Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/287

 Closely connected with this tendency to speak in obscure images was his predilection for argument with the Jews on abstruse theological topics. In the other Gospels he teaches the people who surround him, and the subject of his teaching is generally the rules of moral conduct; comparatively seldom theology. In John he does not so much teach as dispute, and the subject of the dispute is not morals—a field he scarcely ever enters—but his personal pretensions. Upon these he carries on a continual wrangle, supporting his claims by his peculiar views of the divine nature and of his relation to it (Jo. v. 16-47; vi. 41-59; vii. 14-36; viii. 12-29; ix. 39-41; x. 19-37). In the same spirit the blind man whom he cures enters into a discussion with the Pharisees on the character of him who had restored his sight (Jo. ix. 24-34). The Jews are depicted as continually occupied about this question. Even their own officers receive from them a reproof for making a laudatory remark about him (Jo. vii. 47, 48), while Nicodemus, who interposes in arrest of judgment, is sharply asked whether he also is of Galilee (Jo. vii. 51-52).

The very best instruction of Jesus is not given, as in the other Gospels, to a multitude, but is reserved for a select circle of his own followers. It is in the 14th, 15th, and 16th chapters that he rises to the sublimest heights of his doctrine, and the whole of this remarkable discourse is delivered to the disciples after Judas has left the supper-table in order to betray him. The substance of his teaching is no less peculiar than its occasions. The writer conceives of him as holding an altogether singular relation to the Father, and that relation he represents his Christ as continually expounding and insisting upon as of vital moment. The Evangelist himself begins his work by a concise statement of his doctrine on this point. The Logos, he says, was with God in the beginning; the Logos was God. All things were made by it, and nothing was made without it. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. This Light came into the world, but the world did not know him. Even his own, whoever these may have been, did not receive him. To those who did receive him, he gave power to become the sons of God; and these were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. The Logos was