03. The Man

THE HOME OF JOHN. HIS GENERAL CHARACTER. SON OF THUNDER.

"THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED." GREATNESS OF MIND.

SYMBOLIZED BY THE EAGLE. AN EXAMPLE OF CHRIST'S NEW-

FASHIONING POWER. JOHN'S FITNESS FOR BEING A WITNESS.

If the band that followed Jesus the Apostle John was one of the earliest and most notable members. His individuality is as strongly marked as that of any. This individuality, sanctified and unfolded by Divine grace, fitted him to be a witness of certain aspects of the Lord's life, to receive and treasure up a certain class of His sayings, and to elucidate certain special truths of the profoundest order, beyond any other of the twelve.

We must endeavour, in the outset, to know *the man*. This is as important in some respects as to know the language in which he wrote his testimony. In calling him to be a follower, and in making him an organ of His Spirit, the Lord did not destroy or suppress his individuality, but used it; as, if one should send a message by a lisping child, the lisp will be heard in the delivery of the message; or as, when Moses' face shone, or Stephen wore as it had been the face of an angel, the men were still them-

BIRTH-PLACE OF JOHN.

selves.* This is the Lord's way with His own throughout. While they are all taken up with Him into heavenly places, there is no dead monotony of character produced; each wears a grace peculiar to himself; each is Christ-like after his own order.

So with this man. It is indeed no longer he that lives, but Christ that liveth in him. The Christ-life pours through all the channels and works all the machinery of his being. But he has not ceased to be John. The original texture of his nature abides. He has lost nothing; rather he is become more simply, truly, characteristically, profoundly, essentially *himself*—himself, purified and exalted. The record he gives us of the Word of Life, being the record of what entered the most deeply into his own heart, and was most his own joy, will be correspondingly different from that given by any other.

His form will stand out more distinctly to our eye if we call up the outward circumstances. When we first meet him, he is young; perhaps not far beyond his twentieth year,—if indeed he has reached it. He belongs to the fishing village of Bethsaida, on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, near where the swift and milk like Jordan enters. The whole region wears a quiet beauty of its own,† and must have been still more charming in New Testament days. The sea itself—twelve full miles in length by nearly seven in breadth, formed by the widening of the river, and lying almost seven hundred feet below the level of the

* "God, when He makes the prophet, does not unmake the man."—*Locke*.

† "I have an ancient love for the mere features of a lake, and so, forgetting all else when I reached the summit, I looked away eagerly to the eastward. There she lay, the Sea of Galilee. Less stern than Wastwater—less fair than gentle Windermere—she had still the winning ways of an English lake; she caught from the smiling heavens unceasing light and changeful phases of beauty."—*Eothen*.

THE SEA OF GALILEE.

Mediterranean*—is a beautiful expanse of clear, shining water, transparent to considerable depths. Viewed from different points and at different times, it is now a deep blue mirror among the mountains, now lustrous and glittering in the sunbeams like molten silver, now a sea of glass, as it were mingled with fire, now varying under every changeful gleam like an opal set in emeralds.

In shape it is rather harp-like† than oval. The beach is in parts pebbly,‡ in parts sandy, and of pearly whiteness, owing to the presence of innumerable fine shells; elsewhere it is covered with big, rough stones. The silent shore behind, stretching out here and there into small, irregular plains, is belted with a jungle of oleanders and other shrubs and bushes, and contains some rich corn-lands. On the eastern side the treeless hills, scarred with ravines, have a desolate and mournful look.§ Those on the west swell up pleasantly from the shore; and if they are not bold and romantic, neither are they tame. The snowy top of the Hermon range rises majestically in the distance like a mighty guardian of the northern frontier.

Orange, citron, myrtle, and date-trees, are still to be found; and the wandering foot crushes fragrance from many a lowly herb. Birds of bright plumage frequent the shores, and over the waters of the lake many sea-fowl dip the wing. Visitors tell how, as night gives place to morning, the sudden note of a lark will ring out, silvery and joyous, as if from the very midst of the stars, waking a con-

* 682·554. Lieut. Kitchener's measurement; Palestine Exploration Survey.

† Hence called "Chinnereth"—from the Hebrew word for "lyre" or "harp."

‡ Flint, jasper, chalcedony, and agate.

§ "The eastern shore is destitute of verdure, and consists of a bright-red naked precipice, whose picturesquely solemn expression enhances the splendour of the blue mirror."—Tischendorf.

HIS FATHER AND MOTHER.

cert all along the shore and back to the hills. The sunrise and sunset tints, opal and purple, are wonderful; and so are the contrasts of light and deep shadow. "God," said the Rabbins, "loved that sea beyond all other seas." All around there now-broods (to use Gibbon's phrase) "a mournful and solitary silence." But in New Testament days the stir of busy life was everywhere. Villages nestled in the green valleys, were perched upon the heights, lay scattered along the shores; everywhere "great multitudes of people" might readily be gathered together.

Though mingled with lower and impurer elements, a "deathless trust" in the Invisible and the Future still survived in this secluded region, at least in some lowly, God-taught hearts; and great spiritual ideas struggled amidst narrowness and darkness.

It was here that the youth of the Apostle John was spent. His father, Zebedee, was a fisherman, with boats of his own, employing hired servants. His mother, Salome, was one of the Galilean women who followed Jesus, and ministered to Him of their substance. The family seem to have lived in comfort, if not in comparative wealth. There is ground for surmising some bond of connection - possibly some tie of blood - with the mother of Jesus; it may be that Salome was Mary's sister.* I picture to myself a pious and happy Hebrew home, a dwelling of the righteous, wherein

* It is not by express statement, but by a comparison of passages, that Salome is known as the wife of Zebedee and mother of James and John. By a similar comparison of passages it is inferred as not improbable that Salome was the sister of Mary. The Evangelists Matthew and Mark show us Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome - these four-standing near the cross of Jesus. John gives us Mary the mother of Jesus, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. Had Mary the mother of Jesus a sister also called Mary? If not, who is this unnamed woman, "His mother's sister"? Is it not Salome? (See Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; John xix. 25.)

EARLY TRAINING.

was daily heard the melody of joy and health—the inmates united both by natural affection and holy bonds of spirit, —the mother a woman who knew how to nurture her greatly-gifted sons.

School-days being ended, the lads are employed with their father on the sea. A fisherman's life is somewhat silent, fitted to nurture habits of thoughtfulness, independence, and patience; and such a life they are inured to from their boyhood. Every year after the age of twelve, they go up to Jerusalem for the great festivals, before and after harvest and after the vintage, carrying offerings with them to present before the Lord, and bringing back thoughts, and yearnings, and perplexities, and musings, kindled by what they heard and saw on their visits.

Their education would be of the simplest kind. Much of it would go on under the midnight sky and the stars, as they lay out all night on the sea in their fishing boats. The law, the history of Israel, the prophecies, the wondrous Psalms of David, form the literature in which their minds are steeped. It is a time of strange and wistful expectation, even beyond the limits of the chosen people, with powerful and deep-reaching though mysterious influences for all "men of desires;" for the Desire of all nations is at hand, and the God-inspired yearnings of ages are about to be met.

To most of us—for long, if not all our lives—the Apostle John dwells apart, in a dim, solemn region of mystery; and his figure looms forth faint and indistinct, as through a haze. He seems to look out upon us with gentle, dreamy eyes—a man of meditative calmness and repose, intensely intuitional, speaking in words of childlike, mystic simpleness, whose drift and scope baffle our logical methods to apprehend. With a kind of vague intention we are content to call him "the Apostle of Love," while his meaning floats before us in twilight and distance.

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT.

As our life in God deepens, we begin to perceive that, while the image of the Lord mirrors itself in him, as the sky mirrors itself in the depths of the Galilean sea, he is no mere passive and idle recipient of light, no mere reflecting surface, but a great, loving, deeply-spiritual soul, all aglow with adoration, and enthusiasm, and delight, and ever-living wonder, absorbed with the Lord, and resting in the calm assurance of His favour. As when one gazes with speculative eye into the star-lit azure, piercing far into its deep immensity, so (spiritually) does this man gaze into the depths of Christ, with the gaze of love.

As he appears before us ultimately in his writings, he exhibits no signs of doubt and conflict and struggle, of suspicion or cloudings of fear; these (if they ever were) lie behind him: "the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."

His language is extremely simple. He does not dispute or reason: he "shows," "testifies," "bears witness," "declares what he has seen and heard;" in short, decisive sentences that bear in their very brevity "the stamp of grandeur."

There is nothing obscure in his thoughts; while fathomlessly deep, they are always crystal-clear and untroubled. It is their clear depth that at once charms, fascinates, and baffles us.

Like all men of true, powerful, and loving nature—yea, like the Lamb Himself—he is capable of vehement and burning anger, as when volcanic fires burst through the rich and fertile slopes of Vesuvius or Etna. This characteristic shows itself—very mistakenly indeed, and so as to need rebuke—in his proposal to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village that would not receive Jesus. It shows itself also—so as not to need rebuke—very largely throughout his writings, breathing, as has been remarked, through the most quiet speech. Nowhere else, save from

TRUTH.

the lips of Incarnate Mercy, do we find such awful words launched against sin: all the more terrible that they are so very calm, and so evidently proceed from a tender and loving heart.

Because he speaks so much of love, he has frequently been pictured as one of those shrinking and yielding natures, deficient in nerve and stamina, unfit for the battle-strife, that are left at home to comfort the women and children; whereas, in reality, though gentle as a child, he carries in his bosom the germ of all strength and heroism; and the volume and force of his being are as remarkable as its quality.

He is not in the least sentimental. Nowhere does he exhibit trace or taint of that false "liberality" which bids truth and lie shake hands and be friends, or judicially binds them over to keep the peace; far less of that "philosophic breadth" which places Jesus Christ, Zoroaster, Sakya-Mouni, Mahomet (and why not by-and-by Joseph Smith?) in the same Pantheon. He is full of the grand intolerance of love; incapable of compromise or truce with falsehood, however mighty or loftily throned.* If a man come and bring not the doctrine of Christ, whosoever biddeth him God-speed is partaker of his evil deeds.† (2 John 10, 11.)

* There is a legitimate place for compromise, but it is not the realm of truth. Take an illustration which keeps clear of all theological complication. One man says, *Five times six are thirty*. Another says, *Five times six are twenty-eight*. Our liberal friend steps forward, and says, *Come now, don't fight about it; you must love one another; split the difference, and say, Five times six are twenty-nine*. Even in arithmetical discussions, men should show a right spirit, and not be overbearing or selfish or bitter; they are all the likelier to arrive at truth in this way: but compromise is no step toward truth—does not even lie on the road to it at all.

† "The vague cloudy men are always talking against intolerance. Why, our very calling is to be intolerant; intolerant of proved error and known sin. The evil is, that we are not intolerant enough; though, at the same time, we are not benevolent enough. A man however must have a clear eye and a large heart, before he has a right to be intolerant, either

A "SON OF THUNDER."

He never puts himself forward in the sight of others, challenging observation, but yet is ever found by his Master's side in the hour of danger, quietly, and as of course; one of those who willingly offered themselves, and who did not turn back in the day of battle.

Thus, on the night of betrayal, after the first alarm and forsaking, he closely follows Jesus from the garden, goes in along with Him to the place of trial and judgment, and never for a moment falls away from Him or flinches. Peter too follows, but afar off, and takes his place with the officers and servants, as if he belonged to their company; and in that "afar off" lay his weakness and danger. John goes in "with" Jesus, quietly, and as a simple matter of course; and in this very cleaving to the Lord lay his safety.

Again, at the crucifixion, he held his station near the cross of his Master all day, a witness of His dreadful sufferings; exhibiting that rarest form of courage, which so few even of strong men are capable of the courage to stand still and look upon the sufferings of a beloved friend, protracted and intensifying from hour to hour, which we can do nothing whatever to relieve. Ah, it takes courage of the loftiest order for that!

In the list of the Twelve Apostles, we read that Jesus surnamed John a "Son of Thunder." Granted the native force—the passion—that lay at the basis of his character, the name does not mark something that grace was to eradicate; it is his new and true name, given by the Discerner of hearts; even as the name Peter, Man of Rock, is the new and true name given to Simon the son of Jonas.

towards concrete error or concrete sin."—Colloquia Peripatetica; Dr. John Duncan.

"Thou knowest the serpent cunning of this liberal spirit. It is killing our children; it has already slain its tens of thousands: this city is sick unto death, and dying of the mortal wounds which she hath received from it."—

Edward Irving.

SUGGESTION OF THE NAME.

In the light of the after-history, it may appear to some that the name is scarcely appropriate. So calm as he is, so gentle, so loving—

“The human-hearted man we loved”— he is about the last whom we would liken to thunder: we think rather of the still small voice that speaks from the hush when the tempest has ceased. The incongruity, however, springs from a misapprehension on our part of the meaning and suggestion of the name. It does not point to human vehemence, or anything that partakes of the “wrath of man;” what wrath there is, is like that of Him who wept over Jerusalem, which is infinitely awful by reason of being “the wrath of the Lamb.” In the Old Testament, by which the name must be interpreted, the thunder is the voice of Jehovah,* pealing amidst solemn darkness from the sky, abrupt, crashing, following no rhythmical laws for the human ear, with mystic intimations for the conscience, the transient

* It is the voice of God, not by some superstitious misinterpretation which modern science abolishes, but as all nature is a medium for conveying Divine meanings and monitions to the human heart. The hearing depends on the particular ear. To him who is in sympathy with heaven, every natural sound has some vibration within the breast; as, to the unsealed eye,—

And every common bush afire with God.**

I give the following fragment of child-experience in illustration of this point. In a small country village, a young boy was left at home one Sabbath morning, with strict charge from his parents to avoid the company of some rude and bad children in the neighbourhood. These children sought him out however, and succeeded in enticing him to go with them and join in their amusements. They found their way together to a small reedy lake about half a mile off, surrounded by larches and dark firs, with water lilies and many small silver-budded flowers brightening its surface. It was a warm summer day, and they had played some time, when a strange silence fell ominously around, the lake grew inky black, and all of a sudden a peal of thunder broke and rattled overhead. It was the voice of the living God to the young boy. It told his conscience of his sin, as plainly as if in articulate words. Full of anguish and terror, he ran home, and could not stay his

HIS PERSONALITY.

revelation of majestic and eternal power. In some sense John represents this "voice of the Lord." (Job xxxvii. 1—5; Psalm xxix.)

It is not the mere loudness of the sound that is to be thought of—the noise of an empty waggon passing over the stony street may be louder: it is the soul-awakening power, the solemn majesty. From the bosom of the cloud the flash darts forth, swift, bright, intense, resistless; followed by the voice which appeals to the soul, finding her in her most secret chambers. This is what I think of when John is called a son of thunder; and I find the name justified both in his personality and in the light and power of his writings.* Personally he is no weak and shallow nature, deficient in force, straitened of understanding, concerning himself with pious trivialities, talking about love (the most sovereign thing in the universe) in a sweet and feeble monotone; he is powerful, grand, and energetic. The merely passionate man is borne away by impulses of the flesh; his urgencies are the feverish urgencies of the flesh. This "Son of Thunder" has his inspiration from heaven. His thought comes to us sudden, unexpected, bright as a flash of lightning; he speaks to us in a voice having no sign of the perturbations of earthly passion in it, that seems to come with a sovereign tone, from the upper sky, startling souls that are held in a "dead sleep," and oft-times melting down as into glad echoes.

sobbing, till, with his cheek leaning against his mother's bosom, he confessed his fault and sought forgiveness. The incident may serve to show how God can speak to consciences by His thunder, even in the nineteenth century, when so many intellects, misreading the glorious teachings of science, incline towards the cold conclusion, "Here's law! Where's God?"

* "Cujus vita fulgor, ejus verba tonitrua." Take the opening paragraph of his Gospel, "In the beginning was the Word:" three men so different as Chrysostom, Augustine, and Bengel remark, "Hear how he thunders!" "John has opened his words as it were with a burst of thunder!" "This is the thunder brought down to us by a son of thunder!"

THE BELOVED DISCIPLE.

I cannot altogether agree with the often quoted representation of Chrysostom, "He has filled the whole earth with his voice, not by its mighty reverberations, but by the Divine grace which dwelt upon his lips. That which is most admirable is, that this great voice is neither harsh nor violent, but soft and melting as harmonious music." It seems to me there are as awful, thunder-like things in John, as awfully said, stopping the very beat of the hearer's heart, as anywhere in Scripture.

The name that we oftenest call him by, is "*the disciple whom Jesus loved*." One would rather be known thus than even as Enoch, who "walked with God." If "Son of Thunder" is a magnificent name, this is inexpressibly winsome. We picture him to ourselves in the attitude in which the Evangelists represent him at the last supper, seated nearest the Lord, and leaning on His bosom, enjoying His closest intimacies. It does not appear that either Jesus or any of the disciples made use of this name; it is not found in any of the other Gospels; it is the name which *he himself assumes*. It does not occur for the first time until the very close of the Lord's ministry, on the evening of the betrayal; when he has occasion to refer to himself earlier, he is merely "another disciple."

To understand the name, we must know something of the love of Jesus Himself. Just as He hungered and thirsted, and was weary, and sorrowed, and wept, and marvelled, and rejoiced—so He loved; with a love as real as our own. Like all love that is true and deep, it had not only its tenderness and clemency, but also its graver looks, and faithful wounds, and far-purposed severities; its summons to self denial and cross-bearing and forsaking of all that a man hath; its grand "*Follow Me*," as it went forward to its sacrifice; yea, "as many as I love I rebuke and chasten." Among the little band of the disciples, He walked as the

THE LOVE OF JESUS.

Elder Brother. He never sided with their sin, nor passed it lightly by because it was in *them*; He rejoiced in their holiness; He bare their burdens; He restored them in the spirit of meekness; He shrank from no suffering in their behalf; He “prevented” them with the blessings of goodness; He girded Himself as a servant to wash their feet; He summoned them to dangers, yea, sent them forth as sheep into the midst of wolves.

One special and crowning quality His love had—that of constancy. Human love faileth; it finds flaws in its object, and is disenchanted; it meets ingratitude, and is soured; it decays through absence and distance; the world frowns, and it falls off from our side; a wind comes from the wilderness, and blows it out. But the love of Jesus was faithful and constant; many waters could not quench it, and no floods drown it. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end.

The love of Jesus toward His disciples was not a kind of vague benevolence, smiling alike on all: it had discrimination; and His heart went out specially to John. The rest of the twelve were no losers by this, for in truly and ardently loving *one* friend, I have not the less of love to give to others, but the more. A heart does not, as if it were a cup, contain just so much of love, which must be divided into shares, each becoming smaller as they are multiplied—and something always spilt in the dividing. Every elder brother knows that the true love of one is at once an education and a security for more deeply loving all. The love of Jesus toward John was more than “common friendship,” such as grew “wild” in human society; it was friendship in its most exalted form. What it did for him, what joy it brought with it, what it was to him as a memory, we must ourselves taste the love in order that we may understand. I do not think that we are warranted to resolve

WHAT IT MADE JOHN.

it into a case of sovereignty of which no account can be given; far less of capricious favouritism. We must look for those qualities and characteristics whereon the love of the Son of God rested; for, as human love is justified by the qualities, real or supposed, of our friend—as John himself loved the elect lady and her children, for the truth's sake which dwelt in them—so here.

These qualities are nowhere catalogued in a formal way, and we are left to discover them from what we know of the Lord Himself. They must have been qualities in which He could take delight, such as the tender and delicate sensibility of the Apostle's nature, his profound and pure affectionateness, his childlike simplicity, as if you looked through crystal windows into his soul, the deep truthfulness of his spirit, his ultimate gentleness and holiness, his reverence, his heroic faith and strength of character, his capacity for meeting and returning the love of which he was the object with undivided heart, and the grand sea-like largeness of his nature that could take in sublimest vision disclosed to him.

It is nothing against this that these qualities were of Divine creation in him, ripening through his intercourse with the Holy One. This is fully true; the very love that was shown him made him lovable; beholding the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, he was changed into His likeness; he could say as fervently as the Apostle Paul, "By the grace of God I am what I am:" but none the less was his lovableness real and attractive to the heart of Jesus. Just as the painter who expresses on canvas some vision that has risen up before his inner eye,—or as the musician who hears in his soul some grand piece of music, like a bar or two of the

"Undisturbed song of pure concent,"

"AT A SOLEMN MUSICK."—*Milton.*

FREEDOM FROM SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS.

and sings it forth with his own voice, and in his own hearing only,—has delight in it altogether apart from the thought of its being his own creation, so could Jesus love this man, although the lovableness was due to Himself.

The fact that it is John himself who uses the name, as he does again and again in his Gospel, brings into view his beautiful and childlike humility. A self-conscious man never would have ventured to do it, lest he should be charged with claiming distinction and honour for himself above his fellow-disciples. With finest lowliness of mind, he utters no disclaimer of merit—makes no formal protestation of unworthiness that such love should have been his—does not feel it necessary to do so. To my mind, the humility of fearlessly using the name is as touching as when the Apostle Paul calls himself “less than the least of all saints,” or remembers how he was of sinners the “chief.” The glory of his beloved Lord lighted up and beautified the countenance of John, as well as penetrated his soul; and he thought no more about it than a child unconscious of the grace of its own movements or the lustre of its eye, or as when Moses “wist not that the skin of his face shone.” All he thought of was the blissfulness of being loved with a love so pure and wonderful.

Another aspect of the man is seen in the request preferred by his mother Salome, but acquiesced in by himself, that he and his brother might sit, the one on the Lord’s right hand, and the other on His left, in His kingdom. With something of heartless pertinacity, commentators ground upon this request accusations which they fail to prove, and oftener reveal their own low thoughts than enter into the spirit of the two disciples. As the story is told in the Gospels, I do not read “selfish ambition” in it, nor “immense egotism,” nor a “proud contempt of others,” nor a “proof of the weakness and wickedness of human

"AT THY RIGHT HAND AND THY LEFT."

nature," nor a violation by "that woman" and her sons of the primary conditions of brotherhood. On the contrary, I read John's faith in Jesus as the "King most wonderful," his love to Him, his high-hearted fortitude, and desire for the glory that He alone gives.

We wrong the man by detaching his request from its historical connection, and inventing a connection of our own for it. It is like the buying of land at full price in Rome, when the city was in the power of an enemy. The Lord had just foretold, in vivid and awful terms, His approaching sufferings—how He should be condemned, mocked, scourged, spit upon, crucified, and the third day should rise again. No words could have been plainer. It is at this moment, in connection with this announcement, and not knowing what the "rising" on the third day might mean, that the brothers ask places at His right hand and His left, in His glory.

What if they remember His large and varied teaching about exaltation in the kingdom of heaven? What if they understand, however dimly, that the greatest greatness is that which can bear to be despised and rejected of men—that the chiefest power is that of suffering love? What if they understand, however dimly, that all greatness under Him is held in like manner—that all power under Him is like-conditioned? What if their desire on this occasion has been quickened into energy by His very prediction of the cross, and is kin to that of Paul, "that I may know . . . the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death, if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead"? When it is put to them, they hold themselves prepared to suffer with Him to drink of His cup and to be baptized with His baptism, sharing His sufferings of both kinds, inward and outward. It is true they knew not what was involved in their request, and the

GREATNESS OF MIND.

means of its accomplishment, and the Lord tells them so—who knows all that lies in his own prayers?—but the Lord reads their sincerity of heart, and accepts them, and they shall learn afterwards, in good time, how deep and serious their word was.

It is noticeable that while Jesus explains that places in glory are given by the Father to those for whom they are “prepared,” He does not blame the ambition of the brothers, but rather their ignorance. I am far from saying that unworthier thoughts were not present in their minds; I cannot justify them; yet neither can I join in the sweeping assertions which ascribe to them a mere selfish and vulgar ambition, as if they were trying to drag down others from their seats and to mount in their stead.* I do not think they could have brought *that*, in the manner they did, under the eye of the meek and lowly One. Ambition there is; but I would venture to call it noble, though as yet untaught in the highest truth: not that soiled and unholy thing, the selfish lust of power or of human admiration—the thirst of fame, which is well nigh as base as the thirst of gold; but that *greatness of mind*, princely and heroic, which the Lord Himself creates, and to which He makes appeal, as when He promises His apostles to sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel—when He tells that the faithful servant shall have dominion over many things—or when He says, “If any man serve Me, *him will My Father honour.*”

We shall not know the Apostle John till we recognize his “high humility,” his noble ambition to be great, seated by the side of the suffering King in His glory. Were we more Christlike, we should be able to enter more sympathetically into this aspect of his Christianhood. The spirit

* “It may be that an action displeases us, which would please us if we knew its true aim and whole extent.”—*Letter of Meta Klopstock*.

THE EAGLE.

of simple contentment with lowly things is of Christ's giving (and is one of His most precious gifts)—as in the shepherd-boy in the Valley of Humiliation, wearing the herb called *heart's-ease* in his bosom, who sang—

"He that is down need fear no fall,

He that is low no pride ;

He that is humble ever shall

Have God to be his Guide."

But so too is the princely spirit, that aspires after the glory that cometh from God. The evil thing in high or low is selfishness.

In the ancient Church he was symbolized as the flying eagle, "kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam." He rises to loftier heights spiritually than any other of the New Testament writers; further still above clouds and earth-born mists; and ever looks and points upwards to the "heavenly places." As Augustine says, speaking of the four Gospels, "While the three Evangelists remained below with the Man Christ Jesus, and spoke but little of His Godhead, John, as though impatient of treading the earth, rose from the very first words of his Gospel, not only above the bounds of earth and air and sky, but above the angels and celestial powers, into the very presence of Him by whom all things were made."

Even physically, he is the eagle-eyed. Not to refer to the Book of Revelation, this is illustrated notably in three incidents recorded in his Gospel. On the evening of the crucifixion day, the Jews besought Pilate that the bodies should not remain on the cross during the Sabbath; and accordingly the soldiers came and brake the legs of the two who were crucified with Jesus; but when they found that He was dead already, they brake not His legs, but one of them with a spear pierced his side, and John, who was standing near, testifies, "Forthwith came there out blood

HIS EYE.

and water." In thus distinguishing, at such a time, the blood from the water that flowed forth with it, he shows the keenness of his eye.

Again, when Peter and he came running to the sepulchre on the morning of the first day of the week, John stooped down and looked in; he does not enter and search: he *uses his eye*.

Once more, at the sea of Galilee, when Jesus stands unknown on the dim shore, in the early morning light, John the eagle-eyed (though doubtless his heart helped his eye) is the first of the seven to recognize Him, and to say, "*It is the Lord*."

Probably we should associate with the keenness and truthfulness of eye a kindred feature—namely, his minute delicacy in marking time. Thus he tells the hour of the day when he began to follow Jesus on the banks of the Jordan; the very moment when Jesus rose from table at the last supper to wash the disciples' feet; and the moment when Judas went out. I do not name this as of any very special importance; but I would venture to call attention to it in connection with the writing of both the Gospel and the Apocalypse. In both books, as it seems to me, we have the tokens of a *seer*; from the nature of the case more evident and large and peculiar in the latter book.

Putting together the various things recorded about him in the New Testament, and the indications of character in his own writings, we find as marvellous an illustration of what the grace of God can accomplish as even in Saul of Tarsus.* Here is no invalid or valetudinarian, but a man of

* In his "*Fuller Worthies*," Dr. Grosart, recognizing in the "holy Herbert" "one whom we inevitably think of as a St. John in his ultimate tenderness and lovingness," says, in words that are very much to the point here. "I do not the less—rather the more—recognize the loveliness of the after-life in thus holding him to have been a debtor to the constraining and

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.

healthful, robust physique, capable of sustained energy and patience.* There is the same healthfulness mentally: in his writings, with all their depth, we detect nothing hazy, vague, blurred; every chapter is like an engraving in which the nicest lines are distinctly seen. If Paul was characterized by a profound sense of “righteousness,” John is as notably characterized (if such an expression may be allowed) by a profound and vehement sense of “truth”: a man to whom “a lie” is intolerable. Naturally and originally bold, intense, capable of the most ardent passion and enthusiasm, with an all-daring imagination, with a capacious understanding, and wonderful receptivity both of brain and heart, he is one of the grandest “captives” that ever surrendered to Jesus Christ; and he becomes one of the noblest ensamples of his new-fashioning power, so as ultimately to exhibit, beyond the rest, the perfect likeness of the Lamb.

It is obvious that such a man as this, combining qualities apparently opposite, or at least seldom found strongly developed in the same nature, was fitted to be an organ of the Lord in special and singular ways. He could see aspects of the Lord’s character and life that were either hidden from others, or but dimly and partially discerned. He could hear words for which no other had an ear. Even apart from the special grace of the Holy Spirit vouchsafed to him, and the bringing of all things to his remembrance thereby, it is not incredible that he should have retained in his memory, on to his old age, not merely brief sayings of Jesus, but whole discourses, and these of the profoundest order. Through such a man we may expect to receive mastering ‘grace of God’ beyond most of his eminent contemporaries. Not of nature, but from Above—not as primary, but ultimate—came that saintliness which has perfumed his memory through the centuries, and will enduringly.”

* *Mens sana in corpore sano.*

RIPENESS.

deep and peculiar revelations of the glory of Him who is the light and life of men. All the more so, that he does not complete and give forth his Gospel till he reaches his wonderful old age, having meditated for half a century on what he had witnessed in his youth.* Through all these marvellous but (to us) silent years, his "knowledge" would be growing larger and grander to him under the teachings of the Holy Spirit, till at length it ripens into what we find in Gospel and Epistles.

"We are free to suppose," says De Pressensé, "that the period of his life about which we have no information, was devoted to climbing that spiritual Tabor, on the summit of which the only and eternal Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, was to appear to him in all the glory of His divinity. The apostle, like Mary, pondered in his heart all that he knew of his Master. In the silence of devotion he listened to His living voice, and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit discerned more and more of the mystery of His being."

• "And Him evermore I behold

Walking in Galilee,

Through the corn-field's waving gold,

In hamlet, in wood, and in wold,

By the shores of the Beautiful Sea

He toucheth the sightless eyes;

Before Him the demons flee;

To the dead He sayeth 'Arise!'

To the living, 'Follow Me!'

And that Voice still soundeth on

From the centuries that are gone

To the centuries that shall be."

*Longfellow.*


III.