ON THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN, FORMING A CONTINUOUS COMMENTARY. BY GEORGE J. BROWN, M.A. CURATE OF BLADON, OXON. AND DOMESTIC CHAPLAIN TO THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. VOL. I. OXFORD: H. HAMMANS, HIGH STREET. LONDON: RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE. BUX 381 589866 Т MERCIFUL LORD, WE BESEECH THEE TO CAST THY BRIGHT BEAMS OF LIGHT UPON THY CHURCH, THAT IT, BEING ENLIGHTENED BY THE DOCTRINE OF THY BLESSED APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST SAINT JOHN, MAY SO WALK IN THE LIGHT OF THY TRUTH, THAT IT MAY AT LENGTH ATTAIN ΤΟ THE LIGHT OF EVERLASTING LIFE; THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD AMEN. Collect for Saint John the Evangelist's Day. 17 A for 46 P PREFACE. THESE Expository Lectures may be described as an attempt to combine careful criticism with practical instruction, so that on the whole they may be neither beneath the notice of the theological student, nor beyond the capacity of the general reader. For this purpose the Author has endeavoured to collect, as into a focus, rays of light from whatever source; the purely critical remarks and references being thrown into the shape of foot-notes, which plentifully illustrate the work: forming, if the sources from which they are mostly taken be considered, a sort of "Catena Patrum," or Sacred Anthology; "a set of orient pearls," (if the expression may be allowed,) yet not, it is hoped, altogether "at random strung"." As such they have a value of their own, altogether independent It may be allowable to cite here, in illustration of this, what was said on a kindred subject by one whose words must, of course, for any in this Diocese, have a double weight. The following is from the report of the Bp. of Oxford's speech at Cambridge, on All Saints' Day, 1859, in behalf of the Mission to Central Africa; words which since their first utterance have received a solemn and unlooked for emphasis in the early death of the first leader of that great Christian enterprise:-" The lives of such men have not been lost because they died early in the cause, the labours of half a century having been gathered up, as it were, into two or three years..... You must concentrate the light, in order to make it luminous amid the darkness." b This oft quoted expression, it may not be superfluous to observe, is found in Sir William Jones's translation of a Persian Song of Hafiz. |