LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 University of California. 
 
 OIFT OF 
 
 Class 
 
jWoDem Kelffitott^ pvoUtxa^ 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 AMBROSE WHITE VERNON 
 
THE HISTORICAL AND 
 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 BY 
 
 ERNEST F. SCOTT, D. D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, 
 KINGSTON, CANADA 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (ftbt 0i\jer?itie J^tz0 Cambridge 
 
 1909 
 
^^l\ 
 
 t'4 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ERNEST F. SCOTT 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published October ^ jqOQ 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 
 I. 
 
 Introductory 
 
 I 
 
 II. 
 
 Authorship 
 
 . 5 
 
 11. 
 
 General Characteristics 
 
 15 
 
 [V. 
 
 Subordinate Aims 
 
 19 
 
 V. New Presentation of Christianity 28 
 
 VI. The Logos 33 
 
 VII. The Death of Christ 41 
 
 VIII. Light and Life 46 
 
 IX. Man's Relation to the Life-Giver 57 
 
 X. The Eternal Christ 66 
 
 XL Permanent Value of the Gospel 75 
 
 235440 
 
THE HISTORICAL AND 
 
 RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE 
 
 FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Every reader of the New Testament is 
 conscious of a difference when he passes 
 from the first three Gospels to the Gospel 
 of John. The earlier Gospels are distinct in 
 character from one another, and are some- 
 times at variance in their record of facts; 
 but they all present the same general pic- 
 ture of our Lord's life and teaching. They 
 are termed the "Synoptic Gospels," since 
 they deal substantially with a common ma- 
 terial from a common point of view. The 
 fourth evangelist, like the other three, is 
 concerned with the life of Jesus, and repro- 
 duces the familiar story in its main outline 
 
. . THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 and in 'many of its more striking details. 
 But we feel at once that the portrait is 
 different Our Lord as he appears in the 
 fourth Gospel is no longer a prophet and 
 teacher, but the manifest Son of God. He 
 speaks not in vivid saying and parable, but 
 in the language of a mystical theology. The 
 message of the Kingdom, which forms the 
 one subject of his teaching in the Synoptic 
 Gospels, falls practically out of sight, and 
 our attention is fixed instead on his own 
 personality, in its relation to God and its 
 significance for the world. We discover, 
 on closer examination, that this Gospel 
 differs from the others, not only in its gen- 
 eral view of the nature of Christ's mission, 
 but in its reading of the history itself. The 
 chief scene of our Lord's ministry, which 
 was Galilee according to the Synoptic re- 
 cords, is placed in Jerusalem. The time 
 covered by the ministry is extended from 
 one year to three. Important incidents are 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 transposed into a new setting; or they are 
 omitted altogether^ while others, unknown 
 to the previous Gospels, take their place. 
 Even where the fourth evangelist is in 
 closest agreement with the Synoptists, he 
 never fails to introduce some modification 
 in detail, often of such a nature as to change 
 the whole meaning of the event. 
 
 These peculiarities in the Gospel are all 
 the more difficult to explain in view of the 
 traditional theory of its authorship. There 
 can be no doubt that the Synoptic records, 
 on the face of them, bear more convincing 
 marks of authenticity. They describe the 
 incidents of our Lord's life in a natural se- 
 quence, and set them in intelligible relation 
 to well-known facts of contemporary Jew- 
 ish history. Their account of his works and 
 sayings is consistent and life-like, and seems 
 to embody the reminiscences of actual eye- 
 witnesses. A thoughtful reader who stud- 
 ied the Gospels for the first time, with 
 
 3 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 nothing to guide him but his own impres- 
 sions, would almost certainly conclude that 
 the Synoptists gave him the facts, while in 
 John the facts were interpreted and ideal- 
 ised. But this judgment which we should 
 otherwise pass with little hesitation, has 
 been complicated by the generally ac- 
 cepted view of the authorship of the Fourth 
 Gospel. In the epilogue with which it closes 
 it is expressly assigned to the "beloved 
 disciple" of Jesus, — the disciple who has 
 been identified, from a very early time, 
 with John the son of Zebedee. If we admit 
 this evidence as to its origin, we have little 
 choice but to grant it a higher claim to 
 authenticity than any of the other Gospels. 
 It comes to us, not as a comparatively late 
 compilation, woven out of stray fragments 
 of surviving tradition^ but as a first-hand 
 narrative of the life of Jesus, written by 
 that disciple who knew him best. 
 
AUTHORSHIP 
 
 II. AUTHORSHIP 
 
 In modern times the authorship of the 
 fourth Gospel has been the subject of rig- 
 orous investigation. The discussion has 
 now been in process for nearly a hundred 
 years, and is by no means closed; but the 
 weight of scholarly opinion is settling down 
 to a conviction that the traditional theory 
 must be abandoned. It is not the purpose 
 of this little book to deal with the "Johan- 
 nine problem/' the most involved and diffi- 
 cult of all the problems which have arisen 
 out of the critical study of the New Testa- 
 ment. A few sentences, however, will be 
 enough to indicate at least the main reasons 
 for the conclusion that the author of this 
 Gospel was not the Apostle John. 
 
 (i) The book itself makes no claim to 
 Apostolic authorship. It is now generally 
 agreed that the closing chapter, in which 
 alone such a claim is suggested, is of the 
 
 5 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 nature of an appendix, added by a different 
 hand to the original work. This is obviously 
 true of the concluding verses of the chap- 
 ter. They purport to be written not by the 
 author himself, but by some body of wit- 
 nesses, who set their imprimatur on his 
 book. The appendix was no doubt added 
 at an early date; but we cannot infer with 
 any certainty that its account of the origin 
 of the Gospel is more than conjectural. 
 There would indeed have been no occa- 
 sion for the calling in of witnesses, if the 
 authorship had been definitely known from 
 the beginning. In any case, it is noticeable 
 that the Gospel is assigned, in general 
 terms, to a beloved disciple. The writer 
 of the appendix seems to find this disciple 
 in John the son of Zebedee, but guards 
 himself against any express identification. 
 
 (2) The external evidence for the Jo- 
 hannine authorship is far from conclusive. 
 It ultimately rests on the testimony of Ire- 
 6 
 
AUTHORSHIP 
 
 naeus, toward the end of the second century, 
 and there are reasons for supposing that 
 he confused the Apostle John with another 
 John, who was a prominent figure in the 
 early history of the church in Asia Minor. 
 Traces of an acquaintance with the Gospel 
 can be discovered in patristic literature be- 
 fore the time of Irenaeus; but these prove 
 at most that the work was current at 
 an earlier date than has sometimes been 
 granted. If the Apostolic authorship was 
 matter of common knowledge, we should 
 doubtless have found constant reference to 
 the Gospel in the literature of the second 
 century. As it is, the few vague quotations 
 and reminiscences which prove its exist- 
 ence, seem also to indicate that it held a 
 subordinate place among the scriptures of 
 the church. The tradition that John wrote 
 our Gospel has therefore little evidence to 
 support it; and we have further to reckon 
 with a counter-tradition. It is known that 
 
 7 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 at least one sect in the early church refused 
 to admit the Johannine authorship. Little 
 is told us about this sect or the grounds on 
 which it took up its position; but we may 
 reasonably infer, from the mere fact of its 
 appearance, that the Gospel established itself 
 with some difficulty. Its origin was involved 
 in obscurity; and the church consented 
 slowly, and not without misgiving, to ac- 
 cept it as the work of John. 
 
 (3) The relation of the fourth Gospel 
 to the other three is of such a nature that 
 we cannot well conceive the possibility of 
 Johannine authorship. On the one hand, 
 as we have seen, the Synoptic account is 
 greatly modified, alike in its general fea- 
 tures and in details. An eye-witness of the 
 events could hardly have allowed himself 
 those many departures from what, to all 
 appearance, is the correct historical tradi- 
 tion. On the other hand, the fourth evan- 
 gelist, while he modifies the Synoptic 
 8 
 
AUTHORSHIP 
 
 account, is manifestly dependent on it 
 throughout. Again and again he borrows 
 the very words of his predecessors. Al- 
 most all the incidents he records are de- 
 rived, more or less obviously, from the 
 Synoptic narrative. Even where he appears 
 to have least in common with the other 
 evangelists, we can usually discover that 
 he is working on some suggestion which 
 they have offered him. An apostle who 
 had his own store of personal reminiscence 
 from which to draw, would not have leaned 
 in this manner on written documents; and 
 there seems to be no escape from the con- 
 clusion that the fourth evangelist was not 
 one of the original witnesses of the life of 
 Jesus, but a later, derivative writer. His 
 divergences from the Synoptic record are ■ 
 to be explained by his remoteness from the 
 facts which he describes. He is no longer 
 in a position to see the life of Jesus in its 
 historical surroundings and under its true 
 
 9 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 character as a human life. The events have 
 all receded into the distance, so that he is 
 free to deal with them imaginatively, in 
 their ideal and spiritual import. 
 
 (4) The crucial argument against the 
 traditional theory is to be found in the in- 
 ternal character of the Gospel. Its portrait 
 of Jesus is dominated by certain concep- 
 tions of his work and nature which were 
 not possible to a thinker of the primitive 
 age. The evangelist has steeped himself 
 in the teaching of Paul. He has combined 
 the Pauline speculations with those of Alex- 
 andrian philosophy. His mind is set, not so 
 much on the literal facts of his narrative, 
 as on the meanings which had been at- 
 tached to them in the light of subsequent 
 doctrine. Now it may fairly be maintained 
 that an aged apostle, after a life-time of 
 deep Christian experience, would be filled 
 with a sense of the divine significance of 
 the events which he had witnessed. His 
 10 
 
AUTHORSHIP 
 
 remembrance of them would be inter- 
 woven, almost unconsciously, with the 
 thoughts and surmises they had awakened 
 in him long afterwards. But in the fourth 
 Gospel we have something more than this 
 natural blending of memory and reflec- 
 tion. The history is subordinated to the 
 theology. The writer appears to value it 
 chiefly as a proof and illustration of the 
 doctrinal ideas with which he approaches 
 it. We cannot believe that one who had 
 known Jesus in the flesh, and who had 
 been nearer to him than any other, would 
 thus have presented the Master's life. His 
 reflections on the meaning of the life could 
 never have displaced his interest in the life 
 itself. As it is, the Gospel is the work of 
 a great religious thinker, who has entered 
 profoundly into spiritual fellowship with 
 Christ. But it lacks the warm colours and 
 the definite outlines of personal reminis- 
 cence. The evangelist, like Paul, is "one 
 II 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 born out of due time," who has not wit- 
 nessed the earthly life of Jesus except 
 through the eyes of others. 
 
 The fourth Gospel, therefore, cannot be 
 attributed to the Apostle John, and the real 
 secret of its authorship seems to be irre- 
 coverably lost. Many attempts have been 
 made in recent times to connect it with 
 some particular name ; but with our scanty 
 knowledge of the early history of the 
 church, they are hazardous at the best. 
 The evangelist himself remains unknown. 
 All that we can do is to distinguish, within 
 certain limits, the place and time in which 
 he composed his work. From various in- 
 dications, both internal and external, we 
 can infer that he belonged to Asia Minor, 
 and probably to the region of Ephesus. 
 His date has been much disputed; but the 
 evidence would seem to point, more and 
 more decisively, to some time within the 
 first two decades of the second century. 
 
 12 
 
AUTHORSHIP 
 
 Though considerably later than the Synop- 
 tic records, the fourth Gospel is thus an 
 early work, removed by only one genera- 
 tion from the Apostolic Age. It is even 
 possible that the Gospel as we have it was 
 based on an earlier writing, in which case 
 its original sections would fall within the 
 first century. This opinion is held by sev- 
 eral notable scholars in our day; but in 
 view of the uniform character of the work, 
 alike in its language and its teaching, 
 it must be regarded as more than doubt- 
 ful. 
 
 The early date of the Gospel must be 
 taken into account before we refuse it any 
 value as a historical document. At a period 
 when men were still living who had listened 
 to the Apostles, many recollections of the 
 life of Christ must have been current in 
 the church. The evangelist would doubt- 
 less make use of the oral tradition, as he 
 did of the written record. There are several 
 13 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 historical questions of capital importance 
 (e. g'.y the length of our Lord's ministry, 
 the procedure followed at the trial, the 
 date of the Crucifixion) in which the evi- 
 dence of the fourth Gospel seems prefer- 
 able to that of the other three. It is by no 
 means improbable that the writer had ac- 
 cess to sources of information which en- 
 abled him to correct or supplement the 
 account of the Synoptists. From the same 
 sources he may have derived not a few of 
 the sayings and incidents which are pecul- 
 iar to himself, and which have been set 
 down, too hastily, as free additions. Allow- 
 ing, however, for all this possible use of 
 authentic material, we cannot unreservedly 
 accept the testimon)^ of the fourth Gospel 
 on any matter of historical fact. It is evi- 
 dent that all the material has undergone a 
 process. From whatever source he derived 
 it, — whether from our Synoptic Gospels or 
 from other traditions, equally trustworthy, 
 
 H 
 
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 — the writer has moulded it anew and 
 brought it into harmony with his own con- 
 ceptions. What we have before us now is 
 not the literal history of our Lord's life^ but 
 the Johannine interpretation of that life. 
 
 III. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 The process to which the history has 
 been subjected will be better understood, 
 if we look briefly at two outstanding charac- 
 teristics of the Gospel. 
 
 (i) In the first place, the writer views all 
 the facts not as they are in themselves, but 
 through an atmosphere of symbolism. It was 
 already observed by Clement of Alexandria, 
 at the beginning of the third century, that 
 "since the bodily things had been exhibited 
 in the other Gospels, John, inspired by the 
 Spirit, produced a spiritual Gospel." This 
 "spiritualising" of the history is manifestly 
 his aim throughout. Impressed by the infi- 
 nite significance of the revelation in Christ, 
 
 15 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 he sees a deeper meaning in all the exter- 
 nal incidents. He presents them in such a 
 manner that the fact becomes the transpar- 
 ent veil of some inward religious idea. The 
 symbolic value which is thus attached to 
 the life of Jesus can be discerned most 
 clearly in the case of the miracles. As the 
 evangelist regards them they are not 
 merely works of power or beneficence, but 
 " signs," pointing to some truth beyond 
 themselves; and his account of each of 
 them is followed by a discourse, in which 
 this deeper truth is expounded. We are 
 meant to understand that the actual deed 
 of miracle was only the expression, under 
 a visible type, of something that has an 
 abiding reality in the spiritual world. In 
 like manner all the circumstances of the 
 life of Christ — down even to accidental 
 details — were of the nature of signs. 
 Names of places, numbers, casual coinci- 
 dences, are carefully recorded, in order to 
 i6 
 
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 draw attention to the hidden import sug- 
 gested by them. The history resolves itself 
 at every point into a kind of allegory which 
 cannot be rightly apprehended without a 
 key. In this way we must explain the lib- 
 erties, strange to our modern mind, which 
 the writer continually takes with historical 
 facts. The event as it happened was to him 
 the adumbration, necessarily dim and im- 
 perfect, of a spiritual idea. His interest is 
 in the idea, which he regards as the one es- 
 sential thing, — the "truth'' or inward re- 
 ality of the fact. He thinks it not only per- 
 missible but necessary to modify the fact, 
 so as to bring out more fully or emphati- 
 cally the idea at the heart of it "Lo, now 
 speakest thou plainly, and speakest no 
 parable," say the disciples to Jesus at the 
 Last Supper.* The evangelist here ex- 
 presses the thought which has guided him 
 constantly in the writing of his Gospel. 
 
 ^ xvi : 29. 
 
 17 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 He has taken the earthly life of Jesus as a 
 great '' parable/' and seeks to make it in- 
 telligible, in its infinite significance for all 
 time. 
 
 (2) In estimating the historical character 
 of the Gospel we must further bear in mind 
 that it is written with a deliberate purpose. 
 Although cast in the mould of a biography 
 of Jesus, it is not, like the other Gospels, a 
 simple narrative of events. The evangelist 
 himself declares, in the verse which origi- 
 nally closed his work, that he had kept an 
 aim before him. " These things are written 
 that ye might believe that Jesus i^the Christ, 
 the Son of God, and that believing ye might 
 have life through his name."^ In other 
 words, we have here a history which is 
 meant to illustrate and support a given re- 
 ligious belief. We are prepared to find that 
 the facts as recorded are all brought into cor- 
 respondence with that belief. Consciously 
 
 * XX : 31. 
 
 18 
 
SUBORDINATE AIMS 
 
 or not, the writer so adjusts and colours 
 them as to bear out his own conception of 
 the Person and work of Christ. 
 
 IV. SUBORDINATE AIMS 
 
 The Gospel is confessedly written with 
 an intention, and we are justified in enquir- 
 ing whether the declared religious intention 
 may not be combined with some other. The 
 beginning of the second century was one 
 of the critical periods in the history of the 
 church; and it may fairly be expected that 
 a work written about that time will have 
 a bearing on the needs and problems which 
 were occupying the minds of Christian men. 
 When we look below the surface of the 
 fourth Gospel we seem to discover clear 
 traces of this interest in the contemporary life 
 of the church. Several of the more striking 
 peculiarities of the Gospel are not capable 
 of explanation until we read it not only as a 
 historyofjesus, butas a^^tract for the times/' 
 19 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 called forth by the practical requirements 
 of the second century. 
 
 (i) A number of chapters are devoted 
 almost entirely to controversy, — our Lord 
 asserting his claims in face of the antago- 
 nism of "the Jews.'' This substitution of the 
 nation generally for the " scribes and Phari- 
 sees " of the earlier Gospels is itself strange ; 
 and our surprise is still greater when we 
 examine into the nature of the controversy. 
 It turns, not as in the other records, on 
 matters of Jewish custom and morality, but 
 on doctrinal questions which first came 
 under discussion at a later time. Jesus meets 
 objections which the Jews bring forward 
 against his unity with God, his preexist- 
 ence, the character of his Messianic work, 
 the partaking of his flesh and blood, the 
 apparent failure of his mission. We have 
 here to do not with the conflict between 
 Jesus and his enemies, but with the conflict 
 between Christianity and Judaism. The 
 20 
 
SUBORDINATE AIMS 
 
 objections answered are precisely those 
 which were urged by the Jews against the 
 rival religion: they meet us continually, 
 under various forms, in the controversial 
 works of the second century. It is impos- 
 sible to avoid the inference that the evan- 
 gelist, writing at a time when the synagogue 
 was in strong opposition to the church, 
 took occasion to read back into the past 
 the conflict of the present. His Gospel be- 
 came, in one of its aspects, a reply to the 
 Jewish antagonists, whose arguments were 
 more dangerous than any others to the pro- 
 gress of the Christian mission. 
 
 (2) Another remarkable feature in the 
 Gospel is its attitude to John the Baptist. 
 John ceases to be the preacher of righteous- 
 ness whom we read of in the Synoptic nar- 
 ratives, and is simply a witness to the Light. 
 He foretells the advent of Jesus, and is the 
 first to recognise him. When once he has 
 welcomed and proclaimed him, he feels 
 21 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 that his own vocation is ended, and with- 
 draws from the scene. The greatness of 
 John is generously acknowledged, yet there 
 is an obvious anxiety to subordinate him 
 to Jesus, — an anxiety which to our minds 
 seems superfluous. It only becomes intel- 
 ligible when we remember that John was 
 the founder of a sect, which continued in 
 being long after his death, and which ap- 
 parently came into conflict with the Chris- 
 tian Church. The evangelist had in his mind 
 not only the historical John, but this Baptist 
 party. He sought to refute their extrava- 
 gant claims on behalf of their master, — 
 possibly also to win them over, like John's 
 first disciples, to the allegiance of Christ. 
 
 (3) A farther controversial aim may be 
 traced in the Gospel. We know that the First 
 Epistle of John — a kindred writing, which 
 comes to us from the same school, if not 
 from the same hand — is directed against 
 certain heretical teachers. These appear to 
 22 
 
SUBORDINATE AIMS 
 
 have been precursors of the later Gnostics, 
 who denied the reality of Christ's appear- 
 ance and death, and sought to resolve his 
 message into a vague philosophical system. 
 It is highly probable that the same type of 
 heretical teaching is combated in the Gos- 
 pel. The writer goes back to the earthly 
 life of Jesus, and follows it step by step 
 through its earthly progress. He lays stress 
 on details which serve to illustrate the Lord's 
 humanity. He offers solemn testimony to 
 the material fact of the death upon the Cross.' 
 The whole Gospel centres on the thesis that 
 the Word was made flesh, — that the divine 
 nature has imparted itself to men through 
 a human life. But while the evangelist is 
 thus strongly opposed to Gnosticism, there 
 is reason to believe that he has himself been 
 touched by Gnostic influences. He makes 
 frequent use of well-known Gnostic watch- 
 words ; he draws a Gnostic distinction be- 
 
 1 xix: 35. 
 
 23 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 tween the two classes of men, — the earthly 
 and the spiritual, the children of darkness 
 and the children of light ; with all his in- 
 sistence on the reality of the Saviour's life 
 he never loses sight of its ideal significance. 
 This twofold attitude to the Gnostic specu- 
 lations is one of the chief problems of the 
 Gospel. In order to solve it fully we should 
 require to know something of the person- 
 ality of the writer and of the particular cir- 
 cumstances in which he wrote. 
 
 (4) Thus far the Gospel appears to have 
 a bearing on specific controversies, which 
 agitated the church about the beginning of 
 the second century; but we can discern in 
 it yet another interest, subordinate to the 
 main religious one. Nowhere in the book 
 is there express reference to the " church "; 
 yet there is no New Testament writing 
 which is more impregnated with the eccle- 
 siastical idea. Jesus is regarded throughout 
 as the founder of a community which was 
 24 
 
SUBORDINATE AIMS 
 
 by and by to overspread the world. The 
 disciples whom he calls around him are 
 the nucleus and the eventual leaders of this 
 community. Rules are laid down for the 
 administration of the church ordinances and 
 the direction of its government and life. 
 The seventeenth chapter more especially — 
 the so-called Intercessory Prayer — can 
 only be read aright when we consider it as 
 a prayer for the future church. Jesus, on the 
 point of his departure, looks forward to the 
 great brotherhood which would call itself by 
 his name, and prays for its unity and peace. 
 The apparent universalism of the Gospel 
 must be interpreted in the light of this 
 church idea which everywhere pervades it. 
 There appears, at first sight, to be no writ- 
 ing in which the largeness of Christ's mes- 
 sage is so fully recognised, and which sets 
 forth so absolutely the duty of Christian 
 love. But when we look more closel}^^, we 
 see that the evangelist was thinking pri- 
 
 25 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 marily of the church, in its opposition to 
 " the world." He has done with the exclu- 
 siveness that would limit salvation to one 
 race or class; but he replaces it by another 
 exclusiveness. Jesus " lays down his life for 
 his friends."' He prays " not for the world, 
 but for those whom thou hast given me." ^ 
 The love so beautifully typified in the 
 Lord's act of service at the Supper, is 
 ^' love for one another,'' — that is, mutual 
 love within the Christian community. The 
 real universalism of the Sermon on the 
 Mount and the parable of the Good Samar- 
 itan gives place in the fourth Gospel to a 
 narrower message, in accordance with the 
 idea of the church. There can be little 
 question that the evangelist wrote con- 
 sciously in the interest of this idea. Living 
 at a time when the unity of the church was 
 in danger, and when various abuses were 
 creeping into its life and sacraments, he 
 
 * XV : 13. * xvii : 9. 
 
 26 
 
SUBORDINATE AIMS 
 
 sought to remind it of its true character. 
 He reads back into the gospel history the 
 conditions of his own day, in order to sub- 
 mit them to the Master's judgment. Jesus 
 himself becomes the counsellor and legis- 
 lator of his church. 
 
 These subordinate motives can all be dis- 
 covered in the Gospel, and need to be taken 
 into account in any estimate of its historical 
 value. Under the form of a biography of 
 Jesus it deals with problems and difficulties 
 which did not arise until after his death. It 
 bears a constant reference not only to the 
 events which it narrates, but to the situation 
 of the church in the early part of the second 
 century. These other motives, however, are 
 always subordinate in the writer's mind. 
 His paramount aim is the purely religious 
 one; "that ye may believe in Jesus as the 
 Son of God, and that believing ye may have 
 life through his name." 
 27 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 V. NEW PRESENTATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 We may now concentrate our attention 
 on this supreme religious purpose which 
 the fourth evangelist had at heart. His 
 teaching is profoundly spiritual, and in its 
 essence has little relation to time and his- 
 torical circumstance. There can be no key 
 to its inmost secret except that of Christian 
 experience and faith. But to understand the 
 forms in which this permanent message is 
 expressed, we must think of the time when 
 the Gospel was written and try to realise 
 its conditions. The first century had just 
 ended, and the new religion was passing 
 through the most critical years of its history. 
 Hitherto it had been proclaimed by Apos- 
 tles or comrades of the Apostles, — men 
 who were in immediate contact with the 
 personal ministry of Jesus. It had centred 
 its message on the enthusiastic hope of an 
 imminent return of the Lord to judgment. 
 28 
 
NEW PRESENTATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 While extending its mission through the 
 cities of the Gentile world, it had found its 
 chief support in Jews and Jewish proselytes, 
 to whom the original teaching was directly 
 intelligible. But towards the turn of the 
 century, all the conditions which had se- 
 cured the initial success of Christianity un- 
 derwent a change. The high enthusiasm of 
 the early days had ebbed away. The last 
 links with the Apostolic Age were on the 
 point of severing, and the life of Jesus had 
 faded into a historical memory. The hope 
 of the Lord's coming, which had sustained 
 Paul and his fellow labourers had appar- 
 ently proved vain. Judaism and Christian- 
 ity had come to open quarrel; and the 
 younger religion had to seek its future in 
 the great Gentile world, to which its beliefs 
 and ideals and traditions were all strange. 
 It was evident that if the church was to sur- 
 vive and to maintain itself as a living power, 
 its whole message had to be re-interpreted. 
 29 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 Some expression must be found for the rev- 
 elation in Christ, which would set it free 
 from its mere local and accidental ele- 
 ments, and give it a meaning for Gentiles 
 in the second century as it had had for Jews 
 in the first. Our Gospel was written in 
 those years of critical transition. The task 
 which the evangelist laid on himself was 
 that of interpreting to a new time and trans- 
 lating into the terms of a different culture, 
 the truth as it was in Christ. 
 
 This task had already, in some measure, 
 been attempted by Paul, who had stood out- 
 side of the original circle of disciples. In the 
 endeavour to explain the Christian message 
 to his own mind, and to preach it effectively 
 to the Gentile world, he was obliged to 
 clothe it in new forms. His faith was di- 
 rected not to Jesus as he had lived on earth, 
 but to the risen and exalted Christ. He con- 
 strued in terms of a theology the truth which 
 had been given simply and directly, through 
 30 
 
NEW PRESENTATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 a personal life. The fourth evangelist takes 
 up the work of Paul, to whom he is indebted 
 for all his main conceptions; but in two im- 
 portant respects he advances on the Paul- 
 ine teaching, (i) On the one hand he trans- 
 fers to Jesus in his lifetime the attributes 
 of the glorified Lord. Paul, in his desire to 
 emphasise the eternal meaning of the Chris- 
 tian revelation, had refused to " know Christ 
 after the flesh." The one object of his faith 
 was the ever-living Christ, who had now 
 thrown off the form of a servant, and had 
 declared himself as the Son of God with 
 power. But this Pauline gospel, as later 
 experience had shown, was fraught with a 
 grave danger. It tended to break up the 
 identity of the Christ of faith with the his- 
 torical Jesus, and to empty the earthly life 
 of all value and purpose. In the hands of 
 teachers who were less mastered than him- 
 self by the genuine Christian idea, the views 
 of Paul were already being developed in a 
 
 31 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 Gnostic direction. A doctrine of Christ 
 was gaining ground which had no relation 
 to any historical fact. The fourth evangelist 
 seeks to reconcile the Pauline account of 
 Christ with that of the Synoptic Gospels. 
 He goes back to Jesus as he had actually 
 lived among men, and invests him with 
 the glory of that exalted Christ whom Paul 
 had beheld in vision. Thus the higher sig- 
 nificance of the Christian revelation is read 
 into the history itself. Jesus in his human 
 intercourse with his disciples is no other 
 than "the Son of God who is in heaven.'" 
 (2) Again, the Christian theology is pre- 
 sented in the fourth Gospel under Greek 
 forms of thought. Paul was a Jew of Tarsus, 
 one of the centres of Greek philosophical 
 culture; and a Hellenic influence has been 
 traced in not a few of his speculations. But 
 the prevailing colour of his thought is Jew- 
 ish. He was trained in the Rabbinical 
 
 1 iii : 33. 
 32 
 
THE LOGOS 
 
 schools, and borrowed from them the theo- 
 logical ideas under which he explained the 
 new message. The fourth evangelist — 
 though almost certainly a Jew — had en- 
 tered deeply into the spirit of Greek philo- 
 sophy. In his endeavour to set forth the 
 inner meaning of the Christian revelation, 
 he discards the Jewish forms, which were 
 unintelligible to the wider audience he has 
 in view. In a far more radical sense than 
 Paul, he re-interprets the message. It is 
 translated out of the language in which it 
 was originally given into another, which in 
 many points was alien to it altogether. 
 
 VI. THE LOGOS 
 
 The evangelist found ready to his hand, 
 in the general thought of his time, an idea 
 on which he was able to base his new in- 
 terpretation. Greek philosophy was chiefly 
 represented in the first and second centuries 
 by Stoicism; and the central doctrine of 
 
 33 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 Stoicism was that of the Logos, or imma- 
 nent Reason of the world. An attempt had 
 already been made by Philo, a Jewish 
 thinker of Alexandria, to reconcile Greek 
 philosophy with the Old Testament on the 
 ground of this Stoic doctrine. The Greek 
 term " Logos" signifies " word'' as well as 
 "reason"; and Philo had availed himself 
 of this double meaning. Into the Old Testa- 
 ment allusions to the creative and revealing 
 word of God he had read the philosophical 
 conception of the Logos; and had thus 
 evolved that theory that within the being of 
 God there was a secondary divine principle, 
 the Word or Logos, which was His agent 
 in the creation and government of the world. 
 God Himself was solitary and transcendent, 
 of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; but 
 He had entered into relation with the world 
 of time through that intermediate Power, 
 which was one with Him and yet distinct. 
 Christian teachers from an early time had 
 34 
 
THE LOGOS 
 
 been drawn to this Alexandrian doctrine, 
 more especially as Philo himself had attrib- 
 uted a kind of personality to the Logos. 
 It was recognised, more and more clearly, 
 that the Jewish idea of the Messiah did not 
 fully represent the significance of Jesus. He 
 was something more than a national deliv- 
 erer. He had brought men into fellowship 
 with God, in a manner that could not be 
 explained by the current Messianic the- 
 ology. Paul, though he still speaks of Jesus 
 as the Messiah, the " Man from heaven " 
 of Rabbinic speculation, is evidently reach- 
 ing out towards some higher conception. 
 In the Epistle to the Colossians the Logos 
 theory of the Person of Christ is plainly 
 suggested; and it meets us again, even more 
 definitely, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 But it was reserved for the fourth evan- 
 gelist to complete and to work out in all its 
 bearings, the identification of Jesus with 
 the Logos. He declares explicitly at the 
 35 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 very outset of his Gospel, that the Word 
 which had existed from all eternity with 
 God, sharing with Him in the divine nature, 
 had become incarnate in Jesus Christ. 
 
 It is true that after the prologue with 
 which the Gospel opens we have no further 
 direct reference to the Word. Jesus hence- 
 forth appears as the " Son " or the " Son of 
 God"; and from this it has been argued 
 that the Logos conception was only an af- 
 terthought which has no intrinsic relation 
 to the teaching of the Gospel as a whole. 
 But a closer analysis seems to remove all 
 doubt that the idea of the prologue is car- 
 ried out consistently through the entire 
 book. Jesus is the Son of God in the sense 
 that he is a divine Being, eternally one with 
 God. While appearing in the form of man, 
 he is endued with divine power and know- 
 ledge and majesty. His sojourn on earth is 
 only a brief interval in the heavenly life 
 which has been his from the beginning and 
 
 36 
 
THE LOGOS 
 
 to which he presently returns. At the same 
 time his distinction from God is brought 
 into prominence, as in the philosophical 
 doctrine. Though one with God he is subor- 
 dinate to Him. He does nothing of him- 
 self, but is dependent in all things on the 
 Father.' All that he possesses has been 
 "given" him by the Father, who is greater 
 than he.^ Thus in his picture of the actual 
 life of Jesus the evangelist keeps before 
 him the philosophical idea, and tries to give 
 effect to it, on both its sides. 
 
 A historical life cannot, by the nature of 
 things, be interpreted by means of an ab- 
 stract philosophical idea. We must needs 
 admit that in his endeavour to represent 
 Jesus as at once Man and incarnate Logos, 
 the evangelist falls into many inconsisten- 
 cies. Not only so, but he divests the his- 
 torical life of much of its meaning and its 
 true grandeur, in order to bring it into con- 
 
 ^ V : 19. ^ xiv : 28. 
 
 37 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 formity with the Logos idea. We miss from 
 his narrative some of the most striking epi- 
 sodes of the Synoptic story, — for example, 
 the Baptism, the Temptation, the Agony, 
 the Cry from the Cross. These could not 
 be reconciled with the theory of the Logos, 
 and had therefore to be omitted. No allu- 
 sion is made to the intercourse of Jesus 
 with publicans and sinners, which seemed 
 incompatible with his dignity as the incar- 
 nate Son of God. The miracles are re- 
 garded simply as " signs " of his supernat- 
 ural power and origin; and the motive 
 of human compassion, so prominent in 
 the other Gospels, falls out of sight. The 
 prayers of Jesus cease to be true appeals 
 for God's help and guidance. He is himself 
 one with the Father, and knows beforehand 
 that his prayer is sure of fulfilment." As 
 many things are omitted, so there are cer- 
 tain features added which impair the hu- 
 
 38 
 
THE LOGOS 
 
 man reality of the portrait. Jesus knows 
 himself from the beginning to be the Son of 
 God, and is so recognised by his disciples. 
 His life unfolds itself according to a pre- 
 arranged plan, of which no part is hidden 
 from him. He preserves an attitude of aloof- 
 ness towards those around him, who are of 
 different nature from himself. Though he 
 has submitted for a time to the trammels of 
 earthly circumstance, he is never merely 
 passive, but orders his life down to its most 
 casual details, and goes to the Cross by his 
 own free choice. It is not the life of Jesus 
 which is thus set before us, but the history 
 of the Logos, who acts by the laws of his 
 divine nature, though he has taken on 
 himself the form of man. 
 
 We misunderstand the Gospel, however, 
 if we regard it merely as the presentation, 
 in the guise of history, of an abstract theo- 
 logical idea. The idea, when all is said, is 
 secondary and external. It is only the in- 
 
 39 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 tellectual form whereby the evangelist tries 
 to realise and explain the impression made 
 on him by Jesus. As he reflected on that 
 divine life, as he discerned what it had been 
 to him in the experience of faith, he felt 
 that God Himself had come near to men in 
 Jesus Christ. All previous conceptions of 
 the Saviour's nature and mission seemed 
 wholly inadequate, and he had resort to the 
 very highest category which the thought of 
 the time afforded him. Jesus was no other 
 than the eternal Word, — the representa- 
 tive and express image of God. Like Paul 
 before him the evangelist had been mas- 
 tered, in the first instance, by the actual life 
 of Jesus ; and his theology, like Paul's, has 
 a personal love and faith behind it. The 
 Logos doctrine is never so conspicuous 
 but we can trace in the writer's mind this 
 thought of Jesus; and ever and again the 
 remembrance of the living Person breaks 
 altogether through the theological concep- 
 40 
 
THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 tion. Most of all in the Supper discourses 
 we are brought face to face with Jesus as 
 he lived. He is no longer the transcendent 
 Logos, aloof from the world while travel- 
 ling through it, but the Friend and Master 
 who loves his own unto the end. The Gos- 
 pel owes its permanent place in the hearts 
 of Christian men to this vision of Jesus, in 
 his human personality, which lies always in 
 the background. We feel, as we read, that 
 the abstract theory is only a means to an 
 end; and our ultimate impression is one of 
 simple love and adoration in the presence 
 of a personal life. 
 
 VII. THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 The theology of the fourth Gospel is 
 governed throughout by the idea assumed 
 in the prologue, that the eternal Word be- 
 came flesh. It follows that the redemptive 
 work of Christ was achieved through his 
 Incarnation. The emphasis is laid not on 
 
 41 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 the death, as in Paulinism, but on the life; 
 and Jesus can say at the Last Supper, when 
 the Cross is still in front of them, " I have 
 finished the work which thou gavest me to 
 do." ' The Crucifixion was indeed the out- 
 standing fact of Christian history, and the 
 fourth evangelist, like Paul and the Syn- 
 optists, is careful to set it in its due place. 
 From the beginning, when John the Bap- 
 tist points his disciples to "the Lamb of 
 God," the story looks forward to the Cross. 
 Jesus is ever mindful of his "hour," and 
 the thought of his approaching departure 
 gives pathos and meaning to many a solemn 
 utterance as well as to the great farewell 
 discourses at the Supper. Nevertheless, it 
 is apparent that the writer felt a certain dif- 
 ficulty in regard to the death. He could 
 not omit it, as he had done other incidents, 
 or assign it any place except a central one; 
 yet it was irreconcilable with his theory 
 
 42 
 
THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 of Christ as the Logos, who could not be 
 touched by earthly change or accident. 
 The Gnostic thinkers were conscious of the 
 same difficulty involved in the death of 
 Christ, and sought to overcome it by the 
 strange theory that he did not really die. 
 They maintained either that Simon of Cy- 
 rene who bore his Cross was crucified in- 
 stead of him, or that his seeming death 
 was of the nature of an illusion. The evan- 
 gelist, with those false teachers in his view, 
 is anxious to remove all doubt concerning 
 the historical fact. He declares that "Jesus 
 went forth, bearing the cross for himself," ' 
 and establishes the reality of the death by 
 the direct testimony of an eye-witness.^ 
 Yet in various ways he endeavours to miti- 
 gate, in the interest of his theory, the su- 
 preme difficulty of the Cross. He insists, 
 as we have seen, on the self-determination 
 of Jesus, whose life was not taken from 
 
 ^ XIX : 17. * xix: 35. 
 
 43 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 him, but laid down of his own free will. 
 He is at pains to show that the death was 
 a necessary episode in the fulfilment of a 
 divine plan. In recounting the actual story 
 of the Passion he brings into strong relief 
 the majesty and authority of Jesus, so that 
 instead of a Sufferer we see a King, whose 
 apparent humiliation was his " lifting up " 
 to the throne of the world. 
 
 The evangelist, then, does not regard the 
 death from the point of view of Paul, as the 
 great redemptive act in which the life of 
 Christ found its issue and explanation. He 
 thinks of it rather as something which was 
 additional to the life, and which itself had 
 to be explained. Sometimes he describes it 
 as the sovereign instance of faithfulness to 
 duty," or as the crowning example of self- 
 sacrificing love.^ Elsewhere he brings it into 
 relation to his favourite idea of Christian 
 unity. Around the Cross, as a common 
 
 1 x: II. ' xv: 13. 
 
 44 
 
THE DEATH OF CHRIST 
 
 standard, all the scattered children of God 
 are to be gathered into one.' But there is 
 one interpretation of the death of Christ 
 which meets us continually in the Gospel 
 and which serves to connect it, in spite of 
 apparent difficulties, with the doctrine of 
 the Logos. Christ was the Word made 
 flesh; and by the assumption of an earthly 
 nature he had necessarily placed certain 
 limits on his activity. He had revealed 
 himself under conditions of space and time, 
 and only a chosen few could know him, 
 and their knowledge at the best was partial 
 and imperfect. By his death, all the limi- 
 tations were broken down. He emerged 
 from the narrow earthly life into a univer- 
 sal life, and could henceforth hold com- 
 munion with his people everywhere, as he 
 had once done with his immediate disci- 
 ples. He was restored to the fulness of his 
 preexistent being, while he carried into 
 
 1 xi: 52. 
 
 45 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 it those other attributes he had worn as 
 Man. This is the characteristic Johannine 
 doctrine of the death of Christ. The re- 
 deeming work was fully accomplished in 
 the life; but through the death it became a 
 lasting and universal possession for men. 
 The corn of wheat was cast into the ground 
 to die, that it might bring forth much 
 fruit' 
 
 VIII. LIGHT AND LIFE 
 
 What, then, was that work of Christ 
 which he finished in his earthly life and 
 which was set free from every limitation 
 by his death ? The Gospel offers a twofold 
 account of its nature and purpose, (i) In 
 the first place, through Christ we have the 
 full and ultimate revelation of God. It be- 
 longs to the Hellenic cast of the evangelist's 
 thinking that a peculiar value is attached to 
 the idea of revelation. To the Greek mind 
 
 * xii : 24. 
 
 46 
 
LIGHT AND LIFE 
 
 the highest good was identified with per- 
 fect knowledge; and for more than five 
 centuries the great philosophers had been 
 striving after that knowledge. It was as- 
 sumed that the " wise man '' — the man who 
 rightly apprehended the nature of God — 
 would raise himself above earthly circum- 
 stance, and become, in some measure, like 
 God. The evangelist, imbued with this 
 Greek idea, declares that God has now 
 granted to men the absolute revelation of 
 Himself. From the beginning He has been 
 found of those who sought Him. In sages, 
 prophets, law-givers. His Word has been 
 dimly reflected, and men have been led by 
 them to some partial knowledge of Him- 
 self. But now at last the revealing Word 
 has appeared in very Person. The Light 
 which in broken rays had been present to 
 men from the beginning, had come into the 
 world. It was the supreme service of the 
 fourth evangelist to Christian thought that 
 
 47 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 he discerned the true revelation of God in 
 the Hving Person of Christ. The objection 
 has often been urged against the Gospel 
 that it contains little of definite teaching. 
 Its elaborate discourses are almost wholly 
 occupied with sayings about the speaker 
 himself. With all their claim to convey a 
 fuller revelation, they have far less to tell 
 us of the Heavenly Father, in His love and 
 providence and will towards men, than the 
 simple Synoptic parables. But it may be 
 answered that by concentrating his thought 
 upon the Person, almost to the exclusion 
 of all else, the evangelist has truly appre- 
 hended, and expressed with a matchless 
 clearness and power, the truth that un- 
 derlies even the Synoptic teaching. Jesus 
 himself was the revelation. He made the 
 Father known to us, not so much by the 
 words he spoke as by his life, by his 
 whole personality, ^^full of grace and 
 truth.'' Our knowledge of God is dependent 
 
 48 
 
LIGHT AND LIFE 
 
 henceforth on an ever-growing vision of 
 Jesus Christ. It may be granted that in his 
 presentation of this great truth the evangel- 
 ist is largely influenced by philosophical 
 ideas that obscure much of its meaning. 
 He appears to suggest that Jesus revealed 
 the Father because He was Himself of the 
 same essence, and made palpable to us the 
 absolute divine life. A one-sided emphasis 
 is laid on " knowledge/' as if God were to be 
 apprehended through Christ by some intel- 
 lectual process. Yet beneath these wrap- 
 pings of metaphysic, inseparable from the 
 Logos theory, we can discover the simple 
 religious idea that Jesus revealed God by 
 the divine character of his human life. The 
 knowledge by which we lay hold of him 
 is something more than intellectual know- 
 ledge. It is bound up with obedience to his 
 will, and inward fellowship with him. 
 
 (2) The work of Christ, however, did 
 not consist wholly in revelation. As he 
 
 49 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 was the Light, he was also the Life, — im- 
 parting to men not only the knowledge of 
 God, but the divine nature. In this concep- 
 tion of Christ as the Life-giver we find the 
 central motive of the Gospel. It was written, 
 as the evangelist himself tells us, that be- 
 lieving in Jesus as the Son of God we might 
 have life. 
 
 " Life '' is the comprehensive word em- 
 ployed in the Old Testament to denote the 
 sovereign good. Joy, prosperity, peace, 
 wisdom, righteousness, are all summed up 
 in the idea of life, and God Himself is pre- 
 eminently the " Living One.'' In later Jew- 
 ish thought, life was associated in a special 
 manner with the coming age, when all 
 things were to reach their consummation. 
 The blessings which God would bestow 
 upon His people in the great future were 
 ^all included in the one possession of " eternal 
 life." It is in this sense that the word meets 
 us frequently in the Synoptic Gospels. The 
 SO 
 
LIGHT AND LIFE 
 
 message of Jesus is concerned with the 
 coming age, or kingdom of God; but the 
 kingdom itself is identified with its chief 
 blessing. Jesus can speak, almost in the 
 same sentence, of "entering into the king- 
 dom "and of "inheriting eternal life." The 
 fourth evangelist takes advantage of this 
 equivalence of the two terms, and discards 
 the idea of the kingdom altogether. It was 
 related to hopes and beliefs that were spe- 
 cifically Jewish, and he replaces it by the 
 more general conception of life. At the 
 same time he introduces an all-important 
 change into this conception. Life in the 
 Synoptic teaching belonged to the inherit- 
 ance of the kingdom of God, and was re- 
 garded as still in the future. It was described 
 as " eternal life," since it was part of that 
 divine, eternal order which was presently 
 to be inaugurated. But the epithet " eternal," 
 as used in the fourth Gospel, applies simply 
 to the quality of the life. The natural life is 
 
 51 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 something defective and unreal, little better 
 than a state of death; and over against it 
 there is the true life, offered to us by Christ. 
 It is not a blessing of the remote future, but 
 an actual and present possession. " He that 
 believeth in the Son hath life."' " He that 
 believeth in me is passed " (already by that 
 very act) " from death into life." ^ 
 
 The evangelist nowhere declares in so 
 many words, what he understands by life. 
 His apparent definition ^ has reference rather 
 to the indispensable means whereby the 
 true life is to be attained. In the light of 
 various passages, however, his underlying 
 thought becomes evident. Life is primarily 
 the absolute divine life. God is Spirit, and 
 possesses an eternal, self-originated life, of 
 a different nature from that of men. This 
 higher life is not conceived, at least in the 
 first instance, under ethical categories. God 
 is the Living One, not in virtue of His love 
 
 ^ iii : 36. ^ V •. 24. ^ xvii : 3. 
 
 52 
 
LIGHT AND LIFE 
 
 and righteousness and holiness, but because 
 there resides in Him a purer essence, anal- 
 ogous to the life principle in man, yet dif- 
 ferent in kind. The Logos, as one with God, 
 participates in that divine attribute of life. 
 " As the Father hath life in himself so he 
 hath given the Son to have life in himself." ' 
 The purpose of Christ's coming, then, was 
 to communicate to men that life which, as 
 the eternal Word, he shared with the 
 Father. Man was by nature a creature of 
 flesh, excluded, by the very conditions of 
 his being, from the higher life. But through 
 the incarnation of His Son, God had now 
 allied Himself with the human race. What 
 was formerly an impassable gulf, not to be 
 crossed by any effort of man, had been 
 bridged over. The higher nature had taken 
 possession of the lower, and all who would 
 had access to it and could make it their own. 
 This, according to the fourth evangelist, 
 
 * V : 26. 
 
 53 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 was the meaning and end of the Lord's 
 sojourn in the flesh. " In him was life," 
 and we also can have life through his name. 
 Two things need to be observed and em- 
 phasised in connection with this primary 
 Johannine doctrine, (i) The life, as we 
 have seen, is not conceived in a purely 
 ethical or religious sense. It is regarded 
 from a metaphysical point of view as the 
 absolute life which constitutes the being 
 of God; and as such it is opposed to the 
 mere earthly life which we inherit as men. 
 The work of Christ consists, therefore, not 
 so much in the renewal of our sinful will as 
 in the actual transformation of our nature. 
 He communicates the divine life as a kind 
 of higher essence, by the reception of which 
 man's being is wrought into affinity with 
 God's. This mysterious change is symbol- 
 ised by the miracle at Cana, — the ^^begin- 
 ning of miracles," which was typical of all the 
 others. As Jesus changed water into wine, 
 54 
 
LIGHT AND LIFE 
 
 so he came to transmute our earthly nature 
 into something richer and better. It is in- 
 dicated, likewise, in the so-called parable 
 of the Vine. In more than a figurative sense 
 Jesus describes himself as the true Vine, — 
 the living stem whereby life is transmitted 
 to all the branches. A conception of life 
 which can only be defined as semi-physical 
 is involved in the whole Johannine doctrine ; 
 and in so far it falls short of the highest re- 
 ligious value. A magical element is intro- 
 duced into Christianity which we cannot 
 but recognise as alien to the real spirit of 
 our Lord's teaching. None the less, we 
 must here again distinguish between the 
 truth itself and the form in which it is em- 
 bodied. The evangelist is conscious that in 
 Jesus Christ a new, transforming power 
 has entered into the world. He has seen 
 a change effected in the lives of men so 
 profound and mysterious that it seems no- 
 thing less than a change of nature; and he 
 
 55 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 has himself experienced this inward re- 
 newal. To the moral miracle accomplished 
 by Jesus he applies the categories suggested 
 to him by his philosophical doctrine. Jesus 
 was the Word, in whom the being of God 
 became incarnate. The possessor of the 
 divine life has imparted it to his people, 
 changing their mortal nature into the sub- 
 stance of his own. 
 
 (2) Life is inseparable from a living 
 person; and we can only receive the gift 
 of Christ by union with himself. The life 
 is in him; not in his teaching, or in any 
 work performed by him, but in his very 
 self. He can say, " I am the Life." The 
 idea thus conveyed brings us directly to 
 the heart of the Johannine message. Our 
 Lord's purpose, as conceived by this evan- 
 gelist, was nothing less than to impart his 
 own personal life to his disciples. "I am 
 the living bread which came down from 
 heaven.'' "The bread that I will give is 
 
 56 
 
MAN'S RELATION TO THE LIFE-GIVER 
 
 my flesh, which I will give for the life of 
 the world.'' ' Here, also, the thought is no 
 doubt obscured by conceptions that to our 
 minds may appear crude and half-material. 
 The life is viewed as an ethereal essence, 
 resident in the incarnate Word; and is only 
 to be received by some mystical absorption 
 into ourselves of Christ's actual body. Yet 
 the truth suggested is the vital truth of 
 Christianity, and the fourth Gospel, more 
 than any other writing, has established its 
 place in the Christian thought of all time. 
 Our Lord's great gift to humanity was 
 himself, and to receive the gift he offers 
 we must apprehend him in his living 
 Person. We must fill ourselves with his 
 mind and will, and become incorporate 
 with him in the whole spirit of our lives. 
 
 IX. MAN'S RELATION TO THE LIFE-GIVER 
 
 The higher life is imparted as an im- 
 mediate gift of God through Christ j but 
 
 1 vi:5i. 
 
 57 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 certain conditions are required of men be- 
 fore they can receive the gift. To set before 
 us these conditions is the practical religious 
 aim of the fourth Gospel. It might appear, 
 at first sight, as if the evangelist simply 
 took up the message of Paul. As Paul in- 
 sists on faith as the one thing needful, so 
 the later teacher makes the whole process 
 of salvation centre on the act of believing 
 on Christ. We find, however, on compar- 
 ing the two ideas more carefully, that the 
 "belief" so persistently demanded in the 
 fourth Gospel is something different from 
 the Pauline "faith,'' — something much nar- 
 rower and more definite. Its nature is in- 
 dicated by the conjunction with "know- 
 ledge " in which it is so often placed. Where 
 Paul contemplated an energy of the whole 
 man, an entire surrender of heart and will, 
 the evangelist thinks, in the first instance, 
 of an act of intellectual assent. To "be- 
 lieve" is to accept the given doctrines of 
 
 58 
 
MAN'S RELATION TO THE LIFE-GIVER 
 
 Christianity, especially the fundamental 
 doctrine that Jesus is the Son of God. 
 
 But while belief in itself has thus a re- 
 stricted meaning, it is combined with other 
 elements which give it something of the 
 larger significance of Faith. We are re- 
 minded, on the one hand, that the intel- 
 lectual act is morally conditioned. Before 
 we can know Christ and recognise him in 
 his true character as Son of God, we re- 
 quire to enter into full sympathy with 
 him; and this sympathy is wrought in us 
 by a life of obedience and loyal disciple- 
 ship. "If any man will to do His will, he 
 shall know of the doctrine.'' ' The promi- 
 nence thus given to the ethical demand of 
 Christianity is a marked feature in the Gos- 
 pel, — all the more striking because of its 
 pervading speculative character. Warned, 
 perhaps, by the current errors of Gnosti- 
 cism, the evangelist feels the danger of re- 
 
 » vii: 17. 
 
 59 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 solving the message of Christ into a mere 
 theology. He holds that the true know- 
 ledge runs back in the end to practical 
 obedience. 
 
 On the other hand, while belief is repre- 
 sented as nothing in its outward form but 
 an act of bare confession, an emphasis is 
 laid on the mystery involved in it. Through 
 belief a man is brought into life-giving fel- 
 lowship with the Son of God; and an act 
 so momentous in its consequences must be 
 the outcome of some profound and divine 
 impulse. " No man can come to me unless 
 the Father draw him." ' The will of God 
 Himself must cooperate with the human 
 will, before there can be a true belief in 
 Christ. This idea of a divine activity re- 
 vealing itself in the Christian confession, is 
 presented most fully and impressively in 
 the doctrine of the New Birth. The doc- 
 trine is peculiar to the fourth Gospel, and 
 
 1 vi : 44. 
 
 60 
 
MAN'S RELATION TO THE LIFE-GIVER 
 
 combines in itself various elements derived 
 from Pauline theology and from early spec- 
 ulations on the mystical import of the bap- 
 tismal rite. But it is ultimately derived 
 from the familiar sayings in which our 
 Lord declares that men must become like 
 little children before they can enter the 
 Kingdom of God. The evangelist height- 
 ens the original image, and in so doing 
 throws a new suggestion into it. He speaks 
 not merely of a return to childhood, but 
 of a renewal of birth. The acceptance of 
 Christianity is nothing less than another 
 beginning of life; and this second begin- 
 ning, like the first, is mysterious, and not 
 dependent on our own will. We are born 
 into our faith in Christ by the agency of 
 God's spirit, which moves invisibly like 
 the wind. Whence it comes, or how it 
 works in us, we cannot tell; yet its influ- 
 ence, so real though so inscrutable, is the 
 beginning of the new life. 
 6i 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 By the act of belief, therefore, — which it- 
 self is preceded by a whole religious process, 
 — we enter into such a relation to Christ 
 that his gift becomes possible. But the be- 
 lief is only the starting-point of another 
 process, by which the work of Christ attains 
 to its final outcome in eternal life. To un- 
 derstand this part of the evangelist's teach- 
 ing we need to bear in mind his ruling con- 
 ception, that the life bestowed by Christ is 
 identical with Christ himself. How can 
 we so apprehend him that he may commu- 
 nicate to us his own personal life ? This is 
 the crucial question of the Gospel, and an 
 answer is sought to it along various lines 
 of thought, (i) A peculiar importance is 
 attached, in the first place, to the " words '' 
 of Christ, which are " spirit and life " to 
 those who truly receive them. The words 
 are regarded not merely as the vehicle of a 
 certain message, but as a living and per- 
 sonal influence. To the ancient mode of 
 62 
 
MAN'S RELATION TO THE LIFE-GIVER 
 
 thinking, a man's word was part of himself. 
 The word of God, more especially, is con- 
 ceived in the Old Testament as the outflow 
 of the divine Personality, carrying with it 
 a quickening and creative power. So the 
 words uttered by Jesus were a sort of efflu- 
 ence from himself. Through them he makes 
 his abode in the hearts of his people, and 
 communicates his own life. (2) Again, a 
 place is given in the Gospel to the mystical 
 ideas which had already begun to grow up 
 around the Lord's Supper, under the influ- 
 ence of Greek and Oriental theosophy. In 
 the long discourse of Jesus after the feed- 
 ing of the five thousand ' we have a whole 
 series of sayings which can only be ex- 
 plained in the light of eucharistic doctrine. 
 The evangelist's attitude to this doctrine 
 seems to be a twofold one. He combats 
 the superstitious belief that the Supper 
 was valid in itself, apart from the discern- 
 
 ' Ch. vi. 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 ment of its spiritual meaning. It can avail 
 us nothing unless we can grasp the reality 
 through the symbols and yield ourselves to 
 Christ in the fellowship of faith. But at the 
 same time a more than symbolical value is 
 attributed to the sacred elements. If they 
 are received with the true spirit they repre- 
 sent, in some real sense, the Person of 
 Christ. Only as we partake of his flesh and 
 blood can we receive into ourselves the 
 divine life; and by the institution of the 
 Supper the great miracle is accomplished. 
 Christ gives himself to us as the bread of 
 life. In this sacramental train of thought, 
 more distinctly than elsewhere, we can de- 
 tect the semi-physical idea that is inter- 
 woven with the purely spiritual teaching of 
 the Gospel. Life is a divine essence, inher- 
 ent in the Word made flesh; and as such it 
 must be imparted magically, by a special 
 miracle. (3) Once more, — and here we 
 touch the centre of the Johannine message, 
 
 64 
 
MAN'S RELATION TO THE LIFE-GIVER 
 
 — life becomes ours through an inward 
 abiding union with Christ, the Life-giver. 
 Paul had already spoken of a fellowship 
 with Christ so entire and intimate that the 
 believer became one with his Lord. " I 
 live, yet not I, but Christ who liveth in me." 
 The evangelist takes up this Pauline con- 
 ception, and develops it, on the ground of 
 his own spiritual experience, to yet fuller 
 and deeper issues. Life as it manifests itself 
 in the disciples is the life of Christ, apart 
 from whom they can do nothing. He makes 
 his abode with them and unites them to 
 himself, as the branches have their life in 
 the vine. The question of how this union is 
 effected is left in the end unanswered; or 
 rather it is answered, as alone it can be, by 
 a simple judgment of faith. Those who have 
 known Christ are conscious of his presence, 
 beside them and within them. They are 
 made one with himself, and with the Father 
 throuo^h him. 
 
 ^fc) 
 
 65 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 X. THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 So it is by uniting us with himself that 
 Christ bestows on us his gift. The Gospel 
 describes how he sojourned with his first 
 disciples, and how they were quickened to 
 new life by their immediate intercourse 
 with the Son of God. But the thought of 
 that wonderful history brings with it a great 
 problem. Did the work of Christ avail only 
 for the particular time and for the small 
 circle of personal followers, to which he 
 came? Holding as he does that life must 
 be transmitted directly from the living Sav- 
 iour, the evangelist may seem to have 
 driven himself to this mournful conclusion. 
 He cannot take refuge in any theory of the 
 perennial value of Christ's message, or of 
 some redeeming act performed by him once 
 for all. We cannot receive the life except 
 through the Person, to whom we have ac- 
 cess no more. 
 
 66 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 The solution to this problem is found in 
 the deeper interpretation of a belief which 
 held a cardinal place in primitive Christian 
 theology. The early disciples, identifying 
 Jesus with the Messiah of Jewish tradition, 
 were confident that he would presently re- 
 turn to bring in his everlasting Kingdom. 
 His earthly life had closed in apparent fail- 
 ure, but he would vindicate the faith of his 
 people by a second coming, which would 
 reveal him to the world in his true sover- 
 eignty. It was this hope that sustained the 
 Apostles in the face of unbelief and oppo- 
 sition; but as time went on, and the Lord 
 delayed his coming, the ardour of confi- 
 dence gave way to doubt and disappoint- 
 ment. We have evidence in the later books 
 of the New Testament of the mood of de- 
 pression which was beginning to chill the 
 energies of the church. To the minds of not 
 a few, the whole Christian message seemed 
 to have fallen to the ground with the fail- 
 
 67 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 ure of the great promise on which it had 
 first rested. The fourth evangelist, how- 
 ever, falls back on the primitive hope and 
 re-affirms it, even more strenuously. He 
 declares that the early disciples had only 
 been mistaken as to the manner of the 
 Lord's return. The promise had referred 
 not to a visible advent, manifest to all the 
 world, but to an inward, spiritual coming 
 of which none would be aware but the 
 Lord's own people. And in this sense Jesus 
 had already fulfilled his promise. By his 
 death he had ascended to God, re-assuming 
 the glory which he had from the begin- 
 ning; and his return to the Father was at 
 the same time a return to his people, in a 
 closer and more pervading presence. The 
 " little while " of his departure was not a 
 period to be measured by months or years; 
 but was merely the short interval between 
 his death and his Resurrection. In the 
 same act by which he rose again, he had 
 68 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 entered on his endless life; and from that 
 time onward he had been dwelling with 
 his people, — invisible, but even nearer to 
 them, and more of a present help, than he 
 had been at first. His earthly life had been 
 subject to many limits and obstructions. He 
 had manifested himself under the condi- 
 tions of space and time. He had lived in the 
 flesh, separate from his disciples, and they 
 could only know him externally, as men 
 know one another. His intercourse with 
 them had been fitful and imperfect at the 
 best, and had finally been broken off by 
 death. But the limitations that had been 
 placed on his first appearance had now 
 fallen away, and he had returned; or rather 
 he had continued, under new and larger 
 conditions, the selfsame life in which he 
 had been known to his disciples. We read 
 in the Supper discourses how the Lord 
 would henceforth reveal himself as an all- 
 pervasive, inward, eternal presence. He 
 
 69 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 would be near to all his people, however 
 they might be scattered over the wide world. 
 He would dwell with them, not outwardly 
 as before, but in their very hearts. Their 
 joy in his fellowship would be uninter- 
 rupted by any earthly change or accident, 
 and would remain the same forever. Thus 
 the seeming departure of Christ had been 
 only the commencement of his true and 
 eternal abode with men. Those who had 
 not seen, yet had believed, could hold com- 
 munion with him as his own disciples had 
 done, and could know him even more 
 closely and personally. They could receive 
 him into their hearts, and participate in 
 his life. 
 
 This doctrine of the Return of Christ is 
 complicated and partly obscured by the 
 references to the Holy Spirit, which alter- 
 nate with it throughout the Supper dis- 
 courses. Almost in the same breath in 
 which he speaks of his own coming, Jesus 
 70 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 tells his disciples of the "Comforter" or 
 "Advocate" who would take his place 
 after he had himself departed. In these 
 allusions to the Holy Spirit we may discern 
 an effort, on the part of the evangelist, to 
 combine an earlier Pauline conception with 
 his own characteristic thought. Paul had 
 regarded the union with Christ as mediated 
 by the Spirit, the new divine power which 
 was now operative in the Christian Church. 
 His idea of the Spirit is vitally bound up 
 with his theology as a whole; but in the 
 fourth Gospel it seems only to express, 
 under a different form, a thought which is 
 already complete in itself. The Spirit is 
 another name for Christ. His promise of 
 its coming is included in the greater prom- 
 ise of his own personal return to his peo- 
 ple. So far as an independent value can 
 be attached to the doctrine of the Spirit, it 
 serves to bring into special prominence 
 one aspect of the abiding work of Christ. 
 
 71 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 He had come as the revelation of God; 
 but his earthly life did not exhaust the 
 revelation. There were many things which 
 he desired to say to his disciples; but the 
 time was short and their hearts were un- 
 prepared, and he had disclosed only a 
 little portion of the truth. But he be- 
 queathed the Spirit to them as a perma- 
 nent source of revelation. In the possession 
 of it they would be guided into the hidden 
 meanings of all that he had done and 
 spoken. They would be enabled to read 
 his past message in its bearing on new 
 times and circumstances, and to develop 
 it, age after age, to ever higher and larger 
 issues. The Spirit, sent by him from the 
 Father, would speak in his name, and its 
 utterances would carry the same authority 
 as his own recorded words. 
 • In his doctrine of the Spirit, therefore, 
 the evangelist gives expression to an in- 
 finitely fruitful thought, which has hardly 
 72 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST 
 
 yet come to its own in the accepted faith 
 of the church. He maintains that Chris- 
 tianity is not bound down to any unchange- 
 able tradition or dogma. It is the absolute 
 because it is the living and ever-growing 
 religion. It possesses within itself an end- 
 less power of development, and of re-adjust- 
 ment to new conditions and needs. In each 
 successive generation its message is able 
 to clothe itself in changing forms; while 
 through them all it remains the authentic 
 message of Jesus Christ. The revelation in 
 history was never meant to stand alone. 
 From our knowledge, rather, of what Jesus 
 was when he appeared on earth, we can 
 discern him still, and receive the new 
 truth which he imparts to us through his 
 living Spirit. The fourth Gospel itself is 
 the grandest illustration of this profound 
 and far-reaching doctrine. Writing in a 
 new century, for a people of alien race and 
 culture, the evangelist goes back to the 
 73 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 teaching of Jesus; but he does not simply 
 reproduce it as it had been handed down. 
 He translates it into new language; he in- 
 terprets it with the aid of later theological 
 forms ; he brings it into relation to contem- 
 porary problems and interests, which had 
 not yet emerged in the Master's own life- 
 time. Literally considered the message is 
 different from that which had come down 
 in the tradition. The words attributed to 
 Jesus had not actually fallen from his lips, 
 and the whole picture of his earthly life 
 and surroundings is in many respects al- 
 tered. Yet the writer claims authority for 
 his Gospel. He is convinced that he, as 
 truly as the Synoptists, is recording the 
 deeds of Jesus and the words he spoke. 
 For through the historical life he has a 
 vision of the eternal life. The literal teach- 
 ing has been illuminated to him and filled 
 with new meanings and applications. Nearly 
 a century had passed by since Jesus had de- 
 
 74 
 
PERMANENT VALUE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 parted; and through all those years his 
 revelation had been unfolding itself, under 
 the growing light of the world's thought 
 and knowledge. This later revelation — 
 the Gospel would teach us — was continu- 
 ous with the first. Behind the things which 
 Jesus had spoken there were those which 
 he had left unsaid, and which were now 
 declaring themselves to his disciples 
 through his Spirit of truth, 
 
 XI. PERMANENT VALUE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 It would be difficult to over-estimate the 
 influence of the fourth Gospel on the sub- 
 sequent history of Christianity. Unlike the 
 other writers of the New Testament the 
 evangelist addressed himself directly to the 
 Gentile churchy in which the religion of 
 Jesus was to find its chief fulfilment; and 
 he may be said to have marked out the di- 
 rection which the great stream of Christian 
 thought was henceforth to follow. It was 
 
 75 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 due in large measure to the influence of 
 his Gospel that Christianity remained true 
 to its original character, amidst the many 
 disturbing forces of the second and third 
 centuries. At a time when the primitive 
 tradition was in danger of perishing, this 
 great teacher re-asserted it, and embodied 
 it in new and living forms. He gathered 
 up into one final utterance the whole mes- 
 sage of the Apostolic Age. The Synoptic 
 history, the theology of Paul, the hopes 
 and beliefs of the early disciples were all 
 harmoniously blended in his Gospel, and 
 became the lasting inheritance of the Gen- 
 tile church. It must never be forgotten 
 that the primary aim of our evangelist was 
 to maintain the faith as it had been at the 
 beginning. From the age immediately be- 
 hind him he received the message of the 
 Apostles, and sought to bring it home, as 
 a saving power, to his own generation. 
 But in the very effort to preserve what was 
 
 76 
 
K PEF 
 
 PERMANENT VALUE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 essential in it, he was led to introduce cer- 
 tain new elements, which profoundly af- 
 fected all the later development. 
 
 (i) He availed himself of categories of 
 thought, unknown to the primitive age, 
 which were derived mainly from the phi- 
 losophjT' of Greece. These new categories 
 were in many ways well fitted to express 
 Christian ideas ; but it cannot be denied that 
 something was lost by the adoption of them. 
 The teaching of Jesus became abstract and 
 mystical, instead of simple and direct. An 
 appeal was made to the intellect more than 
 to the underlying instincts of the moral and 
 religious life. The loss, however, was coun- 
 ter-balanced by undoubted gains. Chris- 
 tianity was now enabled to present itself to 
 the Western peoples under forms of thought 
 and language which they could understand. 
 Not only so, but it was brought into alli- 
 ance with new forces that worked hence- 
 forth for its enrichment. It asserted itself 
 77 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 heir to five centuries of Greek thinking. It 
 was acclimatised in the general culture of 
 the time, and penetrated it more and more 
 with its own spirit. To the fourth evan- 
 gelist, more than to any other teacher, the 
 church was indebted for the mighty pro- 
 gress of the next three centuries. He trans- 
 planted the new religion from its Jewish 
 soil into another, where it could take deep 
 root and send out its branches freely. 
 
 (2) The early apocalyptic ideas were 
 changed, in the fourth Gospel, into their 
 spiritual equivalents. This was a great and 
 necessary change, the full importance of 
 which we are just beginning to realise, in 
 the light of a better knowledge of the New 
 Testament times. The members of the 
 primitive church were unable to grasp the 
 message of Christ apart from certain beliefs 
 which they had inherited from Judaism. 
 They looked for an approaching end of the 
 world, for a visible coming of the Messiah 
 
 78 
 
PERMANENT VALUE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 on the clouds of heaven, for a literal Day of 
 Judgment. Even Paul, while he discarded 
 the Jewish legalism, held firmly to those 
 apocalyptic conceptions; and his teaching 
 has constantly to be disentangled from them 
 before we can understand its real import. 
 In the fourth Gospel, however, the great 
 Christian ideas are set before us in their 
 purity. They are no longer involved in those 
 wrappings of myth and imagination which 
 in course of time might have smothered 
 them altogether. The dramatic advent of the 
 Messiah becomes the return of Jesus as an 
 inward presence with his people. The judg- 
 ment ceases to be a definite event in the 
 future, and is conceived as something pres- 
 ent and always in process, — a continual 
 sifting out of men by their attitude to the 
 light. By this dissolving of the old apoca- 
 lyptic hopes, the evangelist broke away 
 from much that was characteristic of earlier 
 Christianity; but in so doing he only af- 
 
 19 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 firmed more clearly the essential Christian 
 message. It was preserved for the time to 
 come in its true character, as inward and 
 spiritual. 
 
 (3) The evangelist made it evident, once 
 for all, that the central fact in Christianity 
 is the Person of Christ. No doubt he pre- 
 sents this great truth under doctrinal forms 
 which belonged to a given age, and have 
 now in large measure lost their value. It 
 might be argued that the whole attempt to 
 construe the Person of Christ theologically 
 was a mistaken one, and tended to divert 
 the church from its true mission. An ortho- 
 dox belief came to be the one criterion of 
 the religious life. Christian thought ex- 
 hausted itself in endless efforts — futile by 
 their very nature — to define the mystery of 
 the Godhead, and the precise relation be- 
 tween the Father and the Son. For much 
 of the fruitless controversy of the succeed- 
 ing centuries the fourth evangelist must 
 80 
 
PERMANENT VALUE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 be held responsible. But the controversy, 
 however misdirected in itself, had behind 
 it the great conviction which he had be- 
 queathed to the Christian Church. Christ, in 
 his own Person, is the revelation. Through 
 knowledge of him and participation in his 
 spirit, we have access to God. 
 
 The value of the fourth Gospel, how- 
 ever, is not to be measured by its historical 
 influence on the faith and development of 
 the church. It holds a place of its own, 
 — sacred and apart even among the books 
 of the New Testament, — as the devotional 
 Gospel, which has moulded and nurtured 
 the Christian piety of all ages. The tradi- 
 tion which assigns it to a Beloved Disciple 
 is true in essence, if not in literal fact. We 
 can recognise in the unknown evangelist 
 one who had entered into the inner secret 
 of the life of Christ. He has taught us, out 
 of his own deep experience, how the Mas- 
 ter who departed long ago is still a living 
 8i 
 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL 
 
 presence with those who love him; and 
 Christian men have ever found in his Gos- 
 pel the largest and tenderest expression of 
 their personal faith. The language they 
 have learned from it comes naturally to 
 their hearts, when they hold their own 
 communion with Christ. 
 
 The ultimate purpose of the Gospel was 
 this which it has fulfilled, in ampler meas- 
 ure than the evangelist could dream of. He 
 wrote a "spiritual Gospel/' which should 
 not merely record the facts of history, but 
 should interpret them in their inward and 
 abiding reality. He saw that the life which 
 had once been manifest for a little time in 
 a remote land, was the revelation of God; 
 and he sought to detach it from all that was 
 transient and accidental, and show forth its 
 meaning for all time. Jesus who lived and 
 died, was the Son of God. He is still pres- 
 ent with his people; and those who have 
 not seen yet have believed, may hold fel- 
 82 
 
PERMANENT VALUE OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 lowship with him and have life through 
 his name. It is true that in this endeavour 
 to portray Jesus, in his earthly ministry, as 
 the ever-living Christ, the evangelist has 
 modified and idealised the facts. As a work 
 of history his Gospel is secondary to the 
 Synoptic records; and its evidence must 
 always be sifted and controlled by means 
 of them. Yet it possesses an inestimable 
 value even for the history. We cannot un- 
 derstand what Jesus was, while he yet so- 
 journed among men, until we learn to see 
 him, with the fourth evangelist, in the 
 eternal significance of his life. 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
MODERN 
 
 RELIGIOUS 
 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 DR. AMBROSE W. VERNON 
 
 For a long time there has been an atmosphere of 
 uncertainty in the religious realm. This uncertainty- 
 has been caused by the widespread knowledge that 
 modem scholarship has modified the traditional con- 
 ceptions of the Christian religion, and particularly by 
 widespread ignorance of the precise modifications to 
 which modem scholarship has been led. 
 
 The aim of this series of books is to lay before the 
 great body of intelligent people in the English-speak- 
 ing world the precise results of this scholarship, so 
 that men both within and without the churches may 
 be able to understand the conception of the Christian 
 religion (and of its Sacred Books) which obtains 
 among its leading scholars to-day, and that they may 
 intelligently cooperate in the great practical problems 
 with which the churches are now confronted. 
 
 While at many a point divergent views are cham- 
 pioned, it has become apparent in the last few years 
 that it is possible to speak of a consensus of opinion 
 among the leading scholars of England and America, 
 who have, in general, adopted the modern point of 
 view. 
 
The publishers and editor congratulate themselves 
 that this consensus of opinion may be presented to 
 the public not by middle -men, but by men who from 
 their position and attainment are recognized through- 
 out the English Protestant world as among those best 
 able to speak with authority on the most important 
 subjects which face intelligent religious men to-day. 
 It is a notable sign of the times that these eminent 
 specialists have gladly consented to pause in their de- 
 tailed research, in order to acquaint the religious 
 public with the results of their study. 
 
 Modem Religious Problems are many, but they 
 fall chiefly under one of the four divisions into which 
 this series of books is to be divided : — 
 
 I. The Old Testament. 
 II. The New^ Testament. 
 
 III. Fundamental Christian Conceptions. 
 
 IV. Practical Church Problems. 
 
 Under these four main divisions the most vital 
 problems will be treated in short, concise, clear vol- 
 umes. They will leave technicalities at one side and 
 they will be published at a price wjiich will put the 
 assured results of religious scholarship within the 
 reach of all. 
 
 The volumes already arranged for are the following : 
 
 I. OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 "THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
 LAW." By Canon S. R. DRIVER, Oxford University. 
 
 "HOW WE GOT OUR OLD TESTAMENT." 
 
 By Professor WILLIAM R. ARNOLD, Andover Semin- 
 ary. 
 
 -THE PRIMITIVE RELIGION OF ISRAEL." 
 
 By Professor L. B. PATON, Hartford Theological Semin- 
 ary. 
 
11. NEW TESTAMENT 
 
 ••THE EARLIEST SOURCES FOR THE LIFE OF 
 JESUS." By Professor F. C. BURKITT, Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, England. (In Press.) 
 
 «*THE MIRACLES OF JESUS." 
 
 By Professor F. C. PORTER, Yale University. 
 
 "THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH." 
 
 By Professor B. W. BACON, Yale University. (Now 
 Ready.) 
 
 "HOW WE GOT OUR NEW TESTAMENT." 
 By Professor J. H. ROPES, Harvard University. 
 
 "PAUL AND PAULINISM." 
 
 By Rev. JAMES MOFFATT, D. D., Broughty Ferry, 
 Forfarshire, Scotland. 
 
 "THE HISTORICAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUE OF 
 THE FOURTH GOSPEL." By Professor E. F. SCOTT, 
 Queen's University, Kingston. (In Press.) 
 
 IIL FUNDAMENTAL CHRISTIAN 
 CONCEPTIONS 
 
 "THE GOSPEL OF JESUS." 
 
 By Professor G. W. KNOX, Union Theological Seminary. 
 . New York. With General Introduction to the Series. (Now 
 Ready.) 
 
 "THE GOD OF THE CHRISTIAN." 
 
 By Professor A. C. McGIFFERT, Union Theological Sem- 
 inary. 
 
 "SIN AND ITS FORGIVENESS." 
 
 By President WILLIAM DeW. HYDE, Bowdoin CoUege. 
 (Now Ready.) 
 
 ♦THE PERSON OF JESUS." 
 
 By President H. C. KING, Oberlin College. 
 
 "THE AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES." 
 
 By Professor SHAILER MATHEWS, University of Chi- 
 cago. 
 
IV. PRACTICAL CHURCH PROBLEMS 
 
 ••THE PLACE OF THE CHURCH IN MODERN 
 SOCIETY." By WM. JEWETT TUCKER, Ex-Presi- 
 dent of Dartmouth College. 
 
 "THE CHURCH AND LABOR." 
 
 By CHARLES STELZLE, Superintendent of Department 
 of the Church and Labor of the Presbyterian Church of the 
 United States. 
 
 "THE ADJUSTMENT OF THE BIBLE SCHOOLS 
 TO MODERN NEEDS." By Professor CHARLES F. 
 KENT, Yale University. 
 
 "THE CHURCH AND THE CHILD." 
 
 By Rev. HENRY SLOANE COFFIN, Madison Ave. 
 Presbyterian Church, New York City. 
 
 The general editor of the series, Rev. Ambrose 
 White Vernon, is a graduate of Princeton University 
 (1891) and of Union Theological Seminary (1894). 
 After two years more of study in Germany, on a fel- 
 lowship, he had an experience of eight years in the 
 pastorate, at Hiawatha, Kansas, and East Orange, 
 New Jersey. From 1904 to 1907 he was professor of 
 Biblical literature in Dartmouth College, and then 
 professor of practical theology at Yale till the present 
 year, when he returned to the pastorate, succeeding 
 the late Dr. Reuen Thomas at Harvard Church, 
 Brookline, one of the leading churches of metropoli- 
 tan Boston. Dartmouth College gave him the de- 
 gree of D. D. in 1907. 
 
 The volumes are attractively bound in cloth. Thin 
 I2m0y each ^o cents net. Postage ^ cents, 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 4 Park St., Boston : 85 Fifth Ave., New York 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
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