INTRODUCTION.

BY THE EDITOR.

AN affecting interest is given to this treatise on the life, character, and writings of St. John, in consequence of the death of its author while these sheets were passing through the press. I am not able to reckon Dr. Macdonald among my own personal American friends. I never had the pleasure of meeting him on either side of the Atlantic: but a slight biographical notice, which has been placed in my hands, enables me to furnish the following particulars.1

Descended from a family in the north of Ireland, and, more remotely, drawing his origin from the west of Scotland (these two parts of our coast have been associated together by many romantic and historical incidents, and the name "Macdonald " has a well known place in such recollections), and himself born and bred in the midst of the Puritanism of New England, the writer of this book united in his character two elements of strength, which showed themselves, throughout his career, in a vigorous and resolute habit of mind. His father, a man of mark both as an enterprising merchant and as a general in command of troops during the war of 1812, on his deathbed dedicated this son, then a boy of only fourteen, to the Ministry of the Gospel. The youth "appears never to have lost sight of this dying charge, and very soon set himself in earnest to fulfil it "; and his character was from the first and throughout in harmony with the calling thus accepted. By a companion of his early manhood he is

1 Memorial of James Madison Macdonald, D.D.: a Discourse delivered in the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton, New Jersey, by Lyman A. Atwater. 1876.

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described as robust in frame, with an honest face, a fresh complexion, and a bright eye, as devout and conscientious, genial in society, firm in his friendships and diligent in study. After exercising his ministry first in Connecticut, then in Long Island, then in Brooklyn, he made his home in Princeton, New Jersey; and there his mature work was done with zeal and perseverance for many years. There too he became Vice President, and (for the most part Acting President) of the Board of Trustees of the Theological Seminary, though himself a graduate of the Theological Seminary of Yale. Thus, in different parts of his life, he was closely connected with two of the most famous Divinity Schools of the New World, each of which has exercised a wide and beneficial influence on Religion in the United States. Dr. Macdonald's position at Princeton was peculiarly responsible and difficult, his congregation containing men of the highest culture in Science, Philosophy, and Theology. It is justly remarked in the pamphlet which I am now consulting, that "no pastor retains his unabated hold of any congregation for a score of years without some very sterling qualities, much less such a charge as this." But Dr. Macdonald had this success, and he was never more honoured and trusted than at the last. The most conspicuous feature of his character appears to have been an unswerving love of truth, with an earnest and zealous desire to propagate the truth. As a preacher he had great advantages in a voice of singular compass and distinctness, and in his power of lively description. Notwithstanding his tenacity of purpose, he was remarkably candid in his dealing with new expressions of opinion; he was always a most diligent student; his habit was to make careful and assiduous preparation for his work; and he had that strong common sense, and that power of subordinating the unimportant to the important, which almost always give to the possessor of these faculties a command over the minds of others. With all this there was a tenderness and a gentle sympathy in his nature which 1 This period began in 1853 and ended in 1876.

bound him closely to those who were in suffering and sorrow. "We never truly knew what Dr. Macdonald was," it was said, "till he came to us when death invaded and darkened our households." The end of his own life came very suddenly; but in this circumstance, notwithstanding the distress which it caused, there was this advantage, that the impression of his full usefulness and the fresh power of his example were unimpaired. These particulars are put together from a short memoir, which is evidently not written in the language of blind eulogy; and it is pleasant thus to be able to combine a slight sketch of the author with the publication of the book which is here edited.'

Both the plan and the execution of this book will, if I am not mistaken, recommend themselves to the English-speaking world as a really valuable addition to our theological and religious literature. The plan is to present in one view all parts of St. John's life in their connection with one another and with his writings, and also in their connection with the Life of Christ and the founding of His Church. Of the execution the readers must judge, when they have examined the whole volume. I may be allowed here to make a few remarks on the general subject.

We are invited in this volume to contemplate St. John as the personal link connecting together three very different parts of Holy Scripture. This method of presenting the personality of a Biblical writer in close combination with his writings,—so that the man is set forth, so to speak, as part of the Divinely-communicated Revelation with which we have to deal,-is remarkably characteristic of our times, and has met with much favourable acceptance. The texture of the Bible lends itself with peculiar facility to this method. It may be worth while to note two or

1 Among the books which he published was one entitled Credulity in its Different Forms, and another, for devotional use, entitled My Father's House. See below on the Apocalypse.

2 I am of course not in any way responsible for the friendly way in which my own attempts in this direction are mentioned in one of the notes of this book; but it may be allowed to me to express my sense of obligation to the writer of the note.

three instances before we turn to the special features which mark the case of St. John, when regarded in this point of view.

There are some cases of this kind in the Old Testament.

One

is pre-eminent. We have there the life of David in the Historical Books, and the poems of David in the Psalter; and in proportion as we can connect the two together (and to a considerable extent we certainly can) we gain very much in our appreciation of the value of both. If the man stands out, as it were, from the Psalms, we read those Psalms with a stronger sense of their reality; and when we study the story of David's life we study it with a new interest, if we remember that it is he, under God, who instructs us, for the conduct of our life and devotion, in poems familiar as household words.

It is however in the New Testament that we have the best and the most frequent instances of this connecting together of different books by a living personality. One such instance is St. Luke. We can trace his presence and his movements in the incidents recorded in that narrative of the Acts, which he wrote without a dream of attracting any attention to himself. But he is the writer too of one of the Gospels. He is an Evangelist as well as a biographer of the Apostles. May we not say that he is a Psalmist also for to him we owe that Angels' Song which makes our Christmas morning bright, as well as those three familiar Hymns of the Nativity, which are embodied in the Services of the Church of England. Another example is St. Peter. Not an Evangelist, and not a historian of the early events of the Church, he yet binds together the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles by the continuous thread of his own animated and vigorous life, while in his two Epistles the same disciple and apostle, of whose doings and words we have read with so much interest, stands forth to address us directly. The great instance of this personal and most eloquent connection between different books of the Sacred Volume is, of course, St. Paul; for his letters are so numerous that they constitute a very large portion of the New Testament, while he is also

the great figure in the Apostolic History, and becomes more and more commanding as we approach the end of that narrative; while the letters and the narrative are so bound together by coincidences of time and place, in small things as well as great, that these coincidences have formed the whole subject of a treatise famous in Theology.1

Perhaps we shall best appreciate the distinctive characteristics of St. John, viewed under this aspect, if we contrast him with St. Luke, St. Peter, and St. Paul. Like the first of these, he is an Evangelist, and also has a very definite connection with the Acts of the Apostles: but "the beloved physician" wrote no Epistles destined to be a part of Holy Scripture: no "Acts" of his own are recorded by the pen which has so diligently recorded the sayings and doings of others: and, so far as we know, he never saw the countenance or heard the voice of the Incarnate Son of God. In certain of these respects St. Peter held common ground with St. John; he shared with him the blessed and ever-fruitful experience of the Gospel time; he is even more conspicuous on the ground of the apostolic history. He also wrote inspired letters; but he did not write a Gospel; his two Epistles are not marked by that variety of character which we find in the three by St. John; and to his early friend of the Galilean lake, not to himself, was vouchsafed the Apocalypse. In the two facts that St. John's writings are of three very different kinds, and that he was personally associated with our Saviour upon earth, we see at once that he rises to a level higher than that which is occupied even by St. Paul. The "beloved disciple" and the "apostle of the Gentiles" have indeed these things in common, that we can connect their early training and early history with their subsequent career and with their writings, and that each has a place in St. Luke's narrative, while the latter has there by far the greater place. In other respects the former has pre-eminent claims on our attention and reverence. To this we must add that the ground

1 The Hora Paulina need hardly be named.