THE KING’S BUSINESS
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reaches out to the calling of the Gentiles; and the catholic spirit of St. Luke falls back upon its Jewish origin. St. John, in exhibiting the divine nature of Christ, ex hibits only what the others have every where implied and frequently affirmed. “The Johannean conception of Christ,” as it has been termed by some who would place it in opposition to preceding repre sentations, is in fact their explication and confirmation. In the former Gospels we behold the Son of God, proclaimed by angels, confessed' by devils, acknowledged by the voice of the Father, with authority and power commanding the visible and in visible worlds, and at the central moment of the history transfigured on the holy mount before the eye-witnesses of His Majesty. The first word in the Temple declares to His earthly parent His con scious relation to His Father; the last charge to the Apostles founds thevChurch in the Name of the Father, the Sqp, and the Holy Ghost; while, in the intervening period, some voice of self-revelation more deep than usual is from time to time suf fered to fall upon our ears like that which so many commentators have noticed as a kind of anticipation of the language of St. John, “All things, are delivered to Me by My Father: and no man knoweth who"the Son is, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him” (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22). 'CONVINCING RECORD On the other hand, it is in the record of St. John that we read words which,, if found in another Gospel, would have been eagerly urged as antagonistic to “the Johannean conception.” We can imagine what use would then have been made of the argument founded on the text. “I said, Ye are gods,” or of the assertions, “The word which ye hear is not Mine,” and “The Father is greater than I” (John 10:34, 36; 14:24, 28). Now standing in connection with the claim to the incorfimunicable Name, and with the statements, § “All things that the Father hath are mine,” and “I and the Father are one” (John 16:15;
office was assigned, and his Gospel is its fulfillment. He begins', not like his prede cessors from an earthly starting point, from the birth of the Son of Adam, or the Son of Abraham, or the opening of the human ministry, but in depths of un measured eternity and the recesses of the nature of God ; and then bringing the First- begotten into the world, traces with ador ing eye the course of word and deed by which- He manifested forth His glory, and at last -1 delivers his record to others, “that ^they may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing” they may “have life through His Name” (John 20:31). We have now seen that in the three synoptic Gospels the representation of Christ, as,He'lived and conversed among men, is carried | on by three successive stages, from its first Jewish aspect and fundamental connection with the old cove nant to its most catholic character and adaptation to the Gentile mind ; and that these steps ' correspond to and are con nected withv the historical stages of- ad vance by which the Word of God passes from .its .first home to its destined, sphere of influence.- We have seen that in the fourth :Gospel we rise to a more distinct apprehension: of the spiritual mystery in volved in thè picture which has been pre sented; and further, that this advance also is connected with historical ..conditions, subsequent in time to those under which the preceding book originated. The course of teaching thus produced is-according to that principle which places; the earthly things as the introduction to the heavenly, and keeps everything in “its own . order, first that which is naturàl, and afterwards that which is spiritual.” ALL ARE' AGREED . And yet these stages of progress tire constituted only'by differences of degrees. There is nothing expanded in one book which has not been asserted in another. Take whatever may seem to you the dis- tirtguishing idea- of any one of them, and you find a strong expression of it in all the others. The Judaism of St. Matthew
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