The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 110

bupplicd by the synoptists that Jesus was, by some of his hearers, more clearly appre- hended as the months rolled on, but at the first he was hailed from heaven as "the beloved Son, in whom the Father is well ple11Sed." There is scarcely anything moro explicit., nwrc allied to the crown of imperial majesty, than this. 'l'o get rid of the force of it the whole conception or John's baptism of Jesus has to be explained away (see Schenkel, 7oc. cit., l)P, 44-47, where the testimonies of the Ilaptist, as given in the Fourth Gospel, are but" forms of later ideas"). The important fact is that the vision of John and Jesus, as given in the synoptic Gospels, is practically identical with the testimonies which, according to the Fourth Gospel, many days later were borne by John the Baptist to Jesus (eh. iii. 27, etc.). We are not disposed in the least to question that there must have been development in the soul of Jesus from his childhood to his boyhood, from twelve years old to thirty. nut Jerns did not wait for the daimoniacs or the multitude to tell him that he was the King o_f the new kingdom. So great a nature as his was not governed by Hille! or Gamahel, by Essene or Rabban, by Sadducee or Pharisee. The immense originality of Jesus, as at the very first displayed in the synoptic narrative, showed how far his consciousness of mission and origin had gone. "Sonship, as an element of Messiah- ~hip, grew and deepened with time," says Dr. Davidson. The element of time, if we take even the longer chronology of John, is almost a vanishing factor in the exhibition of the character of Jesus. He had reached his maturity when he appeared as a candidate for John's baptism. His mind was made up with reference to what was involved in the role of Messiah, both as a Son and as a Sufferer, as a Prophet and as a King. He did not wait for circumstances·. to reveal him to himself. But the stages of some kind of evolution and revelation of his nature, conditionated, so far as bis hearers were concerned, by their susceptibility to his teaching, are not absent from the Fourth Gospel. Thus compare the teaching bestowed upon the woman of Samaria with that to the leaders of religious thought in Jerusalem :(eh. v.); e.g. compare the elementary ideas of the spirituality of" God" and of "worship," and the power of Jesus to give the water of life, with the grounds on which, as the Son of God, he was able to follow the leading and do the will of the Father in works of mercy. Add to this the growing revelation of himself as Life, Light, and Love, from eh. v. to eh. xi. In this respect, also, compare the teaching bestowed on the different groups of disputants in eh. vii. and eh. viii. with the more explicit and abundant revelations of his character, functions, and work as the Shepherd of the sheep, and his unity with the Father (eh. x.). Almost all shades of modern criticism admit the impressive change in manner and teaching ina~"ll.rated in eh. xiii., after he had retired from the temple, and, with his beloved ones around him, proceeded to reveal the way to the Father, the imminence of his departure, the certainty of his mystic presence, the mission of the Comforter, and the oneness of his '!,'hurch. So far as progress is concerned in the self-revelation of the Lord, the records of our Gospel are as explicit and marked as those of the synoptic Gospels. We are ready to concede a different level of instructions and a class of teaching better adapted to indivi- duals than to multitudes, more suited to the midnight auditor, or to the solitary waif at a wayside well, or to the knots of perturbed ecclesiastics, or to the family at Bethany, than to the ordinary synagogue life or the miscellane-0us crowds on the hille of Galilee. The synoptic Gospels, if they are left to tell their own story, and are not torn to pieces in order to secure a chronological arrangement in harmony with a preconceived theory, disclose, as the Fourth Gospel does, that the mind of the Lord was mature and made up from the first, and that the apparent progress is due to the increasing sensitive- ness and susceptibility of the hearers of his wondrous words. 3. The prellence of Alexandrine and Gnostic ideas is supposed to dominate the Gospel, and thus to discriminate it from the synoptic narrative to the disadvantage of its genuineness. In dealing with the sources aa.d language of the Gospel, with its platform and antecedents, we have seen what ground there is for accepting a certain method or style of representation more prevalent in Ephesus than in Jerusalem, in Rome or Alexandria than in the Palestinian schools, and also the limitations to which thill explanation is submitted, and the indications of the eye-witness that strike through the whole weft like silver threads. It is desirable in this place merely to call attention to the exaggerations of criticism in this behalf. Attention has been already called to the presence, in Matt. xi 27, 28, and Luke x. 21, 22, of phraseology which is identical  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO S'l'. JOHN. cxxl