We may call this, if we choose, the idealism of the Johannine Gospel and of the early Church ; but the question is worth pondering wlietlier any- thing less than an idealism which rested on a sure, if profound, basis of truth, could have held the Church to its loyalty to the unseen Jesus in face of the disappointment of hopes which the Syn- optic testimony, taken in its natural sense, had encouraged. In any ease, the Johannine picture of Jesus may be considered to .supply a striking confirmation of the opinion, already partly ex- pressed in this article, that no amount of frag- mentary sentences of Jesus, liowever accurately reported, and however definite their meaning may be when they are taken by themselves, can be a perfect index of a mind like His.
2. Its fonception of Eternal Life. — Every reafler of John notices the prominence of the words 'life,' or ' eternal life,' or ' spirit.' The phrase ' Kingdom of God' has practically disappeared, and 'life 'or ' eternal life takes its place. The fact is of im- portance to us in our jiresent study, because it is the index of John's way of conceiving what in the Synoptic mode of speech might be called the present aspect of the Kingdom. Jesus appears as the possessor and even tlie direct dispenser of the Divine life. It is given to the Son to have life in Himself even as the Father (5™), and no one can come to Him excejjt it be given him from the Father (6*'). Yet neither the Father nor the Son dispenses life in its fulness till the Son is glorified through death, or returns to the glory which He had from the first witli the Fatlier (7^'-'). But once the life is imparted il is a new birth which carries
its own promise. It is, in a proper sense, sufficient for itself. If a man is born of God, the Divine seed remains in him. Its product is righteousness.
begotten Son Himself (3' 9«- ■", IJn 3=- » etc.). is clear that this mode of view brings the Divine boon nearer to the individual heart, and necessarily alters, at least for the individual, the perspective of the eschatology.
Not simply the great event itself, — the glorious Parousia of the Christ, — but the events of resurrec- tion and judgment that accompany it, are regarded from within ratlier than from without. Those whose hope is set on Jesus do not lift to the heavens faces sick with deferred hope. They look within and behold Him with the vision of the pure in heart. For them Jesus has come alreaily and keeps coming. The supreme matter is to abide in Him or in His love by keeping His words. Let a man thus live and believe in Him, and he shall never die. Nothing, that is, not even what we call death, will break the continuity of his life (ipat.) xhe water of life that Jesus gives shall be in him a well of water springing up unto ever- lasting life (4"). The Jut/f/mcnt similarly is, or tends to be, withdrawn from futurity. He who believes does not come to judgment ; he has passed already from death to life (5;^ 1 Jn S"). On the other hand, he who disbelieves is condemned already. Life has come to him, but he chooses death ; light, but he chooses darkness. In turning from the only-begotten Son of God he puts from him his chance of being saved from a Divine wratli already present (S'*"- **) Until he seeks tlie Father through Him who is the Way, the wrath of God abideth on him. Every thoughtful reader of Jn. perceives that such are the main ideas both of the Gospel and of the Epistles. He will hardly fail to reflect also that these are, and have remained ever since the time of these writings or earlier, the vital ideas of the Christian Church in its cultiva- tion 1 of individual and social life, both on its practical and|its meditative side.— Comparing the Johannine testimony with the .utterances in the Synoptic Gospels — few, it may be, but important— which reveal a consciousness in Jesus of a Kingdom of God that is present and not simply future, and considering especially the fact that in spite of their testimony to Jesus' sense of the imminence of a Kingdom yet to come, there is not in the Synoptic Gospels the slightest indication that this tremend- ous prospect at all diminished His appreciation of the worth of those ethical precepts {e.g. those relating to marriage and the parental relation (Mk lO^f- 7»*-) that have to do with the secular order, we shall hesitate before accepting the idea suggested by Joh. Weiss [op. cit.), that the precise meaning of the ethical utterances of Jesus is to be determined by our knowledge (?) of His eschatol- ogy, and that Jesus would not have spoken as He does, e.g., in Lk 14^, had He not believed that within a generation the institutions of marriage and the family would cease, and that those who should survive this end of the world, being ' sons of the resurrection' (Lk '20^'), should be thence- forward as the angels {ib.). In this reference also the Johannine Gospel confirms our sense of an element in the equipment and outlook of Jesus to which justice can hardly be done by those who lay unqualifiiMl ^trp^-'; on thr di-itinctively eschato- logical portions nt llic Syiiii|itic ( lospels.