The Gospel of St. John was not written till half a century later than the events it records; yet it is written as though it were but yesterday the Apostle had witnessed the scenes he describes. Those recollections had not been casual visitants, but constant inmates of his mind and heart. There was hardly ever a day he had not thought about them. At night when he lay awake and could not sleep he had thought about them. He conned them over in memory, he pored over them in his mind, he cherished them in his heart lovingly. And the promise his Lord had given came true to him, for the Holy Spirit took of these things of Christ, and showed them unto him, so that they grew to his eyes better and better, and more beautiful, and more full of meaning, till their inmost heart of Divine goodness was revealed to him. Ah! when we first get to know Christ it is but His face, His eyes, His outer form we see. That is a great sight! But to see and know all the heart of God that was in Him—that takes a very long time; it takes half a century; it takes eternity to get at that! John lived in that high quest almost all his life, gazing at the Master, worshipping and adoring, laying his heart on the Master's heart; and the result was that he got to know Jesus far better than he did when he lived with Him. Hence it is that the fourth Gospel is so different from the other three. They just tell us what Jesus said and what Jesus did. But John's Gospel mixes up the acts and words of Jesus with John's own thoughts and explanations, so that it is sometimes hardly possible to tell whether we are reading what Jesus said or what John thought about it. He is ever passing behind the loveliness of the human life, to trace its explanation in the inner heavenly nature. He paints for us the tree with its beauteous branches, leaves, and blossoms, and then he bids us behold the great root in God's earth out of which it grew; that wonderful root, which is Divine, and which is the source of all the sweetness that is brightening the upper air. The Jesus of John's Gospel has more of God in the look of face and eyes, and in the ring of His voice, than the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It is the Jesus that lived and grew on in John's loving memory, year by year becoming greater, holier, Diviner in the illumination of the Holy Spirit, that was brooding over that home of Christ in the heart of John. It is, indeed, Jesus coloured by John's thoughts and John's feelings; but then they are true thoughts and true feelings. And so it is that sometimes, in the evangel of the Beloved Disciple, we almost lose sight of the outer form and familiar features of our Lord, but only that we may see more clearly the glory of His inner nature and the beauty of His heart Divine.