bate such subjects as might have been in dispute in the schools of Ephesus, when Paul disputed daily in the school of Tyrannus. They use the language and terminology of such debate. All the characters speak just as the evangelist himself speaks in the three Epistles, and his style and language have an oracular tone which is highly characteristic. All the utterances are "as it were oracles of God."

It must be admitted that the nature of this Gospel's contribution to its own age and to ours is different from that which it has often been supposed to render. It was not written for historical critics, but for disciples who needed a higher interpretation of the divine revelation in the coming of Christ. What the author aimed at he has accomplished. He seeks to convey truth, and not mere fact. He seeks to reveal the heart of Christ, not to describe his outward appearance. He wishes to tell what Christ eternally is to the soul self-dedicated to him, not what he was to past observers that had neither eye nor ear for the things of the spirit. "These things were written that men might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that in this faith they might find life," as the writer had found it.

The Christ of the fourth evangelist is truly man, truly the historical Jesus, depicted as faithfully as the evangelist's information permits. Doubtless narrative as well as discourse is freely adapted; but we do him great injustice if we treat as insincere his insistence on the reality of Jesus' flesh, its tangible and corporeal nature, manifest to the historical sense, a witness borne to eye and ear-witnesses, and cherished in the Church as its choicest possession. To him on the contrary the attempt of docetic heresy to vaporize this all away was the chief danger of the Church. To his view this was the false and deceitful spirit of Antichrist foretold for the last times. His Christ is as real and historic as he

is able to depict him. But he is also the incarnate Spirit of the redeeming Wisdom of God, the revealing "Image of the invisible God," as he had been to Paul; and the evangelist is no more satisfied than Paul would have been with the depiction of a Christ after the flesh. He retains what he regards as of value in Synoptic story, but with something like the sovereign freedom of the Spirit that animated Paul. Thus the values, for him, are not in the mere record, but in its inner significance. Critical historicity in the modern sense he had neither the will nor the power to attain. For the assumption that he was an eye-witness is no longer admissible. Applying no such false and unfair standard of measurement, attempting neither to defend every part as historical fact, nor to apologize for it as "fiction," we recognize this portrait of the eternal Christ as a portrait of the heart. The artist"paints the thing as he sees it"; but he sees it with the eye of the spirit "under the aspect of the eternal." His closing words of blessing upon those who have not seen, and yet have believed, have to my mind all the meaning of an utterance of one who takes them to himself personally. This evangelist, like ourselves, had to take his evidence of a glorified Christ, conqueror of death, from others. He accepts it as sufficient; but if it were shown in any given case to be fallacious, Christ would still be to him the source of a divine and eternal life, known to inward experience. This is that eternal life of which he declares that it was with the Father and was manifested, a divine power for us to see, to bear witness to and to declare, bringing men into the true fellowship with the Father, the fellowship of self-dedication in love and service to the triumph of the reign of God. In a sense the witness is all the greater if this evangelist speaks to us from an age already remote from what we call the "historic Jesus." The Spirit of Jesus which "ener

gized in " Paul had energized in him also. He was not remote from the eternal Christ, and he knows it. Perhaps he could afford to regard as knowledge much that was not so, and to lack knowledge of some things that we count important, if he could truly make such a confession of religious faith as this: "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ."

LECTURE IX

THE MESSAGE OF THE FOURTH EVANGELIST

1. The Use of Material

In our consideration of the general structure of the Ephesian Gospel, I pointed out that its main body consists of the story of the public ministry in Synoptic outline, but that upon this it superimposes a scheme of the great religious feasts of Judaism with typical signs" and discourses of Jesus. The public ministry begins with a Passover at Jerusalem. In chapter 5 we have a second visit to Jerusalem with "sign" and discourse appropriate to Pentecost. In chapter 6 comes a second Passover, this time spent in Galilee, closing the first half. After this follow in chapters 7-9 and 10-12 visits to Jerusalem at Tabernacles and Dedication respectively, each with "sign" and discourse appropriate to the feast in question. At this point the evangelist introduces a well marked division closing the public ministry. Chapters 13-17 are concerned, like the section between the Prologue (1:1-18) and the beginning of the public ministry in 2:12, with discourses to the disciples, which have a more esoteric character. The closing chapters (17-20) present a somewhat altered form of the story of the Passion and Resurrection. But into these differences of the narrative, great as is their interest to the historical critic, I shall not enter.

Thus the career of Jesus, according to the fourth Gospel, covers exactly two years, each period beginning and ending with Passover. The earlier ministry

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(chapters 2-6) is devoted to Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, the later (chapters 7-12) is wholly devoted to Judea. Jesus is depicted in the three discourses of the former section first as the inaugurator of the new temple and universal worship in the Spirit (2: 12-4:54), then as the inaugurator of a new Sabbath under greater authority than that of Moses (chapter 5),1 finally as giver of the Bread of Life (chapter 6). In the Judean ministry he appears first as Light of the World (7-9), then as the Good Shepherd that layeth down his Life for the Sheep (10-12).2 Have we any literary parallel that will help us to appreciate the general method and purpose of this arrangement? I have already adduced the five "Sermons" of Matthew. Perhaps I can suggest a parallel that will be still more helpful.

Take up the collections of Synagogue discourses delivered on occasion of the great feasts and known as piskoth; or take up better still the Alexandrian pane gyric on the martyrs of Jewish liberty called IV Maccabees, an oration for the feast of Dedication. It is what Americans would call a Memorial Day address. Here are examples of what continued to be the custom in the Christian Church, especially in churches such as Ephesus, where we know observance of Passover at least, and perhaps others of the great Jewish feasts, was continued in Christianized form from apostolic times. Of similar type is the "Word of Exhortation " as its author calls it, known to us as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It also might well be a panegyric for the feast of Dedication (or Martyrs), written to a church just entering the shadow of bloody persecution. It has a Jewish parallel in II Maccabees, another piskah for the feast of Dedication. Even if this judgment be incorrect as regards Hebrews, later fathers of the Church afford us examples 1 Displaced; see above.

2 10; 1-18 is displaced from after verse 25.