02. The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved.

THE DISCIPLE WHOM JESUS LOVED.

I. The aureole round the head of St. John is that he was “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” This statement about him is made several times; and in different places both the Greek words for “loved” are employed—both the colder, which expresses esteem, and the more heartfelt, which denotes feeling more tender. As among the patriarchs Abraham was “the friend of God,” and among the kings David was “the man after God’s own heart,” and among the prophets Daniel was the “man greatly beloved,” so among the followers of the Son of God, during his earthly ministry, St. John was the foremost friend.

We cannot help asking to what he owed this prominence.

Perhaps something was due to an extremely natural cause: it would appear that St. John was, according to the flesh, a cousin of Jesus. The way in which this is made out is as follows: In describing the crucifixion St. Matthew mentions three holy women as witnesses of the tragic scene—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of

James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s children; St. Mark also mentions three—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the Less and Joses, and Salome. In St.John four names occur; the first place is given to the Virgin Mary; but the other three are Mary Magdalene, Mary the wife of Cleophas (whom we know from other passages as the father of James and Joses), and Christ’s mother’s sister. Thus, leaving the Virgin aside, we find two places in each of the three lists occupied by the same two women; but she who occupies the remaining place is called by St. Matthew the mother of Zebedee’s children, by St. Mark Salome, and by St. John the sister of the mother of Jesus. It is inferred that she who is designated in these three ways is the same person: her own name was Salome; she was the wife of Zebedee; and she was the sister of the mother of Jesus. If this inference be correct, of course it follows that she was the aunt of Jesus, and that her son John and Jesus were full cousins.

Such a relationship would not have necessarily made Jesus and John friends in the sense indicated by calling John the disciple whom Jesus loved. It might have had precisely the opposite effect. Mary’s own sons, the brothers of Jesus, were not, during his lifetime, believers; and there can be little doubt that their very familiarity with him was an obstacle to faith. They could not believe that one to whom they were so closely related was so much greater than themselves. They had seen him so long engaged in the little details of rural existence that it was an offence to their minds when, rising from their narrow lot, he made known his great aims and claims. Not till he appeared to one of them alive after his passion was their unbelief overcome. John might have been affected in the same way by his kinship with Jesus. But, when he escaped this temptation, the natural relationship may have become a bond even within the realm of grace. It was as his Saviour that John loved Jesus; but this may not have prevented him from feeling a peculiarly cordial interest in the affairs of Christ because he was his cousin; and while Christ loved John from the height of his divinity, this may not have prevented him from being drawn to him, and made familiar and confidential, by the operation of the tie of nature.

Cousinship has in multitudes of cases given rise to delightful and helpful associations. There is, indeed, a form of philosophy which scoffs at the obligations created by such relationships. The other day a prominent and educated Socialist asked in public why he should have more to do with his own brother, if he bored him, than with any other man, if he was a good fellow. But nature is not thus to be turned out of doors; human nature, also, is wiser; and Christianity, while not deifying natural relationships, as some religions have done, honors and hallows them. Never were all the beautiful and useful possibilities of cousinship so demonstrated as when Jesus admitted John to the position of the disciple whom he loved.

II.

Although the influence of a natural relationship may have entered into the Saviour’s predilection for this disciple, this circumstance could have had no weight at all unless there had been in St. John qualities to support the claim of kinship. But he was one formed by nature to be loved.

If his mother really was the sister of Mary, this points to hereditary advantages enjoyed by St. John. Without having any sympathy with such a doctrine as the Immaculate Conception, we cannot help believing that she who was chosen from among all the daughters of Eve to be the mother of the Perfect Man was, both in mind and body, a rare specimen of womanhood—pure, gentle and gracious. Although her estate was lowly, the blood of kings was in her veins, and in her mind and manners there worked the subtle influence of long descent. Now, what Mary was, it is natural to suppose her sister also was in her own degree; and she was able to impart hereditary advantages to her son.

Certainly there are some of the children of men who appear to be formed of finer clay than their neighbors and cast in a gentler mould. Not infrequently their superiority is stamped even on the outward man, their faces carrying a certificate of excellence which predisposes all who see them in their favor. They are marked out for love; and, if they bear their honors meekly, and if the inward disposition corresponds with the outward promise, they do not as a rule miss the enviable destiny for which nature has intended them. The religious painters of all ages, with whom St. John has always been a favorite subject, have been unanimous in representing him as one of this type. Mrs. Jameson, in her “Sacred and Legendary Art,” says, “St. John, in Western art, is always young or in the prime of life, with little or no beard, with flowing or curling hair, generally of a pale brown or golden hue, to express the delicacy of his nature, and in his countenance an expression of dignity and candor.” How far in detail the actual St. John may have answered to this description it is of course impossible to say, but there can be but little doubt that the underlying idea is correct. His must have been a fine and a gifted nature. He was especially strong in the region of the affections— profoundly loving and sympathetic; the heart of Jesus could not have gone out so cordially to him unless it had met with a corresponding return. Yet it is a mistake to think of John’s nature as a mere pulp of softness and toleration. There are clear indications, both in the incidents of his life and in his writings, that there burned in him great moral intensity, and that he was capable of strong moral indignation. To speak in the language of philosophy, he was not of the lethargic temperament, but of the melancholic. This is the temperament which beneath an outward demeanor somewhat resembling lethargy conceals the surest and swiftest insight; it keeps silence and broods, but its fire is only suppressed; it is the temperament which the ancients attributed to their greatest men—to a Sophocles and a Plato, to the philosopher, the poet, the genius.

St. John’s writings are before us to show what he was as a thinker, and they thoroughly bear out this estimate. No doubt they are inspired, and the glory in them is due to the Spirit of God; but inspiration did not overlook or override the individuality of the human agents whom it employed, but made use of it, allowing them to speak with their own accent and to think in accordance with the peculiarities of their minds. Now of all the New Testament writers St. John is the most peculiar. He cannot make a remark, or describe a scene, or report a conversation or a speech, without doing it as no one else could. His peculiarity has been described by calling him a mystic: he does not deal much with the outsides of things, but lays hold of everything from within. A scene or occurrence is only interesting to him on account of the idea which it embodies. His thinking is intuitive: he does not reason like St. Paul, or exhort like St. Peter, but concentrates his vision on the object, which opens to his steady gaze. His ideas are not chains of argument, united link to link, but like stars shining out from a background of darkness. He often appears to speak with the simplicity of a child, but under the simple form are concealed thoughts which wander through eternity. Although the materials for writing the life of St. John are meagre, yet no other figure of the New Testament—not even St. Paul or St. Peter— makes such a distinct impression on the mind of every reader. This is due to his marvellous originality; and it is easy to conceive what a satisfaction it must have been to Christ to have in the circle of his followers one in whom the profundities of his doctrine and the finer shades of his sentiments were sure of sympathetic appreciation.

III. In spite of these natural advantages and graces, it is true in the fullest sense that St. John was made by Christ. That which the Saviour loved in him was produced by Himself; and here we come upon the deepest reason of the attachment between them. Perhaps no one whom Jesus ever met so much resembled him in natural configuration; but Jesus brought out all that was best in John, and repressed or destroyed what was evil. He imparted himself to his disciple, who did not thereby become less himself, but grew to be what he could never have been without this influence. The loving nature of the disciple found in Christ an excellence on which it could lavish all its affection. In the sayings of Christ his mind obtained truths on which it could brood for ever, finding beneath every depth a deeper still. The supreme characteristic of St. John’s thinking is that Christ himself is its centre and circumference. Face to face he was gazing on the person of Christ, and, while this steady, unaverted look revealed the Saviour, it at the same time transfigured himself.

Remarkable as were John’s natural powers, there is no reason to believe that, apart from Christ, he would ever have burst through the obscurity in which the life of a Galilean fisherman was enveloped, or have become an influence in the world. But for the redeeming power of Christ his fine qualities might even have been wasted on sinful excesses, as the powers of genius and the wealth of sympathetic natures have often been. But the Saviour not only developed and sanctified John’s character, but made him a power for good: he set him on one of the thrones from which the most regal spirits rule the destinies of the race.

It was not, indeed, vouchsafed to St. John to take such a part as St. Peter in the founding of the church. In the Pentecostal days, when the two were associated, St. Peter was always foremost both in speech and action, St. John taking a secondary and subordinate place. Still less had he the world-conquering instincts and the organizing genius of St. Paul. He had his own share, indeed, in the blessed work of spreading the gospel and founding the church. There is a legend of his later life, not without a considerable air of verisimilitude, which illustrates his evangelistic zeal. Preaching in a certain town near Ephesus he was particularly struck with a young man among his auditors, and, at his departure, specially recommended him to the bishop of the place, who took him home and educated him until he was fit for baptism. But the youth fell into evil courses, renounced his profession, and at last went so far as to become the captain of a band of robbers. Subsequently visiting the same town, St. John approached the bishop and asked, “Where is the pledge entrusted to you by Christ and me?” At first the bishop did not understand, but when he remembered he replied, “He is dead—dead to God,” and told the sad story of backsliding. Immediately procuring a horse, the apostle set off for the robber’s stronghold. He was captured by one of the band and brought before the captain, who, recognizing who his prisoner was, attempted to flee. But the apostle detained him by entreaties, reasoned with him, prayed with him, and never rested till the prodigal returned to the bosom of the church, a pattern of penitence. Of such scenes there may have been many in St. John’s career, but, on the whole, while others were converting the world he was a force in reserve. Yet there slumbered in him the possibility and the intention of a priceless service; and he brought it to perfection when, in his gospel, he gave to mankind the final and incomparable portrait of the Son of God.

There are many services. There is that which can be rendered immediately, and there is that which must ripen first for a lifetime. The ardent young disciple, intent on the undertakings of the hour, may hardly believe at all in the Christianity of the thinker, whose slowly matured thoughts will be fertilizing the church for hundreds of years after his zealous critic is forgotten. But the church has need of those who toil in the depths as well as of those who busy themselves on the surface. She needs her Dantes and Miltons as well as her Whitefields and Wesleys; her Augustines and Pascals as well as her Columbuses and Livingstones; she requires not only the fiery energy of St. Peter and the mighty argumentation of St. Paul, but the exquisite feeling and the mystic depth of St. John.

IV.

It was a special mark of the Lord’s affection for St. John that he suffered him to live to a great age. This he indicated himself, when he said to St. Peter, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” At the beginning St. John appears to have been the youngest of the apostolic circle, but at the close of life he survived all the rest. The age at which he died is variously given by tradition from ninety up to a hundred and twenty years. The grace of this divine appointment is apparent when we recollect that it was in extreme old age that his Gospel was composed; and the same is probably true of his Epistles. These writings were fruit from an old tree; but the tree was not losing its sap; on the contrary, the fruit was only then fully ripe; and if the tree had been cut down earlier its fruit would never have been gathered.

Besides, the disposition and character of St. John were of a type which shows to great advantage in old age. There are natures to which the gay poet’s words apply, “That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer;

But, being spent, the worse and worst Times still succeed the former.”

There are even types of religious character of which this is true: it is best to see them when their zeal is new and their speculation fresh: afterwards they appear exhausted, or they harden into dogmatism and censoriousness. But St. John’s religion was of the type described by a poet of a different order:

“And in old age, when others fade, Their fruit still forth shall bring, They shall be fat and full of sap, And aye be flourishing.” His later life is surrounded with a halo of legends, which unite in conveying the impression that his old age was exquisitely beautiful. Thus, it is told that he used to keep a tame partridge; and one day a noble huntsman, coming upon him as he was fondling it, expressed surprise that a man of such renown and unworldliness should be so trivially engaged. But the saint answered him, “Why is it that you do not carry the bow in your hand always bent?” And when the huntsman answered, “Because then it would lose its elasticity.” “So,” rejoined the saint, “do I relax my mind with what appears to you a trivial amusement, that it may have more spring and freshness when I apply it to divine mysteries.”

Everyone knows the legend of how, when too old and weak to walk, he used to be carried into the Christian assembly and, when seated in the teacher’s chair, to utter only the words, “Little children, love one another and how, when they asked him why he always repeated this precept, he said, “Because, if you have learned to love, you need nothing more.” A legend also obtained currency, that, being of priestly descent, he wore on his brow in old age the petalon of the high priest, that is, the golden plate, fastened on a blue band, with the inscription, “Holiness to the Lord.” But obviously this is only a mythical expression for the impression produced by the priestlike dignity and the beauty of holiness with which his old age was encompassed. Indeed, the fragrance of love, truth and sanctity which breathed from this life in its later stages lingered in the atmosphere of the early Church for generations.

Some have regarded this late development of St. John’s influence as a prophecy. St. Peter first stamped himself on the Church, then St. Paul, last St. John. And, as it was in that first period of Christianity, so was it to be in the subsequent ages. For fourteen centuries St. Peter ruled Christendom, as was symbolized by the church inscribed with his name in the city which was, for most of that period, the centre of the Christian world; then, at the Reformation, St. Paul’s influence took the place of St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s doctrines being the soul of Protestantism. But the turn of St. John has still to come: his spirit will dominate the millennial age. Perhaps in the individual Christian three such stages may also be distinguished — the period of zeal to begin with, when we resemble St. Peter; the period of steady work and reasoned conviction, when we follow in the steps of St. Paul; the period of tolerance and love, when we are acquiring the spirit of St. John. But we will not defer to any distant stage of life the imitation of the apostle of love. “Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” “Love is the fulfilling of the law and it is the fulfilment of life; it is both the perfection and the blessedness of humanity. But where shall it be found? what is its secret? St. John, who knew, has told us: it springs from faith in him who is love, and in the work which love led him to do on our behalf: “We love him, because he first loved us.”