SERMON IV.

ST. JOHN.

JOHN XXI. 22.

If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?

IV.

WHATEVER ground there may be for the hesita- SERM. tion with which a pious mind approaches a critical analysis of any of the apostolical characters,-whatever reverence and caution may be required in conducting this analysis, exists in the highest degree with reference to the last of the Three Apostles, St. John, on whose life and work I this day propose to enter. The strongly-marked natural peculiarities which distinguish St. Peter, the full blaze of historical light which surrounds St. Paul, in themselves justify and invite an investigation of the human springs of action to which they were subject. But St. John's life, at first sight, seems shrouded in an atmosphere of religious awe which we cannot penetrate; in him the earthly seems so completely absorbed into the heavenly—the character, the thoughts, the language of the disciple so lost in that of the Master-that we tremble to draw aside the veil from that Divine friendship;

R

IV.

a

SERM. We fear to mix any human motives with a life which seems so especially the work of the Spirit of God: it was, we may be inclined to think, a true feeling which in the greatest of Christian poems declared itself unable to discern any earthly form or feature in the third of the Three Apostles ;we may fancy that in the answer to the question, "Lord, and what shall this man do?" there is contained for us, though in a different sense, something of the same mild rebuke as was addressed to John's first companion, "What is that to thee? "Follow thou Me."

But the fact is, that in these natural and obvious feelings we have virtually anticipated all that is peculiarly distinctive of the life of St. John. The mysterious characters, as well as the mysterious truths of Scripture, are placed before us not to perplex but to instruct us; and our Lord's words, if rightly understood, may invite us to the task of defining the lineaments of that character which Jesus loved without intruding into things invisible; of ascertaining the true position of the Apostle of Love without instituting any irreverent comparison between him and the Apostle of Faith. It was precisely in this very capacity for reflecting, as in an unbroken glass, the glory of things Divine ;

a As he who looks intent,

And strives with searching ken how he may see
The sun in his eclipse, and through decline

Of seeing loseth power of sight, so I

Gazed on that last resplendence.

Cary's Dante; Paradiso xxv. 117.

IV.

in this passive reception (so to speak) of the high- SERM. est and holiest influences, that the human fitness of St. John for his appointed work properly consisted. It was not by fluctuating and irregular impulses like the first Apostle, nor yet by a sudden and abrupt conversion like the second, that he received his education for the Apostleship; there was no sphere of outward activity as in Peter, no vehement struggle as in Paul; in action, while Peter speaks, moves, directs, he follows, silent and retired ;-his teaching is expressed not in the arguments and entreaties which mark the Epistles of St. Paul, but in the simplest forms in which human language can arrange itself. Every thing local and national seems to have passed away; and, if in Peter we seemed to trace the Jewish element in its native vigour, if in Paul there seemed to be a development of those peculiar qualities which so well fitted him to be the Apostle of the Gentile nations of the west, it would almost seem as if in St. John the still contemplation, the intuitive insight into heavenly things, which form the basis of his character, had been deepened and solemnized by something of that more eastern and primitive feeling to which the records of the Jewish nation lead us back; something of that more simple, universal, child-like spirit, which brooded over the cradle of the human race; which entitled the Mesopotamian Patriarch, rather than the Hebrew Lawgiver or the Jewish King, to be called the "friend of God";" which

b James ii. 23.

IV.

SERM. fitted the prophet of the Chaldæan captivity, rather than the native seers of Samaria or Jerusalem, to be the "man greatly beloved"." If there be any outward influence visible in the mind of St. John, it is from these remoter regions, from that more primitive atmosphere that it seems to come: it is in the opening words of his Gospel that, after the lapse of ages, we catch the echo of the same words which had announced the creation of all things": it is in the close of the Sacred Canon that we heare once again of the tree of life and the river of paradise it is the most primeval traditions and images of ancient civilization to which, if to any outward source, we owe those ideas of life and death, of light and darkness-that blending of fact with doctrine, of the real with the ideal, which so strongly characterize the writings of St. John. He could not by any possibility have been a Jewish zealot or a Hellenistic rabbi; it is possible to conceive that but for the grace of God he might have been an Oriental mystic.

Still, after all that can be ascribed to any outward circumstances, the whole sum of his character must of necessity be contained in the one single fact that he was "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Once understand that from whatever causes no obstacle intervened between him and that one Divine object which from the earliest dawn of youth to the last years of extreme old age was ever impressing itself

c Dan. x. 19.

e

d Comp. Gen. i. 1. with John i. 1. Comp. Gen. ii. 9, 10. with Rev. xxii. 1, 2.