This part of the Gospel therefore appropriately closes with the words: "These things spake Jesus and departed, and did hide Himself from them" (xii. 36). The public manifestation of Jesus is closed.
Between the first and the second part of the Gospel there is interposed a paragraph (xii. 37-50), in which John briefly points out that the rejection of Jesus by the Jews was no more than had been predicted by the prophet Isaiah, and that it reflects no suspicion on the manifestations of His relation to the Father which Jesus had made. He then sums up in one or two sentences the significance and consequences of receiving and of rejecting Jesus.
In the second part of the Gospel the writer is still guided by the same purpose of showing how Jesus manifested His glory. This is obvious not merely from the contents of this second part, but also from the fact that in the language of John the death of Jesus is constantly referred to as His glorification, being the "lifting up" which was an essential step to, or part of, His glorification. Before entering upon the last scenes, which are described in chaps. xiii.-xix., Jesus is assured that in His death the Father is to glorify His Name (xii. 28); and in the prayer recorded in the seventeenth chapter, which closes the explanations which our Lord Himself made of His work, it is still the manifestation of His glory that is in His thoughts. The characteristic which distinguishes this second part of the Gospel is, that Jesus no longer manifests His glory to the people in signs of manifest power, but now, in chapters xiii.-xvii., further discloses His glory privately to the Twelve; and in chapters xviii. and xix. passes triumphantly through the ultimate trial which still lay between Him and the final consummation of His glory. That this final glory has been achieved is witnessed by the Resurrection, the record of which, and of its results in faith, occupies the twentieth chapter. De Wette has the credit of being the first to discern that the entire Gospel is held together by this idea of the manifestation of Christ's glory, and that "the glory of our Lord appears in all its brightness in the second part of the narrative (xiii.-xx.), and that (_a_) inwardly and morally in His sufferings and death (xiii.-xix.), and (_b_) outwardly and sensibly, in the triumphant event of the Resurrection."
The best tabulated division of the Gospel with which I am acquainted is that which the Rev. A. Halliday Douglas, M.A., of Huntly, has printed for private circulation. By the kindness of the author I am allowed to publish it here.