"J give v SiA t^v /xaprupiav 'Inaov, " decollatorum propter testimonium Jesu." Apoc, xx. 4. THE PERSECUTION UNDER DOMITIAN. 69 from his bloody fingers, or gouge out his eyes, when Par thenius, on the lookout, gave entrance to a re-enforcement of gladiators, who stabbed him to death.1 The Flavian dynasty disappeared with him, for he had made wide inroads into the ranks of his own House. His cousin, Flavius Clemens, had perished by his orders, a wit ness to the Christ. The Emperor adopted the two sons of his victim, and had them educated by Quintilian,2 desig nating them as heirs to the throne. What became of them in the tempest which swept away their father's as sassin ? No one knows. Their illustrious kinsfolk, the Domitillas, were still in exile. The sceptre fell from the hands of this family ; but a purer aureole encircles their memory to-day : the glory of having been the first to con fess the faith on the steps of the throne. i Suetonius, Domit., 17. Dio Cassius, lxvii. 15, etc. Philostratus, Vita Apol., viii. 25. Orosius, vii. 10, II. Aurelius Victor, Epitome, xi. 11, 12. 2 Suetonius, Domit., 15. CHAPTER V. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. The persecution had not been confined to Rome ; little by little its ravages extended to the most distant prov inces. The Acts of Saint Ignatius describes it as then raging like a whirlwind over Antioch in Syria; "with Ignatius like a trusty pilot steadfast at the wheel mid most the gale ; by his fasts, his prayers, and the firmness of his teachings exorcising the dangers; shielding the simple-hearted and the weak in spirit from the wild surge of allurements which threatened to engulf them." a It is true, these Acts were not written till the fourth century ; nevertheless, it is hardly likely that their author is merely romancing at pleasure ; rather we may suppose that, in the case of a fact so notorious as the persecution insti tuted by Domitian at Antioch, he is founding his narra tive on that of earlier writers.2 However this may be as regards the churches of Syria, there is no manner of doubt that elsewhere, especially along the coast of Asia Minor, the edict of proscription worked fearful havoc. A letter written by Pliny, Gov ernor of Bithynia (about the year 112), speaks of certain Christians summoned before him, who declared that they had renounced their faith, " some, three years previously, others still less recently, some of them as long as twenty years back." 3 This last date would relegate the apostasy 1 I take this testimony from the sole version of the Acts of S. Ignatius which is trustworthy, and the one which locates the scene of the Saint's trial, not in Rome, but in Antioch. See Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Part II, vol. ii. pp. 363-495. Funk, Opera patrum Apostolicorum, vol. i. pp. lxxviii-lxxxiii and pp. 254 et seq. 2 Lightfoot, loc. cit. p. 389. 8 Pliny, Epist. x. 970. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 71 of these unfortunates to Domitian's time. Thus, then, there must have been Christian congregations at that time in existence in Bithynia, which also suffered by the persecution. Certain no less explicit passages in the Apocalypse allude to it as being equally active in Proconsular Asia : at Smyrna the Christians are thrown into prison;1 at Pergamus, Antipas is put to death for having been a faithful witness unto Jesus.2 Nor is he the sole martyr whose blood flows for the Saviour: "from beneath the mystical Altar whereon is throned the slaughtered Lamb," the Seer of Patmos hears a great cry ascending unto heaven.3 These are the souls of those that have been slain for the word of God, and " the testimony which they have given" unto the Christ; generous believers " beheaded because of this their testimony. " 4 Their blood cries out for vengeance unto the Lord, but He bids them bide their time as yet in their celestial resting-place, until the number of their brethren among the Lord's faithful followers, who like them were to be sacrificed, should be, at length, complete.5 It was a mighty harvest, a harvest of bloodshed, which Saint John beheld. He himself was overtaken by this persecution and be came its most illustrious victim. As sole survivor of the Apostolic college, this " dearly beloved disciple of Jesus," was regarded by the entire Church with a special venera tion. We have lost sight of him since the day when Saint Paul arrived in Jerusalem to explain his Gospel before the Apostles Peter, James, and John, whom he considered the pillars of Christianity.6 What became of him in the days that followed ? So long as Mary lived, it would appear that he dwelt in Jerusalem. The dying Jesus had bequeathed to him the care of His mother,7 John accepted the heritage, and seems to have made it his principal care, since we nowhere encounter him as a i Apoc. ii. 10. 2 Id., ii. 13. - Id., v. 6; vi. 9, 10. 4 Id., xx. 4. 5 Id., iv. 10, 11. c Gal. ii. 1,2,9. 7 John xix. 26, 27. 72 SAINT JOHN. leader in the earliest efforts of the Apostles. Thereafter he only appears at Peter's side, and almost like his shadow, at the miracle of the Gate Beautiful ; before the Sanhe drin; in Samaria; at the Assembly of Jerusalem.1 So, near to Jesus' heart, and in the company of Mary, " the Son of the Thunderbolt"2 had learned to temper that impetuosity which, more than once, the Saviour had been forced to chasten ; his whole being was absorbed in love, in contemplation, and in study of that Divine Charity, whereof he was to be the evangelist in the evening of his days. In the lowly home which he offered as a refuge to the Mother of Jesus, John had become wonted to a life of retirement ; and so, when Mary left him and fell asleep for the last time in his sight to awaken in the skies,3 John's preaching did not take on that bold char acter presaged both by the zeal of his youth and by his ardent love for Jesus. Undoubtedly, like his brethren in the Apostleship, he preached the Gospel ; like them, his life was devoted to making the Saviour better known and loved ; but his ministry had none of the striking charac teristics which distinguished that of Peter and James, and of Paul, especially. Scanty in matters of detail as is tradition concerning the other Apostles, it at least indi cates in what parts of the world they labored. But as l Acts iii. 1-11 ; iv. 1-22 ; viii. 14-25 ; xv. 1-31 and Gal. ii. 1, 2, 9. 2 Mark iii. 17. 8 An arbitrary interpretation of an obscure text is the sole foundation on which is based the opinion which locates the last residence and the tomb of the Blessed Virgin at Ephesus. 'Evflo <5 fltoAo-yos 'ladvvris ical 77 fleoroKos irapBevos r) ayia Mapia (Cone. Ephes. Mansi). This text of the council of Ephesus entirely lacks a verb ; it does not state, therefore, that Mary and John were entombed in the place where the Fathers were writ ing, but may just as well signify that both were there venerated in one and the same sanctuary: perhaps that double church the ruins of which are still standing to the north of the Forum of Ephesus (Weber, Guide du voyageur a Ephese, pp. 24, 25) . The tradition which records that Jerusalem was the last home of the Holy Virgin rests, on the contrary, upon explicit testimony, which, it is true, only dates back to the fifth century, but comes nevertheless from witnesses of great weight, owing to the preciseness and continuity of their evidence. It was not, indeed, until the first half of that century, under the episcopate of Juvenal (429-458), that Mary's tomb was discovered at Gethsemane ; thereafter, all down the centuries, the pilgrims' narratives mention this venerable sepulchre on this same spot, as well as the church which speedily enclosed it. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 73 for Saint John, during the lives of Peter and Paul, it leaves him in complete oblivion and makes no mention of him until the closing years of the first Christian century ; but, as if to make up for this neglect, it displays him then in a r6le of incomparable majesty, dominating the end of the Apostolic age by his writings and by the unanimous respect he is invested withal. Proconsular Asia, now become his residence, was the seat whence John exercised this empire. Thither he had sought refuge after the fall of Jerusalem. Nor was he alone : those leading men of the Mother Church that had not fled over beyond Jordan accompanied him. Papias of Hierapolis speaks of a large company of Elders gathered about John ; as intimates of the Apostles, having seen and heard them, they could repeat at first hand their reminis cences " of what they had heard said by Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, Matthew, and the other disciples of the Lord." x Outside of Saint John, Saint Philip is the only one of these Apostolic men whose ministry has left any lasting traces. From a union contracted before he was called by the Saviour, he had three daughters, who followed him to Asia and there were employed in what was then called the "gift of prophecy," with duties similar to those of the deaconesses. Two of them were virgins, the third married and led, like her sisters, a holy life, absorbed in spiritual things ; she died at Ephesus.2 Philip and his two other daughters resided in Hierapolis, where, in the third century, the Montanist Proclus mentions having seen their tombs.3 Papias, Bishop of that city about 130, had known these virgins and from them gathered some 1 Papias, quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eceles., iii. xxxix). 2 The fact that the Deacon Philip the Evangelist had also virgin daughters who prophesied' (Acts xxi. 8, 9) led to some confusion among ancient writers who identified him with the apostle Philip. Eusebius (H. E. iii. xxxi.) misunderstands and confuses the testimonies of Poly crates, the Montanist Proclus, and the Acts of the Apostles. The most reliable of those statements seems to be that of Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus, in the latter part of the second century, who writes to Pope Victor that " Philip was one of the Twelve Apostles." 3 Polycrates of Ephesus, quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eceles., iii. xxxi.). 74 SAINT JOHN. marvellous tales, notably of a resurrection from the dead, happening in their day, probably at the prayer of the Apostle. They related how Joseph Barsabas drank a deadly poison, but was spared any ill effect. "John, Philip, and his pious daughters," adds Polycrates of Ephe sus, "were the great lights of the Asia of that day. They are extinguished, but only to reappear at the last day at the Lord's advent, when He shall come from heaven in His glory, to gather His chosen ones." 2 Having thus inherited all that was most venerable in Christian Jerusalem, Asia Minor became the centre whence the Glad Tidings emanated most effectively. Antioch had never been so famous or so fruitful. Rome, unquestionably, by virtue of its position as the See of Peter, was considered the head of the pastoral hierarchy and supreme seat of truth, but Rome no longer had its great Apostles. More fortunate at this period, Asia pos sessed John, the well-beloved of Jesus, His companion from the very first, His trustworthy and unanswerable witness. Paul's glory among these churches which he had begotten unto the Christ was thereby dimmed, since, striking as were his words, it was well known that he had been converted much later, and that he had never known the Divine Master personally. John, on the contrary, had beheld him with his own eyes, heard Him with his ears, touched Him with his hands; he had rested on His breast,2 and from that source divine had drawn such visions of light, and a love so fervid, that none like him could speak of God ; he was known, above all others, as the Theologian.3 All Asia, with one voice, had accorded him this title, but, even more than for light, they went to him to find new Christian life. In the thirty years that had elapsed since Paul's last visit to this region, the gospel had never ceased spreading. Almost all the towns had churches of their own, and at the head of these com- 1 Papias, loc. cit. 2 John xxi. 20. 8 Many of the ancient Fathers so entitle him : S. Athanasins, Synopsis Scriptural Sacroz, 73. S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., xii. 1, etc. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 75 munities there was no longer a college of Elders, as in the primitive times, but a Bishop. There, as everywhere else, the hierarchy took on, little by little, its definitive form. Without confining himself to any one of these sees, John treated them all with a lofty fatherliness, as being under that universal jurisdiction bestowed by the Saviour on His Apostles, which should only disappear with the last of their number. Tradition points to Ephesus as the usual residence of the Apostle during his stay in Asia.1 The Master had foretold for him a baptism of blood, but without declaring to him either its manner or date.2 He may well have believed that that hour had struck during these days of Domitian's persecution. The tyrant, as we have seen3 disquieted by the rumors which promised the Empire to descendants of the Kings of Juda, had given orders to seek out all the members of that noble stock. After the grandsons of Jude were brought to Rome from far away Batanaea and had been forced to defend themselves on this sole charge, what was more natural than that John, re nowned as he was as having lived in intimate relations with the Christ, should have fallen under the same ban ? He also was haled to Rome. Very ancient traditions establish the fact beyond a doubt that it was in that city he received the sentence of death. Peter and Paul, by watering Christian Rome with their blood, had already assured it an inexhaustible fertility, but Jesus desired that His dearly beloved disciple, by shedding his, should still further increase the faith and love of the supreme Church. The traditional scene appointed for his execution is the Latin Gate,4 or, more exactly, the open space which was later occupied by this entrance to Rome.5 The torture 1 Acta Sanctorum, 24 John. 2 Mark x. 39. 3 See above, Chapter VI. page 66. 4 Baronius, 92, 553. Tillemont, Me'moires, S. Jean 1'EvAngeliste, Art. v. 5 This gate, giving access to the Appian Way, was not opened until the days when Aurelian narrowed the city's boundaries. Iu the outer 76 SAINT JOHN. began with the flogging which was always its precursor. Thus it was that under the knout John's blood in turn fructified the Roman soil. After this mournful prelude,1 came the real torment, whereof the Acts of the Apostles cites other examples : the victim was plunged into boiling oil.2 But still the hour foretold by the Christ had not arrived, the hour when He Himself would come for His disciple and take him to Himself for evermore.3 To the amazement of the onlookers, John came forth from the fiery bath safe and sound. Was it due to their emotion, or to pity, or mere prudence on the judges' part ? At all events he was spared. Some little time must have elapsed between his arrest at Ephe sus and his condemnation at Rome. In that interval Domitian bad become reassured as to the Christians' aims and had begun to relax his proceedings against them. Inspired from on high, this movement of clemency led the magistrates to desist from further cruelties toward an aged man whom they had beheld snatched from death by a miracle ; they were content with ordering his transpor tation to the Isle of Patmos, there to labor in the mines.4 walls of Servins, the Porta Capena served as entrance to two highways, the Latin and the Appian. Jordan, Topographic der Stadt Rom., vol. ii. pp. 155, 163-166, 335. 1 A mosaic in the Lateran represents the whipping of the Apostle: one noteworthy detail in this is that John's hair has been cut short, and many hold that this was done by order of the Emperor who was bald. Ciampini, De sacris JEdifi, ii. 8. 2 Kraus, Real Encyklopozdie der Christlichen Alterthumer, Martykium, i. ii. 8 John xxi. 22. _ 4 Tertullian is the first witness of tradition who makes known just what trials S. John had to endure : when felicitating the Roman church on having been enriched by the teaching and the blood of the great Apostles. " Peter," he says, " suffered the same torture as the Master ; Paul was crowned, by dying like John the Baptist ; the Apostle John, after having been immersed in boiling oil, was banished to an island " (De Prozscript., 36). _ Very many of the Fathers have preserved and lent their authority to this tradition and a large number of them name the place whither John was exiled the Isle of Patmos. S. Irensus, Hozr., v. 30. Clement of Alexandria, Quis dives salv., 42. Origen, In Matth., xvi. 6. S. Vic- torinus of Pettau, In Apocah/p., Ex Cap. x. 11 ; Ex Cap. xvii. 10. Migne, Patrol, lat., v. 333, 338. Eusebius, Hist. Eceles., iii. xvii. S. Jerome, Contr. Jovin., i. 26. Though unanimous in attesting to the THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 77 Rome's penal colonies were always located in the wildest districts or on desolate islands. Patmos was no exception to this rigorous rule, displaying to the eyes of the traveller naught save a long chain of volcanic rocks, broken in two and connected by a narrow isthmus. To the east, its shores enclose a goodly harbor much fre quented by navigators between Rome and Ephesus. Thereabouts was concentrated all the life and wealth of the island, for almost everywhere its soil is barren. The name Palmosa which it bore in the Middle Age, would indicate that it was onceshaded by palm-trees. Of these there remains but a clump, in the valley called "The Saint's Garden;" elsewhere, we see nothing but scanty fields and vineyards.1 Jesus could not have provided for his Apostle a soli tude where he would be more wholly absorbed in Him. John abode alone amid Greeks, solely occupied in their humble business. Had they been even more distinguished . in intellect and feeling, what had they to offer which he did not possess in over-abundance in his union with the Christ ? Ephesus and Ionia had displayed before his eyes the marvels of Greek Art; no memory, nor any image drawn from them is to be noted in his writings ; not one single allusion to that poetry which is the glory of Hellas. The lovely isles round about Patmos have been celebrated by the bards of old. In their songs John hears only the discordant note, that mad worship of the sensible world, a deification of Nature's charms ; from such fables he turned in disgust. His gaze, all his thoughts, were rapt on matters of far deeper import, on the churches of Asia now in the midst of the persecution's worst horrors. He could easily corn- fact of the Martyrdom, three Fathers do not agree as to the period when it took place. Clement of Alexandria and Origen do not give the name of the persecuting ruler. S. Epiphanius ([/ceres, li. 2) speaks of Claudius. Tertullian would seem to imply that all three Apostles suffered together under Nero; but, with much more reason, Eusebius and S. Jerome desig nate Domitian, and their opinion has generally prevailed. 1 Boss, Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln, ii. 123-139. Tischendorf, Reise in's Morgenland, ii. 258-265. Victor Gue'rin, Description de Vile de Patmos. 78 SAINT JOHN. municate with them, for Miletus, Ephesus itself, were but a few hours' sea-journey distant. He learned that there, as at Rome, the believers were being despoiled, impris oned, put to death ; but these were but outward sufferings, glorious struggles, which would but bring about a closer union of the martyrs with the Christ ; a much more fear some trial threatened their faith, which he considered more imperilled than their lives. That heresy which had so disturbed Saint Paul, continued to undermine these churches, under a form at once more hateful and more seductive. The germs of impurity it fostered had blossomed out in broad day. Now become a methodical system of teachings, known as "The Doctrine of the Nicolaltes," l it threatened to corrupt the whole body. The real origin of the Nicolaites is still uncertain ; it would seem that they were Israelites and that their main efforts had in view the Christians of their own race, for in branding their infamy, the Apostle makes use of refer ences and terms familiar only to Jews. " T is a Synagogue of Satan," he says ; " they say they are Jews and they are not.2 Their doctrine is that of Balaam who taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat meats sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication." 3 Always this twofold temptation had proven a pitfall for that carnal people. They were only arrived at the thresh old of the Promised Land when Balac bade the daughters of Moab spread their foul nets, wherein the Israelites forthwith fell.4 Like dangers awaited them in Judea, the country of religious voluptuaries. In Phoenicia, as in the land of Canaan, license pushed to the point of madness was regarded as an act of religion. It took the Prophets centuries of strife to repress these unholy rites. This leaning towards the most shameless forms of idolatry became even more noticeable after the return from Baby- 1 Apoc, ii. 15. 2 Id., iii. 9. 8 Id., ii. 14. 4 " And the people began to commit fornication with the daughters of Moab and they called them to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people did eat and bowed down before their gods. And Israel joined himself unto Baal-Peor and the wrath of the Eternal was kindled against Israel." Num. xxv. 1-3. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 79 Ion. The sufferings of their protracted exile, the Schools established in every part of Palestine, had purified their morals and elevated their minds, but none the less there remained, deep down in the nature of every Jew, that seed of sensuality. " You are still like your fathers before you," Saint Stephen tells them, " uncircumcised of heart." 1 And of this they gave proof in the churches of Asia, when, hardly as yet won over to the Gospel, their worst instincts reappeared. Once enfranchised from the bondage of the Law in the Christ, they held that they were freed of all restraints ; we find them taking part in pagan festivals and sacred orgies, reproducing them in their 6wn religious gatherings and transforming the pure mysteries of our faith into Bacchanalian revels. There is naught to in dicate that they had then proceeded to that pitch of infamy unveiled by Saint Epiphanius ; 2 but the tremendous scorn wherewith the Apostle scourges the Nicolaites leaves no doubt that their excesses had already grown intolerable. How did the name of one of the seven Deacons 3 come to be associated with this sect ? Tradition explains it in various ways. Nicholas of Antioch had a wife of unusual beauty, and had separated from her, in order to devote himself entirely to the Church. According to certain ac counts, he lacked the greatness of soul to break beyond recall those bonds which had united them ; he returned to her, lost little by little all fervor for the faith, and fell finally so low as to become the head and promoter of an unclean heresy.4 Others recount, with more apparent likelihood, that when the woman's beauty caused men to accuse him of jealousy he offered to let any one who would take her from him. Thereby he merely meant to testify to his complete renunciation of all he had held dearest ; the sectaries, seizing upon this unconsidered remark, held 1 Acts vii. 51 . 2 S. Epiphanius, Hozres,, xxv. xxvi. In the opinion of the first witnesses of tradition, the Nicolaites were but one of the numerous and unclean sects of Gnosticism. S. Irenseus, Hozres., iii. 11. 8 Acts vi. 3. 4 S. Irenseus, Hozres., i. xxvi. 3. Hippolytus, Philosophoumena, i. vii. 36. S. Epiphanius, i. ii. Hozres., 25. 80 SAINT JOHN. that Nicholas had authorized the holding of women in common. Just as unfairly, they took advantage of this other saying of the holy Deacon : " One must needs abuse his flesh." By this Nicholas meant that men must repress their instincts, crucifying them with Jesus and for Jesus.1 Changing a counsel of penance into a licentious maxim, they urged it as being a full permission to yield to temp tations. Nor were they content with merely travestying the teachings of Nicholas after this fashion ; they went so far in their impudence as to hold him up as their founder and use his name as their mask. The fact that these fables gained currency in Asia would prove, 'either that the Deacon was dead, or that he lived far away and in ig norance of them ; for we find no evidence that he pro tested against this misuse of his name, as he assuredly would have done had he known of it ; the most trust worthy witness in all that concerns him, Clement of Alex andria, tells us that he remained to his last day the self-same man he was when the Apostles chose him to be one of the Deacons, " full of the Holy Ghost and of wis dom." 2 He expressly asserts that Nicholas never had to do with any woman, after he had generously separated from his wife ; and that he and his whole family lived and died in the odor of sanctity.3 Apparently it was during the troublous days of the persecution that the Nicolaites unmasked their true char acter as it is depicted in the Apocalypse. John's pres ence at Ephesus had held them in restraint ; they deemed it possible to venture anything once he had been removed to Rome and thereafter banished for life to Patmos ; but from this final abode the Apostle kept his watchful eyes on the Christian congregations of Asia. Trembling for their faith, he resolved to address to them a sort of En cyclical, which, by being passed from church to church, might sustain their drooping courage and overawe the heretics. 1 Clement of Alexandria, Stromat., iii. iv. Eusebius, Hist. Eceles., iii. xxix. Theodoret, Hozret. Fab., iii.- 1. 2 Acts vi. 3. 8 Clement of Alexandria, Stromat., iii. iv. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 81 This Epistle, which nowadays has become incorporated with the Apocalypse, forms its three opening chapters. In many ways it differs from the other Apostolic letters. Therein Saint John assumes the manner and tone of the Prophets of Israel, or, to be more precise, he allows the objects to reflect themselves therein which had altogether occupied his mind on the rock of Patmos. Doubtless since his first coming to Asia the turn of his thoughts, and of his language especially, had become conformed by degrees to that of the Alexandrian believers with whom he had as sociated daily ; but, nevertheless, he had lived the Jewish life too long not to revert instinctively to its modes of thinking, when he found himself in this place, abandoned to himself. The bloody tragedies of Rome, whence he had just escaped by a miracle, reminded him of that sudden catastrophe wherein banished Israel had beheld Babylon overwhelmed : accordingly, the Prophets of that Captivity became the nourishment and stay of his soul, when the rough work in the mines left him a moment's leisure. Hence comes, doubtless, theJBiblical coloring, the strange forms his words are clothed in, an imagery formerly bor rowed by Ezechiel and Daniel from the Assyrian world, and which we encounter again in the Visions of Patmos. Hence, too, the very notable part played therein by mys tical numbers.1 We know what importance was attached to them in the eyes of antiquity, as much among pagans as by the Jews, and what mysterious properties were at tributed to them.2 Pythagoras looks upon them as " the first principles of things." Divested of the more or less exaggerated commentaries of his disciples, the formula of the Greek sage may be reduced to this very acceptable 1 "In the numbers of the Apocalypse, we must learn to grasp a certain mystic reason, whereby the Holy Ghost desires to make us more keenly attentive." Bossuet, ('Apocalypse, chap. vii. 4. "... Numeris quos in Scripturis esse sacratissimos et mysteriorum plenissimos . . . dignissime credimus." S. Augustine, Quozstiones in Genesim, i. clii. 2 Aristotle, Metaphys., i. v. and vi. ; xii. vi. and viii. iElian, Variaz Historioz, iv. xvii. josephus, Bell. Jud., vii. v. 5. Philo., passim. Mischna, Pirke Aboth, v. 7, 8. 6 s 82 SAINT JOHN. interpretation, namely, that the primitive elements whereof the world is composed, being perfectly ordered, make the universe one immense harmony. And though number, indeed, is neither the source of life, nor even the type of being, it is to this concept what color is to the drawing, what melody is to the song; without adding anything which is essential to the thought, it gives it its strength and brilliancy, makes it more striking, expresses the most delicate turns of thinking, succeeds in depicting to our eyes and rendering audible to our ears that which words are powerless to utter. Among the numbers held in special honor among the ancients, Seven holds incontestably the highest place : it is the mystical number deemed sacred beyond all others. Throughout the Orient, Persians, Assyrians, as well as Jews, ascribe to it this primacy.1 Principally, it is when God enters into relations with His creatures that we find the Holy Books of Israel making use of it ; it denotes, not simply the supernatural character of the divine action, but the fulness, the universality, the perfection where with God operates. In sign that God's seal was set upon his letter, John takes good care that this mystical num ber should everywhere be in evidence therein. He speaks in the name of the Seven Spirits who stand before the Eternal ; the Son of Man appears to him having Seven Stars in His hand, amid the Seven Golden Candlesticks. 1 The hallowed character of the number Seven seems to arise from the six days of creation and the Seventh whereon He rested, for we find it honored especially wherever the pure traditions concerning the origin of the world have been preserved, as among the Assyrians and Hebrews ( Vigouroux, la Bible et les decouvertes modernes, Part I. Book 1 . Chap. 1 . S. Jerome, in Annos, v.). In the Mosaic worship this number is like the divine seal set on everything which concerns the Eternal. We know with what rigor the Seventh Day of the week, the Sabbath, is consecrated to Him (Exod. xxxi. 15). The Paschaltide lasts seven days (ibid., xii. 16) ; seven weeks elapse between this Feast and Pentecost (Lev. xxiii. 15) ; the Golden Candlestick in the Holy Place has seven branches (Exod. xxv. 31-40; xxxvii. 17-24); seven unblemished lambs are offered as a holo caust at Pentecost (Lev. xxiii. 18); in the sacrifices for sin, seven sprinklings of blood are prescribed (ibid., xvi. 14), etc. From the East, the idea of perfection attached to the number Seven had passed over to the Greek and Roman world. Among many other witnesses to the fact, see Macrobius, Somnium Scipionis, i. 6. Aulius Gellius, iii. 10. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 83 And when among the numerous Churches of Asia we find him addressing his words to Seven only, may we not rightfully suppose that it is for the same mystical reasons that he limits them to this number ? Indeed, it behooves us ever to bear in mind that the Seer of Patmos is not, like Saint Paul, an athlete, a soldier of the Christ, con testing here on earth step by step with the foeman he would overcome ; he is writing in a supernatural world, in a holy ecstasy.1 John unto the Seven Churches which are in Asia : "Grace and peace from Him that is, that was, that is to come,2 and from the Seven Spirits which stand before His Throne,8 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful Witness, the first begotten of the dead,4 Prince of the kings of the world, Who hath loved us, Who hath washed us from our sins in His own Blood, Who hath made us the Kingdom and Priests of God His Father : 5 to Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen ! " Behold He cometh on the clouds, and every eye shall see Him, even they which pierced Him;6 and at sight of Him all the tribes of the earth shall bewail themselves.7 Amen ! " I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, that is, that was, that is to come, the Almighty. " I John, your brother, and your partner in tribulation and in the kingdom and the patience in Jesus Christ, was in the Isle which is called Patmos, because of the Word of God, and the testimony which I had given unto Jesus. On the Lord's day I was taken up in the spirit and I heard i Ephes. vi. 11-17 ; 2 Tim. iv. 7-8. 2 'EyovSp.Tij' kv Trj/evfiari. Apoc. i. 10. 8 This is only a more explicit form of the saying in Exodus (iii. 14) : " And God said unto Moses : I am that I am." 4 Israel had kuown and revered long since these Seven Spirits who, the Apostle tells us, stand before God's throne, ready to carry His orders over the world and see that they are fulfilled, for mention is made of them in the Book of Tobias (xii. 15), which, as even most of the Eationalists agree, antedates the Christian Era. 6 S. Paul (Coloss. i. 18), in like manner, calls Jesus "the first born from among the dead," that is the first, Who, by rising from the womb of Death, has taken on life anew, the Life Eternal. 6 1 Peter ii. 9. 7 Zachar. xii. 10. 84 SAINT JOHN. behind me a great Voice, like the peal of a trumpet, which said: '"What thou seest, write in a book and send it to the Seven Churches which are in Asia, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamus, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, to Laodicea.' " And I turned to see the Voice that spake to me, and being turned, I saw Seven Golden Candlesticks, and in the midst of the candlesticks one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a long garment and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and His hair seemed white as pure wool, like snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire. His feet were like unto fine brass glowing in a fiery furnace ; and His voice as the voice of great waters. He had in His right hand Seven Stars, and out of His mouth went forth a sharp two-edged Sword. His countenance was as the sun when it shineth in its strength.1 " And when I saw Him I fell at His feet as dead ; but He laid His right hand upon me and said to me : " ' Fear not ! I am the First, and the Last, the Living One. I was dead, and behold, I am living for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of Death aud Hell.' " Of a truth, a strange picture this ! So incongruous are its features that it scarcely appeals to the imagination, and we look in vain for the elements of beauty, even in a superhuman sense: there is neither any order, nor har monious proportions, nor a just conformity of the whole. The Greeks, accustomed to their perfect productions in Art, were even less likely than we are to appreciate it. Consequently it seems most likely that John, though not neglecting or forgetting the interests of the Hellenic part of the Asiatic churches, destined his work, first and foremost, for the benefit of the believers in those com munities who belonged by extraction to the Synagogue. 1 This portrait of the Son of Man recalls a very similar appearance He made before the gaze of Daniel on the banks of the Tigris: "Then I lifted my eyes and I beheld a Man clothed in linen ; His loins were girded with very fine gold; His body was like a chrysolite; His face gleamed like the lightning and His eyes like flames of fire ; His arms and His feet had the appearance of sparkling brass and the sound of His voice was like the noise of a multitude." Daniel x. 5, 6. THE LETTER TO THE SE1HEN CHURCHES. 85 Naturally as he had lived with them hitherto in the intimacy of the Jewish life, he would be most attached to them, and consequently to them he would speak most particularly in his letter. He knew that they cared far less for the plastic elements, by aid of which an idea assumes its form, than for the brilliancy and power where with it is clothed. God inspired him with the idea of setting his Vision in more striking relief, by using the same grandiose images which Ezechiel and Daniel had borrowed from Babylonian Art, and which thereafter had been familiar figures to the Israelitish mind. What it most behooves us, therefore, to recognize in all the sym bolical features figuring forth the Saviour, is just what was intended by Ezechiel in his " Cherubim," and his life-endowed " Chariot," by Daniel with his fantastic ani mals, to wit, some idea or fact which is merely presented to us in this guise to increase our desire to grasp it more fully. Interpreters have but too well understood this duty of casting aside the husk of the letter, for, in their eager ness to comprehend the hidden sense of the Sacred Word, they have frabricated many a meaning which has been far more ingenious than probable. The surest means of arriving at the real signification attached to each by the Seer, is to discover in what sense the same expression is used in the Prophets and in Jewish traditions. There are very few of the symbolical terms which do not admit of being explained thus after the most likely fashion. The long robe in which the Son of Man is attired, is that of the Priests of Israel, and indicates the eternal Priesthood of the Christ. The cincture, as well, was part of the sacerdotal vestments,1 but in token of Jesus' Kingship it is of gold. The locks and the head are of a dazzling white, like driven snow and the purest wool. This is reminiscent of Daniel, who speaks of his " Ancient of Days " as having white hair, an emblem of His Eter nity.2 Another of the Prophet's visions suggests the idea 1 Exod. xxviii. 31-41. 2 Daniel vii. 9. 86 SAINT JOHN. of making the gaze of the Christ like a flame which il lumines the righteous and devours the wicked ; of giving His footsteps in the supernatural world the blinding glow and the invincible heat of molten brass ; x to His voice the majestic eloquence of great waters.2 As for the two- edged sword that comes forth from the mouth of the Son of Man, it was a common figure of speech among the Jews : it images " the Word of God, living and effectual, more piercing than a sword sharpened on both edges, penetrat ing into the recesses of the soul and of the spirit, unto the joints and the marrow, discerning the thoughts and the intents of the heart." 3 These symbols only depict the divine attributes of the Christ. Now John's gaze had not been absorbed by this glorious nimbus of his Vision : what he had ever first in mind, what he recalls over and over again in moving ac cents, is the Heart of Jesus, Saviour and Redeemer of our souls : " He hath loved us," he says, " and hath washed away our sins in His Blood ; He hath made us Kings and Priests of God His Father." 4 Another detail about the Son of Man denotes a fruit of His coming no less precious than our Royal Priesthood. Jesus holds in His right hand Seven Stars, and Himself explains their meaning to the Apostle : " The Seven Stars are the Angels of the Seven Churches : " 5 whereby he would have us understand the Bishops of those religious communities. Thus the Divine Pastor portrays to us the ecclesiastical Hierarchy modelled after the image of the Heavenly Hierarchy. The Bishop, in whom Jesus lives anew in the fulness of the priesthood, has the same mission as the Angels, as regards the faithful committed to their care ; he must needs main tain in them the unity of faith and love, purifying and enlightening them, perfecting in them the supernatural life, which from him should circulate throughout the mys tical body whereof he is the head. In the divine econ omy and in the Saviour's eyes, the Bishop is in a manner 1 Daniel x. 6. 2 Ezechiel xliii. 2. 8 Hebr. iv. 12. 4 Apoc. i. 5, 6. 5 Apoc. i. 20. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 87 an incarnation of his Church : consequently it is in his person that John is bade to address each of the Churches of Asia figured under the form of the seven golden candle sticks. " Write, therefore, that which thou hast seen, that which is, and that which shall be. " Unto the Angel of the Church of Ephesus, " Lo, thus saith He that holdeth the Seven Stars in His right hand, Who walketh in the midst of the Seven Golden Candlesticks : — " I know thy works, and thy labor, and thy patience, and that thou canst not bear them that are evil. Thou hast tried them that say they are Apostles, and are not, aud hast found them liars ; thou art patient, thou hast suffered for My Name and thou hast not fainted. But somewhat I have against thee, because thou hast cooled in thy first love. Be mindful therefore from whence thou hast fallen, repent and return to thy first works : else will I come unto thee, and except thou dost penance, I will remove thy Candlestick out of its place.1 Nevertheless this hast thou done well that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaites, which I hate also. "Let him that hath ears, hearken to what the Spirit saith unto the Churches. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life which is in the Paradise of God.2 " To the Angel of the Church of Smyrna, " These things saith the First and the Last, which was dead and is alive : — " I know thy sufferings and thy poverty (in reality thou art rich) ; 8 I know that thou art calumniated by them that say they are Jews and are not, but are the Synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold the Devil will cast some of you into prison that you 1 I will remove thee from the Church which is entrusted to thee and I will give it unto another Pastor. 2 Reminiscent of Eden, in which was the Tree of Life, the fruits whereof, had our first parents remained faithful to the Lord, would have assured them the beatific vision and immortal life. Gen. iii. 22. 3 Rich, that is, in real wealth, the possession of the virtues and super natural life. 88 SAINT JOHN. may be tried : you shall have ten days of tribulation.1 Be faithful unto death and I will give you the Crown of Life. "He that hath ears to hear let him hearken to what the Spirit saith unto the Churches. He that overcometh shall not suffer the Second Death.2 " Unto the Angel of the Church of Pergamus, " Lo thus saith He that hath the Two-edged Sword : — " I know where thou dwellest, there where the Seat of Satan is ; s and thou boldest fast My Name, and hast not de nied My Faith, even in the days when Antipas,4 My faithful witness, suffered death among you, in the place where Satan dwelleth. But I have somewhat against thee : 't is that there be among you men that hold the doctrine of Balaam,6 who taught Balac to east a stumbling-block before the chil dren of Israel, that they should eat things sacrificed unto idols and commit fornication. So hast thou, also, them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaites. Repent; else will I come to thee quickly, and will fight against them with the Sword of My mouth. " He that hath ears let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches : To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the Hidden Manna, and I will likewise give unto him a white stone, and on this stone shall be written a new Name which none knoweth save he that receiveth it.8 •" Unto the Angel of the Church of Thyatira, 1 Probably this number ought to be taken literally. Their trial would be severe, but of short duration. 2 The first death separates the soul from the body ; the second entombs both body and soul in Hell. ' 8 Pergamus boasted of a far-famed Temple of .iEsculapius (Tacitus, Annales, iii. 63) ; but it was not so much the throngs attracted thither by this sanctuary of the God of Healing, as it was the fanaticism of its citi zens which won for this city the name of " Satan's Throne." 4 Two Bishops of Cesarsea in Cappadocia, Andreas and Arteas, in the ninth century still had in their possession the Acts of this holy Martyr. (Commentaria in Apocalyps. in loco. Migue, Patrol, grozc, vol. cvi. pp. 237 and 535.) The Martyrologies tell us that Antipas perished inside a brazen bull heated red hot. Acta Sanctorum, April, ii. pp. 3-5. Tillemont, Memoires, ii., Persecution de Domitien, p. 119, and note, p. 523. 6 Numbers xxiv. xxv. 6 The mysterious Manna is the bread wherewith the Angels are fed (Ps. lxxxvii. 25). The name, written on a white stone, in token of for giveness and triumph, is the Name wherein, for the Christian, all is summed up, — Jesus, Whom only those know who, having received it by their Faith, and made one with Him by their Charity, taste and see how sweet it is to such as love Him. (Ps. xxx. 20.) THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 89 "These things saith the Son of God, He that hath eyes like flame, and feet like unto sparkling brass : — " I know thy works, and thy love, and thy faith, and thy charity for the poor, and thy patience, and thy last works which exceed the former. But I have this against thee that thou sufferest the woman Jezabel,1 who calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to lead My servants to commit fornication, and to eat meats sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to do penance and she will not repent of her fornication. Behold I will cast her into a bed,2 her and them that commit adultery with her, and I will over whelm them in great tribulation, except they repent of their works. And I will kill her children, and all the Churches shall know that I am He that searcheth the reins and the hearts, and I will render to each according to his works. As for the rest of you at Thyatira, who hold not this doc trine, neither know what they call 'the Profundities of Satan,' s I will lay upon you no other burthen save to hold fast that which you have till I come. "To him that overcometh and keepeth My works unto the end, to him will I give power over the Nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, and shall break them in pieces like earthen vessels, as I also have received power of My Father, and I will give him the Morning Star.4 Let him that hath ears hearken to what the Spirit saith unto the Churches. " Unto the Angel of the Church of Sardis, "Lo thus saith He that holdeth the Seven Spirits of God, and the Seven Stars : — 1 This name may designate either the Synagogue of Thyatira, or some Jewish congregation, which by its corrupting doctrines recalled the influ ence exercised in the time of Achab by his unworthy consort, the Phoeni cian Jezabel. 2 I will afflict her with a fearful malady. 8 A ruse common to all the Gnostics, Nicolaites, Valentinians, et al., was to delude their adherents into believing that the Higher Science, which they alone possessed, the Gnosis, was an unfathomable, inaccessible abyss : the 0vS6s. In a word, S. John illumines those depths which only impose on men by reason of the mysterious shadows enshrouding them ; he unveils them and shows that naught lurks therein save their own evil genius, as ever corrupt and corrupting, Satan. 4 Jesus is this Morning Star. Balaam had designated Him by that name in his Prophecy. " A Star shall rise from Jacob " (Num. xxiv. 17), and the Saviour Himself assumes the title at the close of the Apocalypse (xxii. 16) : " And I Jesus, ... I am the bright Star, the Morning Star. 90 SAINT JOHN. " I know thy works ; thou hast the name of being alive and thou art dead. Be watchful and strengthen that which is dying, for I find not thy works full before My God. Re member therefore how thou hast received the Word, and keep it, and repent. If thou dost not watch, I will come like a thief and thou shalt not know at what hour I will come. Nevertheless thou hast a few names in Sardis, which have not defiled their garments ; these shall walk with Me clad in white, because they are worthy. " He that overcometh shall likewise be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life, and I will confess his name before My Father, and be fore His Angels. He that hath ears let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches. " Unto the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia, "Behold thus sayeth the Holy One, and the True, He that hath the Key of David, Who openeth, and no man shutteth ; Who shutteth, and no man openeth : * — " I know thy works ; I have set before thee a Door which no man can shut; though thou art weak, yet hast thou kept My word, and thou hast not denied My Name. Behold, I give unto thee these people of the Synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie. Because thou hast kept My word of patience,2 I also will preserve thee from. the hour of temptation which shall come upon the whole world to try them that dwell upon the earth. Lo, I come quickly! Hold fast that thou hast, that no man take away thy Crown. " Him that overcometh, I will make a pillar in the Tem ple of My God, and he shall go no more out, and I will write upon this pillar the Name of My God, and the name of the City of My God, the New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of Heaven from My God, as also My new Name.3 1 As Son of David, Heir to his kingdom (Luke i. 32), the realm of souls, Jesus holds in His hands the keys thereof ; He opens and shuts as He sees fit. 2 My bidding to fear nothing by My side, to have courage, to believe in Me without any hesitancy or any reserve (Matt. xxi. 2), 22; Mark xi. 24; John xi. 25; xiv. 1, etc.) ; to be steadfast and possess one's soul, whatsoever happens, with immovable patience (Luke xxi. 19). 8 "The Name of My God," that is to say, "of My Father Who is your Father" (John xx. 17), of " our Father in Heaven " (Matt. vi. 9) ; very different was the God before Whom Israel trembled, Whose Name it durst not utter, Whom none might behold and live (Exod. xxxiii. 20). THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 91 Let him that hath ears hearken to what the Spirit saith unto the Churches. "Unto the Angel of the Church of Laodicea, " Lo thus saith the Amen,1 the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God : 2 — " I know thy works, thou art neither cold, nor hot. I would thou wert cold or hot ! But because thou art luke warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to spue thee out of My mouth. Thou say est unto thyself : I am rich, I am overflowing with goods, and have need of tnothing ;. and thou seest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire,8 that thou mayest be truly rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed,4 and an eye-salve wherewith to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. I rebuke and chasten them that I love. Be zealous, therefore, and repent ! Behold I stand at the gate and knock ; if any one hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with Me. "To him that overcometh I will give to sit with Me on My throne, as I also have overcome and am set down with My Father on His Throne. He that hath ears let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches." Evidently the Seven Churches named in this letter do not comprise all the Christian communities of Asia: in " The name of the City of My God," is no longer either that of the old time Jerusalem, or of the Synagogue, a cold and cruel step-mother, with steely talons, her bowels dried and dead, but the Church, the New Jeru salem, descended from the heavens to be the Bride of the Saviour and the Mother of all such as are His. " My new Name, which is none of those given Me by the Old Covenant — Messiah, Son of Man, Son of God, — but the Name which an Angel was sent from Heaven to bear to Mary : 'Thou shalt call His Name Jesus'" (Luke i. 31), the Jesus of the Manger, of the Eucharist, of the Cross. 1 The Amen: He Who is of unchangeable fidelity, the Incarnate Truth. 2 " All things were made by Him," we shall soon hear John say in his Gospel, " and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was Life " in its primal source (John i. 3, 4). 8 Charity, purified by the inner fire which warms it ; thereby freed of all egoism, all hypocrisy, all uncleanness. 4 The garments the Apostle speaks of are those which S. Paul desired for his faithful followers in Colossa; : " Put ye on, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, long- suffering . . . ; above all put on love which is the bond of perfection." Coloss. iii. 12, 14. 92 SAINT JOHN. the Valley of the Lycus alone two of the most illustrious are omitted, Hierapolis and Colossae ; elsewhere were Mag nesia and Tralles, to which Saint Ignatius writes ten years later and which, assuredly, existed then. Nor is any mention made of the fraternities of Bithynia, to the North, which stood in as much, if not greater, need of being sustained, since there the Persecution was raging and lamentable defections had already occurred.1 It has been hinted that the mystical meaning of numbers, which we encounter everywhere in Saint John's Revelation had something to do with the number of Seven Churches in his Epistle; but it seems equally proper to note that these communities are chosen in such wise that, in their person, the Apostle includes all the bodies of brethren in those parts. The three named first stretch from North to South along the shores of the Archipelago : from Ephesus, the cradle of Christianity in these regions, the Apostles' thoughts naturally proceed to Smyrna, a city of equal im portance ; thence to Pergamus, a Church more menaced than any of the others, since Satan and Paganism were there enthroned. Passing thence by way of the cities of the interior, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, his gaze de scends from the north to the south as far as the Valley of the Lycus and Laodicea, embracing in this circuit the whole domain won over to the Faith. All this had been conquered by the Gospel during the thirty years that had elapsed since Saint Paul had de parted from the coasts of Asia : thirty years of peace, dur ing which Timothy, set over these new-born congregations, had been given leisure to oversee their growth, and es pecially to give to each its hierarchical form : over each of them a Bishop ; under him, a body of Priests ; then, the Deacons and Deaconesses. But, there as everywhere else, prosperity had been at its work of dissolution, under mining men's courage, enfeebling the souls that Persecu- 1 " Alii ab indice nominati esse se christianos dixerunt, et mox negar verunt : fuisse quidem, sed desisse. . . Quidam ante plures annos, non nemo etiam viginti quinque." Pliny, Epist., x. 97. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 93 tion had tempered for the strife and steeled against suffering. The peaceful conduct of life, and unhampered dealings with the Pagans had led them into strange com promises with their conscience. John, coming to Ephesus in all the ardor of his faith, could not witness without grief this falling away from the ideal of Christian life ; but the indolence and well-nigh complicity of the pastors moved him still more deeply. The Bishop of Pergamus, as we have just now seen, per mitted the preaching of infamous doctrines; that of Thyatira gave full license to a prophetess who was like wise inculcating the disorderly views of Paganism. At Sardis, its Bishop, under a godly exterior, bore about sin and death in his heart. There was a similar state of de cadence in Laodicea : the lukewarmness of its chief fairly turns the Apostle's stomach. But it is Ephesus which most deeply wounds him. In striking contrast to the other pastors, whose names remain unknown to us, we do know full well who then governed the metropolis of Asia. It was Timothy ! Timothy, the friend of Saint Paul ! It will be recalled what apprehensions the character of this disciple had given rise to in the mind of the Apostle.1 Despite the fact that he loved him above all others and cherished the highest esteem for his faith, his piety, his devotedness, he dreaded lest that gentleness, which was his chief characteristic, might not degenerate into cul pable time serving, even go so far at times as to paralyze the strength of hand, the promptitude and hardihood of counsel necessary to the Episcopate. " God has not given us the spirit of fear, but courage," he had written him. "... Be instant, therefore, in season and out of season, reprove, entreat, threaten, without ever wearying." 2 Did he forget those tender admonitions, once the Apostle was gone ? How far did Timothy yield to the promptings of his easy-going nature ? The testimony of the Apocalypse allows of no doubt but that he had lapsed, both too widely and too deeply. It was a slackening of 1 See The Last Years of Saint Paul, chaps, xi. and xii. 2 2 Tim. i. 7; iv. 2. 94 SAINT JOHN. the former fervor, a fall J all the more dangerous now that with the torch of persecution new lighted, it behooved all, with the heads of the Church in the van, to stand on guard, prepared for battle and death. At such a crisis John proved himself worthy of taking the place of the Apostle to the Gentiles, for what he once had been he became again, in the moment of peril, "Son of the Thunderbolt."2 This Timothy and the pastors of Asia realized when, from Patmos, the lightning shook the skies and startled them from their torpor. Their awaken ing was such as one might have expected in the Apostolic days : it led Timothy straight forth to Martyrdom. At the passing of one of those shameless processions which were the disgrace of Ephesus, the Bishop protested so energetically, that the mob fell upon him, and slaughtered him with a shower of stones and clubs.3 The Apostle chastens them so severely simply because he loves them,4 with a love in nowise robbed of its im petuosity by its prevailing depth of tenderness. Of this the two Bishops of Smyrna and Philadelphia had ample proof. On the former John showers affectionate words of consolation, congratulating him on his poverty, which is great riches in God's sight, and on the wrongs and perse cutions which are assailing him. Must he needs die thereby : then let him remain fearless and faithful, for He unto Whom belongs the first and the last word, He Who hath only known death to conquer it, He has set apart for His martyrs a crown of life. Still more touch ing is the Saviour's consideration for the Angel of Phila delphia. The head of this church, though "weak,"5 unequal to the task set for him, lacking the natural gifts which are so helpful in the Apostolate, is therefore but 1 T))V aya-K-nv txov r^\v irptar-nv arprjuas . . . ir6iTTu>Kas. Apoc. ii. 4 2 Mark iii. 17. 8 The Martyrologies and the abridged Acts of this martyr, preserved by Photius, agree in representing the holy Bishop as falling a victim to the zeal he displayed in opposing the unclean festivals to which Ephesus had become wonted. These Acts place his martyrdom in the reign of Nerva, in the spring of the year 97. 4 'Eytii So-ovs iav (pi\a, ehiyxto Km TcuSeiw. Apoc. iii. 19. 5 Mmpai' cxeis tfoaiuv. Apoc. iii. 8. THE LETTER TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES. 95 the more devoted, more absorbed in God Who works in us to will and to do. Jesus will supply what is wanting in this humble pastor ; He will reveal Himself in him, as One holding the key to men's souls, opening and closing them at will. " I will open the gates before thee," He tells him, " and no man shall be able to shut them." J Even the Jews of the Synagogue of Satan, everywhere else so stiff- necked, these will I make bow down before thee and they shall know that I love thee." Like John, one must needs have fathomed the depths of the Heart of Jesus to be able to understand and repeat such words, and show the Saviour just as pitiful toward those who have deserted Him. " The Angel " of Laodicea appears to have been less worthy of His loving kindness ; out of sheer disgust Jesus is fain to vomit him forth ; and yet, 't is at his door that He stands and knocks, beseeching him to open, promising him, if he will but yield, to sit down with him at the banquet-board of eternal delights.2 Everywhere, in the letter to the Seven Churches, as in the Visions which are to follow, we feel that the God Made Flesh is love, a love which nothing disheartens, nothing wearies : a divine feature of these mysterious and delight ful pages, which makes them most dear to souls enamoured of Jesus. 1 Apoc. iii. 8, 9. 2 Apoc. iii. 20, 21. CHAPTER VI. THE APOCALYPSE. John wrote his letter to the Seven Churches, fully enlightened from on High, his very words dictated by Jesus Himself ; J nevertheless it would not appear that, in this instance, the Apostle had been raised to such a pitch of supernal ecstasy that, forgetful of earthly things and altogether absorbed in God, he lost consciousness of his surroundings. Indeed he notes that it was on " a Lord's Day" that his soul was thus transported;2 it is from behind him that he hears the Voice, like a trumpet ; and that, on turning about, he beheld a figure more divine than human of aspect, reminding him of the picture drawn by the Prophets of the Son of Man.3 He does not perceive with like lucidity the portentous visions which go to make up the bulk of the Apocalypse. "I looked," says the Apostle, " and I beheld a door opened in Heaven ; and the first Voice which I had heard, and which had spoken to me with a blare as of the trumpet, said to me : Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to pass hereafter." 4 Thus 't was into high Heaven that the Seer is this time exalted, there to stand face to face with the Divine Majesty. A Throne stands there in the midst ; but John distinguishes only a dazzling light like the rays cast by sardonyx and jasper. Lightnings flash forever from that Throne ; thunderous voices proclaim the Majesty of the Eternal, and a Rain bow crowns it, wherein prevail glints of emerald, the fadeless gleam of celestial hope; a sea of azure, trans- 1 Apoc. i. 1. 2 Ibid., i. 10. 8 Ibid., i., 12, 13. • Ibid., iv. 1. THE APOCALYPSE. 97 parent as crystal, encircles the Eternal and isolates Him from the created beings who, afar off, form His Court.1 In the foremost ranks of these and at the foot of the Throne, appear the Angelic cohorts, represented by seven principal Spirits, whom Love Divine has enkindled, and are like seven lamps shedding light and lustre over the rest of Creation.2 Round about, four animals, similar to the Assyrian " Cherubim " in Ezechiel, figure forth the sensible and corporeal world. The Bull denotes the forces of Nature, both in brute matter as well as in organized bodies ; the Lion, the unconquerable activity of that Nature under its divine phenomena; the Eagle, with outspread wings, its nobler flights ; the Beast with a human countenance, the intelligence which has so perfectly ordered it and is everywhere manifested. Though these prodigious creatures are of a type lower than man, every segment of this life renders homage to the Creator, by its readiness and vigilance in fulfilling the tasks assigned to it, which is indicated by the Six Wings, as also by the Eyes wherewith these mystical creatures are covered. In testimony of the harmony which main tains the universe in indissoluble order and union, day and night they sing with one voice unto the Triune Creator : " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was, Who is, and Who is to come," 8 1 Apoc. iv. 1, 7. Thus Moses and Aaron and the ancient writers of Israel beheld God " and under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire, and as it were the sky when it is clear." Ex. xxiv. 10. In Ezechiel (i. 26, 28), God's throne resembles " a sapphire and it is surrounded by a rainbow. In all these agreeable colors of precious stones and rainbow tints, we see that God is clothed in a benignant majesty and a brightness pleasing to the eyes." Bossnet, L' Apocalypse, iv. 3. 2 Apoc. iv. 5. 8 As most expressive, to their thinking, the Assyrians adopted the form of the bull to signify strength ; that of the eagle to denote agility ; that of the lion to express power ; the human countenance, to indicate intelligence, and they combined in a single subject the king of the domes tic animals, the monarch of all wild beasts, with the sovereign of the air and the lord of creation. The " Cherubim " are, therefore, types of life itself, living creatures in the first degree, who render homage to the Author of all existence, in the name of all Creation, whose representatives they are, by their symbolic form, in its most lofty sense. (Vigouroux, La 7 98 SAINT JOHN. These, however, are but speechless praises ; it is reserved for His intelligent and loving creatures, to humankind, to give life to these encomiums : accordingly we behold them in the place of honor. As representatives there are Twenty-four Ancients : twelve of their number to recall the chosen ones among the Saints of the Old Covenant ; the other twelve are the Apostles, the founda tion stones of the Church.1 As Pontiffs and Kings of creation, all are clad in white in token of their Priest hood, and, seated on thrones, bear crowns upon their brows. Nor is the act of Adoration complete until these Four and Twenty Ancients cast down their crowns be fore the Throne Divine, as a sign of homage, and, in the name of all Creation, give utterance to this prayer unto Him that liveth forever and ever: " Thou art worthy, 0 Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power because Thou hast created all things, and 't is by Thy will they were and have been created." a FIEST VISION. The Seven Seals. [Apoc. vi., vii., viii., 1.] Jesus has not, as yet, appeared in the Heavenly Vision. John, absorbed in contemplation of the Throne, Bible et les de'couvertes modernes, vol. iv. part 4, book iii. chap. i. 1, La Vision des Chbkubins). This is surely the meaning S. John gives to the four Animals, for, after having marshalled before our eyes " all crea tures that are in Heaven, upon the earth, under the earth and in the sea," and telling us of the glory they give to God, he adds that the four mys tical Animals did but utter their assent, saying Amen to what had been proclaimed by all creation, whereof they are a symbol. 1 "'Tis the whole Calendar of the Saints both of the Old and New Testaments, here represented by their heads and leaders. Those of the Old are contained under the Twelve Patriarchs, and those of the New in the persons of the Twelve Apostles. . . . The whole roll of the Saints is likewise represented below by the Twelve Doors of the Holy City, whereon are written the names of the Twelve Tribes, and by the Twelve Foundation Stones of that same City, whereon are writteu the names of the Twelve Apostles." Apoc. xxi. 12, 14. Bossuet, V Apocalypse, iv. 4. 2 Apoc. iv. 10, 11. .. THE APOCALYPSE. 99 where, though invisible, the Majesty of the Most High is seated, now perceives a Hand holding a Book, roll- shaped, written on both sides and fastened with Seven Seals. " Who shall loose the Seals ? " cries one of the Angels ; but no one, either on earth or in Heaven, can open them, or even gaze thereon unblinded by its bright ness. The Apostle is fain to weep at the thought that this Book, which should reveal so much concerning Jesus, His Kingdom, His speedy coming, — all that he most longed to know, should remain forever sealed. "Weep not," says one of the Ancients, and points out, midmost the celestial Court, a slain Lamb:1 under this figure Jesus reveals Himself, Jesus the Paschal Victim immo lated on the Cross ; but this time it is not, as on Calvary, a bloody Sacrifice slaughtered for our sins ; the Apocalyptic Lamb has Seven Horns and Seven Eyes, to show forth that the seven strong and watchful Spirits we have just noted at the feet of the Eternal,2 are likewise His active and mighty ministers He goes up to the Throne " of the Lord Almighty," takes the Book and opens it.3 Forthwith the scene of Worship begins afresh in His honor, still more majestically. The Four Animals and the Four and Twenty Ancients, holding in their grasp harps and golden vials full of odors (the prayers of the Saints) fall down before the Lamb and sing unto Him a new Song : " Thou art worthy, Lord, to take the Book and to loose the seals thereof, for Thou wast slain, and, by Thy Blood, hast redeemed unto God the chosen ones of every tribe, and tongue and people, and nation ; Thou hast made them Kings and Sacrificers to our God and they shall reign on the earth." Thousands of Angels join the glad acclaim, and their songs arouse the whole Universe. From the depths of the firmament, from sea and earth and its lowest depths, from the breast of every creature capable of loving, or at least of feeling, rise the 1 Apoc. v. 1-6. 2 " And there were Seven Lamps burning before the Throne which are the Seven Spirits of God." Apoc. iv. 5. 8 Apoc. v. 6. 100 SAINT JOHN. voices which embrace their supreme God and His Christ in a common Act of Adoration : "Blessing, honor and glory and power be unto Him that is seated on the Throne, and to the Lamb forever and ever." "Amen ! " answers all Nature, represented by the four mystical Animals.1 But the hour has come to loose the mysterious Seals. On the opening of the First, a white horse dashes forth, its rider with crown on forehead and bow in hand leaps from victory to victory.2 All that time which is to elapse between the advent of Christianity and the last days of the world is figured forth by this symbol: this period shall last until the moment when, in Hell's despite, the Saviour shall have carried the Glad Tidings over the whole world. Immediately thereafter appear the Plagues, forerunners of the last days. The Second Seal now broken, a red horse comes forth : — this is War ; from the Third, a black horse, Famine; from the Fourth comes a horse pale as Death, gloomy as the grave ; it has power over one fourth of all living things, to slay by the sword, famine, pestilence, and wild beasts.3 When the Fifth Seal is loosed the Apostle's eyes behold the fearful perse cution which shall precede the end of time : a veritable Altar of Holocausts, dripping with the Martyrs' blood, while, from below it, the souls of such as have given their lives for Jesus, send up to Him this loud cry : " How long, Lord, Holy and True, dost Thou defer doing us jus tice and avenging our blood ? " Then comes the answer that they must needs have patience until the number of their brethren, destined like them to be put to death, be completed ; but, as first fruits of victory, the white robes of the conqueror is given them, investing them before hand with a glorious light.4 The promised vengeance is not long in coming. On the opening of the Sixth Seal, all the plagues foretold by the Saviour in the Gospel break loose at once. The earth 1 Apoc. v. 8-14. 2 Djid., vi. 2. 8 Ibid., vi. 4-8. * Ibid., vi. 9-11. THE APOCALYPSE. 101 quakes, the sun becomes as black as sackcloth of hair, the moon is the color of blood, the stars fall from the skies upon the earth, as a fig tree, shaken by a mighty wind, scatters afar its green fruit. The heavens draw away like a book which is rolled up ; the mountains and the islands are shaken from their firm bases. Kings of the earth, rulers, men of war, the rich and the mighty, free men or slaves, all that have risen against the Christ hide them selves in the caves and rocks. They cry to the moun tains, " Fall upon us,1 hide us from the face of Him that is seated on the Throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great Day of their Wrath is come. Who shall be able to withstand it ? " 2 All too well-founded are their fears, for the Angels stand at the four corners of the earth, ready to let loose the winds which shall overwhelm the persecutors in the depths below. And, notwithstanding, the order is given to withhold these destroying elements until the heavenly messengers shall have signed God's elect with His sign upon their forehead. The number of believers to be thus marked from among the house of Israel is definite and fixed, one hundred and forty-four thousand.3 As to the chosen ones among the Gentiles, they seem an innu merable throng, of every race and people and tongue. Clothed in white raiment, with palms in their hands, they 1 "The words are borrowed from Osee, x. 8, and Our Lord applies them to the desolation visited upon the Jews to avenge upon them His Passion." Luke xxiii. 30. Bossuet, L Apocalypse, vi. 16. 2 Apoc. vi. 12-17. 8 It is self-evident that this is but a symbolical number. "In the numbers of the Apocalypse it behooves us to look for some certain mysti cal reason, whereby the Holy Ghost desires to rivet our attention more fixedly. The mystery He would here have us grasp is that the number Twelve, sacred alike in the Synagogue and in the Church, because of the Twelve Patriarchs aDd Twelve Apostles, multiplies itself by itself until it makes twelve thousand in each tribe, and twelve times twelve thou sand in all the tribes together, in order that we should see how the Faith of the Patriarchs and Apostles is multiplied in their successors ; while in the evenness of a number so perfectly squared, we note the everlasting unchangeableness of God's truth and His promises. For this reason we find (Apoc. xiv. 1, 3) this same number of an hundred and four and forty thousand taken as a number to represent the universality of the Saints." Bossuet, L' Apocalypse, vii. 4. 102 SAINT JOHN. chant the glory of God, and, bowing low, they worship Him.1 One of the Ancients explains the meaning of this multi tude to John : " These are they that have come out of great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the Throne of God and serve Him day and night in His Temple and He that sitteth on the Throne shall spread over them His tent.2 They shall no more hunger, nor thirst; neither shall the sun fall on them, nor any heat annoy them, because the Lamb, that is in the midst of the Throne, shall be their shepherd, and shall lead them to the fountains of the waters of life, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." a Only the Seventh Seal remains unopened. The Lamb looses it, and forthwith there is silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour. As all was consummated on earth, the opening of this last Seal could be naught else save a vision of Heaven. Nevertheless, the endless hour of eternal blessedness was not discovered in its full glory to the Seer's eyes. All that Jesus, in this first apparition, reveals thereof, is that a silence, an unspeakable peace, shall succeed the world's troubles. SECOND VISION. The Seven Trumpets. [Apoc. viii., 2-13; ix., x., xi.] " Blow ye the Trumpet in Sion, blow it loudly on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the earth tremble, for the Day of the Lord cometh, it is nigh : a Day of darkness and gloom, a Day of clouds and thick darkness." 4 This trumpet of the Great Day is one of the 1 Apoc. vii. 1-12. 2 ~2,Knvioei K7jpv£ Kal b.ir6aro\os . . . SiHdo'KaKos kQvatv. 5 In the Epistle to the Romans (xv. 24), S. Paul had mentioned his longing to evangelize Spain : it is to that country S. Clement alludes here, for the ancients regarded it as the furthermost boundary of the Western world. Strabo, ii. 1 ; iii. 1 and 5. Velleius Paterculus, i. 2. "In ultimo Hispaniaj tractu, in extremo nostri orbis termino." 6 In Saint Paul and His Missions, chap, xii., I have explained in what sense we are to understand this term : iirl rwv r\yovp.£vwv. 7 See The Last Years of Saint Paul, chap, vi., The Massacre of the Christians. 144 SAINT JOHN. not only to remind you of your duties, but also to refresh Our memories of them, for We are in the same arena as you and the same combats await Us. Away, then, with all vain and useless cares, and let us return to the glorious and venerable rules of life which have been handed down to us. . . . Let us fix our gaze on the Blood of the Christ, and realize its cost in God's sight ; how, shed for our Salvation, it has purchased the grace of repentance for the whole world." 1 The effect of this repentance will be to bring back into men's hearts, gentleness and mercy, consequently restor ing in the Church of Corinth that Peace, which God implants and wills should fructify in all His works. Throughout them all there does indeed reign an admirable order, in the heavens, on earth and over the seas ; nights and days follow each other regularly ; the seasons come at their appointed time ; all creatures fulfil their missions in peace.2 Clement delighted in basing his arguments on the har mony displayed by natural phenomena. He has recourse to it again when demonstrating that the Resurrection of the dead, — one of the articles of Faith over which, ever since Saint Paul's day,3 Corinth had never wearied of de bating, — is in no wise shocking to right reason, is, in fact, nothing more than what we see daily going on under our eyes. Does not the dawn arise each day from out the shades of night ; the plants and trees from seeds sown in earth ; does not the phoenix, that marvellous bird of Araby, renew itself from its ashes ? 4 God has, therefore, declared 1 S. Clement, Ad Cor., v.-vii. 2 Ibid., viii.-xxii. 8 1 Cor. xv. 4 The fable of the Phoenix enjoyed a wide popularity in olden times. Hesiod (Fragm. 50, Gaesf. ed.) and Herodotus (ii. 73) are the first writers to mention it, but, after them, both Greeks and Latins were fond of re ferring to it (Pliny, Hist. Nat., x. 2. Tacitus, Annal., vi. 28. Seneca, Ep. Mor., 42. Lucian, Hermot., 53, etc.). See the numerous allusions to this fabulous bird,$collected by Henrichsen, in De Phoznicis Fabul.a. From Pagan authors this legendary tale has been adopted by the Jews, and we find them crediting it before the Christian era. See the passage from an Alexandrian poem, of the second century before Christ, quoted by Eusebius, Prozp. Evang., ix. 29. Buxtorf, Lexic. Rab., s. h. v. Henrich sen, he. cit., ii. p. 19. THE EPISTLE OF SAINT CLEMENT. 145 nothing not in conformity with the economy of His world, as it issued from His hands, when He proclaims in the Scriptures that our bodies shall rise again. Thereunto He has pledged His word ; that word the Almighty can and will keep.1 Another of Saint Paul's teachings, Justification through Faith, continued to be quite as much a matter for contro versy at Corinth, as the Resurrection. Had not Saint James spoken of this Dogma in terms very different from those used by the Great Apostle ? To exactly determine its purport, Pope Clement, and the Roman Pontiffs after him, had but to compare the Apostolic traditions and by explaining one by the other prove that together they formed one consenting voice.2 " Called by the will of God in Christ Jesus, 't is not by ourselves that we are justified, neither by our wisdom, nor by our intelligence, nor by our godliness, nor by the works which we do in the holiness of our hearts, but by our faith, that faith whereby God hath justified all men. What then shall we do, my brethren? Shall we abandon all good works and charity? God forbid ! Let us hasten on every good work in all fervor and diligence.8 "By walking in these ways we shall find Salvation, a Salvation which is none other than Jesus Christ, the High Priest of our sacrifices, our Protector and our Help in all our weaknesses. Through Him, our gaze pierces the depths of the heavens ; through Him, the eyes of our hearts are opened, and our strayed and clouded intellect springs up 4 again in new light ; through Him, the Lord has willed that we should taste immortal knowledge.",6 Hitherto the writer has only touched on the causes of the disorders at Corinth in a general way ; now he puts his finger on the very seat of the malady, by reminding 1 S. Clement, Ad Cor., xxiii. xxviii. 2 Ibid., xxxi. 5 Ibid., xxxii. xxxiii. 4 'AvaBiWei. By this figurative expression the soul is compared to a plant withering in the shade which revives and sends forth fresh shoots as soon as it is set out iu the light of day. 8 S. Clement, Ad Cor., xxxvi. 10 146 SAINT JOHN. them of what an example of admirable discipline is fur nished them throughout the Empire by the Roman armies : — " Let us consider the soldiers who serve under our sov ereigns: what order reigns among them! what obedience! with what submissiveness they execute the instructions given them ! All are not Prefects or Tribunes, all do not com mand a hundred or even fifty men, but each one in his own rank executes the orders of the Emperor and his respective leaders. The great cannot exist without the lowly, nor the lowly without the great ; all combined together have their usefulness. Take, for example, our bodies. The head is naught without the feet, nor the feet without the head ; the least of its members are necessary or useful to the whole body ; all tend to unite together in just subordination for the welfare of the whole.1 Let us likewise keep our mysti cal body united in Christ Jesus, and let each remain subject to his neighbor in the order wherein Grace hath placed him. Let the strong protect the weak, let the weak respect the strong ; let the rich be bountiful unto the poor, and let the poor praise God for having provided them with helpers in their necessities." 2 Thus order shall be maintained, a thing so important in the eyes of the Lord that, in order to conform Israel, His chosen people thereto, He imposed on them so many minute practices, regulating every least detail which con cerned Him, His Worship, the Feasts and Sacrifices, the Priesthood, their public and private life.3 The Apostles have simply fulfilled what was foretold and prefigured by the Levitical Code, by giving the ecclesiastical Hierarchy a firm constitution. " Preaching through the countryside and in the cities, they chose out such as were the first fruits of their Aposto- late, and, after having proved them by the Spirit, they made them Bishops4 and Deacons of them that were to 1 1 Cor. xii. 12-27. 2 S. Clement, Ad Cor., xxxvii. xxxviii. 8 Ibid., xl. xii. ^ * 'EiricricSirovs. This word must be taken as synonymous with irpeo-Pv- repovs, for, here as everywhere else iu his letter, S. Clement would seem THE EPISTLE OF SAINT CLEMENT. 147 believe. . . . Well were they aware, these Apostles of ours, enlightened by Jesus Christ Our Lord, that some would dispute their titles. Wherefore, in their perfect foreknowledge, they designated those of whom We have just spoken, and furthermore laid down this rule, that after their death other men thus approved should take over their ministry. Consequently, that those who were clothed with this dignity by the Apostles and that other eminent men raised thereto by the consent of the whole Church, that those who have blamelessly served the flock of the Christ in all humility, peaceably, generously, men to whose goodness all have borne witness for many long years, that these should be deprived of their charge We believe to be unjust, for We cannot, without sinning gravely, disown men who have worthily and piously offered the Holy Obla tions. Happy the lot of those Elders who before Us, having finished their career, became partakers in a holy and merito rious death ; these needed not to fear lest they be dismissed from the post which had been assigned them.1 " Have we not one, only and the same God, one and the same Christ, one and the same Spirit of Grace outpoured upon us, the same vocation in the Christ ? Why, then, tear and hack in pieces the members of the Christ, why make war against our own Body, and forget that we are its members? . . . "... Your Schism has perverted many of the brethren, discouraged some, unsettled many others ; it has filled Us with sorrow, and distressed Us, but nevertheless the em- branglement widens among you.2 " Look again at the Epistle of blessed Paul.8 What did he write you during the first days of the Evangelical min istry ? Assuredly God inspired the letter which he wrote you on this very subject, concerning Apollo and Cephas ; for even then there were factions and cabals, — cabals more excusable at that time, since your preferences were divided between Apostles endowed with the highest authority, and a man who had been approved by them. But now, what men are these that have perverted you, and have tarnished to have in mind simply a body of pastors governing the Christian com munities : i. xxi. xliv. xlvii. liv. lvii. , 1 S. Clement, Ad Cor. xiii. xliv. 2 Ibid., xlvi. 8 1 Cor. i. 10-17; iii. 1-8; iv. 14-21. 148 SAINT JOHN. the fair fame of your fraternal love, that love for which you were so renowned ? For what We now hear said of you, my brethren, is a shame and unworthy of a Christian, that the Church of Corinth, so steadfast, so ancient, should be up in arms against its own Pastors because of one or two individuals. And this report has reached not only Us, but those as well who are far from being favorably dis posed toward you, in such wise that by your follies you have caused God's Name to be blasphemed, and put your selves in peril.1 " Let us, therefore, root out this disorder, and throw our selves at the feet of the Lord, beseeching Him with tears to grant us His favor and thus be reconciled with Him. May He vouchsafe unto us anew that noble and stainless life which nourished brotherly love among us. . . . Who shall tell what ties that love formed between God and us ? Who shall describe the splendor of its beauties ? Words cannot express to what heights it lifted us. Love unites us to God ; love covereth a multitude of sins ; love beareth all things, endureth all things, patiently ; there is naught that is mean in love, yet naught that is haughty; love doth not foster schisms ; love never causeth seditions ; love worketh only in perfect concord ; by love God's chosen ones become perfect; without love no one is pleasing unto God.2 Love alone has made us acceptable unto God, for it was by reason of His love for us that Our Lord Jesus Christ, conforming Himself to the Divine Will, did shed His Blood for us, His flesh for our flesh, His life for ours." 3 In this eulogy of love Saint Clement's sole purpose is to enkindle their hearts and dispose them to nobler sacrifices ; his end is to cut to the roots of the malady, by persuad ing the fomenters of unrest to expatriate themselves : — " Lives there among you a man of a generous, compas sionate and charitable soul? If so, let him say, 'If I am the cause of the seditions, the discord, the schisms which are troubling us, I will withdraw, I will go away whither soever you please. Whatsoever the common voice of the 1 S. Clement, Ad Cor., xlvii. 2 Here the holy Pope is evidently thinking of the praises S. Paul lavished on Divine Charity, 1 Cor. xiii. 8 S. Clement, Ad Cor., xlviii. xlix. THE EPISTLE OF SAINT CLEMENT. 149 brethren deems best, that will I do : my only longing is that the flock of the Christ may live in peace with its law fully appointed pastors.' He that shall conduct himself after this fashion shall acquire great glory in the Christ, and shall meet with a glad welcome everywhere. For ' the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof.' 1 Behold what hath been done and ought to be done by such as are ani mated by this divine life, which never leaveth room for re penting it." 2 In this, moreover, they will but imitate a goodly throng of worthies who have not hesitated before any act of self- sacrifice for the good of their fellow countrymen : Moses begging the Lord to blot him from the Book of Life, if, at that price, He will spare Israel;3 the Pagan kings, who, in like manner, have immolated themselves for the public weal ; even women, like Judith and Esther, imperilling their lives to save their people. Nor should they regard such an act of self-sacrifice as humiliating, for in this humble renunciation " they yield not to Us but to God." 4 " We have warned the guilty and thereby lightened Our conscience ; what more can We do except beseech the Lord to keep His chosen flock under His care ? " 5 And Clement closes his letter with a touching prayer, wherein all men are partakers, even the rulers and chiefs of the Empire who had but now been persecuting the Church. Even when fresh from the scene of Nero's blood-stained orgies, Peter and Paul had bidden all true believers to re spect the power committed to the hands of that monster.6 Following their example, Clement prays for Domitian and the Prefects of the Empire, the agents of his cruel acts. Had not this Divine Master commanded them to honor established powers in the lawful domain of their authority, to " render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's " ? 7 To that command we find the Roman Pontiffs ever faith- 1 Ps. xxiv. 1. 2 S. Clement, Ad Cor., liv. 8 Exodus xxxii. 30-32. 4 S. Clement, Ad Cor., liii. Iv. 6 Ibid., lvii. 6 1 Peter ii. 13, 15 ; Bom. xiii. 1-7 ; Titus iii. 1. 7 Matt. xxii. 21. 150 SAINT JOHN. ful, ever inculcating this respectful spirit throughout Christendom. But, over above kings and princes, in the esteem as in the affection of the Church, are the poor and afflicted. So it is in their behalf that Saint Clement be gins his prayer : — " Lord, we beseech Thee, be our aid and helper ! Deliver those of us that are in tribulation, have pity on the lowly, lift up them that have fallen, succor the poor, heal the sick, convert such of the people as have strayed, comfort the weak spirited ; let all the Nations know that Thou alone art God, and Jesus Christ Thy Son, and we Thy people and the sheep of Thy Fold. . . ." Thereupon he passes on to those in authority, and well do we know what they were in his day : — " Grant unto us concord and peace, to us and to all the inhabitants of the earth, as Thou didst bestow it upon our fathers who invoked Thy Name in godliness and truth ; grant us this because we obey Thee, Whose Name is om nipotence and majesty; and we likewise obey them that are our rulers and masters upon earth. Thou art He, Lord, Who, by Thy great and unutterable power, hath given them the power to reign, that, even so, recognizing the glory and honor wherewith Thou hast invested them, we should be subject unto them, thereby avoiding all opposition to Thy will. Grant them, Lord, health, peace, concord, firmness, that they may wield unhampered that sovereignty which Thou hast bestowed upon them. For Thou, Lord, the Heavenly King of the ages, dost give unto the sons of men, glory, honor, and authority over all that is on earth. Guide, Lord, their wills according to what is goodly and acceptable in Thy sight, that by using, in peace and gentleness, the power which Thou hast confided unto them they may find in Thee their Helper. 0 Thou Who alone canst pour out upon us these graces, and others far excelling them, unto Thee do we offer up our praises through Jesus Christ, the Pontiff and Guardian of our souls, in Whom be glory and majesty unto Thee both now and from generation to gen eration, forever and forevermore. Amen." THE EPISTLE OF SAINT CLEMENT. 151 I have gone to considerable length in the quotations from this Epistle ; indeed I would gladly have extended them and given my readers the entire work, so eminently adapted does it seem to me to introduce us not only to the Pontiff who wrote it, but to the Church of Rome in the closing years of the Apostolic Age. We have seen how, thereafter, the authority of that Metropolis had mani fested itself over the other Churches ; in like manner it enables us to glimpse many features of their private life, the forms after which their prayers were fashioned, their customary themes for meditation, consequently their modes of thought. The numerous extracts Clement makes from our Holy Books give us invaluable information on these points, for both laymen and clergy made use of the same sources. The Psalter contributes a goodly share ; he has recourse to it no less than forty times, and often the holy hymn is repeated in its entirety ; among the Prophets, Isaias is the oftenest cited, after him Ezechiel and Jeremy. As for the New Testament, frequent similarities in thought and ex pression testify to the confidence reposed in them by the writer, but actually quotations are rare ; they are confined to a few sayings borrowed either from the three first Evan gelists or from Saint Paul.1 It was under the watchful eyes of Saint Peter's successors that the Canon of Apostolic writings gradually took shape, without, however, at that period predominating over the Sacred Books of Israel. The Liturgy of the Synagogues still maintained a like ascendency; some curious comparisons have been made between the most commonly used prayer of the Jews, " The Eighteen Benedictions " (Shemone Esre) 2 and the text of Saint Clement; actually the similarities are en tirely external and very easily explained. As then each pastor improvised the public prayer, he would naturally make it appropriate to the occasion. And as like needs 1 Again I would refer the reader, for a list of these borrowed passages, to the works of Lightfoot and Funk given above. 2 For details concerning this Prayer, consult Saint Paul and his Mis sions, chap. viii. and Schiirer, Geschichte des Jiidischen Volkes, ii. 377 et seq.; 384. 152 SAINT JOHN. would justify like appeals, the duties of worship and thanksgiving being still less subject to varying circum stances, it would of course happen that when the same thoughts recurred in the mind of the officiating clergy man, the same words would rise to his lips. Thus by degrees, prayer, especially in divine service, took on cer tain fixed forms, which they agreed in repeating and which soon became consecrated by hallowed usage. The respect shown these formulas depended in great measure on the degree of authority enjoyed by the pastors or churches from which they emanated. And as Rome, in this respect, overshadowed all Christendom, its model was followed by the rest of the world : this is the most prob able explanation of the conformity offered by the prayers in the oldest liturgies with the final invocation in Saint Clement's work.1 If this conjecture is well founded, Rome must have already begun to exercise its providen tial mission in the domain of Christian worship, as an exemplar to the other churches, and determining its forms. Nowhere more than in this city were .there minds better disposed to estimate rightly the importance of a Liturgy, for it is well known with what scrupulosity Roman Paganism had, at all times, guarded its least rites ; a watchful rigorism was its distinguishing trait. However great or small the influence exercised in this respect by the formalism of the old Romans, other in stincts of their race flowed manifestly in the veins of Christian Rome : namely, the genius of authority, the spirit of order and discipline, necessary to the Metropolis of a new world. Experience, grafted on this sturdy stock, has borne its fitting fruit in a rectitude of judgment and practical sense which render it worthy to govern the Christian world. Clement has one very significant word to express this combination of qualities, a word which constantly recurs to his pen, — " moderation." 2 What he understands thereby and what he longs to inspire in the 1 Cf. the interesting and learned study in Lightfoot's S. Clement of Rome, i. pp. 382-400. 2 'Eirieiicefa, xiii. xxx. lvi. lviii. lxii. THE EPISTLE OF SAINT CLEMENT. 153 Corinthians is a constant carefulness not to go to excesses, to seek in everything a perfect equilibrium, the rightful measure, the means adapted to conciliate men's minds. This spirit of compromise, which to him seemed the only way of restoring peace in Corinth, was ever Saint Clement's foremost thought. His letter had the desired as well as a durable effect. Fifty years later Hegesippus tarried some time as a visitor to this Christian community ; he had the great consolation of finding himself in perfect communion with it ; of the dissensions which had unset tled it in the days of Domitian, not a trace was left. After Clement's letter, Corinth continued steadfast and peace able in the sound doctrine.1 Antiquity, struck by this first evocation of the Papal Authority, has conferred many glorious titles on Saint Clement. It saluted his memory as the Martyr of the Christ,2 the Apostle, the Apostolic Man,3 the Bishop who, from the outset, was wise enough to provide precious or gans for the use of his Church. Some have even gone so 1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iv. xxii. 2 For the Acts of the Martyrdom of S. Clement, see Paul Allard, His toire des Persecutions pendant les deux premiers siecles, 2d ed. pp. 173-180. All that can be said in support of the tradition which calls S. Clement a martyr, is summed up in the note appended by the Abbe Duchesne to this line in the Liber Pontificalis: "Obiit martyr Trajano III." "This unwonted formula as well as the date is taken from the account of S. Clement given by S. Jerome in his De Viris: ' Obiit tertio Trajani anno.' The intercalation of the word Martyr is very noteworthy. Clement is styled Martyr by Bnfinus (S. Jerome, Apol. Ado. Libros Rufini, edited by Martianay, vol. iv. Part II. p. 409) ; and by the Council of Vaison, in 442 (Can. 6). The same title is given him in the Roman Calendars, from the Hieronymian Martyrology down ... in the Roman Sacramentaries, from the Leonine Sacramentary down, and in the other liturgical books. At Rome in the Basilica, which from S. Jerome's time (De Viris, 15) has preserved the memory of Clement, there have been found fragments of a grand dedicatory inscription, wherein the word Martyr is prominent. The restoration proposed by Signor de Rossi (Boll., 1870, p. 148) is almost certainly the correct one, and, if he is right, this qualifying term was joined to the name Clement. The inscription dates from the time of Pope Siricius (384-399). It is therefore positive, whatever we may think of the silence on this subject of such ancient writers as Irenseus, Eusebius, Jerome, that the tradition of S. Clement's Martyrdom was firmly estab lished in Rome from the end of the fourth century down." Liber Pontifi calis, i. 123, note 9. 8 'O &tt6o-to\os KK-fip-ns. Clement of Alexandria, Strom., iv. xvii. " Vir Apostolicus," S. Jerome, In Is., Iii. 13. 154 SAINT JOHN. far as to attribute to him the division of Christian Rome into seven quarters, and the creation of notaries charged with engrossing the Acts of the Martyrs.1 Criticism does not permit of our accepting without reservation all these hypotheses, which, be it said, cannot add anything to the lustre of his fame as having, by his sole mediation, put an end to the troubles of Corinth. By that intervention he consecrated forevermore the right inherent in Rome and her Pontiffs to utter their authoritative decrees in any and every debate which threatens to divide Christendom ; he testifies that to them belongs the duty of speaking in the name of Peter and Paul to the entire Church, to up hold therein the vigor of its rules and the unity of the Faith. 1 In all likelihood the division of Rome into seven ecclesiastical regions does not antedate the pontificate of Fabian (236-250). See the note on this Pope by Mgr. Duchesne in the Liber Pontificalis, and, in the same work, on the Notaries and the Gesta Martyrum, in the Introduction to vol. i. pp. c and ci. CHAPTER IX. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. About the same time that Corinth welcomed the words of peace we have just heard, the Christian congre gations of Asia, still more highly favored, were enriched by a bequest of the reminiscences of John's ripe old age, the most sublime of the evangelical teachings. When "the dearly beloved of Jesus," sole survivor of the Twelve, completed his term of exile at Patmos, he returned to Ephesus. There he renewed his acquaintance with the society of believers that for the past thirty years had dwelt there. During the period of Saint Paul's preaching we, too, had a glimpse 1 of that circle of converts drawn, some from Jewry, others from the Gentile world, but all alike basing their ideas on the same philosophical groundwork : the system fostered throughout the East by the Schools of Alexandria. Ephesus was steeped in these notions, for this city of pleasure and commerce kept up a busy intercourse with Egypt. Accustomed as they were to clothe everything pertaining to the speculative domain in Alexandrian modes, the flower of the Asiatic Christians lost no time in refashioning the new doctrines ; consequently, not only a majority of the brethren, but John himself, thoroughly Jewish as he was by education and native genius, insen sibly became wonted to this more abstract manner of teaching. In this way the Johannine Theology had had its rise, even before Domitian's acts of persecution cast the Apostle into the Praetorian dungeons, and thereafter on the rocky shores of Patmos. This metaphysical system, so far removed from the primitive simplicity, gave occasion to the novelty seekers 1 Saint Paul and His Missions, chaps, ix. and x. 156 SAINT JOHN. who were always in evidence at Ephesus, even in Chris tian congregations, to bewilder themselves and their hearers with fanciful conceits concerning the chiefest article of their Faith, — the adorable Personality of Jesus Christ. Some went so far as to distinguish the Christ from Jesus, seeing in the latter only a man like any other. To disprove and dispel these figments of the imagination by bringing them face to face with the Christ actually incarnate, true Man and true God, no testimony could outweigh that of the disciple who had pillowed his head on the Master's breast and had known Him so intimately. According to the tale treasured up at Rome and Alexandria1 it was owing to the solicitations of the Asiatic Bishops that John was moved to arrange his memories of those days and to indite them. Whether or not this be the true origin of the Holy Book, we know at least that it obtained an immediate and wide circula tion. Elsewhere2 we have seen how, from its first ap pearance, the few contemporaries whose testimony has come down to us not only venerate it but quote it as of the same rank as the other Gospels. In the latter half of the Second Century it is everywhere recognized as the work of John, the Lord's disciple. One of the fore most Fathers of that age, Saint Irenseus, puts it beyond all question that this disciple is the son of Zebedee.3 How comes it then that Tradition, thereafter unani mous on this point, has hardly given a thought, in all these nineteen centuries, to the objection over which the Rationalists now raise so great a to-do? that is to say, the differences between the character of the work and that of the Author.4 Is it not most unlikely, they urge, that a Galilean fisherman, imbued with Jewish ideas, 1 Fragment de Muratori, p. 10 A. Clement of Alexandria quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., vi. xiv.). 2 See the Introduction, page 8 "Even-a 'ladvvns, 6 Kal /xaflrjT^s too Kvptoo, 6£ir\ rb ot-^Bos auroB acoire- a-iiv, Kal alirbs i^eSaxf rb Ebayyi\iov iv 'Etpeo-tp rjjs 'Ao-las Siarplfiar. S. Irenseus, Adv. Hozr., iii. iii. 1. 4 Luthardt, Der Johanneische Ursprung, pp. 178 et seq. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 157 should have clothed his thoughts and his language in Alexandrian forms ? Assuredly this contrast did not escape the Fathers of the first centuries. The contro versies carried on over the question of the Alogi 1 bear witness to their abilities and the Doctors who took part in it, especially Saint Hippolytus and Dionysius, testify in the fragments of their works now in our possession that for shrewdness and penetration, these critics of old need not yield the palm to those of our day. If they paid small heed to these antitheses, which our opponents exaggerate to suit themselves, it must have been because they did not regard them as irreconcilable. And if once we obtain a just notion of what the Fourth Gospel is, we shall share their sentiments. The Author distinctly declares what object he has in view : " These things are written," he says, " that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; " 2 in other terms, that Jesus and the Christ form but the one same Person, which is God, by the same right as He is the Supreme Being, the Father that has begotten Him from all Eternity. Who were they, then, that were attacking this divine dogma at that time ? This the Gospel does not tell us, but another document which is closely linked to it, John's First Epistle, gives us the answer : " Who is a liar," we read therein, " but he who denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? This is the Anti christ who denieth the Father and the Son ! Whosoever denieth the Son, doth not recognize the Father, and whosoever confesseth the Son recognizeth the Father also."3 "Every spirit that divideth Jesus Christ4 is not of God, and this is the Antichrist."5 It is hardly possible 1 Consult the Introduction, page xiv. 2 John xx. 31. 8 1 John ii. 22, 23. 4 Socrates (Hist. Eceles., vii. 32) declares that in the ancient MSS. he found the reading " vav TtveDpa i Atei rhv 'I-no-ovv," which the Vulgate adopted and translated: "Omnis spiritus qui solvit Jesnm." The same is true of S. Irenasus (Adv. Hozr., iii. xvi. 8) and Origen ( In Matt. xxv. 14). The text as given in the Greek MSS., irav irvebpo. % p^ ipo\oyei rbv 'Inaovv, is much less expressive. 6 1 John iv. 3. 158 SAINT JOHN. to draw any other conclusion from these earliest refer ences than this, that " many false prophets had arisen in the world " l of Asiatic society in which the Apostle was living; but other passages in the same letter cast still more light on the question. " Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the veritable flesh is of God." 2 And further on : " Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? This is He that came by water and by blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but water and blood. And it is the Spirit which testifieth ; now the Spirit is the Truth."3 To rightly understand this last text, it is necessary to set over against it the errors which were then being pro mulgated in the name of Cerinthus, the principal dis turber of the Asiatic Churches.4 This personage, a Jew by birth but brought up in the Alexandrian Schools, had only embraced the Faith that he might interpret it after his own imaginings, and, like many of his compatriots, had set out to scour the world in search of proselytes.5 The Churches of Palestine and of Syria, Jerusalem, Caesaraea and Antioch, had all been more or less exposed to the infection of his corrupting doctrines ; but it was in Asia Minor and especially in Galatia that the pit of perdition,6 wherein he was endeavoring to drag down his followers, became most manifest. When he reached Ephesus, he had already fabricated his Heresy out of whole cloth. Its underlying purpose was to deny the miraculous con ception of the Saviour. It is true that this, the foremost 1 1 John iv. 1. 2 Ibid., 2. 3 Ibid., v. 5, 6. The other reading, Xpio-r6s io-nv r> AX-hBeia, which the Vulgate translates, is to be found in only one Greek MS. of recent date. 4 As to Cerinthus and his heresy, consult S. Irenseus, Adv. Hozr., i. xxvi. 1 ; iii. xi. 1, 7. S. Hippolytus, Refutatio omn. Hozr. (Philosophoumena), vn. 7, 9, 33-35 ; x. 21, 22. Caius, quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eceles., iii. xxvn. 2, 3). Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius (Hist. Eceles., iii. -in. 4, 5 ; vn. xxv. 2-5). Tertullian, Prozs., 48. S. Epiphanius " in. Epit. Poznar., 1. Theodoret, Hozret.fab., ii. 3. Philaster 3f Matt, xxiii. 15. ' Trjs avrov aTruKtlas PdpaBpov. S. Epiphanius, Hozr., xxviii. 2. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 159 fact in Christianity, is related in Saint Matthew's Gospel, which was the only one he accepted, but he did not hesitate to tear out this first page, and to begin the Divine Life of the Saviour with His Baptism. Till then, he taught, the son, born of the natural union of Mary and Joseph, was but a man, the holiest, the wisest that can be conceived of, but yet a mere man. But at the moment Saint John Baptist poured over him the water of Jordan, a sudden transformation took place in Jesus. The divine Christ, " iEon," separating itself from the Supreme Being, descended upon Him in the form of a dove, and remained with Him throughout the course of His ministry ; but this alliance only lasted up to His Passion. The Christ then went up again into the bosom of God, leaving Jesus alone to suffer and die and rise again. Such, according to the testimony of Saint Irenaeus, was the teaching of Cerinthus. This coinage of his fancy, as gratuitous as it is singular, made the Saviour's Divinity a fleeting union which the Christ had contracted with Jesus in Jordan's waters, but without hypostatically uniting the flesh of the latter to His Divine Person, without making of his blood His own blood. It absolutely did away with the reality of the Incarnation. These are the impious vagaries of Cerinthus which Saint John has in view in writing his Epistle, urged thereto by his disciples, who asked that he avenge the adored memory of the Christ.1 This he did, not by disputing every step of the ground with his adversaries, but by endeavoring to raise their thoughts to serener heights, where, fully imbued with memories of the Saviour, he was wont to contemplate Him in the possession of His glory. Are we not well aware that the impressions of youth revive again in old age ? In Saint John they had kept a freshness of features and coloring, a preciseness of detail that rendered the Master's 1 Evidently it was this error of Cerinthus which prompted the passage in S. John's Epistle referred to above : " Jesus came by water and by blood, not by water only (of His Baptism), but by water and the blood (of His Humanity)." 1 John v. 6. 160 SAINT JOHN. words as distinctly, His Personality and His deeds as actu ally present before him, as during those days when he followed after Him step by step. Beyond the fact that it behooved him to see that none of this priceless treasure be lost, John deemed that the best argument to bring against the innovators was to confront them with just what " his eyes had seen," what " his ears had heard," what " his hands had touched," in testimony of the Divinity of the Christ. But from those heights whither the illustrious patri arch had risen and where he reposed, his gaze swept the long flights of time wherein the Church was to endure. The errors of Cerinthus only served him with an occasion for writing; it was neither the sole, nor the principal, cause of his undertaking it. He saw that this was but the beginning of that strife which was to last as long as the world lasts : the never-ceasing rebellion of hearts inclined to evil, which, far from seeking salvation in the Christ, would ever be bitterly bent on vilifying His divine Personality, debasing Him to the level of a mere mortal, quite as incapable of saving as He was powerless to punish them. It was to these hosts of rebels, to the Antichrists of all ages, that John dedicates the words of his Gospel : words resplendent with light and life and love. This doctrine had to be understood by those that re ceived it from the outset. Accordingly the Apostle was very careful to accommodate his thoughts, not only to the peculiar cast of mind and to the familiar speech of his hearers, but furthermore to their degree of knowledge. It is easy to divine, just from the prominent features of this work, what men he had in view: evidently he is speaking to Greeks but slightly acquainted with Israel- itish lore. Consequently he never fails either to translate the Hebrew names,1 or to explain Jewish institutions, or to add certain information concerning localities which would have been superfluous had he been addressing Jews born in Palestine or such as had visited it on pilgrimage.2 1 John i. 38, 41, 42 ; v. 2 ; ix. 7 ; xi. 16 ; xix. 17 ; xxi. 2. 2 Ibid., ii. 6, 13 ; iv. 5-9 ; v. 2-4 ; vii. 37 ; xi. 18 ; xix. 14, 17, 20, 31, SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 161 The stress laid on events which in the Life of the Saviour brought Him in touch with the Gentiles, would also go to show that he is thinking of believers who, for the most part, have been gathered from Pagan society. So then, he speaks to them of the Jews as of a foreign race, and with far less consideration for Israel than is displayed by the Synoptics. He is writing after the destruction of the Holy City, nor does he, as Paul did, discuss the obligatory force of the ancient Law, since already the divorce between Synagogue and Church had been consummated. In the lustre of the preaching of the Son, that splendor divine, whereof it was but the dawning light, the revelation of Moses pales away and is effaced forevermore. Not that John misprizes either the authority God had given to the Law, or the notable factor it had been in the economy of our salvation. He relates the saying of Jesus to the Samaritan woman, "Salvation cometh from the Jews," a and that other to the mob which wanted to stone Him : " Search the Scriptures, wherein you deem you have eternal life : and the same are they that give testimony of Me."2 Not content with recalling the Saviour's praises of the Law, he depicts Him as being exact in its prac tices,3 observing its Feasts; declaring that the Temple is His Father's House ; by driving from it the traffickers and money changers, whip in hand.4 John could not have adduced a higher authority than this lofty example to affirm the power of the Mosaic legislation ; hence he is all the more justified in upbraiding the Jews in whose behoof God destined the Gospel to be the perfect accom plishment of the Law, though they have disowned it. Only a chosen few from among them ever acknowledged the Christ : the overwhelming majority of the people, led 42. For ampler details see Camerlinck, De Quarti Evangelii Auctore Dissertatio, pp. 276-281, and Bacuez and Vigouroux, Manuel Biblique, vol. iii. No 68, 5°. 1 John iv. 22. 2 Ibid., v. 39, 45, 47. 8 Both Circumcision and the Sabbath are treated by Him with respect, Ibid., vii. 21-23. 4 Ibid., ii. 14, 16. 11 162 SAINT JOHN. on by its Pontiffs, fought against Him, put Him to death. And thus, while the earlier Evangelists lay the blame for having withstood the Saviour in great measure to the Pharisees, John accuses the whole Nation of having been His enemies, — those Jews, thenceforth damned, whom he now beholds siding with Cerinthus, among the foemen of the Faith. It is obvious, from these several features, that the fourth Evangelist, from living so long away from those converted Jews who had filled the first ranks of the Church, was heart and soul in sympathy with the Asiatic Christians ; we note, too, taking his work by and large, that though he does not suppose any familiarity on their part with Jewish localities and customs, he does presume on their being well instructed in regard to the Saviour's life, as the Twelve had been wont to recount it to their congre gations, and as, consequently, the Synoptical Gospels had published it far and wide. We have an example of this in the facts concerning the Forerunner ; at the very out set Saint John advances this bit of evidence which he deems important as establishing the Saviour's Divinity : " I saw the Spirit coming down as a Dove, and resting upon Jesus."1 Here the allusion is, of course, to the Baptism in the Jordan, and notwithstanding that he was an eye-witness to it, he does not relate that scene, because he considers it sufficiently known to all. Then again, although he nowhere tells the tale of John the Baptist's arrest and trial, he does in the course of another narrative let fall this remark, " John had not as yet been cast into prison." 2 Thus, then, this is no new history of the Saviour which Saint John is composing ; nor has he even in mind, as some of the Fathers have presumed,3 a work which should supplement that of his predecessors. We do undoubtedly owe to him many facts which are not to be found in the Synoptics,4 facts assuredly of deep interest, such as Jesus' 1 John i. 32. 2 Tya., ;;;. 24. 8 S. Jerome, De Viris illustr., 9. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii. xxiv. 4 The same may be said of many minor details which lingered in his SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 163 conversations with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman ; the Miracle of the wedding at Cana ; the healing of the paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda ; that of the man born blind ; and the resurrection of Lazarus ; but these inci dents were chosen by him solely because they were the most fitting for his purpose. " Were it necessary to relate all," he tells us, " I do not believe that the world would be able to contain the books I should have to write." 1 This touch of Oriental hyperbole shows that the Apostle had no intention of penning an historical work : on the con trary he confirms his declaration " that he is writing solely to quicken the belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.2 " But it seldom happens that a man rids himself of in herited tendencies altogether. Even when moved by the Spirit which is assisting him, even while so far absorbed in the Gentiles' cause as to condescend with fatherly solicitude to their ignorance of Jewish history, John still bears the impress of his race, which asserts itself in his manner of writing. An Apologist of Greek birth or education would have had recourse to didactic reasonings to prove his thesis : nothing could be more opposed to the genius of Israel. The latter's process is always first to seize the imagination by means of some picture or allegory, thereafter enforcing its moral appeal to the intellect. Accommodating His teachings to this turn of the Jewish mind, the Master hardly ever did more than set before them certain parables, enforcing them by miracles. In like manner the Apostles based their instructions on incidents in the Saviour's life, which in the sequel went to form " the Gospel " as we now read it in the Synoptics. If I may without disrespect make use of a modern term to characterize this method of instruction, I might term it, to a certain degree, " object lessons ; " or, better, it is mak ing the facts, whether real or symbolical, speak for thein- memory and are peculiar to him : Malchus, the man's name that was wounded by Peter (xviii. 10) ; the name of Judas' father (xiii. 2) ; like wise certain names of places : Cana, iEnon, Salim, Sichar, Bethany near Jordan. 1 John xxi. 25. 2 Ibid., xx. 31. 164 SAINT JOHN. selves, preach their own sermon. Accustomed from child hood to this system, John naturally recurred to it when setting forth his doctrine. Hence it happens that what we call " his Gospel " has an historical coloring because, outside of the Prologue, what we find therein are mostly facts which furnish mat ter for the discourses ; but these facts are selected with the sole purpose of proving the point at issue. Almost all of them are Miracles, " Signs," 1 indicative of those Divine Attributes which the Apostle is seeking to display in Jesus: thus he shows Him as the fountain-head of Life in the raising of Lazarus ; of Light, in the healing of the man born blind ; as Creator and Master of the material world, in the wedding at Cana and the multi plying of the fishes. For the same reasons he chooses the personages who fill his stage: they but furnish further examples of the wretched welcome which ignorance and human passions have extended to the Gospel from its first appearance, which they will continue to do till the end of Time. The Doctors of Jerusalem, even Nicodemus him self, the most loyal of their number, display, in their conver sations with the Saviour, very little open-mindedness to " Heavenly things," 2 a failing common to the most culti vated minds when Faith has been clipped of her wings.3 On the contrary, the Samaritan woman and she that was taken in adultery testify to the ease wherewith Grace finds its way into even blighted hearts, if only they be simple, upright, repentant. But, once again be it said, John is not writing a con nected tale. He picks out certain facts and personages merely because they permit him to point the moral of the Master's discourses, by witnessing to His Divinity ; and 1 27)/«m. John ii. 11, 23 ; iii. 2 ; iv. 48 ; vii. 2, etc. 2 T& tirovpdvia. Ibid., iii. 12. 8 All men are prone to debase the Master's words by understanding them in a material sense. Designedly, it would seem, S. John chose such scenes as for the most part furnish but a series of misunderstandings and misconceptions, to display the feebleuess of the human mind when super natural light floods it for the first time; it remains dazzled, blinded incapable of seeing anything until, with the awakening of Faith, it is enlightened by its pure rays. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 165 accordingly they interest him only in so far as they con tribute to this end. Nicodemus 1 appears solely to show by his interruptions how unfitted were the wisest and sincerest minds of Israel to understand the Saviour. As soon as the response of Jesus, proceeding unhindered, becomes the doctrinal exposition which the Evangelist has in mind, Nicodemus disappears and we hear no more of him. The same is true of the Gentiles who besought the Apostles to bring them before Jesus.2 The Saviour takes this occasion to announce His approaching hour, and to engage in a sublime colloquy with His Father. As for the Gentiles, we are left in ignorance as to what became of them. This omission of accessory circumstances, the absence of any logical order in the narrative, are characteristic of the Author's manner. He searches his memory for such matter as seems to him most fitted to support his demonstration ; the few facts he adduces furnish an occasion for lofty teachings ; but though small in number these suffice to assure him an incontestable authority, since the abundance and preciseness of the details given prove that he was an eye-witness. The design of the Fourth Gospel, conceived after this fashion, may, up to a certain point, explain the peculiar ities which distinguish it from the others. The principal one is the scarcity of Parables, the customary vehicle which the Saviour's preaching makes use of in the Synoptics, so much so that Matthew and Mark go so far as to say that He never spoke to the people save in this fashion.3 In this He adapted Himself to the habits of His hearers ; most of all because thereby He translated the Word Divine into the popular tongue. By allegorical scenes which gave a tangible appearance to the purest Truths ; by similitudes drawn from the fields, from fishing life, from business, from the various happenings of every-day life, He descended to the level of the lowliest, captured their imaginations, and engraved upon their hearts in 1 John iii. 2 Ibid., xii. 20 et seq. 8 Matt. xiii. 10-12, 34, 35. Mark iv. 33, 34. 166 SAINT JOHN. glowing letters His precepts of morality. We recognize a Divine hand in the choice of this mode of instruction, for, though especially native to the Oriental genius, it is no less fitting at all times to attract the common run of mortal minds, that multitude of humble folk to whom Jesus preferred to confide the truth rather than to the haughty and rich. It is impossible, furthermore, not to note how widely the forms of the Saviour's teachings differ in Saint John and in his predecessors. In the Synoptics, the Master's language is simple, made up of short sentences and familiar comparisons. Quite otherwise is the case with the Fourth Gospel : a series of discourses, or rather, let us say, conversations, wherein mystical speculations are treated of in terms so lofty that it would seem impossible for the masses to grasp them. Nevertheless, though John has penetrated further than any man into the knowledge of these " Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven," 1 which Jesus divulged to His Apostles, need we conclude from this that the first Evangelists were ignorant of them ? Is there, after all, such a wide gulf between Saint John's contemplations and the sublime Prayer in Saint Matthew : " Yea, Father, I praise Thee because it hath pleased Thee to hide these things from the prudent and to reveal them unto the little ones. All things are given into My hands by My Father, and none knoweth the Father but the Son and he to whom He shall see fit to reveal Him." 2 Despite these differences3 in handling their subject, 1 Matt. xiii. 11. 2 Ibid., xi. 25, 27. 8 Even the Synoptics do not report the Saviour's words identically; all they deemed essential was to give His thoughts with perfect fidelity. They did not pretend to be able always to repeat word for word the expressions He had used. For the important points, however, there is reason to believe that the words of Jesus were graven on the memory of His hearers. This is true of S. John. He recalls perfectly the Saviour's conversations, but he evidently does no more than sum them up and give their principal features. How otherwise, for instance, could we account for His interview with Nicodemus lasting no longer than the time it takes to read the third chapter of the last Gospel 1 See Corluy, Commentar. in Evangehum S. Joannis, Prolegomena V, De Indole Sermonum Jesu apud o. Joannem. r SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 167 always the features and the figure of the Saviour as re flected in the last Gospel recalls Him as He appeared to us in the three others : the same character, the same spirit, the same doctrine. Even the vivid imagery of the Synoptics is in evidence : here, Jesus directing the Samaritan woman to the spring of waters which springs up unto eternal life ; 1 elsewhere, displaying before His Apostle's eyes that allegorical picture of the Good Shep herd,2 of the Vine and its Branches ; 3 with many others which we cannot stop to enumerate. But I am anxious to emphasize this point, that it was of set purpose that John omits so many instructions in order to concentrate his readers' attention on the circumstances whereby Jesus bore witness to His Divinity. In this choice he was guided by the same considerations which influenced his style, and which I have alluded to already. No reader can fail to remark, in the last Gospel, the use of certain locutions like " Word," " Light," " Grace," " Paraclete," which indicate a new spirit in the Church. These are typical expressions of the Alexandrian School, and in common use among the Greeks at Ephesus, respond ing as they did to their abstract conceptions. John, accus tomed for the past thirty years to hear them, and most desirous of making himself understood, naturally clothes the Saviour's preaching in these forms. The same reasons would seem to have led him to pre fer the symbolic scenes.4 It is well known how fond the Alexandrians were of casting their thoughts in this mould. It seems all the more likely that it was to adapt his words to the taste of his hearers that John gave this character to the historical portion of his work, because he himself makes no secret of it. Take the conclusion of the sub- 1 John iv. 14. 2 Ibid., x. 1-16. 8 Ibid., xv. 1-6. Cf. Weiss, Einleitung in das N. T, p. 580, no. 3. 4 We should be careful not to confound a Symbol with a Parable. The latter is a complete story, historical or fancied, told with the idea of inculcating a moral lesson, — for example, the tale of the prodigal son. A Symbol is any word, figure, or fact employed as a sign of something else : thus, the healing of the officer's son at Capharnaum, which signifies the calling of the Gentiles. 168 SAINT JOHN. lime Prologue which begins in Heaven itself the history of the Incarnate Word on earth : — this is that the Son, while becoming Man, remains what He is from all Eter nity in the Bosom of the Father, the outward Expression of God.1 Now everything about this Word made Flesh has some message for us, not only His voice, but His look, His gestures ; every deed of this Divine person is fraught with meaning; over and above the rest, His Miracles, since they all contain, together with the testi mony of His Omnipotence, such profound lessons. Ac cordingly, from among the wonders he had been witness to, John selects such as best illustrated the Saviour's meaning. At times the thought symbolized seems to him so luminous that he need add no explication. Is it not manifest, for instance, that at the wedding in Cana,2 the water is for a figure of Judaism with its successive Ablu tions, powerless to purify men's souls ? Wherefore Jesus changed it into the generous wine of the New Belief. Or again, what is the healing of the officer's son of Caphar- naum,3 if it does not mean that the Gentile world owes its salvation to its Faith alone ! Thus, then, it would be folly to deny that the Fourth Gospel is Alexandrian in its form, but it remains no less evident that its Author is a Jew by birth and education. Not only is everything concerning Palestine, its topog raphy, the religious and political conditions of the country, well known to him,4 but he speaks Greek like a 1 " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God, and the Word was God. . . . No man hath seen God : the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." John i. 1, 18. 2 John ii. 1-11. 8 Ibid., iv. 46-54. 4 His acquaintance with the slightest details concerning the localities betrays the fact that the Author had lived in Palestine and traversed those regions. He distinguishes the Bethany which was the abode of Martha and Mary from the Bethany over beyond Jordan (xi. 1, 18 ; i. 28 ; x. 40) ; he is aware that from Cana to Capharnaum the road goes down hill: Jco ica-rajS?? (iv. 47) ; he notes that ^non is near Salim (iii. 23), etc. The religious conditions of Judea, at the time of the Christ, are no less exactly known to him. To cite but one example : the Synoptics name as the Saviour's bitterest enemies the Sadducees and Pharisees : with more correctness S. John speaks of them as High Priests, 'Axiepeis. As a SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 169 veritable Israelite ; beneath every word he utters in his adopted tongue, one detects the Hebrew term, the Hebrew thought ; the balanced periods of the Hellenes are foreign to his speech ; a few particles suffice to link the short members of each phrase, and often it is hard to catch the logical connection between them ; to make up for it, that parallelism of ideas so dear to the Hebrews occurs fre quently and under divers forms: repetition, opposition, contrast.1 These peculiarities lend an original character to the Greek of the Fourth Gospel, without, however, injuring its purity ; for the language is more correct than in the Apocalypse.2 Is not this an indication that in all likeli hood other hands were at work with Saint John in the editing of his Recollections. Those disciples that had urged the aged man to bequeath them his document might easily render him any services such as correcting what ever might strike them as improper, either in form or ex pression. Indeed they do actually reveal their presence, in person, at the end of the last chapter, when confirming the testimony of the Apostle ; 3 it may very well be that matter of fact, the sacerdotal aristocracy did form this political party, Sadducean in its doctrines, which, owing to its position and influence, shared the power with the popular party of the Pharisees. For further details see A. Camerlinck, De Quarti Evangelii Auctore Dissertatio, pp. 220-229. 1 Lnthardt, Das Johanneische Evangelium, vol. i. pp. 14-62 (2d ed.). Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, p. 260 (5th ed.) Godet, Commentaire, pp. 226 et seq. Weiss, Einleitung in das N. T., p. 562. Fillion, Hvangile Selon S. Jean, pp. Hv. et seq. P. Calmes, L'Uvangile Selon S. Jean, Introduction. 2 As far back as the third century, S. Dionysius of Alexandria had re marked this fact (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vii. xxv.). — As to the Greek type of the Fourth Gospel, see Beelen, Grammatica Grozcitatis Novi Testamenti. Lovanii, 1857, passim. 8 John xx. 30, 31 ; xxi. 24, 25. Note, nevertheless, these wise reflec tions of Camerlinck : " We should not forget that the Apostle's psychology is not the common psychology. There are, as it were, two persons in his consciousness, — his own person and the Person of the Spirit. An Apostle who has the Spirit of God may write, " I tell the truth, I lie not, my con science bears me witness in the Holy Ghost." This bold saying is not John's, it is Paul's (Rom. ix. 1), who did not have his epistle written by his disciples. An Apostle might appropriate what Jesus in the Fourth Gospel says of Himself, " My testimony is true because I am not alone, 170 SAINT JOHN. their assistance was not confined to the part of mere sec retaries writing under the dictation of their master,1 but that, to a greater or less degree, they clothed his spoken words in their own language. Elsewhere we have seen how Saint Jerome gives this explanation of the differences in style which mark the Second Epistle of Saint Peter from the First.2 This hypothesis would quite quash the principal objection brought by Rationalistic Exegesis against the authenticity of our Sacred Book. I confine myself, however, to merely calling attention to it : for one thing, because I do not know surely whether it can be lawfully upheld, and, for the other, feeling as I do, that it is superfluous after all that has just been said. Even this short study shows that there is nothing in the Fourth Gospel to prevent us from agreeing in the verdict of all antiquity that it was penned by John, the son of Zebedee. Nor is that all ; it is befitting to add that from what we know of this Apostle from other sources he was predestined, as it were, to gather up the loftiest evan gelical teachings, and to exhibit the Divine Saviour to us in a more striking light than his predecessors had done. Such a knowledge of the Christ was, firstly, the fruit of the pre-eminent graces which the predilection of Jesus had lavished on the dearly beloved disciple: perhaps John's education, and especially his natural character, had contributed thereto. He would seem, indeed, owing to his family's position, to have had a more cultivated mind than his companions in the Apostleship : he is the son of a fisherman, undoubtedly, but of a master fisher who employs many workmen in his service ; 3 his mother, but I and He that sent Me." (John viii. 1 6 ) And it is with this meaning that " the disciple that Jesus loved " can write, " He that hath seen gives testimony thereto, and his testimony is true." De Quarti Evangelii Auctore, pars altera, p. 329, note 2. 1 P. Calmes does not hesitate to ascribe a goodly share in the revision of S. John's Gospel to his Disciples. Comment se sont Forme's les Evan- giles, p. 57, 3d ed. ; cf. L'FJvangile Selon S. Jean, Introduction. 2 See The Last Years of Saint Paul, chap. xii. p. 293, note 3. 8 Mark i. 20. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 171 Salome, is among the train of Galilean women who follow Jesus and " ministered unto Him of their substance ; " x also among the holy women who purchase the sweet spices wherewith to anoint the Saviour's dead body.2 He him self is so well known at the Palace of the High Priest that his word is sufficient to introduce Peter within its gates.3 Still more than his education, his inborn enthusiasm, his instinctively religious soul, made John prepared to hear and to retain the loftiest revelations of the Master. From their first meeting he won the heart of Jesus, by responding on the spot to His summons ; without an in stant's hesitation, without any reservation, he left all to follow Him.4 Often thereafter did the Divine Master have to moderate the fire of youth which made Salome's child a " Son of the Thunderbolt." 5 We have seen him amid the disciples, calling down Heaven's fire on the Samaritans who refused to entertain them;6 forbidding any one that was not of their company to cast out devils in the Saviour's Name ; 7 claiming for himself and his brother James the foremost places in the Kingdom that was to come.8 Jesus pardoned much in that heart which He knew to be so warm and generous and devoted, more than any other capable of loving and understanding Him. Accordingly, not content with counting him in the little circle of three Apostles whom he called to be witnesses of the raising of Jairus' daughter,9 of His Transfiguration,10 of His Agony,11 He reserved a special place for him in His affections, a sort of primacy. All knew that he was " the disciple that Jesus loved," His confidant, and so when, at the Last Supper, Peter wished to know which of the Twelve would betray Him, it was to John, then resting his head on the Lord's bosom, that 1 Matt, xxviii. 55, 56. Mark xv. 40, 41. Luke viii. 3. 2 Mark xvi. 1. 8 Ibid., xviii. 15, 16. 4 Matt. iv. 21, 22. 6 Mark iii. 17. 6 Luke ix. 52-56. 7 Mark ix. 37, 38. 8 Ibid., x. 36-40. 9 Ibid., v. 22-43. / 10 Matt. xvii. 1-9. Mark ix. 1-8. Luke ix. 28-36. 11 Matt, xxvii. 3, 27. Mark xiv. 32, 33. 172 SAINT JOHN he addressed his question.1 It is true that, like his fel low-witnesses of the Agony, the son of Zebedee slumbered at his post in Gethsemane, but the approach of danger awakened him, and from that moment he never quitted the Master. Alone he followed Him all along that way of sorrow to the Pontiff's Palace, to Pilate's Praetorium ; he alone of the Apostles was on Calvary with the holy women, and there he received from the expiring Saviour, as his heritage, Mary.2 Thereafter the one same roof covered the two beings whom Jesus had loved the most. There they lived on His memory, His love : Mary repeated to John the Divine sayings which Saint Luke testifies "she had faithfully treasured in her heart." 3 Now these words she had gath ered up not only during their long sojourn in Nazareth, but in the course of the three years of evangelical wan derings, when, in the train of the holy women, she had accompanied Jesus, listening to Him as never mother listened to her son, for she knew Who He was, that in Him the Word of God was living and speaking. It may be that until Pentecost these memories remained voiceless and more or less indistinct in Mary's soul, like letters graven in the gloom, but at the glorious outburst of that great day, they were illumined with new brightness. In her, as in all, the Saviour's promise was fully accom plished, " that the Paraclete would come in His Name, and bring all things to the minds of His disciples what soever He had spoken to them." 4 There is small room to doubt that Jesus reserved His loftiest teachings for Mary and the Apostle whom He loved so dearly that He gave him to His Mother to be a son to her.6 These divine thoughts, held in common by Mary and John, furnished the food of their meditations during the years they dwelt together. Is it at all aston ishing that they made of this Apostle " The Theologian," over and beyond all other divines, according to the ex- 1 John xii. 23-27. 2 Matt. xxvi. 36-46. John xviii. 15 ; xix. 25, 26. » Luke n. 51. 4 John xiv. 26. s j.D;di) xix. 26. SAINT JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 173 pression of the ancients,1 as he is the most eminent of all mystical writers ; for, with him, all light turns to love, and that love did, if not create, at least develop, in the " dearly beloved of Jesus " that contemplative genius which is the distinctive character of his writings. " The eyes of the heart being enlightened " 2 in him, attained such power that in gazing on the Master's teachings, they pierced depths never fathomed by any other, not even by Saint Paul. To John we owe the priceless privilege of worshipping in full enlightenment our most touching Mysteries: the Eucharist, the outpouring of the Para clete in our souls, our union with the Heavenly Father in Jesus, and through Jesus. From him, as much as from Saint Paul, the Fathers and the Doctors of the Councils drew the principal elements of our faith as far as con cerns its essential dogmas : — the Trinity, the Incarna tion, the Redemption. And this positive Theology is far from being all we owe to John. What transcends all else in him is that which he absorbed from his intimacy with the Master, in those tender talks wherein Jesus, raising his mind above the earthly royalty he still coveted, revealed to him a higher world,3 those mystical regions, where the heart, disdaining aught that is not of God, yearns only to be united and live and lose itself in Him. Burning as are the accents of Saint Paul when he exalts the Divine Love,4 none has spoken of it as Saint John has, none ever so wrought that passion in men's souls. For them he gathered up the Saviour's urgent appeals, those utterances which, coming from Jesus' Heart, re-echo in the very depths of men's being, and make them captives unto Him : " And you will not come unto Me, Who will give you life ! . . . Abide in Me and I in you ! . . . Father, may the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me be in them and I in them ! " 6 Who hearkening to these accents can deceive himself ? 1 'ludvirnv rhv 'Efipaiuv 8e6\oyov. Eusebius, Prozp. Ev. xi. 18. 2 Ephes. i. 18. 8 Mark x. 35-40. 4 1 Cor. xiii. 6 John v. 40 ; xv. 4 ; xvii. 26. 174 SAINT JOHN. To consider them as merely a feeble echo of the earlier ecstasies, a far-away reverberation of the Glad Tidings repeated by some unknown, is to err in good faith, I ad mit, but it is unquestionably to misapprehend the very accent of truth in history. In the event, this hypothesis will do small honor to those who have fabricated it. Men will once more come to believe, with us, that John is the Author of a work which can only be his ; and this be cause there is something stronger than any reasoning, and that is evidence. For the Author successfully to confront the cloudy conceptions, the fantastic " iEons " of the Alexandrians, with the Christ, living and loving, and to be able to make the Word made Flesh speak as he does, he must needs not only " have heard with his ears, seen with his eyes, touched with his hands," he must have loved Him with his whole heart ; nay, more, he must have been " he whom Jesus loved." CHAPTER X. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. After an appreciation of the author of the last Gospel, the next in order is a consideration of his work : one of the sublimest ever penned by mortal man, even granting that its inspiration was from on High. Certain features do indeed disclose its humanity. According to Saint Epiphanius,1 Saint John had all but reached his hundredth year when he composed it. It is, therefore, the work of a patriarch who is writing under divine impulse, and yet, as it would seem, still subject to the influence of advanced age. Thus any one can remark, for example, the repeti tion of words and thoughts so characteristic of the aged, when they refer to old recollections or strive to make themselves better understood ; 2 then there is, too, the as sistance of his disciples, who lend their aid to the writer and eagerly confirm his revered testimony.3 The question has already been mooted as to how far this co-operation on the part of the brethren may have extended. At the very least, they wrote down what the Apostle dictated to them. If such was their task, they fulfilled it with scrupulous fidelity, jotting down the slight est details of time and place, always respecting the various forms assumed, according to the inspiration of the moment, by the speech of their venerable master. And perhaps that religious care to reproduce his language may ac count for the lack of nicely balanced proportions in the several narratives, some seeming like an unfinished sketch,4 1 S. Epiphanius, Hozr. ii. 12. 2 Patrizzi, De Evangeliis, Book i. iv. ; Quozst. ii. 9. 8 John xxi. 24. 4 Jesus' interview with Nicodemus, and the unexpected appearance of the Greeks, asking to see Jesus. John iii. ; xii. 20-23. 176 SAINT JOHN. others presenting us with a carefully elaborated picture.1 The same holds good as regards the discourses: here summed up in a few words, and again developed at length. In almost all of them it is apparent that John is giving utterance to his recollections just as they recur to him, fragmentarily, in detached phrases and sentences, oblivious of the connection which they must have had in the original conversations, as the Saviour developed them.2 This unevenness in its composition in no wise robs the work either of its lively interest or its sublime conception, which have made it, to use the Fathers' favorite expres sion,3 " the Gospel of the Spirit." Neither do they inter fere with its design, concisely set forth, of proving that Jesus is God. This demonstration consists in showing that four essential attributes of the Godhead are made manifest in the doings and sayings of the Christ : He is the Omnipotent, as His miracles bear witness; He is Light, Life, and Love most of all, and this as their fountain-head and in all their fulness. The arguments urged to support his demonstration are drawn from the evangelical occurrences. As a rule John records them in the order of their happening ; and never theless it is possible to note a progessive movement in the march of ideas, which warrants the division of the Holy Book into three parts. The first recounts the very various greetings accorded by the world to the Light bestowed on it by the Incarnate Word ; the second de scribes the implacable resistance it met with from the creatures of Darkness ; the third describes the eclipse of the Light, but only an apparent eclipse, since from it Jesus emerges in a more striking manifestation of His Divinity : His love attaining its climax in the Eucharist and the sacrifice of the Cross. None but God^could have loved so greatly as this.4 1 The conversation between the Saviour and the Samaritan woman ; the healing of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus, etc. John iv. ix. xi. 2 Patrizzi, Commentarium in Joannem, Proozmium. 8 Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl.), vi. xiv. S. Epiphanius, Hozr. li. 19. 4 The first part comprises the first four chapters of the work ; the THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 177 But is not the presentation of the Saviour's work under an allegorical form, treating it as a struggle between Light and Darkness, just one of those Alexandrian conceptions which modern Exegesis is so fond of pointing out in the construction of the work, notably in the Prologue, de claring them utterly irreconcilable with the Jewish character of the son of Zebedee ? What has been said elsewhere1 of the influence brought to bear on John's manner of thinking and speaking by his long sojourn in Ephesus sufficiently explains these seeming contradictions. To what, after all is said, does this Prologue amount, which they gratuitously ascribe to some Egyptian metaphysician ? To the three first sentences of the Book. The first reveals, in His eternal Essence, the divine Person incarnate in Jesus : — In the Beginning was the Word, And the Word was in God, And the Word was God. The second determines His part in the Creation : — He was in the Beginning in God ; All things were made by Him, And without Him nothing was made that was made. The last phrase^ sums up in two words the ministry of Jesus : the divine Saviour offering the world light and life, and the world rejecting them : — In Him was the Life, And the Life was the Light of men,2 And the Light shineth in Darkness, And the Darkness comprehended it not. second, the eight following, from v. to xii.; the third, the eight chapters consecrated to the narratives of the Last Supper, the Passion, and the Resurrection, from xii. to xx. ; the xxi. and last chapter would seem to have been added as an afterthought, by the Author, and for rather different reasons. 1 See preceding Chapter. 2 The Life existing in the Word, in its fulness and as unchanging toun- tain-head of all things that are, is not a hidden force, working in secret, without other manifestation than the activity it communicates to every- 12 178 SAINT JOHN. Such, in its principal features, is the foreword to the Fourth Gospel. What is there about it that might not have emanated from the mind and fallen from the lips of this Apostle ? John was a man gifted with sublime visions ; no eye has pierced further into the vast deeps of the celestial life : thereof his Apocalypse is witness. In stinctively, as it were, and as a familiar friend he goes straight to the very heart of the Godhead, when contem plating the origin of all things. True, these lofty con siderations which constitute his own peculiar domain are given a coloring and style which appear borrowed. Nevertheless we must beware of mistaking them : though the terms be foreign, the Hebraic construction always underlies them in its essential forms. The thoughts fol low according to the laws of parallelism, in short sentences, connected by a simple repetition of words ; the phrases have a harmonious rhythm and are disposed in groups like the strophes of a song. This, as we know, was the dis tinctive character of the poetry and of all elevated style in Hebrew writers ; it was their native tongue, whenever enthusiasm and higher flights of thought or passion thrilled them. For all these reasons the mystical Prologue of the Word is attributable to the genius of Israel : there is nothing to forbid us ascribing it to the Galilean fisher man, who under the tutelage of Jesus became the sublime Seer of his race. Furthermore, it is impossible to disallow the intimate relationship in doctrine, if not in language, existing be tween the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of Saint Paul. Beyond the fact that the latter assigns to Jesus the same privileges which Saint John accords Him, — for example, that of being the Redeemer of all humankind, whereof He wished to become a part, and at the same time the equal of His Father, by Whom He is seated in the Heavens;1 Saint Paul does, moreover, represent the thing which it penetrates. This Life is Light ; it illumines everything in the man that receives it, not" only his intelligence, but his heart, his feel ings, his impulses to will and to do. Cf . Matt. vi. 22-23. Luke xi. 34, 36. 1 Compare particularly Rom. i. 3 ; viii. 3, 32. Gal. iv. 4-6. 2 Cor. viii. 9. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 179 Christ as the very Wisdom of God, consubstantial with Him from the origin of all things.1 What is this but that same Word which " in the Beginning, was in God and was God," according to the expression used by Saint John in conformity with the philosophic idiom of his times.2 Thus, then, the Fourth Evangelist was in no sense an innovator : his conceptions are identical with those of his predecessor, or are logically derived from principles laid down by him. Nor is it at all surprising that one Apostle should have developed what another Apostle had ex pressed before him, since both drew from the same source, which is the Truth, Incarnate in Jesus. Only a superficial critic, after studying the sublime Prologue, could come to the conclusion that another than John must be its author. What follows immediately upon this masterly passage attests still more clearly the hand that penned it. Com ing down from the eternal heights, where he had soared, and reverting suddenly to the practical purpose of his work, the Apostle invokes, as foremost proof of the Saviour's Divinity, evidence which he deems the strong est of all : that of John the Baptist. It is hard to con ceive of an Alexandrian of the second or third generation 1 1 Cor. i. 24-30; viii. 6. Colos. i. 15-17. Hebr. i. 2 Renan agrees that it is not merely " a question of vocabulary " (S. Paul, 274-275). Elsewhere he writes : " The belief that Jesus was the 'Logos' of the Alexandrian Philosophy must have suggested itself at an early date and in a very logical fashion. From the year 68, he is called the Word of God. . . . The doctrines of the Epistle to the Colos sians present striking analogies with those of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus being represented in the above-named Epistle as the image of the invis ible God, the first begotten of all creatures, by whom everything was created ; who was before all things, and by whom all things exist, in whom the fulness of the divinity dwells corporeally" (Vie de Jeius, App. pp. 479, 480). Elsewhere again : "In the later writings [of S. Paul] we find a theory of the Christ considered as a sort of divine person, a theory quite analogous to that of the Logos which, later on, was to find its definite form in the writings attributed to S. John. . . . The anterior and cer tainly authentic writings of Paul contain the germ of this new language " (L'Antechrist, p. 76, etc.). Prof. Harnack says the same: " Was not this astonishing formula [the Logos] prepared, even led up to by the messianic speculation of Paul and certain other writers of the earlier period 1 " What is Christianity, p. 214, Cf. Lepin, JCsus Messie et Fits de Dieu, pp. 142, 143, etc. 180 SAINT JOHN. of Christians, laying such stress on the words of the Precursor ; as for John, on the contrary, nothing could be more natural, since he had been one of the disciples of the Baptist : it was in obedience to his words, declaring that Jesus was the " Lamb of God," that he had followed the Divine Master.1 And so in what bold relief he makes the figure of the last Seer of the Old Covenant stand out ! " There was a man sent by God, whose name was John ; he came to bear witness to the Light ; " then, fearing lest any one mis take his meaning, " he was not the Light," he adds ; " but he came to give testimony to the Light that all men might believe through him," and thereby become " sons of God." 2 It is in this mission of the Forerunner that he enshrines and enunciates the master-thought which animates his whole work : that the Incarnate Word ever remains God even as is the Supreme Being which begot Him. And the Word was made Flesh, And dwelt among us, And we saw His Glory; A Glory like unto that which a Son An only Son, receiveth from His Father Full of Grace and of Truth.8 " And we have beheld His Glory," all of us, the com panions of His Ministry, but first and foremost, we, John the Baptist and the Apostle John, eye-witnesses of that Glory which manifested itself in wonders without num ber, thus fulfilling the figures and promises of the Old Testament. Instead of the bright cloud which over shadowed the tent of the Ark in token of God's dwelling amid His people 4 the Word Divine has pitched His tent, and abides in the deepest privacy of our souls ; 5 in place of the rigorous Law of Moses, grace and truth are poured out upon our souls in all their fulness, by Jesus ; 6 in- I John i. 29, 35-40. " Ibid., 6-13. 8 Ibid 14, 4 Exod. xxv. 8, 29-45. Ps. lxxxiii. 2. Zach. ii. 10. 6 'Eo-Ktjvao-ev iv fjpiv. John 1. 14. 6 Ibid., i. 17. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 181 stead of the fearsome God no Jew could look upon and live, the only Son, — only-begotten God, says another reading,1 — He that was in the Bosom of the Father, reveals to us this Supreme Being, as invisible and inac cessible to such as are not born anew, in Jesus, and through Jesus, unto the life of the Spirit.2 Like a true son of Israel, John delights on dwelling on the correspondence of the New to the Old Covenant ; and, as all old men do, in lingering over youthful days, when, as a disciple of the Baptist, he heard him tender his solemn homage to Jesus : " I saw the Spirit come down from Heaven as a Dove, and rest upon Him. As for me, I knew Him not, but He that sent me to baptize with water said to me, He upon Whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining, He it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and I gave testimony that this is the Son of God.3 After the testimony of the Precursor, so memorable to the Evangelist and to which he reverts again and again,4 it is a very natural transition that leads him to speak of his own calling and thereafter to that of the other dis ciples. Thus he enters on the first part of his work ; the welcome which the world gives to the Light, offered it by the Incarnate Word. The hearts of those first to be called — John, Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathaniel 5 — responded generously to His message. The accents, even the glance of Jesus, went to the very depths of their souls and constrained them to 1 'O povoyeviis Beos. This reading is that of the best authorized MSS. : the Vaticanus, the Sinaiticus, the Codex Ephrozmi, the Codex Regius Parisi- ensis (L.). See the comments of the Fathers (which are very contradic tory and uncertain) in Alford's Greek Testament, in he. 2 In Himself, God is precisely what the Jews imagined Him, — the Supreme Being, inaccessible, unfathomable, an ineffable Being, of Whom we can say no more than that He is the Infinite. He escapes the grasp of the most gifted minds. Only through Jesus, and in Jesus, can we attain unto Him : " God," says S. John, " no man hath ever seen; the only Son Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath made Him known." John i. 18. Cf. Ibid., v. 37, 38. 3 Ibid., i. 32-34. 4 Ibid., iii. 23-27 ; v. 33-36; x. 40-42. 5 Ibid., i. 35-51. 182 SAINT JOHN. leave all and follow Him. This is true, too, of those that witnessed the Saviour's earliest miracles : at Cana, where He turned the water into wine ; l at Jerusalem, during the Passover Festival, when Jesus obtains such mastery over men's minds by the wonders He worked that He can venture with impunity to drive the traffickers from the Temple with scourge in hand.2 Thus far the Glory of Jesus shines forth unobstructed. And yet the spirit of rebellion was even then seething beneath the surface. Many witnesses of the Miracles performed in the Holy City had declared themselves openly for Him, but Jesus, fathoming their hearts, " did not trust Himself to them, for that He knew all men." 3 Saint John notes among the Jews of Jerusalem, these first puffs of the smouldering opposition which was soon to break out in fiery flames ; and yet, to show that the very best among them were ready to receive the New Faith, he begins by relating the interview between Nicodemus and the Saviour. This Scribe was the peer of any of the members of the Sanhedrin in intelligence as well as in experience of life ; nay more, he excelled them in recti tude, since, as soon as he recognized the Truth, he ac knowledged it ; and yet, in his first converse with the Lord, he evidences no comprehension of the new birth wrought by water and the Holy Ghost, a necessary con dition of all human life. " How can that be ? " he asks in all simplicity. " What ! " Jesus answers, " art thou a master in Israel and knowest not these things ? How then can I converse with thee? If I speak to you of earthly things, you believe Me not ; if I speak to you of heavenly things,4 how will you believe Me ? " This appre- 1 John ii. 1-11. " This was the first Miracle of Jesus ; He worked it at Cana in Galilee ; thereby He manifested His Glory and His disciples believed in Him," — in His Divinity, for the words " Glory, Brightness," are always used by S. John to designate the Divine Being in the Brilliancy of His Splendor. John i. 14 ; v. 44 ; xi. 40 ; xvii. 5, 22, 24. 2 Ibid., ii. 13-17. 8 Ibid., 23-25. 4 " Heavenly things" (John iii. 12), that is tp say, the Mystery of the Redemption, whereto Jesus strives to raise the limited intelligence of His questioner. And, indeed, if we be not " born again of the Spirit," how THE FOURTH GOSPEL 183 ciation of the Faith, at the outset, Saint John tells us, was evidenced by but a few chosen souls : a scanty num ber of Galileans, among the Jews ; the sinful woman of Samaria and her fellow-countrymen ; 1 the official of Capharnaum, the first-fruit of the Gentile world. Thus was fulfilled the saying which closes, or rather comments 2 on, the testimony of John Baptist : " He that believeth on the Son hath life everlasting, he that believeth not on the Son, hath not life." 3 With the fifth chapter begins the second and most cir cumstantiated of the three parts of the work, to wit, the description of the struggle between light and darkness, between Jesus and the unbelieving throng. The debate be gins at Bethsaida Pool, its occasion being the healing of the paralytic by Jesus. It was a Sabbath day. The hateful Pharisaism of the Jews is displayed by their presuming to forbid the doing on that day of any sort of work, even one of charity.4 Jesus' response is couched in terms of can we understand that God so loved the world that He willed that His only Son should die on the Cross to save it? (John iii. 14-16). This faith in the Redeemer-Christ makes for the salvation of the lowly who bow before the Truth revealed from on High, even when it passes their comprehension ; but, when disdained by the haughty, it works their own condemnation. Thus, of itself, it marks the cleavage betwixt the destinies of mankind, without any need that the Son, " Who is not come to judge," should pronounce sentence (ibid., iii. 7-19). 1 John dwells at great length on this scene, striking as it is from every point of view. None, indeed, gives clearer evidence of the power of Faith to illumine the mind. Here we see Jesus displaying to a poor woman, enlightened by repentance, the mysteries of the supernatural life ; bidding her worship the Father " in spirit and in truth ; " making her glimpse, by means of that figure "of water springing up unto Eternal Life," the never-failing fountain-head of Life Divine, alone capable of quenching the thirst of holy souls. lt>id., iv. 14-23. 2 This restriction I make simply because it seems so difficult, and perhaps of little moment, to decide, in the testimony of John Baptist, precisely as elsewhere in the talk with Nicodemus and many similar cases, just at what point the Saviour's words cease and the Evangelist's reflec tions thereon begin. I have already alluded to the fact that the Apostle does not mean to reproduce word for word all that his Master uttered : they are His thoughts which he sets forth, thoughts which he has so long meditated upon that he has made them his own, in so far that in hearken ing to John we are really hearing but the voice of Jesus. 3 John iii. 36. 4 Ibid., v. 1-17. 184 SAINT JOHN. one that is Master of the Sabbath as of all life : from all eternity "until now My Father worketh and I like wise work." Nor do the Jews fail to grasp the significance of this testimony which Jesus, furthermore, takes care to make as formal as possible, by telling them that all His Father does He does also; like Him raising the dead, giving life to whomsoever He sees fit. To have life in one's self and through one's self is a peculiar attribute of the Godhead. Jesus lays claims to it in set terms : "As the Father hath life in Himself, so He hath given to the Son, also, to have life in Himself." i For this cause, the Evan gelist relates, the Jews, already resolved to make away with the despiser of their Observances, " sought the more to kill Him because He did not only break the Sabbath, but because He also said God was His Father, making Himself equal to God."2 Galilee was the chosen field of the Saviour's Ministry. There He had lived the thirty years of His Hidden Life ; thence He drew, not only His first disciples, but the holy women who ministered to His wants and served Him; on it He fairly showered His instructions and miracles ; there, doubtless more than anywhere else, did His words reach deeper down into the people's hearts. Full of such memories, John could not pass over in silence the deeds and words of Jesus while in that region. From it he takes the principal scene in the second part of his work, for Jesus, by announcing beforehand the founding of the Eucharist, reveals that He is God, since He has in Him self and communicates to men the Life Divine. The Evangelist reserves for later on, in the actual institution of the same Mystery, this exposition of Him as likewise God, by virtue of another of His attributes, of all the most winning, Love, which he displayed as no mere man ever could have done. It was just after the multiplying of the loaves that John heard the Saviour asseverate anew His Godship. The throngs, in their enthusiasm over the Miracle, had 1 John v. 19-26. 2 Ibid., 18. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 185 followed Him into the Synagogue at Capharnaum. "I am the Living Bread come down from Heaven," the Saviour tells them. ... "If any eat of this bread, he shall live forever; now, the bread which I give is My flesh, which I must give for the life of the world. . . . My flesh is meat indeed and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me and I in him. As My Father that sent Me is living [the very Life], and as I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me shall live by Me." x One must have eyes enlightened by faith not to be dazzled by such a mystery. The multitude murmured, " How can He give us His flesh to eat?" just as Nicodemus had answered, "How can these things be?" Even some of the disciples joined the mutterers, and many left Him never to return. The Twelve remained close to the Saviour. "And you," He said to them, " will you, too, leave Me ? " Peter replies in the name of all : " To whom shall we go, Lord ? Thou hast the words of Eternal Life. We know that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God ! " 2 Assuredly under the cir cumstances this solemn profession must have touched the heart of the Master. But Peter was only the spokesman of the Apostles ; he was not warranted to pledge the faith of the deserters. And this defection seemed all the harder to Jesus, because in the very ranks of those that had just sworn fidelity to Him He already descried "the betrayer."8 Thus even in Galilee the conflict of light and darkness had not been a triumphant one. Notwithstanding the great peril, the implacable hatred of the Jews, which awaited Him at Jerusalem, Jesus re turned thither for the succeeding Feast of the Taber nacles; and immediately their wrath burst forth, more burning than ever, decisive even for the future, to the Evangelist's thinking, for the extended details he gives concerning this solemnity show the important place it held in his memory. The Galilean kinsfolk of the Saviour — who, "even 1 John vi. 48-59. 2 Ibid., 61-70. s Ibid., 71, 72. 186 SAINT JOHN. they," sorrowfully adds the Apostle, " did not believe in Him " 1 — had urged Him in vain to accompany them to the Holy City, and there exhibit His all-powerfulness. He went there in His own good times in the midst of the feastmaking. The populace ran after Him, much divided in opinion in His regard ; some in His favor, others hesi tating, none daring to come out openly for Him, out of fear of the Sanhedrin party, which had determined on taking Jesus and killing Him. But their timidity van ished on hearing Him. " It is a prophet; it is the Christ ! " they cried aloud. The guards dispatched thrice by the Sanhedrin to arrest Him, themselves yielded to His ascend ancy. Returning to their superiors, " Never man," they said, " spake like this man." 2 So, for the time being, they must needs give up their plots of violence. Priests and Pharisees had no other recourse than to mingle with the throng and seek to recover their empire over it by interrupting the Saviour's discourses with their objections. This only offered Him another occasion for affirming still more explicitly that He is one, in nature and attributes, with the Supreme Being, whose Son He proclaimed Himself: "I am the light of the world ; he that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but he shall have the light of life. ... If I do judge, My judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent Me." " Where is Thy Father ? " his enemies interrupt. And Jesus answers : " Neither Me do you know nor My Father ; if you did know Me you would know My Father also. . . . You are from below, I am from above ; you are of this world, I am not of this world." And with all this, Saint John notes, " they did not understand that He said God was His Father."3 They did understand Him, 1 John vii. 5. 2 Ibid., 10, 53. 8 As the Jews had shown themselves almost unanimous in their mis understanding and rejection of their Saviour, in his Gospel S. John usually uses their name to designate the adversaries of Jesus ; once and again, however, he does not fail to note that a chosen few from out the nation had believed in the divine Master. Midmost the events of the Feast of Tabernacles, he describes the Saviour as addressing these beautiful words THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 187 however, when, on their boasting of their being sons of Abraham, He made answer that that Patriarch had longed above all things to behold the days of that salvation which He, the Son of the Heavenly Father, should bring into the world, and that when God permitted him to see them beforehand he had been filled with joy. "Thou art not yet fifty years old," they interjected, " and thou hast seen Abraham ? " " Of a truth, yea, verily, I say unto you," replied Jesus, " before Abraham was, I am." He could not more clearly have declared Himself the Eternal. The Jewish priests rushed to grab up stones to slay Him ; but He hid Himself and departed from the Temple.1 Once outside the Sanctuary, the populace for the most part protected Him. The healing of a man born blind, worked that day 2 by Him, had increased His popularity. He took advantage of this to repeat to those about Him the truths which their leaders,3 obstinate in their blind ness, had refused to see. " I am the Light of the world. ... I am the Good Shepherd, I am come to give My Life to a small group of believers : "as He said these things many believed in Him. Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, ' If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed, and you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall set you free.' " John viii. 30, 31, 32. To be a disciple of Jesus it is not enough to hearken to His words, or meditate on them to a greater or less extent ; we must penetrate into them as into a Sanctuary, there " abide," as it were, permanently therein, communi cating with them in all they have to give of Life and Light. The fruit of this union is a knowledge of the truth which does not limit itself to pure speculations ; rather spontaneously it translates what it believes into deeds. 1 John viii. 52-59. 2 Ibid., ix. 3 Solely to the haughty Pharisees surrounding the man born blind does the Saviour address that austere saying : " I am come into this world to provoke a judgment, that they who see not may see, and that they who see may become blind." John ix. 39. " To provoke a judgment," that is, a selective opinion, one that shall mark the difference, and discern between, those blind ones who, suffering in the night wherein they lan guish, seek to grope their way forth, and those others that see, leaders and teachers of Israel. Infatuated with the revelations made to their race, the latter refused to see anything beyond them. What could the Saviour do except abandon these to their blindness and keep the full enlightment for the lowly-minded, so eager for Heaven-born Light ? 188 SAINT JOHN. for My sheep," but to give it as God, Sovereign Master of life and death ; for that life, He adds, " no man takes away from Me, but 't is I that lay it down Myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up." 1 The outspoken hatred of the Sanhedrin made it impos sible for Jesus to linger longer in Jerusalem. He departed, not to return thither till the following winter at the Feast of the Dedication. Then, more emphatically than ever, He told the Sanhedrin members, that, as Son of God, He had the same Nature as has He. " I and My Father," He said to them, " are One." 2 And as they picked up stones to cast at Him, " For which of My works would you stone Me ? " He asked. " Because of Thy Blasphemy," they answered, " because, being a man, Thou makest Thyself God ! " Far from retracting a word, but merely calling to wit ness the wonders He had worked in their presence, it is, He tells them, " in order that you may believe and that you may know that the Father is in Me and I in My Father." Enraged again the members of the Sanhedrin sprang to seize Him ; but He escaped out of their hands and got out of Jerusalem. He was not to return till He came to meet death there.3 The untimely end of His friend Lazarus was destined to bring Him back into the neighborhood, to Bethany, 1 John x. 1-21. * It was when reverting to the allegory of the Good Shepherd and his sheep, whereof He had made use in the foregoing Feast of Tabernacles, that the Saviour is led to make this declaration : " You are not My sheep," He tells the members of the Sanhedrin ; " My sheep hear My voice . . . and they follow Me, and I give them Life everlasting, and they shall not perish forever, and no man shall steal them from Me. My Father that hath given them Me, is greater than all and no man can snatch them from the Father. I and the Father are one." John x. 26-30. This Unity proclaimed by Jesus, giving Him the same power as the Father has, over all life, comes not simply from the fact that there is a community of will and action between Them, but from the fact that He is the Son of that Father, and that there is between Them a unity of Substance and Life. So the Jews understood Him ; for they forthwith accuse Him of making Himself God. 8 John x. 22-3S THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 189 very shortly. He comes thither to give the most striking testimony to His Godhead, by breathing new life into an already corrupted corpse. " I am the Resurrection and the Life," He says to Martha weeping at His feet ; " he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die. Believest thou this ? " And Martha answers, " Yea, Lord, I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God that art come into this world." 1 This Miracle was so widely noised about, that at the following Passover, when Jesus came thither to deliver Himself up into His enemies' hands, Jerusalem was still deeply moved thereby.2 Accordingly Saint John, when making his selection of Evangelical narratives, has made the raising of Lazarus the last scene of importance, and, as it were, the final act in that dramatic strife between Darkness and Light, a struggle as ungrateful and well- nigh fruitless as he had foretold that it would be, in the Prologue of his work : " The Light shone in Darkness and the Darkness comprehended it not." 3 Some features, selected here and there from the doings of Jesus, complete the tableau of this sad drama. Around the board of the risen Lazarus appears the little group of friends and faithful Apostles ; but even among the latter a traitor, Judas, murmuring against Mary Magdalene, when she lavishes the costly ointments on her Saviour.4 The hate of the Sanhedrin party growls more fiercely than ever round about their dwelling ; they are planning to kill Lazarus along with Jesus, in order to suppress this living miracle.5 Many, it is true, do not share their blind frenzy, but these dare not declare themselves for fear of being driven out of the Synagogue.6 As for the multi tude, transported by the resurrection of Lazarus, it runs on ahead of Jesus and makes His entry a triumphal one ; 7 1 John xi. 27. 2 Ibid., xii. 9-19. 3 Ibid., i. 5. 4 Ibid., xii. 1-8. 5 Ibid., 9-11. 6 Ibid., 42. ' Ibid., 12-16. 190 SAINT JOHN. an ephemeral enthusiasm, which changes within a few days into death cries: "Away with Him! Crucify Him ! " i But one bright ray lightens up this gloomy picture : the entrance on the scene of certain Greeks asking to see Jesus,2 and in their persons fortelling that the Gentile world, by giving themselves shortly to the Christ, would embrace that Cross on which He was about to die. The Jews, witnessing this scene, give no heed whatever to it ; indeed their obstinacy constrains the Saviour to abandon them to their reprobate nature. Not without great grief does He do so, His Heart actually breaking, as He utters that supreme warning : — " Yet a little while the Light is still with you. . . . While you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may be children of the Light." Vain appeal! Their hearts remain as hard as ever. Jesus turned away from them and the doom of Israel was sealed.3 Hence the Saviour's cry of anguish, at the thought of His Cross and the scanty fruit it would reap from His Blood, shed for so many self-blinded men, these Jews in particular who dared go so far as to call down His Blood on their own heads. "Now is My soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour, and nevertheless it is for this I am come. Father, glorify Thy Name ! . . . And as for Me, if I be lifted up from earth I will draw all things unto Myself." "Now this He said," notes Saint John, "signifying what death He should die." Thereupon a Voice comes from Heaven to comfort Him, as shortly the Angel of Gethsemane would do : "I have both glorified it and I will glorify it again." It was the Father's response to that doleful supplication of His Son, in testimony that as these two Divine Persons are but one, their all-powerful- 1 John xix. 15. 2 Ibid., xii. 20-23. 8 Ibid., 34-37. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 191 ness would turn to eternal glory this work of Salvation now under an apparent eclipse.1 On bringing to a close his narratives of the Saviour's Public Life, Saint John, too, casts a sad backward glance over those three almost barren years, wherein God Him self, speaking and acting through the Christ, performed so many prodigies. What obstacle, then, had hindered the workings of that sovereign bounty ? Pride ! that eternal and insurmountable barrier, which God, when creating man a free agent, had bound Himself to respect. This haughty spirit had risen to such a pitch among the Jews that, by a righteous punishment, the people chosen by God to beget the Saviour, disowned and rejected Him. What did the Divine Master demand to consummate the glorious destinies of Israel ? Nothing beyond the powers of all, of the simple and lowly especially. This John points out in a few words borrowed from the preceding discourses of the Saviour, wherein He gives us, as it were, the kernel of His teaching : 2 — Believe in Me, and through Me, in the Father that sent Me, with Whom I am One. Through that Faith you shall find in you that which I am come to bring unto the world, Light and Life ; My mission is altogether one of mercy and salvation, for I came not into the world to chasten it for its opposition : to that end of 1 John xii. 23-33. 2 In this series of sentences which I have tried to set down in a, methodical fashion, it is easy to recognize all of the Saviour's teachings scattered through the Fourth Gospel : " Then Jesus cried out saying, He that believeth in Me, believeth not in Me, but in Him that sent Me, and he that beholdeth Me, beholdeth Him that sent Me (v. 36 ; vi. 38 ; vii. 29 ; viii. 12 ; x. 38). I am come, the Light of this world, that whosoever be lieveth in Me should not abide in Darkness (iii. 19, 21 ; viii. 12 ; ix. 5 ; xii. 35). And if any one hear My words and keepeth them not, I do not judge him, for I am not come to judge, but to save the world. He that rejecteth Me and he that receiveth not My words hath what judgeth him ; the Word which I have spoken shall judge him in the Last Day (iii. 17-19-, v. 24; viii. 15; ix. 39). For I do not speak of Myself, but the Father that sent Me hath commanded what I must needs say and how I should say it, and I know that His commandment is Life Everlasting. Therefore the things I say, I say as the Father hath told Me (v. 30 ; vi. 63 ; vii. 16 ; viii. 28, 38)." 192 SAINT JOHN. judgment My word is enough of itself, — accepted, it saves; rejected, it condemns.1 The opening lines of the third part of the Gospel, con secrated to the Last Supper and the Passion, are couched in words of peculiar solemnity : " Now, before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was come to pass from this world to His Father, having loved His own who were in the world He loved them to the end. . . . Knowing that the Father had given Him all things into His hands, and that He came from God and would return to God. . . ."2 Such almighty power was needful to work that wonder which Saint John with good reason regards as the most striking proof of the Divinity of Jesus : the Eucharist, perpetuating the Sacrifice of the Cross. Love, even more than Light and Life, reveals the Godhead. Because He loves, God is one in Three Persons ; because He loves, He has created, redeemed, and destined us to everlasting blessedness. In Jesus, likewise, Love, more than aught else, gives the keynote, the revealing token, of His Nature : no man has loved, none can love, as He did, because He loves as God. The Jews clung too closely to earthly things to understand so lofty a testimony. We have seen how they rebelled at the idea of eating His flesh. Jesus does not revert to it again in their presence. But to Nicodemus, more fit to grasp the truth than the common run of Rabbis, He says expressly: "God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have Life Everlasting."3 To the Apostles alone He reserved the full revelation of the secret of His love.4 l John xii. 44-50. "¦ Ibid., xiii. 1-3. 8 Ibid., iii. 16. 4 This evidence is of such an exalted order that Jesus reveals it to none save the eleven faithful Apostles. As a farewell token of His tenderness and clear-sightedness, He induces the traitor to withdraw. Judas goes out into the night (John xiii. 21, 30). Now in that Upper Chamber, where none but pure hearts, illumined by the Eucharist, remain, Jesus, Whom the presence of the guilty soul oppressed, thereafter speaks of naught save brightness and glory : that Glory of the Son of Man, in Whom God reveals Himself, and Whom, by that very fact, He clothes with His Brightness (John xiii. 31, 32). THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 193 Absorbed as ever in his main purpose, John does not, like the Synoptics, relate the details concerning the insti tution of the Eucharist. What he deems important and what he groups together from his recollections of the Last Supper, are the sentences whereby the Master, commenting on the Act He had just accomplished, offers in evidence to His disciples that only a God, the God living in the Christ, is powerful enough to work in men's souls the prodigious effects of the sacred rite. These marvels of Grace Jesus refers to as a comforting compensation, seeing how saddened they are over the fast approaching hour of parting : " Let not your heart be troubled ; you believe in God, believe also in Me. ... I go to prepare a place for you. . . . and I will come again to take you, that where I am, there you may be with Me." 1 Nor need any disquiet themselves as to how He will accom plish this upbringing of our perishable humanity into the bosom of Divinity. The way whereby He will lead us thither, or, rather, which of itself will bring us there, is Jesus. By uniting, abandoning ourselves to Him, we penetrate through Him to the Bosom of the Father, with Whom He is one, and consequently we must attain to the very fountain-head of Truth and Life.2 But these consolations only looked to the future, that time, maybe far distant, when the Saviour would return. Till then, who would replace Jesus in their hearts ? The Divine Master steeled their souls by the assurance that His presence would not long be lacking them: "I will not leave you orphans," He says, " I am going to disappear in the world's eyes; yet a little while and it shall see Me no more, but you shall see Me ; you shall feel my Presence, because I live and you also shall live," with that same Life, the supernatural Life, the divine, the only true Life. " In that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you will be in Me and I in you."3 This mysterious Presence every Christian has known and felt : it is Jesus, dwelling among us, in the Sacrament of 1 John xiv. 1, 3. 2 Ibid., 6. 8 Ibid., 18-20. 13 194 SAINT JOHN. the Altar, and, within us, by the Grace communicated to us by His Life. To this first fruit of the Eucharist the Saviour adds another of such great worth that the Apostles, to thor oughly believe it, must needs devote all their attention to His words. Separated from Jesus though they may seem to be, yet they shall remain with Him in a com munity of power, in so far as to perform greater works than His. Only let them pray in His Name, and there is nothing that will not be vouchsafed them for the success of their ministry. No seed sown by them shall be lost ; it shall bear fruit, if not at once, at least in the generations to follow, to all such as the Christ calleth to Himself.1 One last fruit of the Eucharist — not the least admira ble — is that it draws down into our souls, together with Jesus and His Father, that Divine Person Who, in the bosom of the Trinity, is the common tie of Their Love. In all the workings of the Holy Ghost within us, He performs an act of God. He descends and abides there, even as do the Father and the Son ; of past things He renews the teachings of the Christ. The future He unveils to eyes clear-sighted enough to pierce it;2 He teaches us all things, even such as the Saviour had judged His disciples incapable of taking in, prior to His coming upon them.3 And whence does He draw these powers, manifestly Divine? From the Father, from Whom everything proceeds, and Who sends Him ; but likewise from the Son, by Whom the Father sends Him, and from the plenitude whereof the Spirit receives that which He gives. "He shall glorify Me," says Jesus, " because He shall receive that which is Mine and shall shew it you.4 All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine ; " and the Holy Ghost that proceedeth from us both, as from one only and the same Principle of Being, is full of Me. In what higher terms could Jesus have asserted that He is God. 1 John xiv. 18-20. 2 Ibid., 13, 26. 8 Ibid., xvi. 12-13. 4 Ibid., xvi. 14-16. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 195 It remained for Saint John to show more explicitly the perfect unity of substance between the Word made Flesh and the Heavenly Father, without other distinction save that which proceeds from the eternal begetting of the Son. For this the Apostle finds occasion in the sublime Prayer uttered by Jesus just before leaving the Supper Room : — " My Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son may glorify Thee." 1 And the Saviour notes forthwith this Glory He claims is " that which He had had in the bosom of the Father before the world was." In His consciousness of possess ing the fulness of the Divine Being, He addresses the Heavenly Father as one equal speaks to another: "All that is Mine is Thine, and all that is Thine is Mine." 2 His almighty powers embrace all humankind, and extend so far as to bestow on whomsoever he sees fit Eternal Life, "which is to know the Father and Jesus." Just as with their being and acting, so is love their common property: "He that loveth Me will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and there will We make Our abode."3 Sent by the Father to save the world, He nevertheless has not ceased to be His equal. And so when, His task finished, He demands His wage, He does so in sovereign accents : " Father," He says, " I will." 4 . . . . (What other than a God durst speak in such wise to God ?) " Father, I will that where I am these that Thou hast given Me should be also, that they may see the Glory which thou hast given Me, for Thou hast loved Me before the creation of the world." That Glory is His very Godhead, and in the overflowing of His love for us the Christ demands of the Father, as the price of His Sacrifice, that we should enter into some part of that Eternal Brightness. " That Glory ... I have given them,5 that they may be one, as 1 John xvii. I. 2 Ibid., 5-10. 3 Ibid., xiv. 23. 4 @€\a. Ibid., xvii. 24. 5 By Grace, but most of all by the Eucharist. See The Christ, the Son of God, vol. ii. book vi. chap. v. 253. 196 SAINT JOHN. We are One, and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me and that Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved Me."1 After having displayed Jesus to us performing a di vine work in the Eucharist, and associating us in His Glory, by the consummation of His Flesh immolated and His Blood shed for us, John must needs demand of the Cross, — the blood-stained sequel of the Last Supper, — the supreme evidence of the Christ suffering and dying like a God. With this intent he has selected the salient features of his story of the Passion. No detail is given concerning that cruel Agony, when the Humanity of Jesus succumbs to mortal anguish ; 2 the coming of the soldiery alone is related. The Saviour, " knowing all things that should come upon Him," 3 steps toward them, and with the words " I am He," they recoil and fall to the earth.4 He surrenders Himself, but as the Master of his enemies, as He is of all events ; as a Pontiff, sovereignly disposing the sacrifice of His life whereby He wills to save the world ; Priest and Victim 1 John xvii. 22, 23. " The Word of God means not to ask of the Heavenly Father that the Saints may be one, in essence and in nature, as are the Father and the Son, but that they may be so through the union and transformation of love, even as are the Divine Persons by the unity of Love. Thus, by participation, souls possess the same goods which the Son of God possesses by right of nature ; thus they become verily gods, like unto God and His associates. In this sense S. Peter says, " may Grace and Peace increase within you more and more through the knowl edge of God and of Our Lord Jesus Christ ; as His divine power hath given us all things which appertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us by His own proper Glory and Virtue, and Who, in this manner, hath accomplished within us His great and precious promises, that by these same graces, we may be made par takers of the Divine Nature" (2 Peter i. 2-4). These sayings of the Prince of the Apostles would teach us that the soul shall enter into par ticipation with the very Nature of God, that with Him and in Him it shall co-operate in the work of the Most Holy Trinity, thanks to the substan tial union which has been accomplished between it and God. Although these admirable things are not to be accomplished until Eternity, never theless, on this earth, when any one arrives at this state of perfection, he already possesses certain striking tokens of that glorious destiny which fill his soul with happiness unutterable." S. John of the Cross, Explica tion du Cantique, strophe xxxix. 2 Mark xiv. 33, 34. Luke xxii. 43. 8 John xviii. 4. 4 Ibid., 5, 6. THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 197 of this Sacrifice, He takes from His Father's hand the bitter chalice 1 and drains it, His gaze fixed on the pro phetic picture drawn by Himself of this His Passion. Now, we know how precisely He had foretold to His Apostles : " Behold we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed to the Chief Priests and the Scribes who shall condemn Him to death : they shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged, and crucified, and the third day He shall rise again."2 All happens in the order indicated. The Saviour is brought before the High Pontiffs of Israel, who, stripped of their powers to inflict death, cannot do more than de liver Him over to the Roman Governor.3 Pilate allows himself to be bullied by a threatening mob into pro nouncing the death sentence, but, as he does, he trembles before the mysterious Master of a Kingdom not of this world.4 Far from lowering Himself, Jesus reminds the cowardly magistrate that he could do naught to his Vic tim, were it not that the power to treat Him thus had been given him from on High.5 The same imperial man ner manifests itself in all his actions, in the course of His Passion : John depicts Him as a Ruler even when raised on the gibbet, and as a Master ordering the details of His torture. Just as He is about to breathe His last, " Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, in order that still one saying of Scripture might be ful filled, saith, ' I thirst ! ' " Some one offers Him to drink the vinegar foretold by the Psalmist. "All is consum mated," He says, and bowing His head, " He gives up His Spirit " 6 into the Father's hands, freely, as He had de clared: "I lay down My life, but that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from Me ; but I lay it down of Myself ; I have the power to lay it down and to take it up again; this commandment I have received of My Father."7 1 John xviii. 11. 2 Matt. xx. 17-19. 8 John xviii. 13, 14, 19-24. 4 Ibid., 36. 6 Ibid., xix. 10, II. 6 Ibid., 28, 30. 1 Ibid., x. 17, 18. 198 SAINT JOHN. " Greater love than this hath no man," Jesus had said, "than that a man lay down his life for his friends."1 This proof the Saviour furnished, not alone by dying for us, but by giving, as God, such an infinite value to the forfeit, and making of that Sacrifice the Salvation of all mortal kind. With good reason does John regard this office of Redeemer as a new proof of His Divinity. The Crucified Jesus appears to him as the Baptist, his first Master, had described Him : " The Lamb of God that tak- eth away, that blotteth out, the sins of the world," 2 the veritable Passover Lamb, whereof "not a bone must be broken." In their turn, Pilate's soldiers, by not breaking the limbs of the holy Victim, observed the prophetic rite,3 while one of them, piercing with his lance the Sav iour's side, caused a gush of water and blood, symbolic of the effects of Redemption, — the water, whereby we are new born in the Life Divine, the Eucharistic Blood, which nourishes it within us.4 It remains now for John to complete his design, to bring forth the strongest argument, that without which Saint Paul declares his preaching and the Faith itself were vain,5 — the Resurrection of the Christ. None could be better qualified to bear witness to it than he, for he had beheld the Divine Risen One ; he had talked with Him; he had, with his own hands, touched that glorious Body.6 Many others, furthermore, had had the same great joy: Peter, Magdalene, the Eleven.7 And though one of them, being absent at first, remained so incredulous as to force the Saviour, out of His pity for the man's weakness, to place his hands in the nail prints, 1 John xv. 13. 2 Ibid., i. 29. 3 When the soldiers were come to Jesus and saw that He was dead, they did not break His legs ; . . . and these things were done that the Scripture might be fulfilled : " You shall not break a bone of Him " Exod. xii. 46. 4 This prodigy, the last of the Passion in S. John's recital, seems to him so important that he refers more than once to the fact that he was an eye-witness of it : " He that saw it hath given testimony ; and his testi mony is true ; and he knoweth that he saith true, that vou also mav believe " (John xix. 35). J 5 1 Cor. xv. 14. « John j 1# -i Ibid ^ ^ THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 199 and in the wound in His side, was it not all meant to ex tort that confession, wherein his stupor and repentance well up ? " My Lord and My God ! " A cry of Faith, too, which has overcome many an unbeliever since, by finally setting the seal of certitude on the Resurrection, and, therefore, on the Divinity of the Christ. Saint John could not seek a better conclusion to his work. He adds only these words : " Jesus worked many more wonders,1 which are not written in this Book : these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His Name." Here ends, in the unanimous opinion of the interpret ers, the Fourth Gospel. How comes it, then, that all the manuscripts append to it a recital of still another appear ance of Jesus, on the shores of the Sea of Tiberias ? The very text of this addition betrays its origin. On seeing John, bearing the burthen of so many years, and showing no sign of an approaching end, the rumor got abroad, in the Christian congregations of Asia, that he was destined not to die, but would await below the Christ's coming on earth, at the end of time, to consummate all in God.2 A certain saying of Jesus, in the conversation which took place in the course of this Apparition, furnished the foundation for their mistake. The Saviour had just fore told to Peter what manner of death awaited him : — " And this man," the Apostle had replied, pointing to the dearly beloved disciple, " what shall come to him ? " " Him, so I will have him to remain till I come, what is that to thee ? " "Till I come," does not signify that the Apostle was not to die, but that he should see, before his eyes were closed forever, the return and the presence of Jesus amid His own, manifested in the establishment of the Church. It behooved him to give this saying of the Saviour its proper meaning, for, as twisted by the Asiatics, it tended 1 -2,-np.ela, literally : " Jesus gave many other signs, other evidences of His Divinity." 2 John xxi. 23. 8 John xxi. 22. 200 SAINT JOHN. to make of John a permanent eye-witness of the Christ, His most authoritative interpreter, and consequently the Chief Pastor of Christendom. Now it was to Peter and not to him that this office had been entrusted. John could not. tolerate so dangerous an error. To put a stop to it, he adds to his narrative the omitted scene of the Apparition, at which Jesus asks Simon whether he loves Him more than the others. By his humble avowal of that love, Peter effaces his threefold denial, and in recom pense receives the supreme charge of providing for the Church : sheep and lambs, the faithful and their pastors.1 Love, in St. John's eyes, was the greatest proof of the Saviour's Divinity: in Peter he regards it as the source of his Primacy. It is because he loved more than all others that Peter must needs command all. 1 John xxi. 15-17. CHAPTER XI. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. Toward the close of the second century, the aged Polycrates had to defend, before Pope Victor, the tradi tional customs of Asia relative to the date on which they celebrated Easter.1 He alleged, as his principal authori ties, two Apostles, Philip and John. " These great lights," he says, " have shone and were extinguished among us, leaving behind them the living rays which still guide our Churches." Of Philip, Polycrates mentions only his end. " He was one of the Twelve, and his tomb is at Hierapolis, as well as that of his two daughters, who lived to a ripe old age in Virginity." Saint John's venerable figure, on the con trary, stands out in bold relief in his recollections of the past. He depicts him as occupying, toward the end of the Apostolic era, an eminent position, owing at once to his titles of Apostle, Pontiff, Martyr, and Doctor. Apostle, not merely as was Philip, for, among the Twelve, he was the " dearly beloved " of the Saviour, and in that Upper Room had rested his head on the breast of Jesus. Priest he is, in all the majesty of that office, the veritable Pon tiff of the New Law. In token of this superiority the Judaizing Christians of his flock had insisted on his bear ing upon his brows, during the ceremonies, that distinc tive badge of the sovereign pontificate under the Old Covenant, — the Petalon, a golden plate with these words : " Holiness of Jehovah." 2 Nor was his Martyr's 1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., v. 24. 2 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, iii. 31 ; v. 24. S. James the Less also wore this token (S. Epiph., Hozres., Ixxviii. 4). The holiness of the Bishop of Jerusalem produced such a lasting impression on S. John that, in his 202 SAINT JOHN. crown one whit less glorious. This was due him most rightfully, since the day when, plunged in the boiling oil, he escaped death only by a miracle, and was thereafter doomed to weary years of captivity in the mines of Pat mos.1 Finally he is the Doctor above all others,2 heark ened to as if he were the Master Himself, Whose closest confidant he had been, Who had caused him to survive all the rest, to remain the trustworthy echo of His words, the unanswerable witness to His Divinity. Tradition describes the leaders of the Asiatic churches urging the Apostle to set down his evangelical recollec tions as an offset to the inventions of Cerinthus. It is quite likely that similar appeals induced him to write his First Epistle ; but the end he had in view is not nearly so apparent to the scholar. Did he merely have in mind an introduction to his Gospel, and by this letter accredit it to the churches ? Several modern interpreters regard it in this light s and adduce in support of this hypothesis the similarities in form and framework of the two writ ings : the same style ; the same sequence of phrases ; the same repetition of thoughts according to the rules of par allelism; the same dogmas set forth and expounded: the Divinity of Jesus, His mission as Redeemer, the life everlasting which He came to endow men's souls withal.4 outward habit and conduct of life at Ephesus, he made him his pattern (S. Epiph., Hozres., xxx. 24; Ixxviii. 13). It is hard to see just why, when it comes to a detail so likely as this, M. Jean Reville should be so shocked: "But as for the transformation of the Apostle John into a priest who wears the plate (the Petalon?), we prefer to let that stand to the account of Polycrates. It simply shows just how much of a legend ary personage the Apostle John had become by the end of the second century, and m that very city where he was supposed to have exercised, during many a long year, his Apostleship in Asia" (Le Quatrieme £van- gile, p. 19). i This title pdprvs given him by Polvcrates is at once in remembrance of his tortures at Rome, and of the Saviour's prediction to John as well as to his brother James : " Yon shall drink of Mv chalice. ..." Mark x. 39 ; Matt. xx. 23. 2 Eusebius, loc. cit. 8 Hug, Einleit., ii. 243 sq. Reithmayr, trad. Valroger, ii. 105, 400- 404. Maier, Einleit, p. 430 sq. Bisping, Exeq. Handb., viii. 258 sq. Comely, Introduct. in libr. Nov. Test., p. 663. 4 1 John i. 1, John i. 1 ; 1 John i. 4, John xvi. 24; 1 John i. 10, John LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 203 These resemblances do indeed establish beyond question that the two works are by the same author, but one can not infer from them that the Epistle was meant to form but a preface, a foreword to the Gospel. The name and authority of John were amply sufficient to guarantee the work without any necessity of enclosing a letter of recom mendation. Another design would seem to me to be indicated by the polemical turn of the letter, and its exhortations to the practice of the Commandments. Besides Cerinthus and his adepts, who attacked the speculative doctrines of the faith principally, certain odious sectaries were always at work, eager to deduce from these dogmatic errors their moral consequences. Since the Christ, sole God and Son of God according to Cerinthus, had not become incarnate in Jesus, but had had but a fleeting union with Him, it followed that all belief in a Man-God dying on the Cross and thereby expiating our sins, van ished. What was the use, then, of burthening oneself with the lessons of renunciation and self-sacrifice which the latter had given to the world ? The Christ is all ; it is enough to know Him, to cleave to Him by faith and understanding and we become impeccable, superior and indifferent to the vulgar precepts of virtue. Long ago Saint Paul had perceived the germs of this corruption in the churches of Asia ; before his death, he had charged Timothy to be watchful lest the gangrene spread among his Christian congregations.1 But, since then, the malady had made very visible progress : during John's absence, dragged far away by Domitian's persecu tion, first to Rome and then to Patmos, it had become aggravated to such a pitch that the captive Apostle felt forced to interpose his influence with the pastors of Asia. In the Letter to the Seven Churches, we have heard him fulminate like a true " Son of the Thunderbolt," threaten- viii. 37 ; 1 John ii. 1, John i. 29 ; 1 John ii. 5, John xiv. 15 ; 1 John ii. 7, 8, John xiii. 34 ; 1 John ii. 24, John xv. 4, 7, 8 ; 1 John iii. 5, John i. 29 ; 1 John iii. 16, John xv. 13, etc. Cf. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., vii. 25. S. Jerome, Ad Galat., vi. 10. 1 2 Tim. ii. 17. See The Last Years of Saint Paul, chap. xii. 204 SAINT JOHN. ing them with the sword of his word, if they suffered within their fold those unworthy ones who, under color of unveiling to their initiated certain mysterious doc trines, hurled them headlong with themselves into the pit of perdition, " the depths of Satan." Nicolaites, vota ries of Balaam, or of " Jezebel the Prophetess," all had this trait in common, that of leading men to despise God's commandments, ending always in the worst disorders of the flesh.1 The Apostle's impetuous reprimand had checked for a time, this licentious spirit ; it had not drained the cess pool, deep down in the souls of these people, still half Jewish or Pagan, whose curiosity had led them to Chris tianity,2 but in whom survived, ever living and alert, that threefold concupiscence of fallen humanity : " lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life." 3 This last passion, the most prolific in the fruits of death, had sprouted up, among the leaders, in the form of an overweening spirit, the lust of authority ; it bred in them, in any case of withstanding their overbearingness, a supreme contempt for such of the brethren as would not bow before them. What then had become of their peace and the union of hearts ? Were not these great boons in the same perilous state as was their faith in the Divinity of Jesus ? The latter dogma Saint John had established on the immova ble foundation of his Gospel ; he realized the urgent need of reminding them that one must needs not only believe in the Divine Redeemer, but, still more, follow His exam ple, observe His commandments, whereof Charity is the chief. The necessity of inculcating these duties to the Asiatic churches, would seem to me to have been the motive which induced the Apostle to write to them. This he did with all the freedom of a father, without taking any pains to observe that fine ordering of ideas, which we just now admired in his Gospel. In his letter we find no trace of a plan by which he would treat his subject methodically ; consequently, there is no progres- 1 Apoc. ii. 12-16, 20-24. 2 Ibid., iii. 9. 8 1 John ii. 16. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN: 205 sive movement. The thoughts flow along, one suggested by another. John jots them down just as they occur to his mind. Amid sublime teachings, he introduces lively exhortations, and in his anxiety to impress them more profoundly, he repeats them under very many forms. This lack of any plan, which makes an analysis of the First Epistle well-nigh impracticable, is more than com pensated for by the opportunity it affords us of surprising, as it were, the aged Apostle in familiar intercourse with his disciples, and of becoming acquainted with the thoughts which were wont to overflow from his full heart. Any one who has read thus far in this study of Saint John, no matter with how much or little interest, must imme diately recognize his accents : " My dearly beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, for God is love. Now in this is manifested God's love for us, that He sent His only Son into the world, that we might live by Him, and that love consists in this, that 'tis not we who have loved God, but 't is He that hath first loved us, and sent His Son as the victim of propitiation for our sins. My dearly beloved, if God hath loved us in this wise, we ought also to love one another.1 " " God is love." Therein lies everything to Saint John, and from it follow all the rest: the Incarnation, the Redemption, and the outpouring of that greatest of Christian virtues, holy Charity. Israel had been able to gain but feeble glimpses of the Godhead under this aspect. It had received from Jehovah that commandment which Jesus proclaims the first of all: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength ; " and that other, like unto the first, which sums up all the Law and the Prophets : " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."2 But when the Eternal spoke thus to Moses, it was from amid thunders and lightning ; He appeared to him as the mighty God (El), the All- powerful (El Shaddai), the Lord (Adonai), the God of 1 1 John iv. 7-11. 2 Mark xii. 30, 31 ; Deut. vi. 5 ; Lev. xix. 18. 206 SAINT JOHN. Hosts. It belonged to Jesus to reveal God as altogether lovely, lovable as He is love, showing us Himself in His Son, clothed in our flesh, living our mortal life, and still remaining that "Life Eternal which is in the Father," " the Word of Life which was in the Beginning." 1 " No man hath seen God," 2 said Israel ; yet in Jesus, we see Him, without our eyes being dazzled by the brightness of His majesty: the divine speech is made human in Jesus ; we listen to it, without any fear (such as filled Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai), of His thun derbolts,3 and its very first lesson is that " God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness." 4 To draw nigh unto Him, to attain Him, " to have fellowship with Him," 5 we must " walk in the light " as Jesus did, not content to merely know the truth, but we must " shew it in deed." 6 Yet, how often, proving false to this duty, do we fall back into the darkness ! The first step from out the gloom is an acknowledgment on our part of what we are, a con fession that we are sinners ; then we find in Jesus, the Redeemer, " the Advocate," 7 Who obtains from the Father our forgiveness, and is at the same time, " the victim of propitiation for our sins," 8 a victim Whose blood never ceases to flow for the washing away of our sins. But if, on the contrary, "we say," like the libertines of Asia, " that we are without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." 9 A humble recognition of our falls, only beseeching Jesus to uplift us, is, for us Christians, " to walk in the light," to enter, nay, " to abide in the Father and the Son " 10 in a communion of life and love. "And behold," continues Saint John, "unto what lengths that love of the Father goeth, even unto willing that we should be called the children of God," u He corrects himself at once : " called " but faintly expresses 1 1 John i. 1, 2. 2 Ibid., iv. 12. s Exod. xx. 19 ; Deut. xviii. 16. 4 1 John i. 5. 6 Ibid., i. 6. 6 Tloiovpfv t^v &\i)8eiav. 1 John i. 6. Cf. John iii. 21. ' napdKXnrov. 1 John ii. 1 . 8 1 John ii. 2. 9 Ibid., i. 7. M Ibid., ii. 24. u Ibid., iii. 1. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 207 it ; in reality " we are children of God." " Born of Him, the seed of God abideth in us," x a seed whereof the fruits grow up here below mid the shadows, but shall bloom forth in all their brightness on the day when the Son of God shall manifest Himself unveiled and we shall behold Him as He is in the Holy Trinity, and God, by His mediation being reflected in our souls, "we shall see ourselves like unto Him." 2 This similitude does not stop at modelling our life on that of Jesus, it teaches that within us resides the Holy Trinity ; the Father and the Son accomplishing therein, by the Incarnation and the Redemption, their works of Love ; the Holy Ghost finishing it by the unction He outpours upon it, for He it is whom Saint John designates by those words : " Let the Unction,3 which you have received from the Son of God, abide in you, and you have no need that any man teach you; but as this same Unction teacheth you all things, and is truth itself, free of all falsehood, you have but to abide in that which It teacheth you."4 Now what that Divine Spirit first in spires in us is love, and to testify to that love, by the practice of the virtues. We have known that love in Jesus : " He hath laid down His life for us, and we," after His example, " we too ought to lay down our lives for our brethren." 5 Carried to this point, to the heights of self-sacrifice and self-f orgetf ulness, brotherly love raises the soul so far above the allurements which tend to abase it, that it no longer finds in them the occasion of sin.6 Thus cleansed, it can fearlessly face the judgment seat of God, for " there is no fear in love : perfect love casteth out fear."7 This enfranchisement from sin, this serene confidence face to face with the mysteries of eternity ; above all, the 1 1 John iii. 9. 2 Ibid., 2. 8 By this imagery S. John displays the Third Person of the Trinity penetrating through the soul like an oil, a balm poured forth, shedding over it the unction of Grace ; grace of light, grace of holiness, grace of love most of all. 4 1 John ii. 27. 6 Ibid., iii. 16. 6 Ibid., 9; v. 18. 7 Ibid., iv. 17, 18. 208 SAINT JOHN. communion, through love, with the most intimate life of God, are such treasures that, to battle with those who would rob his faithful followers of them, John summons up all the strength left in his deepest soul. His letter has in view principally, as has been suggested above, the dissolute Christians, those " children of the Devil," 1 who use the externals of the faith to mask a hateful libertin- age ; but he does not forget that the germs of corruption came from those higher up, from those " false prophets," 2 against whom he had written his Gospel, and whom he calls here by their rightful name of " Antichrists," 3 since they deny that Jesus is the Christ.4 " They went out from us," he says, " but they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us,"5 like us they had bowed before that threefold testimony which witnesses that Jesus Christ is at once God and Man : the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood.6 The Holy Ghost, at the baptism of Jesus in the waters of Jordan, had pro claimed Him Son of God, God even as is His Father ; on the other hand, the blood of Jesus shed on Calvary and His death have borne witness that He is as truly man as He is God. These three" witnesses — the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood — form but one single testimony, one single voice, affirming that Jesus and the Christ are not, as Cerinthus fabricated, two persons distinct and separable at will, but One Sole Person, having at one and the same time, and indissolubly united, a Divine nature and a human nature.7 1 1 John iii. 10. 2 Ibid., iv. I. 8 Ibid., ii. 18. 4 Ibid., 22. 5 Ibid., 19. 6 ibid., T. 5-8. 7 The reading in our Vulgate shows how, in order to mark how inti mate and indissoluble is the hypostatic union of the Natures in the In carnate Word, John assimilates it to that which, in the Holy Trinity, makes of the Three Divine Persons one only and the same God : " There are Three Who give testimony in Heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." It is true we do not find this text in any Greek Manuscript earlier than the eleventh century, or in scarcely any of the Versions. None of the Greek Fathers, prior to the twelfth century, quotes it. The same may be said of the Syrian and Armenian Fathers, and, among the Latin, it is true of SS. Augustine and Jerome. Notwithstanding, the Latin version, in use in the churches of Africa and LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 209 By this faith in the Divinity of Jesus, a burning faith, which, seizing his whole soul, his understanding, his heart, devotes him to the Word made Flesh, man is born again to a new life whereof God alone is the source, and where- over neither flesh nor blood has any sway. Now all that which is thus born of God, partaking in part of His al mighty powers, as well as of His holiness, draws from this union the glad confidence of triumphing over the world : " And who is he that (thus) overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ? " 1 "These things I write you," continues the Apostle, " that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the Name of the Son of God." 2 Sharers by this, faith in the Sonship of the Incarnate Word, like Him, we obtain through our prayers all that is in con formity with the Will of our common Father in Heaven.3 'T is in Jesus and by Jesus that we are given such portion of the life divine. " He is come, and He hath given us understanding, that we may know the true God and that we may be in His true Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and Life Eternal." * To this formal declaration of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, worthy conclusion of his letter, John adds but one word : " Little children, keep yourselves from idols ! " 6 Idols, that is to say, everything that is not Jesus, any thing whereby we risk being separated from Him : to Him alone are due our thoughts, our worship, our love ! No trace appears in this Epistle of any personages or Spain, contained it, probably from the time of Tertullian and S. Cyprian : it is constantly referred to by all the writers of the Middle Age, and thereafter the Latin Church has always made use of it. On the other hand, this testimony is so important in establishing the dogma of the Trinity, that it is not to be sacrificed lightly. These various motives led the Holy Office to declare in 1897 that the authenticity of this verse can not tuto be called in question. This is a disciplinary decision which com mands onr entire respect and to which we must needs submit. If the reader would see this question of authenticity amply and prudently treated, let him consult M. Vigouroux's article in Dictionnaire de la Bible, Eipitre de S. Jean, ii. Cf . Alford, Greek Testament, in loc. 1 1 John v. 1-5. 2 Ibid., 13. 8 Ibid., 14, 15. 4 Ibid., 20. 6 Ibid., 21. 14 210 SAINT JOHN. churches in whose behoof the Apostle destined it par ticularly. It must be regarded, therefore, as a sort of Encyclical addressed to all the communities of Asia, which, being exposed to the same dangers, had need of the same counsels. Though John, indeed, on his release from Patmos, would seem to have made Ephesus his prin cipal residence, he never failed, at the request of neigh boring congregations, to visit them and exercise therein his Apostolic prerogatives. Here, so Clement of Alexan dria tells us, he formed from the believers marked out by the Holy Ghost, a chosen body consecrated to the Lord ; elsewhere he founded churches and set over them bish ops ; 1 thus he appointed as first pastor of Smyrna, Poly carp,2 and of Hierapolis, Papias.3 When time or strength to undertake such journeyings were wanting to the holy old man, he made up for it by his letters, of which two have come down to us. Though of little weight so far as their subject-matter is concerned, for they hardly do more than repeat what we have just read in his great Epistle, we may well prize them as showing us the form in which the familiar correspondence of the Apostle was carried on. Saint John, in the first of these missives, salutes the persons to whom he addresses it, in these affectionate terms: "The Aged Man unto the Lady Elect4 and to her children whom I love in the truth. . . . May God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, grant you grace, mercy, and peace in truth and charity." 5 Should we regard the recipients of this letter as the family of a lady bearing the name of Electa (the chosen), or as a church thus personified, which merited, by the distinguished character of its virtues, the twofold name of Lady and of an elect congregation, chosen in a most especial manner ? Many exegetical scholars lean to 1 Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl, iii. 23). 2 Tertullian, De Prasscript., 32. S. Jerome, De Viris Illustribus, 17. 8 S. Jerome, ibid., 18. 4 'O Trpto-piiTtpos iAtKTJi nvpia. 6 2 John 1. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 211 the latter belief, and for weighty reasons.1 Everything would seem to justify their opinion : the symbolic lan guage, so familiar to Saint John ; the contents of the Epistle, which would be much more fittingly addressed to a Christian community than to a private family ; finally the greeting with which it concludes : " The children of thy sister, ' the Chosen One (Electa) ' salute you." 2 It is scarcely likely that in the same family, two sisters should have had the same name. • " Electa, Chosen One," may, therefore, be regarded here, as in the opening words, as a qualification applied to a church where the Apostle then chanced to be, and which, in common with him, sent greetings to the recipients of his letter. His third Epistle leaves no room for similar conjectures, for Saint John ad dresses it in express terms to one of his Asiatic Chris tians : " To my dear Gaius, whom I love in the truth." 3 Both of these documents are mere notes whereby Saint John announces his speedy arrival,4 and defers to that time the opinions he prefers to express by word of mouth: Despite their brevity, they suffice to give us an idea of the growth of the Apostle's character, in his declining days, for there is no doubt that the two letters date from that period of his life. Indeed, Saint John declares as much by assuming at the beginning the name then gladly ac corded him by the faithful, — " the Ancient, the Aged Man," — a title of honor which implies at once the famil iarity of children toward their father, together with a feeling of veneration for an old age the most majestic in history, since it reflected all the prestige of the Apostolic Age, and was itself like a bright ray from that Sun which is Jesus. The trait of character most noteworthy in the first of these letters is the persistence of that impetuous zeal which had caused the Saviour to give John the surname " Son of the Thunderbolt." He exhorts his faithful fol- 1 Clement of Alexandria, Adumbr. in 2 Joan. S. Jerome, Ad. Age ruchiam, ep. 193, 12. Saint Bede, In 2 Joan. 13. Card. Hugo, In 2 Joan 1, etc. 2 2 John 13. 3 3 John 1. 4 2 John 12 ; 3 John 14. 212 SAINT JOHN. lowers, not only to be on their guard against the foes of their faith, " but not to receive them into your house," nor even " to bid them God-speed." a By this sternness we recognize the man who long since besought the Divine Master to call down the fire of Heaven upon the Samar itan city which had refused to harbor them.2 On the other hand, his letter to Gaius shows how the moderating influences of age, experience, and his love for Jesus, " the meek and lowly of heart," had wrought on this same zeal. John's feelings were personally involved by the incident which forms the subject of this letter. He favored, or at least he tendered a charitable greeting to the missionaries who went from town to town preach ing the faith, not to the Christians, who had their own pastors, but to the Gentiles whom they strove to convert. This was, doubtless, an irregular ministry, which would disappear when the hierarchical discipline should attain its complete development; but in those days all that John saw was that there strangers were laboring "for the furtherance of the truth." 3 Thenceforth it was the duty of all to assist them, for, out of respect for the dig nity of the Gospel, they wished to accept nothing from the Pagans who were their hearers, leaving it to the be lievers to provide for their needs.4 Gaius had eagerly fulfilled this office of charity ; the missionaries had testified before the whole Church to the debt of gratitude they owed him.5 Another believer, Demetrius by name, had rivalled him in zeal for their welfare.6 But very different had been the conduct of the head of their church, one Diotrophes. This unworthy pastor, jealous to an excess of his authority and fearing lest these outsiders should minimize it, violated in their respect one of the principal obligations of his charge, that of hospitality. Not only did he refuse to welcome them, he went so far as to drive from the church all such as harbored them.7 John exhorts his disciple not to fol- 1 2 John 10. 2 Luke ix. 54. 8 3 John 3, 4. 4 Ibid., 7. 6 Ibid., 6, 6 3 John 12. 7 Ibid., 9, 10. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 213 low such an example : let him not be content with being ever ready to give comfort to these ministers of the gos pel, but, at their departure, let him take care " to bring them forward on their way and lend them aid on their journeys in a manner worthy of God."1 As for Dio- trophes, the meekness with which John speaks of him is surprising, when one recalls with what vigor, in his Letter to the Seven Churches, he lashes and threatens those bishops who had proven false to their trust. The head of a Christian congregation which numbered believers as generous as Gaius and Demetrius, certainly merited a severe rebuke ; for, not content with straiten ing the great law of fraternal charity, he took issue against the Apostle himself and harbored evil designs against him. In vain had John written to the church in hopes of allaying the disorders ; his letter remained destitute of any effect, and he was reduced to a state of indecision as to whether he could revisit a Christian congregation so bitterly prejudiced. " Diotrophes," he says, " who loveth to have the pre-eminence, does not wish to receive me." 2 And it was he against whom they were wroth! John, the dearly beloved disciple, remembered what his Divine Master would have done on a like occur rence : forgetting his personal grievance, he is content to pen but a few lines concerning the guilty man : " If ever I do come among you, I will advertise what evil he is committing." 3 He closes his Third Epistle with an almost literal repetition of the formula with which he terminates the Second. It is a touching excuse, if only from its simplicity. One feels in it the gentle humor of an old man, more accustomed to talking than to writing, ever a bit suspicious of the tricks played by "ink and paper " : 4 "I had many more things to tell thee ; but I trust that we shall see each other soon and we can talk at our ease. Peace be with thee. Salute our friends by name." 5 The scanty traditions which have come down to us 1 3 John 5, 6. 2 Ibid., 9. 8 Ibid., 10. / 4 Ibid., 13. 6 Ibid., 14. _ 214 SAINT JOHN. concerning the closing years of Saint John's life bear evi dence to a happy combination of tenderness and firmness in his character. His aversion to Cerinthus in no wise diminished, if we may believe Saint Irenseus, who re counts the following fact as told him by Saint Polycarp. The holy old man on entering, contrary to his custom, the public baths, learned that the heresiarch was within. " Let us flee ! " he cried, " for fear lest the building fall on us : Cerinthus, the enemy of God and the truth, is here!"1 Another trait, preserved by Tertullian and attributed to the Apostle by Saint Jerome, evidences the same vigor in him, when it is a question of making an example even of one of the pastors and maintaining among them, together with a dignity of speech, a fitting respect for the truth. A certain priest of Asia, a great admirer of Saint Paul, conceived the idea that it would be a pious task to attribute to the Apostle a series of romantic adventures which he was supposed to have experienced in company with Thecla, a young girl of Iconia converted by him. Such a fanciful production aroused suspicion, and he was forced to confess its falsity. He excused himself on the ground that he had acted only "out of love for Paul." Indignant at the falsehood, Saint John demanded that he be deposed by the Church.2 This hardy action on his part was doubly necessary since the honor of the Church and the uprightness of the priesthood were at stake. When it behooved him to chastise, John recovered all his youthful fire. In the course of his daily life, on the contrary, his only theme was love, evermore preaching love and winning over by his tender and tireless charity those souls he yearned to lead to God. With good reason tradition has treasured up this likeness of him, making it most striking in an incident of great renown in olden days. Clement of 1 S. Irenseus, Hozres., iii. 3. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, iii. 28. S. Epipha nius (Hozres., xxx. 24), by mistake, substitutes the name of Ebion for that of Cerinthus. 2 Tertullian, De Baptismo, 17. S. Jerome, De Vir. Must., 7. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 215 Alexandria, who is the first to make mention of it, would seem to have had some doubts as to its authenticity, for he begins by alluding to it as a legend ; but, immediately thereafter, referring to his former dictum, he assures his readers that, all things considered, they should rather regard it as a faithful bit of history.1 Whether authentic or not, it was too highly prized in the earliest centuries of Christianity to be passed over here in silence. It took place on his return from Patmos, at the time when John, once more established in Ephesus, went about preaching the Good News in the surrounding towns. Meeting a young man of unusual talents, he sowed in his soul the seed of faith, and after confiding him, on his departure, to the Bishop of the place, he called Jesus and his fellow believers to bear witness to this sacred trust. The Bishop fulfilled his charge conscientiously ; he re ceived the young neophyte into his dwelling, took due pains to see that he was well brought up, and when he deemed him ripe for the Christian life, conferred baptism on him ; then, by the laying on of hands, set upon him " the seal of the Lord." But it was too soon to flatter himself that he was thereby put beyond the reach of dan ger. Certain loose-lived young men insensibly exercised their influence over him, and made him the companion of their vices, in so far that he soon fell into their froward ways, put himself at their head, and became a robber chieftain. Long afterwards John returned to the same city. He inquired of the Bishop concerning the young man he had intrusted to his care. The latter, with downcast eyes, replied with tears that he was dead. " What ! " John exclaimed, " how did he die ? " " He is dead to God," replied the Bishop. " A pervert, lost in crimes, he has become leader of a band of brigands whose haunt is in a mountain near by." At these words the Apostle rent his garments ; groaning 1 Zahn (Acta Johannis Einleitung, Iii.) considers that it is impossible to deny that there must have been some foundation of historical fact under lying this tale. 216 SAINT JOHN. and beating his brows, he bade them bring a horse and a guide, and that very hour set forth for the region de scribed to him. When halted by the first outpost of the bandits, he demanded to be taken before their chief. The latter was awaiting him, fully-armed; but, so soon as he recognized the Apostle, overwhelmed with shame, he fled. The aged saint hastened in pursuit, crying after him : "My son, why flee from me, me, your father, old and unarmed? Have pity on me, my son; fear naught. There is still hope of life and salvation for you. I will answer for you before Jesus Christ. If need be, I will die for you, as Jesus died for all of us ; I will give my soul for yours. Stay, believe me, it is the Christ that sendeth me." The entreaties of the Saint were heard ; the young man stopped ; not daring to lift his eyes, he threw down his weapons and burst into tears. And as he saw the Apostle approaching him, he fell into his arms, testifying by his sobs that henceforth he meant to live only a life of expi ation for his misdeeds. Once more John assured him, under oath, that he should obtain forgiveness of the Saviour, and, in token that he regarded him as already purified by repentance, he fell on his knees before him, and, taking the hand befouled by so many crimes, despite the wretched man's efforts to hide it, he covered it with kisses. Thereafter he conducted him before the assem bled brethren that they might be witnesses of his peni tence, nor did he abandon him until he had made him steadfast, for once and all, in his return to God.1 Clement of Alexandria, of whose narrative the above is but a summary, adds that it was by the aid of long fasts, kept in common with his penitent, that the Apostle confirmed his perseverance. This last feature agrees with that austerity which the ancients attribute to Saint John. According to the account of Saint Epiphanius, who is here their spokesman, he led a manner of life in every way similar to that which had made Saint James the Less so revered by the Jews, as well as by the Christians, of 1 Clement of Alexandria, Quis dives salv., 42. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 217 the Holy City.1 If we put trust in his testimony that gracious aspect under which Christian Art commonly depicts the beloved disciple is not the one it behooves us to give him. His features, like those of the sturdy Bishop of Jerusalem, must have been those of an ascetic ; over his shoulders flowed the long locks of the Nazarene, which had never known steel ; neither oil nor baths re freshed that body worn with fasts ; he wore no garment save a tunic and a linen mantle. Still more authentic is the privilege attributed to Saint John by numerous witnesses, — his virginity. About thirty years after the Apostle's death we find this distinc tive characteristic mentioned in a document of Gnostic origin, the (apocryphal) "Acts of John,"2 but with circumstances so unlikely that it behooves us to discard them. Thrice in this legendary account does the son of Zebedee endeavor to contract marriage ; but in vain, for the Saviour dissuades him from it. " If thou wert not Mine, John, I would allow thee to take unto thyself a wife ; but I have need of thee." And yet Jesus can only prevent his doing so by afflicting him with a dangerous sickness.3 This farrago of fiction 4 would seem irreconcilable with all that we know of the Apostle ; it is to cast a slur on his brave heart to fancy it so helpless before the on slaughts of temptation, that he can only overcome them by escaping them. Tertullian 5 and after him Saint 1 S. Epiphanius, Hozres., xxx. 24 ; Ixxviii. 13. 2 This apocryphal story is taken from a collection entitled "Acts of the Apostles," the work of an imaginary personage, named Leucius, of whom S. Epiphanius (Hozres., li. 1) would make a disciple of John and whom Photius (Cod., 114) calls Aevicios Xapivos. The Gelasian Catalogue abom inates these Gnostic romances : " Libri omnes quos fecit Leucius, discipu- lus diaboli." The few fragments of these Acts which we possess, published by Thilo and Tischendorf, have been collected by Zahn in his Acta Johannis, pp. 218-250. 8 This altogether fictitious story is found in the most important frag ment of the Acts which we possess (Codex Paris, graec. 520). Tischen dorf, Act. Apocr., 272-276. 4 Another Gnostic writing of the following century, the Pistis Sophia, confines itself to doing homage to the Apostle's virginity- "All hail unto thee, John, thou virgin that hast thy throne in the Kingdom of Light." Pistis Sophia, ed. Schwartze & Petermann, in lat., Theii, p. 45. 5 " Johannes Christi spado." Tertullian, De Monogam. xvii. 218 SAINT JOHN. Jerome,1 have given us a juster idea of his virtue, by ranking him in the number of those chosen souls that are masters of themselves as of the bodies they animate, voluntary victims whom the Saviour calls to a life more angelic than human: "All are not capable of such a measure. . . . There be those that have sacrificed them selves for the kingdom of Heaven's sake. . . . Let them that can understand this saying, understand." 2 What, according to Tertullian, the Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries admitted as true in these Gnostic romances, was that John was still a virgin when he was called by the Lord ; that therefore, like every son of Is rael, he had anticipated founding a family, is only what we should expect ; but that as soon as Jesus revealed to him the excellence of the spiritual life, the mystical world, whereof he has ever been the type and the Apostle, he consecrated himself to it with that ready ardor which was the distinguishing note of his soul. Never having known any love save that of Jesus, he loved Him with his whole heart, and as a righteous reward he was loved by Him more than was any other. 'Twas due to the virgin purity of his love that, like the eagle whose realm is in the heavens and its clouds, he could soar to those heights never attained by eye of man, and glimpse beyond the veil of the Infinite,3 to it, too, we may ascribe the choice of him by Jesus on the Cross, bequeathing to him His Mother. As it was befitting that the Virgin Mother of God should have a virgin spouse, so also was it fitting that her foster son be a virgin likewise.4 Saint John's ministry had been so prolonged and so fruitful that reminiscences of it abound. Unfortunately, 1 " Talem f uisse eunuchum, quem Jesus amavit plurimum, evangelistam Joannem, ecclesiasticas tradunt historise." S. Jerome, In Is. 15. 2 Matt. xix. 12. 8 Cassian, Collat., xvi. 14. S. Augustine, In Joann. tract, cxxiv. 7. S. Jerome, In Matt. Prozfat. ; In Is., Book xv. chap. lvi. verses 4, 5 ; Adver. Jooin., i. 26. " Joannes vero noster quasi aquila ad superua volat, et ad ipsum Patrem pervenit dicens : In principio erat Verbum. . . . Ex- posuit virginitas quod nuptise scire non poterant." 4 S. Epiphanius, Hozres., xxviii. 7. Pseudo-Cesarius, Dial, iii. 177. S. Paulinus of Nole, Ep. li. S. Ambrose, De inst. Virg. viii. 50, etc. LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 21 9 they have come down to us so disfigured by the Gnostics that it is well-nigh impossible to separate the true from the false. Take, merely as an example and because of its winning character, the story of the pheasant which the Apostle was fond of petting. A huntsman, finding him engaged in this pastime, marvels that so holy a man could take pleasure in it. "And thou," the Apostle asks him, "dost thou keep the bow thou hast in thy hand always strung ? " " I unbend it and let it rest," replied the hunter, " so that at the proper time the bowstring may not have lost its springiness, but shoot forth the shaft the more vigorously." " So is it with our minds," John answered ; " if we never relax them, they cannot, in case of necessity, display all their energy." x In the " Acts of John " revised by the Pseudo-Prochorus, we come across a scene evidently founded on the same recollections, although the details and conclusions are different. A pheasant, alighting near John, begins to beat up the dust, and the saintly greybeard looks on with genial interest at its play. A priest passing by is scan dalized thereat, saying within himself, " How can such a great personage waste his time watching so trivial a spectacle ? " John tread his heart. " My son," he said to him, " far better would it be for thee to amuse thyself with this bird frolicking in the dust than to soil thyself with low and shameful deeds. What have I to do with this pheas ant ? What I am looking at is your soul." At these words, the priest, seeing that the Apostle of the Christ had penetrated his conscience, threw himself at his feet, crying out, " Now I behold, O blessed John, that God dwelleth in thee." 2 What are we to conclude from this diversity of treat ment ? Simply, it would seem, that the main fact alone is deserving of some credence, namely, that the saintly 1 Cassian, Collat., xxiv. 21. 2 Pseudo-Prochorus in the Acta Johannis, Zahn's ed. p. 190. 220 SAINT JOHN. old man gladly took part in innocent recreations and, like his Divine Master, loved to draw from them lessons of wisdom.1 Always as the groundwork of his preaching, none the less, as we have seen in his Epistles, there remained the love of Jesus, and as the witness to that love, fraternal charity. For him, the practice of the faith reduced itself, more and more to that virtue. Saint Jerome relates that, in the last days of his life, the venerable Apostle, no longer able to walk, was carried into the Church by his disciples. There, incapable of delivering any long discourse, he was content to address that one saying to the faithful, " My little children, love one another ! " Wearied of the ceaseless reiteration, those about him began to complain, "Master, why always say the same thing?" Whereupon he made this answer most worthy of Saint John : — "It is the Lord's precept : keep it and it shall be enough."2 The work, for which the son of Zebedee had survived his brethren in the Apostleship, was finished. It only remained for the Saviour to keep his promise,3 to return unto His dearly beloved, and taking him to His heart, as once long since in the Upper Chamber, close his tired eyes. On this point the traditions are unanimous : John's death was as gentle as sleep. Dearly should we like to know its details ; but, for this fact, as for the foregoing ones, all that we know has passed through Gnostic hands. It is true, their narration of the last days of the Apostle is one of the rare episodes in the apocryphal Acts which have come down to us intact : hardly more than thirty years elapsed between the death of the aged saint and the composition of the reminiscences which record it: but even this space of time sufficed the forgers for the fabrication of their fancies. The sole truthful incident, 4 1 Matt. vi. 26-30; vii. 16-20; xiii. 3-8, 31, 32, etc. 2 S. Jerome, In Galat., vi. 10. 8 John xxi. 22. 4 It was too late, when in the sixth century, under the names of Pro- LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 221 which we are justified in regarding as such, is this : that, when forewarned by Jesus of his approaching end, John ordered a grave to be dug, spread his mantle in it, and laid himself down therein. "Be with me, Lord," he murmured; then, addressing the disciples who, bathed in tears, were standing about him, "Peace be unto you all, my brethren;" whereupon he slumbered in that rest which he wished for them all.1 The tomb where the last of the Apostles thus reposed immediately acquired the same renown as that in which were held, at Rome, the venerated remains of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Of all the glories of Ephesus which Polycrates, one of John's first successors, enumerated to Pope Victor,2 this was the foremost. And that veneration was not restricted to Asia ; it spread throughout Christen dom, waxing greater with the ages. At the time of the Council of Ephesus, Pope Celestine, on quoting to the Fathers a saying of Saint John, reminds them that they have before their eyes the relics of the Apostle, and owe him their homage.3 At the same Council, we hear the Bishops of Syria complain that " though come so great a distance, they cannot venerate as they would the tombs of the holy martyrs, notably that of the thrice-blessed John, the Theologian and Evangelist, who lived on such chorus and Melito, an attempt was made to expurgate the Gnostic Acta. The first of these revisions, attributed to Prochorus, one of the seven Deacons (Acts vi. 5) who was put forward as a disciple of John, has been published in Greek by Professor Zahn, with a remarkable study of the pseudo-Prochorus (Acta Joannis, pp. 3-165 ; iii. Ix). His conclusion is that it is a narrative of Syrian origin, for the most part legendary, and composed about the year 500. As for the Pseudo-Melito, the name assumed by the unknown author of this second revision is that of a Bishop of Sardis, a well known and highly revered Asiatic churchman toward the end of the second century (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, v. xxiv. 5). This abridgment of the primitive Acts would seem to have been made in the Church of the West, and for its use. The Latin text is in Migne's Patrologie Grecque, v. 1239-1250. See Dictionary of Christian Biography: Melito and Prochokus. 1 These details are contained both in the MSS. of Paris and Vienna, which preserve the fragment of the primitive Acts, as well as in the Syriac and Armenian translations. Zahn, Acta Joannis, p. 250. 2 Polycrates quoted by Eusebius (Hist Eccl., Book V., chap. xxiv). 8 Mansi, iv. 1286. 222 SAINT JOHN. intimate terms with the Lord."1 But though tradition has ever been as steadfast as it is unanimous in this point that John died and had his tomb at Ephesus, the same cannot be said of the legends which had their birth about that sacred monument. Here, again, Gnostic fancies found fertile soil. We find the earliest trace of them in the Acts of John, composed a short time after his death. "The disciples," we read in this apocryphal work, "on returning to the grave on the morrow, found the Apostle there no longer; they discovered only his sandals and the earth boiling up " 2 over the spot where he had laid him down to die. This tale, in itself so suspicious in every way, was variously elaborated on, in the course of the ages, by popular devotion. Saint Augustine relates that, among the African churches, the common saying was that the Apostle, while awaiting the Lord's coming, reposed in slumber in his grave, and that his breath gently stirred the ground above him.3 In Syria there was a rumor of a perfume which flowed from this spot, and which pilgrims gathered up ; 4 in Gaul, of a manna issuing from his sep ulchre, which, when carried afar, worked miracles.5 All these are but mystical fancies, symbols of all that had been given to the world by the ministrations of the "dearly beloved of Jesus." In these reveries of pious souls over the loved one's grave, the churches of France would seem to have been the most truly prompted ; for the manna is for a figure of the Eucharist, supreme pledge of love divine ; it proceeds from the tomb of John, be cause he was its Apostle, and because Love triumphs over Death : " Fortis ut mors dilectio." 6 1 Mansi, iv. 1276. 2 Bpvovo-o-av tV itj^i/ ; Zahn conjectures, very reasonably, that instead of -rrnyiiv we should read 77)1/. Acta Joannis, p. 250, note 1, 23 and Pref ace, cviii. cix. 8 S. Augustine, tr. cxxiv. In Joan, 2. 4 Ephrem of Antioch, quoted by Photius. Cod. 229. 6 Pseudo-Melito, Liber de Actibus Joannis, in Migne, Patrologie Grecque, v. 1250. Abdias in Fabricius, ii. 586. S. Gregory of Tours, De Glor. Mart., 30. Menology of Basil Porphyrogenetes, iii. 8 May. Metaphrastus in Migne's Patrologie Grecque, cxvi. 704 et seq. Cf. Combefis, Auctor Noviss., i. 485 sq. 6 Cant. viii. 6. CHAPTER XII. THE CHURCH AFTER THE DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. That the last of Jesus' Apostles was laid to rest in the grave must have been not only a cruel blow to the hearts of the disciples who had tended him with such filial affection ; it was, furthermore, a temptation against the Faith, for, despite the holy Patriarch's denials, many undoubtedly persisted in believing he would not die be fore "the Lord's return" and the setting up of His " King dom." Always there was that " Kingdom," the fond chimera of the Jews who, in spite of the Christ's words " that it is not of this world," never ceased dreaming of it as triumphant on earth ; yet even prejudiced minds might even then have recognized its actual existence in the daily increasing sway of the Glad Tidings over men's souls. The workings of Grace are discoverable in its fruits. Right in the midst of the Pagan world another society was growing up, made up at first of low-born Jews, — fishermen, tax-gatherers, boatmen of Tiberias, without art, without money, whom neither parentage nor education had prepared to combat established teach ings, and who, nevertheless, met and vanquished them. This struggle, then a century old and still going on in our own day, had been wanting in no possible element which could threaten to overwhelm the Cause, — the relentless hatred of their fellow-countrymen, Rome's haughty scorn, the magistrates' harassing acts, Nero's refinement of cruelty, the fear or frenzy of Domitian. Not a hand had been raised in defence of the innovators. "The weapons wherewith we fight," says Saint Paul, " are not those of the flesh." 1 Nay, more, their teaching, 1 2 Cor. x. 3, 4. 224 SAINT JOHN. founded on patience, charity, self-sacrifice, goes directly counter to the innate instincts of every man and are against the most violent passions of our nature. Athwart all the obstacles accumulated by self-interest, human pas sions, their attachment to the old worship, wherein a pious feeling for their ancestors was intimately associated with the Roman common weal, the Gospel made won drous progress. The grain of mustard seed has sprung up and with its branches overshadows the world. Already it is that "goodly multitude," whereof Tacitus speaks with less of pity than disdain ; and how it has grown since the day when Nero flattered himself that he had swept its vestiges from the earth ! a Nor was it only in the ranks of the populace, the lowly folk, that it now numbered its followers ; we have seen it climbing the Palace steps, crossing its threshold, finding its way first among the officers of lower rank, then rising ever higher, reaching the throne itself in the person of Caesar's nearest of kin. Three generations have not passed since the Christ was nailed to the gibbet, and already the Church can count more pastors and sanctuaries than any philosophy can boast of teachers and schools. Every city in the East, in Greece, in Italy, possesses some sort of Christian "brotherhood." How were these congregations ruled; what were the hierarchy, the forms of worship, and the state of belief like, toward the close of the first century ? Although I have already touched lightly on these questions,2 it would seem worth while to revert to them now and cast a rapid glance at the general status of the principal Churches. It was part of God's plan that the Episcopate should only take on certain fixed forms little by little, as the Apostles, one by one vanished from the scene. The lead ers set over the various communities were destined to be their successors, and not those chosen by each congrega tion ; for it was fitting that their powers should emanate from an Apostolic, that is to say, a divine source. In the 1 " Plus afficimur, quotiens metimur," Tertullian. 2 See Saint Paul, vol. i. chap. viii. and vol. ii. chap. xi. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 225 earliest days all that had been needful was the preaching of the missionaries, picked representatives travelling from town to town and sowing the seed of the Glad Tidings ; this was the part played by the Twelve and their dis ciples ; but before their demise, they realized the neces sity of a stable organization for the Church, now become a permanent society. This evolution is not easy to follow in the contemporary documents. Saint Paul's first epis tles mention but two degrees in the functions of the Min istry.1 His letter to the Philippians 2 and the Acts of the Apostles 3 likewise, speak of " Deacons and Priests," or of "Deacons and Bishops," as if the terms "Priests" and " Bishops " were synonymous. In translating the Apoca lypse, however, I have adopted the opinion which holds that the "Angels of the Seven Churches" were really the Bishops of those communities. One thing does indeed remain beyond all question, and that is the fact that from the middle of the second century the existence of the Episcopate, under the forms it had preserved ever since, is established by authentic testimony, at least so far as the larger cities are concerned. Among the Priests there is always one who holds the highest rank, occupies a seat apart in token of his primacy, ordains the other ministers, after the example of the Apostles, and, according to the received rites,4 in a word, governs the community. Outside of Jerusalem, which was the first to have a single Pastor in the person of Saint James the Less, we encounter, at this epoch, Bishops at Rome, at Corinth, at Smyrna, in the Pontus, in Crete, and even in far-off Gaul. Many of the Churches still preserve a list of their Pastors and thus refer back, by an unbroken chain, to the Apos tle who founded them. Hegesippus, a Christian author,5 1 1 Cor. xii. 28. Ephes. xiv. 11. 2 Philip, i. 1. 8 Acts xiv. 23. 4 'T is thus S. Paul ordains Timothy and Titus by the laying on of hands (1 Tim. iv. 14). The latter likewise ordain Priests iu the various Churches. (Titus i. 5.) 6 Hegesippus seems to be of Jewish birth. He went first to Corinth, then to Rome, where he sojourned under the Popes Anicetus, Soter, and Eleutherius. His principal work is the History of Heresies. 15 226 SAINT JOHN. whose works were collected by Eusebius, has handed down to us many of these precious documents; Saint Irenasus has done the same for Rome; Dionysius of Corinth for Athens; Eusebius for Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem.1 Nothing in the contemporary writers indicates that this institution, already everywhere in vogue, was regarded as of a novel character. And, never theless, it meant nothing less than the transforming of collective powers into an individual authority ; one might, therefore, with good reason say that it was a veritable " revolution." Now, if we consider that this "revolution " worked injury to numerous interests, held in high repute and based on traditional possession, and all to the profit of a single magisterium unsanctioned by precedents, who, shall we say, was powerful enough to introduce it, and why has the change left no traces behind it ? Logic, therefore, makes up in a most pertinent fashion, for the silence of certain documents, so far as the West ern Churches are concerned.2 As regards Asia, all at tempts to refer to this silence are of no avail to our adversaries, for the authentic 3 Epistles of Saint Ignatius, written in 112-115 to Saint Polycarp and to five Asiatic Churches, — Ephesus, Magnesia,'1 Tralles, Philadelphia, Smyrna, — speak of a regular Hierarchy as already con stituted there : the Bishop is over all and in himself con centrates the fraternity over which he has charge. He is the Christ living in its midst : " There where the Bishop is, there is his Church, even as where Jesus Christ is, 1 Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth in the fsecond century, died about the year 178 ; he wrote, under Marcus Aurelius, a collection of heretical beliefs. The Greeks honor him as a Martyr. 2 The allusion is to the arguments some try to draw from the letter of S. Clement of Rome, from Hennas' Pastor, from the apocryphal Second Clementine, and from the letter of S. Polycarp to the Philippians, which simply speak of them as the "Priests." These objections are ingenionsly refuted by Mgr. Duchesne Les engines chritiennes (chap, vi.), who recalls that in the writings of S. Irenseus even Popes are designated by the term " Priests," although their primacy had been long since established. 8 As to the authenticity of the letters of S. Ignatius and the epistle of S. Polycarp, which bear witness to them, see the very concise dissertation of Mgr. Duchesne. lcr Cahier, Appendice au chapitre VI. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 227 there is the Catholic Church." x In his hand, Priests and Deacons are " like the strings of a lyre." It would be hard to express more happily the harmony which existed between the members of the fraternities and their leaders. But it is not only among them that this brotherly concord reigns ; the term " Catholic Church," which appears here for the first time in Christian literature, indicates to us clearly enough that, even at that date, some strong tie bound together the several Churches in one single body. One such testimony taken in conjunction with the text of the " Letter to the Heads of the Seven Churches," confirms what has been said above2 of Saint John's ministry, journeying through the country about Ephesus, in order to establish communities there and appainting Bishops over them. How can any one contend that he was the only one to fulfil this function, so pre-eminently appro priate to one of the Apostles? The Apostolic origin of the Episcopate, so far as the greater sees are concerned, supported as it is furthermore by weighty traditions, would therefore seem unquestionable. As for the ceremonies of the primitive worship, it will be recalled that they have been studied at considerable length in an earlier work in this series,3 using as ground work the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a venerable document but recently brought to light, although it was known and quoted in the earliest days.4 It is a veritable handbook of religion, comprising, as a whole, moral pre cepts for the conduct of life and liturgical directions 1 S. Ignatius, Ad Smyrn., 8. 2 See Chapter IX. 8 Saint Paul and His Missions, book i. chap. viii. Daily Life and Worship in the Primitive Churches. 4 The AiSox^! rZv SaStica 'Arroar6\aiv was discovered and published in 1883 by Mgr. Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia, after a Greek MS. found in the Monastery of Jerusalem of the Most Holy Sepulchre, in the Phanar quarter of Constantinople. It is quoted at the close of the first century in The Ascension of Isaias, and was written at Jerusalem, for it recommends the community of goods, which nowhere else has ever been practised. It disappeared in the fourteenth century. Cf. the Abbe" Jacquier (Doctoral Thesis, Vitte, Lyons, 1891) who dates it back to the year 60, and Mgr. Batiffol who believes it is still more ancient (Etudes d'histoire et de theologie positive, p. 250). Consult Funk, Zahn, Schaff, etc. 228 SAINT JOHN. destined for the ordering of the forms of worship. Let us remember, that as the "Good News" hailed from Judea, — " Salvation cometh from the Jews," Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, — in like manner the Christian fraternities, at the outset united with the Synagogue, though afterwards separated from it, certainly preserved the impress of their origin. Consequently it is not at all surprising that their weekly meeting should have been given up to the wonted exercises : readings from the Holy Books, singing of Psalms, the delivering of a homily on some text. Moreover, it was not only in Jerusalem and Syria that these exercises constituted the Christian Lit urgy. Saint Justin, who lived about thirty years -1 after Saint John's death, in speaking of Rome, gives us details in perfect accord with the rules laid down in the Teach ing of the Apostles. He sets out by saying that, to become a member of the Church, one must receive Baptism, be true to the Christian Faith and promise to observe its moral laws.2 Baptism, he says, is the true Circumcision, that of the Spirit.3 By applying to us the merits of the Death of the Christ, it remits our sins : it is a new birth which causes the soul to pass from the darkness and mire of Sin, to a state of holiness and light, a " veritable illumination." 4 By Bap tism, the newly converted enter the brotherhood, take part in the religious gatherings, in the exercises of wor ship, and in the most excellent of all, that which properly constitutes the difference between the ceremonies of the Church and those of the Synagogue, the Eucharist. He beholds the Head of the congregations receive the bread and wine, give thanks to the Father, in the Name of the Son and the Holy Ghost, an act of homage which the people ratify, by responding " Amen," then the Deacons distribute the "Blessed Elements," and carry them to the absent members. None is entitled to par- 1 S. Justin was converted between 132 and 136 ; he was martyred under Marcus Aurelius (Dialog., chap. i. § 217). 2 Apol, i. 61, 93. 8 Dialog., chap. 43, § 261. 4 Tiop6s. Apol, i. 61, 74. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 229 take of this holy food if he is not a believer and has not received the ablution of his sins in Baptism, for this is no longer bread and wine : " even as Jesus Christ," by God's word become incarnate, has taken on Flesh and Blood for our Salvation, so likewise the repast consecrated by the Eucharistic words which the Lord has taught us, and which nourishes our flesh and blood, is the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Incarnate." * It would be impossible to testify in stronger terms to the unity of doctrine and practices between Jerusalem, the Mother Church, and Rome, the new metropolis of the Faith ; 2 a unity which goes so far as to use the same language, for, during three centuries, Greek served as the organ of both liturgies.3 Furthermore, what more explicit testimony could there be to their belief in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, whose essential lineaments we have just now noted, and which was shortly to be perfected in the actual ceremonies of the Mass, by means of certain additions which in no way affect its substance ?4 On the other hand, the importance attached by the Teaching of the Apostles " to the part played by the " Prophets " in their gatherings, leads us to note that this role de creases in proportion as the Episcopal Hierarchy becomes more firmly established. It will not be forgotten with what prudent reserve Saint Paul endeavored to moderate these spontoneous manifestations, which eluded all sur veillance and might easily degenerate into disorder.3 1 Apol, ibid. 2 On this subject one may profitably compare the Letter of Pliny to Trajan (112 A. D.) on the Christian worship of Asia ; the Epistles of S. Ignatius on the usages at Antioch ; the Gnostic Apocrypha which preserve numerous traditions concerning the ritual, feast days, etc. 3 When the Roman Liturgy becomes Latin it retains several Greek terms : " Kyrie eleison ; agios ischyros ; athanatos ; Theos " (Office for Good Friday). The most ancient Latin epitaph is that of S. Cornelius (252 A. D.). The first Church to use Latin is that of Africa, to which we owe a Bible in that language, and probably certain parts of the Mass. 4 It is impossible to infer anything from The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, as to the question of the Agape, so much discussed nowadays. Mgr. Batiffol does not hesitate to assert that this custom never existed. Htudes d'histoire et de The~ologie positive, p. 279. 6 1 Cor. xiv. 3, etc. Cf. The Last Years of Saint Paul, chap. viii. 230 SAINT JOHN. Little by little they disappeared ; no mention at all of them is to be found after Saint Irenaeus' day. Like those sudden gleams which flush the skies, and with the sunrise fade away, so those fleeting lights which had illumined the Church's morning vanished when the clear sunlight of the Spirit had fully enlightened it. This is not the place to study those interesting works suggested by questions concerning the Sacraments in the primitive Church, and especially as regards one of the most necessary, — Penance.1 I would merely like to remark, that, on this subject as on so many others, the testimony of ecclesiastical writers leaves no doubt that the Roman Church, in communion with the sister Churches of Asia and Africa, had already assumed the ascendency, and that its authority was referred to under circumstances when any point of discipline or belief was at stake. We shall shortly see this tutelary authority invoked as a final court of appeals, at the time of the famous contro versy which divides the Churches concerning the celebra tion of the Pasch. But still weightier themes were to appeal to the solicitude and thereafter to the supreme intervention of Rome. In order to more thoroughly grasp them, we must needs anticipate somewhat the order of time. Though the persecutions foretold by Jesus remained ever threatening, and overcast the horizon of Christendom, still other storms, also predicted, but far more formidable, were already beating down upon the bark of Peter. This time the whole Faith was imperilled. In many ways it was like a murky mist, which neither the mighty ad jurations of Paul in his Epistles, nor the tender mysticism of John could dispel, and which threatened to envelop the entire Orient. To rightly understand the danger, it is necessary to consider in what state the removal of 1 On Penance in particular consult the AbbiS Vacandard, La Confession Sacramentelle, La Penitence Publique. Mgr. Batiffol, op. cit. M. 1'abbiJ Boudinhou, apropos of Lea's work in Revue d'histoire et de littgrature reliqieuse, 1897, M. l'abbe Pelle, La Penitence devant la Theologie et I'Histoire. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 231 the Apostles had left the principal communities founded by them. Take first Jerusalem, the parent stock and mother of all. It had been the first to possess a single Pastor, a Bishop, in James the Less, whose memory was ever cherished as a monument of righteousness and godliness. We have seen 2 how the little flock of faithful ones, when forced by those outbreaks which preceded the siege to take refuge in Pella, had there chosen as successor of Saint James, Simeon, son of Cleophas, like him one of the " kinsfolk " of Jesus.2 It was not long before the congregation at Pella divided: some, and many among the Saviour's kindred, going northwards as far as Kokaba, in Batansea ; others, with eyes fixed on that guilty but holy City were bent on returning thither. The Romans, on perceiving that the town was pacified, — in other words deserted,3 — had in a measure relaxed their watch over its ruins. Further, it was always Mount Moriah, site of the destroyed Temple, which the Tenth Legion had orders to guard, for it was well known that all the hopes of the Jews were centred about this spot. Such was not the case with the Christians. Venerable as the heights of Moriah must appear to every true son of Israel, it was not thitherward that their hearts yearned. Their fondest memories led them to Mount Sion, to the Sanctuary where Jesus had instituted the Eucharist. There was the Upper Chamber, overflowing with that august Mystery ; round about it, some few buildings, having escaped the destroyers, were still standing, amid the wreckage of the town, and offered them shelter.4 Thither it was that Simeon saw fit to lead his flock and gather about him the little group of faithful ones whose souls clung to that ground5 soaked with the Blood 1 See Chapter II. 2 They were called " Aeo-rt6crvvoi " the kindred, Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, I, i. ; vii., 14. 8 " Ubi solitudinemfaciunt, pacem appellant." Tacitus. 4 There were to be seen, in particular, seven synagogues more or less intact. Cf. S. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech., xvi. 4. 5 Ps. cxviii. 25. 232 SAINT JOHN. Divine. History tells us no more that is worthy of mention concerning this touching return home. The Church thus restored had a modest existence until Hadrian's time, when new foundations and new troubles occurred to distract the field of death. Probably Simeon himself did not long remain there, for the fraternities of Batansea offered a far wider field for his zeal. They have been described already as preserv ing, under the name of Nazarenes, a like fidelity to the Law and the Gospel, but often too conceited not to be sus ceptible to error. Though the first Fathers, Hegesippus and Julius Africanus always speak of them in terms of esteem, the time is not far distant when we shall find Saint Irenseus outspoken against them, reproaching them with having altered, and transgressed the Gospel teach ings, in his indignation mingling in a common anathema the names of Ebionites and Nazarenes. No task is more difficult than an attempt to discern just what differences distinguished them. Over beyond Jordan, there was a swarm of sects, not, like the Schools of Jabneh or of Lydda, occupied in a dry study of the Law, but altogether absorbed in those mystical dreams which were destined later on to give birth to the Cabala. We have already had a glimpse of the Essenes,1 that " strange people among whom no child was ever born," and which died out a short while after the destruction of Jerusalem, at least in its primitive form. But it left behind it certain traditions resuscitated by the Ebionites2 who mingled with them their own wildest fancies. Hegesippus who enumerates these heresies, reckons seven as the offspring of Judaism ; but he mentions, to the honor of the Church of Jerusalem, that at that epoch it still preserved the Faith in its integrity.3 The common tendency of all these sects was to seek, in 1 See the first chapter of The Christ the Son of God. 2 See above, The Church of Jerusalem in Exile, chap. ii. 8 Hegesippus adds that the Church of Jerusalem later on was iufected by heresy through a certain Thebutis, vexed by the fact of his inability to obtain the Bishopric. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, iv. 22. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 233 never-ending ablutions,1 the purification of the soul. In this strange crowd one name stands out prominently, that of Elkasai ; 2 who boasted that his baptism was more efficacious than any other, and capable of effacing the worst offences. Some fragments of the book in which he inscribed his phantasies have come down to us ; in it we find nothing but a weird mixture of exorcisms, incanta tions and astrological predictions.3 His doctrines are re vealed to him by an Angel thirty leagues in height, which claims to be the Son of God, and has a companion of the same stature, who is the Holy Ghost. One might well blush to repeat such absurdities ; but the East is the land of dreams and these give a fair picture of many a dis traught soul. And, indeed, it was more often their hearts than their minds which were led astray by these whimsies. Though many details of their belief were borrowed by the Elkasaites from the Essenes, their moral teachings were far from retaining any of the latter's rigorousness. The Book of Elkasai, though little known in the Greek and Latin Churches, enjoyed a great renown in Asia 4 and perhaps acted as an inspiration to Menander. This last personage, in the opinion of Saints Irenseus and Epiphanius, ought to be regarded as the father of all the Gnostics,5 who were then beginning to spring up all over Syria. What are we to understand exactly by Gnosticism, which has played so important a part, be gotten a thousand heresies, and corrupted such an array of souls since the earliest days of the Church ? It is really no easy matter to form a clear conception of it, from a 1 Recognition, i. 54-60. 2 Origen, in Eusebius (Hist. Eccl, vi. 38). Philosophoumena, ix. 4, 13-7; x. 29. S. Epiph. Hozr., xix. 1; xxx. 3, 17. Theodoret, Hozr. Fab., ii. 7. 8 Hilgenfeld, Novum Testament extra canon., fasc. III. * These various sects of Oriental Baptists exist to our day in the marsh lands of Bassora, between the Tigris and Euphrates under the name of Sabians (Sabun is the Syriac word which signifies Baptizers). Renan, Les E'vangiles, p. 462. It is likely that here we have the origin of the manifold ablutions iu the Mohammedan religion. 5 S. Irenseus, I, xxiii. 2; xxiv. 1; xxvii. 1. S. Epiph., xxiii. 1; xxiv. 1. 234 SAINT JOHN. dogmatic standpoint, since there were as many mistaken systems as there were seats of error. Before going into a summary study of them, let us sum up in a few words those features common to the different schools, as regards the conduct of life : they are indifference to the rules of morality ; disdain of the Mosaic Law, aversion for mar riage, and a denial of the Divine Judgment. Flesh and matter are both evil : but we have merely to scorn them mentally, even while yielding to them in deed. These extravagances are enough to justify the relentless warfare waged against Gnosticism by a Church already in the firm hands of the Episcopacy, by instinct shrinking from all disorderly characters, and whose mission it is to lead mankind in the paths of Salvation. As for its doctrinal theories one might say that, to a certain degree, it had forestalled Christianity, in this sense, that the state of mind it takes for granted existed before the latter's appearance. We have seen how Saint Paul and Saint John strove against the fomenting, nay the hatching, of heresies. The Apocalypse thunders over the heads of the Nicolaites. The Fourth Gospel inveighs against the illusions of Cerinthus. How often did the good seed fall on soil already oversown with cockle ! Among the Pagans it was the degenerate metaphysics of Plato, so much more attractive to the Oriental genius than the rigorism of Aristotle; among the Jews, there were the fancies of allegorical exegesis, not to mention the uncouth religions of Chaldea and Persia and Egypt, ever more imported along with their commerce. All these elements were amalgamated with the Nazarean dreams and the doctrinal deposit of Christianity, forming innu merable combinations which defy analysis, but wherein almost always myths are predominant. By diverse ways, whether through mysticism or philosophy, they end in relegating God to an empyrean so lofty that all relations with the universe become impossible to Him. Hence it follows that to explain the formation of the world they are forced to have recourse to " iEons," emanating from God as the first principle ; but growing more and more CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 235 imperfect, the further they are withdrawn from the foun tain-head. Matter, which is their handiwork, must there fore be, from its origin, tainted and vicious. Hence flow all the consequences which have been stated above, and which tend to do away with all morality, under color of purifying it. Such, in its broad outlines, is a sketch of Gnosis.1 There can be no question here of going into the endless details concerning the sects sprung from it, nor of the pernicious vagaries they fathered : on the other hand, it is to our purpose to know the principal seats of the first great Heresy which attacked the cradle of the Church. These were Antioch and Alexandria. I have already mentioned Menander to whom many of the Fathers ascribed the paternity of all Gnosticism. It may be that this is to magnify beyond measure the part played by a personage known to us solely by their refutations. He would seem to have resided for a long time in Antioch, although he was a native of Samaria, like his master, Simon the Magician, whom we saw withstanding Saint Peter.2 Simon, in his impiety, had gone so far as to bid his disciples worship him in company with a woman named Helen, whom he called "his first thought."3 Menander revived all his pretensions, boasting of still higher revelations, which he supported by deceitful spells of magic, and even dared to baptize in his own name, without invoking that of the Christ. Another Samaritan, Dositheus, a disciple of theirs, announced that he was the great Prophet foretold by Moses. If to these names we add that of Saturninus who likewise taught in Antioch, according to Saint Irenseus we shall have become ac quainted with the most dangerous artificers of error in Syria, at the time we are now concerned with. All founded their theological aberrations on the legions of Angels, 1 The terms " Gnosis " and " Gnosticism " are employed almoBt in differently to designate the whole body of mythical errors, which played so great a part in that epoch. The word " yvaxris," knowledge, is em ployed by S. Paul in a sense not at all favorable. 1 Tim. vi. 20. 2 Acts viii. 9-25. 8 S. Justin, Apol, i. 26, 56. S. Irenseus, i. 23. Philosophoumena, vi. 236 SAINT JOHN. already endlessly multiplied by the Essenes. Among these fantastic beings, though at their head be it said, they set a Jesus more or less real, who with them serves as an intermediary between the world and the inaccessible Divinity. These daring conceits do really testify, even by their extravagance, to a faith in the mystery of the Incarna tion, without which no man ever would have dreamed of saying he was God. Though combated at Antioch and Smyrna with equal authority and vigor by bishops like Ignatius x and Polycarp, the spiritual sons of Saint John, whose virtues won for them the crown of Martyrdom, they nevertheless pushed their propaganda beyond the boundaries of Asia, and in the Alexandrian School found a soil better fitted for their full flowering than any other in the world. Egypt is said to have been evangelized by Saint Mark,2 but this tradition is contested. It is certain that, as the Alexandrian Philo relates,3 it possessed, for many a year, communities of " Therapeutse," 4 living on the shores of Lake Mareotis, and leading an austere life quite similar to that of the old Essenes. Were these Jews converted by the preaching of the Gospel and raised to the practice of the higher Christian virtues ? Many of the Fathers be lieved so;5 but as the Therapeutse bound themselves down to many observances purely Jewish in character, notably their frequent ablutions, the contrary opinion generally prevails. The same may be said of the poems styled " Sybilline " which then were so plentiful in that country, as a sort of oracles, wherein magnificent prayers were mingled with threatening prophecies concerning the last days. Are we to believe that in the Fourth Book 1 S. Ignatius, Philadelp., vii. Ephes., ix. Trail, ix., x. Magn., viii. 2 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, ii. 16. S. Epiph. Hozr., li. 6. S. Jerome, De Vir. Ill, 8. 8 Philo was a Jewish philosopher, born at Alexandria in 30 B. C. Although he lived to be a very old man, he must have been dead before the probable time of S. Mark's preaching there. 4 ©epoireur^s, "servant " of God. B For the references, see note 2. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 237 especially, in which a Christian spirit is so often recog nizable, the handiwork of some disciple of Jesus is before us ? It is a question ; but certainly there is nothing ex travagant in concluding therefrom that the Gospel had penetrated into these regions by the latter part of the first century; that it had made its influence felt there; consequently, that the list of successors of Saint Mark given by tradition — Annianus, Avilius, Cerdo, Primus 1 — is not devoid of a certain authenticity. The Christian communities of Egypt display from the outset a spirit most contrary to that of Judaism. This opposition appears notably in a work entitled "The Epistle of Barnabas," wherein the separation of the Church and the Synagogue is clearly indicated. The way is open to Christian Gnos ticism, which was to find in Alexandria a fertile field. Three names condense its history as well as represent its essential teaching, — Basilides,2 Valentinus, and Car- pocrates. Basilides, born in Syria, where he would seem to have been under the influence of Menander, professes, at least in his private instructions, a doleful system of metaphysics which foreshadows, in more than one feature, the scepticism of the Kantian School. Everything in the Universe is a perpetual growth, an evolution whereby the material world tends to transform itself little by little into an ideal world. The perfect flowering of it all is consummated in the person of Jesus, in a fashion so com plete that in Him was left nothing which Death could claim its own. The Gospel He gave to the world is the "Glad Tidings," the announcement of this progress in which, by following His example, every man can become a partaker, and which results in every creature becoming lost in God. Basilides quotes the Gospels faithfully, and it is proper to note that he refers to that of Saint John as of the same weight as the three others. Later on he endeavors to make a commentary on them in order to 1 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, ii. 24 ; iii. 14, 21 ; iv. 1, 4. Conslit. Apost., vii. 46. 2 Cf. S. Irenasus, i. 26. Philosophoumena, vii. Clement of Alexandria. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, iv. 7. Acta Archelai, in Migne, Pair. Gr., x. 1523. 238 SAINT JOHN. use them to uphold his system of manifold '' Filiations," whereby he explained the genesis of the world. Valentinus,1 according to Saint Epiphanius, was a na tive of Egypt, was educated at Alexandria, and, after having resided at Cyprus, intrigued vainly for the bishop ric. At first he insinuated his doctrines secretly, before breaking openly with the Church. Basilides' system, very obscure and complicated as it is, would seem a marvel of clearness when compared with the Valentinian phantasies. And yet one can note a common basework of scepticism and an analogous conception of the Supreme Being, — " The Great Depths," by degrees declining from its Per fection down to the material creature, whereof it becomes the Father. To the Christ is attributed the same mission of regenerating, spiritualizing this inferior element, and bringing it back to God. Lost in their metaphysics, Basilides, Valentinus, and their adepts accorded as little attention as they did importance to the rules of morality. They were secondary considerations in the eyes of these men absorbed in infinite visions. From morality neg lected to morality destroyed is an easy step. Many came to regard as indifferent for the " Illuminati," the true Gnostics, all, even the most guilty, outward acts. Always, after this fashion, human dogmas perish. What his masters had merely tolerated was reserved to Carpocrates 2 and his son Epiphanius to build up into a system. Both seemed to have purposed casting some light on their Theogony and of harmonizing it with the Greek fables ; but what most remains of their teaching is that they made iniquity a means of salvation. The reason of this is that in order to arrive at the eternal blessed ness — in other words, to liberate oneself from the tyr anny of the creative powers — one must have passed through the whole cycle of actions possible, crimes in cluded. That so monstrous a doctrine should have been taught openly by a teacher of renown in a city like Alex- 1 S. Epiph. Hozr., 31. 2 S. Irenseus, i 25; ii. 31, 32. Philosoph., vii. 20. Tertullian, De Anima, 23-35. Clement of Alexandria, Strom., iii. 2. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 239 andria, which plumed itself on continuing, if not of in fusing new life into, the pure Platonic speculations, and to an ambition so high joined that of presenting, in its " Therapeutse," a model rivalling the cenobitic in virtues, one may well be amazed at the spectacle; but what is even more astonishing is that a woman was one of its chief interpreters, and that in Rome itself. Saint Irenseus tells us that Marcellina won great fame by her preaching of such infamous doctrines.1 There is no doubt but that the majority of the calumnies which defamed Christianity, by connecting it with stories of secret attacks, and by its libels went far to justify its persecutors, issued from this impure source. It would be unfair, however, to judge all Alexandrian Gnosis by these weaknesses. Basilides, Valentinus, Car- pocrates himself, were men of distinguished and brilliant minds. Though they too often are led astray by Utopian follies, though they lower themselves, whether by logic or by weakness, to the very depths of degradation, they none the less give evidence, in many of their conceptions, of a depth and power which is surprising when set side by side with such chimeras. Egypt, that bore them, cherished both their influence and its esteem for them. The Fathers must needs reckon with them in their philo sophical works and highly too. Clement of Alexandria speaks of them with the greatest respect ; he quotes one of their disciples, Heracleon,2 as one of the authorities. He and Origen take from them all which seemed com patible with the teaching of the Christian Church. Under their influence the city of Alexandria became one of the most brilliant centres of theology. But however great the renown of any provincial town, Rome, nevertheless, preserved its primacy which shone 1 " Marcellina qua? Romam, sub Amicto venit, cum esset hujus doctrinse, multos exterminavit." S. Irenseus, Adv. Hozr., i. 25, 26. Cf. Mgr. Duchesne, p. 161. 2 Heracleon, Valentinus' disciple, lived in the second century. He wrote commentaries on SS. Luke and John, afterward collected by Origen. Cf. S. Irenseus, Adv. Hozr., iv. 4. Strom., iv. chap. iv. 26. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, v. x. 1. 240 SAINT JOHN. over the world and attracted to it the brightest minds. From all quarters men flocked to the " Sacred City ; " 1 believers, to refresh their Faith at the tombs of the Mar tyrs ; the hesitating, to seek there the Arbiter who should strengthen their convictions, and the light which should dissipate their doubts ; the heretics, finally, to gain credit for their errors, by exhibiting them in a lustre borrowed from it. We have just seen how the revolting excesses of Carpocrates were preached in Rome by a woman. Gnos ticism had a worthier representative there in one of its principal upholders, Valentinus, who had belonged to the Church, but brought about his own expulsion. Among all analogous errors his was nearest the truth. In many points it was in touch with Christianity. Heracleon and Ptolemy, his principal disciples, carried on at Rome the teaching of his doctrines, and added to them commenta ries on our Holy Books, for a mania for writing was one of the peculiar characteristics of that sect.2 The immorality of most of the Gnostics won for them well-merited contempt. Still more dangerous was the heresy inaugurated by Cerdo, later on revived and devel oped by Marcion, who wore the mask of modesty. Both, natives of Asia,3 had gone to Rome, under pretence of getting the stamp of the Church's approval for their vagaries, and were repudiated. They agreed in preaching a dualism in the Godhead, and in declaring the Old and New Testaments irreconcilable whereof they eliminated several books. As Jesus had but an apparent body, His Incarnation, His life and death no longer present any reality either; hence the name of " Docetism,"4 by which this heresy is known. Its austere outwardly appearance 1 " Civitas sacrosancta." Apuleius, Metam., xi. 26. 2 Nevertheless all that has come down to us from Valentinus is one book, the Pistis or Piste Sophia, The Faithful Wisdom, which consists in interrogations of Jesus by Mary. Schwartze. Ed. Petermann, Berlin, 1851. 8 Cerdo was from Syria; Marcion from Sinope. As to Docetism, cf. S. Irenssus, i. 27 ; iii. 4. S. Hippolytus, Pseudo-TertuUian, 50. Epiph., 41. Philastr., 44, 45. S. Justin, Apol, i. 26, 58. Philosoph., vii. 29, 31 ; x. 19. Tertullian, Contr. Marc. 4 Aokc'w, " to appear." CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 241 made it the more pernicious. Furthermore, it affected a clearness as much as the Gnostics did a misty depth of utterance ; accordingly, it had so many followers that it could divide them in groups, which organized under a Hierarchy, after the model of Christianity.1 Here let us finish our list of these errors. Each in its own way all the visionary concoctors of new Faiths served, in turn, the Cause of the Christ by coming to dash themselves to pieces against that " Corner-stone " whereon He had built. " For there must be also here sies," 2 the Apostle has said in His name ; they had flung themselves upon Rome in such numbers, so subtile, so perverse, but only the better to testify to the steadfast ness of the edifice capable of staying their mad assaults. They came hither, I have said, less to shake its founda tions than to add to their lustre. In all this confusion of sects which boasted of being Christian, God never failed His work in the hour of need. " He well knew how to preserve in it a character of authority whereof the here sies could not rob it."3 "This Church of Rome, the most ancient," 4 toward which all eyes turned as to a bril liant lighthouse, was of a mould fitted to withstand all shocks, and already in a position to enforce everywhere its belief together with its discipline. Those that with drew from it, after first having recognized it, never could efface the mark of their novelty, neither of their rebel lion. The lofty speculations, not to say the dreams, which always had been the reef on which the Oriental imaginations foundered, had proved of no danger to it. Imbued with that old Roman spirit, a mixture of strength and suppleness which had conquered the world, well aware that, for the weak, all power consists in remaining united, its first care was to establish its mastership. The i It is interesting to note that Docetism is still extant in the East. The Church of Deir-Ali, to the south of Damascus, still adheres to Marcionism. 2 " Oportet et hozreses esse.'' 1 Cor. 11, 19. 2 Bossuet, Histoire universelle, 2d part. 4 Eb^dpavos rt)v dpyaiordrnv "Pwpaiuv titKAnirlav ISeiv. Origen, quoted by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. vi. xiv. 10). 16 242 SAINT JOHN. widely dispersed Christian communities it bound up to gether by ties of dependency and fraternity until it made them into a fasces so solid that no strength could break it ; to it belonged the duty of constituting the body, es sentially hierarchical, the great school of respect and of authority, which is of all others Catholicism, the work of a hand Divine if ever any was.1 The Episcopate, already robust, quite as opposed to any extravagances, whether in looseness or in piety, less anx ious about vain analysis than to maintain, in the unity of Faith and morality, the flock intrusted to it, became its strength as well as its salvation amid the flood of errors which encompassed it. Then by a just balancing of ju risdiction and action, the Episcopate is in its turn main tained in the closest union by the Bishop of Rome set over it as its Head, established from on High as judge and arbiter beyond appeal, in all disagreements. The Popes Anicetus, and Soter, his successor, beheld the entire movement of Christendom centre about themselves. The Symbols of belief, which were beginning to come into use at Rome, became a law to every Christian congregation for that sole reason. Irenseus, who, through Polycarp, his master, was in touch with Saint John, " who had seen the Christ," deems it quite sufficient to confound any heresy, if he quotes the Roman Faith, the doctrines of that Mother Church, " the greatest, the oldest, the most illustrious, which possesses, through an unbroken succes sion, the true tradition of Peter and Paul; unto which, because of its Primacy,2 every other ought to have re course." The correspondence between Christian congre gations, inaugurated by the letters of the two great Apostles, thereafter continued by Pope Saint Clement, becomes a custom and at the same time a new tie. These circular letters are read in the Sunday meetings, and form, as it were, a prolongation of the Apostolic writings.3 Against this perfect accord between the head and its 1 0eoC VTfla H\ KaBoAwh imcX-no-la. Constit. Apost., i. 1. 2 Propter potiorem principalitatem. S. Irenseus, iii. Ill, 2. 8 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl, v. xxv. CHURCH AFTER DEATH OF SAINT JOHN. 243 members, this concert of wisdom, piety, goodness inspired by the everlasting promises, what heresy could make any headway ? Gnosticism, which at first seemed so threaten ing, unable to take root in a soil devoid of consistency, began to wither and decay. Other errors followed which had a like fortune ; then others still. Even to-day the list is not closed of turbulent and restless spirits which deem themselves wiser than the Church, and seek to sub stitute their opinions for her teachings ; but in her old age the Church is not exhausted, neither her voice nor her heart are worn out. Better than oracle, more than queen, she is always Mother ; her sternness is all made of tenderness. When she raises her hand, is it to strike. or is it to bless ? Even when she condemns, she does it out of love, for, since it is her mission to lead men to salvation, what better proof of love could she give than to keep them in the path that leads thereto ? To the inno vators who would murder her, her arms are stretched forth ; she urges them to fling themselves in her embrace. Full of the Spirit of Him Who said, " I will draw all things unto Me," x she invokes Him in their behalf and repeats with Him, " Holy Father, I commend unto Thee them that Thou hast given Me : that they may be one as We ; that they may be one in Us." It is the Prayer of Jesus Christ in Saint John.2 Heaven and earth shall pass away but not those words.3 l John xiii. 32. 2 Ibid., xxvii. 11. 8 Matt. xxiv. 35. INDEX. .3Sons, in Cerinthus, 159 ; in Alex andrian philosophy, 174 ; in Gnos tic heretics, 234 et seq. Agape, at Corinth, 136. Agrippa II, his realm, 18 et seq. ; at Court, 37 ; listens to S. Paul, 43 ; death, 61. Alexander (Tiberius), at Court, 37 ; statues erected to him, 38. Alexandria, preserves Septua gint, 28; influence on Josephus, 63 ; on Johannine Theology, 155 et seq., 167 ; heresies, 235, 238 et seq. Alogi, origin, xii, xiv et seq., 157. Amen, title of Jesus, 91. Ancient, John's title, 211. Ancients, in Apoc, 98 etseq.; 122. Angels (Fallen), blasphemers, 108. Anicetus, 242. Animals, mystical meaning, 97 ; 99, 100, 117, 122. Annianus, 237. Antichrist, in Apoc. 112, 119 et seq. ; 127 ; in 1 Ep. of John, 157 ; 208. Antioch, centre of heresies, 235. Apion, 63. Apocalypse (The), chaps. v., vi., vii. Apocrypha, Nazarenes' Gospel, 21 et seq. ; Fourth Maccabees, Fourth Esdras, and Henoch, 29; first named by Josephus, 64 et seq. ; Paul and Thecla, 215; "Acts of John," 217, 219, 222; "Acts of the Apostles " by Leucius, id. ; Pistis Sophia id., 240; Pseudo Melito and Prochorus, 219, 220, n. 4. Assyrian, influence on Prophets, 84 ; on John, 97, 104. Atheism, crime against State, 58 et seq. Avilius, 237. Babylon, in Apoc, 119, 129; et seq. ; 146. Bassus (Lucilius), Governor of Judea, 2 ; death, 3. Berenice, separated from Titus, 35 ; at Court, 37 ; listens to S. Paul, 43; death, 61. Bible, see Canon of Bible. Bishops, their office, 86 et seq.; established by Timothy, 92 ; in Ep. of Clement, 141 ; in Paul's Eps., 225. Brigand, convert of S. John, 215 et seq. Brutius, on Martyrs, 59. Cabala, 232. Cana (Wedding at), 163 et seq.; 182. Canon of the Bible, 26 et seq. ; Fourth Maccabees and Henoch, 29; under S. Clement, 151; Mu ratorian, xi et seq. Capitol, burned, 32 ; restored by Vespasian, 34; region round about in flames, 36 ; Domitian's statue there, 58. Catholic Church, word first used, 226 et seq. CarpOCRATES, 237. Cemeteries, evidence of, 47 et seq. Cerdo, 237. Cerinthus, life and heresy, 158 et seq.; S. John's aversion for him, 214, 234. Cherubim, 85 ; like Animals, 97. 246 INDEX. Church of Jerusalem, chaps, i. and ii, passim. Clemens (Titus Flavius), a Chris tian, 45; Suetonius' testimony, 46 ; martyred, 59 ; not same as Clement ? 137 et seq. Clement (S.), Pope, 50 ; his Epistle to Corinthians, chap. viii. Cletus (Pope), not martyred, 47 n. 3 ; Pontificate and name, 49 et seq. Coliseum, built, 38 ; dedication, 39. Corinth, sketch of Church, 135; S. Clement's Epistle, chap, viii., 242. Cyrene, 5 et seq. Daniel, influence on John, xxv, 81 ; referred to, 84 et seq. ; " Cheru bim," 85, 97 ; Darom (The), described, 13 ; char acteristics, 14. Deaconesses, in Asia Minor, 92. Deacons, in Asia Minor, 92 ; in S. Clement's Ep., 146 et seq.; func tions in Primitive Church, 228. Demetrius, in Third Ep. of S. John, 211 et seq. Didrachma, pre-empted for Trea sury, 5 ; under Domitian, 56 et seq. Diotrephes, in Third Ep. of S. John, 211 et seq. Disciples of John, 133 ; assist him, 175 et seq. Docetism, 240, 241, n. 1. Domitia, protects Josephus, 62 ; plots against Domitian, 68 et seq. Domitian, life and death, chap. iv ; prayed for by Clement, 149. Domitilla (Flavia), a Christian, 45 ; her cemetery, 48 ; banished, 59. Dositheus, 235. Drusilla, at Boman Court, 38. Eagle, in Apoc, 97, 104. Ebionites, 22 ; origin, 24, note 1 ; heresies, 232 et seq. Egypt, Jewish refugees, 5 ; heresies, 235 et seq. Eighteen Measures (Schemone Esre) compiled, 18 et seq. ; added to, 31 ; compared, 151. Eleazar, hero of Zealots, 3. Elect Lady, meaning in Ep. 210 et seq. Emmaus, an exempt city, 5. Epaphroditus, Nero's freedman, 55 ; protects Josephus, 62 ; slain, 64. Ephesus, John's residence, 75 ; John's letter to, 83 et seq. ; cradle of Asiatic Christianity, 92 ; Tim othy its Bishop, 93 ; corrupted by Cerinthus, 158 et seq.; John's tomb its glory, 221 et seq. Epictetus, 56. Epiphanius, heretic, 238. Epistle, of John, xx et seq. ; to Seven Churches, chap. v. ; of S. Clement, chap. viii. ; First of John, 157 et seq. ; Second and Third, 210 et seq. Essenes, Josephus one , 40 ; de scribed by him, 44 ; peculiarities, 232 et seq. 236. Eucharist, forefigured, 184 et seq. ; seal of Love, 192; His Glory, 195; His Blood, 198 ; distinguishes Church from Synagogue, 228. Eunuchs, at Borne, 51. Eye-salve, in Apoc. 91. Ezechiel, influence on John, xxv, 81 ; borrows from Babylonian Art, 85. Flavius Sabinus, a Christian? 45. Gaius, in Third Ep. of S. John, 211 et seq. Gamaliel II, at Jabneh, 10 ; made leader, 11 ; reverses policy, 12. Gentiles, brought to Jesus, 165. Glabrio (Acilius), a Christian Mar tyr? 60. Gnosticism, 89; Apocrypha, 217 et seq., 220, 233 et seq. ; decline, 243. Gospel, according to S. Matthew, of Nazarenes, 22 et seq. Greek, its art unnoted by John, 77 ; its taste violated by him, 84; used in Liturgy, 229. INDEX. 247 Hagada, 30. Halaca, 29. Heaven, portrayed by John, 96 et seq. ; 102, 129 et seq. Henoch (Book of), 29. Heracleon, 239. Herodium, besieged, 2. Hierarchv, its evolution, 74 et seq. ; Heavenly and earthly, 86 ; devel oped in Asia Minor, 92 ; in S. Clement's Ep., 146 ctse^.;founded, 224 et seq., 229 ; at close of period, 242 et seq. Hillel, his liberal teachings, 16. Holy Ghost, Paraclete, 167, 172, 194 ; Unction, 207 ; at Baptism of Jesus, 208. Ignatius (S.), Bishop of Antioch, 70 ; his Epistles, 226. Illuminati, xiii. et seq. ; of Corinth 136 ; of Alexandria, 238. Incarnation, xxvi ; first revealed, 108; in Fourth Gospel, 173. Incense, Prayers of Saints, 103. Informers, repressed by Domitian, 53 ; restored to favor, 54 ; activity, 59 ; entrap Josephus, 64. Iren^us, xii, xvi et seq. Jabneh (School of), location, 7 ; Johanan becomes leader, 8 ; be comes centre of Jewish Authority, 10 et seq. ; Canon mutilated, 27 et seq. ; inanition, 31. James (S.), in Nazarean Gospel, 25 et seq. ; wears Petalon, 201 et seq.; John's model, 216 et seq. ; Bishop of Jerusalem, 231. Jerusalem (Church of), chap. i. ; in exile, chap. ii. ; sketch, 231 et seq. Jesus, Apocalyptic Lamb, 99 ; Con queror, 108; Attributes, 123; Priesthood, 126. "Jewish Antiquities/' interpo lated passage on Jesus, 43. "Jewish War," as conceived by Josephus, 40 et seq. Jews, in favor at Kome, 38 ; Josephus' defence of them, 40 et seq. ; under Domitian, 56 et Johanan Ben Zakkai, in Jerusa lem, 6 ; rescue, 7 ; at Jabneh, 8 et seq. ; retires, 11 ; teachings, 12. Johannine Theology, its origin, 155; anticipated by S. Paul, 178 et seq. John Baptist, in Fourth Gospel, 179 et seq. John (S.), character, vii. et seq. ; life of seclusion, 71 et seq. ; dom inates his era, 73; the "The ologian," 74; Ephesus his resi dence, 75; "Martyrdom" in Eome, 75 et seq. ; banished to Patmos, 76 et seq. ; writes Letter to Seven Churches, chap. v. ; his Apocalypse, chaps, v., vi. ; dic tates it to disciples, 133; the Evangelist, chap. ix. ; his Gospel, chap. x. ; last years and death, chap. xi. ; First Ep., 202 et seq. ; no plan, 204 ; Second and Third, 210 et seq. ; S. James his model, 216 ; his appearance, 217 ; his grave in Ephesus, 222. John, the Priest, xiv, n. 3. Jonathas, Jewish agitator, 5. Josephus, foretells Vespasian's rise, 7 ; at Court, 37 ; status and first work, " Jewish War," 39 et seq. ; under Domitian, 61 ; writes " Jewish Antiquities," 62 et seq. ; "Against Apion," 63 ; plans for future, 63 ; "A Discourse on the Sovereignty of Reason," 64. Josue', Babbi, 9. Judea, desolated, chap. i. Ketoubim, 27. Kinsfolk of Jesus, at Kokaba, 19; working men, 20; haled before Domitian, 65 et seq. ; in Fourth Gospel, 185 et seq.; &eo~ir6o-vvot, 231. Lamb of God, xxvi. 99; on Mt. Sion, 113 et seq. ; His Bride, 123 ; 129; enthroned, 131. Laodicea (Letter to), 91, 93, 95. Lateran, 76. Latin Gate, 75. Law (Mosaic), at Jabneh, 16; mis understood by Jews, 1 7 ; Hala- 248 INDEX. cists and Hagadists, 30; fatal results, 31 ; in Josephus' teach ing, 65. Lazarus (Eaising of), 163 et seq. Linus (Pope), not martyred, 47, u. 3 ; Pontificate and name, 49 et seq. Liturgy, use of Apocrypha, 29 ; in S. Clement's Ep., 151; in " Teach ing of The Twelve Apostles," 227 et seq. ; Greek used, 229. Love (Divine) in S. Clement's Ep., 148; in Fourth Gospel, 173; its keynote, 192 ; in John's First Ep., 205. Macheronte, besieged, 2. Manna, in Apoc, 88. Marcellina, 239. Marcion, 240. Mark (S.)., evangelized Egypt? 236. Martyrs, under Domitian, 59 et seq. ; in Josephus' teaching, 65 ; of higher classes, 67 ; plebeians, 68 ; in Asia Minor, 70 et seq. ; in Apoc, 100, 107, 126; S. Clement M? 153; S. John,i201, et seq. ; tombs visited, 240. Masada, besieged, 2 et seq. Menander, father of Gnosticism, 233 ; teachings, 235, 237. Michael (Archangel) , fights devils, 110. Mary (B. V.), life with S. John, 71 ; death, 72 ; according to Cerinthus, 159 ; entrusted to S. John, 172 ; befitting their Vir ginity, 218. Milleni alism, xii, xxiv et seq. ; in Apoc, 125 et seq. Minim, " Heretics," 30. Mischna, its meaning, 15 et seq. Montanus, xii. Morning Star, Jesus, 89. Muratorian Canon, xi et seq. Nazarenes, origin, 21 ; their gos pel, 22 et seq. ; history and here sies, 232. Nero, his edict in abeyance, 46 ; persecution contrasted, 58; edict revived, 68 et seq. Nicholas the Deacon, 79 et seq. Nicodemus, in John's Gospel, 163 et seq., 1 82. Nicolaites, origin, 78 ; unmasked, 80 ; anathematized, 87 ; ruses, 89. Numbers, mystical sense, 81 et seq. ; Seven Churches, 92 ; Twelve and its multiples, 101, 114, 130; Forty-two, 106, 112; Thousand Years, 125 et seq. "Novelties," term for Christian beliefs, 60. Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, 73 ; appointed by S. John, 219. Paraclete, see Holt Ghost. Parthenius, 68. Passion of Jesus, in Fourth Gos pel, 196 et seq. ; placed over Church, 199 et seq. Patmos (Isle of), John banished thither, 76 ; description, 77 ; his labors there, 132. Paul (S), influence in Asia Minor, 74 ; on Timothy, 93 ; quoted by S. Clement, 147, 148 ; anticipates Johannine Theology, 178 et seq. Pella, refuge of Mother Church, 18, 231. Pergamus, 93. Persecution, thirty years' res pite, chap. iv. ; under Domitian, chap. v. ; in Syria, 70 ; in Bithynia, 71, 92 ; foretold in Apoc. 100 ; led by Satan, 104. Petalon, worn by James and John, 201 et seq. Peter (S), Confession of faith, 185. Pharisees, at Jerusalem, 6 ; de scribed by Josephus, 44 ; believe in Resurrection, 64; in John's Gospel, 168, n. 4. Pheasant (Legends of), 219 et seq. Philadelphia, Letter to, 90, 94. Philip (S.), life in Hierapolis, 73, et seq. ; referred to by Polycrates, 201. Philo, 236. Phchnix, in S. Clement's Ep., 144. INDEX. 249 Pistis Sophia, 222, 240, n. 2. Polycrates (Bp.), testimony, 201. Pomponia Gr^cina, 48. Pontiff, title given to John, 172. Prayers of Saints, 103 ; Jesus their Altar, 127 ; Priests, under Bishops, 92. Priscilla (Cemetery of), 48; tomb of Acilii, 60. Prologue to Fourth Gospel, 177 et seq. Prophets, office discarded, 229 et seq. Pseudo-Clementine writings, 139 et seq. Pseudo Melito, 220, n. 4. Pseudo Prochoeus, 219, 220, n. 4. Pudens, 48. Quintilian, on Domitian, 51 ; tutor of Titus' sons, 69, 138. Rabbinical learning, 14 et seq. Redemption, in Fourth Gospel, 173. Resurrection, Pharisaic doctrine, 64; First and Second R., 126; disputed at Corinth, 136 ; in S. Clement's Ep., 144 et seq.; in Fourth Gospel, 198 et seq. Rome, after Nero's death, 32; in flames, 35 ; restored by Flavians, chap. iii. passim ; Jews in favor there, 38 ; Christians also, 42 et seq. ; under Domitian, chap. iv. ; in Apoc, 119 et seq. Rome (Church of), in favor, 42 et seq. ; Popes Linus and Cletus, 47, n. 3; respite from persecution, 49 et seq. ; under Domitian, chap. iv. passim; Primacy acknowl edged, 74 ; under Clement, 135 ; Primacy inferred from it, 139 et seq., 151 ; influence on Liturgy, 151 et seq., 229; jurisdiction, 153 et seq. ; ascendency assured, 230 ; bulwark against heresies, xiii et seq.; 239 et seq. Salome, mother of John, 170 et seq.; 183. Samaritan woman, 163 et seq. Sanhedrin, abolished, 11; in Fourth Gospel, 188 et seq. Satan, in Apoc, 104 et seq. ; fights Church, 109 et seq.; enchaiued, 125. Saturninus, 235. Saturninus ( Antonius) revolts, 53 et seq. Schammai (School of), 12. Sea, type of humanity, 111. Second Death, 88, 127. Septuagint, its authority, 27. Seven, mystical number, 82 et seq. ; Stars, Angels, Churches, ex plained, 87 ; Seals, 98 ; Trumpets, 102; Vials, 116; Plagues, 116 etseq.; Angels, 116 et seq. Silva (Flavius), Governor of Ju dea, 3 ; captures Masada, 4. Simeon (S.), Bishop after James, 19, 231. Simon, the Magician, 235 et seq. Smyrna, Angel of, 87. Soter, 242. Stephanus, 68. Sybilline Oracles, 236. Synagogue, a step-mother, 91; " S. of Satan," 95. Synoptics, xiii. Tacitus, on Jewry, 41 ; made Praetor, 52 ; on Domitian, 56. Talmud, legends, 8; growth, 14 et seq. ; the Halaca, 29. "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 227 et seq. Testament of Benjamin, 21. Testament of the Twelve Patri archs, 21. " Theologian " (The), John's title, 74, 172 et seq. THERAPEUTiE, 236, 239. Throne of God, 96, 131. Thyatira, in Apoc, 88 et seq. Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, 92; his martyrdom, 94. Titus, withdraws from Judea, 1 ; character and reign, chap. iii. passim; poisoned? 51. Treasury, looted by Nero, 33 ; the Flavians' policy, 34 et seq. ; under Domitian, 53, 56. 250 INDEX. Trinity (The), in Fourth Gospel, 173, 195; in First Ep. of S. John, 207. Twelve, mystical meaning, 98, 131. Unction, the Holy Ghost, 207. Valentinians, 89. Valentinus, x, 227 et seq. Vespasian, in Judea, 2 ; sells its lands, 5 ; disavows outrages, 6 ; elevation foretold, 7; enters Rome, 32; policy and death chap. iii. Vestal Virgins, executed, 52. Woman, type of Church, 108 et seq. ; of the World, 118 et seq. Word (The), in Apoc, 123 et seq. ; in Fourth Gospel, 167, 177 et seq. Zealots, 2 et seq. ; take refuge in Egypt, 5. Zebedee, a master-fisherman, 170. Cfje Beginnings of tje CjjurcJ) A Series of Histories of the First Century BY THE ABB£ CONSTANT FOUARD Late Member of the Biblical Commission, formerly Professor of the Faculty of Theology at Roden, etc, etc. ..This series appeals alike to the student and the lay reader, both for practical use as a handbook for the history of the Apostolic Age, and for a narrative of the times. The Author's system of confining all matter of purely academic interest to the notes, thus leaving the interest of the text untrammelled, adapts his books to the needs of the general reader, while to the student they appeal as a source of information and a means of reference. Uniform Authorized Translations as Follows : — THE CHRIST THE SON OF GOD: A Life of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. By the Abbe Constant Fouard. Trans lated from the Fifth Edition with the Author's sanction. With an Introduction by Cardinal Manning. Two vols., with Maps, small 8vo, cloth, gilt top, S4.00. "This singularly able and excellent work can need no commendation. It is already in the fifth edition. When it first appeared, it had the commendation of the late Cardinal de Bonnechose, Archbishop of Rouen, who well described it, as uniting 'the consolations of piety with the explanations of true science on the text of Scripture.' In 1881, Leo XIII. sent his benediction to the author, and many Cardinals and a large number of the Bishops of France gave it their approbation." ¦ — From Cardinal Manning's Introduction. ST. PETER AND THE FIRST YEARS OF CHRISTIANITY. With an Introduction by Cardinal Gibbons. In one vol., with 3 Maps, small 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.00. ST. PAUL AND HIS MISSIONS. In one vol., with Maps, small 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.00. THE LAST YEARS OF ST. PAUL. With Maps and Plans. Small 8vo, cloth, gilt top, $2.00. ST. JOHN AND THE CLOSE OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. Translated with the sanction and co-operation of the Author's Executors. With a Portrait of the Abbe Fouard. Small 8vo, gilt top, net $1.60, by mail $1.74- [Complete Sets, 6 vols, in box, net $9.60, expressage additional.] LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., New York and London [The Christ, the Son of God.] EXTRACTS FROM CRITICISMS IN SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH, ENGLISH, AND AMERICAN REVIEWS. The Catholic World (New York). This Life of Christ, as Cardinal Manning says in his introduc.tion, is a golden book. It is written in the best style by one who has thor oughly fitted himself for the task. The Abbe Fouard has wandered through the Holy Land from Dan to Beersheba, and knows the geogra phy and topography perfectly, and he has made himself thoroughly famil iar with all the oriental customs, so that he was well equipped to repro duce the scenes of our Lord's Life. His thorough acquaintance with the modern controversies, with Strauss and Baur and Renan ; his extensive reading among English com mentators as well as German ones ; his purpose, too, of banishing the contentious spirit and of preserving the piety of a devout and prayerful Christian — all this has combined to make his book one of the highest merit. . . . When the work first appeared in the original it was very extensively reviewed in these pages. ... It was said then that the Abbe Fou ard had succeeded in giving us one of the best devotional, and at the same time scholarly, lives of Christ that had ever been written. A hope was expressed at that time that it would find an able translator who would do it into English for the popular reader. We are glad to find that Mr. Griffith has answered that expectation, and we bear witness that he has done his work well. His style runs along as smoothly as a limpid stream, and the translation is characterized by such an absence of the French idiom that one would never know that the book came from a foreign tongue. It interests one like an intensely absorbing novel — far more in teresting than " Ben-Hur," because all the scenes are woven about the Christ as the central figure. The imagery is as vivid, the character- painting as strong, and the scenes as well depicted as the most fastidious novel-reader could desire. The Tablet (London, Feb. 14, 1891). After the writing of a good book, the greatest benefit a man can con fer on the public is to translate a good one into their language. This Mr. Griffith has done, and he deserves the gratitude of all those — and their name must be legion — who care to have in readable English a life NOTICES OF THE PRESS. of Christ, which is up to the level of modern research, and yet is written in a spirit of reverence and Catholic faith. ... It will be seen that a careful reading of the translation has not led to the discovery of any thing of great moment, and it is quite likely that even where we have expressed our preferences, the reader may not be in sympathy with us, but with the translator. In any case we do not forget the numerous in stances in which the translator has been very happy in rendering difficult and idiomatic passages, and we congratulate him on it. May the devout and learned study of our Lord's Life, which he has brought within the reach of millions of new readers, spread the knowledge of Christ in minds, deepen faith in Him and love for Him in hearts. Meditation on that life and those words — contemplation of the living Christ and devout applica tion of His words to ourselves — has ever been the Catholic practice ; meditation is a daily office of devout souls. It would become, we venture to think, a delightful exercise of the minds and hearts of countless others, if they helped themselves by means of the light thrown on the Gospels by such a book as this. The Ave Maria (March, 1891). We cannot, therefore, too highly commend these volumes to our readers. The translation has been skillfully done, and reflects the many gifts of mind and heart possessed by the one to whom the task was en trusted. The mention of the publishers is a sufficient guarantee for the mechanical execution of the book. Catholic Standard. This learned work is not merely a biography, it is a veritable history as well. The whole period is rehabilitated, the people made to appear before us as they actually lived. Geography, topography, ethnology, and politics are here combined to form a picture instinct with living reality. We do not think that we are saying too much when we declare that this work should at once find a place in every Christian library. American Ecclesiastical Review. The Abbe Fouard has successfully avoided all extravagances. His picture of Christ is exact in its detals, and still imposing in its grand completeness. The thousand human actions of the God-man stand out in clear relief, but are always surrounded by the halo of the divine. In general the work follows the dictates of exact science and theology, but it also glows with the warmth of a personal love for Christ. The Monitor. The work is not only a biography of our Blessed Redeemer, but it is also a book of historical references which brings the scenery of the Holy 3 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. Land, the customs of the people, and their peculiar sacred rites promi nently before the reader. The work has already reached the 5th edition, and we hope a copy will be added to every Catholic library on this coast. Church Progress. The work is thoroughly Catholic, and is also fully in keeping with the best and most progressive spirit of modern research. It affords a full and life-like view of the times and the surroundings of our Saviour, and it will undoubtedly lead to a deeper and even a more devout study of our Redeemer's life. The Tablet (London). Naturally, the great chiefs of the infidel camp are not included in the Abbe Fouard's long list of authorities. . . . But he has made honor able mention of several Protestant writers who have, in a different spirit, devoted themselves laudably to magnifying the name and history of Christ according to their lights. Such are Messrs. Westcott, Geikie, Farrar, Lange, Caspari, Pressense, Wordsworth, and Trench. As to Catholic writers on the Gospel history, they are without number ; but it would be difficult to point out any merit possessed by these divines, scattered throughout all the lands and ages of Christendom, which are not fairly represented and in a manner summed up in this most valuable, carefully written, and comprehensive vie de fesus [" The Christ, the Son of God "]. It is thoroughly worthy of a scholar. Things are not taken at second hand, but the original sources referred to in the foot-notes. . . . The charm of novelty is as far as possible given to what is very old. . A principle of selection operates in every paragraph and sen tence, and the effect produced is remarkably happy. Needless matter is eliminated ; and the chaff being winnowed, the pure grain alone is kept in store. To the student of the Greek Testament the work will be pecul iarly valuable, since the writer never fails to point out any difficulty or singularity that there may be in the original. The Catholic World (Father A. F. Hewit). We express at the outset our judgment that the learned professor has succeeded admirably, and much better than any of his predecessors, in fulfilling his task. . . . With this book as a guide to the study of the Gospel narrative, and such a book as Father Ciccolini as a guide to meditation on its deeper meaning, one would not need any other books. . . . The narrative runs on smoothly and consecutively, in a clear and reasonably concise manner ; and the style has the grave and austere beauty which becomes the subject, and yet gives enough of poetic color ing to the recital and teaching of the Saviour to satisfy the imagination and give play to pious emotions. [Saint Peter and the First Years of Christianity.] EXTRACTS FROM CRITICISMS IN SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL FRENCH, AMERICAN, AND ENGLISH REVIEWS. Le Messager des Fideles. Professor Fouard stands in the front rank of Christian Apologists. His Life of Our Lord [ The Christ, the Son of God, Longmans] has re ceived a well-merited welcome ; his last work is in every way worthy of its predecessor. . . . Our Author has re-set the facts within their historical framework, giving us, by the aid of the literature of those times, a vivid picture of the intellectual, moral, and social status of the Roman world and the Jewish people ; while taking every advantage of recent dis coveries, he has rehabilitated many neglected points of history in the most charming fashion. La Science Catholique. Saint Peter's ministry at Rome is a well-nigh unknown factor to most students of history. But Monsieur Fouard knows where to look in his treasure-house of historical lore for facts and indices, wherewith to make up for the silence of sacred writers ; and thus with him we follow (so to say) the great Missionary, step by step. ... All the praise we might lavish on this important work would add nothing to the great repu tation already won for the learned and devout writer by his Life of Jesus. We have but one word to add to what we have said above, to wit, that Saint Peter is in no wise inferior to his earlier work. Le Bien-Public (of Belgium). What remains for us to add to all these good opinions of press and public alike ? unless it be to record our own guess that M. Fouard will feel that his end is accomplished when he sees his work finding its way into all Christian families which cherish a respect for their church ; into every rectory, where it will furnish new weapons for the defense of our Catholic Faith ; into Seminaries and Colleges, where it will prove an in valuable book. . . . NOTICES OF THE PRESS. Nouvelliste de Rouen. I do not believe that the science of religious history has produced a work of equal merit, these many years. More than one soul harassed and discouraged amid the struggles going on about us will drink in peace and new strength from his words, seeing with what health of spirit and intellectual poise an orthodox mind like his can treat the question of the origins of our Faith, satisfying every most exigent demand of modern criticism without sacrificing any of the claims of tradition. Paul Allard. The Dublin Review. The work of the Abbe Fouard possesses a double claim to be read and studied by Catholics and truth-seeking Protestants. It is not only a book on a popular and important subject, but it is also a treatise of great historical, critical, and dogmatic erudition. . . . The history that he relates is clear and luminous, and strict as to exegesis and facts, without being either hypercritical or even what is usually termed dry. Indeed the chapters that are devoted to an exposition of the character of the re ligious and pagan deities of Rome, the importance of their culture and its ceremonies, the decline of belief among the higher classes, the deca dence of morality among the women, in the family and public, under the pagan empire at the time of Augustus, are in the highest degree attrac tive. The Tablet (London). Certain pages of the New Testament have a freshness of meaning for us when we have made the acquaintance of the motley crowd that in St. Peter's day thronged round the shops of the wealthy merchants in the Campus Martius, or have chatted with the man of letters as he took his daily walk in the Via Sacra, or mingled with the rag-pickers of the Su- burra. We have lately had before us many learned critical works by Catholics and Protestants on the Sacred Scriptures. There has been at times a tendency to underrate Catholic laborers in this respect. It is well to stimulate Catholic activity in this as in other matters. But up to this moment we doubt if we have come across a volume which, in the same compass, conveys with equal facility so great an amount of illustra tive matter. In a word Abbe Fouard's work in our opinion ranks among the most brilliant and solid productions of Biblical literature in our day. American Catholic Quarterly Review. The work presents to us a picture of the Apostolic Church in its sur roundings, with St. Peter in the foreground. There are master-sketches of a number of the great representatives of the Apostolic age, St. Peter, 6 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. St. Stephen, St. Philip, St. Paul, St. Matthew and his Gospel, and St. Mark and his Gospel. To the separate consideration of these great characters a large portion of the work is devoted, and each special chapter is complete in itself, filled with historical instruction, and replete with the conclusions derived from the learning and research of the author. Intermingled with these chapters is another series treating upon the environments of the Apostolic Church. Probably no more instructive and interesting chapter can be found in the volume than is the one of twenty-eight pages on " The Jews of the Dispersion " and their influence upon the surrounding pagan world — sowing the Messianic seed which was soon to spring up into a great spiritual harvest under the Christian Apostles. Hardly less graphic and attractive are the chapters on the moral condition of the pagan world, on Antioch, on the Religion of Rome, on the Conduct of Life under Augustus, and on the Stoics of the Empire. . . . Vivacity, brilliancy at times, pervades the entire volume. There is no dullness to be found in the pages. Catholic Book News. When we pass to other subjects — and there is a great variety of sub jects in this volume — we are always fully captivated, fully satisfied. The chapter on " The Conduct of Life in the Time of Augustus " gives a brief and vivid picture of the daily life of the Romans, not only of the patri cian, but of the lower orders . . . Altogether this is a very admirable book, and certainly on the subjects of which it treats it is the best book which has been translated into the English language. The translation is as good as it could be. Ave Maria (Notre Dame, Ind.). The work of the Abbe Fouard possesses a character of interest and instractiveness peculiarly its own . . . while the work of the apos tolic ministry, under the divinely appointed chief, is well portrayed in all the splendor and glory connected with the establishment and early devel opment of the Christian religion, there is presented to the reader a strik ing picture of the manners and customs of the times among Jews and pagans— showing the mighty obstacles against which the first founders of the Church had to contend, and over which they gloriously tri umphed. ... Even as a study of contemporaneous history, the work of the Abbe Fouard is invaluable ; but to the Christian and the earnest seeker after truth it is especially acceptable. 7 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. Angelus (Detroit). A most delightful history of the early days of the Church. With the keen perception of a highly cultured mind, the author takes the historic events of the New Testament and embellishes them in an interesting way as he leads the reader on, step by step, through these days of faith and favor. The original French edition has been admirably done into English by Mr. George F. X. Griffith. Catholic World (New York). Fouard certainly tells us what we knew before, but never so distinctly and in such fulness as now. Peter and the other Apostles seem to stand before us as living men. . . . Abbe Fouard's book will help to make the truth known. We cannot but acknowledge our great indebtedness to Mr. Griffith for putting this great work within the reach of English readers. His former translation of Fouard's Life of Christ has already been noticed at considerable length in these pages, and we are pleased to record its hearty reception by the reading public. We sincerely hope that this companion volume will meet with an even warmer welcome. Sun (New York). There are other chapters of this book which the reader will find stored with information drawn at first hand from the original authority. We have probably, however, already given a sufficiently clear idea of the con tents of the volume to indicate its substantial value and the literary skill which not even the translation from the author's native language into English is able to disguise. Pilot (Boston). This History of St. Peter will be found absorbingly interesting. The book is not brief, but no one who begins it will weary until the end is reached, and every one will regret that it is not longer. The Thinker (New York). Probably nowhere ... is there to be found so vivid a portrayal of the environment of the Church in Jerusalem during the first decade of its existence as is given in the first two chapters of the volume before us ; nor can we discover a livelier picture of the wonderful favor which met the Jews of the dispersion in many lands than is given in the third chap ter . . we unhesitatingly recommend it for earnest study. 8 [Saint Paul and his Missions.] EXTRACTS FROM CRITICISMS IN SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL REVIEWS. Le Monde. A writer for this journal, and a distinguished historian himself, but recently spoke with due homage of the activity displayed by French clergymen nowadays in the vast field of religious history. Well may the rationalists look to their outer walls ; for henceforth their disdain of all works emanating from Catholics will not serve them in lieu of argument. Archaeology, epigraphy, Semitic tongues, criticism of the text, all the sciences which can be used are being marshalled in the support of the Holy Books. The new work on St. Paul is successfully executed in pre cisely this spirit. Louis Riviere. Nouvelliste de Bordeaux. The Author's method is well known, he resets the facts of the New Testament amid the surroundings wherein they took place. This means that he gives us living history instead of that dry and deadly thing once palmed off on us as history. Whoever takes up this volume will not drop it, my word for it, till he has turned the last page. Any way that has been the case with all whom I have questioned. As for myself, I dare not begin to say all the good things that must be said out of decent grat itude to M. Fouard for his great work, for I fear I shall not know where to stop. Cyprien Thibaut. fournal de Namur. A striking and firmly executed picture, such is the effect produced on us after reading Professor Fouard's Saint Paul. He has neglected noth ing to make it deserving of a place beside its predecessors, and assure it the same success. L' Inddpendance Bretonne. It is the living likeness of that indefatigable preacher whom Bossuet once called " the divine Paul." " The Apostle's great heart,'' says Car dinal Thomas, . . . "stands revealed in every page of your nar- NOTICES OF THE PRESS. rative, and casts a celestial light of love about those letters which Paul wet with his tears, wherein the thrilling cries he utters still move us after all these centuries." . . . After reading this fascinating study, we under stand better the truth of that lovely saying of S. John Chrysostom, " Cor Christi, cor Pauli erat " Paul's heart, was the Heart of Christ. F. N., Licencie es lettres. Revue de Normandie. The writer makes us follow his hero step by step, showing us the man in all his poverty and helplessness, yet ready under God's guidance to start out to conquer the world ; we share his struggles, his fears, hopes, falterings, daring audacity, discouragement, successes, and defeats. Saint Paul will never again be for us a supernatural creature ; in the Apostle we behold the man, and only in and behind the man does God make himself apparent. The AbbIs Sauvage. Universite" Catholique. In closing we must repeat that the work is in every way excellent. It is written in a clear, distinguished, and elegant style, without affectation or mannerisms ; in learned matters it is reliable and thoroughly well in formed. The author tries to make the reader follow and understand him easily, and he certainly attains his end. No one will put the book away without finishing it and many will resolve to read it more than once. E. Jacquier. La Semaine Religieuse de Rouen. Apologetics has already to thank M. l'abbe Fouard for several works of world renown. His life of Our Lord [The Christ, the Son of God] is certainly one of the most valuable of the works published on that subject ; it is the most chaste and exact, and probably for these very reasons, des tined to last the longest. His volume on Saint Peter can be found on the shelves of all who care for exegetical science or desire to know aright the early Church. His history of St. Paul is worthy of these great predeces sors, and that is praise enough. The Tablet (London). We have said nothing on what is one of the marked features of the work on which we are engaged, to wit, the careful and graphic descrip tions of the scenes of the Apostle's missionary journeys. With the aid of the excellent maps, he leads us from place to place, leaving a vividness of impression on our mind which lends a wonderful charm to his narrative as we accompany the Apostle through the Syrian gates to the Cilician plains, or mingled with travellers along the great Equatian Way, or in to NOTICES OF THE PRESS. the classic lands of Attica. In his clear and lucid topographical descrip tions our author has no rival, from his starting point at Antioch till he leaves the Apostle at the Tres Tabemce on the Appian Way. La Cultura. Ample erudition, accurate handling of authentic documents, abandon ment of pseudo-traditions, and absence of all direct polemics constitute the characteristics, and, if you will, the novelty of this as of all Fouard's works. The struggles that went on in the Early Church between Judaizing Christianity and Paul, between Jerusalem and Antioch, are faithfully delin eated ; and this is the only way to correct the exaggerations of Baur and his school. Paul's joumeyings are illustrated, but not overburdened, by a mass of geographical and archaeological lore, while they are made more interesting by being explained from the letters which belong to this period of his missionary life. The book closes with Paul's imprisonment in Rome, and this makes us look with interest for the complementary volume or volumes which shall complete this new history of the Begin nings of Christianity. p. Catholic World. It would be difficult to find a more interesting and instructive book. . . . It is translated with great spirit. . . . The great apostle throughout the book stands in vivid personality. We accompany him everywhere. Nor does the animation of the narrative prevent Abbe Fouard from supplying all the materials to grasp the picture in its truth. He has brought to his work copious information concerning the physical geography of the regions visited by St. Paul, as well as the customs, tra ditions, and creeds of their inhabitants. Ave Maria. It is a remarkable book . . . the Abbe Fouard has given us a speaking likeness of the great apostle. . . . The three missionary journeys of the Apostle of the Gentiles and his visit to the Eternal City form the main portion of the Abbe Fouard's narrative. It would be im possible to over-state the merit of this portion of the book, in which the labors and trials of St. Paul are set forth. Suffice it to say that no one can hope fully to understand the Scriptural narrative who has not read these middle chapters. Such erudition, such firm grasp of subject, and such a vivid presentation are rarely found within the covers of one book. It is needless to speak of Mr. Griffith's translation. Like all his former work, it combines absolute fidelity with the ease and grace of the original. Two excellent maps and a faultless index help to make this one of the most important books of modern literature. [The. Last Years of Saint Paul.] OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. Catholic University Bulletin (Washington). " From cover to cover this book is useful and elevating reading ; it well might be made, with its companion volume, a manual of the earliest church history in our colleges, academies, and high schools." Catholic Times. ". . . deals with perhaps the most critical period in the history of the Apostle's labors, and not only represents with singular clear ness the scope of St. Paul's efforts, but vividly pictures the whole of his surroundings during the period under investigation." Republican (Springfield, Mass.). ". . . is a devout and scholarly presentation of the stirring times in which the great Apostle to the Gentiles laid the foundation of the Christian faith in Rome and neighboring lands. It deals with great problems and is written in an attractive style ... is worthy of a careful perusal." Boston Transcript. ' ' A very able and scholarly work is that of the Abbe Constant Fouard. The style is vivid and, if the premises be granted, the logic is sound. . . . The book will tend to confirm the Catholic in his faith, and be of intense interest to the Protestant as a strong statement of the Catholic contention. There is in it much spiritual food for all. " Chronicle- Telegraph (Pittsburg). ' ' Written in a spirit of candor. . . . The work contains fine maps, and is written in a vivid style and with a good sense of his torical perspective." The Living Church (Milwaukee). ' ' A narrative full of instruction, and in a style which engages the attention of the reader throughout. The writer rarely dwells upon critical questions, though he reveals his knowledge of them at every point, and does not hesitate to take advantage of such conclusions of the critics as appear to be sound. . . The narrative portions of the work are written with lucid clearness and a graphic touch which makes the scenes live again. . . On the whole, there are few better his tories of that period, so momentous both for ancient Israel and for the Church of the new covenant, from the arrival of St. Paul in Rome to the downfall of Jerusalem, than that contained in this volume." Longmans, Green & Co., New York and London. 12 YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 05130 5176