miss the significant sayings altogether. However
inconsistent they may be with the doctrine he is consciously driving
at, they appeal to some sub-intellectual instinct in him that makes him
stick them in, like a child sticking tinsel stars on the robe of a toy
angel.

John does not mention the ascension; and the end of his narrative leaves
Christ restored to life, and appearing from time to time among his
disciples. It is on one of these occasions that John describes the
miraculous draught of fishes which Luke places at the other end of
Christ's career, at the call of the sons of Zebedee.

JOHN AGREED AS TO THE TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION.

Although John, following his practice of showing Jesus's skill as a
debater, makes him play a less passive part at his trial, he still gives
substantially the same account of it as all the rest. And the question
that would occur to any modern reader never occurs to him, any more than
it occurred to Matthew, Mark, or Luke. That question is, Why on earth
did not Jesus defend himself, and make the people rescue him from the
High Priest? He was so popular that they were unable to prevent him
driving the money-changers out of the temple, or to arrest him for it.
When they did arrest him afterwards, they had to do it at night in
a garden. He could have argued with them as he had often done in the
temple, and justified himself both to the Jewish law and to Caesar. And
he had physical force at his command to back up his arguments: all that
was needed was a speech to rally his followers; and he was not gagged.
The reply of the evangelists would have been that all these inquiries
are idle, because if Jesus had wished to escape, he could have saved
himself all that trouble by doing what John describes him as doing: that
is, casting his captors to the earth by an exertion of his miraculous
power. If you asked John why he let them get up again and torment and
execute him, John would have replied that it was part of the destiny of
God to be slain and buried and to rise again, and that to have avoided
this destiny would have been to repudiate his Godhead. And that is the
only apparent explanation. Whether you believe with the evangelists
that Christ could have rescued himself by a miracle, or, as a modern
Secularist, point out that he could have defended himself effectually,
the fact remains that according to all the narratives he did not do so.
He had to die like a god, not to save himself "like