Fourth Gospel takes a step further by affirming that the Logos was made flesh.

In this document Jesus does not grow in wisdom and stature. He appears complete, developed, openly divine. from the first moment. John does not baptise him; he simply looks on with awe while the celestial dove flutters down upon the Christ's head. From the outset he is the Lamb of God who removes the sin of the world; and, from the outset, disciples acclaim him as the Son of God. He penetrates Nathaniel's inner thoughts. His new teaching, infinitely superior to the water of the old Hebrew lustrations, is typified by the wine of Cana. Straightway he advances to Jerusalem, and flings the exchange-tables from the courts of the Temple. Proudly he points to his own body as the Temple which shall be raised up after a ruin of three days. When Nicodemus comes to him by night, we hear no counsel to sell goods and give to the poor; the discourse turns on salvation by new birth, by loyal belief in the Son, by rejection of the dark world and acceptance of the heavenly light. Before this light John the Baptist diminishes and fades. All things are given into the Son's hands. Calmly and unhesitatingly he tells the Samaritan woman at the well that he, who has described to her the true spiritual worship, is the Messiah of God. The Samaritans entitle

him the Saviour of the world. In Galilee he heals a feverstricken youth, and immediately retraces his way to Jerusalem, to restore the invalid who had long and vainly waited for healing in the trembling pool of Bethesda. [The passage about the angel troubling the water is interpolated.] The Jews gather angrily about the Sabbath-breaker. He addresses them; they listen without interruption while he pictures himself as the Judge, the raiser of the dead, the Messiah of whom Moses prophetically wrote. Turning again to Galilee, he feeds the multitude, and when he withdraws to the mountain it is not to pray, but to meditate in royal solitude. He walks on the sea; of the story of his sleeping in the boat not a syllable is said. He spiritualises the bread of his recent miracle. He himself is the vital bread; his blood energises the believer. At this hard saying disciples fall away. The Jews are plotting against his life. Jesus finds that natural; for the world must needs hate him. All through the gospel this dualism runs-light and

darkness, God and the World-prince, Messiah and the malignant Jews. He again visits Jerusalem; his arrest is fruitlessly attempted, while he triumphantly proclaims himself as the living water [the legend of the woman taken in adultery is an insertion; it may have been borrowed from the Gospel of the Hebrews; see p. 123], and the light of the world, the predecessor of Abraham. He symbolises his illuminative grace by opening the eyes of the blind. The disputation grows deeper; the Jews, muttering innuendoes of devilry, cower darkly round while Jesus gleams in the foreground as the Good Shepherd. He retires to the quiet region of the Jordan, whence the pleading of Mary and Martha draws him to the tombs, where, amid an awestruck crowd, he calls aloud and beckons pale Lazarus from the shadow of death. That is the climax; his Christhood is assured. Mary pours ointment over his feet; the rest of the salve, he says, will serve for his burial. He rides into Jerusalem. A voice from heaven greets him. [A break, not easily understood, occurs at xii. 37-43, in the middle of a speech in which Jesus again declares himself to be the light of the world.] "Before the feast of the Passover Jesus sits at supper, rises and washes his disciples' feet in order to furnish an emblem of humility, and sits down again to warn them of the treason of Judas. Judas leaves the chamber.

[The Paschal discrepancy.-The Synoptics represent Jesus as eating the Passover supper with his disciples on the evening before his death; and at this supper he tells how one shall betray him. But the Fourth Gospel states that Jesus, "before the feast of the Passover," sups with his friends and points to a coming traitor; and, when Judas leaves the room, some suppose he has gone to purchase provisions for the as yet uncelebrated Paschal (Passover) feast. Next day, when Jesus is on his trial, the Jews decline to enter Pilate's palace lest they may be polluted, and so debarred from eating the approaching Passover. The Jews kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month Nisan-i.e., on that day they killed and ate the paschal lamb; and, so the Synoptics say, Jesus died the next day after. But the Fourth Gospel makes the crucifixion take place before the Passover celebration. We

shall encounter this subject again when we reach the Paschal controversies of the year 162 and onwards.] Jesus now delivers his farewell. The disciples must not give way to depression; the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, shall suffuse their souls and abide in them, and breathe peace; and they must love one another. He himself will go away; and yet only in appearance will he leave them. A sublime one-ness knits all the family of light; they are united in a divine harmony-like branches joined to the vine, as friend to friend. The Father, the Son, the disciple; the disciple, the Son, the Father-these three are one in the Spirit; one, even though persecutors rage, and sorrows multiply, and the world and its prince may frown. And now that the union is accomplished, Jesus turns to the Father to announce the crowning of the work. "The glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one...... Father, I desire that, where I am, they also may be with me...... O righteous Father, the world knew thee not, but I knew thee, and these knew that thou didst send me; and I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known, that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them."

This in reality completes the gospel. The rest is detailthe betrayal, the trial, the crown of thorns, the blood of the cross, the cry "It is finished" [Jesus here utters no despairing sob of "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"], the piercing of the side, the embalming, the resurrection, the removal of Thomas's doubts. Nothing is said of the ascension. To Thomas, the repentant doubter, Jesus says his last word, and the unknown author adds: Many other signs, therefore, did Jesus in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye may have life in his name." Some strange hand has evidently attached a supplementary chapter containing the incident of the Seven Fishers at the Sea of Galilee (xxi.); it resumes the story after it has been formally closed, it gives Peter a suspicious prominence, it mentions the " sons of Zebedee," who are not before named, and its Greek varies from that of the preceding gospel.

While the general impression conveyed by the Synoptics is that Jesus spent most of his ministry in Galilee, and, at the end of a year, entered Jerusalem and was slain, the Fourth Gospel portrays him as passing backwards and forwards between Jerusalem and Galilee, and spending two or three years in his public propaganda. Many lively features of the Synoptics are absent from the Fourth Gospel-the crowds that tread upon each other's heels, the woman who blesses Mary's breasts, the harlot who kisses the Master's feet, the poor imbeciles from whom he drives the demons, the blind men who call after him, the prattling children that nestle in his arms, the buzzing mob of Nazarenes that threaten to hurl him from the cliff, the picturesque parables of the dough-bread and the spendthrift and the reapers and the argumentative Sadducees. A new solemnity surrounds the person of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel; the human elements are reduced to a minimum; his speeches are impressive meditations on divine philosophy, circling round his own individuality and exalting his own dignity. Such differences as these cannot be reconciled. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel is a fresh creation, a reconstruction, a refinement, a mark of dissatisfaction with the cruder and more materialistic Jesus of the first generations of Christians.

In much smaller matters critics have accused the Fourth Gospel of inconsistency with the Synoptics. It is said that the writer has invented geographical details-a Bethany beyond Jordan, a Sychar in Samaria, the waters of non. These are of no moment, though somewhat more important would seem to be the error which makes Caiaphas “Highpriest for this year," as if the High-priesthood changed annually.

The author of this remarkable transfiguration of the biography of Jesus perhaps wrote in Asia Minor. Was he the Theologian who wrote the Epistle to the Little Children (p. 156)? The epistle speaks of Antichrist; it does not refer to the Paraclete (Comforter) as distinct from Christ; but these details do not sufficiently establish a diversity of authorship. There is a kindred mysticism in the Epistle and the Gospel which would lead us to suspect a common

source.

Irenæus speaks of certain Christians who would not accept the Fourth Gospel, and Epiphanius called these.

rejectors "Alogoi”—i.e., A-Logoi, or people who dissented from the Logos doctrine.*

23. The "Shepherd" of Hermas.-Perhaps composed in the time of Hadrian, or perhaps (if written by Hermas, brother of Bishop Pius of Rome) dating 140-155, the Shepherd has come down to us as a peculiarly isolated production of the early Christian period. It quotes nothing from the Old Testament; and, though absorbed with the subjects of the Holy Church, the Holy Spirit, and the Son of God, never alludes to either "Jesus" or 66 Christ." We possess the "Shepherd" in Greek, Latin, and Æthiopic. In Greek the book is named "Primen." Its style is graphic, imaginative, allegorical. The author, who was the John Bunyan of his age, may have only called himself Hermas as a literary device. The work attained popularity, but subsequently fell under suspicion of heresy.

The allegory opens with a glimpse of a love story. Hermas, though now the father of a family, had never forgotten the sweet face of a Roman girl, Rhoda. One day he walked by the river, and knelt in a lonely spot to pray; and as he prayed he saw the face of Rhoda look out upon him from the sky. She gently reproached him for once entertaining a lustful thought towards her, and then vanished. As he sadly reflected on her words he saw an aged lady seated in a snow-white chair. She bade him be of good cheer, and bethink him of his duty, especially of his responsibility towards his sons, who led worldly and immoral lives. She read to him comforting promises for the Righteous, and threatenings for the rebellious and the "Heathen" (Gentiles). This is the first Vision. The second Vision again shows the lady, who again bids him reprove his family, while he himself must patiently continue in the way of righteousness. And she quotes an unknown work: "The Lord is nigh unto them that turn unto him, as it is written in Eldad and Modat, who prophesied to the people in the wilderness." A handsome youth then comes forward to acquaint Hermas that the aged lady is the Church. In the third Vision he descries by the water-side a square tower being built by many masons under the

* Davidson's "Introduction;" E. Schürer's article already cited.