his writer.

The object which the Evangelist had in view in writing this Gospel we
are not left to find out for ourselves. He explicitly says that his
purpose in writing was to promote the belief that "Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God" (chap. xx. 31). This purpose, he judges, he will best
accomplish, not by writing an essay, nor by framing an abstract argument
in advocacy of the claims of Jesus, but by reproducing in his Gospel
those manifestations of His glory which elicited faith in the first
disciples and in others. That which had produced faith in his own case
and in that of his fellow-disciples, will, he thinks, if fairly set
before men, produce faith in them also. He relates, therefore, with the
utmost simplicity of language, the scenes in which Jesus seemed to him
most significantly to have revealed His power and His goodness, and most
forcibly to have demonstrated that the Father was in Him. At the same
time he keeps steadily in view the circumstance that these
manifestations had not always produced faith, but that alongside of a
growing faith there ran an increasing unbelief which at length assumed
the form of hostility and outrage. This unbelief he feels called upon to
account for. He feels called upon to demonstrate that its true reason
lay, not in the inadequacy of Christ's manifestations, but in the
unreasonable and unspiritual requirements of the unbelieving, and in
their alienation from God. The Gospel thus forms the primary apologetic,
which by its very simplicity and closeness to reality touches at every
point the underlying causes and principles of faith and unbelief.

The object of the Gospel being kept in view, the plan is at once
perceived. Apart from the Prologue (chap. i. 1-18) and the Appendix
(chap. xxi.), the body of the work falls into two nearly equal parts,
chaps. i. 19-xii., and xiii.-xx. In the former part the Evangelist
relates, with a singular felicity of selection, the scenes in which
Jesus made those self-revelations which it was most important that men
should understand, and the discussions in which their full significance
was brought out. Thus he shows how the glory of Christ was manifested
at the marriage in Cana, in the cleansing of the Temple, in the
conversation with the Samaritans, in the healing of the impotent man, in
the feeding of the five thousand, in the cure of the man born blind; and
how, through these various signs or object-lessons, Jesus makes Himself
known as the