“When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.”  So John describes the first meeting of Jesus with the disciples after His resurrection.  He gives hints of some things of which other Evangelists are silent.  With emphasis he notes “that day” as the day of days whose rising sun revealed resurrection glory.  That “evening” must have recalled the last one on which they had been together.  Then the Lord had said unto them, “Peace I leave with you.”  But the benediction had seemed almost a mockery, because of the sorrow which followed.  But now it was repeated with a renewed assurance of His power to bestow it.  Through fear of the Jews they had closed the doors of probably the same Upper Room where they had been assembled before.  These doors were no barrier to His entry, any more than the stone to His leaving His tomb.

[Illustration:  ST. PETER AND ST. JOHN AT THE BEAUTIFUL GATE
              Old Engraving Page 225]

As John alone preserved the incident of the pierced side, he alone tells how Jesus “showed unto them His ... side,” and said to Thomas, at the next meeting, “Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side;” and how this was followed by Thomas’ believing exclamation, “My Lord, and my God.”  With this and the Lord’s beatitude for other believing ones, John originally ended his story of the Lord, in these words,—­“Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of His disciples which are not written in this book:  but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in His name.”

CHAPTER XXIX

“What Shall This Man Do_?”

     “Jesus manifested Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of
     Tiberias.”—­John xxi. 1.

     “There were together Simon Peter ... and the sons of
     Zebedee.”—­v. 2.

     “Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved
     following.”—­v. 20.

     “Peter ... saith to Jesus, Lord, and What shall this man do?”—­v.
     21.

The twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel is without doubt an addition, written some time after the original Gospel was finished.  Why this addition?  To answer the question we must recall the things of which the addition tells.  They are of special interest in our studies of Peter and John.

In our last chapter we were with John in Jerusalem.  From there he carries us to the Sea of Tiberias.  He tells us that he and his brother James, and Peter, with four others, “were there together.”  They were near their childhood home, where they had watched for the Messiah, and where, when He had appeared He called them to leave their fishing employment, and to become fishers of men.  They had been saddened