A STUDY OF ST JOHN XIV.-XVIL BY HENRY BARCLAY SWETE, D.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE HON. CANON OF ELY ; HON. CHAPLAIN TO THE KING e\d,\r)ff(v OIITWS MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN S STREET, LONDON 1913 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK BOSTON CHiCACO DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO TO THE MEMORY OF E. H. W. S. S. A. S. F. S. B. o> TO AI)TOS, 4>aiOa)c, irapeyevov -.WKparei tKtivri Ty ijfJ.fpq- JJ (ftdpnaKov firi(v tv rij} Sfff/jLwrrjpiy, 77 iSXXou rou iJKovffas ; 4>AlA- Avr6;, &> Ex^paTes. EX- Tt oCv STJ eVnc arra direv 6 dvrjp roG Oa.v6.rov . Ai* ?rp6 ; r/5^ws ^ap eytl> d/couffat^t. PLATO, Phaed. FOREWORD THIS little book makes no claim to the character of a formal commentary. Its purpose is to offer help to any who may wish to combine a devout study of our Lord s last discourse and prayer with some attempt to gain a better understanding of the thought that lies beneath the surface of His words. I hope that it may serve this end more especially in Holy Week, when the Church of England reads St John xiv.-xvii. at daily mattins and evensong. The present volume will thus range with two earlier books, The Appearances of our Lord after the Passion (1907), and The Ascended Christ (1910), which were designed for use at Eastertide and Ascensiontide respectively. With this aim I have banished to footnotes all references to the Greek text and any other matters which might break the thread of the reader s medita tions. For the same reason I have limited myself to one view of passages which have received more than one interpretation. Critical problems have been almost wholly passed over, not as being unimpor tant but as foreign to the intention of this book. viii FOREWORD There is, however, a preliminary question on which something must be said at the outset. Any one who attempts to comment, however simply, upon one of the Johannine discourses may reason ably be asked to state the relation which he con siders them to bear to words actually spoken by our Lord. It has been urged, rightly as I think, that the sayings of Christ, even as they are recorded in our earliest Gospel and in those parts of the other Synoptic Gospels which are derived from an earlier lost document, cannot be regarded as the ipsissima verba of our Lord, since they have come to us through a translation and from sources which origin ally were not documentary but oral. In the case of the fourth Gospel further allowance must be made for the greater length of time that elapsed between the utterance of the sayings and their crystallization in a written shape. Moreover, it is clear that the author of this Gospel has set before himself a purpose which enables him to deal more freely with the form of the Lord s teaching than the Synoptists would have dealt. His role is that of the interpreter rather than the he seeks to to his readers the compiler ; impart impression made upon his own mind by the person and teaching of Jesus. His prologue shews what that impression was, and the discourses expand the idea of the prologue. It was inevitable that the FOREWORD ix discourses should, in the circumstances, be coloured their the mind of the by passage through Evangelist ; and there are places where he seems to comment on the words of the Lord rather than to record them. But that the discourses as a whole are the work of the author of the Gospel is inconceivable. When the reader passes from the prologue to the discourses, a subtle of manner makes itself felt in the change ; former the disciple speaks, in the latter we hear the voice of the Master. The often repeated argument that the Synoptic Christ could not have spoken as the Johannine Christ does, appears to rest upon the assumption that the greatest of religious teachers (to take no higher ground) was incapable of varying either the method or the substance of His teaching when different circumstances called for such modi fication. I regard, then, the earlier discourses in St John as genuine utterances of our Lord, cast in the form which they took in the thought of the great artist " for the who planned the spiritual Gospel." But last discourse and prayer I am disposed to claim something more. It is not, I think, unreasonable to suppose that words spoken on the last night of the Lord s life, in the privacy of the Upper Room, or, when that was left, of some other retreat where He was alone with the Eleven, produced an impres sion which could not be effaced that at the end of a ; x FOREWORD long life one who was present found almost the very words still ringing in his ears. If this were so, that disciple would assuredly have placed on record here his recollections of the Master s very words. Repeated study of these chapters confirms my con viction that they approach as near to the words actually spoken by our Lord as the memory of one who heard them can bring us. There is in them a severe simplicity, a divine dignity, a mystery of para dox in which the reader catches sight of unexplored of truth features if not absent from depths ; which, the earlier discourses, are present here far more conspicuously. I cannot escape from the feeling that a greater than the greatest of Evangelists is here. That the last discourse and prayer of Jesus Christ rest upon no historical foundation, but repre sent only what the Evangelist conceived that the Incarnate Word would have said on the last night to His faithful disciples and to His Father in heaven, is to me altogether incredible. It is my hope that such a view may appear no less incredible to those who follow with me sentence by sentence through the words which St John assigns to the hours that immediately preceded the Agony, the Arrest, the Trials, and the Cross. CAMBRIDGE, Advent, 1913. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION xiii THE LAST DISCOURSE Part I. - i Part II. 69 THE LAST PRAYER - - - - - - 157 INTRODUCTION THE Last Discourse follows the departure of Judas Iscariot from the guest-chamber, the great upper room where our Lord and the Twelve were assembled for the Last Supper. Judas went forth from the company of the Twelve because he was not of them. There was no longer any possibility of keeping up the appearance of discipleship. The Master had exposed his treachery, and bidden him go quickly and do the thing on which he was resolved. We see the traitor rise silently, open the door, and disappear into the darkness of 1 the night. And now, for the first time during many months, Jesus felt Himself free from the presence of one who was officially a member of the Apostolic college, and at heart a 2 devil; at length He could speak freely, as among friends. Moreover, the action of Judas was, as He well knew, the for the of the last crisis the time had signal coming ; and come to prepare His true disciples for it. His first words to the Eleven proclaim His relief, and at the same time His consciousness of the approaching end. When therefore he was gone out, Jesus saith, Now is the Son of man glorified? and God is glorified in him; and God will glorify him in himself, and will glorify him forth was with (xiii. 31 f.). The errand on which Judas had gone 1 2 xiii. 30 fjv 8 i/$f. vi. 70 5td/3o\6s icmv. 3 f see The On 3oci<r077 Abbott, Johannine Grammar, 2446. " glorification is past in relation to the spiritual order, though it was " yet future in its historical realization (VVestcott). xiv INTRODUCTION to prepare the Lord s way to the Cross, and the Cress would 1 be the supreme act of His life of service and sacrifice, which is the true glory of His humanity and ours. The treachery of Judas was, though the traitor knew it not, for the glory of the Incarnate, and therefore for the glory of God, who was glorified by the perfect obedience of His Son, and would in turn glorify His Son by the glorious resurrection and ascen sion, the reward of His sacrifice and the expression of the " inner glory of His life. Forthwith," in a few short weeks, will in 2 on His "jGod glorify Him Himself," by placing Him own throne, and acknowledging the oneness with Himself of the ascended Christ. But the speedy glorification of Jesus, seen from the dis of have another to them it ciples point view, would aspect ; would speak of loss and grief beyond words. The Lord realizes this, and at once turns to them. Children? yet a little while I am with you ; ye shall seek me, and as I said to the Jews, Where I go, ye cannot come, so also I say nou> to you his 4 (xiii. 33). He speaks to the Eleven as a father to sons. They are soon to be left in the world alone, and the words He had said to the hostile Jews some time ago would be true also in their case ; both His enemies and His friends would seek Him in vain when He had left the world.