1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2, 3 The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 6, 7 There was a man, sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9, 10 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth.

THE whole New Testament becomes vivid, to the eye that looks attentively upon it, with the implied or express representation of the person of Christ: as of one who had taken the nature of man into a union, mysterious but intimate, with his preëxistent and divine constitution; who was therefore God, manifest in the flesh, and in seeing whom men had seen the Father. To this conception of him, indeed, the whole Bible brings tribute; and only when this is clearly unfolded does the unity which pervades its manifold parts, and subordinates their varieties to a single and sovereign line of instruction, become apparent. Then, “what is latent in the Old Testament is made patent in the New;” and Messianic prediction links itself so closely to Christian description that the gap of 400 years between them is passed by us without a jar.

Up the steady ascent toward this clear declaration of the nature of Christ—the Law-giver, Redeemer, and King of mankind—we journey from the verse which tells us that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. We reach it, at last, in the words which tell us that in that beginning was the Word, by whom all things that are were made; and that he it is whom apostles have beheld, dwelling among them, full of grace and full of truth. We do not marvel, after that, that he claims a love which surpasses all other, where it does not suspend it; that no force resists, and the grave cannot hold him; that to him the saints, in the hour of death, commit their souls; that in his name their miracles are wrought; that he looked forward to a kingdom world-wide, and enduring forever; that the awful function of final judgment, with the determining of men’s destinies for eternity, is in his hands; or that the angels are commanded to worship him; or that the benediction which closes the Bible, from the hand of him who had leaned on the breast of this Lord at the Supper, contains only his name: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.” R. S. S.

1-14. The prologue is a condensed statement of the results of John’s contemplation and experience as a faithful witness of the life and work of Christ on earth. The theme is the eternal Logos or personal Word that was with God and of divine essence from the beginning of beginnings, and at last became incarnate for the salvation of the world. The leading ideas are life and light, grace and truth, as emanating from and centring in the Logos. Every sentence, every word, is pregnant with meaning, and furnishes inexhaustible material for meditation and reflection. In the whole range of literature, ancient and modern, there is no passage or chapter that can at all compare with this prologue. It is not poetic in form—yet like the account of the creation in Genesis, to which it forms the New Testament pendant, it rises, by its calm dignity, simplicity, and grandeur, to more than poetic beauty. P. S.

1. He goes back further than Matthew, who begins with Abraham, whose promised seed is Jesus Christ the son of David; and further than Luke, who carries the sacred pedigree of the Son of man back even to Adam. As Moses commences the history of the creation with the words, In the beginning, so John commences his gospel with the same words, though he soars higher even than Moses. In the beginning, before God had yet created the heavens and the earth, the Word already was. He did not come into being, but he was. Before this Word, who is announced in the gospel, appeared in time, he was in the beginning; before he became the light and life of men, he was with God; before he became flesh, he was God. Before he dwelt among us he had been from all eternity with God. R. B.—With God: toward God—expressing the more significant fact of perpetual intercommunion. The face of the Everlasting Word, if we may dare so to express ourselves, was ever directed toward the face of the Everlasting Father. H. P. L.—Both the inner substantial union and the distinct personality of the Logos are here asserted. The former is distinctly repeated in the next words—and the Word was God. A.

4. The life was the light of men.** Earthly light is clear and makes clear; it shines and it enlightens; in the Scriptures it is the constant image of God who is spirit, of him who is holy and makes holy, who is the living one and deals forth life, who is true and leads to truth; “With thee is the fountain of life, in thy light shall we see light.” In Christ is the light of life, out of Christ is the night of death. R. B.—Life, love, and light are inseparably connected. God is the living one; he is love and he is light. As God, Jesus Christ has life in himself, is light, is love; as the God-man, he is set apart from all eternity, that in and through him, life, light, and love might be communicated to heirs of death and children of darkness and wrath. A. S.—Christ who centres in himself life, light, and love, when he allied himself with our humanity, brought into its sphere a personal power the highest in measure and kind, and of the widest and farthest reach: for his entering into human flesh was the advent of Life and Light, the two terms which represent the sum of all power, of all capacity, and all blessedness in the universe. He brought to us all that God is, in order that we might become all that man can be. Life as a principle and a power, life in its essence, was already in him, and had been from eternity; and though, when he entered into the world, he assumed an earthly life under the forms and conditions of humanity, yet could he appropriate without reserve that ineffable title by which Jehovah announced to Moses his absolute and essential being—saying: “Before Abraham was, I AM;” and again: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending; which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” All that pertains to the idea of life, all that enters into our most refined and most sublime conceptions of God as the absolute and eternal life, we must transfer to him who was at once the Son of man and the Son of God, in order to realize the meaning of the words, IN HIM WAS LIFE. J. P. T.

11. Came unto his own.** The Jews were his own by a fraternal right of consanguinity. He was pleased to derive his humanity from the same stock, to give them the honor of being able to call the God of heaven and the Saviour of the world their brother. They were his own also as selected and inclosed by God from amidst all other nations, to be the seat of his worship, and the great conservatory of all the sacred oracles and means of salvation. R. S.—Received him not. The Jews, as a nation, rejected the Saviour. Throughout the whole ministry of Christ, as recorded in the fourth gospel, the progress of this wilful blindness is traced, till the record closes with the fatal sentence: Though Jesus had done so many miracles before them, yet the Jews believed not on him; as Esaias prophesied when he saw his glory, and spake of him. B. F. W.—As John writes, there was an advent and a rejection: a bodily advent, a bodily crucifixion: the image and outer form of the Word that was from the beginning, the ever-living Emmanuel, the Christ that comes to-day. Received him. How to receive the Son of God: they that, in any sense, believe on his name will seek earnestly the full answer to that question. They will seek it through the giving up of the dearest preference that hurts the simplicity and humility of their faith. They will seek it in the New Testament, in Christian instruction, in prayer, in doing every hour all of God’s will they know, in counting belief, not doubt, the glory and power and joy of man. Strong and ample minds will reverently bring their strength and amplitude, a free and noble offering to their Saviour’s cause, yet not thinking it much to give him who, knowing all that is in men, having all the science they are striving after, the wisdom of which their learning is but a broken alphabet, the Master of that world of nature whose margin they are holding up dim lamps to explore, and commanding that spark of life at whose mysterious, silent secret all their knowledge of phenomena stops short, and is dumb. The young will bring the freshness and dew of their youth. Life and lips will not give too much emphasis to that good confession. No energy of health, no affection of the heart, will be willingly excused. F. D. H.

12. Sons of God. The dearly-beloved Son of God became the Son of man, in order that he might make out of the children of men the children of God. Chrys.—The God-man has obtained for us the power to become God’s men. Because Jesus Christ is become my brother, I joyfully cry to the Father of my brother, “Abba, Father!” To no other right do I appeal, no other power do I know, than the right and the power of faith, which gives me to say: “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God.” R. B.—That believe. Not that there is such a being as Christ, nor that he is the Son of God and Saviour of man, nor even that what Christ says is true, but an actual trust, and personal reliance upon his accomplished mediation—this is that believing which is the single condition of our divine adoption and heavenly heirship.

13. Born, not of blood. In the Greek, plural, “bloods,” intended to exclude all fleshly confidence in any descent or relationship. Nor of the will of the flesh. Nor yet did believers become what they are by the efforts and exertions of their own natural hearts. Nor of the will of man. Nor by the acts and deeds of others. To God’s free grace, calling, converting, renewing, and sanctifying, they owe their new birth. J. C. R.

14. This verse is the theme of the gospel and the central truth of Christianity, and marks the turning-point of the whole history of the world; for ancient history before the incarnation was a preparation for Christ as the fulfilment of all types, prophecies, and nobler aspirations of men; history after that event is subservient to the spread and triumph of Christianity till Christ be all in all. P. S.—The word “flesh” is used to show us that, when our Lord became incarnate, he took upon him nothing less than our whole nature, consisting of a true body and a reasonable soul. His humanity was not different from our own, and though now glorified is our humanity still. Our high-priest in heaven is not God only, but man. J. C. R.—Was made flesh. Not a mere phantasm, as the Docetæ and others imagined. By this union the Word and the flesh became one person, but the two natures were not confounded, nor was the Word changed into Flesh. As the human soul is united to the body, but is not changed into the body, so the eternal Word took on flesh, and was united to it, and made himself manifest in it, but was not changed into it, or confused with it. W.—The blending of the human and the divine, though it cannot be explained by our philosophy, appears most natural in Christ; is harmonious throughout; and it causes us to realize the nearness and the love of God through the interplay of the two natures in the same person. The mere acting of the Divine Spirit through a human form, without a personal human spirit, could not have brought God so nigh to us. J. P. T. (Read Section 168.)

Into the mystery of the Word which was made flesh, and into the mystery of that faith through which all flesh is made participant in life, John is all through looking with fixed and steadfast gaze. The Word became flesh. Not as formerly in the old dispensation, when the Word occasionally clothed himself in some visible form, in order therein to reveal his presence, and then immediately to lay it aside again, but he became flesh: human nature became associated with the Godhead of the Word in the oneness of his person as God-man, so as to effect a union never to be dissolved. Godhead and manhood are in Christ one person. R. B.—No one had dared to form such a sentence as that which, with almost awful simplicity, declares the central fact of redemption, in connection with time and eternity, with action and with being: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and it may well seem that the light of a divine presence still ever burns in that heavenly message, thus written for us, as clearly as it burned of old on the breastplate of priest, or among the company of the first disciples. If any one utterance can bear the clear stamp of God’s signature, surely that does which announces the fulfilment of the hopes of a whole world with the boldness of simple affirmation, and in language which elevates the soul which embraces it. B. F. W.

We beheld his glory. A sublime association of thought with the glory hovering over the mercy-seat. This glory, the only visible symbol of the manifest Jehovah, Isaiah saw, and John asserts that it was the glory of Christ. Of this glory or Godhood of Christ, as evinced in his spirit and life while dwelling among us, John declares, we beheld his glory. J. G. B.—We—John and the little band of men who received Jesus. Those who did not receive him saw not his glory; for in the days of his flesh it was an inward glory, only visible to the eye of faith.

John is not celebrating merely that glory which he had seen with the Saviour in his miracles, or on the Mount of Transfiguration, or after his resurrection; but the whole of the gracious walk of the Lamb of God, who takes away, or bears, the sin of the world—the holy walk of love of that Jesus who “spake as

Shepherd and was silent as a Lamb”—his quiet life of sacrifice, and his innocent and bitter sufferings and death—all this is present before his ravished eye when he says, We saw his glory. Full of grace, he is our life; full of truth, he is our light. R. B.

Section 14.—The Baptism. The Baptist’s Witness.

The Jordan.

19. And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ. And they asked him, What then? Art thou Elias? And he saith, I am not. Art thou that prophet? And he answered, No. Then said they unto him, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.

24,25. And they which were sent were of the Pharisees. And they asked him, and said unto him, Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet? John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; he it is, who coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose. These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. 29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me. And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. 32 And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God.

THE Lamb of God is to remove human transgression, both in its guilt and in its power. This designation to the Jews, at this time on their way to the feast of the Passover, is highly instructive. The paschal lamb was originally appointed as the means of deliverance from otherwise inevitable destruction. It arrested the progress of the destroying angel. All upon whose houses the blood was sprinkled were preserved alive; while all who were without this symbol perished. Christ, as the Lamb of God, is our deliverer from a bondage more fearful than that of Egypt; and from a ruin more awful than temporal destruction. His death stands always as a complete vindication of the law, and an authentic instrument of sanctification and of acceptance for all to whom his blood is applied. His sacrificial office was revealed as early as his kingly; and from the first he was set forth, not only as suffering, and in suffering leaving us an example, but as himself bearing our sins in his own body on the tree. J. A.

If life depended on your seeing the sun, whither should you be bending your eyes, but yonder where the reddening dawn, breaking into streaks of gold, harbingers the approaching orb of fire? Set up before your mind the one great aim of faith, Jesus Christ the Righteous. All our exposition, argument, exhortation, and entreaty can only reiterate the cry, Behold him! behold him! See in him your priest. See in him your sacrifice. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” J. W. A.

JOHN THE BAPTIST is called by some of the Fathers the clasp that unites the two Testaments. In his person and office the law and the gospel met together. In respect of the law he is called a prophet, the last prophet that immediately foretold Christ’s coming and manifestation; his father Zacharias terms him “The prophet of the Highest.” In respect of the New Testament he was an evangelist (messenger), pointing out and discovering the Messias already come. Brownrig.

19. The Evangelist John has appealed before to the witness given by John the Baptist, his own guide to the Saviour. In grateful remembrance, he now dwells for a while on this testimony, for it had sown the first fruitful seed of truth in his own soul. He had taken to heart the voice of the preacher in the wilderness, and the Lamb of God found in him a sinner, ready to be loved and saved. . . . The Jews. The Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, the heads of the people, who represented the Jews as a nation. R. B.

Sent priests and Levites to ask him. Such was the general excitement at the appearance, the teaching, and baptizing of John, so great was the influence which he had obtained throughout the country, that a formal deputation from the national authorities was commissioned to ascertain whether he limited his pretensions to those of a prophet, or laid claim to the higher title of “the Christ.” And the deep hold he had taken upon the popular feeling is strongly indicated by the fact, that the rulers did not dare, when the question was at a later period proposed by Jesus, openly to deny the prophetic mission of John, which was zealously asserted by the people. H. M.

21. I am not. He knew that they expected Elias to appear in person, and he declared that he was not Elias in the sense in which the question was asked; though in another sense, he was that Elias, of whose coming, as the precursor, of Christ, the prophet Malachi had spoken. K.—The whole appearance of John reminded them of Elias. Besides, his announcement that the kingdom of God was at hand, naturally led them to the prophecy (Mal. 4 : 5). The Rabbinical books testify that the Jews expected a general purification of baptism before the coming of the Messiah, and that it would be ministered by Elias. A.

That prophet. The glorious prophecy of Christ, in Deut. 18 : 15, the comfort of which is set forth in Isaiah, from chap. 40 onward, had been perverted by the scribes, so that what men were then expecting was a mighty prophetic Moses, who, in the face of the Romish Pharaoh, should open the road for the Messiah by the exercise of supernatural powers. R. B.—23. I am the voice. These words introduce the great closing section of the prophecy of Isaiah (40–66), so full of the rich promises and revelations of the Messiah and his kingdom. By implication, the Baptist, quoting this opening prophecy of himself, announces the approaching fulfilment of the whole section. A.

25,26. The Pharisees ask by what authority he baptizes. John answers, by the authority of one who then stood unknown among them, whom he intimates to be the Lord, and of whom he has just declared himself the forerunner. J. G. B.—27.

Whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy. This remarkable expression is illustrated by a passage in the Talmud: “Every office a servant will do for his master, a scholar should perform for his teacher, except loosing his sandal-thong.” H. M.—28. Bethabara. (Read note on Matt. 3 : 6, Section 12.)

29. Behold the Lamb of God!** The image of the Holy One, suffering for his people, and bearing their sins (Isaiah 53), stood before his soul as he uttered these words. The intuition to which he gave utterance was simultaneous with the appearance before his eyes of Christ’s person, so gentle, so calm, and so meek. N.—If salvation for our race is through atoning blood, then these are of all possible words the most fitting to set forth a Saviour slain. If life for the saved comes through the death of their Saviour, then he can have no fitter description than this—“The Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world.” H. C.—That taketh up and taketh away. The word signifies both, as does the corresponding Hebrew word. Applied to sin, it means to be chargeable with the guilt of it, and to bear it away. In the Levitical victims both ideas met, as they do in Christ, the people’s guilt being viewed as transferred to them,

avenged in their death, and so borne away by them. B.—John wished to point out Jesus as the Messiah; he designates him as the Lamb of God. The most obvious reference is to the prophetic announcement in Isaiah 53 : 7. We have there the servant of God (= the Messiah) compared to a lamb brought to the slaughter, and it is said of him, He hath borne our griefs; was wounded for our transgressions; he bare the sin of many. So that here, and here only, we have the connection between the lamb and the bearing or taking away of sin, i. e., by expiation, by the offering of himself. A.—All the lambs whose blood had ever been poured out at the altar of the temple, morning and evening, had been unable to give to the troubled consciences anything like true repose—all the paschal lambs that ever were eaten yet failed to satisfy the hunger of the spirit; but now, with eyes enlightened by the Holy Ghost, John beholds the Lamb which God himself had prepared (Heb. 10 : 5) and given to be a sin-offering. R. B.—There are only two places where sin can be—either it is with thee, to lie upon thy neck, or it lies on Christ, the Lamb of God. If it lies on thy shoulders, thou art lost; but if it rests on Christ, thou art quit of it, and art saved. Luther.

31. John must have been acquainted with the events of his own childhood and that of Jesus; he had now come preaching and baptizing as his forerunner; but he knew not Jesus personally before he came to be baptized; at which time God had promised him a sign, by which he might know certainly that Jesus was the Messiah. R.

34. John’s first public official testimony to Christ was particularly remarkable, as containing no reference whatever to that character or office in which the mass of the Jewish people might have been willing enough to recognize him, but confined to those two attributes of his person and work which they so resolutely rejected. There is no mention here of Jesus as Messiah, the Prince, the King of Israel. The record that John bears of him is, that he is the Son of God, the Lamb of God. In the two declarations, “This is the Son of God,” “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” you have in a form as distinct, as short and compendious, as it is anywhere else to be found—the gospel of the kingdom. The divine nature of the man Christ Jesus, the completeness and efficacy of the shedding of his blood, of the offering up of himself for the remission of sins, are here very simply and plainly set forth. H.

Section 17.—The First Five Disciples.

Jordan Valley and Galilee.

35,36. AGAIN the next day after, John stood, and two of his disciples; and looking upon

37. Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard

38 him speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being in-

39 terpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day: for it was about the tenth hour.

40. One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon

41. Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have

42 found the Messias; which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas; which is, by interpretation, a stone.

43. The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto

44, 45 him, Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him of whom Moses in the law,

46 and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.

47. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in

48 whom is no guile! Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus an- swered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the

49 fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son

50 of God, thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things

51 than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.

THE gospels do not present to us a scheme of doctrine as to the nature of Christ, or as to the work which he does. They present the Lord Jesus himself, as he showed himself to men in order to win their confidence and fix their trust. Thus they teach us that the essential and original nature of the Christian faith lies, not in acceptance of truths which are revealed, but in confidence in a person who is manifested. The first disciples believed before a miracle had been shown. So with ourselves; the Lord himself is his own evidence, and secures our confidence, love, and adoration, by what he is more than what he does.

Open these pages where we will, the sense of reality revives within us. We feel afresh that we have not followed cunningly-devised fables, have not loved an idea, or trusted in an abstraction. We know whom we have believed, and feel that our Redeemer is our friend. We have escaped from doubt and debate, and no longer criticise or reason. We have recovered the minds of little children. We sit at the feet of Jesus; and the faith which came into his presence languid and dispirited, departs invigorated and refreshed. T. D. B.

36. Looking upon Jesus. Independently of all tradition, we may believe with reverent convic- tion that there could have been nothing repugnant in the form which enshrined an eternal Divinity and an infinite Holiness. All true beauty is but “the sacrament of goodness,” and a conscience so stain- less, a spirit so full of harmony, a life so purely noble, could not but express itself in the bearing, could not but be reflected in the face of the Son of man. F.—He saith, Behold the Lamb of God! No words of prophets, nor of the sweet psalmist of Israel, are to be compared with these: “Behold the Lamb of God!” behold him, not far off, not through distant years, not in types and shadows: there; go, speak with him; the Lamb of God is come to take away the sin of the world. In this simple way the old dispensation was connected with the new, and then superseded by it, just by attaching one or two humble, plain men to Jesus Christ. N. A.—Jesus chose lowliness and obscurity for himself, and the smallest beginnings for his kingdom, letting it win its way slowly by the conquest of single souls, as was demanded by its very nature. It was to rest on loyalty and love, which must rise spontaneously in individual breasts. Success and results were only subordinate. His work lay clear before him: to live and to die as the Lamb of God—the incarnation of infinite love, attracting humanity by its holy charms, his life an example, his death an atonement. G.

37. The two disciples heard and followed Jesus. These words of the Baptist were listened to by two Galilean youths, who stood in the circle of his disciples—John and Andrew. N.—Thus it was from the circle of John the Baptist, as was quite natural, that the first nucleus was formed of that company which became the chosen companions of Jesus. G. P. F.—It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, when, obeying the hint of the Baptist, they followed Jesus. The Saviour, anticipating their request, kindly invited them to visit him. The two hours that remained before evening were spent in his society. This was their first impression of Christ; he left it to work in their hearts. N.—Minds never really awakened to anything intellectual or spiritual, have a world of bliss into which yet to enter. Early disciples felt this, especially under the words of the Great Teacher. When once they heard him speak as never man spake, they were smitten with his heavenly voice, and received into their bosoms a secret, on which to ponder without weariness as long as they lived. J. W. A.—On the part of John the Evangelist, we can trace clear indications that the voice: “Behold the Lamb of God!” which called him to Jesus, never ceased to vibrate in his heart during the whole of his life. Christ, as the Lamb of God, fills him through and through, and has taken entire possession of his soul. In his gospel (19 : 36) he discerns in the crucified one the true paschal lamb; and in his revelation, his enraptured eye rests from beginning to end on the Lamb whom he recognized by the marks of his slaughter—the “Lamb as it had been slain.” R. B.

38,39. What seek ye? Come and see!

The first words publicly spoken by Christ—words of sympathy and kindly invitation—a fitting introduction to his life of ministering love. J. G. B.—With the fine modesty of his nature, John says nothing of himself in relation to a day so eventful in his history. The kingly soul of Jesus evidently enchained him at once. Henceforth, he was altogether his; though for a time dismissed to his home. But, once more permitted to follow him, he is ever found at his side, forgetting himself in his love for his Master, and lost in the contemplation of his life and words. G.

40,41. Those two hours of Andrew with Jesus had fixed his heart upon this new Master. What should he do next but find his own brother Simon to tell him the great discovery: We have found the Messiah! Come at once and see him for yourself! H. C.—Andrew first found his own brother Simon, and then others. Relationship has a very strong demand upon our first individual efforts. Simon Peter was worth ten Andrews, so far as we can gather from sacred history, and yet Andrew was instrumental in bringing him to Jesus. You may be deficient in talent, and yet be the means of drawing to Christ one who shall become eminent in grace and service. Spurgeon.—The teachers of the day had round them an inner circle of disciples, able, in some measure, to represent them in public, in their own absence, by speaking in the synagogues, answering questions, or undertaking missionary journeys, and these were to be the special duties of the disciples of Jesus. They were to be trained by him in the mysteries of the kingdom, as those of the rabbis were in the mysteries of the law. It was, therefore, only an adoption of the custom of the day which Jesus now followed. G.

42. “Thou art Simon the son of Jona,” the hearkening, timid one, the unstable man; “thou shalt be called,” according to the Hebrew idea, shalt become, “Cephas,” rock, the stable man. In the earlier part of his career he had a marked defect, the want of a settled purpose and grand governing motive. Jesus, the Christ, was to furnish him with that, and thus to change the unstable Simon Jona into the stable Cephas. D. S. G.

43. It is well worthy of note how often this finding recurs in this chapter; Christ finding disciples as here; disciples finding each his friend, and reporting how they have at once been found by, and have themselves found, the Messiah. T.—Observe in what various ways the Saviour goes after the souls of men, even in these first days of his Shepherd’s work, and how he draws them to himself out of pure goodness! Observe, also, how each disciple, when found, becomes immediately a seeking preacher! . . . Does not a secret longing come over us for these affectionate feelings shown in this morning-hour of the New Testament—an hour which so strikingly displays such precious gold? The pure gold of brotherly love—how brilliant its lustre! Here is mission-life in all the vigor of youth, and here is angel’s joy over the heavenly secret of Christian fellowship! R. B.

45. The arguments for the identity of Nathanael and Bartholomew are very strong. Nathanael’s vocation here is coördinated with that of apostles, as of equal significance; on a later occasion we meet him in the midst of apostles, some named before him, some after; the three earlier evangelists never mention Nathanael, the fourth never Bartholomew; Philip and Bartholomew in the catalogue of the apostles are grouped together, as a pair of friends, but with Philip first, even as he is here the first in Christ; the custom of double names seems to have been almost universal at that time in Judea, so that wellnigh all the apostles bore more than one; to all which may be added that Bartholomew is no proper name, signifying only son of Tolmai. All these arguments in favor of the identity, with nothing against it, bring it nearly to a certainty, that he to whom the promise of the vision of an opened heaven was vouchsafed, was no other than Bartholomew the apostle. T.—As his home was at Cana of Galilee, the son of Tolmai might easily have become acquainted with the young fishermen of Gennesareth. And yet so deep was the retirement in which up to this time Jesus had lived his life, that though Nathanael knew Philip, he knew nothing of Christ. F.

46. Good come out of Nazareth.** The pictures which have been drawn of the “meanness” of Nazareth, and of the “poverty” of Christ’s family, are as distressing as they are untruthful. Nathanael, in his surprise, said only: “The great good which we expect cannot come from Nazareth, because Scripture has declared that he must come from Bethlehem.” According to the New Testament writers, Nazareth was a city and never a village, and hence of size and importance. S. M.

Come and see One from whom there seems to breathe forth the irresistible charm of a sinless purity, the unapproachable beauty of a divine life. “Come and see,” said Philip, convinced in his simple, faithful heart that to see Jesus was to know him, and to know was to love, and to love was to adore. F.—There are truths in the heavenly world which, like the sun in the natural world, can only be seen by their own light. Philip has a confidence which the result abundantly justified, that in that holy presence, if only he could bring his friend within its influence, all preconceived objections would disappear. Perplexities might still remain, but he would be content to adjourn the solution of them to a later day, which indeed is what faith is summoned to do evermore. T.—The only satisfactory test of Christianity is the test of personal examination and personal experiment. The skeptic class is mainly composed of those who, never having tried the spiritual medicines of the Great Physician, contemptuously denounce them as quackery and imposture. Having never tried to “do his will,” they must not complain if they have no spiritual perception of his “doctrine.” If the noisiest skeptics of our time would spend even a few weeks in a patient trial of Christ’s precepts, by doing just what Jesus commands—if they would honestly endeavor to live according to his divine code—they would find the fog-bank of their infidelity dispersed by exposure to the sun of righteousness. Philip’s “come and see” is the surest antidote to skepticism. The Master himself throws out the same challenge. Do those who actually go to him confessing weakness or sorrow or guilt come away without obtaining sensible relief? Do men who practise the Christianity of Calvary grow utterly sick of it, and denounce it as a worthless imposture? These are questions which every rejecter of Christ Jesus should squarely face. Those who have tested him as a Redeemer, a spiritual guide, and a comforter, can fearlessly say to the questioning of the unconvinced, “Come and see.” We know whom we have believed; and of this actual experience no scoffer can outwit us, and no gainsayer can rob us. T. L. C.

47,48. Nathanael was already a true servant of God, living in the inner spirit of the Old Testament revelation; and, in welcoming him with the reading of his heart and life, Jesus revealed his own omniscience. J. P. T.—He who is “without guile” is not therefore without sin; this, at least, could only be asserted of One; but he is one who seeks no cloak for his sin—does not excuse, hide, diminish, or deny it. This guilelessness or absence of deceit, which the Lord imputes to Nathanael, reveals itself in his reply, “Whence knowest thou me?” There is no affectation here of declining the praise, but only a question of admiration how the Lord should have known him so exactly. T.

49. This proof of Christ’s omniscience called forth a confession which forms a climax to those made by the other disciples. Andrew and his companion had acknowledged him as their Master, and the former had told Peter that they had found the Christ; Philip had recognized in Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph, him who had been foretold by Moses and the prophets; and now Nathanael gives him the full titles of the Messiah: “Rabbi! Thou art the Son of God! Thou art the King of Israel!” S.

51. Verily.** Amen, like Hallelujah, is not an English or even a Latin, but a Hebrew word, which has come down to us from the ancient Jewish people.

It means true, trustworthy. It means something on which you can thoroughly rely; something on which you can rest, as a building rests on a massive column. “Steady and steadfast, faithful and true,” is the English of amen. It reminds us that truth is the ever-recurring, ever-living principle at once of Christian life and of Christian worship. A. P. S.—This “Verily, verily,” this double amen, which here occurs for the first time, is peculiar to John; he only records our Lord’s use of it, but he on very many occasions. It comes most fitly from the lips of him who is himself the Amen, the God of truth, in whom all the promises of God are yea and in whom amen. How different, too, the majestic, “I say unto you,” of Christ from that, “Thus saith the Lord,” of all the prophets preceding—they bearers of the word of another, He the utterer of his own! T.—The double verily is uniformly connected with sayings peculiar to John—in short, with his expression of the great life-and-death truths of Christianity. The passages from John that are prefaced by it sum up all the glorious and solemn verities of the gospel in its relation to life here and hereafter, so that, if John’s gospel is the heart of Christ, the double verities are the heart of the heart of Christ. D. S. G.

51. Hereafter ye shall see the heavens opened.** Assuredly the Lord would indicate by these wondrous words that he should henceforward be the middle point of a free, uninterrupted communion between God and men. And this glory of Christ they, his disciples, should behold; and should understand that they too, children of men, were by him, the Son of man, made citizens of a kingdom which, not excluding earth, embraced also heaven. From earth there should go up evermore supplications, aspirations, prayers; and from heaven there should evermore come down graces, blessings, gifts, aid to the faithful, and punishment for them that would hurt them. T.—It is not the outward, visible opening of the material heavens that is meant, nor ascent and descent of angels in the sight of men, which our Lord here announces; but the series of glories which was about to be unfolded in his person and work from that time forward. Luther beautifully says: “When Christ became man, and had entered on his ministerial office and begun to preach, then was the heaven opened, and has from that time, since the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, never been shut, and never will be shut, although we do not see it with our bodily eyes.” A.—He was to learn Christ in his true relation to the development of humanity, as him through whom human nature was to be glorified; through whom the locked-up heavens were again to be opened; the communion with heaven and earth restored; to whom and from whom all the powers of heaven were to flow. N.

The Son of man. This title, applied to the Messiah, occurs in Daniel 7: 13, and had become familiar in Christ’s day, through its use in the apocalyptic literature of the Jews. Jesus applies the title to himself about eighty times, but it is not applied to him by any of the N. T. writers, except in passages which refer to his heavenly exaltation (Acts 7; Rev. 1; Rev. 14). G.—The facts of usage in regard to these two designations—“Son of God” (verse 49) and “Son of man”—are striking and full of precious significance. Throughout the gospel history the disciples use the name “Son of God;” they never call Jesus “the Son of man.” But usually and almost invariably Jesus calls himself “the Son of man.” He employs this title with equal freedom, whether the scene suggests his humiliation or his glory. This chosen title manifestly looks toward the incarnation—the great fact of his earthly life. On the other hand, this title always implied his preëxistent divinity. For he was no ordinary Son of man, nor any merely human Son of man; for this would nullify all its real significance. H. C.—He called himself the “Son of man” because he had appeared as a man; because he belonged to mankind; because he had done such great things even for human nature; because he was to glorify that nature; because he was himself the realized ideal of humanity. N.

35-51. The first five disciples were gathered in by John speaking to two, Jesus to one, Andrew to one, Philip to one. It is the same species of agency similarly employed which God has always most richly blessed; the direct, earnest, loving appeal of one man to his acquaintance, relative, or friend. How many seldom if ever have endeavored, by direct and personal address, to influence one human soul for its spiritual and eternal good! . . . Those days were not only the birth-time of the Church, they were the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, and how does that ministry open? Silently, gently, unostentatiously; no public appearances, no great works done, no new instrumentality employed; by taking two men to live with him for a day, by asking another to follow him, by dealing wisely and tenderly and encouragingly with two others who are brought to him—so enters the Lord upon the earthly task assigned to him. H.

Section 18.—The Marriage at Cana.

Galilee.