the old religion shall have been destroyed I undertake to replace it with a new one.'

Next come a series of dramatic illustrations of the feeling which the manifestation of the Son of God was calculated to evoke among different classes of men-in other words, of the nature of faith (the great subject of the gospel drama) in its various capacities and degrees. Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and the nobleman of Capernaum, indicate three different kinds or classes of believers. The first class, represented (iii. 2) by the benighted Nicodemus, are those mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, and who frequently reappear afterwards among "the Jews," who believed because they "saw the miracles," but whom Jesus could not trust (ii. 24). No one, says Nicodemus, could do these miracles if God were not with him. But this kind of belief is of a merely speculative and very imperfect kind,2 implying no real progress in spiritual life; and doubtless, in the infallible "crisis" or judgment of divine light mentioned directly afterwards, would be found still darkling in the obscurity of spiritual eclipse. It may be compared to the seedlings of the "way side" and "stony places," elsewhere mentioned as having no root;3 it is superficial, unproductive, and unreal. "Signs and wonders" are in reality only an external means for awakening attention, and giving a first impulse to a higher spiritual state; the real transition, the inward regeneration, is still wanting; and the subsequent address of Jesus shews how much more Nicodemus, as representing this class of half believers (iii. 2), required in order to become a real member of the kingdom of God. And here it is not irrelevant to remark that Mr. Mansel, in his recent argument on miracles, unwittingly instances this very case of Nicodemus as an example of true faith, whereas, in the meaning of the evangelist, it is only a very precarious and imperfect one; and it is in reference

to these uncertain, untrustworthy followers, who believed only because they "saw the miracles," that Jesus lays so much stress upon "continuance." Indeed it is particularly significant that this occasion is selected to call our special attention to the great "crisis" or severance of classes (iii. 18), and that the Baptist now solemnly inaugurates the commencement of the new dispensation (iii. 29); all concurs in this disposition of the narrative to impress upon us that mere external belief in signs still remains on the unregenerate or dark side of the picture—that the true spiritual life has yet to commence.

We next proceed to illustrations of this transition, gathered in the symbolical journey of Jesus through Samaria-the first scene, according to the tradition recorded in Acts viii. 6, of the successful preaching of the gospel. The half-heathen Samaritaness represents its first stage. Her belief is indeed at first occasioned by a "sign" or manifestation of supernatural insight; but eventually the Samaritans pass on to the higher stage of belief in Jesus "for his word," so as to acknowledge his true character; and finally a still higher spiritual state is exhibited in the Galilæan nobleman, who believed without the intervention of a sign; his faith anticipating the miracle, and being generated independently. The perfection of mental aptitude is belief without sights or "signs;" and since, once effected, it carries with it conviction of heavenly as well as earthly things (iii. 12, vi. 69), it would seem that to the spiritually-minded miracle is wholly superfluous : this indeed is the last inference of the evangelist (xx. 29).

Dialectical Encounter with "the Jews."

The fifth chapter introduces a scenic encounter with the principle of unbelief represented by "the Jews," partly carried on by way of argument, partly in signs or ex

1 Ch. viii. 30; comp. ii. 23.

amples. Darkness has its signs and manifestations as well as light, meeting the clear evidences of the latter with its own specious arguments and cavilling objections; but these eventually serve only to shew its vanity and inconsequence. The drama is arranged under specific heads or types, the display being in each instance followed by an explanatory discourse, pointing out in the general spirit of the gospel its moral bearing. First, a remarkable work of healing, characteristic of the "Word" as source of life (i. 4), is performed on the Sabbath. It contains intrinsic evidence of divinity, not only as a miracle or "sign," but as a "work," evineing the beneficent power of healing and quickening which proceeds from God only. Confronted with this test, unbelief goes beyond the neutrality of Nicodemus, and at once reveals itself in its true character by disclaiming the divine work for the paltry reason that it was done on the Sabbath, and already shews its natural tendency to destroy him whose power is exerted only to heal and save. Jesus takes the opportunity to shew that God's agency is subject to no Sabbath restrictions or interruptions; moreover, that the Son's action is indissolubly bound up with that of the Father, who as absolute principle of life communicates to the Son the same healing and life-giving power, hereafter to be more conspicuously exhibited on the grand scale of the resurrection. He goes on to argue that this divine character, though disputed by the Jews, was sufficiently proved according to the strictest rules of forensic evidence; not only by John's testimony, but by the intrinsic moral evidence of the works, and also by the testimony of God himself in that very Scripture on which the Jews relied, and from which they derived their technical objection as to the Sabbath.

Again, in the sixth chapter, the "Word" is shewn to be the great supporter and nourisher, as well as source, of physical and spiritual life—the giver of meat "enduring to the everlasting life," eventually to be realised at the

last day. The nature of faith, or the subjective appropriation of the divine object, is here discussed; and the idea of the heavenly manna, or divine principle as bread, serves to illustrate its spiritual operation as assimilating and incorporating congenial nourishment in a way analogous to the alimentary processes of the body-becoming in fact one with the object of belief. This idea of course appears as foolishness to the sensuous unbeliever; it is "a hard saying;" by materialists food can only be understood materially; the unspiritual insist on the literal meaning of allegory, and speculative ends in practical unbelief, if not open hostility. The unsteady, untrue disciples are self-convicted by withdrawing; and Judas, who remains, only shews how long the real unbelief characterising the Satanic class may counterfeit the semblance of its opposite.

Jesus thus standing almost isolated in the midst of an unbelieving world, proceeds with that public display of light before the blind eyes of darkness to which he is challenged by his unbelieving brethren. Jewish darkness exerts every effort of ingenious quibbling to maintain its plausibility; but is at last ignominiously driven from all the illusory pretences of "Scripture," "affinity to Abraham," etc., on which its obstinacy is based. Its selfrefutation is contained in three successive acts or scenes, the whole forming a continuous satirical burlesque on the empty loquacity of Rabbinical argumentation. Jesus first comes forward under the incognito1 which according to vii. 27 was characteristic of the Messiah; yet they refuse to recognise him as such because he does not appear under an entirely contradictory aspect, as the known pupil of a recognised teacher (ver. 15), although really he was taught by the greatest of all teachers, God. Then again he appears in the opposite character as "known" ("πappnσia λaλe"), reminding the Jews of his previous encounter with them on the occasion of healing the lame man, when

1 “ ώς εν κρυπτῳ” (vii. 10).

they so inconsistently appealed to Mosaic law. Hereupon the Jews perversely adopt a ground of denial directly refuting their former argument; they now say, "this man cannot be the Messiah because we know whence he is;" yet after all they are proved not to know whence he is, for they knew not God who sent him, etc.1 Their Rabbinical pedantries are the self-deluding sophistry peculiarly characteristic of unbelief; and thus the expedients resorted to in self-vindication prove to be self-destructive, forming a net in which it becomes inextricably entangled and selfrefuted. And when, on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Christ announces himself in all the unveiled dignity of his personal presence, as the fountain of living waters, so that unprejudiced spectators are forced to confess that "never man spake like this man" (vii. 40, 46), unbelief still ventures to come forward with the sorry pretence that Christ must come not from Galilee but Bethlehem, David's well known place of residence, overlooking its former argument at ver. 27, and again contradicting

1 Here again Dr. Hilgenfeld recognises dualistic gnosticism in the fact so repeatedly insisted on (ch. vii. 28; viii. 19, 54, 55; xv. 21; xvi. 3; xvii. 25), that the Jews had not known the true God; that with the exception of a few prophetic glimpses (v. 46; viii. 56; xii. 41), the Supreme Deity with eternal life was first revealed by Christianity (i. 17; xvii. 3). For Christ says, not that the Jews failed to recognise the messenger of a known God, but that they knew neither God nor his messenger, and that to say his Father was their God was a delusion (viii. 54). Hence Christ is the true door; and all who came before him were thieves and robbers (x. 8). A difficulty occurs in ch. iv. 22, where it would seem as if the Jews were contrasted with the Samaritans in regard to this very matter of knowing God (See Baur's "Christenthum," p. 133); really, however, both Jerusalem and Gerizim stand on the same footing of a transient, because an undiscerning and unspiritual, worship. Jesus certainly does not mean to contradict his general antithetic position to Judaism; on the contrary, while admitting the external antecedency of Jewish rights, he places Judaism, whether in its orthodox or heretical (Samaritan) forms,-altogether below and apart from the true spiritual worship. Compare with the above ch. v. 37, 38, 39; vi. 46; viii. 15, 54; ix. 41; and see Hilgenfeld in the Zeitschrift f. Wiss. Theol. vol. vi. p. 103.

2 The acts recorded as occurring at the several feasts have evidently a symbolical propriety; thus, at the Passover (vi. 2), Christ announces himself as the heavenly bread; at the Feast of Tabernacles (vii. 2), he appears as the living water (vii. 37; comp. 1 Sam. vii. 6; and the libations customary at this feast in Winer, B. R. W. "Laubhüttenfest").