It is bewildering, because it is a postscript, added, with a singular
artlessness, after the Gospel has come to a full close. Perhaps St
John did not even write it, though the pretty childlike conclusion
about the world itself not being able to contain the books that might
be written about Christ has always seemed to me to be in his spirit,
the words of a very simple-minded and aged man. It is enchanting,
because it contains two of the most beautiful episodes in the whole of
the Gospel History, the charge to St Peter to feed the lambs and sheep
of the fold, where one of the most delicate nuances of language is lost
in the English translation, and the appearance of Jesus beside the sea
of Galilee. I must not here discuss the story of the charge to St
Peter, though I once heard it read, with exquisite pathos, when an
archbishop of Canterbury was being enthroned with all the pomp and
circumstance of ecclesiastical ceremony, in such a way that it brought
out, by a flash of revelation, the true spirit of the scene we were
attending; we were simple Christians, it seemed, assembled only to set
a shepherd over a fold, that he might lead a flock in green pastures
and by waters of comfort.
But a man must not tell two tales at once, or he loses the savour of
both. Let us take the other story.
The dreadful incidents of the Passion are over; the shame, the horror,
the humiliation, the disappointment. The hearts of the Apostles must
have been sore indeed at the thought that they had deserted their
friend and Master. Then followed the mysterious incidents of the
Resurrection, about which I will only say that it is plain from the
documents, if they are accepted as a record at all, from the
astonishing change which seems to have passed over the Apostles,
converting their timid faithfulness into a tranquil boldness, that
they, at all events, believed that some incredibly momentous thing had
happened, and that their Master was among them again, returning through
the gates of Death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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