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* *' You will not wonder that a religion which bore fruits like these in act spread rapidly in the world. For all men desire 382 ST JOHN. THE APUCALY1>SF. happiness; and to follow counsels such as these is to become happy in this life, and to enter with a good conscience on a better. Nor is there a higher witness to God than goodness ; and men found in the deeds of Christians who thus lived, the will of our Father who is in heaven. Thus, before St John, the yoimgest of Christ's disciples died, about a century from his Master's birth, the Church had leavened the world. This John in his youth had the fervent zeal of Elijah. In his first book, which is the Revelations, he records the visions in which God shewed him judgment about to fall on Jeru- salem*. Thus he is carried in spirit to the great Day of the Lordf. He sees the Son of God, who had suffered as a lamb sacrificed on earth, standing with all His company in heaven. The beast of worldly pride and idolatrous power makes war on the saints. The Church, or new society of believers, is as a woman giving birth to a man-child, who is caught up into heaven, but she is driven into the wilderness. God, however, avenges her by sending woes on the guilty City and land. His martyrs, slain in the body, live in the spirit. The imperial City, which sat on seven hills, is to be judged as well as the earthly Jerusalem. Therein we have a type of every worldly Babylon which opposes its pride to the spiritual kingdom of God. As Titus destroyed what was once the Holy City, so the Gt)ths and the Vandals destroyed Rome. The Pagan emperors and nations made war against the Truth of God, but were over- thrown in mutual strife, and with the sword of the Spirit. But the Truth went forth prevailing; and the spiritual Jerusalem, or the church and kingdom to which Christians say that the old promises of the Jewish Sion are now extended according to the divine design, came forth in majesty out of the counsel of God. Even during the siege of Jerusalem, those believers who fled, in faith of Christ's warning, to Pella, had been sealed, * Revelations i. i; xxii. 7; xi. 8; xvi. 19. The expositions of Michaelis, of Moses Stuart, and of the Key. P. S. Desprez, B,D., may be compared. t Kevebitions i. ro. A day of the Lord is a signal judgment, or manifestation of His power. Revelations vi. 17; xvi. 14. 8T John's gospel. 383 as it were, in their foreheads. In the subsequent confusions their faith and patience made them inherit the* earth. Then the old enemy of lawless might and idolatrous t3rrann7 was bound as it were in chains, for all the ages during which the Church shall evolve herself in the world. The kingdoms, once thought to depend on earthly might, acknowledge the rule of our Lord and of His Christ. So Christ came quickly, even according to His promise, before the generation which heard Him had passed away. But the new kingdom of God has gone on growing, and though, when the Spirit of her Lord has grown faint in her, she has become part of the world, and partaken of its judgments ; yet in proportion as He lives within her members, she has become a tree of healing to the nations, and a gate through which men pass into life eternal. " These things John, the son of thunder, saw in vision of the Lord's day of wrath. But in his old age he wrote his more perfect Gospel, in which he sets forth the words which the Wisdom of God spake to men. It was now clearer than ever that Jesus had been the messenger of God; so He was the Christ, and His followers Christians ; the entire thought of the Eternal had found fulfilment in Him, and the likeness of Gt)d was shewn in Man. In proportion as the Apostles learnt Him to be the Deliverer not only of Jews, but of all nations, the more strongly they felt His kingdom to be not of this world, nor His words to be of man's speaking, but to come of His oneness with the Father. Thus Christ is set forth by St Paul and St John more clearly than by others, as the Son of Gtod. To His perfect wisdom all the prophets give partial witness; and the better thoughts of great teachers everywhere are joined in His perfect truth. Thus the desire of all nations, the longing faith of men of old, even as the eternal will of the Father, is fulfilled in Christ. We have in Him the same Word which made the heavens of old, and which dwelt as Wisdom for ever in the bosom of the Eternal. From Him comes forth that Breath of the Lord's mouth which makes all the invisible hosts. 384 ST john'h gospel. He has emptied Himself of His own, by compressing infinity in the life of a man, thereby opening our eyes to the eternal world. If such a helper seem taken from us, it will be only to dwell among us unseen, or to give us His Spirit, as a Pleader on part of God with us, and on our part with God. Hence come our holiest thoughts, our secret prayers, and our quickened faith, which is no longer an obscure groaning, but yet one that cannot be uttered in words, for the manifestation of the glory of the sons of God. This is the water of eternal life, which alone slakes our soul's thirst. This truth makes us free from bondage of caste, and worldliness, and sin, and fear, and is the beginning of our eternal life. " Tlius John writes of Christ : * In the beginning was the Word*, and the Word* was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were bom through Him ; and without Him was not any thing bora, that is born. In Him was life ; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness : and the darkness compre- hended it not. 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 believa He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light, that the true Light, which lighteth every man, was coming into the world He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto Hia 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 wiU of man, but of God 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.' " These also he gives among the latest words of Christ before He suffered upon the cross : ' These words spake Jesus, and lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come ; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee : as thou hast given Him pow^er over all flesh, that * LoyoKf t)ie Word, means aliio Reason. RECAPITULATION. 385 He should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given Him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus, whom thou hast sent to be the Anointed. I have glorified thee on the earth : I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as thou. Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them ; that they may be one, even as we are one : I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved ma Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am ; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me : for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.' "I trust I have now said enough to give a fair idea of the faith of Christ.