The Project Gutenberg EBook of Quiet Talks on John's Gospel, by S. D. Gordon

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Title: Quiet Talks on John's Gospel

Author: S. D. Gordon

Release Date: February 26, 2005 [EBook #15185]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Quiet Talks on _John's Gospel_

By

S. D. Gordon

1915

Preface

_Everything depends on getting Jesus placed._ That lies at the root of
all--living, serving, preaching, teaching. John had Jesus placed. He had
Him up in His own place. This settles everything else. Then one gets
himself placed, too, up on a level where the air is clear and bracing,
the sun warm, and the outlook both steadying and stimulating. Get the
centre fixed and things quickly adjust themselves about it to your eyes.

It will be seen very quickly that this little book makes no pretension
to being a commentary on, or an exposition of, John's Gospel. That is
left to the scholarly folk who eat their meals in the sacred classical
languages of the past. It is simply a homely attempt to let out a little
of what has been sifting in these years past of this wondrous miniature
Bible from John's pen.

The proportions of this homely little messenger of paper and type may
seem a little odd at first. The longest chapter is devoted to only the
opening eighteen verses of John, the prologue. While the whole of the
first twelve chapters of John, excepting that prologue, is brought into
one smaller chapter. It wasn't planned so, though I felt it coming as
the wondrous mood of this book came down over me. I think it mast be
the effect of the atmosphere of John's book.

Sometimes John packs so much in so little space, and again he goes so
particularly into the details of some one incident. The prologue is a
miniature Bible. The whole Bible story is there in its cream. And on the
other hand John spends five chapters (xiii.-xvii.), almost a fifth of
the whole, on a single evening. He devotes seven chapters (xiii.-xix.),
almost a third of all, on the events of twenty-four hours. John is
controlled not by mere proportion of space or