And many resorted unto him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true.
And many resorted unto him - on whom the Baptist's ministry appears to have left permanent impressions,
And said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true - what they now heard and saw in Jesus only confirming in their minds the divinity of His forerunner's mission, a mission unaccompanied by any of His Master's miracles. And thus, "many believed on Him there."
Remark: Since the malignity of His enemies increases, the benignity and grace with which Jesus addresses Himself to His own seem to grow also; as if the sharp drawing off of the one party made Him cling all the more to the other, drew out to them the more of His loving heart, and encouraged a fuller exhibition of the purposes and plans of saving mercy. In proportion, too, as His scornful adversaries seemed bent on depreciating Him, does He Himself seem to rise in the assertion of His own divine dignity and authority. Thus, after the virulent enmity to Him manifested in the scenes of the former chapter, how lovely is the whole discourse on the Shepherd and the sheep, extending over the first eighteen verses of this chapter! And where shall we find a livelier expression of the relation which Christ sustains both to men and to God, as the only way of access and entrance for the one and to the Other; of the absolute voluntariness and saving virtue of His death, as the secret of that self-exerting power in the exercise of which He resumed the life which He had of Himself laid down; of the sustenance which He provides for the continuance of the life He imparts, the pasture of His saved sheep; of the Father's love to Him for freely doing all this; and of the mutual knowledge of Himself and His sheep, as bearing no faint resemblance to that of Himself and the Father? But in the discourse at the Feast of Dedication, we find Him rising if possible, yet higher; speaking of the security that the sheep have, for that eternal life which in the exercise of His royal authority He gives them, in the impossibility of plucking them out of His hand: and lest this should seem to His audience small security, considering how little different from other men He outwardly appeared, He adds that His Father, at least, who gave His sheep to Him, would be admitted even by themselves to be greater than all; and as none could pluck them out of His hand, that was all the same as inability to pluck them out of His own hand, for He and the Father were one. This seemed too much, and accordingly they took up stones to stone Him as a blasphemer. But though He addressed to them an argument fitted to soothe and mollify them, He took care, lest it should take down His dignity in their eyes, to close it by reiterating in substance the very statement for which they had attempted to stone Him; and only by divinely eluding their grasp, and retiring to the further side of the Jordan, did they fail to seize before His time the Holy One of God!