The other Evangelists make these assertions sufficiently clear. They tell us how Christ claimed to be the Lord of the Sabbath, because '_the sabbath was made for man_;' and, because He was the '_Son of Man_;' how He was more angered at the hardness of heart which displayed itself in the apparent zeal of the Pharisees for the Sabbath, than at all their other exhibitions of the same hardness; how the Jewish rulers met His divine anger with theirs, and decided that the only adequate answer to the demand, '_Is it right to do good on the sabbath-day, or to do evil?_' must be a conspiracy to put Him to death. St. John could not say more on these points. But there was a subject which it was his especial office to handle. He shows us how Jesus made the defence of the fourth commandment, in its letter and its spirit, a means of asserting His own relation to God. '_My Father worketh hitherto, and I work._' Man was bidden to work because God worked. Had GOD ceased to work, then, on the day of rest? Was He not nourishing the earth, and causing it to bring forth and bud on that day? Was He suspending His labours for His creatures on that day? The argument, like those about the ox and the ass falling into the pit, was broad, simple, direct; one of those which men who have lost their life, their humanity, their godliness, in their books, are tormented by hearing; one which opens the deepest abysses of thought and consolation to those who are seeking for a living God, for a Father of their spirits. But such seekers cannot be content with a command to work because God works, to rest because God rests,--they must know how the command can be obeyed. They must know on what foundation the command stands. If there is a Son of Man who can say, 'I work because He works; I do as my Father does;' He may give the sons of men power to work and power to rest. His union to them and to God is the foundation of both. I have replied, then, to our second question as well as to the first. I have showed you how the act by which Christ, in the judgment of the Jews, broke the Sabbath-day, naturally led to what was in their judgment an act of blasphemy. It was not that He dispensed with a law of God because He was the Son of God. It was not that He put a new sense into the law of God because He was the Son of God. It was that He could interpret the law of God fully. It was that He could accomplish the law fully. It was that He could unfold the Gospel which was hidden in the law. It was that He could show in what God's rest consists, by showing in what His own rest consisted; what God's work was, by the works which He did Himself in the might of God's Spirit. And thus, by one sign, He declared that men are not the servants of angels, and that they are the children of a Father.