Part of the 'work' of Jesus, then, certainly is his teaching. This is one aspect of his Messianic character as the 'truth' and the 'life.' His whole ministry is an imparting of life, I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly,' 101o. This gift of life is among the greater 'works' which the Father will show to the Son, 520-21; and this is the real attestation of the working of Christ in the world. Looking out over the corn-fields of Samaria, Jesus declared them white already unto harvest. The labourers would gather fruit unto life eternal; their toil was the preaching of the Gospel and the harvesting of souls. And such works' were idenThe doers of ill, representatives

tical with his own. of the world, hated the light and would not come to it, lest their works should be reproved. But the doers of the truth had no such fear: they came to the light, that their works might be 'manifested' that they had been wrought in God, 320 21. Once more is the parallel drawn between the Teacher and the disciple, between Christ and the Church.

The evidential character of the 'signs,' then, does not lie in the external event. It is not the cure of the cripple, the multiplication of the loaves, the gift of sight to the blind, not even the summons of Lazarus-four days dead-from the grave, that is the essential element. These narratives must be studied in the light of the hidden meanings everywhere implied, and sometimes frankly disclosed. The Evangelist lives in a world in which the transition is easy from the symbol to the

EE

spiritual reality. His concern is not with the physical but with the ideal. He clothes his thought in the forms of a scene of sight and touch. But he really shows us the operation of spiritual energies. The multitude who were fed in the desert, are warned not to work for perishable food, 62, and immediately want to know what they must do to 'work the works of God.' The 'work of God,' answers Jesus, is to 'believe on him whom he hath sent.' Faith in Christ was the great instrument of the progress of the Church; and in the stories of the 'bread of life,' the 'light of the world' which carried judgment along with it-'that they which see not may see, and that they which see may become blind'-, and the 'resurrection and the life,' the parables of Christian trust and Christian experience were writ large for all to read. Here lay the secret of the promise, 1412:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.

What greater works? Feed more thousands, set more lame men on their feet, raise more dead? Assuredly not. The works are works of the spirit. The superiority of the disciples' achievement depends on the departure of the Teacher, because the Church could only set forth to win the world when he was on earth no more. The spread of the truth meant the recovery of true vision, the invigoration of the morally halt, the quickening of the dead in trespasses and sins, on a colossal scale. When Pliny described to

the emperor Trajan (111-112, A.D.) the abandoned altars, the deserted temples, the neglected worship, of Bithynia, where Christianity had already made unexampled progress, he bore testimony to the reaping from the seed of apostolic toil; the fruits were being already garnered to eternal life; others had laboured, and the Church had entered into their labour.

V.

Such was the high significance of the belief that Jesus is the Christ; the experience of the 'children of God' is everywhere parallel with that of the 'Son;' and mightier things are wrought by the believer than Messiah himself had accomplished. For those who believe, 'have life in his name.'

The conception of 'life' as it emerges in the Fourth Gospel is the result of a long spiritual development. Centuries before Jesus, the prophets had offered Israel the two alternatives of 'life' and 'death': 'choose life,' cried the Deuteronomic preacher, 'that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed': but the life was the life of the nation on its ancient land. The same symbols served the sages to denote the issues of wisdom and folly. Two gates there were, one narrow and one wide; they opened on two paths, one leading to destruction, and the other to 'life,' Matt. 713-14 'Life' in the coming age would be the privilege of those who should enter Messiah's realm; and it was natural to ask the

1 Prov. 835-36, 96 18, etc.

Teacher what must be done to inherit it, Mark 101. There is no age to come' in John. The 'door' is there, let the believer pass at once into the fold; Jesus is himself the 'door,' the 'way,' and the 'life.' Such sayings reveal at once that the Messianic salvation is not something to be postponed to the future; it is to be realised at once. Moreover, it is not to be gained by 'doing' anything: its essence lies in knowledge, 17*:

This is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.

To be in him that is true,' 1 John 520, is already to have eternal life. The purpose of Messiah's coming is that men may have life; and when they turn away hostile or indifferent, he pleads 'Ye will not come to me that ye may have life.' This was already the experience of the preachers of the Gospel. 'Life' was the only word which could describe for Paul the essential quality of the 'mind of the spirit' when it had been raised from the death of sin into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The quickening of this life is a frequent theme of the Evangelist, who shows us Messiah in colloquy with manifold types of character,-the Jews again and again scornfully indifferent, or openly antagonistic, the timid enquirer Nicodemus-the fickle Samaritan woman-the excellent but conventional Martha-the deep-souled Mary, with the general result that the issue of his appeal is carried to a higher stage, 'No man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me, draw him.'

Most intimate, and at the same time most comprehensive of all, is the farewell address in the upper chamber after the last supper. The audience, however, is not limited to the Eleven from whom the traitor has now severed himself. There is a wider apostolate sent forth into the world; and Messiah's words are designed for the whole Church. The chief theme is the fellowship of the disciples; what power was it that had separated them from the world? what power was it that united them among themselves? The answer is not reached by reasoning or analysis: it is a record of experience. In form the language of Jesus may speak in the accents of prophecy; but in reality it reposes upon actual fact. There are different spheres and modes of knowledge; and not all kinds of knowledge are gained in the same way. The preacher of a new Gospel does not address himself to the enquiring intellect, nor act by arguments of logic on the mind. Spiritual things must be spiritually discerned. The attainment of religious truth will not seem to the soul like an achievement of its own energy rather will it be a gift to it from some higher source. Such knowledge is not the result of an examination of evidence, or the issue of processes of research; it is something realised by insight where there was before a blank; and the power of vision has been imparted, for it was not self-produced. The unseeing eye might stare for ever into vacancy and behold nothing but when once the touch of heaven lets in the light, all things are radiant and the world is full