ON SIMILE AND METAPHOR IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. HI 



yeveaOai iyoo el/xt). The last phrase has been supposed to have 

 carried with it to a Jew the connotation of the Divine ineffable 

 Name. In their ears it was the assertion by a man of equality 

 or identity with God. There was no further parley or 

 misunderstanding. It was for unforgiveable blasphemy that 

 they took up stones to stone Him. 



That the writer of the Gospel is a mystic is therefore abundantly 

 evident, and his place is among the greatest and most spiritually 

 minded mystics of any age or country. No one, I venture to 

 think, who is out of sympathy with mystical thought and aspira- 

 tion can appreciate his Gospel. It is not the exposition of a 

 doctrinal system, still less the fornmlating of dogma or of a 

 canon or rule of instruction. It is the search of a soul for truth 

 and for God under the guidance of the Master w^hom he revered. 

 The traditional portraits of St. John the Apostle attest the 

 character of the mystic. As you look upon the painting you feel 

 that if that man wrote a Gospel it would be such a one as we 

 possess ; not set in the hard and fast lines of literal speech or 

 of necessary chronological succession, but instinct with life and 

 light and love, with loyalty to the highest truth expressed, and 

 as it were personified in the Christ ; subordinating the letter to 

 the spirit, with an intensity of longing and aspiration that only 

 the Divine can satisfy. Such, if I am not mistaken, is the fourth 

 Gospel, the Gospel according to St. John. 



Discussion. 



The Chairman (Prebendary H. E. Fox) thanked Professor Geden 

 for the paper, which admirably combined scholarly skill with 

 spiritual sense. 



Lt.-Col. Mackinlay said : The Professor's paper is very attrac- 

 tive, and expressed in beautiful diction. 



Sir Isaac Newton made a true and shrewd observation when he 

 remarked that, following the custom of the prophets of old, our 

 Lord and His forerunner, John, very frequently referred to things 

 actually present in their parabolic discourses. 



Our author on p. 107 thinks that our Lord followed this rule when 

 He called Himself the Light of the World because there were 

 brilliant lights before Him at the time, at the Feast of Taberuacles 

 at Jerusalem ; but on the same page it is difficult to understand 



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