00.01 Preface

PREFACE

Although critical discussion would obviously be out of place in a volume like the present, it is perhaps permissible to indicate the important bearings the subject has on the Johannine controversy. The figure of the Lamb holds so prominent a place in the fourth gospel that it is regarded by Baur as one of the great dogmatic points in the interest of which that gospel was penned, and for the sake of which the writer deliberately changed the day already known in the church as that of the Lord’s Death. This fundamental and peculiar conception of the fourth gospel also rules the Apocalypse ; is perhaps the main figure ; is associated with what at first seem startling incongruities ; and is met with no fewer than twenty-seven times. Besides, the Saviour is not only the Lamb but the slain Lamb, the word used signifying sacrifice — a conception naturally allying itself with that contained in the nineteenth chapter of the fourth gospel, where stress is laid on the fact that blood flowed from Jesus at His death. The whole subject is discussed by Dr Milligan in his thoughtful paper, " St John’s Gospel and the Apocalypse" {Contemporary Review, Aug. 1871), as well as in a series of papers in the Expositor, 1882. The various English and foreign commentaries have been used in the preparation of this little book, and I have endeavored to own my main obligations. I am anxious to acknowledge my great indebtedness throughout the whole volume to the writings of Dr Maclaren and Dean Church, more especially the former. So far as I am aware there is no separate work on the subject.

Kelso, Jan. 1883.