The state of progressive unification, in which we receive “grace upon grace,” as we learn more and more of the “fulness” of Christ, is called by the evangelist, in the verse just quoted and elsewhere, eternal life.  This life is generally spoken of as a present possession rather than a future hope.  “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”; “he is passed from death unto life”; “we are in Him that is true, even Jesus Christ.  This is the true God, and eternal life.”  The evangelist is constantly trying to transport us into that timeless region in which one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

St. John’s Mysticism is thus patent to all; it is stamped upon his very style, and pervades all his teaching.  Commentators who are in sympathy with this mode of thought have, as we might expect, made the most of this element in the Fourth Gospel.  Indeed, some of them, I cannot but think, have interpreted it so completely in the terms of their own idealism, that they have disregarded or explained away the very important qualifications which distinguish the Johannine theology from some later mystical systems.  Fichte, for example, claims St. John as a supporter of his system of subjective idealism (if that is a correct description of it), and is driven to some curious bits of exegesis in his attempt to justify this claim.  And Reuss (to give one example of his method) says that St. John cannot have used “the last day” in the ordinary sense, “because mystical theology has nothing to do with such a notion.[66]” He means, I suppose, that the mystic, who likes to speak of heaven as a state, and of eternal life as a present possession, has no business to talk about future judgment.  I cannot help thinking that this is a very grave mistake.  There is no doubt that those who believe space and time to be only forms of our thought, must regard the traditional eschatology as symbolical.  We are not concerned to maintain that there will be, literally, a great assize, holden at a date and place which could be announced if we knew it.  If that is all that Reuss means, perhaps he is right in saying that “mystical theology has nothing to do with such a notion.”  But if he means that such expressions as those referred to in St. John, about eternal life as something here and now, imply that judgment is now, and therefore not in the future, he is attributing to the evangelist, and to the whole array of religious thinkers who have used similar expressions, a view which is easy enough to understand, but which is destitute of any value, for it entirely fails to satisfy the religious consciousness.  The feeling of the contrast between what ought to be and what is, is one of the deepest springs of faith in the unseen.  It can only be ignored by shutting our eyes to half the facts of life.  It is easy to say with Browning, “God’s in His heaven:  all’s right with the world,” or with Emerson,