synoptics before him, on purpose to supplement them,
and if he used common sense he would not tell their
story over again. This very omission is highly significant. There is a tacit reference to what they had written, and needed not to be repeated. Still emphasizing
the fact that Jesus had forecast the time of his death,
and that the tender care which he had manifested for his
own followers continued to the last, the whole passage is
in beautiful harmony with all that precedes and follows.
It is hardly a paraphrase to render: "Jesus knew his
time was to come at the feast of the Passover, long before




APPENDIX.                  541
the time of that festival had arrived, and now that it had
arrived, his love of his own was not remitted on account
of his personal dangers, and so, the paschal supper being
in progress, he even left the table to wash their feet."
Still, if there is.any possible doubt as to the meaning
of this passage, it will vanish as we read on. The evangelist proceeds to report the discourses of Jesus with his
disciples in the four following chapters, which the synoptics had omitted entirely, but which John gives in full for
the plain reason that they are in that high spiritual strain
whose music touched his inmost thought, but which only
fell on the external ear and mind of the other disciples.
Then followed the scene in Gethsemane; and, on the
next morning, the trial and the crucifixion. Describing
the latter, the fourth evangelist says, " It was toward noon
on the Preparation of the Passover" (xix. I4). What
was "the Preparation "? It was the day before the Jewish Sabbath, or Friday. The word was just as much
appropriated to designate that day, as our word Saturday
is to designate the day before Sunday. The Passover
festival continued seven days, during which unleavened
bread and other sacrifices beside that of the paschal lamb
were eaten; and the word " Passover " was used to cover
the whole of that time; so that Mr. Norton very properly renders the above passage, " It was towards noon
on the Preparation-day of passover week."  Here, then,
it is distinctly announced by the fourth evangelist that
the crucifixion took place on Friday, in harmony with the
synoptics, using the exact term which they employ, who
call the Preparation "the day before the Sabbath."  See
Mark xv. 42, compared with Matt. xxvii. 62. See also




542                 APPENDIX.
Luke xxiii. 54, who says, speaking of the day of the crucifixion, "It was Preparation-day, anzd the Sabbath was
drawing on;" thus making plain beyond all doubt that
Preparation-day was Friday.
Still the Tiibingen critics will have it that " the Preparation," as used by the fourth evangelist, means the day
before the Passover, though without the faintest shadow
of evidence. Pass on a little further, then, and let the
fourth evangelist interpret himself. After Jesus had
bowed his head and expired, the writer proceeds to say,
the " Jews, as it was the Preparation-day, that the bodies
mnight not remain on the cross during the Sabbath, as that
Sabbath-day was a high day, requested Pilate that their
legs might be broken, and they be taken away" (chap.
xix. 31). The Sabbath-day of paschal week was a great
day, commemorated with special pomp and ceremony,
and would be profaned by the spectacle of dead bodies
near Jerusalem, which rendered any one who came in
sight of them legally unclean. Therefore the execution
is hurried through, and, because late on Friday afternoon
the two robbers were still alive, their bodies were broken
to hasten dissolution; and, though Jesus was apparently
dead, one of the soldiers pierced his side to make the
fact perfectly sure, that the bodies might be taken down
and put out of the way before the Sabbath drew on.
Thus the fourth evangelist not only says that Jesus was
put to death on Friday, but he is at pains to repeat his
statement with circumstantial details as to how the execution was hastened lest they should encroach on the sanctity of the Sabbath-day.
Nor is this all. He repeats his statement yet again in




APPENDIX.                  543
the closing verse of this same chapter, where he describes
the removal of the body to Joseph's tomb. " There, then,
they laid Jesus, it being the Preparation-day of the /yews."
If the fourth evangelist had foreseen this very controversy
he could not have been more decisive and emphatic in
his language, not only telling us once, but three times
over, that Jesus was put to death on Friday, in exact
agreement with the synoptics, furnishing minute details,
which they had omitted, which serve for more complete
and undoubted verification. That "the Preparation"
meant invariably Friday, any one can abundantly verify
from the parallel passages in the synoptics, and from
Josephus, and from other writers, patristic and classical.
See Norton's translation and commentary, ad. loc. The
only other passage which would require elucidation is
xviii. 28: "Then, early in the morning they carried Jesus from Caiaphas to the Praetorium. And they did not
themselves enter the Prmetorium, lest they should be defiled and prevented from eating the Passover." This
was at the trial on the morning of the day of crucifixion;
and, as the paschal lamb was always eaten the evening
previous, it is argued that John here again makes the
crucifixion fall on the day before the Passover. All this
is quickly answered when we remember that " eating the
Passover" meant not merely the paschal lamb of the
evening before, but also the sacrifices and unleavened
bread of the whole Passover week.
The reader may be surprised when we say that the objection, which these simple quotations banish clean out
of sight, has been relied upon as the most stubborn of all
against the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, but this is




544                 APPENDIX.
literally true. The very flood-gates of learning have been
opened in order to cover with darkness a subject which
in itself seems as clear as the light of noon-day.
B.
THE BIRTH OF CHRIST.
It is hardly necessary to say that the theory of evolution given in chapter iii., Part II., is not Darwinian.
It is Darwin's theory of "natural selection;' supplemented
as far as it consistently goes by St. George Mivart's theory
of "derivative creation." The latter, however, seems to me
to have made a very lame and imperfect use of the truth
which he handles. He supposes that nature or the Cosmos only as originally created was the immediate supernatural work of the Creator; that it had certain tendencies impressed upon it to be unfolded within it, such as
tendencies to develop new species at certain times and
eras. A clock-maker so constructs his time-piece that
at certain hours the hammer will strike from one up to
twelve successively without any foreign interference. So
God made and superintends his Cosmos, but does not
work immediately in it. But in due time a human body
was evolved out of this Cosmical machine, with lower
organizations for a basis; the original tendencies working upward till they produced a human form; or to keep
to our illustration, the clock kept striking more and more
till it struck the hour of noon. At this signal the Creator
interferes. The Cosmos, though by its inherent power




APPENDIX.                  545
it could evolve a human body, could not put an immortal
soul into it. Here the Creator comes in immediately and
supernaturally, breathes a soul into the body, and so man
appears on the earth. But why not acknowledge that
God is immanent and interworking in his Cosmos as well
as overlooking it; that He not only created it once but
creates it freshly every day and hour? That done there
are no difficulties in the theory of evolution, and Darwinism is supplemented by the only truth that can give it
philosophic wholeness and consistency. "Natural selection" accounts for change of species within a certain
range, but it breaks down when we apply it universally,
as St. George Mivart clearly shows. It cannot pass the
line between the animal, and the immortal being we call
man, neither can it evolve the animal from the plant, nor
the vegetable kingdom from the mineral without the acknowledgment of an immanent creative force acting intelligently, though acting through natural laws. Natural
paternity only produces its kind, and when a higher kingdom of nature is evolved from a lower one, we must believe in the immanence of a power higher than either, or
else break the continuity of rational thought.
The doctrine of the supernatural birth of Christ is
placed on ground independent of all these analogies.
They are only referred to for the purpose of showing the
impotence of objections from mere naturalism, since naturalism cannot account for the original birth of man without acknowledgment of an immediate higher paternity.
We receive the doctrine of the birth of Christ as given by
the evangelic narratives, not merely because they have
declared it, but because with the other facts of his life it
35




546                 APPENDIX.
makes a seamless, complete, and consistent whole. We
understand Christ himself to claim it. See Matt. xxii.
41-45.
C.
THE PREEXISTENCE.
Mr. Norton renders John viii. 28: "Before Abraham
was born I was he." Undoubtedly the words admit of
this rendering as an instance where the present tense is
used for the past. But the common usage requires that
cyW El/J should be rendered " I am," and by this rendering we think the significance of the passage is more completely given, though the difference would not affect in the
least any theological doctrine which the text might be
supposed to teach. If we supply the ellipsis by the pronoun "he" the question immediately returns, What is its
antecedent? Plainly, " the Son " or " the Son of Man,"
occurring in immediate connection, — terms which Jesus
used invariably in his colloquies with the Jews in the
fourth Gospel, and which almost as invariably raised
against him the charge of blasphemy. For the emphasis
is always on the article. It is the Son, or the only Son.
It is sonship in a sense that applies to him exclusively
that Jesus here affirms. Not less than nine times in this
same eighth chapter, and in this same conversation, Jesus
asserts this sonship, by calling God "my Father," or by
calling himself "the Son." In verse 28 he tells them,
"When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye




APPENDIX.                  547
know that I am," that is, that I am the Son of Man. In
verse 25 they ask him to supply the ellipsis himself, which
he does. He had told them, " If ye believe not that I am,
ye shall die in your sins."  " That you are who? " they
ask him. "The same that I said unto you from the beginning." What had he called himself from the beginning?
If the reader will turn back he will see. In the conversation with Nicodemus he calls himself the only begotten
Son of God " (iii. i6-18). In chapter fifth this sonship
is asserted not less than eight times, so that the Jews
seek to kill him because he made himself equal wjth God
('lrov aVrrov 7roLv rO  ~ OE)). As Son of God he had abrogated
the Sabbath, and annulled the law of Moses, thus arrogating to himself, they thought, the prerogatives of Jehovah.
The reader need not be told that this charge in its very
nature is of blasphemy, even were it not called so afterward, as it is twice over. It was punishable with death
by stoning under the Jewish law (see Lev. xxiv. i6).
This was at the second visit of Jesus to the Capitol after
entering on his mission, and it was the standing accusation against him to the close, invariably for calling himself the Son of God, or Son of Man. Through five successive scenes the charge comes up when they seek to
kill him. It came up at the fourth visit to Jerusalem
(see John x. 33).  It came up at the mock trial before
the High Priest, who shook his robe saying, "He hath
spoken blasphemy," because he had called himself " the
Son of Man " (Matt. xxvi. 64). It came up before Pilate,
where the Jews refer to their law requiring death "because he made himself the Son of God."
There can be no shadow of doubt, therefore, as to how




548                 APPENDIX.
the ellipsis should be supplied in John viii. 58, or how
John himself must have understood it who reports the
words. He opens his Gospel by calling the Word malde
flesh, which was "in the beginning," "the only begotten
of the Father," and " the only begotten Son of God." He
reports Jesus as saying the same of himself, twice in the
identical words of " only begotten Son," always in terms
that involve that meaning. He had been saying it all
through the preceding chapters, and nine times in this
same eighth chapter, which led on to the declaration in
verse 58, and he lay under the charge of blasphemy for saying it. It should read then " Before Abraham was born, I
am the Son of God," or " I am the only begotten of the
Father."  They took up stones, and we cannot mistake as
to what the accusation was. We come to the same result,
by rendering in the past tense " From before the birth of
Abraham I have been the only begotten of the Father,"
referring us directly to the Proem where "the Word"
who was "from the Beginning," is "the only begotten
Son."  I have kept, however, to the rendering in the present tense, because the Eternal Word from which Jesus
speaks, and which, as bread from heaven he calls himself,
is timeless, and it seems to me that this is intimated in
the text.
I can but notice here a common humanitarian argument, that the divinity of Christ is like that of other men
because it is "derived." If we keep to the royal image
of the Johannean writings, we shall see that this argument
has no force. The WORD which became incarnate in
Christ, which is God speaking, or, in the act of self-revelation, is called " Light," "the Light which coming into




APPENDIX.                  549
the world enlightens every man." So Christ as this Word
calls himself " the Light of the World."  In the Apocalypse his face is as " the Sun," and in heaven " the Lamb
is the Light thereof." The Word is all that by which
God is known or shines forth, whether in nature, in man,
or supremely in Christ. The Word on the bosom of the
Father, ever begotten from the depths of his love, is as
the photosphere on the sun's disc, ever born of the solar
fire, or if you will, forever derived or given from the solar
deeps, without which the sun would be an invisible mass
in the heavens, but by which he fills the universe with
life and light. It no less belongs to the sun and is part
of it from being " derived." The image gives us the conception of the Divine Being, as not a bare point or dead
unity, but a DIVINE ORGANISM which has eternal life and
interaction in itself, even as the human being, God's image, has interaction in himself, with one power in derivation from another. Keep clearly to the royal image itself,
and there is no confusion of thought in calling the Logos
both essentially divine, and only begotten; nor is there
any solecism in the language of the church, such as
" eternal Son," or, " very God of very God," for the words
do not mean that there are two Gods, but that God and
his Logos are consubstantial. To say that all power in
heaven and earth is " given " by one being to another, as
if one person could confer omnipotence on another person, is gross solecism of language. To say that God
could have an only Son, in any natural sense, " first born
of the whole creation," yet not appearing till four thousand years after the creation, is most absurd anachronism.
But all this disappears when we think of the Divine Be



550                 APPENDIX.
ing, neither as a bare point of unity, nor a stagnant deep,
but having eternal activities within himself, a LIVING God,
the motions of whose nature all this imagery serves to
shadow forth. For a mortal man, or for an archangel as
well, to announce that God is greater than he is, were
profane egoism. But for Jesus speaking as the Word to
say, "my Father is greater than I," is to say only that
God as absolute, is more than God revealed.
D.
PERSONALITY AND PERSONIFICATION.
In this treatise we have regarded the Logos as personified. If our work were not expository rather than philosophical or ontological, it would require a dissertation on
the distinction between personality and personification.
Though the Word in the New Testament is personified, it:
is none the less regarded as hypostatized. It is not an
abstract noun; not like human speech, something which
can be broken off from the speaker and become dead
letter. The divine substance is in it continuous and unbroken, though it is not a person exterior to God. It 
that in which the One Divine Person is always revealed.
Personality involves essentially the idea of Will or self
conscious volition. Assuming that there are three persons in the Godhead, or three self-conscious Wills, is precisely where Trinitarianism breaks up in Tritheism; though
as shown in the text there are forms of Trinitarianism which




APPENDIX.                  55 I
drop the word " persons " and avoid this danger. While
the New Testament formula of Father, Son, and Spirit,
declares three essentials of the Divine Being, we construe
it in harmony with the strictest and purest monotheism.
The Word and the Spirit may be separately personified,
and are in the New Testament; but the moment we think
of them as separate persons and not co-essentials of one
Person, we have lost the Divine Unity, and are in the
worship of three Gods. The debate of fifteen centuries
has shown no possible escape from this alternative.