Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John Part 25

It is constantly said--as we think with considerable misapprehension--that in his Epistle St. John may imply, but does not refer directly to any particular incident in, his Gospel. It is our conviction that St. John very specially includes the Resurrection--the central point of the evidences of Christianity--among the things attested by the witness of men. We propose in another discourse to examine the Resurrection from St. John's point of view.

FOOTNOTES:

[299] ded??e? ??? d?a???a? ??a ????s??e? ?.t.?. 1 John v. 20. N. T.

lexicographers give as its meaning _intelligentia_ (_einsicht_). See Grimm. _Bretschn._, s.v. Prof. Westcott remarks that "generally nouns which express intellectual powers are rare in St. John's writings."

But d?a???a is the word by which the LXX. translate the Hebrew ???, and has thus a moral and emotional tinge imparted to it. We may compare the sense in which Aristotle uses it in his Poetics for the cast of thought, or general sentiment. (_Poet._, vi.)

[300] e? t?? a?t???a? t?? a????p?? ?aa??e?. 1 John v. 9.

[301] The A. V. (very unhappily) tried to minimise this reiteration by the introduction of synonyms in four places--"bear record," "record"

(vv. 7, 10, 11), "hath testified" (ver. 9).

[302] ? e????.

[303] d? ?dat?? ?a? a?at??.

[304] ??? e? t? ?dat? ????, a??' e? t? ?dat? ?a? e? t? a?at?.

[305] t?e?? e?s?? ?? a?t?????te?, ver. 7.

[306] The _Water_, John iii. 5, cf. i. 26-33, ii. 9, iii. 23, iv. 13, v. 4, ix. 7. The _Blood_, vi. 53, 54, 56, xix. 34. The _Spirit_, vii.

39, xiv., xv., xvi., xx. 22. The water centres in _Baptism_ (iii. 5); the blood is symbolised, exhibited, in Holy _Communion_ (vi.); the Spirit is perpetually making them effective, and especially by the appointed ministry (xx. 22).

[307] ?t? a?t? est?? ? a?t???a t?? Te??, ?t? ea?t????e? pe?? t??

???? a?t??, ver. 9.

[308] v. 39, 46, etc.

[309] viii. 18.

[310] viii. 17, 18.

[311] ver. 36, x. 25.

[312] ? p?ste??? e?? t?? ???? t?? Te??, ver. 10. (See Bihs Ellicott on the force of various prepositions with p?ste??. _Comment, on Pastoral Epistles_.)

[313] Bentley. Letter of January 1st, 1717.

DISCOURSE XIII.

_THE WITNESS OF MEN_ (_APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION_).

"If we receive the witness of men."--1 JOHN v. 9.

At an early period in the Christian Church the pa.s.sage in which these words occur, was selected as a fitting Epistle for the First Sunday after Easter, when believers may be supposed to review the whole body of witness to the risen Lord and to triumph in the victory of faith. A consideration of the unity of essential principles in the narratives of the Resurrection will afford the best ill.u.s.tration of the comprehensive canon--"if we receive the witness of men."--if we consider the unity of essential principles in the narratives of the Resurrection, and draw the natural conclusions from them.

I.

Let us note the unity of essential principles in the narratives of the Resurrection.

St. Matthew hastens on from Jerusalem to the appearance in Galilee.

"Behold! He goeth before you _into Galilee_," is, in some sense, the key of the 28th chapter. St. Luke, on the other hand, speaks only of manifestations in Jerusalem or its neighbourhood.

Now St. John's Resurrection history falls in the 20th chapter into four pieces, with three manifestations in Jerusalem. The 21st chapter (the appendix-chapter) also falls into four pieces, with one manifestation to the seven disciples in Galilee.

St. John makes no profession of telling us all the appearances which were known to the Church, or even all of which he was personally cognisant. In the treasures of the old man's memory there were many more which, for whatever reason, he did not write. But these distinct continuous specimens of a permitted communing with the eternal glorified life (supplemented on subsequent thought by another in the last chapter) are as good as three or four hundred for the great purpose of the Apostle. "These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of G.o.d."[314]

Throughout St. John's narrative every impartial reader will find delicacy of thought, abundance of matter, minuteness of detail. He will find something more. While he feels that he is not in cloudland or dreamland, he will yet recognise that he walks in a land which is wonderful, because the central figure in it is One whose name is Wonderful. The fact is fact, and yet it is something more. For a short time poetry and history are absolutely coincident. Here, if anywhere, is Herder's saying true, that the fourth Gospel seems to be written with a feather which has dropped from an angel's wing.

The unity in essential principles which has been claimed for these narratives taken together is not a lifeless ident.i.ty in details. It is scarcely to be worked out by the dissecting-maps of elaborate harmonies.

It is not the imaginative unity which is poetry; nor the mechanical unity, which is fabrication; nor the pa.s.sionless unity, which is commended in a police-report. It is not the thin unity of plain-song; it is the rich, unity of dissimilar tones blended into a fugue.

This unity may be considered in two essential agreements of the four Resurrection histories.

1. All the Evangelists agree in reticence on one point--in abstinence from one claim.

If any of us were framing for himself a body of such evidence for the Resurrection as should almost extort acquiescence, he would a.s.suredly insist that the Lord should have been seen and recognised after the Resurrection by miscellaneous crowds--or, at the very least, by hostile individuals. Not only by a tender Mary Magdalene, an impulsive Peter, a rapt John, a Thomas through all his unbelief nervously anxious to be convinced. Let Him be seen by Pilate, by Caiaphas, by some of the Roman soldiers, of the priests, of the Jewish populace. Certainly, if the Evangelists had simply aimed at effective presentation of evidence, they would have put forward statements of this kind.

But the apostolic principle--the apostolic canon of Resurrection evidence--was very different. St. Luke has preserved it for us, as it is given by St. Peter. "Him G.o.d raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made manifest after He rose again from the dead, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of G.o.d, even to us."[315] He shall, indeed, appear again to all the people, to every eye; but that shall be at the great Advent. St. John, with his ideal tenderness, has preserved a word of Jesus, which gives us St. Peter's canon of Resurrection evidence, in a lovelier and more spiritual form. Christ as He rose at Easter should be visible, but only to the eye of love, only to the eye which life fills with tears and heaven with light--"yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me ... He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will manifest Myself to Him."[316] Round that ideal canon St. John's Resurrection-history is twined with undying tendrils. Those words may be written by us with our softest pencils over the 20th and 21st chapters of the fourth Gospel. There is--very possibly there can be--under our present human conditions, no manifestation of Him who was dead and now liveth, except to belief, or to that kind of doubt which springs from love.

That which is true of St. John is true of all the Evangelists.

They take that Gospel, which is the life of their life. They bare its bosom to the stab of Celsus,[317] to the bitter sneer plagiarised by Renan--"why did He not appear to all, to His judges and enemies? Why only to one excitable woman, and a circle of His initiated?" "The hallucination of a hysterical woman endowed Christendom with a risen G.o.d."[318] An apocryphal Gospel unconsciously violates this apostolic, or rather divine canon, by stating that Jesus gave His grave-clothes to one of the High Priest's servants.[319] There was every reason but one why St. John and the other Evangelists _should have_ narrated such stories. There was only one reason why they _should not_, but that was all-sufficient. Their Master was the Truth as well as the Life. They dared not lie.

Here, then, is one essential accordance in the narratives of the Resurrection. They record no appearances of Jesus to enemies or to unbelievers.

2. A second unity of essential principle will be found in the impression produced upon the witnesses.

There was, indeed, a moment of terror at the sepulchre, when they had seen the angel clothed in the long white garment. "They trembled, and were amazed; neither said they anything to any man; for they were afraid." So writes St. Mark.[320] And no such word ever formed the close of a Gospel! On the Easter Sunday evening there was another moment when they were "terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit."[321] But this pa.s.ses away like a shadow. For man, the Risen Jesus turns doubt into faith, faith into joy. For woman, He turns sorrow into joy. From the sacred wounds joy rains over into their souls. "He showed them His hands and His feet ... while they yet believed not for joy and wondered." "He showed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord."[322] Each face of those who beheld Him wore after that a smile through all tears and forms of death. "Come," cried the great Swedish singer, gazing upon the dead face of a holy friend, "come and see this great sight. Here is a woman who has seen Christ." Many of us know what she meant, for we too have looked upon those dear to us who have seen Christ. Over all the awful stillness--under all the cold whiteness as of snow or marble--that strange soft light, that subdued radiance, what shall we call it? wonder, love, sweetness, pardon, purity, rest, worship, discovery. The poor face often dimmed with tears, tears of penitence, of pain, of sorrow, some perhaps which we caused to flow, is looking upon a great sight. Of such the beautiful text is true, written by a sacred poet in a language of which so many verbs are pictures. "They looked unto Him, and _were lightened_."[323]

That meeting of lights without a name it is which makes up what angels call joy. There remained some of that light on all who had seen the Risen Lord. Each might say--"have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?"

This effect, like every effect, had a cause.

Scripture implies in the Risen Jesus a form with all heaviness and suffering lifted off it--with the glory, freshness, elasticity, of the new life, overflowing with beauty and power. He had a voice with some of the pathos of affection, making its sweet concession to human sensibility: saying, "Mary," "Thomas," "Simon, son of Jonas." He had a presence at once so majestic that they durst not question Him, yet so full of magnetic attraction that Magdalene clings to His feet, and Peter flings himself into the waters when he is sure that it is the Lord.[324]

Now let it be remarked that this consideration entirely disposes of that afterthought of critical ingenuity which has taken the place of the base old Jewish theory--"His disciples came by night, and stole Him away."[325] That theory, indeed, has been blown into s.p.a.ce by Christian apologetics. And now not a few are turning to the solution that He did not really die upon the cross, but was taken down alive.

There are other, and more than sufficient refutations. One from the character of the august Sufferer, who would not have deigned to receive adoration upon false pretences. One from the minute observation by St. John of the physiological effect of the thrust of the soldier's lance, to which he also reverts in the context.

But here, we only ask what effect the appearance of the Saviour among His disciples, supposing that He had not died, must unquestionably have had.

He would only have been taken down from the cross something more than thirty hours. His brow punctured with the crown of thorns; the wounds in hands, feet, and side, yet unhealed; the back raw and torn with scourges; the frame cramped by the frightful tension of six long hours--a lacerated and shattered man, awakened to agony by the coolness of the sepulchre and by the pungency of the spices; a spectral, trembling, fevered, lamed, skulking thing--could that have seemed the Prince of Life, the Lord of Glory, the Bright and Morning Star? Those who had seen Him in Gethsemane and on the cross, and then on Easter, and during the forty days, can scarcely speak of His Resurrection without using language which attains to more than lyrical elevation. Think of St. Peter's anthemlike burst. "Blessed be the G.o.d and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath begotten us again to a lively hope, by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Think of the words which St. John heard Him utter. "I am the First and the Living, and behold! I became dead, and I am, living unto the ages of ages."[326]