made the necessary distinctions. The Logos designates the absolute determination of the self-determining divine being, according as the creation of the world, the spiritual life of mankind, revelation, and finally the incarnation of Christ, have this determination for their basis. This divine determination, taken in connection with the whole intra-mundane manifestation and life of Jesus, is the Son of God. The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is the principle of life, of freedom, and of unity, or of absolute activity in the absolute determination of the divine being. The difference between the Logos and the Holy Spirit, is accordingly not a difference in being, but in conformation of being. This is the first distinction. The second is between the substance and the consciousness in the life of Jesus. According to His substance, He is ever a perfected manifestation of the Logos, or a pure operation and effect of the operation of the Spirit in human flesh and blood. According to His consciousness, however, Christ proceeds along the path of human development; and here we must distinguish between the stages of His not yet perfected self-consciousness and the completion of the same. Now it is manifest, that the completion of the self-consciousness of Christ must be apprehended as the completion of the consciousness of His absolute determination (subsistence). In the unfolding of this form of consciousness, however, His inward life must necessarily attain to the consciousness of perfected self-determination in unity with the determining Father, i.e., of a life in the infinite fulness of the Spirit. For a perfect entering into the determinate character of His life has perfect self-determination for its necessary result. Finally, in the third place, a distinction might perhaps be drawn between this fact of the perfected development of Christ in itself, and its manifestation in the eyes of the Baptist. (See vol. ii. p. 25.)

SECTION IV.

THE ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THE DARKNESS, AND THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD IN CHRIST, IN ITS DIVERSE MANIFESTATIONS AND FORMS.

(Chap. v.-vii. 10.)

In the same measure in which Christ attracted towards Himself the minds possessing affinity to, and desire for, the light, in which the manifestation of the light in Him awakened into life all germs of heavenly life in them, the influence of His life upon the world necessarily also excited opposition and resistance from the darkness. This was, indeed, the judgment in the form of facts, which was connected with the manifestation of Jesus, as He Himself had already described it in His conversation with Nicodemus (iii. 19-21). As, therefore, His life and labours soon called into being the first-fruits of a church composed of the children of light, they called forth likewise a reaction on the part of the darkness. This shows itself in a series of forms, as in a completed picture. However, as the first indications of a mutual attraction between Christ and all germs of heavenly life among His hearers cannot present themselves at once in the form of a ripened and purified heavenly Church, the manifestation of the repulsion also between Him and the elements of darkness does not meet us immediately in the form of a conspiracy of hell against Him. And as we have seen, on the one hand, how, at the appearance of Christ, a divine bias showed itself in His favour, even among the mass of the people, in the inclination towards Him of many members of the Sanhedrim, as well as in friendly demonstrations throughout Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, we must now also see how the antagonism of the sinful nature against Him finds expression not only in the evil but in the better disposed, as a spirit of apostasy tempting and diminishing in number the company of His disciples, and temporarily discovering itself even among His own brethren.

This reaction of the darkness against the Lord, as it reveals itself in a series of demonstrations of awakening antagonism, gives occasion, nevertheless, to a series of new discoveries of His glory.

The antagonism, as might have been expected, was first to break forth, where, according to previous indications, it had already been germinating for a considerable time, among the Pharisees in Jerusalem. (Chap. iv. 1, 2.)

After this there was a feast of the Jews (the feast of Purim, which was celebrated a month before the Jewish Passover; see vol. i. p. 294); and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is 1at Jerusalem, by the sheep-gate, a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda-house of mercy, of grace having five porches. In these porches lay a great multitude of sick people, of blind, lame, consumptive, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at certain seasons into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first, after the troubling of the water, stepped in, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, who had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, He saith unto him, 'Wilt thou be made whole?' On this occasion He was not solicited by the sufferer, but the sufferer was solicited by Him. In the words, Wilt thou be made whole? He seemed to indicate that this man had sunk into a state of torpor. This also appears from the languid half-answer returned: 'Sir,' he replied, 'I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.' Jesus saith unto him, ‘Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.' And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked.

That was the glorious fact: a miracle of resuscitation in a man doubly wretched in his sickly, expiring courage, as well as in his diseased and withered limbs. One might now expect nothing

but praise and thanksgiving. comes a great-But

Instead of this, however, there

On the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, 'It is the Sabbath-day; it is not

'As this present or can hardly have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem, we may assume that it was written long after that event, at a time when the city was again in part restored, and had begun again to be visited.

2 The remark about the angel is a later interpolation; probably also the words, waiting for the moving, etc. See vol. iii. 119.

lawful for thee to carry thy bed'—although, perhaps, it might have been permitted him to cause himself to be carried thither on the bed. He answered them, 'He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. They now inquired of him further: What man is he that said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?' But he that was healed knew not who it was for Jesus had speedily withdrawn Himself, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said unto him, 'Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worst thing befall thee.' The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole.

92

The Jews now persecuted Jesus, and sought to slay Him," because He had done these things on the Sabbath-day. The Judaical party persecuted Him, and that through their representatives, the members of the Sanhedrim. For the question here has manifestly reference to a judicial persecution. But Jesus answered them, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and so therefore do I work also.' Therefore the Jews sought now the more to kill Him, because He-as they thought-had not only broken the Sabbath, but also called God His Father, making Himself equal with God.

They now instituted (in consequence of His declaration) a double process against His life, by an investigation which probably took place in the Little Sanhedrim. The first charge was for Sabbath profanation, and that of a kind which no longer stood as an isolated act, but was a consequence of a principle which He had just expressed; the other for blasphemy. To both charges Jesus had to answer. To the first as follows:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do: for whatsoever He doeth, the Son doeth likewise.' This declaration has a very deep and universal significance for our Christology: it shows us how the relation of the Son to the Father consists in this, that He, as the absolutely determined, confines His activity to the determinations of the Father-that, moreover, He works in full unity with the Father, thus never in uncertain activity. At the

1 The difference between these two cases has been misapprehended by Weisse, i. 130.

2 These words are wanting in several of the most respectable manuscripts.

same time, it justifies the working of Christ on the Sabbath-day, which it represents as a complying with the suggestion of the Father, as a correspondence with His operations. They have therefore to do with the Father, who accomplishes His heavenly works also on the Sabbath, if they would challenge the sabbatic working of the Son.

On this He declares to them within what compass He uninterruptedly works, and shall work, and on what all this rests:

For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth Him all things that He Himself doeth: and will show Him still greater works than these, so that ye shall marvel.' From the infinite love of the Father to the Son, it follows that He has made Him the centre to which all His operations are related, and that the Son must therefore more and more be made manifest as the means by which He accomplishes all things.

These works are, however, substantially, as in the case in question, works of resuscitation, of quickening, and of raising the dead. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.'

The more defined expression, whom He will, indicates that the impartation of new life to mankind is not natural, necessary, and universal, but rests on the relations of moral freedom, and therefore discovers itself in the antithesis of a quickening and a nonquickening, in which a judgment comes into manifestation. Jesus explains this thought further: For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed the judgment wholly to the Son: that all men may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father who hath sent Him.'

The judgment thus which the Son executes, consists essentially in this, that some He makes alive, others not. Not to be made alive again, means to be judged. This, however, rests on the appointment of the Father. Christ is the holy quickener of the world. The Father works life through Him; and on this account, because He desires to reveal the glory of His life in the living glory of His Son. But when Christ passes by a man without quickening him, this takes place on ethical grounds,— namely, because he does not know and honour in Him the Son, and thus also not the Father.

On this He describes His whole miraculous agency in the