25. This seems the correct reading. Comp. Canon Westcott's note on the passage, and in
general his most full and thorough criticism of the various readings in this chapter.
With this final and highest teaching, which contains all that Nicodemus, or, indeed, the
whole Church, could require or be able to know, He explained to him and to us the how
of the new birth - alike the source and the flow of its spring. Ours it is now only to
'believe,' where we cannot further know, and, looking up to the Son of Man in His
perfected work, to perceive, and to receive the gift of God's love His perfected work, to
perceive, and to receive the gift of God's love for our healing. In this teaching it is not the
serpent and the Son of Man that are held side by side, though we cannot fail to see the
symbolic reference of the one to the other, but the uplifting of the one and the other - the
one by the sin, the other through the sin of the people: both on account of it - the
forthgoing of God's pardoning mercy, the look of faith, and the higher recognition of
God's love in it all.
And so the record of this interview abruptly closes. It tells all, but no more than the
Church requires to know. Of Nicodemus we shall hear again in the sequel, not needlessly,
nor yet to complete a biography, were it even that of Jesus; but as is necessary for the
understanding of this History. What follows26 are not the words of Christ, but of St. John.
In them, looking back many years afterwards in the light of completed events, the
Apostle takes his stand, as becomes the circumstances, where Jesus had ended His
teaching of Nicodemus - under the Cross. In the Gift, unutterable in its preciousness, he
now sees the Giver and the Source of all.27 Then, following that teaching of Jesus
backward, he sees how true it has proved concerning the world, that 'that which is of the
flesh is flesh;' how true, also concerning the Spirit-born, and what need there is to us of
'this birth from above.'
26. St. John iii. 16 -21.
27. ver. 16.
But to all time, through the gusty night of our world's early spring, flashes, as the lamp in
that Aliyah through the darkened streets of silent Jerusalem, that light; sounds through its
stillness, like the Voice of the Teacher come from God, this eternal Gospel- message to us
and to all men: 'God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'
Chapter 7
IN JUDEA AND THROUGH SAMARIA
A SKETCH OF SAMARITAN HISTORY AND THEOLOGY
JEWS AND SAMARITANS.
(St. John 4:1-4.)
We have no means of determining how long Jesus may have tarried in Jerusalem after the
events recorded in the previous two chapters. The Evangelic narrative 1 only marks an