IT is admitted by many thinkers and writers on religion that the Fourth Gospel makes a deeper appeal to the sincere Truth-seeker than any other part of the New Testament. After an unbiased student has read with care the preamble contained in the first eighteen verses of this Gospel and grasps their profound spiritual import, he becomes more and more assured that he is face to face, as it were, with an eyewitness of the events recorded by John up to that wondrous "morning meal" portrayed in the twenty-first chapter, and spiritually interpreted by Mrs. Eddy on pages 34 and 35 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
Someone has said of the Apostle John that "at one bound, the heart of John reached the radiant height on which faith has its throne." More than this, however, we find distinct evidence in his Gospel that he discerned clearly the inevitable conflict between Truth and error, between Spirit and flesh, and chronicled in no uncertain terms the widening separation between the advocates of material means and methods, religious and physical, and the purely spiritual teaching of Christ Jesus. In studying the Fourth Gospel, Christian Scientists find that the greater the demonstrations of the Master, up to the raising of Lazarus, the more urgent the determination to destroy him and his work.
Here it may be said that a close study of the Fourth Gospel does not lessen for the student the value of the other Gospels, but rather enhances it; yet John's record is unique, in that it presents less of material detail and gives the priceless discourses which prove their divine inspiration by spiritualizing the Truth-seeker's thought and desire.
