cussions with them have their root and material in this same antagonism. The historical material is carefully selected with a view to its bearing on the particular conception of Christ’s person and work which is announced in the Prologue. The history is the practical exhibition of the Logos-doctrine in the person and earthly life of the Man Jesus. The miracles are invariably termed signs, and are regarded as expressions and evidences of the divine personality of the worker.
The Gospel is characterized by the profuse employment of symbolism. This accords with its Hebrew fibre, and also, largely, with the nature of its subject. For not only was John a Jew, familiar with the symbolic economy and prophecy of the Old Testament, but Jesus, the central figure of his Gospel was, pre-eminently the fulfiller of the Law and of the Prophe- cies. Christ's own teaching, too, was largely symbolic ; and John’s peculiar, profound spiritual insight detected in His or- dinary acts that larger meaning which belonged to them in vir- tue of Jesus’ position as the representative of humanity; and that unity of the natural and spiritual worlds which was as- sumed in the utterances of our Lord in which the visible was used as the type of the invisible. “John,” says Lange, “gives us not only a symbolism of the Old Testament word, of Old Testament institutions, histories, and persons ; he gives also the symbolism of nature, of antiquity, of history and of personal life ; hence the absolute symbolism, or the ideal import of all real existence, in significant outlines.”
The relation of the Gospel to the Old Testament is pro- nounced. The centre of the Old Testament system is the man- ifestation of the glory of God—the Shekinah. John declares that this glory appears essentially in Christ. He recognizes the divine preparation among the nations for Christ’s coming, and the special discipline of Israel with a view to the advent of the Messiah. In the Jews he discerns the special subjects of the Messianic economy. Nathanael is an Israelite indeed : the temple is the Father’s house : salvation is from the Jews: the Jewish Scriptures testify of Christ: the testimonies to Christ are drawn from the three successive periods of the peo- ple’straining—the patriarchal, the theocratic, and the monarchi-