name, and the emphasis laid upon the Jewish character of the Festival. 2. Unless we consider the first five, and not the first four chapters, of S. John as forming an introduction to the Galilæan Ministry, we must suppose S. John to have done in the case of his 5th chapter what he has done in no other part of his Gospel, viz. recorded events the date, and therefore the bearing, of which, considered with reference to the other Gospels, is left a subject of pure conjecture. The presumption in favour of our Lord attending at least the three chief Festivals, until His doing so had become a matter of personal danger, is very strong. Christ came to fulfil the Law. Whereas, if, without any reason assigned, He were represented as not going to the Feast of Pentecost, He would be represented as having begun His ministry by setting an example of ignoring one of the first and most generally observed requirements of the Law. 4. If Christ had not been rejected from Jerusalem before commencing His Galilæan Ministry, and before absenting Himself for a prolonged period from that city, He would not only have given that very cause of offence to the Jewish rulers which He always seemed anxious to avoid, but He would have ignored the principle which He was careful to lay down, that all teaching should have its 'beginning' from Jerusalem. 5. There would be a peculiar significance, and that of a kind which we are led in many ways to expect, in Christ having been first rejected at Jerusalem at the very same Feast at which the first great ingathering of believers took place. Whilst there would be a corresponding improbability in the alternative supposition that the Feast of Pentecost, a feast so conspicuous in the after history of the Church, was the only one of the greater Feasts which Christ never once attended during His Ministry. 6. The whole structure and symmetry of S. John's Gospel, especially the marked correspondence between its commencement and its close, would be marred by cutting the 5th chapter adrift from those which precede it, and some colour at least would be given to the objections of those who fancy that in S. John's Gospel they have a mere 'fragmentary record.' 7. The record of John v. loses half its force and beauty if regarded in any other light than as an opening Manifesto. The peculiar character and significance of the miracle performed, constituting it an acted parable of the Kingdom, the solemn declaration 'my Father worketh hitherto and I work,' with the expansion of this idea in the closely reasoned argument which follows, all mark this chapter as introductory to the Galilæan ministry recorded by the Synoptic Gospels, and as explanatory of much that becomes comparatively unintelligible, if supposed to have been done or spoken before this Manifesto. Should the considerations thus suggested, combining with and supporting as they do the impression produced by the general character of the incidents recorded, be deemed sufficient to justify the conclusion that this Unnamed Feast can be no other than that which S. Chrysostom and his contemporaries believed it to be, the Feast of Pentecost, it will at once appear how much the general rejection of this opinion in modern times has obscured both the relations existing between the Gospels of S. John and of the other Evangelists, and the view taken of the chronological order of events in our Lord's life. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. SIS VIII. From the Annunciation of the Birth of ΤΟ The Return of Mary to Nazareth. Time. 9 months. I. THE LEGAL DESCENT OF CHRIST. S. Matt. i. 1—17. 'THE book of the generation of JESUS CHRIST, the SON OF DAVID, the SON OF ABRAHAM. ABRAHAM begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judah and his brethren; and Judah begat Perez and Zera of Tamar; and Perez begat Hezron; 1 Or, The genealogy of Jesus Christ 2 Or, birth: as in ver. 18. I 2 3 |