more deft than John. John broods over his thought; Paul thrusts and parries with it.
Yet John is no sentimentalist. He is not the lovely, effem- inate youth of picture. His mental and moral fibre is strong. He received the title “ Son of Thunder ” from One who never misread character. Not irascible, as some have too hastily in- ferred from Luke ix. 54, he illustrates the peculiarity of many affectionate and contemplative natures, which flash into a start- ling impetuosity on occasions which appeal to their more radi- eal view of truth and to their longer range of vision. John was incapable of half-enthusiasms and of suspended faith. To whatever he addressed himself, he was totus in illis. In his own way, he is no less plain-spoken and severe than Paul. He is direct where Paul is sometimes ironical. He is neither gentle nor vague in his language concerning those who deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John ii. 22), nor concerning the lineage of him that committeth sin (1 John iii. 8) and the moral quality of him that hateth his brother (1 John iii. 15; iv. 20). In the Apocalypse he enters with profoundest sympathy into the divine indignation against evil, and contemplates with un- feigned joy its wholesale and crushing defeat and punishment. He seems to cheer the progress of the Conqueror upon the white horse. The issues between truth and falsehood, life and death, light and darkness, love and hatred are stated by him with a stern and decisive sharpness, and as absolute finalities. The quality of sin is conceived according to the scale of his adoring love for Christ. He deals with it as wickedness rather than as weakness, though not overlooking the latter. For him the victory of the Gospel is not a prophecy, but an accom- plished fact. Faith overcometh the world. The overcoming Christ is already present in every believer.
Such a character would not have been adapted to Paul’s work. It was not sufficiently versatile and many-sided. John had not Paut’s pioneer instinct, his pushing activity, and his executive power. He was fitted to raise the superstructure rather than to lay foundations ; to be a teacher rather than an evangelist. It was his to complete the teaching of the other apostles by unfolding the speculative mystery of the incarna-