DISCOURSE II.

THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

Συναδυσι μεν γαρ αλληλοις το ευαγγελιον και ἡ επιστολη. Dionys. Alexandr. ap Euseb., H. E., vii., 25.

"And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."— 1 John i. 4 .

From the wholesale burning of books at Ephesus, as a consequence of awakened convictions, the most pregnant of all commentators upon the New Testament has drawn a powerful lesson. "True religion," says the writer, "puts bad books out of the way." Ephesus at great expense burnt curious and evil volumes, and the "word of God grew and prevailed." And he proceeds to show how just in the very matter where Ephesus had manifested such costly penitence, she was rewarded by being made a sort of depository of the most precious books which ever came from human pens. St. Paul addresses a letter to the Ephesians. Timothy was Bishop of Ephesus when the two great pastoral Epistles were sent to him.³¹³¹    Bengel, on Acts xix. 19, 20, finds a reference to manuscripts of some of the synoptical Gospels and of the Epistles in 2 Tim. iv. 13, and conjectures that, after St. Paul's martyrdom, Timothy carried them with him to Ephesus. All St. John's writings point to the same place. The Gospel and Epistles22 were written there, or with primary reference to the capital of Ionia.³²³²    Renan's curious theory that Rom. xvi. 1-16 is a sheet of the Epistle to the Ephesians accidentally misplaced, rests upon a supposed prevalence of Ephesian names in the case of those who are greeted. Archdeacon Gifford's refutation, and his solution of an unquestionable difficulty, seems entirely satisfactory. (Speaker's Commentary, in loc., vol. iii., New Testament.) The Apocalypse was in all probability first read at Ephesus.

Of this group of Ephesian books we select two of primary importance—the Gospel and First Epistle of St. John. Let us dwell upon the close and thorough connection of the two documents, upon the interpenetration of the Epistle by the Gospel, by whatever name we may prefer to designate the connection.

It is said indeed by a very high authority, that while the "whole Epistle is permeated with thoughts of the person and work of Christ," yet "direct references to facts of the Gospel are singularly rare." More particularly it is stated that "we find here none of the foundation and (so to speak) crucial events summarised in the earliest Christian confession as we still find them in the Apostles' creed." And among these events are placed, "the Birth of the Virgin Mary, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Session, the Coming to Judgment."

To us there seems to be some exaggeration in this way of putting the matter. A writing which accompanied a sacred history, and which was a spiritual comment upon that very history, was not likely to repeat the history upon which it commented, just in the same shape. Surely the Birth is the necessary condition of having come in the flesh. The incident of the piercing of the side, and the water and blood23 which flowed from it, is distinctly spoken of; and in that the Crucifixion is implied. Shrinking with shame from Jesus at His Coming, which is spoken of in another verse, has no meaning unless that Coming be to Judgment.³³³³    It has become usual to say that the Epistle does not advert to John iii. or John vi. To us it seems that every mention of the Birth of God is a reference to John iii. (1 John ii. 23, iii. 9, iv. 7, v. 1-4.) The word αιμα occurs once only in the fourth Gospel outside the sixth chapter (xix. 34; for i. 13 belongs to physiology). Four times we find it in that chapter—vi. 53, 54, 55, 56. Each mention of the "Blood" in connection with our Lord does advert to John vi. The sixth chapter is, if we may so say, the section of "the Blood," in the fourth Gospel. That section standing in the Gospel, standing in the great Sacrament of the Church, standing in the perpetually cleansing and purifying efficacy of the Atonement—ever present as a witness, which becomes personal, because identified with a Living Personality³⁴³⁴    The masc. part. οι μαρτυρουντες is surely very remarkable with the three neuters (το πνευμα, το ὑδωρ, το αιμα) 1 John v. 7, 8. —finds its echo and counterpart in the Epistle towards the beginning and near the close.³⁵³⁵    1 John i. 7, v. 6, 8.

We now turn to that which is the most conclusive evidence of connection between two documents—one historical, the other moral and spiritual—of which literary composition is capable. Let us suppose that a writer of profound thoughtfulness has finished, after long elaboration, the historical record of an eventful and many-sided life—a life of supreme importance to a nation, or to the general thought and progress of humanity. The book is sent to the representatives of some community or school. The ideas which its subject has uttered to the world, from their breadth and from the occasional obscurity of expression incident to24 all great spiritual utterances, need some elucidation. The plan is really exhaustive, and combines the facts of the life with a full insight into their relations; but it may be missed by any but thoughtful readers. The author will accompany this main work by something which in modern language we might call an introduction, or appendix, or advertisement, or explanatory pamphlet, or encyclical letter. Now the ancient form of literary composition rendered books packed with thought doubly difficult both to read and write; for they did not admit foot-notes, or marginal analyses, or abstracts. St. John then practically says, first to his readers in Asia Minor, then to the Church for ever—"with this life of Jesus I send you not only thoughts for your spiritual benefit, moulded round His teaching, but something more; I send you an abstract, a compendium of contents, at the beginning of this letter; I also send you at its close a key to the plan on which my Gospel is conceived." And surely a careful reader of the Gospel at its first publication would have desired assistance exactly of this nature. He would have wished to have a synopsis of contents, short but comprehensive, and a synoptical view of the author's plan—of the idea which guided him in his choice of incidents so momentous and of teaching so varied.

We have in the First Epistle two synopses of the Gospel which correspond with a perfect precision to these claims.³⁶³⁶    See note A. at the end of this Discourse, which shows that there are, in truth, four such summaries. We have: (1) a synopsis of the contents of the Gospel; (2) a synoptical view of the conception from which it was written.

1. We find in the Epistle at the very outset a synopsis of the contents of the Gospel.

"That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we gazed upon, and our hands handled—I speak concerning the Word who is the Life—that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you also."

What are the contents of the Gospel? (1) A lofty and dogmatic proœmium, which tells us of "the Word who was in the beginning with God—in Whom was life." (2) Discourses and utterances, sometimes running on through pages, sometimes brief and broken. (3) Works, sometimes miraculous, sometimes wrought into the common contexture of human life—looks, influences, seen by the very eyes of St. John and others, gazed upon with ever deepening joy and wonder. (4) Incidents which proved that all this issued from One who was intensely human; that it was as real as life and humanity—historical not visionary; the doing and the effluence of a Manhood which could be, and which was, grasped by human hands.

Such is a synopsis of the Gospel precisely as it is given in the beginning of the First Epistle. (1) The Epistle mentions first, "that which was from the beginning." There is the compendium of the proœmium of the Gospel. (2) One of the most important constituent parts of the Gospel is to be found in its ample preservation of dialogues, in which the Saviour is one interlocutor; of monologues spoken to the hushed hearts of the disciples, or to the listening Heart of the Father, yet not in tones so low that their love did not find it audible. This element of the narrative is summed up by the writer of the Epistle in two words—"That which we heard."³⁷³⁷    ὁ ακηκοαμεν. (3) The works of benevolence26 or power, the doings and sufferings; the pathos or joy which spring up from them in the souls of the disciples, occupy a large portion of the Gospel. All these come under the heading, "that which we have seen with our eyes,³⁸³⁸    ὁ εωρακαμεν τοις οφθαλμοις ἡμων. that which we gazed upon,"³⁹³⁹    John xx. 20. with one unbroken gaze of wonder as so beautiful, and of awe as so divine.⁴⁰⁴⁰    ὁ εθεασαμεθα, 1 John i. 1. The same word is used in John i. 14. (4) The assertion of the reality of the Manhood⁴¹⁴¹    John xix. 27 would express this in the most palpable form. But it is constantly understood through the Gospel. The tenacity of Doketic error is evident from the fact that Chrysostom, preaching at Antioch, speaks of it as a popular error in his day. A little later, orthodox ears were somewhat offended by some beautiful lines of a Greek sacred poet, too little known among us, who combines in a singular degree Roman gravity with Greek grace. St. Romanus (A.D. 491) represents our Lord as saying of the sinful woman who became a penitent, την βρεξασαν ιχνη ἁ ουκ ἑβρεξε βυθος ψιλοις τοτε τοις δακρυσιν. "Which with her tears, then pure, Wetted the feet the sea-depth wetted not."
    (Spicil. Solesmen. Edidit T. B. Pitra, S. Romanus, xvi. 13, Cant. de Passione. 120.) of Him who was yet the Life manifested—a reality through all His words, works, sufferings—finds its strong, bold summary in this compendium of the contents of the Gospel, "and our hands have handled." Nay, a still shorter compendium follows: (1) The Life with the Father. (2) The Life manifested.⁴²⁴²    1 John i. 2. The Life with the Father = John i. 1, 14. The Life manifested = John i. 14 to end.

2. But we have more than a synopsis which embraces the contents of the Gospel at the beginning of the27 Epistle. We have towards its close a second synopsis of the whole framework of the Gospel; not now the theory of the Person of Christ, which in such a life was necessarily placed at its beginning, but of the human conception which pervaded the Evangelist's composition.

The second synopsis, not of the contents of the Gospel, but of the aim and conception which it assumed in the form into which it was moulded by St. John, is given by the Epistle with a fulness which omits scarcely a paragraph of the Gospel. In the space of six verses of the fifth chapter the word witness, as verb or substantive, is repeated ten times.⁴³⁴³    The A.V. (1 John v. 6-12) obscures this by a too great sensitiveness to monotony. The language of the verses is varied unfortunately by "bear record" (ver. 7), "hath testified" (ver. 9), "believeth not the record" (ver. 10), "this is the record" (ver. 11). The simplicity of St. John's artless rhetoric can make no more emphatic claim on our attention. The Gospel is indeed a tissue woven out of many lines of evidence human and divine. Compress its purpose into one single word. No doubt it is supremely the Gospel of the Divinity of Jesus. But, next to that, it may best be defined as the Gospel of Witness. These witnesses we may take in the order of the Epistle. St. John feels that his Gospel is more than a book; it is a past made everlastingly present. Such as the great Life was in history, so it stands for ever. Jesus is "the propitiation, is righteous," "is here."⁴⁴⁴⁴    1 John ii. 2-29, iii. 7, iv. 3, v. 20. So the great influences round His Person, the manifold witnesses of His Life, stand witnessing for ever in the Gospel and in the Church. What are these? (1) The Spirit is ever witnessing. So our Lord in the Gospel—"when the Comforter is come, He shall witness of28 Me."⁴⁵⁴⁵    John xv. 26. No one can doubt that the Spirit is one pre-eminent subject of the Gospel. Indeed, teaching about Him, above all as the witness to Christ, occupies three unbroken chapters in one place.⁴⁶⁴⁶    John xiv., xv., xvi., Cf. vii. 39. The witness of the Spirit in the Apostolic ministry will be found John xx. 22. (2) The water is ever witnessing. So long as St. John's Gospel lasts, and permeates the Church with its influence, the water must so testify. There is scarcely a paragraph of it where water is not; almost always with some relation to Christ. The witness of the Baptist⁴⁷⁴⁷    John i. 19. is, "I baptize with water." The Jordan itself bears witness that all its waters cannot give that which He bestows who is "preferred before" John.⁴⁸⁴⁸    John i. 16, 31, 33. Is not the water of Cana that was made wine a witness to His glory?⁴⁹⁴⁹    John ii. 9, iv. 46. The birth of "water and of the Spirit,"⁵⁰⁵⁰    John iii. 5. is another witness. And so in the Gospel section after section. The water of Jacob's well; the water of the pool of Bethesda; the waters of the sea of Galilee, with their stormy waves upon which He walked; the water outpoured at the feast of tabernacles, with its application to the river of living water; the water of Siloam; the water poured into the basin, when Jesus washed the disciples' feet; the water which, with the blood, streamed from the riven side upon the cross; the water of the sea of Galilee in its gentler mood, when Jesus showed Himself on its beach to the seven; as long as all this is recorded in the Gospel, as long as the sacrament of Baptism, with its visible water and its invisible grace working in the regenerate, abides among the29 faithful;—so long is the water ever witnessing.⁵¹⁵¹    John iv. 5, 7, 11, 12, , v. 1, 8, vi. 19, vii. 35, 37, ix. 7, xiii. 1, 14, xix. 34, xxi. 1, 8. In the other great Johannic book water is constantly mentioned. Apoc. vii. 17, xiv. 7, xvi. 5, xxi. 6, xxii. 1, xxii. 17. (Cf. the το ὑδωρ, Acts x. 47.) (3) The Blood is ever "witnessing." Expiation once for all; purification continually from the blood outpoured; drinking the blood of the Son of Man by participation in the sacrament of His love, with the grace and strength that it gives day by day to innumerable souls; the Gospel concentrated into that great sacrifice; the Church's gifts of benediction summarised in the unspeakable Gift; this is the unceasing witness of the Blood. (4) Men are ever witnessing. "The witness of men" fills the Gospel from beginning to end. The glorious series of confessions wrung from willing and unwilling hearts form the points of division round which the whole narrative may be grouped. Let us think of all those attestations which lie between the Baptist's precious testimony with the sweet yet fainter utterances of Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, and the perfect creed of Christendom condensed into the burning words of Thomas—"my Lord and my God."⁵²⁵²    John i. 19, 29, 32, 34, 35, 36, 41, 45, 47, xix. 27. What a range of feeling and faith; what a variety of attestation coming from human souls, sometimes wrung from them half unwillingly, sometimes uttered at crisis-moments with an impulse that could not be resisted! The witness of men in the Gospel, and the assurance of one testimony that was to be given by the Apostles individually and collectively,⁵³⁵³    John xv. 27. besides the evidences already named includes the following—the witness of Nicodemus, of the Samaritan woman, of the Samaritans, of the impotent30 man at the pool of Bethesda, of Simon Peter, of the officers of the Jewish authorities, of the blind man, of Pilate.⁵⁴⁵⁴    John iii. 2. The Baptist's final witness (iii. 25, 33, iv. 39, 42, v. 15, vi. 68, 69, vii. 46, xix. 4, 6). Note, too, the accentuation of the idea of witness (John v. 31, 39). It is to be regretted that the R.V. also has sometimes obscured this important term by substituting a different English word, e.g., "the word of the woman who testified" (John iv. 39). (5) The witness of God occupies also a great position in the fourth Gospel. That witness may be said to be given in five forms: the witness of the Father,⁵⁵⁵⁵    John viii. 18, xii. 28. of Christ Himself,⁵⁶⁵⁶    Ibid. viii. 17, 18. of the Holy Spirit,⁵⁷⁵⁷    Ibid. xv. 26. of Scripture,⁵⁸⁵⁸    Ibid. v. 39, 46, xix. 35, 36, 37. of miracles.⁵⁹⁵⁹    Ibid. v. 36. This great cloud of witnesses, human and divine, finds its appropriate completion in another subjective witness.⁶⁰⁶⁰    This sixth witness (1 John v. 10) exactly answers to John xx. 30, 31. The whole body of evidence passes from the region of the intellectual to that of the moral and spiritual life. The evidence acquires that evidentness which is to all our knowledge what the sap is to the tree. The faithful carries it in his heart; it goes about with him, rests with him day and night, is close to him in life and death. He, the principle of whose being is belief ever going out of itself and resting its acts of faith on the Son of God, has all that manifold witness in him.⁶¹⁶¹    ὁ πιστευων εις τον υιον, κτλ (v. 10). The construction is different in the words which immediately follow (ὁ μη πιστευων τω θεγ), not even giving Him credence, not believing Him, much less believing on Him.

It would be easy to enlarge upon the verbal connection between the Epistle before us and the Gospel which it accompanied. We might draw out (as has31 often been done) a list of quotations from the Gospel, a whole common treasury of mystic language; but we prefer to leave an undivided impression upon the mind. A document which gives us a synopsis of the contents of another document at the beginning, and a synoptical analysis of its predominant idea at the close, covering the entire work, and capable of absorbing every part of it (except some necessary adjuncts of a rich and crowded narrative), has a connection with it which is vital and absorbing. The Epistle is at once an abstract of the contents of the Gospel, and a key to its purport. To the Gospel, at least to it and the Epistle considered as integrally one, the Apostle refers when he says: "these things write we unto you."⁶²⁶²    The view here advocated of the relation of the Epistle to the Gospel of St. John, and of the brief but complete analytical synopsis in the opening words of the Epistle, appears to us to represent the earliest known interpretation as given by the author of the famous fragment of the Muratorian Canon, the first catalogue of the books of the N. T. (written between the middle and close of the second century). After his statement of the circumstances which led to the composition of the fourth Gospel, and an assertion of the perfect internal unity of the Evangelical narratives, the author of the fragment proceeds. "What wonder then if John brings forward each matter, point by point, with such consecutive order (tam constanter singula), even in his Epistles saying, when he comes to write in his own person (dicens in semetipso), 'what we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have we written.' For thus, in orderly arrangement and consecutive language he professes himself not only an eye-witness, but a hearer, and yet further a writer of the wonderful things of the Lord." [So we understand the writer. "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium Domini, per ordinem profitetur." The fragment, with copious annotations, may be found in Reliquæ Sacræ, Routh, Tom. i., 394, 434.]

St. John had asserted that one end of his declaration was to make his readers hold fast "fellowship with us," i.e., with the Church as the Apostolic Church; aye, and32 that fellowship of ours is "with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ;" "and these things," he continues (with special reference to his Gospel, as spoken of in his opening words), "we write unto you, that your joy may be fulfilled."

There is as truly a joy as a "patience and comfort of the Scriptures." The Apostle here speaks of "your joy," but that implied his also.

All great literature, like all else that is beautiful, is a "joy for ever." To the true student his books are this. But this is so only with a few really great books. We are not speaking of works of exact science. Butler, Pascal, Bacon, Shakespeare, Homer, Scott, theirs is work of which congenial spirits never grow quite tired. But to be capable of giving out joy, books must have been written with it. The Scotch poet tells us, that no poet ever found the Muse, until he had learned to walk beside the brook, and "no think long." That which is not thought over with pleasure; that which, as it gradually rises before the author in its unity, does not fill him with delight; will never permanently give pleasure to readers. He must know joy before he can say—"these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."

The book that is to give joy must be a part of a man's self. That is just what most books are not. They are laborious, diligent, useful perhaps; they are not interesting or delightful. How touching it is, when the poor old stiff hand must write, and the overworked brain think, for bread! Is there anything so pathetic in literature as Scott setting his back bravely to the wall, and forcing from his imagination the reluctant creations which used to issue with such splendid profusion from its haunted chambers?

Of the conditions under which an inspired writer33 pursued his labours we know but little. But some conditions are apparent in the books of St. John with which we are now concerned. The fourth Gospel is a book written without arrière pensée, without literary conceit, without the paralysing dread of criticism. What verdict the polished society of Ephesus would pronounce; what sneers would circulate in philosophic quarters; what the numerous heretics would murmur in their conventicles; what critics within the Church might venture to whisper, missing perhaps favourite thoughts and catch-words;⁶³⁶³    For whatever reason, four classical terms (if we may so call them) of the Christian religion are excluded, or nearly excluded, from the Gospel of St. John, and from its companion document. Church, gospel, repentance, occur nowhere. Grace only once (John i. 14; see, however, 2 John 3; Apoc. i. 4; xxii. 21), faith as a substantive only once. (1 John v. 4, but in Apoc. ii. 13-19; xiii. 10; xiv. 12.) St. John cared no more than if he were dead. He communed with the memories of the past; he listened for the music of the Voice which had been the teacher of his life. To be faithful to these memories, to recall these words, to be true to Jesus, was his one aim. No one can doubt that the Gospel was written with a full delight. No one who is capable of feeling, ever has doubted that it was written as if with "a feather dropped from an angel's wing;" that without aiming at anything but truth, it attains in parts at least a transcendent beauty. At the close of the proœmium, after the completest theological formula which the Church has ever possessed—the still, even pressure of a tide of thought—we have a parenthetic sentence, like the splendid unexpected rush and swell of a sudden wave ("we beheld the glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father"); then after the parenthesis a34 soft and murmuring fall of the whole great tide ("full of grace and truth"). Can we suppose that the Apostle hung over his sentence with literary zest? The number of writers is small who can give us an everlasting truth by a single word, a single pencil touch; who, having their mind loaded with thought, are wise enough to keep that strong and eloquent silence which is the prerogative only of the highest genius. St. John gives us one of these everlasting pictures, of these inexhaustible symbols, in three little words—"He then having received the sop, went immediately out, and it was night."⁶⁴⁶⁴    ἡν δε νυξ. John xiii. 30. Do we suppose that he admired the perfect effect of that powerful self-restraint? Just before the crucifixion he writes—"Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe, and Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man!"⁶⁵⁶⁵    John xix. 5. The pathos, the majesty, the royalty of sorrow, the admiration and pity of Pilate, have been for centuries the inspiration of Christian art. Did St. John congratulate himself upon the image of sorrow and of beauty which stands for ever in these lines? With St. John as a writer it is as with St. John delineated in the fresco at Padua by the genius of Giotto. The form of the ascending saint is made visible through a reticulation of rays of light in colours as splendid as ever came from mortal pencil; but the rays issue entirely from the Saviour, whose face and form are full before him.

The feeling of the Church has always been that the Gospel of St. John was a solemn work of faith and prayer. The oldest extant fragment upon the canon of the New Testament tells us that the Gospel was undertaken after earnest invitations from the brethren and the bishops, with solemn united fasting; not without35 special revelation to Andrew the Apostle that John was to do the work.⁶⁶⁶⁶    Canon. Murator. (apud Routh., Reliq. Sacræ, Tom. i., 394). A later and much less important document connected in its origin with Patmos embodies one beautiful legend about the composition of the Gospel. It tells how the Apostle was about to leave Patmos for Ephesus; how the Christians of the island besought him to leave in writing an account of the Incarnation, and mysterious life of the Son of God; how St. John and his chosen friends went forth from the haunts of men about a mile, and halted in a quiet spot called the gorge of Rest,⁶⁷⁶⁷    εν τοπω ἡσυχω λεγομενω καταπαυσις. and then ascended the mountain which overhung it. There they remained three days. "Then," writes Prochorus, "he ordered me to go down to the town for paper and ink. And after two days I found him standing rapt in prayer. Said he to me—'take the ink and paper, and stand on my right hand.' And I did so. And there was a great lightning and thunder, so that the mountain shook. And I fell on the ground as if dead. Whereupon John stretched forth his hand and took hold of me, and said—'stand up at this spot at my right hand.' After which he prayed again, and after his prayer said unto me—'son Prochorus, what thou hearest from my mouth, write upon the sheets.' And having opened his mouth as he was standing praying, and looking up to heaven, he began to say—'in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' And so following on, he spake in order, standing as he was, and I wrote sitting."⁶⁸⁶⁸    This passage is translated from the Greek text of the manuscript of Patmos, attributed to Prochorus, as given by M. Guérin. (Description de l'Isle de Patmos, pp. 25-29.)

True instinct which tells us that the Gospel of St. John was the fruit of prayer as well as of memory; that it was thought out in some valley of rest, some hush among the hills; that it came from a solemn joy which it breathed forth upon others! "These things write I unto you, that your joy may be fulfilled." Generation after generation it has been so. In the numbers numberless of the Redeemed, there can be very few who have not been brightened by the joy of that book. Still, at one funeral after another, hearts are soothed by the word in it which says—"I am the Resurrection and the Life." Still the sorrowful and the dying ask to hear again and again—"let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." A brave young officer sent to the war in Africa, from a regiment at home, where he had caused grief by his extravagance, penitent, and dying in his tent, during the fatal day of Isandula, scrawled in pencil—"dying, dear father and mother—happy—for Jesus says, 'He that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.'" Our English Communion Office, with its divine beauty, is a texture shot through and through with golden threads from the discourse at Capernaum. Still are the disciples glad when they see the Lord in that record. It is the book of the Church's smiles; it is the gladness of the saints; it is the purest fountain of joy in all the literature of earth.

Note A.

The thorough connection of the Epistle with the Gospel may be made more clear by the following tabulated analysis:—

The (A) beginning and (B) the close of the Epistle contain two abstracts, longer and shorter, of the contents and bearing of the Gospel.

A.

i.—1 John i. 1.

1. "That which was from the beginning—concerning the Word of Life" = John i. 1-15.

2. (a) "Which we have heard" = John i. 38, 39, 42, 47, 50, 51, ii. 4, 7, 8, 16, 19, iii. 3, 22, iv. 7, 39, 48, 50, v. 6, 47, vi. 5, 70, vii. 6, 39, viii. 7, 58, ix. 3, 41, x. 1, 39, xi. 4, 45, xii. 7, 50, xiii. 6, 38, xiv., xvii., xviii. 14, 37, xix. 11, 26, 27, 28, 30, xx. 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 27, 29, xxi. 5, 6, 10, 12, 22.

(b) "Which we have seen with our eyes" = John i. 29, 36, 39, ii. 11, vi. 2, 14, 19, ix., xi. 44, xiii. 4, 5, xvii. 1, xviii. 6, xix. 5, 17, 18, 34, 38, xx. 5, 14, 20, 25, 29, xxi. 1, 14.

(c) "Which we gazed upon" = ibid.

(d) "Which we have handled" = John xx. 27 (refers also to a synoptical Gospel, Luke xxiv. 39, 40).

ii.—1 John i. 2.

1. "The Life was manifested" = John i. 29—xxi. 25.

2. (a) "We have seen" = (A. i. 2 (b)).

(b) "And bear witness" = John i. 7, 19, 37, iii. 2, 27, 33, iv. 39, vi. 69, xx. 28, 30, 31, xxi. 24.

(c) "And declare unto you" = John passim.

"The Life, the Eternal Life, which"

א "Was with the Father" = John i. 1-4.

ב "And was manifested unto us" = John passim.

B.

i.—1 John v. 6-10.

Summary of the Gospel as a Gospel of witness.

1. "The Spirit beareth witness" = John i. 32, xiv., xv., xx. 22.

2. "The water beareth witness" = John i. 28, ii. 9, iii. 5, iv. 13, 14, v. 1, 9, vi. 19, vii. 37, ix. 7, xiii. 5, xix. 34, xxi. 1.

3. "The blood beareth witness" = John vi. 53, 54, 55, 56, xix. 34.

4. "The witness of men" = (A. ii. 1 (b)) Also John i. 45, 49, iii. 2, iv. 39, vii. 46, xii. 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, xviii. 38, xix. 35, xx. 28.

5. "The witness of God" =

(a) Scripture = John i. 45, v. 39, 46, xix. 36, 37.

(b) Christ's own = John viii. 17, 18, 46, xviii. 37.

(c) His Father's = John v. 37, viii. 18, xii. 28.

(d) His works = John v. 36, x. 25, xv. 24.

ii.—1 John v. 20.

We know (i.e., by the Gospel) that—

1. "The Son of God is come" (ἡκεν), "has come and is here."

Note.—בָאחִי = ἡκω, LXX. Psalm xl. 7. "Venio symbolum quasi Domini Jesu fuit." (Bengel on Heb. x. 7), the Ich Dien of the Son of the Father—εγω γαρ εκ του θεου εξηλθον και ἡκω. "I came forth from God, and am here" (John viii. 4) = John i. 29—xxi. 23, (John xiv. 18, 21, 23, xvi. 16, 22, form part of the thought "is here").

2. "And hath given us an understanding" = gift of the Spirit, John xiv., xv., xvi. (especially 13, 16).

3. "This is the very God and eternal Life" = John i. 1, 4.

The whole Gospel of St. John brings out these primary principles of the Faith,—

That the Son of God has come. That He is now and ever present with His people. That the Holy Spirit gives them a new faculty of spiritual discernment. That Christ is the very God and the Life of men.