The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved ILL

u Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved, following.”

But which was the disciple whom Jesus did not love? Philip, the first to follow and the last to understand; Thomas, slow to believe, but, once convinced, so prompt with his confession; the guileless Bartholomew; the homely, practical, unsentimental James; the eager, warm-hearted Peter; — J esus loved them all. They had each a place in His intercessions when He prayed for those whom the Father had given Him. They had each a place in His atonement when He made His soul an offering for sin; and each of them has now a home in His heaven.

There was one, however, whom the Lord distinguished from the rest so far as to evince

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a special confidence or congeniality, and to whom there was conceded by his brethren an epithet which consenting Christendom has delighted to confirm; and we may spend a few moments profitably in considering those traits or features which earned for him that highest of distinctions, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

As we apprehend his character, the first thing which strikes us is a peculiar intuition. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and God shall be seen in them. That great sight, God dwelling in the midst of men, was early disclosed to this pure-hearted beholder, and through the rest of life he seems never to have lost the open vision. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us full of grace and truth; and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father.” “The Life was manifested” — the Living One and the Lifegiver — “and that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.” The glorious God, through the face of Jesus, shined into his soul, and through his own bright features and blameless walk that glory shone forth again — passionless, pure-hearted, reflecting the glory which he gazed upon.

When you float on a tranquil bay, and through its sleeping waters look down to the glistening sand and the sea-plants that scarcely move in the waveless tide, instantly you know that it is long since any storm was here; for had there been a recent tempest, by this time the surface might be smooth, but the brine would be muddy, and the tender sea-plants would be tangled and torn: so when you look into John’s pellucid pages, such a meekness and benignity shine through them, and, like the gentle shapes of crimson and green in a stormless sea, the thoughts and feelings of the writer gleam forth from such a transparent medium, that you irresistibly exclaim, “Blessed man! it is long since the last gust of passion ruffled that tranquil bosom. Truly it was a great calm which was there created when to that heart of thine, with its guilty fears and human anxieties, the Incarnate Word said,

‘ Peace, be still, and for ever lulled its agitations in nearness to His own. Blessed are the pure in spirit, for into all the depths of their nature the Godhead can shine.” And

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blessed are they, for from their spirit’s tranquil surface the Godhead is reflected. When you draw near, and bend over that limpid pool, like a fairy forest you see the rhodomenias and corallines underneath, with arrowy forms darting through them; but when you retire, and from some distance look back, all these details are hidden from the view, but in the cloudless sky you see one sun, in the molten silver mirror spread below you perceive another. So when from close contact with John’s Gospel and Epistles, and frqm near inspection of the charming thoughts and wonderful truths there disclosed, you draw off a little space, and try to look at the writer, you are conscious of something clearer than mere candour — something brighter than mere earthly beauty. And so it is. Christ is revealed in the narrative; He is reflected from the mind of the writer. — “With that loving gaze fixed upwards upon the Light of Life, his own eye has become light; the sun has made it sunlike.”*

Ingenuousness and intuition are near allied:

* “Christ the Liglt of the World,” by Rudolph Besser. the pure heart, the open eye. From the time that the Baptist exclaimed, — “Behold the Lamb of God/*’ it would seem as if John had no longer toiled at that task which some of us find so troublesome — the task of taking away our own sins — but had rested in sweet security, satisfied with a Divine Redeemer and Reconciler, and at leisure to observe those gracious words and wonderful works which showed so plainly the Father.

One of the greatest gifts we can ask from God is this open eye, and the open heart its correlate. We say to J ohn, 1 Beloved disciple, do tell us the secret of your happiness; ’ and he hands us an epistle in which it is all written down. “These things we write, that your joy may be full. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin. If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life.” Or he hands us a Gospel with the conversations and prayers of his Master carefully recorded, and subjoins, “These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus

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is the Christ, the Son of God; and that, be-* lieving, ye might have life through his name.” In other words, light shines from the Lord J esus sufficient to show that He is the Son of Gpd, the Saviour. If you will only look, that light will so shine into your heart as to chase away your gloom and cheer you into hope and love, and like-mindedness. The light of God, as it shines in J esus, will be life to your soul. In other words, heaven’s grand gratuity — God’s greatest gift — the best in itself, and in its bestowment the most free and ungrudging, — is salvation or a Saviour. Of presents the purest, of benefactions the freest and most God-like, is life eternal, This life is conveyed in the person of the Saviour; if you have the Son of God, you already have life; if you now accept Him, He is yours, and yours also are the life and the Divine sonship which He confers on as many as receive Him.* ‘ The things which Wfe have seen and heard we write unto you, that you may have fellowship with us; that you may see them as we saw them, and hear them as we

* John xx. 31; i. 4, 12; 1 John i. 4, 7; ii. 1; v.

U, 12.

heard them; and so have the same communion with the Father, and the same fulness of joy.’

We ourselves love to be understood, and we like to have our good offices accepted, our kind intentions appreciated. This was one reason why his Master so delighted in John. He knew that He was understood, and, even where insight might for the moment be baffled, He could count on his adoring acquiescence. The manifestation might be miraculous, and the disciple might be deeply conscious of his own depravity, but John would not cry, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man;” and the act might be painfully condescending; but still, if his Master was pleased to stoop to a menial office, John would not in rash humility exclaim, “Hever! Lord, thou shalt never wash my feet.” ISTor would it be needful on the last day of intercourse to say to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet have you not known me”

That limpid eye, that loving heart, are a joy to the Lord Jesus wherever He sees them. May He see them in you! As a good and

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perfect gift, may the Holy Spirit confer on you the art of seeing anti the art of receiving!

“Earth ’s crammed with heaven,

9 And every common bush a-fire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” *

So this morning there stood a figure on the shore; but although sea-eyes are sharp, the eye of love is still sharper; and where the others were only conscious of some ordinary Galilean, the disciple whom Jesus loved came out with the truth, “It is the Lord.” And so, in that Gospel and in those Epistles where others see only texts and Scripture proofs — answers to Gnosticism, and confutations of Popery — do you learn to see the Incarnate Mystery, the mind and manner of that Saviour with whom your present relations should be so immediate and intimate, and without whose society and sympathy eternity itself is but outer darkness. And whilst with John you learn in Jesus to see what God shows you, learn to accept what in Jesus God gives you, — the cleansing from all

* Aurora Leigh. gin, the life eternal, fellowship with the Father; for in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and the thing which made John so blessed was, that out of this fid ness he had learned to receive, even grace for grace. It is not for Himself, nor for those who are righteous already, that Christ is the Fountain opened, the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, the Light of the World; but, with a mean and mistaken humility, we won’t accept the gift of God till we have prepaid it with a penny in the pound. The Sun of Righteousness is shining, but we keep the shutters closed, and rub our eyes, declaring that there was never known such dismal weather. All around our tent lies the manna shower, but, instead of gathering a fresh supply, we take down some ancient pipkin, and, setting it on to simmer for the fiftieth time, lament the scanty grains and musty flavour. We sing, “I lay my sins on Jesus,” and insist on carrying them ourselves. Christ comes and offers to cleanse us from all unrighteousness — from this day’s trespasses, as well as from the sin of all our history — but we do not understand how His word abiding

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in us makes us clean every whit, and imagine that it is by washing ourselves, rather than by suffering Him to wash us, that we are to obtain a “part” in Him. * Oh, how happy we might be if, like J ohn the Divine, as regards the greatest of sights, we could be content for a time to be simply seers; and, as regards the greatest of gifts, we could bring ourselves to be neither petitioners nor purchasers, but simply receivers! How rich we should be if thus we took all that God actually gives! and what a loveliness might at last be our own if the soul would learn to turn round where God points, and so live and die looking unto J esus 1

Open, receptive, unpreoccupied, J ohn’s was that attitude of mind which, at the disclosure of Incarnate Deity rejoicing with exceeding joy, was prepared to sustain without stumbling the unveiling of an awful as well as glorious future. To the aerial voyager, who soars above it, the lightning is not terrible; and to one who has seen the great white throne, with the justice and judgment which form its habitation, there is nothing * John xiii. 8. ominous or sinister in the clouds which go before it, arid which, after all, are but dark vapours exhaled from our earth. And so in that “revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto Him,” there are things hard to be understood, and bitter when realized;* but a devout and lowly spirit will not stagger at threatenings any more than at promises, and amidst the clashings and conflicts, the woes and the wailings, of a turbulent future, will rejoice because the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.

“He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God.” Such is an aphorism of the celestial philosophy taught by J ohn the Divine. On that night so much to be remembered, and at that Last Supper, it was John’s distinction to occupy the place next to the Master, and in reverential pensive tenderness, he drooped his head on that bosom which was soon to be pierced by the Roman spear. Hor did the Friend who sticketh closer than a brother resent the act so expressive of grateful, confiding affection, but left it on the record to show tl it, like Joseph and his Benjamin, the * Rev. x. 9.

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Lord Jesus is glad when disciples draw nigh; and the disciple thus favoured records it to show that, with the condescension and kindness which He beareth to His own, the Saviour loved them to the end. There were sad thoughts in that bosom, and sorrow verging on death; but there was room also for the lowly ones around Him — room for their love, room for their sorrow.

The Saviour disappeared, but the affection remained. The Saviour disappeared, and the apostle ceased to have any certain dwelling-place, save the unchanging affection of his Lord. Bethsaida was no longer his home, nor Jerusalem, nor Ephesus; his true home now was the constant, ever-enclosing presence of the unseen Saviour. Most delightful of dwellings, — he carried it with him to the surf-sprinkled i,cle, as well as over the balmy hills of his native Galilee. There he found sweet asylum amid the idol fanes of Pergamos, and there he found a loftier fellowship than was offered in all the lordly palaces of Ephesus and Smyrna. In that “moving tent,” through all the pollutions of Sardis he passed with raiment undefiled, and in the blessed fellowship there enjoyed he hardly needed Philadelphian stedfastness to bear his spirit up — he hardly felt the blighting wind which had desolated Laodicea’s fragrant bowers. For he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God dwelleth in him.

That spirit of contemplation, at once lofty and loving, is somewhat alien from our western mind. With our cold temperament and scholastic turn, we are fond of definitions, we like to argue; we are not given to long affectionate pondering of some one engaging theme. To muse and meditate is not so much our way, as clever work and quick conclusions. Akin to this, we are not rich in feeling. We are judicious; we are sensible. We pride ourselves on being practical; but there is “no nonsense” in us — no idealism, no self-devotement, no fervour. We parade our logic; but to love we are ashamed. Nevertheless, in every age there tower up amongst us exceptional and noble natures, like Tabor from the plain of Jezreel, leaving the flat corn-fields far below, and with transfigurations on their summit — natures like that mountain apart which, dwelling alone, are much in heaven; m 2

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on whose elevations the last sunset lingers, and from whose sequestered slopes it seems as if the bow of promise loved to spring; men like those Teutonic mystics of the middle age whom A‘Kempis represents in his “Imitation of Christ;” men like Howe and Leighton amongst ourselves — Howe, with a spiritual optimism, sustained on the equal wings of far-ranging intellect and enraptured devotion, — Leighton perpetually declaring, “There is a noble guest within us; let all our business be to entertain Him honourably, and to live in celestial love within:” and devotees in France, like Fenelon and Madame Guion, of whom the latter has expressed so well the master-thought of this peculiar piety.

“All scenes alike engaging prove To souls impressed with sacred love j Where’er they dwell, they dwell in Thee —

In heaven, in earth, or on the sea.

“To me remains nor place nor time,
My country is in every clime $

I can be calm and free from care
On anv shore, since God is there.

“Could I be cast where Thou art not,

That were indeed a dreadful lot;

But regions none remote I call,

Secure of finding God in all.” *

Of the two types of piety, the active and contemplative, Peter and John may be taken as patterns; and, as both conformations exist in society, it is a cause of rejoicing that there is room for both in the Church of Christ. The side of John is that on which few of us are likely to exceed. We are more ready to work than to worship — more anxious to hear some new thing than to realize the all-important things with which we are already familiar. In the dust of our own bustle we veil the heaven, and we run so fast we cannot read. It is Cod’s goodness, therefore, that He gives us leisure. He gives us days when it is impiety not to pause and ponder — birthdays, New Year’s days, sacramental seasons, Sabbaths. And, if need be, He will find for us a Patinos — service in a family where there is no religion, a sick-room, a dwelling isolated and darkened by some mournful dispensation,

* See Note F. M 3 where we shall be very thankful if we hear a voice behind us, “I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last” — where it will be a profitable seclusion, a blessed banishment, if we are led to a more intimate communion with that Saviour who, oft-forgotten, is never far away,