there.

John 20:30,31 And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book...

Job 26:14 See, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?

Psalm 40:5 Many, O LORD my God, are your wonderful works which you have done, and your thoughts which are to us-ward...

Psalm 71:15 My mouth shall show forth your righteousness and your salvation all the day; for I know not the numbers thereof.

Ecclesiastes 12:12 And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Matthew 11:5 The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up...

Acts 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good...

Acts 20:35 I have showed you all things, how that so laboring you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus...

Hebrews 11:32 And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also...

that even. This is a very strong eastern expression to represent the number of miracles which Jesus wrought. But however strong and strange it may appear to us of the western world, we find sacred and other authors using hyperboles of the like kind and signification. See Nu.

John 13:33 Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You shall seek me: and as I said to the Jews, Where I go, you cannot come...

;

Deuteronomy 1:28 Where shall we go up? our brothers have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we...

; Da.

Deuteronomy 4:11 And you came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire to the middle of heaven, with darkness, clouds...

; Ec.

Deuteronomy 14:15 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,

. Basnage gives a very similar hyperbole taken from the Jewish writers, in which Jochanan is said to have 'composed such a great number of precepts and lessons, that if the heavens were paper, and all the trees of the forest so many pens, and all the children of men so many scribes, they would not suffice to write all his lessons.'

Amos 7:10 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying...

Matthew 19:24 And again I say to you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle...

CONCLUDING REMARKS ON JOHN'S GOSPEL.

John, who, according to the unanimous testimony of the ancient fathers and ecclesiastical writers, was the author of this Gospel, was the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Bethsaida, by Salome his wife, (compare Mat.

John 10:2 But he that enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

, with Mat.

27:55,56 and Mar.

15:40,) and brother of James the elder, whom 'Herod killed with the sword,' (Ac.

John 12:2 There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

.) Theophylact says that Salome was the daughter of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by a former wife; and that consequently she was our Lord's sister, and John was his nephew. He followed the occupation of his father till his call to the apostleship, (Mat.

John 4:21,22 Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when you shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem...

, Mar.

John 1:19 And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?

,

John 1:20 And he confessed, and denied not; but confessed, I am not the Christ.

, Lu.

John 5:1-10 After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem...

,) which is supposed to have been when he was about twenty five years of age; after which he was a constant eye-witness of our Lord's labours, journeyings, discourses, miracles, passion, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. After the ascension of our Lord he returned with the other apostles to Jerusalem, and with the rest partook of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, by which he was eminently qualified for the office of an Evangelist and Apostle. After the death of Mary, the mother of Christ, which is supposed to have taken place about fifteen years after the crucifixion, and probably after the council held in Jerusalem about

A.D.49 or

50, (Ac.

John 5:15 The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

.,) at which he was present, he is said by ecclesiastical writers to have proceeded to Asia Minor, where he formed and presided over seven churches in as many cities, but chiefly resided at Ephesus. Thence he was banished by the emperor Domitian, in the fifteenth year of his reign,

A.D. 95, to the isle of Patmos in the Aegean sea, where he wrote the Apocalypse, (Re. i.9.) On the accession of Nerva the following year, he was recalled from exile and returned to Ephesus, where he wrote his Gospel and Epistles, and died in the hundredth year of his age, about

A.D. 100, and in the third year of the emperor Trajan. It is generally believed that John was the youngest of the twelve apostles, and that he survived all the rest. Jerome, in his comment on Gal. VI., says that he continued preaching when so enfeebled with age as to be obliged to be carried into the assembly; and that, not being able to deliver any long discourse, his custom was to say in every meeting, My dear children, love one another. The general current of ancient writers declares that the apostle wrote his Gospel at an advanced period of life, with which the internal evidence perfectly agrees; and we may safely refer it, with Chrysostom, Epiphanius, Mill, Le Clerc, and others, to the year

97. The design of John in writing his Gospel is said by some to have been to supply those important events which the other Evangelists had omitted, and to refute the notions of the Cerinthians and Nicolaitans, or according to others, to refute the heresy of the Gnostics and Sabians. But, though many parts of his Gospel may be successfully quoted against the strange doctrines held by those sects, yet the apostle had evidently a more general end in view than the confutation of their heresies. His own words sufficiently inform us of his motive and design in writing this Gospel: 'These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, ye might have life through his name.' (ch.

John 20:31 But these are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God...

.) Learned men are not wholly agreed concerning the language in which this Gospel was originally written. Salmasius, Grotius, and other writers, have imagined that John wrote it in his own native tongue, the Aramean or Syriac, and that it was afterwards translated into Greek. This opinion is not supported by any strong arguments, and is contradicted by the unanimous voice of antiquity, which affirms that he wrote it in Greek, which is the general and most probable opinion. The style of this Gospel indicates a great want of those advantages which result from a learned education; but this defect is amply compensated by the unexampled simplicity with which he expresses the sublimest truths. One thing very remarkable is an attempt to impress important truths more strongly on the minds of his readers, by employing in the expression of them both an affirmative proposition and a negative. It is manifestly not without design that he commonly passes over those passages of our Lord's history and teaching which had been treated at large by other Evangelists, or if he touches them at all, he touches them but slightly, whilst he records many miracles which had been overlooked by the rest, and expatiates on the sublime doctrines of the pre-existence, the divinity, and the incarnation of the Word, the great ends of His mission, and the blessings of His purchase.