《Lange’s Commentary on the Holy Scriptures – John (Ch. 4~Ch. 8》(Johann P. Lange) 04 Chapter 4

And yet I am not come from myself.—Καί is emphatic and adversative: And yet I am not come, etc. These words briefly designate His higher nature, which these adversaries do not know. An ordinary extraction elevates itself only by ambition, which comes from itself and has no higher descent at all; Christ Isaiah, in the first place, simply come, and in the second place not from Himself. This introduces the declaration of His descent from God.

But he that sent me is true.—The ἀληθινός is variously explained1. In the sense of ἀληθής, a true person, verus, one who speaks the truth (Luther, Grotius). 2. A reliable person, firmus, verax (Chrysostom, Lampe), John 8:26. 3. A real, genuine person, fulfilling the idea (Lücke, Tholuck, 7th ed.). 4. As used absolutely, for the true, essential God (Olshausen, Kling); against which Meyer observes that ἀληθινός, without a particular subject, forms no definite idea. But certainly we have a particular subject in ὁ πέμψας με. Still we stop with the idea of the real, the living One. The Jews, in their legalistic spirit, live only in symbols, figures, marks of distinction; the Jews of Jerusalem, doubly so: they have a typical, painted religion, painted sins, painted forgiveness, a painted nobility of lineage, a painted God. The real, living God, who has sent the real living Christ, they do not know.^[FN36]

John 7:29. But I know him.—Intensely significant contrast to their ignorance. Founded both on (1) real, ideal descent from Him, and on (2) formal, historical commission from Him.

John 7:30. Then they sought to seize him.—As the Jerusalemites previously named show themselves Judaists in the strictest sense, it is unnecessary here to think of Jews distinct from them. Because his hour had not yet come.—John gives the ultimate and highest reason why they could not take Him, passing over secondary causes, like fear of the people and political considerations.

John 7:31. And many of the people believed in him.—A mark of the increasing ferment in the people, working towards separation. This believing in Him undoubtedly means faith in the Messiah, not merely in a prophet or a messenger of God; yet we must distinguish between their faith and their timid confession. Hence the words: “When Christ cometh, will He do,” etc.—are to be taken not simply as referring to the doubt of the opposing party (Meyer), but as double-minded. Hence the mention of a “murmuring” further on. That the people regard the miracles as Messianic credentials, accords with the expectation of the Messiah.

John 7:32. The Pharisees heard.—Pharisees by themselves alone hear the sly murmuring of the people, which betrays an inclination to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They then get the chief priests to join with them in ordering the official arrest of Jesus. The officers who are sent to take Jesus are to be distinguished from the Jerusalemite Judaists before mentioned as wishing to take Him. Under a despotic system the absolutist party of the people are always in advance of the absolutist government: more royalist than the absolute king, more papist than the pope. There was no need of the Sanhedrin being just now assembled (as at the moment at which the chapter closes). An acting authority which could issue hierarchical warrants, was permanent in the chief priests; and the process for the healing at the pool of Bethesda was here still pending.

John 7:33. Jesus therefore said unto them, yet a little while, etc.—To whom? 1. Euthymius Zig.: To the officers2. Tholuck: To those Pharisees who gave the information3. Meyer: To the whole assembly, but with the chief priests mainly in view. As the officers at first enter the assembly of hearers clandestinely, waiting the proper moment to secure Jesus, and Jesus knows their design, He speaks these words primarily to them; for He fixes them, and they feel themselves hit; while the multitude take His words to themselves. The sentence has evidently a more special and a more general sense. The words: “Yet a little while I am with you,”—uttered with majestic emphasis, mean primarily to the officers: Ye must let Me freely speak a little longer here! (see Luke 13:32-33); and then also to the assembly: My work among you draws to a close. The words “And then I go to Him that sent Me,” mean primarily: I then withdraw into the protection of a mightier One, who has sent Me in a power different from that in which ye are sent; in the more general sense: I go home to God. The words “Ye will seek Me, and not find Me” ( John 7:24), were likewise capable of a special and a general interpretation, but in all these cases the two meanings lay in the same line, so that the more general included the special. This explains the conduct of the officers, and their expression, in John 7:46.

I go unto him that sent me.—According to Paulus and Meyer this would be an addition of John’s because according to John 7:35 Jesus could not have said definitely whither He was going. But His first expression was made enigmatical to the Jews by the second. To go to God does not necessarily mean to them to die; still less, more definitely, to go to heaven. The Christian heaven of the blessed is first disclosed by the parting discourses of Christ and His ascension. It would have been most natural to them to think of the paradise in Sheol. But if they did suspect this, they did not dwell upon it, because they could not themselves renounce the hope of going into Abraham’s bosom. And hence perhaps the remote evasive conjecture: “Will He go … among the Greeks,” etc. This explanation is confirmed by John 8:22, where the evasion is still more malicious than here. The expression of Christ, therefore, is a dark hint of an unknown ποῦ (Lücke), the import of which they might feel, but not understand (Luthardt).

John 7:34. Ye will seek me, and not End (me).—Comp. John 8:21; John 13:33. Interpretations:

1. A hostile seeking (Origen, Grotius, etc.) This applies only in the immediate reference of the words to the officers.

2. A seeking of the Redeemer for redemption, too late. Two sorts of turning to Him: (a) After the terminus peremptorius gratiæ (Augustine, et al.); which, however, can be known in fact only by the cessation of that seeking, (b) With a false, Esau-like repentance, which only trembles before the damnum peccati (Calvin).

3. A seeking for the saving Messiah, whom in My person ye have rejected, especially in the catastrophe of Jerusalem [ Luke 20:16 ff; Luke 19:43] (Chrysostom, Lampe [Hengstenberg] etc.).

4. “And that, Himself, the rejected Jesus, not the Messiah in general.” Meyer.^[FN37]

Jesus, however, is found of those who seek. When it is said; “Seek, and ye shall find,” it is implied that seeking without finding proves a vitium in the seeking; though we cannot, with Maldonatus and others, consider the seeking to be placed here merely for an aggravation of the not finding, as if the Lord would say, by a Hebraism: Ye shall be utterly unable to find Me, Psalm 10:15; Psalm 37:10; Isaiah 41:12. The mere inability to find itself points back to a kind of seeking; and seeking is the emphatic thing in John 8:21; John 13:33; but a false seeking, in which Israel has continued through all the centuries since. Of the mass the word is spoken, and to the mass Jesus speaks; individuals, therefore, who turned, even though in a mass, to Jesus after the destruction of Jerusalem, are exceptions, and do not here come into view. That mass of the Jews has incessantly sought its delivering Messiah, but (1) in another person, (2) in a secular majesty, (3) in the spirit of legal religion, and (4) with earthly, political, revolutionary prospects.

And where I am.—“To explain the present εἰμί, metaphysically, like Augustine: Nec dicit, ubi ero, sed ubi sum; semper enim erat, quo fuerat rediturus ( John 3:13),—there is no reason; like ὑπάγω, it is the present of vivid representation.” Tholuck. The thought that His heaven is not merely local, but also inward, and that He therefore is always at His goal, is not entirely out of sight, though undoubtedly His estate of glory is chiefly in view.

John 7:35. The Jews therefore said among themselves.—The mocking malice of their reply (in vain questioned by Meyer) rises in a climax of three clauses: 1. Whither will He go, that we might not follow Him? (into Paradise?) 2. Will He seek His fortune among the Jewish dispersion among the Gentiles, with the less orthodox, less respectable and intelligent Jews? 3. Or will He even teach the Greeks (to whom, indeed, judging from His conduct towards the law and His liberal utterance, He seems rather to belong than to us)? But what they say in mockery, must fulfil itself in truth; they prophesy like Caiaphas ( John 11:50-51) and Pilate ( John 19:19).—Unto the dispersed among the Greeks.—The διασπορὰ (dispersion, abstract, pro concret.) τῶνἙλλήνων (genitive of remoter relation), not the dispersed Gentiles (Chrysostom), or Hellenists or Greek Jews (Scaliger), but, according to specific usage ( James 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1), the Jews dispersed in the Gentile world.

John 7:36. What is this saying that he said?—Indicating that they cannot get away from this saying. They seem to feel the dark, fearful mystery in the words, but are inclined to persuade themselves that it is sheer nonsense.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See the preceding exegesis.

2. The whispering concerning Jesus from fear of the Jews is a type of the whole spirit of hierarchy in the Church, and absolutism in the State, with its tyranny over opinion and conscience, its censorship, heresy-hunting, and inquisition; and an example of the fact that under such systems the enemies of the truth always venture to speak rather more boldly than its friends.

3. The appearance of Jesus at the first feast of the Jews (the passover of781) was a reformation of it. His appearance at the second (Purim of782) was a completing of it. His appearance at the third (the feast of tabernacles of782) was a contrast or counterpart to it. (Even His being sent to the people and His going forth to the Father seem to allude to the sending of Moses to their fathers and the pilgrimage of those fathers through the wilderness to Canaan, which they were celebrating.) His appearance at the fourth (feast of the dedication, 782) is the following up of this contrast. His appearance at the last passover (783) was the fulfilling of the typical feast of the passover with the reality, the abolition of it thereby.

4. The two reproaches which the Jews cast upon the Lord, and His answers, in their permanent import. The reproach of Rabbinism that He was not regularly educated, and His answer that He was not self-taught, but taught of God. The reproach of the court aristocracy that He was of mean birth, and His appeal to the fact that His person and His mission are a mystery of heavenly descent; carrying with it the intimation that, as the Messenger of God, He bears the dignity of God Himself.

5. The test of true doctrine, of the true course of study in order to come to the knowledge of the truth, and of the true capacity to judge of doctrine, John 7:16-18. Tradition and originality. The tracing of the wisdom of Christ to the schools of the Essenes or other educational institutions, is also a soulless Rabbinism, which is perfectly blinded to the original resources of His mind.

6. The public appearance of Christ and the unveiling of the secret designs of His hierarchical adversaries before the people, a parallel to His turning to the people in Galilee ( Matthew 15:10), a permanent type and a spiritual rule, followed in appeals from the pope to a general council, from the general council under trammels to the Christian people; and yet especially different from all democratic solicitation of the people, Christ treats the laity as accomplices of the hierarchy. The mental indolence of the former supports the mental tyranny of the latter.

7. Heubner: “How is it possible that after so strong and plain a declaration of Jesus, men should continually persist in thrusting human means of education upon Him, as Ammon, for example, does (Fortbildung des Christenthums zur Weltreligion, I. p220). Comp. Storr’s explanation in Flatt’s Magazin, I. p107 sqq.; IV. p220; Süsskind: In welchem Sinn hat Jesus die Göttlichkeit seiner Lehre behauptet? p25–47; Weber’s Programme: Interpretatio judicii, quod Jesus John 7:14-18 de sua ipsius doctrina tulisse legitur, Wittenb, 1797.”

8. Circumcision as healing; or, the symbolical ordinances in Israel founded on real conditions of life at the time. Gradation of ordinances. Jewish fundamental articles. A hint of the eternal fundamental laws of religious and moral life.

9. Earthly, historical descent and heavenly, personal originality. Contrast of a polite world lost in symbolical mummery, usage, conventionalism, titles, and privileges, and a real, personal life coming from God and standing in God’s word and Spirit, John 7:27; John 7:29.

10. The Jews of Jerusalem sought to take Jesus,—the ultra-hierarchical and ultra-imperial party, which always in its fanatical zeal outdoes the hierarchical and absolutist government.

11. The various Christological systems of the Jews in this chapter ( John 7:15; John 7:27; John 7:42), a type of the deep and confused divisions of opinion under an apparently uniting constitution.

12. The officers and their arrest by the word of Jesus, a single point in the line of Christ’s ethico-psychological miracles. See John 2. Discussion of the miracles.

13. The expression of Christ concerning His going to Him that sent Him, the first gleam of the Christian doctrine of heaven.

14. Ye will seek Me and will not find Me. A great prophecy of Christ respecting the tragic retribution of the Jewish people. Seek and not find. To seek salvation and not find it, is the lot of a world lost in vanity; to seek and not find the Messiah, the lot of wretched Israel sunk in the vanity of the letter and of chiliastic worldliness. An ultimate rectification of the false seeking into the true seeking and finding, is not forbidden. See Rom. chs 9,11.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See the previous heads.

Even in the Lord’s wise distinction between His brethren’s legal observance of the feast and His own voluntary appearance at the feast (as the personal truth of the feast), no guile is found in His mouth, 1 Peter 2:22.—The wonderful wisdom with which Christ prolonged His life more than a year (from the feast of Purim in John 5) after it had fallen under the deadly hostility of the Jews.—The ferment of popular opinion concerning the Lord in Jerusalem, a token of the approaching separation between His friends and enemies.—Fear of the Jews, or of the despotism of the letter an ancient and modern hindrance to faith and knowledge.—The gospel’s victorious piercing of the old Jewish hierarchy, a presage of its ever fresh piercing of all hierarchical incrustations.—The fear of man in the adherents of Jesus, over against the fearlessness in Himself.—The example of Jesus in relying on the utmost publicity against the secret plottings of a wicked party spirit.—In the midst of the feast, in the midst of the temple, the Lord appears—appears yet for a long while, though both seem already fallen into the possession of His enemies.—The lion-like spirit of the Lord, in which He seeks His lion enemy in His den: 1. Proved (a) by this incident; (b) by His previous going into the wilderness; (c) by His subsequent surrender to the judgment of the high council2. Again proved in the life of His apostles and in the course of the Church (the apostles in Jerusalem, Peter in Babylon, Paul in Rome, missions to the heathen).—The wisdom of the Lord in bringing before the people the secret design of the Jewish court to kill Him.—The offence of Jewish pride at the Lord’s call to teach: 1. The phases of it; (a) Rabbinical offence at His want of a Rabbinical education; (b) Offence of metropolitan people at His obscure birth2. Its self-contradiction in its expression: (a) He knows letters; (b) He speaks boldly, though they seek to kill Him3. Christ’s declaration in the face of it; (a) As to His school and His doctrine; (b) As to His origin.—The alliance of ecclesiastical and secular party spirit against the Lord.^[FN38]—The fanaticism of the hierarchical party, always in excess of the fanaticism of the hierarchical authorities.—The words of Jesus concerning the heavenly tradition of His doctrine1. It, is not a word of man (of human invention), but a message of God, of eternal and heavenly origin2. It attests itself by the fact that whosoever desires to do the will of God must find in this doctrine the goal of his effort3. It attests the Lord who teaches it, by its looking solely to the glorifying of God, and thereby proving the freedom of Jesus from human ambition and human self-deception.—If any man will do His will, etc.; or: Christ the goal of all really sincere, devout striving.—Sincerity of will, the first and last condition of true knowledge.—The mark of a genuine witness of God, John 7:18.—The true purity of doctrine dependent on the purity of the mind in its endeavors; or, the word of truth dependent on the truth of the word.—Why go ye about to kill Me? So Christ ever turns His defence into attack.—How He unveils to the people the fearful thought of murder against the Messiah, which is germinating in them while yet they themselves think not of it.—“Thou hast a devil (demon);” so unbelief has at all times represented the Lord’s stern, cutting insight into human corruption as a morbid, melancholy conceit of His own mind.—They charge Him now with bright heedlessness, now with gloomy, demoniacal despondency or madness, because they understand not His holy mind.—Jesus often taken for crazy.—How far are the words of Jesus in John 7:21 an answer to the charge in John 7:20? They had taken offence at His work; that is the beginning of the hatred of Christ, which afterwards developed into the murder of Christ.—Christ’s vindication of His healing on the Sabbath by appeal to the circumcision which was lawful on the Sabbath.—They condemned themselves in their judgment of Jesus: 1. They vexed themselves over one work of the Lord on the Sabbath, while in circumcision they continually performed works on the Sabbath2. They broke the Sabbath for the sake of a slight necessity, while they charged the Lord’s healing of a whole sufferer as a transgression.—Law contends with law, knowledge with knowledge, letter with letter, when they are not interpreted and reconciled by the Spirit.—Christ, like Paul, overpowered the Jews with their own weapons, with their own art of Rabbinical logic.—Why Jesus did not openly reveal to the people who were troubled over His descent, the mystery of His miraculous human birth and His eternal divine nature.—How He represents the law of circumcision as a law of healing.—How He discloses as the kernel of it, a law of love, of mercy, of liberty.—“Judge not according to appearance;” or, judging according to the letter a judging according to exterior looks.—The proud contempt with which the people of quality in Jerusalem express themselves respecting the Lord, in its spiritual imbecility: (1) More fanatical than the Jewish authorities; (2) more ignorant in regard to Christ’s descent than the people; (3) wholly incapable of appreciating His spiritual greatness.—The mocking wit of the polite adversaries of the Lord in union with gross ignorance.—The testimony of Christ concerning His heavenly origin hardens the proud.—The divine origin of the doctrine of Christ in its connection with the divine origin of His being.—How imagined greatness is embittered and enraged before the evidences of true greatness.—They sought to take Him: but no Prayer of Manasseh, etc.—Impotence of the adversary against the Lord: 1. His impotence in the most diverse designs (they sought to take Him themselves, they sought to take Him through instruments). 2. Its impotence in the presence of true power: (a) of the faithful adherents of Christ; (b) of the Lord Himself; (c) of the overruling of God (His hour not yet come). 3. His impotence fully displayed just when His hour is come, when it seems almighty.—With the enmity of unbelief ripens also the heroism of faith, John 7:30-31.—The first decided attempt of the Jewish rulers upon the life of the Lord, brought on by the whispering of the people that He was the Christ.—This first attempt at the feast of tabernacles in the autumn related to the last attempt at the passover of the next year. The exalted words of Christ to the people, addressed to the servants of the chief priests in particular, John 7:33–35:1. An expression of His security in the full presentiment of His insecurity2. The language of simplicity, and yet of double meaning3. To the Jews an occasion of mockery, and yet at the same time a momentous riddle.

Yet a little while am I with you ( John 7:33): the great importance of the little while: 1. The period of grace2. The year of grace3. The day of grace4. The hour of grace.—The death of the Lord and of His people, a voluntary going home.—Killed at last, and yet even thereby escaped from His murderers.—How the Jews cannot get away from the word of Jesus: “Ye shall seek Me,” etc.—The divergent paths which separate the Lord from His despisers: 1. The path upward2. The path downward.—Christ perfectly inaccessible to His adversaries: 1. They seek Him and do not find Him2. They find Him, and bind Him, and have Him not3. They nail Him up, and bury Him, and seal the stone, and keep Him not.— Acts 26:7. The tragical hope of Israel for the Messiah: 1. How noble in its truth2. How vain in its perversion3. How prophetic in spite of its delusion.

Starke: God knows the true and better time to appear and help.—That neither He nor His apostles were instructed by men, shows the heavenly origin of His doctrine.—Cramer: In Christ are hidden all treasures of wisdom; but we must go the ordinary way, go to school, study, ask, etc., that we also may be wise.—His that sent me: 1. Because it [His doctrine] contains the whole counsel and pleasure of the Father, John 6:39-40. 2. Because it was in substance one with Moses and the prophets, through whom the Father had spoken, Hebrews 1:1. 3. Because Christ was filled with the Spirit of the Father, John 17:8. 4. Because His doctrine aimed at the glory of the Father.—Zeisius: The test of orthodox and righteous teachers: 1. Their being able to say with Christ in some measure and truth: My doctrine is not mine, but, etc.; taking their doctrine not from their own reason, but from the holy, revealed word of God2. Their seeking therein not their own glory, but the glory of God and of Christ, and directing everything towards this purpose of glorifying the name of God. Hearers also are bound on their part to obey them, on peril of their salvation.—If any man will, etc. As much as to say: I appeal to the experience of all the devout.—Majus: He who uses not the word of God with the true purpose of learning and doing it, will not be sure of its divinity.—In divine and spiritual things we must believe no one absolutely (blindly), but try every one’s doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether the man speak of himself.—Hedinger: Many are ever learning, and yet cannot come to the knowledge of the truth. Why? They hear much, and do it not.—Quesnel: A preacher must seek not his own glory, but only God’s.—Majus: He whose words and works aim only to honor God, is faithful and true, and worthy to be believed.—It is good to remind people of their evil deeds, and convince them of them: perchance some will lay it to heart and be converted, Mark 2:27.—Nova Bibl. Tab.: It is a sure mark of envy and malice, when a man censures in others, and condemns others for, what he does himself.—Ibid.: Whence come so many uncharitable, false judgments of our neighbor’s conduct? From our not seeing to the bottom of the heart, etc.—Zeisius: How can preconceived opinions but blind us, and prevent our true understanding of the Scriptures?—To the pretentious and fine-talking, who boast so much of their knowledge, we must show that they lack the best.—Ibid.: Satan with his tools cannot hurt a hair, without the will of God.—Quesnel: Simplicity and humility open the heart to divine truth, but pride and boastfulness close it.—When Christians are persecuted, openhearted confessors are commonly very few; men keep themselves so concealed, that the confession of Christ is rather a murmuring than a true confessing.—Shame, that in spiritual things carnal means are thought of, and the power of the Spirit is opposed by the arm of secular authority.—Hedinger: The season of grace lasts not forever: follow its drawing!—Canstein: It is but a little while that the pious are in the world; afterwards they will be forever separated from it by death. Therefore they can for the little time bear a little from the wicked world.—Quesnel: The death of believers is a return to their Father.—Majus: In heaven there is peace for all trouble and rest from all labor.—What the world says in mockery will often prove true to its hurt.

Von Gerlach: A sublime disposition would enable them to know divine things.—This is still the proper way to attain to the knowledge of the divine origin and matter of Christianity; to follow with the heart all traces of the divine, and thus with honest purpose to endeavor to do what God requires.—Jesus implicated the whole people, because Ho made all responsible for these purposes and acts of the rulers; without the consent of the people, the rulers, even afterwards, could not have put Jesus to death.—Penetrate to the spirit of my words, and contradictions resolve themselves!

Lisco: Obedience to Jesus leads to experience of the divine virtues of His doctrine and His gospel ( Romans 1:16), of which there are three, corresponding to the three principal faculties of the human spirit: power to enlighten (mind), to sanctify (will), to bless (heart). (From Pascal). Human things we must know in order to love (only conditionally true), divine we must love in order to know.—The Jews know indeed the true God, but they knew Him not as the true and real (they knew Him not truly in His true nature).—The lost opportunity of grace cannot be regained.—Braune: Therefore not the doing of the will of God, but even before that, the will to do the will of God, enables one to experience the truth of Christ’s assertion that His doctrine is of God. If thou only hast the will, art decided in thy wish, to do the will of God as thou know-est it from conscience, nature, education, Scripture,—this leaning of will and heart to the will of God gives (as a condition) the knowledge of the truth.—Ambition makes a man dull and unsusceptible to knowledge.

Gossner: Where is He? might one often ask in bustling church-solemnities, or in learned, flowery sermons. Where is He, the chief person?—There was much murmuring among the people concerning Him.—So Christ and His truth must be canvassed by perverse opinions. This is so to this day.—How men must avoid speaking evil of any other, but speak as much evil as possible of Jesus.—Christ comes forth at the right moment.—The world calls it learning and education, only when one has passed through many classes in a school; of another way of learning it knows nothing.—The doctrine of Jesus puts us already in heaven, and thereby evinces clearly and visibly enough its divine origin.—Those who would banish the Spirit from it, most sadly break the law and the form.

Heubner: Humanly speaking, Jesus was an uneducated Prayer of Manasseh, but He towers infinitely above all the educated.—If any man will, etc. Without religious need, without longing for God and salvation, no conviction of the truth of Christianity, no faith in Christ, is possible. To the conscience all proofs must appeal.—And it follows—which few think of—that this declaration of Jesus contains rebuke and condemnation of the strongest kind: He who cannot be convinced of the divinity of the doctrine of Jesus, etc., has no earnestness in regard to his salvation. The proposition of Christ is universal; here the universio logica holds.—Ambition is a betrayer of a calling not divine, of a self-commissioned prophet, Deuteronomy 18:15.—Thou hast a devil. How those who now so impudently clear themselves, soon after convict themselves of falsehood; for the people loudly demanded His death.—Wickedness, enmity, always judges according to appearances. Righteous judgment is only with the friends of God.—All religion is indifferentism, when men govern themselves in it by the authority of rulers; this is contrary to the principle of Protestantism.—But I know Him. The heart of the believer is an inaccessible sanctuary, from which the world cannot tear out the consciousness of salvation.—Schleiermacher: Having never learned. Literally taken, this is certainly false; for from the beginning of our Lord’s life the history informs us that He increased in Wisdom of Solomon, which means that He learned. They think there were at that time particular institutions, etc. In such a school the Lord had not learned.—We also can make a distinction between what is brought into our souls by others and developed from their own power, and what in them is the gift of the Spirit of God.—Unless man hears the voice of the divine will, he cannot know whether the doctrine of Christ is of God or not.—There is no more dangerous enemy of the true welfare of Prayer of Manasseh, of the pure salvation which we have in Christ, than spiritual pride.