these momentous words (it has been said) “the idea of God receives an abiding embodiment, and the Father is brought for ever within the reach of intelligent devotion.[64]” The purpose of the mission of the Comforter is to reveal the Son.  He takes the place of the ascended Christ on earth as a living and active principle in the hearts of Christians.  His office it is to bring to remembrance the teachings of Christ, and to help mankind gradually to understand them.  There were also many things, our Lord said, which could not be said at the time to His disciples, who were unable to bear them.  These were left to be communicated to future generations by the Holy Spirit.  The doctrine of development had never before received so clear an expression; and few could venture to record it so clearly as St. John, who could not be suspected of contemplating a time when the teachings of the human Christ might be superseded.

Let us now turn to the human side of salvation, and trace the upward path of the Christian life as presented to us in this Gospel.  First, then, we have the doctrine of the new birth:  “Except a man be born anew (or, from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  This is further explained as a being born “of water and of the Spirit”—­words which are probably meant to remind us of the birth of the world-order out of chaos as described in Genesis, and also to suggest the two ideas of purification and life. (Baptism, as a symbol of purification, was, of course, already familiar to those who first heard the words.) Then we have a doctrine of faith which is deeper than that of the Synoptists.  The very expression [Greek:  pisteuein eis], “to believe on,” common in St. John and rare elsewhere, shows that the word is taking a new meaning.  Faith, in St. John, is no longer regarded chiefly as a condition of supernatural favours; or, rather, the mountains which it can remove are no material obstructions.  It is an act of the whole personality, a self-dedication to Christ.  It must precede knowledge:  “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching,” is the promise.  It is the “credo ut intelligam” of later theology.  The objection has been raised that St. John’s teaching about faith moves in a vicious circle.  His appeal is to the inward witness; and those who cannot hear this inward witness are informed that they must first believe, which is just what they can find no reason for doing.  But this criticism misses altogether the drift of St. John’s teaching.  Faith, for him, is not the acceptance of a proposition upon evidence; still less is it the acceptance of a proposition in the teeth of evidence.  It is, in the first instance, the resolution “to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis”; that is (may we not say?), to follow Christ wherever He may lead us.  Faith begins with an experiment, and ends with an experience.[65] “He that believeth in Him hath the witness in himself”; that is the verification which follows