Quotes by Alfred Noyes
Apart from the writings that bear his name (Revelation, the Gospel, and the three Epistles) there are few references to St. John in the New Testament, but, if we had to depend on these references alone, there is enough to give him one of the chief places in the history of Christendom.
The mother of John and James may have expressed herself in terms that sounded like earthly ambition, but it seems at least probable that the natural bonds of relationship might have induced something of that forgivable rivalry of affection.
At the end of Revelation there is again that solemn insistence on the personal testimony, and even more solemn warning to those who would impugn it.
St. Luke tells us that it was St. John who was sent, with St. Peter, to make ready the guest chamber for the Last Supper.
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.
Of the sayings of Christ in the Synoptic Gospels that can be compared to those in the fourth Gospel, there are one or two which I venture to think can only have been recorded on the authority of St. John.
The co-existence of fiery passion and exquisite tenderness in a single character is a fact of human nature which did not escape the observation of Shakespeare, its profoundest secular student.
St. Luke again associates St. John with St. Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, when, after the Resurrection, that strange boldness had come upon the disciples.
At a certain stage in his evolution, man himself had been able to lay hold upon a higher order of things, which raised him above the level of the beasts that perish, and enabled him to see, at least in the distance, the shining towers of the City of God.
To St. John the Word of God is not the Logos of the Greeks nor the Memra of the Hebrews, but true man, in whom God had become articulate.
The first Epistle of St. John is a letter from an old man, solemnly attesting that which he had seen and touched and handled.
