The great design of John's gospel he has himself stated—" These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that, believing, ye might have lire through his name." In prosecution of this design, it (1) declares the existence, in the beginning, with God and as God, of the logos, who is the source of light and life, by whom all things were created; and who became flesh, dwelling among men, mani festing to chosen witnesses his glory in the fullness of grace and truth; (2) gives a state ment of the mission of John the Baptist, and of his testimony to Jesus as the Messiah, the Lamb of God to lake away sins, and the Son of God.in whom all men are called on. to believe; (3) makes prominent the portion of Christ's ministry which was fulfilled in Jerusalem—chiefly at the national feasts, yet clearly marks also his journeys to and from Galilee, where the larger portion of Iris work was performed; (4) records the faith of his first disciples in him as the.promised Messiah; (3) gives an account of his first miracles in Galilee; of the symbolic cleansing of the temple with which his public ministry in Jerusalem began; of his interview with Nicodemus, to whom he declared the necessity of regeneration, the design of the .atonement,•and the love of God in sending his Son into the world; of his conversation with the woman of Samaria, to whom lie proved his Me.isialiship ley an omniscient judgment concerning herself, and made God known as the object of spiritual worship to be offered henceforth by all men everywhere; of his healing the man at Bethesda, followed by his claim of equality with God, and of power to give spiritual life, to raise all the dead, and to judge the world; of his feeding 5,000 men with five loaves; of his proclaiming himself as the bread of life, the living water, the light of the world. the giver of liberty, tend the deliverer from death; of his bestow
ing sight on a man who had been born blind; of his announcing himself as the good Shepherd, who, by laying clown his life for his sheep, would give them eternal life; and of his raising Lazarus from the grave, followed by his triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. From this point the gospel gives the private communion of the Savior with the apostles at the last passover; his foretelling that Judas Iscariot would betray him, and Simon Peter deny him; his words of comfort, peace, and deliverance, followed by the promise to send the Holy Spirit as an advocate, instructor, and guide; his intercession with the Father in behalf of his disciples through all time; his apprehension and arraignment before the Jewish council and the Homan governor: his crucifixion, burial, and resurrec tion from the dead, interviews with his disciples, and final instructions to them. This gospel diffuses the glory of the Son of God over all his incarnate life upon earth. And as the culmination of the external proof of its genuineness is the book itself present in the churches through all the centuries since it was written, so the effulgence of the internal proof is the Divine being, character, and life exhibited through it all.