Note 1 — Chapter XVII · The Heir of Solomon’s Godhead.

The extent to which the man was lowered and lost in the risen Lord is especially revealed in the fourth Gospel. Except for the story of the woman taken in adultery, admittedly interpolated from another Gospel, the fourth Gospel may be regarded as perhaps the only book in the Bible without recognition of humanity. “I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me,” is the keynote. In this work there is no text for the reformer and the philanthropist, unless perhaps the retreat of Jesus from a prospect of being made king. What inferences of benevolence might be made even from the miracles related have to be strained through the arrogance, self-aggrandizement, attitudinizing, as of a showman, with which they are wrought.1 A rudeness to his mother precedes the turning of water to wine (ii. 4); the nobleman’s son is healed because the aristocrat will not believe without a miracle (iv. 48); the infirm man at Bethesda is healed only after a sham question, “Wouldest thou be made whole?” and threatened afterwards (v. 6, 14); feeding the multitude is attended with another sham question (vi. 5), and a parade of the fragments (13); the man born blind is declared to have been so born solely for the sign and wonder manifested in his cure (ix. 3).