THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—As the Spectator has now fairly become the organ and re- presentative of most Liberal Churchmen, in a sense much more actual and real than the Record is the representative of Evangeli- cals or the Church Times of Anglicans, as, at all events, the Editors regard theology as the very highest and most important of all studies, and never shrink from stating what they believe to be truth in it, as in all other subjects, I trust that a country clergy- man who is a constant reader and admirer of your journal, is not out of place in making one or two remarks on your long and able review of Mr. Tayler's work on St. John, contained in your pre- sent number. Of Mr. Tayler's work, at present, I know nothing, save from your own review, so that I may be striking in the dark in what I say, but surely, to a plain man it is not a fair represen- tation of St. John's Gospel to say, as Mr. Tayler (according to your review) says, that the miracles recorded therein are seven in number, from a mystical regard to the number seven.
The miracles, at the very least, are nine in number, independently of hints of other miracles. First, there is the miracle in Cana of Galilee, next (2), the nobleman's son who was sick at Capernaum, next (3), the impotent man at the Pool of Bethesda, (4) the feed- ing of the five thousand, (5) the walking of Jesus on the sea, (6) the healing of the man blind from his birth, (7) the raising of Lazarus, (8) two miraculous appearances to His disciples after the Resurrection (St. John at all events insisting on the miraculousness,
for in each instance he says "the doors being shut"), (9) the draught of fishes caught at the command of Jesus to let down the net at the right side of the ship. Is not this miraculous ?
Next, I would most fully concede the very great difficulties there are in supposing the author of the Apocalypse and of the Fourth Gospel to be identical. Mr. Maurice in his first lecture on the Apocalypse has distinctly stated the difficulty :— "Supposing the superscription of this book did not answer to the contents of it, supposing it were not a revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but merely a collection of predictions con- cerning the future, I do think it would require an overwhelming amount of external evidence to persuade us that it could proceed from him who wrote of the Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world ; who reported the dialogues with Nicodemus with the woman of Samaria, at the feasts of Tabernacles and of the Dedication. There is an amazing difference between the two books."
But notwithstanding this difficulty, Mr. Maurice goes on to give his reasons (to me, I confess, they do not seem powerful ones) for believing that the Apocalypse was the work of the beloved dis- ciple,—reasons which are, I think, very ably met by Mr. Taylor in the extract you have given :—" It has been said that both writers are distinguished by a remarkable power of objective presentation. In a certain sense this is true. But in how different a way is it shown ? Compare, for instance, the awful description of the effect of opening the sixth seal, and that ghastly procession of the horrors which precede it, in the Apocalypse, where every word vibrates as it were with the throbbing pulse of an excited imagination, and that marvellously graphic story of the man born blind, or the exquisite pathos with which the raising of Lazarus is narrated in the Fourth Gospel, where all is so clear, and yet so calm and still, as if the writer had looked the fading traditions of the past into distinctness."
But are there no indications of similarity, or rather identity, in the writers of each ? One expression occurs to me at once. Our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." One of the last invitations of the Lord, according to the writer of the Apocalypse, is, "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely."
Again, is your reviewer quite justified in drawing such a dis- tinction between the gentle, loving tone of the author of the Fourth Gospel and the fierce, exclusive tone of the writer of the Apocalypse, or in saying, "If ever there were clear indications of a disciple's personal devotion, it is in the Gospel of John ; and if ever they were wholly wanting, it is in the Apocalypse "? Is that narrow or exclu- sive, when the writer speaks of the tree of life which yielded her fruit every month, whose leaves were for the healing of the ?lotions 7— El; 0Epcoreiav 1770 EOYCJII. Is there no personal affection here, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus"? Is there none of the fierce spirit of the Apocalypse in the Gospel of St. John? Let me briefly quote a beautiful passage from Mr. Maurice's Patriarchs and Lawgivers, where he is drawing a parallel between Joshua and the beloved disciple :— " Unless the Scripture deceives us altogether, St. John had need of hard inward struggles to become a gentle, gracious, loving
man. That soft, feminine countenance, unmarked by a single furrow, which painters have chosen to ascribe to him, can never have been his actually, is not his ideally. The man who would have called fire from heaven upon the Samaritans, the man who was sure he could bear Christ's baptism of fire, had no soft fea- tures, no sentimental expression. If he was the Apostle of Love,
it was love in a different sense from this. Blessed is he that over- cometh,' are the words which rang again and again in his ears, when he saw the vision of his glorified Master. He had been
taught, through the bitterest inward strife, what such words meant.
And therefore, though he delighted to dwell on the graciousness and gentleness of his Master, he did not forget that He made Him a
scourge of small cords, and drove them that bought and them that sold out of the Temple, or that He told the proud religious men of Jerusalem that they were claiming the Devil for their father, and doing the deeds of their father. Such stern sentences did not seem to him inconsistent with the divinest grace and mercy. He could not conceive of a grace and mercy which tolerated evil, which did not seek for the extirpation
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