About this book.
'It is one of the problems of the New Testament that, although there seem to be many illusions to the Eucharist
inktte Fourth Gospel, there is no account of the Institution. This could well be due tot the fact that the Evangelist was writing from a Church in which there was some danger of cultic superstition. Yet what he writes not only
corrects misunderstanding but illumines Christian worship, and may well spring from services of the Word held towards the end of the first century in some Church of Asia Minor.
These studies seek to expound chapters 13-21 of St. John's Gospel as a liturgy, from the preparation in the
foot-washing to post-communion. Chapter 17 is treated as the Prayer of Consecration, while the Passion and
Resurrection narratives tell of the finished work which in Christian worship we proclaim. The over-riding theme of the whole is the union with the Father through Christ which the Lord's departure from the world through the lif-
thing up on the Cross made possible. The book is written out of a conviction that historical criticism is no enemy to devotion, and that its most rigorous and searching application to the Fourth Gospel, though it may bring its discomforts, leads us to that love which is the very ground of the universe and to an understanding of that unity which is no political merging of separate Churches but our oneness with the Father through the Son.

Gordon S. Wakefield, a Methodist minster, is Principal of the ecumenical Queen's College, Birmingham, and the editor of the SCM Press 'A Dictionary of Christian Spirituality'.