icial
document, "And he that saw it bare record; and his record is true; and
he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe." Why should he
interrupt the flow of his narrative to add these words of assurance?

Some have thought that he was moved to do so by a heresy which sprang
up in the early Church to the effect that Christ was not really human:
His body, it was said, was only a phantom body, and therefore His death
was only an apparent death. In opposition to such a notion St. John
directs attention to the realistic details, which prove so conclusively
that this was a real man and that He died a real death. Of course that
ancient heresy has long ceased to trouble; there are none now who deny
that Jesus was a man. Yet it is curious how the tendency ever and anon
reappears to evaporate the facts of His life. At the present hour
there are eminent Christian teachers in Europe who are treating the
resurrection of the Lord in very much the same way as these early
Docetae treated His death--as a kind of figure of speech, not to be
understood too literally. Against such the Church must lift up the
crude facts of the resurrection as St. John did those of the death of
the Saviour.[3] In our generation teachers of every kind are appealing
to Christ and putting Him in the centre of theology; but we must ask
them, What Christ? Is it the Christ of the Scriptures: the Christ who
in the beginning was with God; who was incarnated; who died for the
sins of the world; who was raised from the dead and reigns for
evermore? We must not delude ourselves with words: only the Christ of
the Scriptures could have brought us the salvation of the Scriptures.

What excited the wonder of St. John is supposed by others to have been
the fulfilment of two passages of the Old Testament Scripture which he
quotes. It appeared to be a matter of mere chance that the soldiers,
contrary to the intention of the Jews, refrained from breaking the
bones of Jesus; yet a sacred word, of which they knew nothing, written
hundreds of years before, had said, "A bone of Him shall not be
broken." It seemed the most casual circumstance that the soldier
plunged the spear into the side of Jesus, to make sure that He was
dead; yet an ancient oracle, of which he knew nothing, had said, "They
shall look on Him whom they pierced." Thus, by the overruling
providence of God, the soldiers, going with rude unconcern about their
work, were unconsciously fulfi