John 21:24-25 This is the disciple which testifies of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.… When I see how much has been written of those who have lived; how the Greeks preserved every saying of Plato's; how Boswell followed Johnson, gathering up every leaf that fell from that rugged old oak, and pasting it away, I almost regret that one of the disciples had not been a recording angel, to preserve the odour and richness of every word of Christ. When John says, "And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written," it affects me more profoundly than when I think of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, or the perishing of Grecian art in Athens or Byzantium. The creations of Phidias were cold stone, overlaid by warm thought; but Christ described His own creations when He said, "The words that I speak unto you, they are life." The leaving out of these things from the New Testament, though divinely wise, seems, to my yearning, not so much the unaccomplishment of noble things, as the destruction of great treasures, which had already had oral life, but failed of incarnation in literature. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. |
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