With Nathanael also there is much interest connected. He, in the last chapter of St John’s Gospel, is called Nathanael of Cana of Galilee, and is named among others who are Apostles. He is identified, on good grounds, with the Bartholomew of the Synoptical Gospels.(93) We mark in Nathanael an aptitude for discerning spiritual greatness; but, with all this, he held stoutly to old prejudices in which he had been born and bred; and when Philip comes to him with his tidings, he breaks out with: “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” There is no reason to suppose that Nazareth was held generally in bad estimation. Natives of Jerusalem would look down on all villages in Galilee without distinction, but Nathanael belonged not to Jerusalem but to Cana. Cana and Nazareth were a few miles apart, each being the chief town in its own district; and the local jealousy and tendency to mutual disparagement between neighbours, which is not unknown among ourselves, and was rife in those times, will account for Nathanael’s words.(94) It was of no ill augury for his holding fast the Faith when he had found it, that he clung to the old traditionary feeling of his native town. He was not blinded by it; he is ready to “go and see.” Here our Lord exercises His singular gift of introspection, “Behold,” says He, “an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” “Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art King of Israel.”(95) Probably Nathanael recalled what had passed in his mind when he had been under the fig-tree. Perhaps some mystery of existence had then weighed upon his soul, and on coming to Christ he found “the thoughts of his heart revealed.”(96) In our Lord’s reply to Nathanael we find His first recorded utterance as a Preacher of the Word; here He first speaks of Himself as the Son of Man, and here we have the first hint of the Law, “To him who hath shall be given,” a law which has been several times before us and will be so again before long. Nathanael _had_ something already; he was enough in earnest to drop his prejudices; a slight token had enabled him to see in our Lord “the Son of God, the King of Israel:” he is told that he shall see greater things than these. Jacob had dreamed of old(97) that there was a ladder between earth and heaven, by which God’s angels went and came; such a ladder Christ was, and he, the Israelite in whom there was no guile, should see “the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”(98) So far I have followed the Gospel of St John. The Synoptists afford corroborative matter to shew that the little company, which had met at Bethabara, continued to hang together.