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 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION
 
 THE GOSPEL OF 
 THE "REJECTION 
 
 A STUDY IN THE RELATION OF 
 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 TO THE THREE 
 
 BY WILFRID RICHMOND 
 
 CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLN'S INN
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN considering the question as to the author- 
 ship and authority of the Fourth Gospel, 
 the answer to a previous question is some- 
 times assumed. The previous question is 
 this : What is the relation to one another, 
 supposing both to be equally authoritative, 
 of the story told by the Fourth Gospel and 
 the story told by the Three ? Does the 
 combination of St John's story with the 
 story of the Three introduce difficulties, which 
 are absent if the story of the Three is left . 
 to stand by itself? Does the treatment of 
 the story of the Three as complete without 
 the story of St John introduce difficulties,
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 which are absent if the story of the Three 
 is combined with the story of St John ? In 
 reading Dr Drummond's " Character and 
 Authorship of the Fourth Gospel " it struck 
 the present writer that justice was not done 
 to the contribution of the Fourth Gospel to 
 the coherence and completeness of the story 
 of the Ministry of our Lord. The following 
 essay is an attempt to present the claim of 
 the Gospel in this respect, and to give as 
 simply as possible the answer to the 
 question : What does the Fourth Gospel 
 do to make the story of the Ministry of 
 Jesus Christ an intelligible whole ? 
 
 The question is treated quite by itself. 
 No attempt is made to indicate the bearing 
 of the view suggested on questions of 
 authenticity and authorship and authority. 
 The only question considered is What do 
 we historically gain from the Gospel suppos- 
 ing its authorship and authority to remain
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 unshaken ? The question whether we 
 historically gain anything or not can only 
 be tested by considering it on the hypo- 
 thesis that the authorship and authority 
 of the Gospel stand. When it has been 
 considered, the result of the consideration 
 will be one element in the case for or 
 against the Johannine authorship and 
 apostolic authority of the Gospel. E.g., 
 Dr Drummond's general conclusions would 
 be modified if Chapter II. of Book I. in his 
 work were to be re- written in the sense of 
 this essay. How far or how it would be 
 modified I do not attempt to discuss, though 
 I am very sure that our debt to Dr 
 Drummond would not be diminished. 
 
 The question with which I endeavour to 
 deal is not merely a question of the external 
 connection of the history of the Synoptists 
 with the history of St John. It has to 
 do not merely with the piecing together
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 of the references to time and place in the 
 one narrative and the other. The relation 
 of the two leads us on to questions as to 
 the part which both narratives play in 
 setting before us the purpose of Christ and 
 its fulfilment, as that purpose and its fulfil- 
 ment must be conceived in the light of the 
 long history that had gone before, and in the 
 light of the history that followed. It is a 
 question not only of the relation of the 
 Fourth Gospel to the Three, but of the 
 view of the whole Gospel story in its con- 
 text with the books of the Old Testament 
 and of the New, with which the Gospels 
 are bound up as parts of a literary and 
 historical whole. 
 
 Apart from any value which this study 
 of the Fourth Gospel may have as a con- 
 tribution to the discussion of such questions 
 as these, it is possible that it may have 
 interest for those who read the books of the
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 Bible for their own understanding. If there 
 is anything in it that is of value to any one 
 it has come to the writer as the result of 
 years of teaching, in which the Fourth Gospel 
 has more and more commended itself as 
 playing its part with the Three in bringing 
 before the mind the vivid realities of the 
 story of Him Who is our Life.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 THE THREE POINTS OF THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 PART I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 JERUSALEM AND THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1. The withdrawal into Galilee 4 
 
 2. The first note of opposition ..... 5 
 
 3. Spiritual antagonism ...... 9 
 
 4. The withdrawal from Galilee 12 
 
 ,x5- The ministry of flight : 15 
 
 6. The approach to Jerusalem 16 
 
 7. The Galilean story calls for a Jerusalem Ministry . 22 
 
 8. Intrinsic probability of a Jerusalem Ministry . . 26 
 
 PART II 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION 
 
 I. What was the Gospel preached at Jerusalem . 28 
 2. St John's Gospel is a record of rejection . . 28 
 
 xi
 
 xii CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 3. The rejection of the fulfilment of God's purpose by 
 S His own people at Jerusalem .... 32 
 
 4. Hence a new society has to be formed in Galilee, 
 
 whose formation is recorded by the Three . 33 
 5. It is as the Gospel of Rejection that St John's 
 >^ Gospel is the Gospel of Manifestation . . 37 
 
 6. But it is the rejection witnessed and recorded by 
 
 one of the disciples of His Love ... 42 
 7. Embodying His own meditative memories of the 
 
 Manifestation . . . . -43 
 
 8. Seen in retrospect as the Gospel presents it . . 45 
 sr 9. The Gospel of the offer of (i) Life in (2) the Person 
 
 of the Son of God 49 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 Preparatory Stage : The Need of Life. (Chapters II., 
 
 III., and IV.) 51 
 
 i. The Offer of Life: The Life that Heals. (Chap- 
 ter V.) 57 
 
 (My Father worketh hitherto and I work.) 
 
 2. The Bread of Life: The Water of Life: The 
 Light of Life : The Conflict in Galilee (Chapter 
 VI.X and in Jerusalem (Chapters VII. and VIII.) 59 
 
 (Before Abraham was I Am.)
 
 CONTENTS xiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3. The Life as the Divine Fellowship : The Separa- 
 tion (Chapters IX. and X.) 65 
 
 (I and My Father are One.) 
 
 4. Conclusion: The Offer vindicated (Chapter XL), 
 
 and rejected (Chapter XII.) 68 
 
 PART III 
 
 THE GOSPEL IN THE MINDS OF THE DISCIPLES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION 
 
 l. After the summary of the Rejection follows the 
 final training of the apprehension of the 
 disciples to witness its issue . . . . 71 
 
 2. The nature of their growth of apprehension illus- 
 trated by a comparison of St John's account 
 of their mental attitude and that of the Three . 72 
 
 3. Apparent contrast between the two as to the 
 
 acknowledgment of our Lord as Messiah . 74 
 
 4. Reasons why the acknowledgment should have 
 
 been held in check in Galilee .... 74
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 TACK 
 
 ;. The Galilean record shows a virtual recognition 
 of Messianic authority from the first, but He 
 was not the Messiah they expected ... 77 
 
 6. And it is at the climax of the trial of their faith in 
 His Messiahship that the epoch-making con- 
 fession is made 80 
 
 7. The development, then, is in the deepening of 
 their apprehension of the meaning of His 
 Messiahship Si 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE 
 
 }i. The deepening of their apprehension still goes on : 
 St John's Gospel itself is the climax, and the 
 chapters before the Passion record one stage 
 in the advance 83 
 
 2. Three times the disciples come into St John's 
 story: (i) before the contact with Judaism; 
 (2) at the crisis of the struggle with Judaism 
 in Galilee ; and (3) now, as receiving the final 
 interpretation of the offer of Life ... 84 
 
 3. It is the revelation to their love in the hour of 
 
 parting, the promise of His Indwelling . . 86 
 
 4. They have learnt (i) dependence on Him as (2) 
 
 the Way and (3) the Truth .... 87 
 
 5. He leads them on to the thought of Him as the
 
 CONTENTS xv 
 
 FACE 
 
 Life the identification with Himself through 
 
 the Spirit 88 
 
 6. The hour of parting enabled them to drink in the 
 spirit of His teaching, and in that strength to 
 go through the dark hour 92 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION 
 
 r. The record of the Judgment and the Death is 
 bare fact ; the rest of the Gospel is the com- 
 ment. From the first the Death was in view . 95 
 
 2. As the Sacrifice ....... 96 
 
 (a) Behold the Lamb of God. 
 
 (b) The Bread which I will give is My Flesh. 
 
 (c) Greater Love hath no man than this. 
 
 ^3. As the " Lifting up " . . . . . 99 
 
 Associated with the manifestation of the 
 Father's Love and the attraction of the 
 
 won 
 
 (a) In the talk with Nicodemus. 
 (6) In the conflict at the Feast of Tabernacles. 
 (c) At the coming of Greeks. 
 
 4. The kingdom which is rejected is the Kingdom 
 of the Truth, the Truth of the manifested 
 Love of God 102 
 
 5. It is hard fact, as he, the disciple, then saw and 
 
 felt the fact 104
 
 
 xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE REVEALING FACT 
 
 MM 
 
 1. "They knew not" till at the Sepulchre the 
 
 disciple "saw and believed" .... 106 
 2. He saw the negative fact not the return to life, 
 
 the old life was over 107 
 
 3. He saw the linen clothes lying empty, revealing 
 
 Life through Death ... . . 109 
 
 4. The continuity is vital to the experience. Death 
 was not an end but a beginning of the life that 
 had risen from the grave-clothes . . . no 
 5. They sought no more the body of the dead. They 
 waited for, and received the manifestation of 
 the Living ill 
 
 6. But it was from the negative fact that the disciple 
 dated his conscious belief in the Gospel of 
 Eternal Life . 112 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 l. St John's Gospel challenges interpretation as a 
 Gospel of Jerusalem, such as the story of the 
 Three and intrinsic probability alike demand . 113 
 
 2. It is the Gospel of Eternal Life in the Son of 
 God, the universal need of man, which the 
 Jew had been Divinely prepared to receive . 115 
 
 3. Rejected by the Jew, interpreted in its fulness to 
 the disciple as the Gospel of the Indwelling 
 Life 118 
 
 4. Whose manifestation is the act of the Eternal 
 
 Word by Whom all things were made . . 120
 
 CONTENTS xrii 
 
 PART IV 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY ILLUSTRATIONS . . . .122 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INCIDENTS OMITTED AND INSERTED BY ST JOHN 
 AND BY THE THREE 
 
 
 /^ 
 
 9 
 
 ^r 
 
 . The Biographical Fallacy ..... 124 
 
 2. The Virgin Birth ....... 128 
 
 3. The Ministry of St John the Baptist . . . 130 
 4- The Temptation ..... . .134 
 
 5. The Institution of the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 
 Supper ........ 134 
 
 6. The Agony ........ 135 
 
 7. The Incidents connected with the Crucifixion . 135 
 8. The Doubt of St Thomas ..... 136 
 
 The Record of the Miracles ..... 137 
 
 (a) Galilean miracles omitted by St John. 
 
 (b) Galilean miracles recorded by St John. 
 
 (c) Johannine miracles omitted by the Three. 
 
 (d) Necessary imperfection of explanations. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 s 
 
 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS IN ST JOHN AND 
 IN THE THREE 
 
 i. The distinctive purpose of the Gospel the leading 
 
 consideration 144 
 
 2. Modern ideas of the miraculous must be eliminated 145
 
 xviii CONTENTS 
 
 VAGB 
 
 . Words for " miracle " used by St John . . . 147 
 4. Privacy and publicity of miracles . . . .150 
 
 5. Review of the miraculous in St John the motive, 
 
 the effect, and the view of the Evangelist . 152 
 
 (a) The turning of the water into wine. 
 
 (6) ThTsigniTatTerusalem. 
 
 (c) Nicodemus and the signs. 
 
 (ef) The nobleman's son. 
 
 (e) The impotent man at the pool. 
 
 (/) The feeding of the five thousand, and the 
 
 walking on the sea. 
 
 () Christ's " brethren " and His " works." 
 (h) Words used at the Feast of Tabernacles. 
 (/) The man born blind. 
 (j) Words used at the Feast of Dedication. 
 (k) The raising of Lazarus. 
 (/) Words in the summary of the Rejection. 
 (/) Our Lord's knowledge of men miraculous 
 
 as the knowledge of perfect Humanity. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD IN ST JOHN AND 
 IN THE THREE 
 
 i. Do the two pictures harmonise ? .... 171 
 >^2. First cause of the difference in St John's picture 
 
 his own personality 173
 
 CONTENTS xix 
 
 PACK 
 
 3. Second cause his purpose to picture the Rejection 
 
 of the Son of God 175 
 
 4. The Galilean picture gives (i) the first appeal of 
 
 Christ to man in the world . . . .177 
 
 5. (2) The Human Perfection of Christ . . . 179 
 
 6. But the Galilean Gospels show the hidden glory . 180 
 7. And in St John we have not lost the Christ of 
 
 Galilee 182 
 
 8. He makes the Eternal Love a fact . . . 183
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE 
 REJECTION 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE THREE POINTS OF THE ARGUMENT 
 
 THERE are three obvious points of contrast 
 between the Three first Gospels and "the 
 Fourth : the scene of the events, the 
 substance of the teaching, and the appre- 
 hension by the disciples of the Master's 
 claim. The contrast is apt to be presented 
 in some such form as this, (i) There is 
 a harmonious and complete story of a 
 Galilean Ministry presented to us by the 
 Three, into which the acceptance of St 
 John's Gospel compels us to intrude an 
 inconsistent story of a Ministry at Jerusalem. 
 (2) In the Galilean story of the Three 
 there is a gradual development of teaching
 
 2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 about our Lord's Person, of His own claim 
 for Himself, while St John's story of the 
 Jerusalem Ministry presents us with the 
 fuller teaching from the first, antedates 
 the claim, makes it more definite and more 
 emphatic, and carries it to a point which 
 in the other Gospels it can hardly be said to 
 reach. (3) In the story of the Three there 
 is a gradual development in the appre- 
 hension by the disciples of the Master's 
 claim, while in St John's story from the 
 very beginning they accept His claim to 
 the full. 
 
 As against the view thus generally 
 indicated, we shall maintain (i) that the 
 story of the Three presupposes the facts 
 whfch St John supplies, and is only explic- 
 able if Jerusalem had already developed 
 an antagonism to Christ ; (2) that this 
 antagonism was provoked by the revelation 
 of truth, which Jerusalem ought to have 
 been ready to accept, though (3) the Galilean 
 disciples needed to be prepared and led on 
 to its apprehension. 
 
 The nature of the argument will not allow
 
 THE THREE POINTS OF THE ARGUMENT 3 
 
 these three points to be entirely separated 
 from one another. But it will be convenient 
 to treat the subject under three heads 
 corresponding to these three points, viz : 
 
 Part I. Jerusalem and the Gospel in 
 Galilee. 
 
 Part II. The Gospel of the Rejection. 
 
 Part III. The Gospel in the Minds of the 
 Disciples. 
 
 Some supplementary discussions in illus- 
 tration of the main thesis will be added in 
 Part IV.
 
 PART I 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 JERUSALEM AND THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE 
 
 i. The Withdrawal into Galilee. 
 
 THE record of the very beginning of the 
 Galilean Ministry points back and points 
 elsewhere. " When He heard that John 
 was delivered up He withdrew (avexupi)<rv) 
 into Galilee." 1 
 
 Where did He withdraw from and why ? 
 
 St John tells us. He withdrew from Judaea. 
 *^ ^ 
 
 1 St Matthew (iv. 12), gives us this note of withdrawal. 
 St Mark"^~'4), has simply "After that John was delivered 
 up 7WUS"^ame into Galilee." "SI "LukeVwfiRRf, ^returned 
 (i>wfffTpt\f/tf) in the power of the Spirit into Galilee,'' if they 
 stood by themselves, would be most naturally taken in con- 
 nection with the Baptism and Temptation, but they plainly 
 admit of the meaning which the natural force of St Matthew's 
 word would impose upon them. 
 
 4
 
 CHAP. I.] THE FIRST NOTE OF OPPOSITION 5 
 
 He had not found Jerusalem ready to receive 
 what He came to give. He withdrew at 
 the time of St John the Baptist's imprison- 
 ment. 1 St John 2 gives us a reason for His 
 withdrawal which exactly fits the note of 
 time. It was because Jesus " knew how 
 that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus 
 was making and baptizing more disciples 
 than John." He was beginning to be 
 regarded as a more dangerously successful 
 teacher than John. He did not wish the 
 antagonism to draw prematurely to a head 
 which, as we shall see, He had already felt 
 to be present in the atmosphere at Jerusalem. 
 
 2. The First Note of Opposition. 
 
 In the course of the Galilean Ministry 
 proper we may note three special occasions 
 when Jerusalem comes into the story, (i) 
 The Healing of the Paralytic ; (2) The 
 Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost ; (3) 
 The Eating with Unwashen Hands. 
 
 (i) The story of the Healing of the 
 
 1 St Matt. iv. 12 ; St Mark i. 14. 2 St John iv. i.
 
 6 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 Paralytic strikes the first note of opposition. 
 The opposition is Pharisaic. And this first 
 mention of Pharisaic opposition is associated 
 with the mention of Jerusalem. The story 
 is ushered in by St Luke l with the words : 
 " There had sat "Themselves down [there] 
 Pharisees and Doctors of the Law which 
 had come out of every village of Galilee 
 and Judaea and Jerusalem." The words 
 suggest, though they do not necessarily 
 imply, a deliberate gathering for a purpose. 
 There is nothing to shew, though the 
 language at least covers the possibility, 
 that the purpose was to hear and to judge 
 the new teacher. The opposition is not 
 outspoken. It is discerned before it is 
 expressed. They reasoned " in their hearts. 
 Who is this that speaketh thus ? He 
 blasphemeth. Who can forgive sins but 
 God alone ? " And our Lord immediately 
 knew in His Spirit that they thus reasoned. 
 There is nothing to suggest any previous 
 conflict elsewhere. But the first manifesta- 
 tion of an instinctive opposition is in a 
 1 St Luke v. 17.
 
 I.] THE FIRST NOTE OF OPPOSITION 7 
 
 gathering of Pharisees among whom are 
 Pharisees from Jerusalem, and the presence 
 of a spirit of opposition is recognised by 
 our Lord. 
 
 The spiritual situation indicated is in 
 harmony with that described in the second 
 chapter of St John where, though many 
 believed, Jesus did not commit Himself to 
 them for He "knew what was in man"; 
 i.e., the opposition, which seems to come 
 from Jerusalem, is at that stage at which 
 it would naturally be after our Lord's first 
 contact with Jerusalem. 
 
 After this first note of opposition has been 
 struck the relation between our Lord and the 
 Pharisees becomes more and more clearly 
 defined. Before the healing of the paralytic 
 we have already come upon our Lord's first 
 healing on the Sabbath Day, the healing of the 
 demoniac in the synagogue at Capernaum. 1 
 This had provoked no protest. After the 
 healing of the paralytic, the plucking of the 
 ears of corn on the Sabbath 2 does provoke 
 protest. And at the healing of the man with 
 1 St Mark i. 21 ; St Luke iv. 31. a St Mark ii. 23.
 
 8 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 the withered hand, 1 they watch Him to see 
 whether He will heal on the Sabbath Day 
 that they may accuse Him, and Jesus looks 
 round upon them with anger, grieved at the 
 hardness of their hearts, " and the Pharisees 
 went out and Immediately Tield a~~couhcil 
 with the Herodians how they might destroy 
 Him." In St Matthew's story 2 there follows 
 alibte of withdrawal. He withdrew from 
 " thence " and " charged " them whom He 
 healed "that they should not make Him 
 known." 
 
 And there have been decisive signs that 
 He for His part has deliberately chosen 
 not to build on the established Jewish re- 
 ligion. When they murmur at His eating 
 and drinking with publicans and sinners, 
 He answers, " I am not come to call the 
 righteous but sinners." 1 When they ask 
 why His disciples do not fast like the 
 disciples of John and of the Pharisees, He 
 answers and the fact that they did not do 
 so is itself significant in the same sense 
 that no one sews new cloth on an old 
 
 1 St Mark iii. i. St Matt xii. 15. * St Mark ii. 17.
 
 I.] SPIRITUAL ANTAGONISM 9 
 
 garment. Already He regards the official 
 Pharisee religion as a worn - out garment 
 
 which could only Be cast aside. 
 
 3. Spiritual Antagonism. 
 
 " The Blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost," 1 the next notable mention of 
 Jerusalem in connection with the opposi- 
 tion to our Lord's Ministry, takes us to a 
 climax in the development of the spiritual 
 antagonism. 
 
 The circumstances are as follows. 
 Jerusalem has been mentioned in all three 
 Evangelists as one of the places from which, 
 after the choice of the Twelve, there was 
 gathered the multitude which came to hear 
 Him and to be healed of their diseases, and 
 they that were troubled with unclean spirits 
 were healed, 2 the multitude whose presence 
 inspired Him to deliver to His disciples 
 the discourse which in St Matthew is 
 
 1 St Mark iii. 22. 
 
 St Luke vi. 17. Cp. St Mark iii. 8 ; St Matt. iv. 25. 
 
 B
 
 io THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 represented by the Sermon on the Mount, 
 in St Luke by the Sermon in the Plain. 
 
 It is after this that St Mark 1 records 
 that "the scribes which came down from 
 Jerusalem >r ~said that He cast out devils 
 through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils, 
 and that He on His part said, that "all their 
 sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men 
 but whosoever shall blaspheme against the 
 Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness." And 
 he adds : " because they said, He hath an 
 unclean spirit." 
 
 In St John, after the healing of the 
 cripple on the Sabbath Day at the Unknown 
 Feast He told "the Jews" 2 that His works 
 bore witness of Him that the Father had 
 sent Him, and that they had not His word 
 abiding in them for whom He sent, Him 
 they believed not. And we must interpret 
 this in the sense of His own reference to it 
 later on : " Are ye wroth with me because I 
 made a man every whit whole on the 
 Sabbath Day ? " * The work of mercy 
 shouldjhave appealed to them in itself as 
 1 St Mark iii. 22. * St John v. 36. St John vii. 23.
 
 I.] SPIRITUAL ANTAGONISM 11 
 
 the work of God. That it did not do so 
 was the sign of the fatal alienation of spirit. 
 
 The spiritual situation is the same as when 
 He is grieved with them because of the 
 
 o 
 
 hardness of their hearts, or when He tells 
 them that to ascribe His works of mercy 
 to an evil spirit is blasphemy against the 
 Spirit of God. Any attempt to relate the 
 event in St John to the events in the other 
 Three Gospels in any definite order of time, 
 any attempt to indicate the point at which 
 the visit to Jerusalem at the Unknown 
 Feast is to be fitted in to the Galilean 
 story would be out of place. But the fact 
 stands that a decisive step in the growth 
 of the antagonism to our Lord is referred 
 in St Mark to " the scribes who came down 
 from Jerusalem," and that the spiritual 
 situation thus created is in harmony with 
 the spiritual situation in that part of St 
 John's Gospel in which we should look for 
 the correspondence if it were Jerusalem 
 that inspired the antagonism.
 
 12 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 4. The Withdrawal from Galilee. 
 
 The third notable mention of Jerusalem 
 as the source of opposition is especially to 
 be remarked because of the time when it 
 occurred, and the events by which it is 
 followed. 
 
 There is one point in St John's Gospel 
 at which he diverges from his usual plan. 
 Speaking generally it may be said that he 
 records the story of a Ministry at Jerusalem, 
 and does not record events recorded by the 
 Three. In telling of the Feeding of the 
 Five Thousand he touches the Galilean 
 story, and he touches it at a point which is 
 central and critical in all the Gospels. He, 
 St John, tells the story obviously for the 
 sake of the discourse on the Bread of Life 
 which follows on, and is connected with, 
 the miracle. And in the discussions in the 
 Synagogue at Capernaum, which are em- 
 bodied in the record, it is "the Jews" 1 who 
 are said to murmur concerning Him because 
 He said : "I am the Bread which came 
 
 1 St John vi. 41.
 
 I.] THE WITHDRAWAL FROM GALILEE 13 
 
 down out of heaven ; " it is " the Jews " 1 who 
 strive with one another sayingT " How can 
 this man give us His flesh to eat?" The 
 term "the Jews" used in these two places, 
 instead of the indefinite "they," stands often 
 in St John for the representatives of the 
 Jewish religion. And the suggestion of the 
 story "is thaT the scene of the conflict with 
 the representatives of the official religion, 
 which it is St John's purpose to describe, 
 is at this point transferred from Jerusalem 
 to Galilee. 
 
 It is at this time then that St Mark tells 
 us 2 that " There gather themselves together 
 unto Him the Pharisees and certain of the 
 scribes which had come from Jerusalem " 
 to find fault with His disciples for eating 
 their bread with defiled, that is unwashen, 
 hands. 
 
 The context in the story of the Three 
 is as follows. The return of the Twelve 
 from their Mission is associated in their 
 story with the death of St John the Baptist, 
 itself suggestive to our Lord of His own 
 1 St John vi. 52. a St Mark vii. i.
 
 14 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 coming death, and with Herod's supersti- 
 tious fear that Jesus was John risen from 
 the dead. As it was St John's imprisonment 
 which called attention to our Lord's danger- 
 ous popularity as a teacher, so St John's 
 death is likely once more to bring Him into 
 dangerous notice. The need of facing this 
 situation seems to have been one of the 
 motives which prompted His retirement 
 into the desert. The multitude follow Him, 
 and the Feeding of the Five Thousand 
 raises His popularity to a point which in- 
 tensifies the critical character of the situa- 
 tion. It is at this point that, according to 
 St Mark, as according to St John, a mission 
 from Jerusalem appears to confront Him in 
 Galilee. 
 
 And this view of the situation of the 
 moment is confirmed by what follows. 
 11 And Jesus went out thence, and with- 
 drew into the parts of Tyre and Sidon " l 
 It is as though they had now driven Him 
 from Galilee. 8 
 
 1 St Matt. xv. 21. 
 
 J Cp. Note on St John vii. i, Pt. II., ch. ii., p. 61.
 
 I.] THE MINISTRY OF FLIGHT 15 
 
 5. The Ministry of Flight. 
 
 When we take note of our Lord's move- 
 ments there are always, apart from the 
 obvious Evangelistic motive, three considera- 
 tions to be remembered, (i) The growth of 
 opposition : (2) The growth of superficial 
 popularity, and (3) The growth of appre- 
 hension in the disciples. The retirement 
 from what has been the main sphere of His 
 work at this time was determined in part 
 by all three. It is with reference to the 
 first that the period may perhaps be called 
 a Ministry of Flight, during which He is 
 seeking out in the outlying borders "the 
 lost sheep of the house of Israel," "out of 
 all places whither they have been scattered 
 in the cloudy and dark day," first in the 
 parts of Tyre and Sidon, then round through 
 Decapolis to the Eastern side of the Lake 
 of Galilee, then in the region of Csesarea 
 Philippi. 
 
 During this period there are warnings 
 of His coming death, after St Peter's con- 
 fession (where St Matthew says "that He
 
 16 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 must go unto Jerusalem "), and again after 
 the Transfiguration. When He comes to 
 the west side of the lake l the Pharisees 
 " come out," and begin to question with Him, 
 and He immediately comes again to the 
 other side. When He again "passed through 
 Galilee 2 He would not that any man should 
 know it," for again, "He taught His disciples 
 and told them, the Son of Man is delivered 
 into the hands of sinners, and they shall kill 
 Him." With this passing visit to Galilee 
 at the end of the Ministry of Flight closes 
 the Ministry in Galilee itself, and with it 
 the " withdrawal " of our Lord. 
 
 6. The Approach to Jerusalem. 
 
 We now enter on a pe/iod when His face 
 is turned towards Jerusalem. 
 
 St Mark's Gospel, which is primarily con- 
 cerned with the Galilean Ministry, touches 
 very lightly on this period. He introduces 
 it* with the words: "And He arose from 
 thence and cometh into the borders of Judaea 
 1 St Mark viii. 10. St Mark ix. 30. 3 St Mark x. i.
 
 I.] THE APPROACH TO JERUSALEM 17 
 
 and beyond Jordan." St John, 1 after the 
 second of the two visits to Jerusalem which 
 he records between the Feeding of the Five 
 Thousand and the Passion, indicates the same 
 region as the place to which Jesus returned, 
 " And He went away again beyond Jordan 
 into the place where John was at the first 
 baptizing, and there He abode." In x. 32 
 again St Mark indicates in a vivid phrase 
 the prevailing" tone of the period he is de- 
 scribing. " And they were in the way going 
 up to Jerusalem ; and Jesus was going before 
 them : and they were amazed ; and they that 
 followed were afraid." And it was then that 
 "He took again the Twelve and began to 
 tell them the things that were to happen to 
 Him saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem." 
 The period which is thus briefly indicated 
 by St Mark, St Luke dwells upon at length, 
 crowding into it not only the incidents but the 
 teaching which seemed to him to belong to 
 the great approach to the Passion, humility, 
 self-denial, the mercy and pity of love. He 
 opens his account of it with words of deliberate 
 
 1 St John x. 40. 
 
 C
 
 i8 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 solemnity. 1 "And it came to pass when 
 the clays were well nigh come that He 
 should be received up, He stedfastly set 
 His face to go to Jerusalem." Again later, 2 
 "And He went on His way through cities 
 and villages, teaching and journeying on 
 towards Jerusalem." And immediately after- 
 wards, 8 "In that very hour there came 
 certain Pharisees saying to Him, Get Thee 
 out and go hence, for Herod would fain kill 
 Thee. And He said unto them, Go and 
 say to that fox, Behold I cast out devils and 
 perform cures to-day and to-morrow, and 
 the third day I am perfected. Howbeit I 
 must go on my way to-day and to-morrow, 
 and the day following, for it cannot be that 
 a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." And 
 on these words follows the great cry, " O 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the 
 prophets and stoneth them that are sent 
 unto her how often would I have gathered 
 thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
 her own brood under her wings, and ye 
 would not. Behold your house is left unto 
 1 St Luke ix. 51. a St Luke xiii. 22. ' St Luke xiii. 31-33.
 
 I.] THE APPROACH TO JERUSALEM 19 
 
 you desolate : and I say unto you, Ye shall 
 not see Me until ye shall say, Blessed is He 
 that cometh in the name of the Lord." And 
 still before these prophetic words are fulfilled, 
 on what must have been the last actual 
 approach, it was " as they were on the way 
 to Jerusalem," when He was passing through 
 the midst of Samaria and Galilee, that He 
 healed the lepers, and there were not found 
 to return to give glory to God save the one 
 stranger. 1 And further on, 2 " He took unto 
 Him the Twelve, and said unto them, Behold 
 we go up to Jerusalem." And again, 3 He 
 added and spake the parable of the pounds, 
 "because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and 
 because they supposed that the kingdom 
 of God was immediately to appear." And 
 finally at the last stage of the approach, 4 
 "When He drew nigh, He saw the city and 
 wept over it saying, If thou hadst known in 
 this thy day, even thou, the things which 
 belong unto peace ! but now they are hid from 
 thine eyes. For the days shall come upon 
 
 1 St Luke xvii. n. 3 St Luke xix. n. 
 
 2 St Luke xviii. 31. * St Luke xix. 41.
 
 20 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a 
 bank about thee, and compass thee round 
 and keep thee in on every side, and shall 
 dash thee to the ground and thy children 
 within thee, and they shall not leave in 
 thee one stone upon another ; because thou 
 knewest not the time of thy visitation." 
 
 The two evident features of this period, 
 that the hostility of Jerusalem is assumed, 
 and that our Lord is setting Himself to 
 face it, reappear in St John's record of the 
 two visits to Jerusalem at the Feast of 
 Tabernacles and at the Feast of Dedica- 
 tion. St John 1 seems to indicate the Feast 
 of Tabernacles as the end of the time when 
 Jesus "was walking in Galilee" to avoid 
 the hostility of the Jews. 2 He represents 
 our Lord as going up secretly to the Feast, 
 not publicly, because His hour was not yet 
 come. The spiritual situation described is 
 a confused conflict between ill - informed 
 adherents and increasingly determined 
 opponents. The attitude of His opponents 
 is not yet fully recognised. The multitude 
 1 St John vii. i. a Cp. note p. 61.
 
 I.] THE APPROACH TO JERUSALEM 21 
 
 say to Him : l " Who seeketh to kill Thee ? " 
 others say: 2 "Is not this He whom they 
 seek to kill ? " and no man dare speak 
 openly of Him because of the Jews. 3 They 
 seek to take Him, but no man laid hands 
 on Him. 4 The officers who are sent after 
 Him are mastered by the majesty or the 
 charm of His words. Nicodemus 5 can still 
 speak for Him among the rulers. As He 
 speaks 6 "Many believe on Him," but as 
 they are brought face to face with His 
 claim they are repelled. And the story of 
 conflict ends with their taking up stones to 
 cast at Him. 7 At the Feast of Dedication 8 
 the Jews have agreed that if any man should 
 confess Him to be the Christ he should be 
 cast out of the synagogue. He for His part 
 condemns them with a spiritual condemna- 
 tion which is final and decisive. 9 " Ye 
 believe not because ye are not of my 
 sheep." Again 10 they took up stones to 
 
 1 St John vii. 20. 8 St John viii. 30. 
 
 2 St John vii. 25. 7 St John viii. 59. 
 8 St John vii. 13. 8 St John ix. 22. 
 
 4 St John vii. 30. 9 St John x. 26. 
 
 * St John vii. 50. 10 St John x. 31.
 
 22 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 cast at Him. Again 1 they sought to take 
 Him, but He went forth out of their hand. 
 
 St John is describing the Jerusalem 
 towards which St Luke pictures the gradual 
 approach, the scene of the earlier stages of 
 the conflict, which was proceeding towards 
 its inevitable end. 
 
 7. The Galilean Story calls for a Jerusalem 
 Ministry. 
 
 In this review of the references to 
 Jerusalem in the three Galilean Gospels, it 
 seemed desirable to indicate at each stage 
 the harmony between the spiritual situation 
 pictured by the Three, and the spiritual 
 situation pictured in what must be supposed 
 to be the corresponding section in St John's 
 Gospel. But the references to St John's 
 Gospel have perhaps obscured the argument 
 from the Galilean records alone. Eliminate 
 then from our review every reference to 
 St John. Imagine that we had only the 
 Three. How would they leave us? 
 
 1 St John x. 39.
 
 I.] THE GALILEAN STORY 23 
 
 The Galilean Ministry begins abruptly 
 with the suggestion that it is a withdrawal 
 from some other sphere. 
 
 Opposition to our Lord begins to be 
 manifested early, but not from the first. 
 
 It begins at a point at which there is 
 mention of Jerusalem. 
 
 After this, opposition is provoked by 
 causes, which before this had not provoked 
 opposition. 
 
 The opposition grows. In the course of 
 its growth a marked stage in its growth 
 is associated with a second mention of 
 Jerusalem, and here the opponents are said 
 to have come down from Jerusalem. 
 
 A third mention of Jerusalem is more 
 definitely suggestive of a mission from 
 Jerusalem for the purpose of opposition. 
 
 It is followed by a withdrawal into more 
 distant parts of the country during which, 
 while the manifestation to the immediate 
 circle of the disciples continues, forecast of 
 His death as the issue of the antagonism 
 begins, and of the death at Jerusalem. The 
 deliberately unobtrusive character of His
 
 24 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 visits to Galilee during this period makes 
 the withdrawal more emphatic. 
 
 So far it may be said that the opposition 
 may have been provoked in Galilee itself, 
 where the Pharisaic spirit and the Pharisaic 
 body would naturally have its representatives, 
 and the references to Jerusalem may merely 
 imply some use of the means of communica- 
 tion which the Pharisee organisation may 
 well have provided either the Pharisees 
 of Galilee referring to the Pharisees of 
 Jerusalem, or the Pharisees of Jerusalem 
 hearing of the danger and sending down 
 to strengthen the hands of the Pharisees 
 of Galilee. This account of the facts is 
 possible, but (i) it does not account for the 
 " withdrawal " at the beginning of the 
 Galilean Ministry, and (2) it does not 
 account for the events thus far in such a 
 way as to make them form part of a con- 
 tinuous history with what follows. And the 
 facts admit at least as readily of the inter- 
 pretation that opposition had already in 
 some way originated at Jerusalem, and that 
 thence it travelled down to Galilee.
 
 I.] THE GALILEAN STORY 25 
 
 Next we come to a period when our 
 Lord is half-way to Jerusalem. Here the 
 narrative is pervaded by the tone of deter- 
 mined approach to a terrible and inevitable 
 conflict. It is very difficult indeed to suppose 
 that this conHTct has become inevitable only 
 in consequence of what has passed in Galilee. 
 The lament over Jerusalem, even if it does 
 not imply that attempts have actually been 
 made to gather her children, does most 
 certainly imply that the attempt is mani- 
 festly hopeless. How has it become so ? 
 Is it conceivable that it has become so 
 without the effort being made ? The parable 
 of the Wicked Husbandmen, taken by the 
 Pharisees as directed at them, implies the 
 condemnation of the official representatives 
 of the Jewish religion for rejecting an offer 
 which, so far as the Three are concerned, 
 has never been made. If we were left only 
 with the materials for reconstructing the 
 story which they provide should we not 
 say : " Surely there is some great omission. 
 There must have been a series of events 
 of which we have not heard, a story of a 
 
 D
 
 26 THE GOSPEL IN GALILEE [CHAP. 
 
 [ manifestation and a rejection at Jerusalem 
 I which has not come down to us?" 
 
 8. Intrinsic Probability of a Jerusalem 
 Ministry. 
 
 And this conclusion would be reinforced 
 by considerations in themselves of over- 
 whelming force. Must there not have been 
 a Ministry at Jerusalem ? Can the claimant 
 of the title of the Son of David have failed 
 to make His claim in the City of David ? 
 
 )Can the successor of the Prophets have 
 failed to bear His witness at the heart of 
 the national life and the national religion ? 
 Can the successor of Jeremiah have failed 
 to face trie rulers of His people on their 
 own ground ? Can the successor of Ezekiel 
 have done otherwise than speak God's words 
 to them whether they would hear or whether 
 they would forbear? If the task of calling 
 Jerusalem to repentance was hopeless, do 
 the analogies of prophetic history allow us 
 to suppose that it was therefore unfulfilled ? 
 Nay, was there no aspect of the Truth
 
 I.] PROBABILITY OF A JERUSALEM MINISTRY 27 
 
 which could be presented at Jerusalem as 
 it could be presented nowhere else ? Was 
 there no special and peculiar manifesta- 
 tion called forth by the place which God 
 had chosen to set His name there ? Do 
 not the Three then cry aloud for a Gos'peT 
 which should tell us some such story as is 
 told us by the Fourth? And if these con- 
 siderations lead us to put upon the data 
 supplied by the Galilean story the inter- 
 pretation that Jerusalem did inspire the 
 opposition which we find manifested in 
 Galilee, we may put this last question in 
 a different form. What was the presenta- 
 tion of Himself by which our Lord had 
 provoked at Jerusalem the antagonism which 
 we find manifested in Galilee ? The Galilean 
 Gospels end with the story of the Cruci- 
 fixion, but they cannot be said to explain 
 the Crucifixion. What did provoke the 
 Crucifixion ? What was the history of the 
 growth of that spirit of rejection of which 
 the natural culmination is the Cross?
 
 PART II 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION 
 
 i. What was the Gospel preached at 
 Jerusalem ? 
 
 THE question suggested by the considera- 
 tion of the references to Jerusalem in the 
 Three is not, when and how was the Gospel 
 as we know it in Galilee preached also in 
 Jerusalem, but rather, what was the Gospel 
 preached at Jerusalem ? This is the question 
 to which St John's Gospel gives us the 
 answer. 
 
 2. St Johns Gospel is a Record of 
 Rejection. 
 
 The Gospel of Jerusalem, as it appears 
 
 in St John, does not profess to be the same 
 
 28'-'-'
 
 CHAP, i.] A RECORD OF REJECTION 29 
 
 as the Galilean Gospel. And St John's 
 Gospel itselF"sEows us the reasons for the 
 difference between the two. 
 
 St John's Gospel is from the beginning 
 a record of rejection. "He came unto 
 His own, and His own received Him not" 
 is trie summary of its subject. If we look 
 at the situation described in the second 
 and third chapters of the Gospel we see 
 that this issue is marked out from the first. 
 
 He goes up to Jerusalem at the Feast 
 of the Passover. He chases the traders 
 and money - changers from the Temple 
 Court. He claims that it is His Father's 
 House. The fury of His zeal carries all 
 before it. The act was one which to a 
 discerning spiritual mind would justify itself. 
 Here it struck no sympathetic chord. It 
 is true that, whether because the rulers 
 were momentarily paralysed by the vigour of 
 His onslaught, or because they did not yet 
 perceive the significance of the claim which 
 it involved, it did not evoke any manifesta- 
 tion of deep spiritual antagonism. Their 
 protest only took the form of a demand for
 
 30 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 an external sign to authenticate an act which 
 should have vindicated itself. But His 
 answer in a parable, unmeaning to them, 
 treats their protest as showing them to be 
 beyond the reach of His appeal. 
 
 Again while He is in Jerusalem at the 
 feast many believe on His Name, beholding 
 His signs which He did. But He sees 
 their belief to be worthless. And if we 
 ask why their belief was worthless, we have 
 the answer in the talk with Nicodemus. 
 They are ready to believe in Him as a 
 teacher. They do not realise the need of 
 a new life, of a new spirit to be put within 
 them. The teacher of Israel understood 
 not these things. And so He withdraws 
 first into the borders of Judaea and then 
 into Galilee. 
 
 The first contrast then which is suggested 
 between Jerusalem and Galilee arises from 
 the fact that Jerusalem was instructed but 
 not spiritually minded. There was an 
 atmosphere of familiarity with religious ideas, 
 but there was no sense of spiritual need. 
 "Thou hast hid these things from the wise
 
 I.] A RECORD OF REJECTION 31 
 
 and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
 babes." The withdrawal from Jerusalem 
 to Galilee was an anticipation of the later 
 withdrawal of St Paul from the Jews to 
 the Gentiles. In the one case as in the 
 other it was a very sorrowful withdrawal. 
 As St Paul had great sorrow and unceasing 
 pain in his heart for his brethren's sake, his 
 kinsmen according to the flesh, who were 
 Israelites, whose is the adoption, and the 
 glory, and the covenants, and the giving 
 of the Law, and the service of God, and 
 the promises, so our Lord cries out His 
 
 ^MM 
 
 lament over Jerusalem. And, even in the 
 words just quoted, when He rejoiced in spirit 
 because the Father had hid these things 
 from the wise and prudent, and had revealed 
 them unto babes, it was with the exaltation 
 of soul which belongs to the sacrificial 
 acceptance of spiritual pain. In the words, 
 " Even so, Father, for so it seemed good 
 in Thy sight," there is not wanting a fore- 
 taste of " Father, not My will, but Thine, be 
 done," the sadness whose shadow seemed 
 always to rest upon His spirit.
 
 32 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 3. The Rejection of the Fulfilment of 
 God's Purpose by His own People at 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 And in the one case as in the other we 
 cannot help wondering as to what might 
 have been. If Jerusalem had known the 
 day of her visitation, if the purpose of God 
 had been fulfilled by man's response instead 
 of being thwarted by man's refusal, how 
 would the new Israel have been built up? 
 
 Nor can this be altogether a hypothetical 
 question. Here Jerusalem was, to receive 
 or to refuse the call. Her refusal of the call 
 was to do for the world what her accept- 
 ance of it might have done. It was the 
 thing that might have been which she 
 refused. We are so familiar with the idea 
 of our Lord having come to do the thing 
 He did, to found a new spiritual kingdom, 
 that we forget that what He really came to 
 do was what He did not do, to transform 
 the Israel that was into the Israel that was 
 to be Here at Jerusalem the kingdom was
 
 I.] A NEW SOCIETY FORMED 33 
 
 a fact. Here was the centre of the organised 
 life of the nation, whose life, so far as it 
 lived, was its religion. Here were the rulers 
 of God's people, the scribes who sat in 
 Moses' seat. Here there could have been 
 no question of founding a new spiritual 
 society, but of transforming a long since 
 founded society. Here was the body into 
 which the new spirit should have been 
 breathed, if it had been ready to receive 
 it. Built up by a long succession of 
 spiritual experiences, the experiences which 
 create those spiritual habits and spiritual 
 instincts in which the character of a nation 
 consists, here the nation stood, the kingdom 
 wanting its king, the body wanting its spirit 
 wanting, but not willing to receive, either 
 the king or the spirit which He came to 
 bring. 
 
 4. Hence a New Society has to be formed in 
 Galilee, whose Formation is recorded 
 by the Three. 
 
 Failing this acceptance, the new society, 
 
 the kingdom, had to be created elsewhere, 
 
 E
 
 34 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 and to build up this new society became 
 accordingly the first object of our Lord's 
 Ministry in Galilee. The materials were 
 such few Israelites indeed as He could find 
 among the lost sheep of the House of Israel, 
 and mould into the new society of which He 
 was Himself the Spirit and the Head. 
 
 Perhaps there is nothing so miraculous 
 in the history of the Gospel as His success 
 in this task. It is no small matter to 
 make a nation, to call into being a common 
 ^00?, a body of common habits and common 
 instincts, which shall issue hereafter in 
 common institutions and common principles 
 of life consciously professed and held. 
 Centuries of history, we know, go to the 
 creation of a nation, though we are apt to 
 take for granted the result of the growth, 
 the spontaneous appearance in a number 
 of individuals of a common temper and a 
 common mind, instinctive, undefined, but 
 the dominant reality of the life of the 
 individual members of the nation. 
 
 It is the history of the spiritual creation 
 of such a social entity that we follow in
 
 I.] A NEW SOCIETY FORMED 35 
 
 the Old Testament, a history so tragically 
 careless of the generations as they pass, so 
 intent on the few through whom the tradition 
 is maintained and the type developed, the 
 type which time after time rises again from 
 the moral and spiritual wreck of the nation, 
 rises to new heights in protest against the 
 national degradation and decay. 
 
 This was the task which our Lord under- 
 took, out of the remnants of the spiritual 
 wreck of a nation to build up the beginnings 
 of a new society ; to embody in a living 
 fellowship a new type of character, a 
 character destined, as the Jewish character 
 had been destined, to inspire all humanity, 
 a fellowship which should aim at including 
 all nations within its scope. 
 
 The task imposed upon Him limitations, 
 reticence, restraint, lest a premature and 
 superficial apprehension and acceptance of 
 His claims should hinder the growth of 
 character, the formation of habit and 
 instinct deep within the soul, bred in the 
 personal fellowship of His disciples with 
 Himself. This was the task which He was
 
 36 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 I driven to attempt and to achieve by the 
 failure of the Jewish nation, as represented, 
 and truly represented, by their rulers at 
 Jerusalem their failure to rise to the 
 national call for which the rrovidence*bf 
 God had prepared them. It was His 
 i accomplishment of this task which was 
 historically the source of the existence of 
 ( the Christian Fellowship. It is the story 
 of the foundation of this Fellowship which 
 the Three Galilean Gospels record. They 
 do not profess or attempt to give a complete 
 account of His life. They record the impress 
 of His character upon themselves as He 
 launched Himself upon their world in 
 Galilee. Their picture of Him is reflected 
 in the history of their own souls. We are 
 gazing into the mirror of their minds, we 
 are seeing the deeds and hearing the words 
 through which He drew them to Himself, 
 by which He fashioned them from within. 
 It is impossible to detach this aspect of the 
 Galilean Gospels and to present it separately. 
 It is interwoven with the whole fabric of 
 the story that they are the witnesses to
 
 I.] THE GOSPEL OF MANIFESTATION 37 
 
 the origin of the Christian Fellowship in 
 the following of Christ^ Jerusalem, which 
 hacfTejectea Him, they only mention when 
 it obtrudes itself upon their story, as the 
 source of opposition, as the scene of the 
 condemnation and the crucifixion. 
 
 5. // is as the Gospel of Rejection that 
 St Johns Gospel is the Gospel of 
 Manifestation. 
 
 And yet here nevertheless at Jerusalem 
 the offer must be made, made only to be 
 rejected, that the offer and the rejection 
 might stand on record. And St John tells 
 us how the offer was made the offer of 
 the new life and how it was rejected. The 
 same spirit of negative and passive rejection, 
 whose presence our Lord felt on His first 
 public visit to Jerusalem, underlies and 
 inspires the more positive antagonism of the 
 succeeding scenes. He was offering new 
 life to those who did not need it, to a 
 religious society which had become identical 
 with "the world," whose religion, that is,
 
 38 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP 
 
 was organised on the basis of self-sufficiency. 
 He was offering healing and deliverance to 
 those who knew no need of healing or 
 deliverance, and to whom the work of 
 mercy made no appeal. He was offering 
 the Bread of God and the Water of Life 
 to those who knew no hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness, and the Light to those 
 who were blind and in darkness, but who 
 said "we see." They were aliens from the 
 fellowship of the Divine Love, which was 
 the Life He came to give. He did not 
 come to them, as to the Galileans, offering 
 to them as individual souls a spiritual society, 
 into which they were to be received. He 
 came to them as to a spiritual society, such 
 as they should have been, offering to them 
 the spirit, the new life, which they had been 
 divinely prepared to long for and to receive. 
 He came to them as to a kingdom waiting 
 for its king, the king who was to vindicate 
 his claim to rule over them by the manifesta- 
 tion of the Divine Love, and to exercise 
 His rule through their welcome of the 
 manifestation. If they had been of the
 
 I.] THE GOSPEL OF MANIFESTATION 39 
 
 Truth they would have heard His voice. 
 They sealed their rejection with the words 
 which unconsciously expressed their repudia- 
 tion of the Messianic promise, " We have 
 no king but Caesar." 
 
 The fact that it is thus the Gospel of the 
 Rejection gives to St John's Gospel at first 
 sight a strangely unpractical character. The 
 manifestation of our Lord at Jerusalem 
 leads to no result except rejection. At 
 Jerusalem itself there is no recorded instance 
 of immediate acceptance except the man 
 born blind. Joseph of Arimathea appears 
 late upon the scene as a secret disciple. 
 Nicodemus seems to be gradually won. 
 He did not trust Himself to those who 
 "believed on His name" at the first Pass- 
 over. Those who believed on Him when 
 He spoke of His being lifted up are 
 immediately afterwards repelled. 1 And a 
 
 1 Dr Sanday has commented on the ambiguity of the one 
 word which denotes all the different stages of belief. 'The 
 context, both in chapter ii., where our Lord did not trust 
 Himself to those who are said to have believed on His 
 Name, and in chapter viii,, where those who "believed on 
 Him," or "believed Him," are driven away by the suggestion 
 that they need the gift of freedom, is in each case decisive
 
 40 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 Gospel which is not accepted is necessarily 
 a Gospel obscured. The utterance is 
 checked, it is not completed by the ampli- 
 fication which a sympathetic hearing calls 
 forth. It is a Gospel in the air. 
 
 But this apparently unpractical character 
 of the Gospel by no means belongs to its 
 substance. Sheer moral fact is the core 
 both of the Gospel and of its rejection. No 
 simpler moral issues could be conceived than 
 those which are presented by our Lord's 
 acts. The making of the House of God 
 a house of merchandise was just such an 
 obvious iniquity as would have stirred the 
 wrath of Amos or Jeremiah. It was sheer 
 moral blindness which prevented them from 
 welcoming the condemnation. The healing 
 of the cripple at the pool on the Sabbath 
 Day was a plain work of mercy. Of such 
 a work He might well say, 1 "The very 
 works that I do bear witness of Me, that 
 the Father hath sent Me." It is to the 
 
 that phrases, in which we might naturally have read the 
 deeper meaning, really bear the shallower significance of 
 " believing." 
 1 St John v. 36.
 
 I.] THE GOSPEL OF MANIFESTATION 41 
 
 plain moral issue that He appeals when He 
 says in reference to this work, 1 "Are ye 
 wrath with Me because I made a man every 
 whit whole on the Sabbath Day?" In the 
 same sense we should take His words in 
 chapter x., spoken probably in reference to 
 the healing of the man born blind, whose 
 blindness He refused to consider in any other 
 light than as it called for healing. In the 
 discourse of the Good Shepherd 2 He had 
 said, " I know Mine own and Mine own 
 know Me, even as the Father knoweth Me 
 and I know the Father, and I lay down 
 My life for the sheep." And this thought 
 governs what He now says in reference to 
 His works: 3 "The works that I do in My 
 Father's name, these bear witness of Me. 
 But ye believe not because ye are not of 
 My sheep. If I do not the works of My 
 Father, believe Me not, but if I do them, 
 though ye believe not Me, believe the 
 works, that ye may know and understand 
 that the Father is in Me and I in the 
 
 1 St John vii. 23. 2 St John x. 14-15. 
 
 3 St John x. 25, 26, 37> 38. 
 
 F
 
 42 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 Father." This is the Truth which they will 
 not hear, this declaration of the Father's 
 Love. 
 
 But because they will not hear, the Gospel 
 remains throughout its story of rejection a 
 Gospel of manifestation, the Gospel, as St 
 John describes it in the Preface, of "the 
 Word." It is the truth which will out. It 
 is the truth which must manifest itself, 
 whether they will hear or whether they 
 will forbear. 
 
 6. But it is the Rejection witnessed and 
 recorded by one of the Disciples of 
 His Love. 
 
 But plainly this very drama of Rejection 
 could not have been recorded if it had not 
 been acted out in the presence of one of 
 those who believed, and in whose belief the 
 whole story is framed. It is a drama within 
 a drama. We see the one drama as it was 
 witnessed by a person in the other. The 
 Revelation of Rejection is witnessed and 
 recorded by one of those who had themselves 
 received the Revelation of love. Before
 
 I.] MEDITATIVE MEMORIES 43 
 
 the series of events begins which make up 
 the story of the Rejection, we have a record 
 of the initial acceptance of our Lord by His 
 disciples! "They Tiad found the Messiah, 1 
 He had manifested forth His glory and His 
 disciples had believed on Him. 2 We have 
 only very scanty glimpses and indications ' 
 of their presence as the story of the Rejec- 
 tion proceeds three times only at Jerusalem 
 itself before the Passion. 3 After the rejec- 
 tion is an accomplished fact, 4 and before it 
 takes effect in the Crucifixion, we have the 
 record 5 of the final Revelation of love in the 
 light of which they witnessed the last issue 
 of the Rejection, and saw and believed the 
 victory into which it was transformed. 
 
 7. Embodying His own Meditative Memories 
 of the Manifestation. 
 
 It is the record then by a disciple of 
 teaching not directly addressed to disciples, 
 not Hirectly adapted to the state of mind 
 
 1 St John 5. 41, 45, 49. 8 St John ii. 22 ; ix. 2 ; xii. 21. 
 8 St John ii. n. * St John xii. 36-50. 
 6 St John xiii.-xvii.
 
 44 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 in which they were then when this disciple 
 heard and treasured what he heard. How 
 much he heard himself and remembered, 
 how much he derived from others from 
 Nicodemus, for instance, or the woman of 
 Samaria, or the man that was born blind 
 we cannot attempt to say. How far his being 
 known unto the High Priest mayKave~given 
 him access afterwards to sources of informa- 
 tion from within the circle of those who took 
 part in the conflict between the rulers and 
 the new teacher, how far his contact with 
 this region of life and opinion may have 
 enabled him at the time to enter into the 
 meaning of what he heard, it is perhaps 
 impossible to attempt to judge. It seems 
 to be evident that, in the Gospel as a whole, 
 he is presenting us with the results of the 
 growth of his own spiritual apprehension 
 of utterances, whose significance he came 
 gradually to realise and understand, utter- 
 ances which must have been largely 
 enigmatical to the disciples at the time, 
 and which were understood only in retro- 
 spect, as the society which our Lord was
 
 I.] SEEN IN RETROSPECT 45 
 
 building up came to be conscious of its 
 strength and being, and to need the record 
 of the first steps in the conscious knowledge 
 of the Spirit that was its Life. It is the 
 record of a brooding meditative memory. 
 Words ot Christ come back to him, spoken 
 in the heat of the great conflict, burnt into 
 his heart, the heart of a passionately loyal 
 partisan, as his soul thrilled with the sense 
 of battle these come back upon him, when 
 time and years and all that had gone 
 between n"a^"Taugrit~Tirni their '"meaning, 
 words spoken to others and handed on 
 to him, treasured side by side with words 
 which he had heard himself, treasured and 
 thought over and ordered into the wondrous 
 story, in which He shows us, as it was 
 exposed in that spiritual Passion which went 
 before what we call the Passion, the inner 
 truth which was at the core of the Gospel 
 of Life. 
 
 8. Seen in Retrospect as the Gospel presents it. 
 
 That the substance and purport of this 
 teaching became part and parcel of the
 
 46 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 life of the Church is evident from a com- 
 parison of the working Gospel of the Church, 
 as it is exhibited in the early Epistles of 
 St Paul, with the Gospel of the Three. 
 
 The contrast between the two is striking 
 in many ways. That a record, so uncoloured 
 by a creed or by a reflective theory of 
 the religion whose origin it pictures as 
 the Gospel of the Three, should have 
 lived on through the time when St Paul's 
 early epistles were written, and when we 
 see, not from what he maintains but 
 from what~ he assumes, that a creed, a 
 reflective theory of the Gospel, had become 
 part of the daily life of the Church, is a 
 wonder which is done away by no 
 theory of the origin and credibility of the 
 documents concerned. But what concerns 
 us here is that the creed, the current 
 creed of the Church of the early Epistles, 
 is the creed of the Four Gospels, not the 
 creed of the Three. To take the two most 
 obvious instances, the Johannine doctrine 
 of the Holy Spirit as the principle of life 
 in the believer only appears in two passages
 
 I.] SEEN IN RETROSPECT 47 
 
 in the Three. 1 It appears five times in 
 the Epistles to the Thessalonians, and is 
 so much part and parcel of the whole con- 
 ception of the Christian life implied in 
 i Corinthians, that no enumeration of the 
 passages in which there is explicit mention 
 of the Holy Spirit in this relation would 
 do justice to the facts. And the Johannine 
 doctrine of the co-equal Godhead of the 
 Father and the Son, which in the Galilean 
 Gospel appears explicitly only in the bap- 
 tismal formula, 2 and in St Matthew xi. 27, 
 and St Luke x. 22, is again part and parcel 
 of the working creed of i Corinthians. 
 
 But though the purport and effect of 
 the Revelation to the disciples through the 
 Ministry at Jerusalem thus plainly passed 
 into the conscious soul of the Christian 
 Society, we can well believe that it took 
 all the years, which the longest spaiT"of 
 human life could give to the disciple that 
 witnessed of these things and wrote these 
 things, to afford him the spiritual perspective 
 
 1 (i) St Matt. x. 20 ; St Luke xii. 12 ; (2) St Luke xi. 13. 
 8 St Matt, xxviii. 19.
 
 48 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP 
 
 in which he sees the story that he tells. 
 The Gospel has been in this respect compared 
 to the prophetical retrospects of the Old 
 Testament. To accept the comparison as 
 luminously suggestive is not necessarily to 
 accept any view, with which the suggestion 
 may be associated, as to the degree in which 
 the record of sheer fact enters into the story. 
 The value of the suggested comparison would 
 not be diminished, if we believed St John's 
 to be the most trustworthy historical guide 
 of all tlie Rjur G6J>els. /vna as regards 
 our present purpose of describing in outline 
 the Gospel of Jerusalem, the Gospel of the 
 Rejection, even if it must be largely a 
 matter of individual judgment of what pro- 
 portion of the discourses in St John we can 
 say These are the veritable words that 
 fell from the lips of Christ even if we were 
 to accept the conclusion that ihe writer 
 himself would hardly have been able to 
 distinguish the original remembrance from 
 the later interpretation which emerged in 
 his mind, as reflection led him to the true 
 understanding of its meaning the fact that
 
 I.] THE GOSPEL OF THE OFFER OF LIFE 49 
 
 these questions are left undiscussed and 
 undecided is so far from incapacitating us 
 from asking what are the main lines of the 
 teaching of the Gospel of the Rejection at 
 Jerusalem, that the answer to this latter 
 question may well put us in a better position 
 for giving to the former questions such 
 answer as they may need to have or may 
 be able to receive. 
 
 9. The Gospel of the Offer of Life in the 
 Person of the Son of God. 
 
 The Gospel of the Jerusalem Ministry then 
 is the "Gospel of the offer of (i) Life ; (2) 
 in the Person of the Son of God. 
 
 Since the offer of life is not accepted, our 
 Lord is continually driven back, in self- 
 defence, on the personal claim which was 
 involved in the offer and justified it. Hence 
 there is a triple development to be observed : 
 
 (1) The Development of the Offer of Life. 
 
 (2) The Development of the Rejection. 
 
 (3) The Development of the Personal Claim. 
 It is in meeting the rejection of the 
 
 G
 
 50 THE GOSPEL OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. I. 
 
 offer that the offer and the claim become 
 separated from one another, that the personal 
 offer of Himself as the Life is converted into 
 a personal claim to the possession of the 
 authority and right to make the offer. The 
 offer being rejected, the claim remains, and 
 remains not by His act but by theirs 
 isolated from the offer of which it was 
 naturally a part. And the successive stages 
 in the development of the Gospel of Life 
 are accordingly marked by a series of great 
 utterances in which the personal claim 
 crystallises, and stands out as the ground 
 of conflict. These successive stages in the 
 development may be briefly indicated here.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE 
 
 Preparatory Stage : The Need of Life 
 (Chapters II., III., and IV.). 
 
 WHEN our Lord purged the Temple at the 
 Passover, His act was nothing less than a 
 national call to repentance, an appeal to 
 the need of moral regeneration. The scene 
 presented by the Temple court was an out- 
 rage to Jehovah, the God of Righteousness. 
 His act was a rebuke of sin, touching 
 probably directly the interests of the rulers, 
 the High Priestly caste, who would be the 
 gainers by the traffic, but addressed to the 
 conscience, not only of the rulers, but of the 
 religious community at large. The moral 
 appeal fell flat. There was no moral re- 
 sponse. The traffic was probably not specially
 
 52 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 popular, and this may have checked the ex- 
 pression of the resentment which the rulers 
 would naturally feel; but in a spiritually inert 
 religious society it may well have been re- 
 garded with the acquiescence of a merely 
 passive dislike. At any rate, the only 
 recorded response is a demand for an 
 external sign to justify the act. The 
 answer as to the rebuilding of the 
 Temple to those to whom it was made 
 merely enigmatical, and signifying on His 
 part only His entire disregard of the 
 temper that prompted the demand, in 
 itself pointed on to a future manifestation 
 of the power of renewal of religious life. 
 It was understood by them literally of the 
 fabric. It was meant by Him no doubt 
 somewhat in the sense of "God is able of 
 these stones to raise up children unto 
 Abraham." It was afterwards referred by 
 the disciples to the Resurrection, as the 
 supreme manifestation of the life-giving 
 power. The act of rebuke did not bite 
 home enough to provoke any notice of 
 the claim involved in the words, " My
 
 II.] PREPARATORY STAGE 53 
 
 Father's House." The claim is here put 
 forward merely in its natural association 
 with the act. It is not aggressively put 
 forward, and there is no controversy to 
 draw it into separate prominence. 
 
 The offer therefore is the call to re- 
 pentance, the offer of moral regeneration. 
 The rejection simply lies in the fact that 
 the call to repentance is disregarded, that 
 the need of life, the need of moral regenera- 
 tion, is unfelt. And the claim is the claim 
 of authority implied in the act, and expressed 
 in the words, " My Father's House." 
 
 This passive rejection appears in another 
 form as apparent "belief on His Name," 
 belief which he rates at its true value and 
 disregards. The significance of the fact 
 that He disregards it can scarcely be ex- 
 aggerated. Plainly it made a great im- 
 pression on the disciple at the time that He 
 should do the works which evoked belief, 
 that the belief should be evoked, and that 
 He should disregard it. It implied in our 
 Lord a sense that virtue had not gone out 
 of Him, that the Love had manifested itself,
 
 54 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 and had met with no real response. The 
 rejection on His part of the unreal response 
 testifies to the strength of the expectation, 
 to the spiritual force which He had put forth, 
 to the significance of the appeal which He 
 had made, and made in vain. 
 j And the inner meaning of the whole story 
 ! of the first offer to Jerusalem is given to us 
 j in the talk with Nicodemus. Nicodemus 
 represents the highest point reached at 
 Jerusalem in the apprehension of the offer 
 of our Lord. And the highest point reached 
 
 """^"^^ ^^^^^^"'^^^^^^'"^Y^^^M^nMMwwi^^MM- 
 
 is the recognition of our Lord as a teacher 
 come from God. Against this attitude of 
 
 (receptivity towards new teaching, our Lord 
 sets the need of the new birth without which 
 no man can enter into the Kingdom of God. 
 " The teacher of Israel " failed of his vocation, 
 who clid not understand this neecL This, 
 the need in man of the new life from God, 
 was the " earthly thing." To be ignorant 
 or unconscious of this need of a new life 
 was to be incapable of apprehending the 
 "heavenly" thing, the offer of eternal life 
 which the Love of God would give through
 
 II.] PREPARATORY STAGE 55 
 
 the lifting up of the Son of Man, as God 
 had given life and deliverance of old when 
 Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
 ness. This was the nature of the rejection 
 at its earliest stage the unconsciousness of 
 spiritual need, which rendered them in- 
 capable of hearing and believing the offer 
 of spiritual life that was to be made. This 
 was the root of that antagonism which 
 grew into embittered enmity. Nothing is so 
 provocative of apparently unreasoning hatred 
 as the suggestion of a deep defect of which 
 the subject is unconscious, the offer of a moral 
 rehabilitation which he does not feel himself 
 to need. It gives mortal offence to the 
 deepest instinct of self-sufficiency. This is 
 the rooted moral enmity with which at 
 Jerusalem our Lord finds Himself face to 
 face from the first. 
 
 Feeling Himself to be in an alien and 
 unreceptive atmosphere, He leaves Jerusalem, 
 at first for the borders of Judaea, and then, 
 on the imprisonment of St John the Baptist, 
 for Galilee. 1 
 
 1 Cp. Part I., i., pp. 4, 5.
 
 56 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 The journey through Samaria shows us 
 what thoughts were uppermost in His mind 
 as He turned His back upon Jerusalem : (i) 
 The gift of the Spirit "Thou wouldest 
 have asked of Him and He would have 
 given thee Living Water"; (2) The con- 
 viction of sin, which was the first step 
 towards receiving the gift " Come, see a 
 man which told me all that ever I did " ; (3) 
 The spirituality of the worship or service of 
 God which was the end to be attained that 
 which it was the privilege of the Jew to 
 know " We know what we worship," 
 " They that worship Him must worship 
 Him in spirit and in truth," "The Father 
 seeketh such to worship Him;" and under- 
 lying all these, though put forward only to 
 confirm them " We know that Messiah 
 cometh," " I that speak unto thee am He." 
 
 The upshot of this visit to Jerusalem, 
 preparatory to the offer of the new Life 
 and the Rejection which was to follow, is 
 that the rejection of the offer of the Divine 
 Life by the Jewish religion as an organised 
 whole is predetermined by their whole moral
 
 II.] THE OFFER OF LIFE 57 
 
 attitude, by the absence of response to the 
 moral appeal, by the absence of spiritual 
 discernment of the meaning of His signs, 
 by the absence of any sense of the need of 
 renewal, of the need of a new Life. 
 
 Nevertheless the offer had to be made, 
 and made to them, in order that through 
 the witness of His own who believed, it 
 might stand on record as the appeal of the 
 Love of God to the sin of niari~tHrougE His 
 
 people whom He had chosen. 
 
 - - .-,,..- 
 
 i. The Offer of Life : The Life that 
 Heals (Chapter V.). 
 
 The Life is offered first as the Healing Life. 
 This is"' the simplest, the most obvious, the 
 most direct appeal that could be made. The 
 healing of the impotent man at the Pool 
 is the appeal of a work of mercy, done^on 
 the Sabbath Day as a challenge to the 
 Rulers of the Jewish religion to welcome 
 the work of mercy as God's work done on 
 God's Day. The Sabbath is God's rest. 
 The work of mercy is a part of that work 
 
 H
 
 58 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 of Love which God worketh even until now 
 in this present time which is the day of 
 His Rest. The work should have spoken 
 for itself, and shown that He who did it 
 came from God. As it did not speak for 
 itself to them, He is driven to justify it in 
 words which embody His claim as the Son 
 to interpret the Father's mind, and to do 
 the Father's life-giving work. " My Father 
 worketh hitherto and I work." " As the 
 Father raiseth the dead, and quickeneth 
 them, so the Son also quickeneth whom He 
 will." 1 He does nothing of Himself. 1 He 
 does not bear witness of Himself. The 
 works which the Father hath given Him 
 to do, the very works He does, bear witness 
 of Him that the Father hath sent Him. 8 
 They have not His word abiding in them. 4 
 They have not the Love of God in them- 
 selves. 8 And so the outcome of this mani- 
 festation of the Life as Healing Power is 
 that " for this cause the Jews sought to 
 
 1 St John v. 21. 3 St John v. 36. 
 
 a St John v. 19, * St John v. 38. 
 
 St John. v. 42.
 
 H.] THE BREAD OF LIFE 59 
 
 kill Him," 1 because, not seeing the moral 
 appeal of the work of mercy, ancf therefore 
 resenting it as a breach of the Sabbath, 
 they further resented the claim of " My 
 Father worketh hitherto and I work,"" the 
 claim to be verified only in the apprehension 
 of the work of Love as Divine, the claim that 
 He was one with the authority from which 
 the religious institutions of Judaism derived. 
 The latent antagonism has now developed 
 into a declared opposition with a definite 
 issue, the claim of a Divine authority, but 
 the manifestation proceeds upon its course. 
 
 2. The Bread of Life: The Water of 
 Life : The Light of Life ; The Con- 
 flict in Galilee (Chapter VI.) and in 
 Jerusalem (Chapter VII.). 
 
 At the next point at which St John 
 takes up the story, the opposition thus 
 provoked at Jerusalem has followed Him 
 
 to Galilee, and the conflict there set up 
 
 then surges Back to Jerusalem. He now 
 
 1 St John v. 1 8.
 
 60 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 presents Himself not as the Healer, the 
 Deliverer, but as the Satisfier of the 
 constant needs of the^ soul. "I am the 
 Bread of Life " " If any man thirst let Hlfti 
 
 come unto Me and clrinkT^ - " I am the 
 Light of the World," identifying Himself 
 with the FatKer in the manifestations of 
 His care for His people in the wilderness 
 after the deliverance, the giving of the 
 manna, of the water from the rock, of the 
 light to guide them on their way. 
 
 It is on the occasion of the first great 
 utterance, just at the time when our Lord's 
 popularity in Galilee reaches a climax " they 
 were about to come and take Him by force 
 to make Him king" that the opposition 
 of "the Jews" breaks in, not only to 
 strengthen and consolidate the tendencies 
 which in Galilee ran counter to this popu- 
 larity, but to invade with their influence 
 the body of disciples whom He was gather- 
 ing out of those who flocked to follow 
 Him. "The Jews murmured concerning 
 Him because He said, I am the bread 
 which came down out of heaven." They
 
 ii.] THE BREAD OF LIFE 61 
 
 murmured at the claim of a Divine 
 origin. 
 
 Our Lord's answer was to restate the 
 offer and the claim : " The bread of God is 
 that which cometh down out of heaven and 
 giveth life unto the world," and to restate 
 it now in words which implied, what their 
 rejection of the offer of Life forced upon 
 His own mind, that the life will be given 
 by sacrifice. " The bread which I will 
 give is my Flesh, for the life of the 
 world." When these words provoke fresh 
 questioning He makes this meaning plainer. 
 " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of 
 Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life 
 in yourselves." And it is on the issue 
 thus raised that His disciples are divided; 
 many of them went back and walked no 
 more with Him. 
 
 St John represents our Lord at this point 2 
 as reluctant to precipitate the issue of the 
 conflict. He went on walking in Galilee. 3 
 
 1 Cp. Part III., ch. iii., p. 97. 3 St John vii. I. 
 
 3 The words are " After these things Jesus was walking " 
 or "went on walking in Galilee." (i) It is not implied that 
 this was TH^S8g333ng7ra llw Valkmg in Galilee." (2) Galilee,
 
 6a THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 He refused to come up to the Feast of the 
 Tabernacles with any challenging publicity. 
 When He does come He finds Himself in 
 the midst of the waves of controversy about 
 Himself, controversy between a partial and 
 hesitating popular acceptance "some say 
 He is a good man" and the determined 
 rejection of the Jews, determined, as St 
 John expressly tells us, by His having made 
 a man every whit whole on the Sabbath ; 
 controversy between Jerusalem and Galilee 
 " Doth Christ come out of Galilee ? " " Art 
 thou also of Galilee ? " 
 
 In this atmosphere of conflict the irre- 
 sistible appeal of His words appears to 
 exert a new power : " Never man spake as 
 this man." And it is of the simple and 
 constant needs of spiritual Life that He 
 speaks, as they were symbolised in the 
 ceremonies of the Feast of Tabernacles, in 
 the ritual of the established religion. " If 
 
 contrasted for the purposes of the Evangelist with Jerusalem, 
 would very naturally cover the outlying borders towards Tyre 
 and Sidon, through Decapolis, and towards Cccsarea Philippi, 
 the districts of what we have called the Ministry of Flight, 
 after which He began His approach to Jerusalem.
 
 II.] THE BREAD OF LIFE 63 
 
 any man thirst let Him come unto Me and 
 drink. He that believeth on Me, as the 
 Scripture said, out of his belly shall flow 
 rivers of living water." " I am the Light 
 of the world : he that followeth Me shall not 
 walk in darkness, but shall have the Light 
 of Life." 
 
 It was in boldly meeting the antagonism 
 provoked by this last saying the accusa- 
 tion that He bore witness of Himself that 
 He emphasised the Divine sanction under 
 which He spoke, and the Divine origin and 
 authority which He claimed, and pointed 
 on to their lifting up of the Son of Man 
 as the revelation to the world that He 
 came from the Father. And the antagonism 
 is carried to a new intensity by the fact 
 that these words caused many to believe 
 on Him. For to them that believed He 
 put the crucial test in the offer of the 
 freedom from sin, an offer which made no 
 appeal to those who trusted in themselves 
 as children of Abraham. This, the offer 
 of the freedom from sin, is the word which 
 had not "free course" in them. It was
 
 64 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 this which reawakened in them the deadly 
 antagonism, which showed them to be not 
 children of God or children of Abraham, 
 but children of the devil. And it was their 
 resentment at the sense that, as the Giver 
 of Life, He ranked Himself above Abraham 
 which called forth the underlying claim that 
 His Life-giving power flowed from a Divine 
 and Eternal Being. " Before Abraham was, 
 I am." He claims to be one with God, not 
 merely as the author of their own religious 
 institutions, but one in His Eternity with 
 the Eternal God whom in Jehovah the Jews 
 had learnt to know. And it was this final 
 utterance which was followed by the threat 
 of immediate personal attack. " They took 
 up stones to cast at Him." 
 
 The moral temper of Our Lord's Divine 
 claim : " I do nothing of Myself," " I can of 
 Myself do nothing " the humility, which is 
 never so overwhelmingly direct and entire as 
 when the claim is at its height, must have 
 been to them if we dare attempt to penetrate 
 the secret of their antagonism essentially 
 repellent. That they should be morally blind
 
 IL] THE LIFE THE DIVINE FELLOWSHIP 65 
 
 to its attraction is the natural result of their 
 spiritual self-sufficiency the seal of their 
 spiritual alienation. 
 
 We pass on to a stage at which the 
 spiritual conflict deepens into the manifesta- 
 tion of this spiritual alienation, and the 
 offer, as He draws apart from the Jews, 
 takes shape in the picture of the spiritual 
 fellowship from which they are excluding 
 themselves. 
 
 3. The Life as the Divine Fellowship : 
 The Separation (Chapters IX. and X.). 
 
 From the time of the Feast of Tabernacles 
 the conflict is continuous, but the healing 
 of the man born blind marks a fresh stage 
 in our Lord's manifestation and in the 
 opposition of the Jews, and seems to belong 
 in time as well as in teaching to the events 
 of the Feast of Dedication. 
 
 Taking up the thread of teaching from 
 the Feast of Tabernacles, He does the act 
 of healing as the " Light of the world," : and 
 
 ' St John ix. 5; 
 
 1
 
 66 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 once more He does it on the Sabbath Day. 1 
 The Jews "had agreed already that if any 
 man should confess Him to be the Christ, 
 he should be put out of the synagogue," 2 
 and accordingly when the man that was born 
 blind will not repudiate his Healer " they 
 cast him out." 3 Our Lord, in inviting and 
 receiving his faith in Himself, makes the 
 inevitable judgment of the Light between 
 those who receive and those who refuse it. 
 And then follow the Parables of the Door 
 of the Sheepfold and of the Good Shepherd. 
 He is contrasting the community from which 
 the man has been cast out with the com- 
 munity into which he has been received. In 
 His indirect rebukes of the rulers He recalls 
 the rebuke of the shepherds in Ezekiel. 4 
 " The diseased have ye not strengthened, 
 neither have ye healed that which was sick, 
 neither have ye bound up that which was 
 broken, neither have ye brought again that 
 which was driven away, neither have ye 
 sought that which was lost." In taking to 
 
 1 St John ix. 14. ' St John ix. 34. 
 
 1 St John ix. 22. 4 Ezekiel xxxiv. 4.
 
 II.] THE LIFE THE DIVINE FELLOWSHIP 67 
 
 Himself Jehovah's title of the Shepherd of 
 Israel, He contrasts Himself with them, 
 " The thief cometh not, but that he may 
 steal and kill and destroy : I came that they 
 may have life, and may have it abundantly." 
 But even more He is picturing the sympathy 
 between the shepherd and the sheep. " The 
 sheep follow him, for they know his voice." l 
 " I am the Good Shepherd, and I know 
 Mine own and Mine own know Me, even 
 as the Father knoweth Me and I know 
 the Father, and I lay down My life for the 
 sheep." Beyond the fold of Israel He looks 
 out towards the Gentiles. " Other sheep 
 I have which are not of this fold." 2 
 
 For when they challenge Him to tell them 
 plainly whether He is the Christ, He answers 
 that He has told them, and that the works 
 that He does in the Father's name these 
 bear witness of Him. " But ye believe not, 
 because ye are not of My sheep." 3 It is 
 this sense of sheer alienation of spirit from 
 them which has led to His manifestation of 
 
 1 St John x. 4. a St John x. 14-16. 
 
 3 St John x. 26.
 
 68 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 Himself as the Giver of Eternal Life in the 
 Fellowship of the Love of God. "My sheep 
 hear My voice, and I know them, and they 
 follow Me : and I give unto them Eternal 
 Life ; and they shall never perish, and no one 
 shall snatch them out of My hand." Finally, 
 He could only justify this sure hold on His 
 own to those who were without by the claim 
 that to this Divine Fellowship He in His 
 own Being belongs. " My Father, which 
 hath given them to Me, is greater than all, 
 and no man is able to snatch them out of 
 My Father's hand. I and My Father are 
 one." l 
 
 4. Conclusion ; The Offer vindicated 
 (Chapter XI.) and rejected (Chapter XII.). 
 
 The manifestation of Life has been carried 
 to its highest the Life which finally meets 
 the need of man by admitting him into the 
 Fellowship of the Love of God. Our thoughts 
 have been already directed towards the inner 
 circle of His own. As the end approaches, 
 
 1 St John x. 27-30.
 
 ii.] CONCLUSION 69 
 
 the threads draw together, and the revelation 
 to the Jews, to the people, and to His own 
 tend to coincide. It is in the immediate 
 presence of His own that He makes His 
 final vindication of the offer of Life, in 
 which He declares Himself to be the Resur- 
 rection and the Life, in the work which by 
 increasing His popular following brought the 
 antagonism of the Jews to a head. " Many 
 of the Jews which came to hear, and beheld 
 that which He did, believed on Him. But 
 some of them went away to the Pharisees, 
 and told them the things which Jesus had 
 done. The chief priests therefore and the 
 Pharisees gathered a council. ... So from 
 that day they took counsel that they might 
 put Him to death." 1 
 
 1 The stages of active antagonism on the part of the Jews 
 seem to be as follows : 
 
 (i.) St John v. The Evangelist finds here the 
 original motive of mortal enmity, but he does not describe 
 this as the time when any plan was formed or any action 
 taken. 
 
 (2.) St John vi. The Jews follow Him to Galilee. 
 Chapter vii. I indicates that during this time the knowledge 
 that the Jews were seeking to kill Him was His motive for 
 walking in Galilee, but it is not suggested that the Jews had 
 taken any action. 
 
 (3.) St John vii. and viii. The chief priests and
 
 70 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE [CHAP. 11. 
 
 St John records our Lord's retirement 
 from the neighbourhood of Jerusalem till 
 the Passover, the stir about Him which 
 caused a gathering to Bethany when He 
 came up there for the Passover and a plot 
 against the life of Lazarus. He tells of the 
 entry of " the King of Israel " into Jerusalem, 
 and of the coming of the Greeks, with the 
 promise of the wider manifestation to come, 
 and then sums up the great rejection with 
 the quotations from the book of the prophet 
 Isaiah, "He hath blinded their eyes and 
 He hardened their heart ; Lest they should 
 see with their eyes and perceive with their 
 heart, and should turn, and I should heal 
 them." 
 
 Pharisees send officers to take Him, apparently with the 
 purpose of hearing Him and passing judgment upon Him. 
 This stage closes with the impulsive attack provoked by 
 His claim of an Eternal Being. 
 
 (4.) St John ix. and x. It is already determined that 
 if any man should confess Him to be Christ he should be 
 put out of the Synagogue. And at the end of this stage the 
 claim of union with the Father again provokes a passionate 
 assault, and after this the attempt to take Him is renewed. 
 
 (5.) St John xi. The council called on the reception 
 of the news as to the raising of Lazarus is marked as the 
 date of the really final decision.
 
 PART III 
 
 THE GOSPEL IN THE MINDS OF THE DISCIPLES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION 
 
 i. After the Summary of the Rejection 
 follows the Final Training of the 
 Apprehension of the Disciples to witness 
 the Issue. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the Gospel thus far, from the 
 first visit to Jerusalem up to the summary 
 of the Rejection, we have been face to face 
 with the world the world that rejects. 
 Christ and the world have been the persons 
 in the drama. The disciples have been in 
 the background or have been spectators on 
 the scene. Now the world drops away and 
 
 disappears, and we are alone with Him and 
 
 71
 
 72 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION [CHAP. 
 
 the disciples of His love, and before they 
 witness the issue of the Rejection in His 
 Crucifixion He tells them, as Love can speak 
 to Love, the truths which in time to come 
 will interpret the experience through which 
 they are about to pass. 
 
 2. The Nature of their Growth of Apprehen- 
 sion illustrated by a Comparison of St 
 Johns Account of their Mental Attitude 
 and that of the Three. 
 
 How the experience of a disciple looked 
 to the disciple who recorded it at the time 
 when he recorded it the Gospel tells us. 
 But at this stage we cannot avoid asking 
 ourselves how it looked to the disciples at 
 the time when they passed through it. The 
 Gospel itself suggests that the apprehension 
 of the disciple grew between the time of 
 the events he records and the time when 
 he- recorded them. Such a growth of appre- 
 hension no doubt plays a large part in the 
 history of the Gospel. There is an apparent 
 contrast between St John and the Three
 
 i.] ST JOHN'S ACCOUNT 73 
 
 in this matter of the growth of apprehension. 
 And it will throw light on the general 
 question of the growth of apprehension in 
 the disciples to compare the record of St 
 John with the record of the Three, in order 
 to see whether the two representations of 
 the mental attitude of the disciples to their 
 Lord harmonise into a single picture. The 
 apparent discrepancy between St John and 
 the Three is that he makes the apprehension 
 and acceptance by the disciples of our Lord's 
 personal claim as the Messiah and the Son 
 of God come much earlier in the story than 
 it does in the Galilean Gospels. The true 
 relation to one another of the story of St 
 John and the story of the Three in this 
 matter of the growth of the apprehension 
 by the disciples of our Lord's personal 
 claim on their allegiance, and the true 
 nature of the growth of their apprehension, 
 may perhaps be best seen if we consider 
 the obvious instance of the contrast between 
 the two stories. 
 
 K
 
 74 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION [CHAP. 
 
 3- Apparent Contrast between the Two as to 
 the Acknowledgment of our Lord as 
 Messiah. 
 
 In the three Galilean Gospels St Peter's 
 confession, " Thou art the Christ," comes, we 
 should say at first sight, as a momentous per- 
 ception and acknowledgment of our Lord's 
 personal claim, and it comes after the 
 Feeding of the Five Thousand, in the second 
 half of His Ministry, just as He is beginning 
 to teach them to look towards the end. 
 
 In St John's Gospel, on the other hand, 
 the words in which St Peter first hears of 
 our Lord are the words of his brother St 
 Andrew, " We have found the Christ." The 
 acknowledgment of the Christ appears in 
 the one story as the climax, in the other as 
 the starting-point. 
 
 4. Reasons why the Acknowledgment should 
 have been held in Check in Galilee. 
 
 In examining the apparent contradiction 
 there are several things to be borne in mind.
 
 I.] THE CHECK IN GALILEE 75 
 
 The work of_the Galilean Ministry was 
 to build up the beginnings of a new spiritual 
 society independent of Judaism. This work 
 needed time. It must not be interrupted by 
 anything which would prematurely provoke 
 that antagonism which He had left Judsea 
 to avoid. 
 
 The aim again would not be to evoke 
 but rather to check among His disciples 
 the superficial enthusiasm of loyalty, such 
 as might well among the simple be merely 
 personal. The society of which the Person 
 was the Head must first be formed, its 
 temper and spirit experienced in their 
 fellowship with Him. 
 
 To have allowed His works to produce 
 their full and natural effect in focussing 
 popular enthusiasm, to lay premature stress 
 on His personal claim would have defeated 
 both these objects. It would have provoked 
 the conflict with Judaism which it was 
 essential to delay till the new fellowship 
 was formed. It would have excited the 
 minds of His disciples about His personal 
 greatness, when he wished them calmly to
 
 76 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION [CHAP. 
 grow into the sense of what His fellowship 
 
 O ^^, ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ * 
 
 meant. It would have brought to the front 
 in their minds all the mistaken expectations 
 as to the Messiah which they shared with 
 the mass of the people, when He wished 
 gradually to form in them the mind and 
 character which would enable them, when 
 the critical moment came, to rise to the 
 conception of the suffering Christ. 
 
 In Jerusalem the situation was entirely 
 different. There, if the Person of Christ 
 had evoked enthusiasm at all, it would have 
 been the enthusiasm of adherence to the 
 promised King of the Kingdom which was 
 always before their minds. If Jerusalem 
 had accepted Him it was as the King that 
 she was called upon to accept Him. It 
 was at Jerusalem that He did allow Himself 
 t> l)e welcomed as "the King of Israel." 1 
 It was as the King that she rejected Him. 
 " We have no king but Caesar." She 
 rejected Him because the religious society 
 of Judaism refused to accept the Spirit by 
 which He would have her to be ruled. 
 
 1 St John xii. 13.
 
 I.] THE GALILEAN RECORD 77 
 
 These considerations go to explain why 
 the personal claim was not explicit, and 
 the personal recognition consequently not 
 evoked in the earlier stages in the Galilean 
 Gospels. 
 
 5. The Galilean Record shows a Virtual 
 Recognition of Messianic Authority 
 from the first, but He was not the 
 Messiah they expected. 
 
 Turn then to the Galilean record. The 
 extreme inference which might be drawn 
 from the contrast between St John and the 
 Three, that the disciples did not recognise 
 our Lord as the Messiah until St Peter's 
 confession, will scarcely stand through even 
 a cursory reading of their story. 
 
 Their immediate acceptance of the call 
 by the lake, recorded by St Mark at the 
 very beginning of his story as the first step 
 in the formation of the Galilean fellowship, 
 not merely accords with, but even demands, 
 some previous knowledge of Him, and 
 implies a recognition of a supreme claim
 
 78 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION [CHAP. 
 
 over themselves and their lives. They 
 hear the demoniacs call upon Him as the 
 Son of God, and the recorded impression 
 is that "He suffered them not to speak 
 because they knew that He was the Christ." 
 When He forgives the sins of the paralytic 
 they hear Him accused of blasphemy, i.e. 
 of usurping the prerogative of God, and 
 there is no repudiation on His part. He 
 claims that He is the Lord of the Sabbath. 8 
 He tells them that they, as His disciples, 
 are the salt of the earth, the light of the 
 world. He tells them that He is come to 
 " fulfil " the Law. He claims an equal 
 authority to that with which it was given. 
 " Ye have heard that it was said by them 
 of old time . . . but I say unto you." 
 
 But, on the other hand, we can well 
 imagine that the disciples who had started 
 with the glad recognition, " We have found 
 the Messiah," feeling, as they did, that any 
 public recognition of claims such as His 
 works warranted was checked, were as time 
 went on in somewhat the same state of mind 
 1 St Luke iv. 41. * St Mark ii. 28.
 
 I.] THE GALILEAN RECORD 79 
 
 in which we know St John the Baptist to 
 have been, when he asked, "Art thou He 
 that should come ? " only that hlTTiaxl not, 
 what they had, the sense of Christ's present 
 moral and spiritual power over their souls. 
 He was not the Messiah they had expected. 
 There was no sign of His becoming such a 
 Messiah as they expected. They had to 
 learn their lesson afresh. They were learning 
 it by degrees. They had to earn the blessing 
 of those who were not offended in Him, who 
 did not stumble at His being no more than 
 He showed himself to be, who saw in the 
 few miracles of healing and the preaching 
 of the Gospel to the poor, the promise of 
 greater things than these. 
 
 Meanwhile they felt themselves gathered 
 into a privileged circle of experience, 
 " Behold My mother and My brethren," 1 
 " Unto you it is given to know." 2 And when 
 they are sent out with power to heal, with 
 power over unclean spirits, what are we to 
 imagine that they thought of Him who 
 gave them such authority, even though the 
 1 St Mark iii. 34. 2 Luke viii. 10.
 
 8o THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION [CHAP. 
 
 enthusiasm of a confession of His personal 
 claim was not yet evoked, till it could carry 
 with it the deeper sense which was growing 
 in them of the Kingdom of which He was 
 the King, of the Spirit with which He, the 
 Christ, was anointed ? 
 
 6. And if is at the Climax of the Trial of 
 their Faith in His Messiahship that 
 the Epoch-making Confession is made. 
 
 What was the time when it was evoked ? 
 The great antagonism with the Jews had 
 been developed. The settled Ministry in 
 Galilee had been abandoned. He was on 
 that wider circuit which in one aspect of it 
 was, what it must have eminently seemed 
 to them, a journey of flight. Their hearts 
 might well be failing them. The hopes of 
 that early flash of recognition, in the shape 
 which they must then have taken, had dis- 
 appeared. He had refused to let them seize 
 Him and make Him king. 1 He had already 
 pointed on to His being a sacrifice, in the 
 
 1 St John vi. 15.
 
 I.] DEEPENING APPREHENSION 81 
 
 hard saying about giving His flesh for the 
 life of the world, at which many of His 
 disciples turned back and walked no more 
 with Him. They had clung to Him. To 
 His question, "Will ye also go away?" they 
 had answered, " Lord, to whom shall we go, 
 Thou hast the words of Eternal Life, and 
 we have believed and know that Thou art 
 the Holy One of God." This is the time 
 at which the Three record the direct and 
 explicit question and the answer : " Whom 
 say ye that I am?" "The Christ." 
 
 7. The Development, then, is in the Deepening 
 of their Apprehension of the Meaning 
 of His Messiahship. 
 
 The result of this survey is to remove the 
 appearance of contradiction between St John 
 and the Three, by showing us the nature 
 of the development in the recognition of 
 Christ by His disciples. The development 
 is the gradual interpretation of the first 
 flash of perception ; it is an enrichment of 
 apprehension in the light of an experience 
 
 L
 
 82 THE GROWTH OF APPREHENSION [CHAP. I. 
 
 which at once tested and deepened their 
 hold on the truth, and transformed the truth 
 itself which tHey held. 
 
 The process was not over when the great 
 confession was made. Still they could 
 relapse into the old idea of a King on whose 
 right hand and whose left His favoured 
 disciples should sit, of a kingdom to be 
 restored to Israel. When the end came 
 they were still only growing into an appre- 
 hension of the meaning of " We have found 
 the Christ," "Thou art the Christ." The 
 growth went on after the Confession. It 
 went on after the Resurrection, after Pente- 
 cost. We see it still proceeding in the Acts 
 and in the Epistles of St Paul.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE 
 
 I . The Deepening of their Apprehension still 
 goes on : St Johns Gospel itself is 
 the Climax, and the Chapters before 
 the Passion record one Stage in the 
 Advance. 
 
 IT is the latest recorded stage of this 
 growing apprehension of Christ by the 
 disciples of His love which is presented to 
 us by the Gosple of St John, as he records 
 his witness of the great Rejection. And 
 it is one step in advance in this growing 
 apprehension which he records between the 
 record of the Rejection and the record of 
 its issue in the Crucifixion. " Now before 
 the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing 
 that His hour was come that He should 
 
 83
 
 84 LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 depart out of this world unto the Father, 
 having loved His own which were in the 
 world, He loved them unto the end." 
 
 2. Three Times the Disciples come into St 
 Johns story : ( i ) Before the Contact 
 with Judaism ; (2) At the Crisis of the 
 Struggle with Judaism in Galilee ; (3) 
 Now, as receiving the Final Interpreta- 
 tion of the Offer of Life. 
 
 At three points only does St John touch 
 the story of the training of the disciples. 
 
 At the beginning, before the Galilean 
 story, before His first public manifestation 
 at Jerusalem, He pictures the gathering of 
 the first Galilean disciples and the mani- 
 festation of His glory to them in the first 
 miracle in Galilee. Against this tender 
 picture stands silhouetted the first dark 
 shadow of the Rejection at Jerusalem. 
 
 Again, in the middle of the story, at the 
 Feeding of the Five Thousand, he shows 
 how the influence of Jerusalem, the spirit 
 of the Rejection, invaded the Galilean 'circle
 
 IL] THE DISCIPLES IN ST JOHN'S STORY 85 
 
 and threatened the very body of the apostles, 
 and how their faith had grown to a strength 
 which enabled them to stand the strain. 
 
 And now, just before the end, He tells 
 how, loving them to the end, He used the 
 hour of parting to reveal to them the secret 
 of the gift of Life which had been offered 
 in vain to the Jews at Jerusalem. 
 
 That the purport of this final revelation 
 entered into the life of the Church we know 
 from St Paul's Epistles. That the words 
 spoken were treasured in the loving memory 
 of him who records them, the words them- 
 selves would lead us to believe. That their 
 deeper meaning and their bearing on the 
 previous course of teaching at Jerusalem 
 was fully realised by the writer through 
 years of reflection, the record itself would 
 suggest. But in any case, here this body 
 of teaching stands at this particular point 
 in St John's Gospel, commending itself to 
 us as the fuller revelation of that Gospel 
 of Life, which could not be uttered to those 
 who did not believe, and whose spirit at 
 least could be drunk in by those who did
 
 86 LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 believe and love, until the time should 
 come when the experience of the Christian 
 life should enable the love which retained 
 the memory to discern and unfold the 
 meaning of what was said. 
 
 3. It is the Revelation to their Love in the 
 Hour of Parting, the Promise of His 
 Indwelling. 
 
 It is the revelation of love to love, the 
 final preparation of those who loved Him 
 for the manifestation of His love in act 
 upon the Cross, which we watch in the 
 last discourses and the final prayer. " I 
 have told you before it come to pass, that, 
 when it is come to pass, ye may believe." 
 The spiritual force of apprehension to which 
 He appeals is love, the love belonging to the 
 hour of parting. He tells them that He is 
 going away from them : "Yet a little while 
 am I with you." "Whither I go ye cannot 
 come." Their very souls reach out to cling 
 to Him. They need comfort. What is the 
 substance of the comfort which He gives?
 
 II.] I IN THEM 87 
 
 What is the truth which the yearning of 
 their love enables Him to reveal to them ? 
 It is summed up in the closing words of 
 the great prayer : "I in them." 
 
 4. They have learnt (i) Dependence on Him 
 as (2) the Way and (3) the Truth. 
 
 Their desire not to lose their hold on 
 Him is not merely the helpless longing 
 which we know as we stand by those who 
 are passing away from us, the desire to 
 retain the sensible personal presence of 
 those we love. There is more in it than 
 this. 
 
 There is the sense of spiritual depen- 
 dence. They have learnt what they hardly 
 realise that they have learnt the lesson 
 indeed was but half-learnt, they were to 
 learn it afresh and for ever that night, 
 St Peter when he denied Him, the rest 
 when they forsook Him and fled they 
 feel, though they do not know, what 
 He presently told them that they might 
 know, that apart from Him they can do 
 nothing.
 
 88 LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 They have learnt what St Thomas thinks 
 that he has not learnt, but our Lord tells 
 him that he knows it, when He tells him 
 once again what by His presence He has 
 been telling them all the time, " I am 
 the Way." They have learnt the way of 
 righteousness, they have seen the fulfilment 
 of the Eternal Law as it was never learnt 
 or seen by man before. 
 
 They have learnt what St Philip asks 
 that he may be shown, though he has seen 
 it all the time, "He that hath seen Me 
 hath seen the Father," " I am the Truth." 
 God as He is in His Eternal Being has 
 been made known to them. 
 
 5. He leads them on to the Thought of Him 
 as the Life the Identification with 
 Himself through the Spirit. 
 
 But He is leading them on beyond these 
 lessons to another. By the force of their 
 yearning desire not to be separated from 
 Him in whom they have found "the Way," 
 the living Law of God, "the Truth," the
 
 II.] I IN THEM 89 
 
 vision of the Father's face, He is leading 
 them on to the knowledge of God within 
 them, the Gift of the Spirit, " I in them," 
 " I am the Life." 
 
 Towards this need, towards this gift He 
 seems to be guiding them all through the 
 discourse in the Upper Room, afterwards on 
 the way to the Garden, and in the Great 
 Prayer at the end. 
 
 They are to regard themselves as identified 
 with Him. The washing of the feet is to 
 teach them that " Ye should do as I have 
 done to you." The new commandment is, 
 " that ye love one another even as I have 
 loved you." The works that He does shall 
 they do also and greater works than these 
 shall they do because He goes to the Father. 
 And if they feel themselves being separated 
 from Him, there where He will be will He 
 prepare a place for them. Whatsoever they 
 shall ask the Father in His Name He will 
 do. And on them thus asking, in the love 
 which strives to keep His commandments, 
 the Prayer of Christ will call down another 
 Comforter, that He may be with them for 
 
 M
 
 90 LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 ever, the Spirit of the Truth which Christ 
 is no stranger to them, for while Christ 
 is with them He abideth with them, but 
 when Christ is gone He shall be in them ; 
 and in this coming of the Comforter to 
 dwell in them Christ Himself comes to 
 them to give them the Life which He is, 
 " I will come to you, because I live, ye 
 shall live also." " He that loveth Me shall 
 be loved of My Father, and I will love Him 
 and will manifest Myself to Him." "We 
 will come unto Him and make our atxxle 
 witH Him;** And He who records the 
 words records the promise too, of which the 
 record itself was the fulfilment, " He," the 
 Comforter, the Holy Spirit, "shall teach you 
 all things, and bring to your remembrance 
 all that I said to you." 
 
 So again, when they are passing from the 
 Upper Room to me Garden, the teaching 
 of the figure of the Vine is " Abide in Me 
 and I 'In you." "Ye cannot bear fruit 
 except ye abide in Me." "If ye keep My 
 commandments ye shall abide in My Love." 
 " This is My commandment, that ye love
 
 II.] I IN THEM 91 
 
 one another, even as I have loved you." 
 And from this identification of themselves 
 with Him it follows that the world will 
 hate them as it hated Him, as in Him it 
 had both seen and hated both Him and 
 His Father. But once more, in the thought 
 of their continuation of His conflict with 
 the world, He recurs to the gift of the 
 Spirit which is to be their strength. " The 
 Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, shall bear 
 witness of Me, and ye also shall bear 
 witness, because ye have been with Me 
 from the beginning." They are not to be 
 offended, not to stumble at persecution. 
 The Comforter will come and will reprove, 
 convict the world. . . . Even as He spoke 
 they must have felt that what He was 
 saying was but a beginning. So He says, 
 
 1 1 have yet many things to say to you, but 
 ye cannot bear them now7[ By the Spirit 
 
 He would say them. "When He, the 
 
 Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall guide 
 you into all truth. He shall take of Mine 
 and show it unto you." And so though 
 for a little while they should have sorrow,
 
 92 LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE [CHAP. 
 
 in a little while " Ye shall see Me." " Your 
 sorrow shall be turned into joy, and your 
 joy no man taketh from you." 
 
 And once more, in the Great Prayer, He 
 lifts up His eyes to the Father, whom He 
 has glorified by giving to them Eternal 
 Life, which is the knowledge of Him. " I 
 pray for them." " Sanctify them in the 
 truth. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, 
 that they themselves also may be sanctified 
 in truth," that the purpose with which He 
 made known to them the Father might 
 be fulfilled in them, "that the Love where- 
 with Thou lovedst Me may be in them, 
 and I in them." 
 
 6. The Hour of Parting enabled them to 
 drink in the Spirit of His Teaching, 
 and in that Strength to go through 
 the Dark Hour. 
 
 As we trace even one thread of thought 
 through these last discourses and the final 
 Prayer, we cannot help wondering how far 
 those who heard them were able, as they
 
 II.] THE HOUR OF PARTING 93 
 
 heard, to understand. If the full meaning 
 of the words was long in coming home 
 even to him who records them, the experi- 
 ence of that hour of pain and love, of 
 promise and desire, would remain with 
 them promise which touched, they would 
 feel, the very heart of their desire. 
 
 It is said of the Three, whom He took 
 apart with Him while He prayed in 
 the garden, that they slept for sorrow. 
 George Tinworth in picturing the scene 
 has scratched, in the plaster in which he 
 worked, beneath the sleeping St John, " I 
 sleep, but my heart waketh." We, as we 
 read such records as these, feel of ourselves 
 that there is a soul within the soul which 
 carries us beyond the words, though it is 
 the words that interpret to us what we 
 feel. It was this living experience of the 
 Love of Jesus Christ in the hour of part- 
 ing, giving the promise of His perpetual 
 Presence through the gift of the Spirit, 
 which St John interpreted to Himself and 
 to the Church by the record of the words, 
 when Jesus was glorified and the Spirit
 
 94 LESSON OF THE INDWELLING LIFE [CHAP.II. 
 
 was come. It was through the spiritual 
 discipline of this experience that He 
 passed to witness the Judgment and the 
 Death.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION 
 
 i. The Record of the Judgment and the 
 Death is Bare Fact ; the Rest of the 
 Gospel is the Comment. From the 
 first the Death was in View. 
 
 THE actual record of our Lord's Judgment 
 and Death in St John's Gospel is a record 
 of bald hard fact. He omits details, which 
 had already been recorded, and which must 
 be assumed to make his story intelligible. 
 He adds details, such as the knowledge of 
 the man who was known unto the high 
 priest enabled him to add to the story 
 of the trial, and such as the memory of 
 him who stood by the Cross enabled Jhim 
 to add to the story of the Crucifixion 
 and here alone, in the record of the fare- 
 
 95
 
 96 THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 well words to Mary and to himself does 
 he seem for a moment to unbend from 
 the rigid horror of his record. But it is 
 bare fact throughout, fact which is left to 
 speak for itself, as we feel it spoke to 
 him, poignant fact, as when "one of the 
 soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and 
 forthwith came thereout blood and water, 
 and he that saw it bare record." It is 
 naked fact, there is almost no comment. 
 The rest of the Gospel is the comment 
 the story of the manifestation of love in 
 the offer of Eternal Life through the Son 
 of God to those who rejected it, as it was 
 witnessed by His own, whom having loved, 
 He loved to the end. And in the rest of 
 the Gospel the Death, the Crucifixion, the 
 Sacrifice, are in view from the first. 
 
 2. As the Sacrifice ; (a) Behold the Lamb of 
 God; (<$) The Bread which I will give 
 is My Flesh ; (c] Greater Love hath no 
 man than this. 
 
 The Sacrifice is in view as the manifesta- 
 tion of Love to~~HIs~6wn7 to the disciples.
 
 III.] THE SACRIFICE 97 
 
 They are first drawn to Htm bv the words 
 of the Baptist, " Behold, the Lamb of God, 
 that taketh away the sin of the world ! " 
 suggesting to the minds of those who heard 
 them the Lamb that was offered in the 
 morning and in the evening, day by day 
 continually, on the altar in the Temple, and 
 the Paschal Lamb offered at the Passover 
 in memory of the great deliverance, and 
 the prophecy of Him who was to be "led 
 as a lamb to the slaughter," whose soul 
 God was to make "an offering for sin," 
 thoughts and memories full of deep mean- 
 ing ""to those who, as disciples of the 
 Preacher of repentance, had learnt the 
 knowledge of sin. 
 
 It was in their own Galilee, and when they 
 were round about Him, that He told how 
 the Bread that He would give, was His 
 flesh for the life of the world, and except 
 they" ate the flesh of the Son of Man and 
 drank His Blood they had no life in them- 
 selves words which to a Jew could only 
 point to His death as a sacrifice, and to the 
 appropriation of the sacrificed Life. These 
 
 ' ' ' N
 
 98 THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 were the words which made many of His 
 disciples go back and walk no more with 
 
 ^<* l ^*'tWt*^ MMaMWBM *VVHMiB^HMMMWI4B'''V'' ll ' BB ^*iw- 
 
 Him. They mark a crisis of the attach- 
 ment of the disciples to their Lord. It 
 was of these words that St Peter said : 
 "Thou hast the words of Eternal Life." 
 
 And again at the end, when the words 
 He had spoken at the Feast of Dedication 
 were yet fresh in their hearts, " I know 
 Mine own and Mine own know Me, even 
 as the Father knoweth Me and I know 
 the Father, and I lay down My life for the 
 sheep," when, having loved His own, He 
 loved them to the end, He said, " This is 
 My commandment, that ye love one another, 
 even as I have loved you. Greater love 
 hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
 his life for his friends."
 
 in.] THE "LIFTING UP" 99 
 
 3. As the "Lifting Up" associated with the 
 Manifestation of the Fathers Love, 
 and the Attraction of the World ; (a] In 
 the Talk with Nicodemus ; (<5) In the 
 Conflict at the Feast of Tabernacles ; 
 (c] At the Coming of Greeks. 
 
 And, as the Sacrifice has been in view 
 throughout the story of the manifestation of 
 Love, the Crucifixion has been in view 
 throughout the story of the manifestation 
 to those who reject Him. Three times the 
 phrase recurs of which St John says : " This 
 He said, signifying what death He should 
 die." "The Son of Man shall be lifted 
 up," "When ye have lifted up the Son of 
 Man," " I, IF I be lifted up from the earth." 
 AncTthe "lifting up" of the Son of Man 
 seems to be associated on the one hand with 
 the manifestation of the Father, and on the 
 other hand, with the thought that, in this 
 lifting up, through the greater manifestation 
 of Love, their rejection will give to Him the 
 new and larger Israel of those who will be 
 drawn to Him and will receive Him.
 
 loo THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 First, in the talk with Nicodemus, which 
 shows us the secret of me rejection ^ of the 
 Jews, that they felt no need of spiritual 
 renewal, when He is saying to him, "If ye 
 believe not" this, "how shall ye believe if I tell 
 you of heavenly things ? " He goes on, "And 
 as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilder- 
 ness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted 
 up ; that whosoever believeth in Him may 
 have Eternal Life. For God so loved the 
 world, that He gave His only Begotten Son, 
 that whosoever believeth on Him should not 
 perish, but have Eternal Life." 
 
 And again, at the Feast of Tabernacles, 
 when He is telling them that the things 
 which He has heard "from Him" these 
 speaks He to the world, and they perceive 
 not that He is speaking to them of the 
 Father, He adds, " When ye have lifted 
 up the Son of Man, then shall ye know"tKat 
 fam He, and that I do nothing of Myself, 
 but as the Father taught Me I speak these 
 things." And St John describes how even 
 among " the Jews " the intrinsic attraction 
 of the words was felt, "As He spake these
 
 HI.] THE "LIFTING UP" 101 
 
 words many believed on Him" though 
 they were not to "abide in His word." 
 
 And once more at the end of the great 
 drama of rejection, before that appalling 
 summary which closes the twelfth chapter 
 of trie Gospel, now when His manifestation 
 to " His own " is finally closing in, "His 
 own" receiving Him not, and, like a ray 
 of light flashing out into the darkness, the 
 coming of the Greeks to seek Him gives 
 promise of the gathering in of the Gentiles, 
 He "breaks out, "The hour is come, that the 
 Son of Man should be glorified. Except a 
 grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it 
 abideth by itself alone ; but if it die, it 
 beareth much fruit ; " and when the prayer, 
 " Father, glorify Thy Name," is answered 
 by the voice from heaven, He adds, " Now 
 is the judgment of this world, and I, if I 
 be lifted up from the earth, will draw all 
 men tcT Myself." 
 
 If throughout the story of the Gospel the 
 manifestation of Love seems to be cut off 
 from its fruit and result, because it leads 
 to nothing but rejection, here it is not so.
 
 102 THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 Here light begins to break. Here we reach 
 the positive issue, the positive result. The 
 final manifestation of Love, to which the 
 great rejection leads, must draw all men 
 to itself. This is how the whole story of 
 the rejection shines with a strange glory to 
 St John, the glory of the manifestation in 
 which it was to end. And this is the light 
 in which, in the bare record of St John, the 
 Judgment and the Crucifixion stand out. 
 
 4. The Kingdom which is Rejected is the 
 Kingdom of the Truth, the Truth oj 
 the Manifested Love of God. 
 
 This is the New Kingdom, the Kingdom 
 of those who are drawn. He had entered 
 Jerusalem amid the shouts of a crowd, who 
 welcomed Him as the King of Israel. Was 
 He a King? Pilate asked. The answer 
 was that He came to bear witness to the 
 Truth, and every one that was of the Truth 
 heard His voice. That was the nature of 
 His kingdom, the kingdom of those who 
 were drawn by the attraction of the Love 
 manifested as the Truth. From this kingdom
 
 in.] THE KINGDOM OF THE TRUTH 103 
 
 the Rulers of the Jews disinherited them- 
 selves. when tney found themselves driven 
 by their repudiation 01 Him to say: "We 
 
 have no" Icing' but Caesar"" 
 
 TKe^power of tHe Roman Empire was 
 given to it from above, it was ordained by 
 the power that orders all things, as the 
 Prophets had always taught that the powers 
 that be are ordained of God. Those who 
 delivered our Lord to Pilate had the greater 
 sin, because they, the representatives of 
 that Higher Power, had failed to recognise 
 in Him the Mind of God, had failed to 
 see in Him the Christ, the King of the 
 spiritual Israel, and therefore had misused 
 and perverted to compass His destruction 
 the earthly empire which was the instru- 
 ment of the Divine Righteousness. 
 
 Pilate, the stages of whose struggle not to 
 surrender Roman justice to the ill-will of 
 the Jews St John so mercilessly and 
 minutely records, finally flings Him to 
 them with a taunt, "Behold, your King!" 
 unconscious of the irony of his condemna- 
 tion of them and of himself.
 
 104 THE ISSUE OF THE REJECTION [CHAP. 
 
 5. // is Hard Fact, as he, the Disciple, 
 then saw and felt the Fact. 
 
 The scene in itself is a scene of sheer and 
 hard rejection. In every detail of it we 
 feel at once the blind unconsciousness of 
 those who knew not what they did, and 
 yet their clear knowledge of the moral 
 issue as presented to their conscience, half- 
 enlightened as it was. As a mere crime it 
 was a clear-sighted and deliberate crime. It 
 is wonderful to think that this is the scene 
 whose issue was described beforehand in the 
 words : " I will draw all men to Myself." 
 
 But as it is called up before us we see it 
 through his eyes, who records it as he saw 
 it when he wrote the record. Who can say 
 with wnat ~eyes He saw it then when he 
 saw it. Who can say whether in thaTTiour 
 his mind could travel back over treasured 
 memories of dark prophetic words ? Rather 
 perhaps the story as it stands conveys to us 
 the truth. Just so the facts stamped them- 
 selves upon his heart, the bare sheer facts, as
 
 III.] IT IS HARD FACT 105 
 
 to which, as they fell upon his soul, he could 
 neither feel nor think. " Not this man, but 
 Barabbas." "Behold, the Man!" " Behold, 
 your King!" "What I have written I have 
 written." " It is finished."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE REVEALING FACT 
 
 i. " They knew not" till at the Sepulchre 
 the Disciple " saw and believed " 
 
 FOR "as yet they knew not." Sometimes 
 we have^TTnowlrf ITeStJi to be the revealing 
 fact, bringing home to us in a flash the 
 secret of a man's life, the high value at 
 which he is rated, known only when death 
 has rounded his life into a whole. But to 
 them His death was itself a mystery, 
 leaving hopes wrecked, and purposes 
 defeated, and promises unfulfilled. The 
 memories of His deeds and of His words 
 rested like unread riddles in their minds. 
 The burden of wonder and sorrow and 
 pain lay heavy on their hearts. 
 
 What was the revealing fact? St John 
 tells us for himself the moment when the 
 new day dawned and the light shot back 
 
 106
 
 CHAP. IV.] THE NEGATIVE FACT 107 
 
 over the past, and the secret stood out 
 plain and clear, which is written plain and 
 clear throughout his Gospel In Him was 
 Life "These are written, that ye may 
 believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
 God ; and that believing ye may have Life 
 through His Name." The Resurrection, 
 Life through Death, revealed the secret, 
 when "he saw and believed." 
 
 The s~ecret was revealed to Love. Once 
 more the world has dropped away and 
 disappeared. The Resurrection is no part 
 of the revelation to those who rejected 
 Him. For them the Cross was the last 
 word. It is a revelation to those who 
 love. The fact is recorded in the light in 
 which it was apprehended, as the revelation 
 of Eternal Life in the victory of the 
 Living Love over Death. 
 
 2. He saw the Negative Fact, not the 
 return to Life, the Old Life was over. 
 
 As yet they knew not. What was it 
 which he saw and believed ? The great
 
 io8 THE REVEALING FACT [CHAP. 
 
 moment was not when He stood in the 
 midst of them and said, " Receive ye the 
 Holy Ghost." It was not when they 
 received His message, " I ascend unto My 
 Father and your Father." It was when 
 he saw the empty tomb, and the linen 
 clothes lying, from which the body had 
 departed. 
 
 It was a negative fact with which he was 
 face to face. It is no story like the raising 
 of Lazarus. It was not that death had 
 broken in upon the course of life, and then 
 suddenly death had seemed to be only a 
 dream of the night, for the dead had come 
 back to life. It was not that Christ was 
 come back to life. His death was not 
 cancelled, or removed, or done away, or 
 made as though it had not been. The 
 purport of what he saw was like the word 
 of the angel, "He is not here." It was no 
 delusive parting that He had made with 
 them after the supper. He was no longer 
 " with " them, though He manifested Himself 
 to them from time to time. "Touch Me 
 not" marked the character of the Risen
 
 IV.] REVEALING LIFE THROUGH DEATH 109 
 
 Life. It belonged to the Ascended Life 
 rather than to the earthly life which lay 
 behind. 
 
 3. He saw the Linen Clothes lying Empty, 
 revealing Life through Death. 
 
 And this was the convincing thing the 
 negative fact. This was what he saw, and 
 believed. He saw them lying the linen 
 clothes empty of the body which they had 
 enclosed. And, when he followed Simon 
 Peter into the tomb, he saw the napkin 
 which had been about His Head, not lying 
 with the linen clothes, but apart, twisted 
 round, away by itself. 1 That which died 
 ha3 passed away into that which lived. 
 Death itself contributed an element in the 
 truth. Life was revealed as Life through 
 Death. In some such way the words 
 indicate that conviction flashed from what 
 he saw. He saw and believed tlie reality 
 of the death, the reality of the Resurrec- 
 
 1 The interpretation is that given in Latham's " Risen 
 Master." ~
 
 no THE REVEALING FACT [CHAP. 
 
 tion, the continuity between the life that 
 was and the life that is, and the difference 
 between the life that was and the life 
 that is. 
 
 4. The Continuity is Vital to the Experience. 
 Death was not an End but a Begin- 
 ning of the Life that had risen from 
 the Grave-clothes. 
 
 The continuity is vital to the meaning 
 of the experience. He had watched the 
 sinless life, the perfect righteousness, the 
 perfect love. He had seen the rejection 
 grow to hate, and hate threaten and seize 
 and condemn and kill. Death was the 
 utmost it could do. And here in a moment 
 he saw that of that righteousness and love 
 death was not the end. It was a beginning, 
 not an end. It was the beginning of a 
 new and wondrous life which had risen 
 from the grave-clothes where _they lay. 
 What this new life was to Jbe_ they knew 
 not yetT^They waited to see.
 
 IV.] MANIFESTATION OF THE LIVING in 
 
 5. They sought no more the Body of the 
 Dead. They waited for and received 
 the Manifestation of the Living. 
 
 They sought no more for the body of 
 Him tKat was dead. They went back and 
 waited for the manifestation of Him that 
 was alive from the dead. 
 
 And word was brought to them by 
 Mary Magdalene that living communion 
 with Him was given back by His manifes- 
 tation in a bodily form, the means of 
 communion between spirit and spirit like 
 the body of the earthly life, through the 
 lips that had spoken her name, but had 
 forbidden her to lay hold on Him, and had 
 given the promise of a new communion 
 with Him, and with the Father to whom 
 He ascended. 
 
 And in the evening suddenly He was 
 among them Himself, breathing on them 
 the promise of the Spirit, which He had 
 told them they should receive from the 
 Father and from Himself, and in whose
 
 H2 THE REVEALING FACT [CHAP. iv. 
 
 power they should give the forgiveness of 
 sins in which their own new life had 
 begun. 
 
 6. But it was from the Negative Fact that 
 the Disciple dated his Conscious Belief 
 in the Gospel of Eternal Life. 
 
 But as St John looked back, it was to 
 that first hour of the dawn that he looked 
 back. All was rooted in that moment 
 when he saw and believed. As yet they 
 knew not. Now they knew. 
 
 And in the light of this new dawn of 
 knowledge he enters on the long years of 
 tarrying till the Master came the years 
 whose meditative memory gave to us and 
 to the Church the Gospel of Eternal Life.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 i. St Johns Gospel challenges Interpretation 
 as a Gospel of Jerusalem, such as 
 the Story of the Three and Intrinsic 
 Probability alike demand. 
 
 IT remains to sum the results of this 
 study of the Gospel of St John in its 
 relation to the Three. 
 
 Dr Sanday says of the Fourth Gospel 
 ("Criticism of Fourth Gospel," p. 145), that 
 for the particular purpose for which it was 
 written, "Geography did not matter, it 
 was quite indifferent whether the scene 
 was laid in Judsea or in Galilee." I do 
 not think that Dr Sanday would wish to 
 press this statement in any sense in which 
 I should question it. It certainly stands 
 for a truth which I should maintain. And 
 yet I will venture to take the phrase as it 
 113 p
 
 114 CONCLUSION 
 
 stands, as representing the neglect of the 
 point of view from which we are bound to 
 start in appreciating the relation of the 
 Fourth Gospel to the Three. 
 
 The first thing to be said is, Geography 
 does matter. Given the mind of the writer 
 of the Fourth Gospel, as it is revealed to 
 us in his Gospel, it is most improbable 
 that to him any element of fact, which 
 challenges attention in his story, is in- 
 different to the idea which his story 
 presents. The fact that, as he tells us, 
 there was a Gospel preached in Jerusalem, 
 the place which God had chosen to set His 
 name there, in itself asks the questions to 
 which we have endeavoured to suggest the 
 answers. 
 
 The Galilean story again, the story of 
 the Three, not only leaves room for, but 
 demands, a story of a Ministry at Jerusalem 
 to supplement and to explain it. 
 
 And when once we are brought face to 
 face with the probability that there was a 
 Jerusalem Ministry and a Jerusalem Gospel, 
 as it is suggested by the Three that there
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE 115 
 
 was, we see that the supposition that there 
 was such a Ministry and such a Gospel 
 has an intrinsic probability of its own, 
 almost amounting to a moral and spiritual 
 necessity. The main object of the Fourth 
 Gospel, it is true, is beyond place or 
 history, but it is quite inseparable from 
 place and history, and to leave place or 
 history out of account is, in part at least, 
 to lose touch with the deepest truth of 
 the Gospel itself. 
 
 2. // is the Gospel of Eternal Life in the 
 Son of God, the Universal Need of 
 Man, which the Jew had been Divinely 
 prepared to receive. 
 
 The main object of the Gospel is to 
 record in its full meaning the offer of 
 Eternal Life, as rooted in the Divine and 
 Eternal character of Him who made the 
 offer. But this teaching of Eternal Life 
 was at once, and for the same reasons, the 
 Gospel which the Jew, the instructed Jew, 
 the Jew of Jerusalem, ought to have received
 
 n6 CONCLUSION 
 
 with eager and sympathetic welcome, and 
 the life, at first the unconscious life, later 
 the conscious faith and life of that universal 
 human fellowship in God, which grew out 
 of the society founded in Galilee. 
 
 There are passages in the record of the 
 Three, the record of the founding of this 
 fellowship, which presuppose or lead up to 
 the deeper teachings as to the Divine Life 
 given to men, with which the later chapters 
 of St John's Gospel finally present us. 1 But 
 it is St John who records the manifestation 
 of that Eternal Life, of that gift of the 
 Divine Life in man, whose growing fruition 
 we watch in the Church of the Epistles. 
 And he records it as the offer made to 
 the Jews in the home of Jewish religion, 
 and commended to them by appeals to the 
 inner spirit of the Law and the Prophets. 
 
 When He demands of the teacher of 
 Israel the knowledge of the need of a 
 new spirit and a new life, He demands 
 that Israel should have learnt to long for 
 the high promise of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, 
 
 1 St Matthew x. 40, xviii. 20. xxviii. 20 ; St Luke xi. 13.
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ETERNAL LIFE 117 
 
 the promise of the new heart and the 
 new spirit which God would put within 
 them. He challenges acceptance as the 
 Life-giving Deliverer in the name of the 
 God of the Sabbath. The Bread, the 
 Water, the Light of Life, are offers, all of 
 them, that carry back to the inspiration of 
 the history whose memories they treasured. 
 As the Shepherd He takes up the threads 
 of history and psalm and prophecy that 
 lead, through the memories of deliverance 
 and fostering care, to thoughts of the ties 
 of tender and intimate fellowship by which 
 God was bound to His people. He appeals 
 to the need, the human need, of God, as it 
 had been developed, in God's providence, 
 in Israel, the religious protagonist of 
 humanity. To the Israelite the ideas, the 
 experiences, were familiar history by which 
 the sense of this need should have been 
 bred. 
 
 To them whom the Love of God had 
 thus prepared, the Love of God must thus 
 and no otherwise be manifested, because 
 no otherwise could the Love of God to
 
 n8 CONCLUSION 
 
 man be manifested, than through His Love, 
 His " Dilectio," of the people of His choice. 
 Only through the manifestation of this Love 
 to them, and its rejection, could the force 
 of Love that lay behind the manifestation 
 be shewn forth, the force which brought 
 out of the very material of the rejection 
 the greater manifestation of Love. The 
 need of the new Life, the need of deliver- 
 ance and "Healing, the hunger aricT'the 
 thirst for God, the longing for the Light 
 in answer to all these, as they cried aloud 
 in the records of Jewish religious aspiration, 
 the Presence of God among His people, 
 at the heart and home of their religious 
 life, must be manifested to satisfy these 
 needs. 
 
 3. Rejected by the Jew, interpreted in its 
 Fulness to the Disciple as the Gospel 
 of the Indwelling Life, 
 
 And so far the manifestation could and 
 must be made even to those who rejected 
 the Divine offer, although it was to be
 
 GOSPEL OF THE INDWELLING LIFE 119 
 
 in a sense even in order that it might be 
 rejected. But how the need was to be 
 satisfied, by what gift of the Divine In- 
 dwelling, by what spiritual union with Him 
 who made the offer this could only be 
 told to the disciples of His Love. To 
 one among these, who, belonging to the 
 company of the Galilean fellowship, had 
 watched with amazement and horror the 
 growing tragedy of rejection, it was given 
 to learn, before its consummation, in the 
 hour of parting, that Gospel within the 
 Gospel, that communication of the Divine 
 Life to man, by the gift of which alone 
 the need of God, in which the Jewish 
 spirit had been trained, would find the 
 satisfaction of its hope, and in after years 
 to enter into the full meaning of what 
 he learnt. In his story the manifestation 
 which was rejected passed on into and 
 is fused with the manifestation which is 
 received. He interprets the Gospel of the 
 Rejection, as it could only be interpreted in 
 the light given to the love of the disciple. 
 He brings to illuminate the disciple's faith
 
 120 CONCLUSION 
 
 and the disciple's experience the memory 
 of the great rejection of the manifestation 
 of Love. 
 
 
 
 4. Whose Manifestation is the Act of the 
 Eternal Word by Whom all Things 
 were made. 
 
 And the scene of that manifestation 
 and of that rejection becomes to him the 
 central scene of the drama of the creation 
 of God. We are in the presence of the 
 great necessities of the Divine Being. As 
 it is the Divine Fellowship, the fruit of 
 the Divine Indwelling, which has come 
 to satisfy the inspired and instructed need 
 of man, so it is the Eternal Word, the 
 expression of the Divine mind and the 
 Divine will, by whose agency all things 
 were made, and man that he might receive 
 the Light of Life, the shining forth of 
 whose glory the disciple has seen, the 
 light shining in the darkness of humanity, 
 the God who had chosen Sion to be His 
 own coming to His own and His own
 
 THE ACT OF THE ETERNAL WORD 121 
 
 receiving Him not, but as many as received 
 Him, Him who was rejected by His 
 own, receiving the sonship to God, which 
 was the living experience of the Christian 
 Life.
 
 PART 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY ILLUS- 
 TRATIONS 
 
 IN the foregoing chapters a view of the 
 relation of St John's Gospel to the Three 
 has been set forth in relation to three 
 main points of difference between them, 
 (i) the difference as to the scene of the 
 Ministry, (2) the difference as to the 
 development of the teaching as to our 
 Lord's Person, (3) the difference as to 
 the development of the disciples' appre- 
 hension of the Master's claim. It may 
 help to illustrate the view set forth if we 
 indicate its bearing on some of the less 
 obvious differences between St John and 
 the Three; viz. (i) The omissions in the 
 one story of incidents told in the other, 
 
 122
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY ILLUSTRATIONS 123 
 
 such as we should expect to be told in 
 the story from which we find them to be 
 omitted ; and with these we may note the 
 different light in which the Ministry of the 
 Baptist is presented: (2) The different 
 place taken by the miracles in the two 
 narratives : (3) The ~HifTerent impression as 
 to our Lord left upon our minds by the 
 one story and the other, the different picture 
 of His Person and character.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INCIDENTS OMITTED AND INSERTED BY 
 ST JOHN AND BY THE THREE 
 
 i. The Biographical Fallacy. 
 
 As to the difference in the events recorded 
 or omitted in St John's Gospel and the 
 Galilean Gospels, it would clear the ground 
 for the consideration of the question, if we 
 could banish from our minds in relation to 
 the Gospels all the associations suggested by 
 the word "biography." Even the phrase 
 " Life of our Lord " suggests a completeness 
 of knowledge which we do not possess, and 
 an aim which was altogether absent from 
 the minds of the Evangelists. 
 
 St Mark's Gospel opens with the words : 
 " the Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus 
 
 Christ," and its first mention of our Lord 
 
 124
 
 CHAP. I.] THE BIOGRAPHICAL FALLACY 125 
 
 tells how He came into Galilee preaching 
 the Gospel of God, and saying: "The time 
 is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at 
 hand." Here is no suggestion of the 
 beginning of a biography. The book is 
 written at a time when " The Gospel " is 
 a well-known thing. It is realised "" and 
 embodied in a Christian fellowship, whose 
 life and faith is pictured to us in the 
 earlier Epistles of St Paul. Writing in 
 the midst of this society the Evangelist 
 gives the rec{d*44ts origin. It is the 
 story of trie Gospel ofl Jesus Christ, not 
 the story of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The preface of St Luke's Gospel gives 
 a similar and more detailed description of 
 his object. He is undertaking, as many , 
 others have done, to draw up a narrative \ 
 "concerning those matters which have 
 been fulfilled among us," that Theophilus 
 may know the certainty concerning the 
 things wherein he was instructed. And, 
 for the purpose of doing this, he has 
 traced the course of all things from the 
 first, and has gone to those as his sources
 
 126 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 who delivered these things, who from the 
 beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers 
 of the Word. Drawing on other sources 
 besides those open to St Mark, he has 
 also presented a different aspect of the 
 story. Comparing his Gospel with St 
 Mark's we can see that the mind of 
 the author was possessed by an aspect 
 of the Gospel, and that with the view 
 of presenting this aspect he selects the 
 incidents on which he shall dwell, and the 
 details which he shall emphasise. This 
 pre-occupation with the presentation of an 
 aspect of the Gospel is such as to exclude 
 all idea of the completeness of a biography, 
 even in a Gospel which, like St Luke's, 
 prefixes to the ceremonious opening of the 
 history of the Ministry, the stories of the 
 birth, and of the scene in the boyhood of 
 Jesus. 
 
 St Matthew's Gospel is even further re- 
 moved from a biography than the Gospels 
 of St Mark and St Luke. The grouping 
 of events, the pre-occupation with the idea 
 of the kingdom, and with the fulfilment of
 
 I.] THE BIOGRAPHICAL FALLACY 127 
 
 the law and the prophets, are sufficient to 
 make this plain. We have once more the 
 story of the beginning of the Gospel in 
 one aspect of it. As ''the generations" of 
 Terah or of Isaac or of Jacob introduced 
 a chapter in God's dealings with His chosen 
 people, so " the Book of the generation of 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of Abraham, the Son 
 of David" is the final chapter in this 
 history. 
 
 St John's Gospel itself implies and alludes 
 to these earlier records of the beginning of 
 the Gospel, and chooses the events to be 
 dwelt on with a view to its own peculiar 
 purpose, covering the same ground as they 
 did only when the particular event to be 
 recorded subserves that purpose. 
 
 The question is then Does St John omit 
 any event recorded by the Three, which 
 from the point of view of his purpose we 
 should have expected him to insert, and 
 do the Three omit any event recorded by 
 St John, which from the point of view of 
 their purpose we should expect them to 
 insert ?
 
 128 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 We may briefly indicate in particular 
 instances the bearing of the clear recogni- 
 tion of the purpose of the Gospel on the 
 answer to be given to these questions. 
 
 2. The Virgin Birth. 
 
 The special point of difficulty in this case 
 is that there are two passages in St John 1 
 in which Jesus is spoken of as the Son of 
 Joseph, and that there is no correction. 
 The speakers are (i) Philip, immediately 
 after his call, (2) the Jews at Capernaum. 
 The words used are natural on any 
 hypothesis in the mouths of those who 
 used them. As to correction by our Lord, 
 which was possible only in the second case, 
 the Virgin Birth does not appear in St 
 Matthew or St Luke as part of the initial 
 Gospel deliverance. It appears as an affix 
 to the Gospel of the Fellowship, a truth for 
 the enlightenment of the believer, never as 
 
 O ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 a means of winning belief. We should not 
 therefore expect any allusion to it by our 
 
 1 St John i. 45 ; vi. 42.
 
 I,] THE VIRGIN BIRTH 129 
 
 Lord. As to correction by the Evangelist, 
 if, as the Fourth Gospentseljmplies, ij^ was 
 written for a church which already possessed 
 the other Three, it would have been quite 
 unnecessary for his readers' sake that he 
 should break in upon the strain of remi- 
 niscence to supply a correction of a form 
 of speech, which would not strike them as 
 unnatural in the mouths of those who used 
 it, a correction which, if it had been needed, 
 they would almost unconsciously and as a 
 matter of course supply of their own 
 accord. 
 
 If it seem strange that there should be 
 no allusion to the Virgin Birth in St John, 
 with whose Gospel of the Incarnation it so 
 readily harmonises, the explanation lies in 
 the fact that St John is throughout recall- 
 ing his recollection of what Jesus said, and 
 that, if he expands his recollection according 
 to his fuller appreciation of the meaning, 
 there is no sign that he adds to it, in the 
 sense that he is otherwise than true to his 
 recollection of the subjects on which our 
 Lord spoke.
 
 130 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 3. The Ministry of St John the Baptist 
 
 is very differently recorded. The difference 
 of purpose is clear. In the Galilean Gospels 
 we have a picture of John's Ministry as the 
 beginning of the- GospeT TnSt John we 
 have a record of the witness of John, (i) 
 as the first step in the manifestation to the 
 rejecting Jews ; (2) as giving our Lord the 
 nucleus of the body of disciples. 
 
 In the former case we are told how, 
 according to the prophecy, (i) John came 
 and baptized and preached (2) the baptism 
 of repentance, and (3) there went out unto 
 Him the country of Judaea and all they 
 of Jerusalem ; (4) how he foretold another 
 greater than himself, (5) Who should baptize 
 with the Holy Ghost ; (6) how Jesus came 
 to him from Galilee and was baptized ; and 
 (7) how the Spirit came down upon Him 
 and the voice from heaven said, " Thou art 
 My Beloved Son." In St John, with the 
 one exception of (6) the actual Baptism of 
 Christ, these are all alluded to, viz., (i)
 
 I.] THE MINISTRY OF THE BAPTIST 131 
 
 "Why baptizest thou?" (2) "Behold, the 
 Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of 
 the world " ; (3) " The Jews sent unto him 
 from Jerusalem"; (4) "the latchet of whose 
 shoes I am not worthy to unloose " ; (5) "He 
 baptizeth with the Holy Spirit " ; (7) " I 
 beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out 
 of heaven, and it abode upon Him," and " I 
 have seen and have borne witness that this 
 is the Son of God." But the allusions are 
 incidental to St John's own purpose. He 
 is not professing to give the story of the 
 Baptism or of the Ministry of St John the 
 Baptist. He is recording the witness of 
 John, first, the negative witness, " I am 
 not the "Christ n ; secondly, the prophetic 
 announcement, " There standeth One among 
 you whom ye know not " ; (3) The positive 
 witness to Jesus, as (a) the Lamb of God 
 that taketh away the sin, (b) the final cause 
 of His own Ministry "that He should be 
 made manifest to Israel, for this cause came 
 I baptizing with water," (c) the recipient of 
 the visible descent of the Spirit, in virtue 
 of which he recognises Him as the Son of
 
 132 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 God. The actual Baptism of Jesus (6) is 
 notable when we are considering the 
 Ministry of St John the Baptist as intro- 
 ductory to our Lord's. It has no special 
 connection with his witness to Christ. The 
 allusion to the preaching of repentance (2) 
 takes the form of the designation of our 
 Lord as taking away sin, through which 
 the first disciples became attached to Jesus. 
 The attachment of these disciples is a main 
 element in St John's story. The designa- 
 tion is first public and ineffective, afterwards 
 private and effective on the two disciples 
 who heard. This is in accordance with the 
 whole record of the Gospel, in which the 
 general rejection is contrasted with the 
 sympathetic belief of the few. So it is 
 here : the general rejection in spite of 
 John's witness is contrasted with the belief 
 of the few as arising out of John's witness. 
 The descent of the Holy Spirit (/) in the 
 form of a dove is mentioned as witnessed 
 by the Baptist, and the designation as the 
 Son of God is given, not as spoken by the 
 voice from heaven, but as echoed from
 
 I.] THE MINISTRY OF THE BAPTIST 133 
 
 that voice by the Baptist's witness and 
 acknowledgment. Considering the complete 
 difference of purpose between the two stories, 
 the amount of explicit agreement in detail is 
 matter of surprise. 
 
 As to the broad difference in the spirit 
 of the picture of the Baptist, this is more 
 than sufficiently accounted for by the fact 
 that in St John we have the picture of 
 the Baptist by a disciple who entered 
 most deeply into his teaching and who 
 was one of those through whom the 
 Ministry of the Baptist did actually lead 
 on to the Ministry of Christ. The general 
 fact that it did thus prepare the way is stated 
 by the Three. The general statement could 
 not be true unless there had been some such 
 inner story of detailed actual connection as 
 St John has given us. 
 
 The suggestion that, if John had made 
 the complete declaration of faith which is 
 ascribed to him by St John, he would have 
 become a disciple of Jesus seems to over- 
 look (i) the prophetic character of the 
 utterances of John they represent moments
 
 134 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 of inspiration, of insight, of enthusiasm, 
 and (2) the very varying significance of the 
 title, the Son of God. And, as a point of 
 contrast between St John and the Three, 
 this suggestion seems to be sufficiently met 
 by the reminder that according to the Three 
 the voice from heaven would seem to have 
 been heard by the Baptist. 
 
 4. The Temptation 
 
 has no obvious connection with the Ministry 
 recorded by St John, and, on our general 
 view of what regulates the choice of incidents 
 to be recorded, there was no reason to expect 
 its inclusion. 
 
 5. The Institution of the Sacrament of 
 the Lord's Supper 
 
 finds its place very naturally in the history 
 of the Fellowship, but it played no part in 
 the preparation, through the sorrow of the 
 parting, for the gift of the Spirit and His 
 indwelling presence, and it is of this that
 
 I.] THE AGONY 135 
 
 the story of these chapters in St John is 
 the record. 
 
 6. The Agony 
 
 in the Garden is omitted in St John, and on 
 the same principle its inclusion was not to 
 be expected. 
 
 7. The Incidents connected with the 
 Crucifixion 
 
 present several differences. The cry of 
 desolation on the Cross is omitted in St 
 John as in St Luke. The words recorded 
 by St John are, (i) the words which mark 
 the final parting in earthly intercourse from 
 the disciple himself, and (2) the words which 
 mark the consummation of the great conflict 
 and of the sacrifice in which the rejection 
 issued, with the words "I thirst" which 
 led up to these. The rending of the veil of 
 the Temple would not have come naturally 
 among the vivid experiences of the eye- 
 witness of the Crucifixion. The piercing of
 
 136 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 the side was not a detail which need have 
 been recorded by the Three. Its inclusion 
 in St John's record is characteristic of the 
 brooding imagination of the writer, who 
 
 1*1 "^^^'^^''VBMtfMWH^HMMVMMMHi^P''' 
 
 seems like a man habitually silent and 
 reserved, whose imagination is liable to be 
 kindled to the point of utterance by some 
 vivid and appealing fact. 
 
 S8. The Doubt of St Thomas 
 f * 
 
 is not the only distinctive feature of St 
 John's story of the Resurrection, but it is 
 the most marked addition to the record of 
 the Three. It seems a natural account of 
 its inclusion that it is recorded for the sake 
 of the confession to which it leads, and 
 that it is intended, in accord with "he saw 
 and believed," to show how the actual 
 resurrection, manifest to sense, was the 
 means by which the disciples were led to 
 the full recognition of the Divine Christ, 
 believing on Whom they had life. Its 
 omission by the Three is in harmony with 
 the general character of the Resurrection
 
 I.] THE RECORD OF THE MIRACLES 137 
 
 stories, which show no attempt at a complete 
 record, and give vivid pictures of appear- 
 ances, such as fit in with the purpose and 
 spirit of each Gospel. 
 
 9- The Record of the Miracles. 
 
 There remain the differences in the record 
 of the miracles. 
 
 (a) TJFtlie miracles recorded by the Three, 
 but not recorded by St John, there are none 
 which would have any particular claim for 
 insertion in his story. The raising of Jairus' 
 daughter, and of the widow of Nain's son, 
 as miracles of raising the dead, might seem 
 to have a claim for insertion in the Gospel 
 of Life. But, when we realise that St John's 
 story is the story of the manifestation to 
 the Jews at Jerusalem, we feel that their 
 inclusion in this story would have been 
 almost impossible. As to the omission of 
 all miracles of casting out demons, it is to 
 be remembered UiaL 1M 'ffllretclbs recorded 
 by St John are very few in number, that 
 those that are recorded are chosen evidently, 
 
 s
 
 138 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 not for their own sakes, but as marking 
 steps or epochs in the development of the 
 antagonism of the Jews, and that there is 
 no sign of their being intended to be 
 representative of the healing of different 
 kinds of disease, e.g., there is in St John 
 no healing of the deaf and dumb, or of 
 the leper. There would be no particular 
 appropriateness to St John's purpose in any 
 of these three classes of miracles. And the 
 fact that no miracle of any of these classes 
 marked a stage or a crisis in our Lord's 
 manifestation and rejection at Jerusalem is 
 not in itself at all surprising. 
 
 (6) Galilean miracles recorded by St John. 
 The Feeding of the Five Thousand and 
 the Walking on the Sea are recorded in 
 St John, although they occurred in Galilee, 
 and are also recorded by the Three, because 
 they were the events leading up to the 
 discourse on the 
 
 substance of which the former, the Feeding 
 of the Five Thousand, is also connected. 
 And this discourse, as we have indicated 
 above, we believe to be included in St
 
 I.] THE RECORD OF THE MIRACLES 139 
 
 John's Gospel, because it represents the 
 antagonism of the Jews of Jerusalem follow- 
 ing our Lord into Galilee (see above, p. 1 3). 
 
 (c) Of the miracles recorded by St John 
 and omitted by the Three there are three 
 that call for notice, two because they 
 occurred in Galilee, and the third because 
 of its special character. 
 
 The Turning of the Water into Wine 
 plainly dwelt in 5t John s mind as con- 
 nected with the dawn of belief in our 
 Lord in the inner circle ot me disciples. 
 He notes that it is part of trie"" proem to 
 the story. His hour was not yet come. 
 It occurred in Galilee, but before the 
 imprisonment of John, which is given by 
 the Galilean Gospels as the date of the 
 public beginning of that Ministry in Galilee 
 which it is their business to record. 
 
 The Healing of the Noblemans Son again 
 dwelt in St John's mind, perhaps partly as 
 in fact the first miracle in Galilee on His 
 return there to begin His Ministry, but 
 mainly as an example of the Galilean 
 temper, that sense of imperative need
 
 140 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP. 
 
 which made Galilee the place of the 
 manifestation. To the Three it had no 
 such importance. It perhaps preceded 
 the beginning of the public preaching in 
 Galilee. In any case it is merely one of 
 the many miracles of Christ which are not 
 recorded by them in detail. They record 
 certain representative miracles which left 
 their mark upon the mind, and dwelt 
 in the memory, and helped forward the 
 apprehension of the disciples. 
 
 The Raising of Lazarus. The omission 
 of trns ""miracle bytKe Three seems to 
 deserve special consideration. It is closely 
 connected with the final catastrophe at 
 Jerusalem. They record the catastrophe. 
 Why do they not record a miracle which, 
 according to St John, did so much to 
 precipitate the issue ? The^answer to be 
 given to this question does not perhaps 
 altogether overcome our surprise at the 
 omission. 
 
 In St John's record the story is of the 
 ? first importance. It is the climax of the 
 * manifestation in works, and it brings the
 
 ,1.] THE RECORD OF THE MIRACLES 141 
 
 antagonism to a point. But it is to be 
 observed that its importance in St John 
 is altogether relative to the conflict with 
 the Jews at Jerusalem. Primarily, there- 
 fore/ its omission by the TThree is no 
 more surprising than their omission of the 
 other incidents of the Jerusalem Ministry. 
 St John in his Gospel is giving the history 
 of the development of the antagonism of 
 the Jews at Jerusalem. The Three take 
 this antagonism for granted from the first. 
 The mere wonderfulness of the miracle is 
 no reason for its being recorded by any 
 one. The miracles recorded by the Three 
 are recorded as part of the manifestation 
 which fashioned the original fellowship of 
 believers. This miracle formed no part of 
 the cycle of events which brought about 
 this result. It was done, as our Lord said, 
 that they might believe in His Life-giving 
 power. But its main historical importance 
 to the Evangelist lay in the fact that it 
 caused certain of the Jews, who had come 
 to Mary, to believe, and thereby led to the 
 final Council.
 
 142 INCIDENTS OMITTED [CHAP, 
 
 These considerations go some way to 
 meet the difficulty. They do not, perhaps, 
 altogether do away with our surprise that 
 a miracle, which did have an important 
 effect in confirming the faith of the disciples, 
 and which was closely connected with the 
 one part of the Jerusalem Ministry with 
 which the Three concern themselves, namely, 
 its catastrophe, should not have been in- 
 cluded in their story of the catastrophe. 
 
 (d) Necessary Imperfection of Explanations. 
 This is perhaps pre-eminently the case to 
 which a consideration applies with which 
 we may close this survey of discrepancies. 
 As we follow such a survey, it is difficult 
 to resist the reflection that, in literary docu- 
 ments of the character we have described, 
 we are not likely to be able to give an 
 exhaustive and complete account of the 
 motives which dictate the inclusion and 
 exclusion of every particular incident. Who 
 that recalls the actual process of his own 
 mind as he writes, could undertake to un- 
 ravel the complexity of the motives under 
 which this or that feature in that which
 
 I.] THE RECORD OF THE MIRACLES 143 
 
 finally stands written has flashed into his 
 mind, and found its way on to the paper? 
 The most we can expect is that we should 
 find, as we do, that the events recorded 
 and omitted harmonise generally with the 
 obvious purpose of the story.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS IN ST JOHN 
 AND IN THE THREE. 1 
 
 i . The Distinctive Purpose of the Gospel 
 the Leading Consideration. 
 
 THE different place taken by miracles in the 
 story of St John and in the story of the 
 Three has been alleged as a discrepancy 
 which tends to discredit the historical 
 character of St John's Gospel. If we look 
 at the miraculous element in St John in 
 the light of the view we have taken of the 
 distinctive purpose of the Gospel, such 
 discrepancy as can fairly be alleged is 
 explained. 
 
 1 The view here controverted is for the most part that 
 which is to be found stated in the section on "The signs 
 of Jesus," in the first chapter of Wendt's Gospel according 
 to St John.
 
 CHAP, ii.] IDEAS OF THE MIRACULOUS 145 
 
 2. Modern Ideas of the Miraculous must 
 be Eliminated. 
 
 But it is necessary first to recall in 
 reference to the interpretation of St John 
 the meaning or meanings of the words for 
 which the English word miracle stands. 
 And, at the very beginning of the con- 
 sideration of any question about miracles 
 in relation to the interpretation of any 
 ancient literary document, it is never super- 
 fluous to recall the necessity of ridding our 
 minds as far as possible of the associations 
 which the word miracle has acquired in 
 modern controversy. This caution applies, 
 for instance, to the modern idea of the 
 miracle as " contrary to nature." These 
 may be very natuHTWWBsTor us to use in 
 describing to ourselves one element in the 
 ancient meaning of the words used for 
 "miracle." But the notion of contrariety 
 to nature is essentially modern, and the 
 application of this idea to the interpretation 
 of any ancient document is unhistorical, if 
 
 we allow ourselves to mean that it was 
 
 T
 
 146 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 as "contrary to nature" that the miracle 
 appealed to the consciousness of men in 
 the times when the Gospels were written. 
 No less foreign to ancient ideas is the 
 notion of the miracle which used to appear 
 in apologetic literature, and still sometimes 
 survives in the literature of attack on 
 traditional ideas, where the miracle appears 
 as the premiss of an argument of the 
 character, " This is a supernatural work, 
 therefore the man who did it must bear a 
 Divine character." The modern argument 
 of this character, besides introducing the 
 modern idea of the supernatural, isolates the 
 evidential force of the element of "wonder" 
 in a miracle, in a way in which, as we shall 
 see, it was not isolated in ancient times. 
 There is no trace in St John or anywhere 
 else in the Gospels of the argument, This 
 is a wonderful, i.e., a supernatural work, 
 therefore, because of its sheer wonderful- 
 ness, of its merely supernatural character, 
 the doer of it must be Divine.
 
 II.] WORDS FOR "MIRACLE" 147 
 
 3. Words for "Miracle" used by St John. 
 
 This will appear more clearly if we look 
 at St John's use of the different words which 
 were used for miracle. The four words 
 which are used are not parallel or alternative 
 descriptions of the thing, but successive 
 stages in the apprehension of its meaning 
 and character. 
 
 "Wonder" (rejoas) was the first aspect under 
 which the miracle appeared. " Miracle " is 
 the English equivalent of this first phase 
 of apprehension. A further stage is reached 
 when it is realised that the thing done 
 excited wonder because of the power shown 
 
 in it, and the miracle was spoken of as a 
 "mighty work" (SiW/us). It is a further 
 stage still when the wonderful work of power 
 is seen to be a "sign" (cnf/ieto*/), pointing 
 to something beyond itself, pointing to the 
 personwHo did it, directing attention to 
 His character and His teaching. Lastly, 
 when He is known, and His character 
 in some measure understood, it is looked
 
 148 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 at no longer from the point of view of the 
 observer, but from the point of view of the 
 doer, which has now become the point of 
 view of the believer. It is a "work" 
 (epyov), the natural outcome of His person 
 and character. 
 
 St John uses the word "wonder" once. 
 It is at the very beginning of the Ministry 
 in Galilee, when the primary aspect of the 
 miracle was naturally prominent, and already 
 our Lord is wishing to lead them on beyond 
 it, " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will 
 not believe." The words are a reproach to 
 evoke the expression of the need of help 
 which led to the doing of the miracle. He 
 uses the term "mighty work" not at all. 
 The two words he does use arc "sign," 
 and "work." 
 
 The question as to St John's distinctive 
 view of miracles really turns on his use <>( 
 " sign." The first thing to be said then is 
 that on the face of it there is no justifica- 
 tion, unless the context supplies it, for 
 emphasising the idea of wonder in St John 
 in connection with the miracle. It is quite
 
 II.] WORDS FOR "MIRACLE" 149 
 
 true that the sign ts wonderful. So also 
 is the work wonderful. Our Lord says : 
 " If I had not done among them the works 
 which none other man did, they had not 
 had sin." The unusual character of the 
 work was a part of that which made it a 
 sign. Wonder is a part of the significance 
 of the sign. But it is only a part and it 
 cannot fairly be separated from the moral 
 and spiritual significance of the work. 
 There are not two things, (i) a wonder 
 which makes you believe in the doer of it, 
 (2) a quasi-allegorical meaning, a spiritual 
 significance. The work is a wonderful work 
 of love and mercy, it is as a wonderTul 
 work of love that It makes men come to 
 Him. That is how it should be effective 
 as a sign. They should have come to 
 Him because they saw the signs. It 
 should point on beyond itself to the 
 Divine pity and love manifest in Him. It 
 is thus significant to those who appreciate 
 the moral and spiritual significance, not to 
 those who do not. This is how the miracle 
 plays its part, as in the story of the gather-
 
 ISO THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 ing of the fellowship in Galilee, so in St 
 John's story of the appeal of our Lord to 
 the Jews of Jerusalem and His rejection 
 by them. 
 
 4. Privacy and Publicity of Miracles. 
 
 The contrast suggested between St John 
 and the Three is that, with the Three, the 
 miracle is primarily a work of compassion, 
 in St John it is primarily a wonder to 
 support a Divine claim. To strengthen 
 this contrast stress has been laid on the 
 privacy of the miracles recorded by the 
 Three, as contrasted with the publicity of the 
 miracles in St John. We have already seen 
 that our Lord's desire to limit the publicity 
 of His work, as an appeal to mere wonder 
 and superficial enthusiasm, is incidental 
 to the purpose of the Galilean Ministry. 
 Beyond what this motive explains, the 
 privacy of the Galilean miracles cannot, I 
 think, be made good. 
 
 The man with the unclean spirit 1 is 
 
 'St Mark i. 21.
 
 II.] PUBLICITY OF MIRACLES 151 
 
 healed publicly in the Synagogue. The 
 sick who were healed 1 "at even when the 
 sun did set," were healed publicly. The 
 leper 2 was told not to publish his cure, 
 but there is nothing to show that he was 
 healed privately. The paralytic, whose 
 story illustrates the inseparability of the 
 spiritual significance from the wonder of 
 a miracle, was certainly not healed 
 privately. Jairus' daughter 3 was raised 
 in the presence of a select few, but the 
 circumstances, as a matter of fact, ensured 
 publicity. The deaf man 4 was taken aside 
 from the multitude for the act of healing, 
 but the multitude were there, and He 
 charged them that they should tell no 
 man. The blind man 5 is led out of the 
 village and told not to return to it : but 
 the object of the privacy may be naturally 
 supposed to be here, as necessarily in the 
 previous instances, the limitation of publicity 
 to those who, being nearly concerned, would 
 
 1 St Mark i. 32. 8 St Mark v. 37. 
 
 2 St Mark i. 40. * St Mark vii. 33. 
 
 8 St Mark viii. 23.
 
 152 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 not be affected by mere wonder without 
 spiritual appreciation. There is nothing to 
 put on His withdrawal from publicity the 
 interpretation that He would not be sought 
 after and believed for the sake of " the 
 miraculous," so long as we mean by "the 
 miraculous," the miraculous works of mercy 
 and healing. If it had been true that He 
 would not be believed for the sake of " the 
 miraculous " in any sense beyond this, why 
 should He do miracles at all ? Why should 
 He not avoid doing what seemed to be 
 wonderful ? When He was asked for a sign 
 from heaven He' refused it, but it was part 
 of the substance of His Ministry to give 
 signs on earth, as He said in the leading 
 case of the paralytic, the first miracle which 
 provoked Pharasaic antagonism : He did 
 it " that ye may know that the Son of Man 
 hath power on earth to forgive sins." 
 
 5. Review of the Miraculous in St John. 
 
 It is neither necessary nor natural that 
 our Lord's use of miracles and His
 
 II.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 153 
 
 demeanour in doing them should be the 
 same in the two entirely different atmo- 
 spheres of Galilee and Jerusalem. But, if 
 we glance at the miracles and the mention 
 of the miraculous in St John, we shall not 
 find any more difference than the difference 
 of atmosphere explains. We may note that 
 it is specially important in the case of St 
 John to keep in view and distinguish from 
 one another : 
 
 (1) The motive of our Lord in doing 
 
 the miracle ; 
 
 (2) The effect it produces on those 
 
 who witness it ; 
 
 (3) The view taken of it by the Evange- 
 
 list. 
 
 (a) The Turning of the Water into Wine. 
 
 r\ T "3T" ""^ TT*** 1 ** 1 " ^**"^^*i"ipM^to- . 
 
 Our Lords motive to do this miracle is 
 described in the words of His mother, 
 " They have no wine." We should not 
 have anticipated that His first miracle 
 would have been done to relieve a social 
 awkwardness, to save hosts and guests 
 from embarrassment at a friendly gathering. 
 
 u
 
 154 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 The only parallel which throws light on 
 His doing so is His use of the anger of 
 a host when his invitation is slighted, as 
 a parable of the Divine wrath with the 
 indifference of men. But there is no deny- 
 ing that on the face of the story this is 
 His motive. The result of this beginning 
 of signs, in which He manifested forth His 
 glory, is that His disciples believed on 
 Him. And this result seems to be the 
 main point of interest to the Evangelist. 
 It is to be noted (i) that the glory of 
 God is here as elsewhere the showing 
 forth of God's goodness, here in particular 
 of His sympathy with the common life of 
 men; (2) that the phrase "believed on 
 Him " is in itself quite vague, and, when 
 used of His disciples, does not necessarily 
 indicate more than a beginning of the 
 belief which was to grow and deepen 
 hereafter. It is as giving a step in the 
 belief of the disciples that the story is 
 told. 
 
 (b) The Signs at Jerusalem. " Many 
 believed on Kis^nameT'BeKolcling His signs
 
 II.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 155 
 
 which He did." Here nothing is said as 
 to the motive, but the result is a belief 
 which was unworthy. The signs ought to 
 have led those who believed to a deeper 
 and more real belief. The most natural 
 interpretation of the story would be that 
 they were impressed by the wonder of the 
 signs, but did not appreciate their moral 
 and spiritual significance, and that in this, 
 as he looked back, the Evangelist saw the 
 germ of the rejection. 
 
 (c) Nicodemus and the Signs. " No one 
 can do these signs that thou doest, except 
 God be with him." Here, again, our Lord 
 finds the belief evoked by the signs quite 
 inadequate, not because it has not led to 
 a sufficiently high appreciation of His person, 
 but because it has not been informed and 
 inspired by a deep sense of spiritual need. 
 
 (d] T/ie Healing of the Nobleman s Son. 
 Our Lord here expressly repudiates the idea 
 of pandering to a mere desire for signs and 
 wonders. 2 The motive necessary to evoke 
 the miracle is not supplied till the sheer 
 
 1 St John iii. 2. 2 St John iv. 48.
 
 156 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 passionate need breaks out in the cry, 
 " Sir, come down ere my child die." The 
 Evangelist's interest in the story is probably, 
 as we have said, the manifestation of this 
 sense of need at the very threshold of the 
 Galilean Ministry, "this is the second sign 
 that Jesus did, when He was come out of 
 Judaea into Galilee." The result is belief 
 on the part of those who had felt the moral 
 significance of the miracle, the Divine relief 
 of need, "The father himself believed, and 
 his whole house." 
 
 (e) The Healing of the Impotent Man at 
 the Pool. This miracle is twice described 
 by our Lord not as a "sign" but as a 
 "work," in both cases in a context where, 
 speaking of the miracles as from the 
 Father, He would naturally so describe 
 them. His motive in doing the miracle 
 is described thus, 2 "When Jesus saw 
 him lying, and knew that he had been 
 now a long time in that case." And with 
 this agrees His later reference to the 
 miracle, 8 " Are ye wroth with Me, because 
 
 1 St John iv. 54. St John v. 6. 3 St John vii. 23.
 
 ii.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 157 
 
 I made a man every whit whole on the 
 Sabbath ? " The motive therefore of the 
 most critical miracle at Jerusalem was 
 compassion, including the directly spiritual 
 aim which is indicated by His saying to 
 the man, " Behold, thou art made whole, 
 sin no more." The reference to the Father, 
 " My Father worketh hitherto and I work," 
 in which a Divine claim is founded on the 
 work, appears afterwards, not as giving the 
 motive of the miracle, but as a defence 
 against the accusation of having violated 
 the law of the Sabbath. The effect of 
 the miracle is purely negative. The work 
 of compassion done on the Sabbath Day 
 was the first cause why the Jews sought 
 to kill Jesus. And the miracle is important 
 in the view of the Evangelist, as the first 
 step in a rejection, rooted in the fact that, 
 while the very works He did bore witness 
 of Him that the Father had sent Him, 
 they had not the Father's word abiding 
 in them. 
 
 (/) The story of the Feeding of the Five 
 Thousand begins with a passing mention
 
 158 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 that the great multitude followed Him 
 because of the signs that He did on them 
 that were sick. The motive of the miracle 
 itself is described in the words: "Jesus, 
 lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a 
 great multitude cometh unto Him, saith 
 unto Philip, Whence are we to buy bread, 
 that these may eat ? " The natural con- 
 . struction to be placed on these words is 
 I that the desire to feed those who needed 
 I food was His motive. And the absence of 
 the words : " He had compassion on them," 
 which occur in St Mark and St Matthew, 
 does not neutralise this suggestion here 
 any more than in St Luke. The result 
 of the miracle was that, "when the people 
 saw the sign which He did, they said, 
 This is of a truth the Prophet that cometh 
 into the world." And the superficial and 
 unspiritual nature of the belief thus ex- 
 pressed is indicated in the words that 
 follow, "Jesus therefore perceiving that 
 they were about to come by force, to make 
 him a king, withdrew." To the Evangelist 
 the miracle plainly is important, as leading
 
 II.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 159 
 
 up, not to this inadequate belief, but to the 
 discourse that follows. And The Walking on 
 the Sea appears to be added as a historical 
 link in the chain of events which connected 
 the discourse with the Feeding of the Five 
 Thousand. The shallowness of the belief 
 produced by the original miracle is once 
 more emphasised in our Lord's opening 
 words to the multitude, "Ye seek Me, not 
 because ye saw signs, but because ye ate 
 of the loaves, and were filled." The mere 
 desire for the physical relief was the lowest 
 motive. The next stage was that, seeing 
 the signs, they should be led to seek Him, 
 and that not for the sake of the meat that 
 perisheth, but for the meat which abideth 
 unto eternal life. 
 
 (g) The mention of His " ivorks" by 
 His brethren, when they are urging Him 
 to go up to Jerusalem to the Feast of 
 Tabernacles, presents difficulties, but they 
 are not material to the question we are 
 now considering. They say, " Depart hence, 
 and go into Judsea, that Thy disciples also 
 may behold Thy works which thou doest.
 
 160 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 For no man doeth anything in secret, and 
 himself seeketh to be known openly. If 
 Thou doest these things, manifest Thyself 
 to the world. For even His brethren did 
 not believe in Him." The view of the 
 miracles presented is in any case the view 
 of those whom the Evangelist reckons as 
 not " believing," although they are urging 
 Him to manifest Himself to the world by 
 His works. And, though it is not clear 
 who are meant by "Thy disciples," the 
 view appears to be that the doing of 
 miracles in Galilee was in itself doing them 
 secretly, whereas doing them at Jerusalem 
 would be of itself doing them openly. 
 Probably the check which our Lord, for 
 reasons which we have noted, imposed 
 on the publishing of His miracles in 
 Galilee lends point to the description of 
 the Galilean miracles as done secretly. 
 But plainly there is nothing in the passage 
 which throws any light on the question 
 of a difference in our Lord's motive in 
 doing miracles in the two cases. 
 
 (k) Our Lord's words at the Feast of
 
 II.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 161 
 
 Tabernacles as to the healing of the 
 impotent man, 1 " I did one work, and ye 
 all marvel," so far as they go, represent 
 the attitude of mind of mere wonder as 
 the wrong attitude ; and the following 
 words, "Are ye wroth with Me, because 
 I made a man every whit whole on 
 the Sabbath Day ? " show that the right 
 attitude of mind in the presence of the 
 miracle was an appreciation of the moral 
 and spiritual character of the work as a 
 work of mercy. This would have been 
 to judge righteous judgment. 
 
 (*') The Healing of the Man born blind is 
 ushered in by a question of the disciples 
 and an answer of our Lord, " Rabbi, who 
 did sin, this man, or his parents, that he 
 should be born blind?" Jesus answered, 
 " Neither did this man sin, nor his parents ; 
 but that the works of God should be 
 made manifest in him. We must work 
 the works of Him that sent Me, while it 
 is day. . . . When I am in the world, I 
 am the Light of the world." The question 
 
 1 St John vii. 21 
 X
 
 i6a THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 is in its substance a question as to the 
 Providential permission of evil. And the 
 spirit in which the question is asked is 
 the Pharisaic spirit, the spirit of judgment. 
 The question is in accord with the idea 
 underlying the merciless and contemptuous 
 judgment of the Pharisees, "Thou wast 
 altogether born in sin." Our Lord's answer 
 directs their attention to a different aspect 
 of the Providence of God. They are to 
 ask not, What sin, in the working of God's 
 Providence, produced this visitation as its 
 punishment ? but, What occasion does the 
 Providence of God afford to us in this 
 visitation for the showing forth of His 
 glory ? " The works of God," " The works 
 of Him that sent Me," must naturally be 
 taken, in the light of the language used 
 in reference to the healing of the impotent 
 man, as the works of compassion and love 
 in which God's character and His glory 
 are manifested. But it is true that, as the 
 spiritual antagonism between our Lord and 
 the Jews is developed, the manifestation 
 becomes more and more a mere manifesta-
 
 II.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 163 
 
 tion, to them even a manifestation of 
 judgment, though to the man healed a 
 manifestation of Divine Love. The motive 
 then is the manifestation of Divine Love. 
 The effect of the miracle is, in the Pharisees, 
 the intensification of the antagonism which 
 arose from their incapacity to appreciate 
 its moral significance. In the blind man 
 himself the effect of the miracle is to lead 
 him to believe on the Son of Man (or the 
 Son of God), but it cannot be plausibly 
 argued that he, with his deliverance from 
 darkness fresh upon him, was moved by 
 the sheer wonder and power as apart from 
 the mercy and love shewn forth to him. 
 
 The comments in the discussion among 
 the Pharisees on this miracle, " This man 
 is not from God, because He keepeth not 
 the Sabbath, but others said, How can a 
 man that is a sinner do these signs ? " give a 
 striking illustration of the intrinsic difficulty 
 of separating the two aspects of the sign, 
 its wonder and its moral character. It was 
 wrong to work on the Sabbath, therefore 
 the inclination to yield to the mere wonder
 
 164 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 must be resisted. But, on the other hand, 
 the nature of the signs was inconsistent 
 with the hypothesis that the doer was a 
 sinner. 
 
 (;') Our Lord's words at the Feast of 
 Dedication 1 come in association with the 
 thought of the shepherd who gives pasture 
 and deliverance, and lays down his life for 
 the sheep, and in doing these things is in 
 perfect sympathy with the Father ; and, so 
 coming, they give the strongest justification 
 of the plea which we make for the moral and 
 spiritual content of such phrases as " the 
 works of My Father." The words are, "The 
 works that I do in My Father's name, these 
 bear witness of Me," "Many good works (e/yya 
 *aXa) have I showed you from the Father," 
 " If I do not the works of My Father, believe 
 Me not, but if I do them, though ye believe 
 not Me, believe the works, that ye may 
 know and understand that the Father is 
 in Me and I in the Father." There is 
 absolutely nothing in the words themselves 
 to suggest that it is as mere works of 
 1 St John x. 25-38.
 
 ii.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 165 
 
 wonder and power that they justify His 
 Divine claim. There is everything in the 
 context to force upon them the interpreta- 
 tion, if it needed forcing, that it is the 
 moral and spiritual meaning of the works 
 as works of Love which vindicates the claim 
 " I and the Father are one." 
 
 (k) In the miracle of the Raising of 
 Lazarus we advance one stage further 
 towards the miracle as a mere manifesta- 
 tion of the Divine Glory, because, as the 
 Jerusalem Ministry approaches to its climax, 
 the antagonism of the Jews makes our 
 Lord's appeal, in its relation to them, more 
 and more despairing and defiant. To the 
 world that rejects He must manifest the 
 Life at any cost, whether they will hear or 
 whether they will forbear. As though to 
 atone for this, to the inner circle of the 
 disciples, and to those whom the miracle 
 relieves, it is laden with more tenderness 
 of love than any other. And the further 
 purpose of deepening the faith of the 
 disciples is expressly stated, " I am glad 
 for your sakes that I was not there to the
 
 166 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 intent ye may believe." It is difficult to 
 resist the conclusion that the deliberate 
 delay, when " He abode two days in the 
 place where He was" after He heard that 
 Lazarus was sick, was intended to enhance 
 the manifestation of the life-giving power, 
 and that the miracle was intended to be 
 a final challenge, a final vindication of the 
 life-giving power. But it is notable, in this 
 connection, that there is no special assertion 
 of the Divine claim in connection with the 
 miracle. It is a final manifestation of the 
 life-giving power, in which indeed the 
 Divine claim was involved, but from which 
 it only emerges into separate prominence 
 when the life-giving power itself is con- 
 troverted. On the theory we are disputing 
 as to the view of miracles in this Gospel, 
 such emphasis of the Divine claim would 
 seem to be demanded in connection with 
 this miracle above all. As it is the miracle 
 is done 1 "for the glory of God, that the 
 Son of God may be glorified thereby," and 
 Martha before the miracle professes that 
 
 1 St John xi. 4.
 
 II.]' REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 167 
 
 she "has believed that He is the Christ 
 the Son of God," but there is no fresh 
 utterance parallel with " My Father worketh 
 hitherto and I work ; " " Before Abraham 
 was I am ; " "I and My Father are one." 
 Instead, there is the great utterance of the 
 life-giving power, " I am the Resurrection 
 and the Life." And in the light of this 
 utterance it is impossible to maintain that 
 the result, the belief of "the Jews which 
 came to Mary and beheld that which He 
 did," was produced by a mere wonderful 
 manifestation of power, apart from the 
 spiritual significance of the work. The 
 other result, the carrying of the news to 
 the Pharisees, raises the question for them, 1 
 " What do we ? for this man doeth many 
 signs. If we let Him thus alone, all men 
 will believe on Him : and the Romans will 
 come and take away both our place and 
 nation." Here the belief, to which they 
 fear the signs will lead, is the belief which 
 would_Jead to our Lord bei ng accepteH' as 
 a political leader the kind of belief which 
 
 1 St John xi. 47.
 
 168 THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 
 
 had led the Galileans to wish to come and 
 take him by force to make Him king not 
 the belief which recognised His own higher 
 Divine claim. The two multitudes who 
 escorted Him and met Him on His way 
 into Jerusalem, those who were with Him 
 when He had called Lazarus out of the 
 tomb, and those who had heard that 
 He had done this sign, greeted Him 
 accordingly as the " King of Israel," and 
 our Lord accepted their homage without 
 distinguishing between the few who had 
 in any measure entered into the spirit of 
 the kingdom, and the many who looked 
 only for a great political leader of the 
 nation. 
 
 (/) In the final summary of the rejection 
 the Evangelist says, 1 "Though He had 
 done so many signs before them, yet they 
 believed not on Him," and the want of 
 belief is attributed to the hardening of the 
 heart, a phrase which cfescTlUe's the moral 
 obliquity of vision, the spiritual blindness, 
 that prevented them from discerning the 
 
 1 St John xii. 37.
 
 ii.] REVIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS 169 
 
 moral and spiritual significance of the 
 signs. 
 
 (m) Our Lords knowledge of the hearts 
 and minds of men and of the future 
 course of events has been represented as 
 a markedly miraculous element in the story 
 of this Gospel. If the suggestion means that 
 He is represented as having knowledge _such 
 as could be attained by perfect humanity, 
 with jtliat DlvmeT eln^werment ana inspira- 
 tion of its faculties which belonged to the 
 true ideal of humanity as manifest in Him, 
 it i<T plainly true that this Tdnd of knowledge 
 is displayed and dwelt upon in a greater 
 degree in this Gospel. But the difference 
 is only one of degree, and the degree of 
 difference is not greater than is accounted 
 for by the aim of the Gospel the manifes- 
 tation of the life-giving Christ as the Son 
 of God. If the suggestion is that the 
 knowledge shown by our Lord is repre- 
 sented as Divine in any sense beyond this, 
 such a view might be imposed on the 
 story, but it does not fairly arise out of 
 the story. There are no instances which 
 
 Y
 
 !7o THE VIEW OF THE MIRACULOUS [CHAP. 11. 
 
 demand this interpretation. As we attain 
 to fuller knowledge, it would appear that 
 we shall more and more view all our 
 Lord's miraculous activity from this point 
 of view. 1 It will not therefore be less 
 miraculous. It is towards such a view of 
 the miraculous that the word "works," 
 St John's characteristic name for miracles, 
 tends to direct our minds. 
 
 1 " Christ's humanity is in the New Testament regarded 
 as normal, in the sense that everything that belonged to 
 His manhood is to belong to ours, in and through Him. 
 He is regarded as setting the standard of what humanity 
 in the purpose of God is, through Him, capable of becoming ; 
 but as compared to humanity as we find it at present among 
 ourselves His humanity is supranormal." The Bishop of 
 Birmingham allows me to make this quotation from an un- 
 published paper.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 i. Do the two Pictures harmonise ? 
 
 WHEN we have been considering the various 
 contrasts between St John's Gospel and the 
 Three, the question very naturally arises 
 whether the general picture of our Lord 
 in St John harmonises with the picture of 
 the Galilean Gospels. And on this question 
 some light is thrown by the difference of 
 purpose between the two stories on which 
 we have been dwelling. 
 
 The question is not very easy to answer, 
 partly because it is not very easy to ask. 
 The question is not whether, if we had * 
 St John's Gospel alone, it would leave us 
 with the same picture as if we had the 
 
 171
 
 172 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP. 
 
 Galilean Gospels without the Fourth. It 
 is not a question of identity. It is a 
 question of harmony between the pictures 
 presented by stories written from professedly 
 different points of view. Is there such a 
 harmony between the two ? Plainly with 
 the Three the human character is more 
 prominent, in St John the Divine Com- 
 munion. 1 Are we to say that in St John 
 the Divine obscures the human ; or, by a 
 fusion in the mind of the writer who 
 penetrates below the surface and brings 
 into prominence elements in the character 
 present, though less obvious, in the earlier 
 story, has the Divine become human and 
 the human Divine ? Are we right in saying 
 that we miss in St John the simplicity, the 
 naturalness, of the display of sympathy and 
 pity and patience and humility, and that the 
 traditional acceptance of the equal authority 
 of the four Gospels has led us to imagine 
 that we can combine into one what are 
 really incompatible presentations ? 
 
 What does the view we have taken of 
 
 1 Drummond, p. 15.
 
 in.] PERSONALITY OF THE AUTHOR 173 
 
 St John suggest as to the causes of the 
 difference in his picture? 
 
 2. First Cause of the Difference in St Johns 
 Picture his own Personality. 
 
 First among these causes comes the 
 
 character and mind of the person whose 
 
 i I r r . 
 
 impression the Gospel gives to us. It is 
 
 one secret of the value of the different 
 Gospels that they <>'ive us the impression 
 
 * uu '<<*MMM*MMttHMBBlBBMBtfMMIMMHHIMlMiMMB 
 
 made by our Lord on various types of 
 
 / j r 
 
 mind, and we should say that on the face 
 
 VtfBfc 
 
 of it the writer of theJFpurth Gospel is a 
 far more marked personality than*tKe"wnters 
 of tHe other Three. This is in part due 
 to the possession of his whole mind and 
 character by the subject of his story. He 
 reflects that which he pictures. But this 
 again, in its turn, is due to some natural 
 kinship between his own mind and the 
 aspect of the story which he presents. It 
 is impossible to marshal the evidence for 
 and against the view that the personality of 
 the writer plays a large part in determining
 
 174 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP. 
 
 the character of the picture. We can only 
 say, ' and appeal to any reader of the 
 Gospel to allow, that the impression of the 
 individuality of the author is strong. He 
 is not like other men. He is a strange, 
 unearthly soul. Like St Paul, we could 
 imagine him to have been caught up into 
 the third heaven, and to have heard things 
 unspeakable, and ever after to have carried 
 about with him the inspiration of the high 
 air that he had breathed. He looks to 
 the eternal significance of the things that 
 are seen. His spirit dwells in the eternal 
 world. To him the present is the eternal. 
 On the other hand, he has a natural gift 
 for intimacy, for a sympathy that goes 
 below the surface, and that by the insight 
 of sympathy reads motives and meanings. 
 The body of things is to him informed 
 and penetrated through and through by 
 their soul. His senses are spiritual, and 
 his pictures of the scenes in which he 
 lived glow with the delight of moments of 
 rare spiritual communion, in which every 
 detail as it is remembered seems illumined
 
 III.] THE REJECTED SON OF GOD 175 
 
 by a light from within a light that belongs 
 to its very self, to the experience which, 
 because it is transfused with the light of j 
 this vision, lives in his mind as though it \ 
 were present still. Above all, it is a passion- 
 ate spirit. His facultiesare^quickcned into 
 full action by the still enthusiasm of devotion 
 which is the true expression of his nature, 
 the life in which his character is fully 
 manifested, in which he truly lives. Hence 
 there is given to him a realisation above 
 that of other men of the issues of Tufrhan 
 life, "of the glory to which men may rise, 
 of the horror of the deeds that they may 
 do. His judgments are most terrible, , 
 because they are the judgments of the I 
 white light of love. 
 
 3. Second Cause his Purpose to Picture the 
 Rejection of the Son of God. 
 
 The second great cause of the difference 
 in St John's picture of our Lord is the 
 aspect under which he presents Him, as 
 the rejected Son of God, as manifesting
 
 176 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP. 
 
 His Divinity under the pressure of the 
 rejection of the offer of Eternal Life. On 
 this we have dwelt sufficiently in what goes 
 before. There must be an almost infinite 
 difference between the picture of a Christ 
 who is accepted, and the picture of a Christ 
 who is rejected. Add to this that the fact 
 of the rejection tended to bring into clear 
 and awful contrast the character and nature 
 of Him who was rejected, His revelation 
 of the Eternal Father, and His own Eternal 
 Being. Add to this, again, that the whole 
 drama is seen as reflected in the souroHolie, 
 who, alone among the Evangelists declaring 
 that which he had seen with his eyes, had 
 himself met the offer of Eternal Life with the 
 awed and loving acceptance of a spinTThat 
 entered into the very spirit of the gift. Add 
 to this, again, that he is one. who through 
 a long life had lived not onlyinthe memory 
 of the giving but in the experience of the 
 fruition of tne gill, to "wnomthe present 
 spiritual "eSffleTflHTCe had become a part of 
 the memory, and the memory a" part <>1 
 the~~present spiritual experience. We have
 
 Ill,] FIRST APPEAL OF CHRIST TO MAN 177 
 
 here considerations which go a very long 
 way to account for the uniqueness of the 
 picture, not to mitigate the contrast between 
 the two stories, but to account for it however 
 great it may be. 
 
 4. The Galilean Picture gives (i) the First 
 Appeal of Christ to Man in the World. 
 
 If we turn to the picture of the Galilean 
 Gospels, we may put first some considera- 
 tions which tend further to account for the 
 contrast. The purpose of these Gospels was 
 to record the beginning of the Gospel. And 
 the story they tell is the story of how our 
 Lord formed in the first members of His 
 Fellowship the character which would fit 
 them for the gift they were to receive. 
 They present the Gospel accordingly in its 
 first contrast with the worldly spirit from 
 which they were to be weaned. There is 
 a very obvious reason why this picture of 
 our Lord, presenting His Gospel in its 
 contrast with the spirit of the world, should 
 always powerfully appeal to us. The world
 
 178 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP. 
 
 is with us still. The spirit of Christ and 
 the spirit of the world hold over us a divided 
 dominion. The Galilean Gospels present 
 the Christ as He appealed to those to whose 
 spiritual position our own far too nearly 
 corresponds. Their spiritual situation is one 
 with which we are more familiar. We are 
 more at home with the Christ who made 
 His appeal to it. There is no such thing 
 to be found by man as an abstract and 
 absolutely true picture of any personality. 
 This is not the nature of truth. There is 
 only to be gained by us or by any one the 
 picture of the personality as it presents itself 
 to the degree and kind of apprehension 
 which men bring to it. We bring to the 
 apprehension of the Personality of Christ 
 far more readily the kind and degree of 
 apprehension from which in His Galilean 
 Ministry He was leading His disciples on. 
 And, even apart from any question of our 
 instinctive sympathy and preference, the 
 Galilean Gospels do present this historical 
 moment in the growth of the apprehension 
 of Christ, the first contrast between the
 
 in.] THE HUMAN PERFECTION OF CHRIST 179 
 
 spirit of Christ and the spirit of worldly 
 interests, of worldly religion, and worldly 
 expectation. 
 
 5. (2) The Human Perfection of Christ. 
 
 Again the Galilean Gospels presents us 
 with the first naive recognition of the 
 charm and power of our Lord's human 
 perfection. From this we are to rise to the 
 knowledge in Him of the Divine. But as 
 the ascent is made the Human is transfused 
 with the Divine, glorified and transfigured 
 beyond the recognition of those who still 
 stand upon the lower steps from which 
 the ascent is to be made. The glorified 
 Humanity is not less but more truly Human, 
 but it is less familiar to our own appre- 
 hension. The beginning is easier to under- 
 stand than the end, except to those who 
 shall have reached the end.
 
 180 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP. 
 
 6. But the Galilean Gospels show the 
 Hidden Glory. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the picture of 
 our Lord in the Galilean Gospels has in 
 it elements which suggest something behind 
 and beyond. Every now and then there 
 breaks in upon the simple story the sense 
 of a grandeur, a fear, a mystery. Behind 
 the Christ who heals the sick and teaches 
 in parables, there is the Christ who goes 
 apart into the wilderness to pray, who 
 comes back saying, "It is I, be not 
 afraid ; " the Christ of the Transfiguration, 
 to whom they say, as in a new and other 
 world, " Lord, it is good for us to be here ; " 
 the Christ who breaks in upon their peace 
 with the predictions of the Passion, and the 
 revelation of a mysterious task of patience 
 and love, a baptism with which He has to 
 be baptized, and He is straitened till it 
 be accomplished ; the Christ of the Agony, 
 who strives in familiar spiritual communion 
 with the Eternal Father : He is in an
 
 in.] THE GOSPELS SHOW HIDDEN GLORY 181 
 
 alien atmosphere even among His own, 
 " How long shall I be with you, how long 
 shall f surter XQU?" and when He thanks 
 the Father because He has hid these 
 things from the wise and prudent, and has 
 revealecT them unto babes, tie ^speaks of 
 a communion with the Father which is the 
 hidden reality of all this passing scene, 
 " All things have been delivered unto Me 
 of My Father, and no one knoweth the 
 Son save the Father, neither doth any 
 know the Father save the Son, and He to 
 whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal 
 Him." There is a Christ within the Christ 
 in the Galilean <jospels, 
 
 dimly felt in these^^e^eaje^onl^.ni > St 
 John, though even there we are reminded 
 Jesus was not yet glorified," and 
 
 St John himself watches the revelation of 
 the mystery reverently, and as from afar, 
 as though already and always he had 
 heard Him saying, "Touch Me not."
 
 182 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP. 
 
 7. And in Si John we have not lost the 
 Christ of Galilee. 
 
 And in St John, on the other hand, the 
 Christ^ ot the Galilean ' uospels has by no 
 means disappeared from view. In scene 
 after s^efte 1 He is present still. He is 
 seen no longer with Galilean eyes, but we 
 can imagine the stories of the turning of 
 the water into wine, of the sitting by the 
 well at Sychar, of the healing of the im- 
 potent man at the pool, of the man born 
 blind, of the raising of Lazarus, as they 
 
 , 
 
 would have been told by the Three, the 
 
 wMw^wMMMMMMMMMMMMMMfCMI^MOTM^- 
 
 same events, and those just such events 
 as they did tell, with less eager absorption 
 of significant details, with less devoted im- 
 print on the memory of a look or of a 
 word, less radiant with the glory that shone 
 through them. But we are face to face in 
 St John with the same or even greater 
 tenderness and sympathy there is nothing
 
 III.] THE ETERNAL LOVE A FACT 183 
 
 in the Three to parallel the sheer humanity 
 of the feeling and the repression of feeling 
 in the story of Lazarus ; we are face to face 
 with a humility more amazing because of 
 
 ^^MMi^* ^^Hi.^"** g "IffT** ** ll T^ i 
 
 its majesty, ana witn a simplicity in the 
 direct appeal of love, which shines through 
 the dark cloud of the rejection in the very 
 unveiling of the Eternal Light. 
 
 8. He makes the Eternal Love a Fact. 
 
 For it is not that St John's Gospel takes 
 us away from the world of fact into a world 
 of ideas, or away from the world of fact into 
 the region of Eternal Truth. Rather the 
 
 . 
 
 Truth, which in the Galilean Gospels is 
 
 1 ^^ ***^f* s>< *^ ii '' ||| '** ->-| * < '' <| ^"* i * < i*' i- ' """"V*** 1 "** ******** I ' I ^^**IP*'*'*/~ 
 the underlying idea, nas become with St 
 
 John the present and immediate fact. The 
 Christ of St John is not less but more 
 the Christ of fact than the Christ of the 
 Galilean Gospels, because the Truth presented 
 as fact in Jerusalem is more vivid and more 
 intimate and more universal in its appeal. 
 The fusion of the picture of the Three
 
 184 THE PICTURE OF OUR LORD [CHAP, 
 
 with the picture of St John is not effected 
 by our going to Galilean Gospels for the 
 actual Christ, and then letting St John 
 breathe into the picture the spirit of the 
 ideal and the Eternal. Even if St John's 
 Gospel stood alone, the Christ of St John 
 would stand before us as the Christ of 
 
 ^^^^iMBaai^ 
 
 fact. Not merely is it tfie purpose of the 
 Evangelist that He should do so " He 
 dwelt among us and we beheld His glory." 
 Not merely does He stand as a Living 
 Person in a real world, who says : " Take 
 these things hence," or, " Go call thy 
 husband," or, "Arise, take up thy bed, and 
 walk," or, 'J'GoTand sin no more," or, 
 "Where have ye laid Him?" He brings 
 into the region of fact the great Eternities. 
 He' who says: "Before Abraham was I 
 am," stands as a living man upon the 
 earth. The Eternal Love of God is 
 manifest in fact, in our world of sin and 
 struggle and need in Him who says, "My 
 sheep hear My voice, and I know them, 
 and they follow Me, and I give unto them 
 Eternal Life, and no one shall snatch them
 
 HI.] THE ETERNAL LOVE A FACT 185 
 
 out of My hand. My Father, which hath 
 given them unto Me, is greater than all, 
 and no one is able to snatch them out of 
 the Father's hand. I and the Father are 
 One." 
 
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