John, whom Jesus Loved.

66

BY

JAMES CULROSS, A.M., D.D.,

AUTHOR OF

"BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR, AND KNOCK;"

"3 66
JESUS SHOWING MERCY; JESUS REVEALING THE FATHER;

"LAZARUS REVIVED;"

"THY FIRST LOVE: CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO EPHESUS."

LONDON: MORGAN AND SCOTT,
(OFFICE OF "The Christian,")

12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.

And may be ordered of any Bookseller.

101. i. 417.

PREFACE.

AM the Vine; ye are the branches."
These words of Jesus say that we are

dependent on Him for our Christian being. They place our union to Him in a very remarkable light. It is not here—as in the Epistle to the Romans (xi. 17-24)-that we have been "graffed" unto Him. The branch is not "graffed " into the vine, but grows out of it. Even so, our believer-life is but the outgrowth (so to speak) of the Eternal Life. The life that was placed in the first Adam was lost in the Fall; the life that is in the last Adam is immortal and sure. And it is in Him as life is in the vine-root-which grows forth into living branches. Because there is a living vine-root, there must be branches; and Christ the Living One must have His branches also; and the endlessness of His life is security that ours shall be endless too.

We know the vine by its branches. It is in them that the fruit is put forth which shows the qualities

and power of the life. We know Christ by His branches. We know Him in His disciples, because in every one of them He liveth, and His fruit is found in them. In such a man as the Apostle John, we see Him more fully than in common saints; not merely by what he tells us-though that is much-but even more by what he is, in his new being.

To regard the Apostle thus is not to make him an object of hero-worship-as there are so many subtle and perilous temptations to do. This hero-worship is a fashion of our age, and grows in the same soil with envy and detraction. Man praises man, and God is robbed of His due. This, I believe, has not a little to do with the decay of true reverence among us, and the debility of faith. It tends also to divisions and alienations. We may not choose out even an Apostle for such worship. Of all saints, perhaps, the Apostle John would have shrunk from it the most sensitively, with the most earnest, See thou do it not! What he was he owed to Christ, and hence could not accept glory for himself. Hence, also, while shrinking from hero-worship, he would have stood forth anywherealbeit in a pillory—if he might thereby show the glory of his Lord and Saviour more fully. To contribute to the exhibition of this glory is the design of the things which follow. In so far as they are according to the truth, may the Lord bless them.