Transcribed from the [1870] edition by David Price. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. A Sermon DELIVERED MAY 8TH, 1870, IN KENSINGTON CHAPEL, AT THE SEVENTY-FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY. * * * * * BY THE REV. J. STOUGHTON, D.D. * * * * * * * * * * PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. * * * * * * * * * * LONDON: 56, PATERNOSTER ROW; 65, ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD; AND 164, PICCADILLY. * * * * * LONDON: PARDON AND SON, PRINTERS, PATERNOSTER ROW. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE. “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”—JOHN xxi. 25. THE chapter before us is plainly a supplement to the main history. St. John concluded that history under a deep conviction that it was far from a full account of his Master’s wonderful ministry. “Many other signs,” said he, “truly did Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.” But in this supplementary chapter, added to the Gospel, perhaps, after a lapse of several years, the inspired Evangelist returns to his subject, and relates with singular minuteness of detail the miracle of the draught of fishes. He then appends to the whole narrative an asseveration of its truth; and still feeling, as he had done before, that there remained an inexhaustible fulness of facts and lessons in the life of his adorable Lord which defied every attempt at recording them, he at last finishes his Gospel—inclusive of the appendix—in the same spirit in which he had concluded what he wrote before. Persuaded of the impossibility of doing perfect justice to such a life as that of the Word made flesh, he employed a strong Oriental hyperbole to express the impossibility, whilst his heart overflowed with adoring love and wonder—“And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.”