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THE KING’S BUSINESS
tinguished from what He taught and what He wrought) is the foundation o f the whole Gospel, it would be first to explore this mystery that the activities and subtle ties of thought would address themselves; it would be first to destroy this mystery that the assaults of the enemy would be directed; it would be first in securing this mystery that the divine guidance of the Church would be made manifest. One Apostle, the first and the“' last of the “glorious company,” was chosen as the chief instrument for settling human thought, defeating the wiles of the devil, and certifying the witness of God. There was but one moment in which the condi tions 'for such a production could coexist. It must be after a speculative theosophy had begun to form its language and mani fest its aberrations.^ Yet it must be while the voice of an eye witness could still be lifted up to tell what eyes had seen, and ears had heard, and hands had handled of the-Word of Life; so that the clearest in tuitions of the divinity of Jesus might be forever blended with the plainest testi mony of the senses concerning Him. Such a moment was seeured by the providence which ordained that John should live till the first heresies had shaped themselves. The disciple who first came to Jesus, who followed Him most closely, who lay $in His bosom, who stood by His cross, who believed when others were confounded, who saw with more penetrating eye the glory Which they all beheld, was reserved to complete the written statement of the Person of Christ in a record which has been designated from ancient days as “the Gospel according to the Spirit.” GLORY OF CHRIST As the other Gospels respectively make prominent the ideas of law, of power, and of grace, so does this present the glory'of Christ. “We beheld His glory, the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father” (John 1:14). All the disciples beheld it, but there was one whose pure, lofty, and contempla tive spirit fitted him to be the best recipient, and therefore the best exponent, of the sublime disclosure. To him, therefore, the
been proved and its character of univer sality established. The whole tone of this Gospel constitutes it pre-eminently a Gos pel for the Gentiles, specially adapted to the Greek -mind, then in some sense the mind of the world. Its internal character thus accords with its historical position as the Gospel of St. Paul, written by his close companion, and circulated, we can not doubt, in the Churches which he founded. As the book of Acts shows us three stages in the outward progress of the Gospel, first within the bounds of Judaism, then in the work of St. Peter, spreading beyond those limits in the Roman direc tion, and finally in the ministry of St. Paul, delivered freely and fully to the world; so do the synoptic Gospels,-as they stand in the canon,' correspond with a singular fitness to those three periods. We are go ing“forward as we pass through them, and are completing the representation of Christ, not by mere repetition or fortuitous variation in our point of view, but in a certain orderly sequence corresponding to that in which the knowledge of Him was historically opened to the world. ?The evangelical narratives are the proper monuments of a Gospel which first asserts itself as the true form of Judaism and the legitimate consummation of the old cove nant, and then unfolded its relations with the whole race of mankind, and passed into the keeping of a catholic Church. 3. If in traversing the synoptic Gospels we march an the line of an historical ad vance, it is stilt more plain that we do so when we pass to the teaching of St. John. A NATURAL COURSE The Gospel of Christ had no sooner completed the conflicts, through which it established its relations to Judaism and to the world, than it entered on .those pro found and subtle, those various and pro tracted controversies which turned on the Person of Christ. This was the natural course of events, whether we regard the tendencies of human thought, the wiles of the devil, or the government of God. If the revelation of Christ Himself (as dis
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