use, and it is much, to recommend the other interpretation, cannot persuade to its acceptance. This mention of the 'twelve legions of Angels,' whom it was free to Him to summon to his aid, brings the passage into striking relation with 2 Kin. vi. 17. A greater than Elisha is here, and thus speaking would open the spiritual eye of his troubled disciple, and show him the mount of God, full of chariots and horses of fire, armies of heaven which are camping round his Lord, and whom a beck from Him would bring forth, to the utter discomfiture of his enemies. But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?' The temptation to claim the assistance of that heavenly host,-supposing Him to have felt the temptation,-is quelled in an instant; for how then should that eternal purpose, that will of God, of which Scripture was the outward expression, that thus it must be,' have then been fulfilled (cf. Zech. xiii. 7)? In St. John the same entire subordination of his own will to his Father's, which must hinder Him from claiming this unseasonable help, finds its utterance under another image: The cup which my Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" This language is frequent in Scripture, resting on the image of some potion which, however bitter, must yet be drained, Besides Matt. xx. 22, 23; xxvi. 39, where the cup is one of holy suffering, there is often, especially in the Old Testament, mention of the cup of God's anger (Isai. li. 17, 22; Ps. xi. 6; lxxv.8; Jer. xxv. 15, 17; xlix. 12; Lam. iv. 21; Rev. xiv. 10; xvi. 19); in every case the cup being one from which flesh. and blood shrinks back, which a man would fain put away from his lips, though a moral necessity in the case of the

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cim legiones habere. The fact that the number of Apostles who were even tempted to draw sword in Christ's behalf was, by the apostasy of Judas, reduced now to eleven, need not remove us from this interpretation. The Lord contemplates them in their ideal completeness. He does the same elsewhere: 'Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel' (Matt. xix. 28; cf. Luke xxii. 30)—when, indeed, it was not Judas, but his successor, that should occupy a throne.

godly, and a physical in that of the ungodly, will not suffer it to be thus put aside.

The words that follow, Suffer ye thus far, are still addressed to the disciples: Hold now; thus far ye have gone in resistance, but let it be no further; no more of this.' The explanation, which makes them to have been spoken by the Lord to his captors, that they should bear with Him till He had accomplished the cure, has nothing to recommend it. Having thus checked the too forward zeal of his disciples, and now carrying out into act his own precept, 'Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you,' He touched the ear of the wounded man, and healed him.' Peter and the rest meanwhile, after this brief flash of a carnal courage, forsook their divine Master, and, leaving Him in the hands of his enemies, fled,—the wonder of the crowd at that gracious work of the Lord, or the tumult, with the darkness of the night, or these both together, favouring their escape.

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33. THE SECOND MIRACULOUS DRAUGh1 of fishES.

IT

JOHN XXI. 1-23.

T almost seemed as though St. John's Gospel had found its solemn completion in the words (ver. 30, 31) with which the preceding chapter ended; so that this chapter appears, and probably is, in the exactest sense of the word, a postscript, -something which the beloved Apostle, after he had made an end, thought it important not to leave untold; which he added, perhaps, at the request of his disciples, who, having often drunk in the story from his lips, desired that before his departure he should set it down, that the Church might be enriched with it for ever. Or, if we call John i. 1-14 the

1 Doubts of the authenticity of this chapter were first stirred by Grotius; he supposed it to have been added, probably after St John's death, by the Ephesian elders, who had often heard the story from his lips. These doubts have little or nothing to warrant them. Unlike another really suspicious passage in St. John's Gospel (viii. 1-11), there is no outward evidence against this. Every MS. and early Version possesses it, nor was there ever a misgiving about it in antiquity. He therefore, and his followers here, Clericus, Semler, Lücke, Schott (Comm. de Indole Cap. ult. Ev. Joh. Jen. 1825), can have none but internal evidence to go on, evidence frequently deceptive, and always inconclusive, but here even weaker than usual. Everywhere we mark the hand of the beloved disciple. Not merely is the whole tone of the narration his;--for that might very well be, were others reporting what he had often told them;-but single phrases and turns of language, unobserved till we have such motives for observing them, attest his hand. He only uses Tißepiác, tádasoa τῆς Τιβεριάδος (vi. 1, 23) for the lake of Galilee; or παιδια as a word of address from the teacher to the taught (cf. ver. 5 with 1 John ii. 13, 18); Tal, which occurs twice (ver. 3, 10), and on six other occasions in his Gospel, is found only thrice besides in the whole New Testament. Again, ¿AKÚεIV (ver. 6, 11) is one of his words (vi. 44; xii. 32; xviii. 20), being

prologue, this we might style the epilogue, of his Gospel. As that set forth what the Son of God was before He came from the Father, even so this, in mystical and prophetic guise, how He should rule in the world after He had returned to the Father.

'After these things Jesus showed1 Himself again to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias.' St. John alone gives to the lake this name. His motive no doubt was that so it would be more easily recognized by those for whom he especially wrote-Tiberias, built by Herod Antipas in honour of Tiberius, being a city well known to the heathen world. On the first occasion of using this name, he marks the identity of this lake with the lake of Galilee mentioned by the other Evangelists (vi. 1), but does not count it necessary to repeat this here. Doubtless there is a significance in the words, 'showed Himself,' or 'manifested Himself,' which many long ago observed, no other than this, that his body after the resurrection was only visible by a distinct act of his will. From that time the disciples did not, as before, see Jesus, but Jesus appeared unto, or was seen by, them. It is not for nothing that in language of this kind all his appearances after the resurrection are related (Mark xvi. 12, 14; Luke xxiv. 34 ; Acts xiii. 31; 1 Cor. xv. 5-8). It is the same with Angels and all heavenly manifestations. Men do not see them; such

found else but once. The double ȧμív (ver. 18) is exclusively St. John's, occurring twenty-five times in his Gospel, never elsewhere; and so too the appellation of Thomas, Owuaç i Xeyóμevoç Sidvμog (ver. 2; cf. xi. 16; XX. 24) compare too ver. 19 with xii. 23 and xviii. 32; the use also of opoiwg (ver. 13) with the parallel use at vi. 11. 'O↓ápiov (ver. 9, 10, 13; cf. vi. 9, 11), and wáλiv dɛúrepov (ver. 16; cf. iv. 54), belong only to him; and the narrator interposing words of his own, as a comment on those of the Lord (ver. 19), is in St. John's favourite manner (ii. 21; vi. 6; vii. 39). And of these peculiarities many more might be adduced.

1 This ¿paripwoer avróv of his last miracle St. John intends us to bring into relation with the ipavipwoɛ rýv dóžav of his first (ii. 11); which being so, our Version should have preserved, as a hint of this, the 'manifested' which it there employs. Compare too the taunt of vii. 4: pavépwoov otauróv: this He is now doing.

2 Λίμνη Τιβαρίς Pausanias calls it.

language would be inappropriate; but they appear to men (Judg. vi. 12; xiii. 3, 10, 21; Matt. xvii. 3; Luke i.'11; xxii. 43; Acts ii. 3; vii. 2; xvi. 9; xxvi. 16); being only visible to those for whose sakes they are vouchsafed, and to whom they are willing to show themselves. Those to whom this manifestation was vouchsafed are enumerated. There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.' It makes something for the opinion, unknown to antiquity, but yet so probable, that the Nathanael of St. John is the Bartholomew of the other Evangelists, thus to find him named not after, but in the midst of, some of the chiefest Apostles. Who were the two unnamed disciples cannot certainly be known. They could scarcely be other than Apostles, a word, it should be remembered, which St. John nowhere uses to distinguish the Twelve, indeed uses only once (xiii.16) in all his writings,-' disciples' in the most eminent sense of the word. Lightfoot supposes that they were Andrew and Philip; which is very likely; for where Peter was, there his brother Andrew would scarcely be wanting (Matt. iv. 18; Mark i. 29; Luke vi. 14; John vi. 8), and where Andrew there in all likelihood would be Philip as well (John i. 45; xii. 22; Mark iii. 18).

The announcement of Peter, 'I go a-fishing,' is not, as it has been strangely interpreted, a declaration that he has lost all hope in Jesus as the Messiah, has renounced his apostleship, and, since now there is no nobler work in store for him, will return to his old occupation. A teacher in that new kingdom which his Lord had set up, he is following the wise

1 Thus Ambrose on the appearing of the Angel to Zacharias (Exp. in Luc. i. 24): Bene apparuisse dicitur ei, qui eum repente conspexit. Et hoc specialiter aut de Angelis aut de Deo Scriptura divina tenere consuevit; ut quod non potest prævideri, apparere dicatur. . . . . Non enim similiter sensibilia videntur, et is in cujus voluntate situm est videri, et cujus naturæ est non videri, voluntatis videri. Nam si non vult, non videtur: si vult, videtur. And Chrysostom here: 'Ev тy eineìv, ¿qavépwOEV ἑαυτὸν, τοῦτο δηλοῖ, ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἤθελε, καὶ αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν διὰ συγκατάβασιν ἐφανέ ρωσεν, οὐχ ὡρᾶτο, τοῦ σώματος ὄντος ἀφθάρτου.