him, John 14231 But this points to a wider use than that of the Prologue, where it is exalted to transcendent glory. May not this be a sign that somewhat different aspects of thought are represented in the Gospel?2 On this question, however, a clearer judgment will be possible, when we have further considered some of the chief features of its view of Jesus.

IV.

The interpreters of the Gospel have often started from the Prologue, and have described the earthly career of Jesus as the manifestation of the eternal Logos in the form of our humanity. That character,

3

1 The phrase in 157, ‘If ye abide in me, and my sayings abide in you,' is again on another level.

2 Other uses of the term deserve attention. It frequently designates the preaching of Jesus, e.g. 'his word' John 41; but it is also used by Jesus himself, my logos' 524, 831 abide in my word,' 837 my word hath no place in you,' cp. 43 51 52, 1423 24, 153 20. Further, 176,' they have kept thy word'; 14 I have given them thy word'; 17thy word is truth'; and even 855 • I know him, and keep his word.' Can the writer of these passages have himself conceived Jesus as the Logos who was 'with God'? In 124 the function of judgment is ascribed to the logos which I have uttered': so flexible was the word, and so easily could it advance towards personification. We might say 'he shall be judged by (i.e., according to) the word ' etc.; but hardly 'the word shall judge.'

3 So, primarily, Baur. This is declared to be the necessary point of view for scientific exposition: cp. M. Jean Réville, Le Quatrième Évangile, 1901, p. 119, 'to try to explain the Gospel without taking account of the prologue, is almost as reasonable as trying to construe a text in a foreign language without taking account of the grammar of that language.' I have indicated above why this rigour seems to me not only needless but dangerous: it imposes one interpretation on a book which contains hints of more than one. In an essay in the Zeitschr. für Theologie und Kirche, 1892, on the relation of the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel to the whole book, Harnack lays it down (p. 230) that the Prologue is not the key to the Gospel; it is only prefixed by the Evangelist to prepare Hellenistic readers for it.

however, is not ascribed to him after the opening verses; it does not reappear in the Gospel itself; and it seems better, therefore, for our present enquiry, to adopt the writer's own statement of his purpose at the original close of the work, 2031 :

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.

Two aims are here formulated, the production of belief in the disciple, and through belief the attainment of life. The emphasis laid on 'believing ' throughout the Gospel must have struck every reader. It is the more remarkable because the noun corresponding to the verb, rendered in our version 'faith,' and familiar to us alike in the Synoptic Gospels and in Paul, only occurs once in the Johannine writings, 1 John 5. It is evident at the outset that the belief which the writer seeks to engender is not a simple intellectual act like the acceptance of a geometrical theorem, such as that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or the recognition of a historical truth, such as that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. The appeals which pervade the Gospel are addressed to the spiritual affections, 'Ye believe in God, believe also in me,' 14'; 'believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me'; 'or else,' it is added with a direct reference to the works' in which the power of Christianity was manifested, 'believe me for the very works' sake,' 14". Of such trust the

On the nature of the 'works,' see below, p. 432 f.

result is that 'he that believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die'; and Martha answers, I have believed that thou art the Christ, the Son of God,' 1125-27. Belief, then, generates life, and this life is in its nature divine; nay, it is the life of a son of God himself; for the First Letter tells us, 1 John 51, 'whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is begotten (or born) of God.' To believe that Jesus was the Messiah was, in the first place, the way of entrance into the Church. It was by this faith that the Christian was marked off not only from the Jew, but in the same manner from the Gentile. It was in fact a summary phrase for being a Christian. Hence it denoted all the new emotions, the new desires, the new hopes, the new aims, the new endeavours, the new outlook on the world, the new affections towards God and man, which filled the believer's soul, and constituted that fresh element of being known in the vocabulary of the early Church as 'life.' Viewed in this light, the Gospel has its purpose in the production of Christian experience. And the foundation of the sonship of the disciple is the sonship of Christ.

Such a book naturally seeks to achieve its result along various lines. The Gospel, consequently, has different aspects. It is full of apparently historical detail. It presents an ethical ideal, 'even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another,' 13. It exhibits a mode of eternal life, not as something to be inherited' or gained by any course of conduct,

but as something to be realised by knowledge,' 178. And it even opens with a profound speculative construction of the person who is the medium of that knowledge. But through it all there runs a note of impassioned conviction. The writer has lived in the centre of the ideas and feelings which he strives to beget in others :

1 John 114: That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us); that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us; yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ: and these things we write, that our (or, your) joy may be fulfilled.2-Cp. 1 John 414.

'We beheld his glory,' says the Gospel, 11. It accordingly assumes historic form. But it is in reality, if we may so phrase it, superhistoric. Its value does not lie in the details of journeys, or the annual round of feasts. The notes of place and time are really indifferent. Nor are even the words or works of Jesus the essential matters with which

It is again noteworthy that while gnosis occurs repeatedly in the Pauline writings, the Johannine avoid the noun, while using the verb 'to know' repeatedly. The Gospel is, in fact, a delineation of the true Gnosis, as opposed to the false.

2 Here is the key to passages such as John 1511, 'These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled'; or 1713, 'these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.' Cp. somewhat differently on the basis of a Synoptic saying (transferred, however, from its original meaning into the sphere of Christ's 'name'), 1624, hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled.'

the author is concerned. They are only the vehicles of something behind. There is a realm of the unseen, a whole world of thought and feeling on another plane; and through symbols and emblems the writer strives to present it in pictures to the believer's gaze. This is the meaning of the abstractions with which Jesus is again and again identified, 'light,' 'truth,' or 'life.' We even read 'I am the resurrection.'

But what kind of equation can be established between a person and a process? How are we to identify an individual and an event? To many modern readers such words are stumbling-blocks. It is difficult for us with our antecedents, and our present modes of education, to realise the atmosphere which made them natural. We are brought up in Christianity. We are familiar with its teachings; since first we can remember, the words of Jesus have been constantly upon our lips. Christianity, therefore, rarely enters our lives as a fresh power. As we begin to think about it, we find that our realisation of the personality of Jesus is beset by many limitations. We see him environed by the ideas and forces of his age, cherishing hopes which events did not fulfil, interpreting the agencies of the world in a way no longer true either to our religion or our philosophy. Moreover, as we trace the history of the Church, we note how many corrupting elements have mingled in it from various sources quite remote from him. We cannot help observing that while Christianity has wrought in