Footnotes
[1.]Cf. the admirable note in Archdeacon Watkins' “Commentary on John.”[2.]By the absence of the article in the Greek.[3.]The opposite is asserted by the fact that one demon may ally himself with seven others worse.[4.]The connection would be almost certain if the word “devil” were alike in both. But in all these narratives it is “demon,” there being in Scripture but one devil.[5.]The exceptions in the Revelation are only apparent. St. John does not call Jesus the Son of man (i. 13), nor see Him, but only the type of Him, standing (v. 6).[6.]And this proves beyond question that He did not merely follow Ezekiel in applying to himself the epithet as if it meant a son among many sons of men, but took the description in Daniel for His own. Ezekiel himself indeed never employs the phrase: he only records it.[7.]Lange. Life of Christ, li. p. 179.[8.]It is also very natural that, in telling the story, he should remember how, while hesitating to enter, he “stooped down” to gaze, in the wild dawn of his new hope.[9.]“Theology would have been spared much trouble concerning this passage, and anxious timid souls unspeakable anguish, if men had adhered strictly to Christ's own expression. For it is not a sin against the Holy Ghost which is here spoken of, but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.”—Lange “Life of Christ,” vol. ii. p. 269.[10.]Unless indeed the meaning be rather, “ever hearing the word,” which is not its force in the New Testament (Matt. xviii. 17, twice).[11.]Once besides in the New Testament this phrase was applied to death. That was by St. Peter speaking of his own, when the thought of the transfiguration was floating in his mind, and its voices lingered unconsciously in his memory (2 Pet. i. 15, cf. ver. 17). The phrase, though not unclassical, is not common.[12.]That the event was recent is implied in the present tense: “he followeth not”: “forbid him not”; the matter is still fresh.[13.] “By the fire the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of death.”—In Memoriam, xx.[14.]The ingenious and plausible attempt to show that His death was caused by a physical rupture of the heart has one fatal weakness. Death came too late for this; the severest pressure was already relieved.[15.]I.e. in the New Testament, where it occurs but once besides.[16.]Can anything surpass that masterstroke of insight and descriptive power, “they still disbelieved for joy” (Luke xxiv. 41).