Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John

PART II.

Chapter 440,062 wordsPublic domain

SOME GENERAL RULES FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN.

I. SUBJECT MATTER.

(1) The _Epistle_ is to be read through with constant reference to the _Gospel_. In what _precise form_ the former is related to the latter (whether as a preface or as an appendix, as a spiritual commentary or an encyclical) critics may decide. But there is a vital and constant connection. The two documents not only touch each other in thought, but _interpenetrate_ each other; and the Epistle is constantly _suggesting_ questions which the Gospel only can answer, _e.g._, 1 John i. 1, cf. John i. 1-14; 1 John v. 9, "witness of men," cf. John i. 15-36, 41, 45, 49, iii. 2, 27-36, iv. 29-42, vi. 68, 69, vii. 46, ix. 38, xi. 27, xviii. 38, xix. 5, 6, xx. 28.

(2) Such eloquence of _style_ as St. John possesses is _real_ rather than _verbal_. The interpreter must look not only at the words themselves, but at that which _precedes_ and _follows_; above all he must fix his attention not only upon the _verbal expression_ of the thought, but upon the _thought itself_. For the formal connecting link is not rarely omitted, and must be supplied by the devout and candid diligence of the reader. The "root below the stream" can only be traced by our bending over the water until it becomes translucent to us.

_E.g._ 1 John i. 7, 8. Ver. 7, "the root below the stream" is a question of this kind, which naturally arises from reading ver. 6--"must it be said that the sons of light need a constant cleansing by the blood of Jesus, which implies a constant guilt"? Some such thought is the latent root of connection. The answer is supplied by the following verse. ["It is so" for] "if we say that we have no sin," etc. Cf. also iii. 16, 17, xiv. 8, 9, 10, 11, v. 3 (ad. fin.), 4.

II. LANGUAGE.

1. _Tenses._

In the New Testament generally tenses are employed very much in the same sense, and with the same general accuracy, as in other Greek authors. The so-called "enallage temporum," or perpetual and convenient Hebraism, has been proved by the greatest Hebrew scholars to be no Hebraism at all. But it is one of the simple secrets of St. John's quiet thoughtful power, that he uses tenses with the most rigorous precision.

(_a_) The _Present_ of continuing uninterrupted action, _e.g._, i. 8, ii. 6, iii. 7, 8, 9.

Hence the so-called _substantized_ participle with article ὁ has in St. John the sense of the continuous and constitutive temper and conduct of any man, the principle of his moral and spiritual life--_e.g._, ὁ λεγων, he who is ever vaunting, ii. 4; πας ὁ μισων, every one the abiding principle of whose life is hatred, iii. 15; πας ὁ αγαπων, every one the abiding principle of whose life is love, iv. 7.

The Infin. Present is generally used to express an action now in course of performing or _continued_ in itself or in its results, or _frequently repeated--e.g._, 1 John ii. 6, iii. 8, 9, v. 18. (Winer, _Gr. of N. T. Diction_, Part 3, xliv., 348).

(_b_) The _Aorist_.

This tense is generally used either of a thing occurring only once, which does not admit, or at least does not require, the notion of continuance and perpetuity; or of something which is brief and as it were only momentary in duration (Stallbaum, _Plat. Enthyd._, p. 140). This limitation or isolation of the predicated action is most accurately indicated by the usual form of this tense in Greek. The aorist verb is encased between the augment ε- past time, and the adjunct σ- future time, _i.e._, the act is fixed on within certain limits of previous and consequent time (Donaldson, _Gr. Gr._, 427, B. 2). The aorist is used with most significant accuracy in the Epistle of St. John, _e.g._, ii. 6, 11, 27, iv. 10, v. 18.

(_c_) The _Perfect_.

The Perfect denotes action absolutely past which lasts on in its effects. "The idea of completeness conveyed by the aorist must be distinguished from that of a state consequent on an act, which is the meaning of the perfect" (Donaldson, _Gr. Gr._, 419). Careful observation of this principle is the key to some of the chief difficulties of the Epistle (iii. 9, v. 4, 18).

(2) The form of _accessional parallelism_ is to be carefully noticed. The second member is always in advance of the first; and a third is occasionally introduced in advance of the second, denoting the highest point to which the thought is thrown up by the tide of thought, _e.g._, 1 John ii. 4, 5, 6, v. 11, v. 27.

(3) The _preparatory touch_ upon the chord which announces a theme to be amplified afterwards,--_e.g._, ii. 29, iii. 9--iv. 7, v. 3, 4; iii. 21--v. 14, ii. 20, iii. 24, iv. 3, v. 6, 8, ii. 13, 14, iv. 4--v. 4, 5.

(4) One secret of St. John's simple and solemn rhetoric consists in an _impressive change_ in the order in which a leading word is used, _e.g._, 1 John ii. 24, iv. 20.

These principles carefully applied will be the best commentary upon the letter of the Apostle, to whom not only when his subject is--

"De Deo Deum verum Alpha et Omega, Patrem rerum";

but when he unfolds the principles of our spiritual life, we may apply Adam of St. Victor's powerful and untranslatable line,

"Solers scribit idiota."

SECTION I.

GREEK TEXT. LATIN.

Ὁ ἩΝ απ' αρχης, ὁ Quod fuit ab initio, ακηκοαμεν, ὁ ἑωρακαμεν quod audivimus, et τοις οφθαλμοις ἡμων, vidimus oculis nostris, ὁ εθεασαμεθα, και αι quod perspeximus, et χειρες ἡμων εψηλαφησαν manus nostræ temtaverunt, περι του λογου της ζωης· de Verbo vitæ; και ἡ ζωη εφανερωθη, et vita manifestata και ἑωρακαμεν, και est, et vidimus et testamur, μαρτυρουμεν, και απαγγελλομεν et adnuntiamus ὑμιν την vobis vitam æternam, ζωην την αιωνιον, ἡτις quæ erat apud Patrem, ην προς τον πατερα, et apparuit nobis: quod και εφανερωθη ἡμιν· vidimus et audivimus, ὁ ἑωρακαμεν και ακηκοαμεν, et adnuntiamus vobis, απαγγελλομεν ut et vos societatem ὑμιν, ἱνα και ὑμεις habeatis nobiscum, et κοινωνιαν εχητε μεθ' societas nostra sit cum ἡμων· και ἡ κοινωνια Patre, et Filio eius Iesu δε ἡ ἡμετερα μετα του Christo. Et hæc scripsimus πατρος και μετα του vobis ut gaudium υιου αυτου Ιησου nostrum sit plenum. Χριστου· και ταυτα γραφομεν ὑμιν, ἱνα ἡ χαρα ὑμων ἡ πεπληρωμενη.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

That which was from That which was from the beginning, which the beginning, that we have heard, which which we have heard, we have seen with our that which we have eyes, which we have seen with our eyes, looked upon, and our that which we beheld, hands have handled, and our hands handled, of the Word of Life; concerning the Word (for the life was of life (and the life was manifested, and we manifested, and we have seen _it_, and bear have seen, and bear witness, and show unto witness, and declare you that eternal life, unto you the life, the which was with the eternal _life_, which was Father, and was manifested with the Father, and unto us;) that was manifested unto which we have seen us); that which we and heard declare we have seen and heard unto you, that ye declare we unto you also may have fellowship also, that ye also may with us: and truly have fellowship with our fellowship _is_ with us: yea, and our fellowship the Father, and with is with the his Son Jesus Christ. Father, and with his And these things write Son Jesus Christ: and we unto you, that your these things we write, joy may be full. that our joy may be fulfilled.

ANOTHER RENDERING.

That which was ever from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we gazed upon, and our hands handled--_I speak_ concerning the Word who is the Life--and the Life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal _life_, as being that which was ever with the Father, and was manifested unto us: that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and that fellowship, which is our _fellowship_, is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be fulfilled.

DISCOURSE I.

_ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL._

"Of the Word of Life."--1 JOHN i. 1.

In the opening verses of this Epistle we have a sentence whose ample and prolonged prelude has but one parallel in St. John's writings.[132] It is, as an old divine says, "prefaced and brought in with more magnificent ceremony than any passage in Scripture."

The very emotion and enthusiasm with which it is written, and the sublimity of the exordium as a whole, tends to make the highest sense also the most natural sense. Of what or of whom does St. John speak in the phrase "concerning the Word of Life," or "the Word who is the Life"? The neuter "that which" is used for the masculine--"He who"--according to St. John's practice of employing the neuter comprehensively when a collective whole is to be expressed. The phrase "from the beginning," taken by itself, might no doubt be employed to signify the beginning of Christianity, or of the ministry of Christ. But even viewing it as entirely isolated from its context of language and circumstance, it has a greater claim to be looked upon as _from eternity_ or _from the beginning of the creation_. Other considerations are decisive in favour of the last interpretation.

(1) We have already adverted to the lofty and transcendental tone of the whole passage, elevating as it does each clause by the irresistible upward tendency of the whole sentence. The climax and resting place cannot stop short of the bosom of God. (2) But again, we must also bear in mind that the Epistle is everywhere to be read with the Gospel before us, and the language of the Epistle to be connected with that of the Gospel. The proœmium of the Epistle is the subjective version of the objective historical point of view which we find at the close of the preface to the Gospel. "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us;" so St. John begins his sentence in the Gospel with a statement of an historical fact. But he proceeds, "and we delightedly beheld His glory;" that is a statement of the personal impression attested by his own consciousness and that of other witnesses. But let us note carefully that in the Epistle, which is in subjective relation to the Gospel, this process is exactly reversed. The Apostle begins with the personal impression; pauses to affirm the reality of the many proofs in the realm of fact of that which produced this impression through the senses upon the conceptions and emotions of those who were brought into contact with the Saviour; and then returns to the subjective impression from which he had originally started. (3) Much of the language in this passage is inconsistent with our understanding by the Word the first announcement of the Gospel preaching. One might of course speak of hearing the commencement of the Gospel message, due surely not of seeing and handling it. (4) It is a noteworthy fact that the Gospel and the Apocalypse begin with the mention of the personal Word. This may well lead us to expect that Logos should be used in the same sense in the proœmium of the great Epistle by the same author.

We conclude then that when St. John here speaks of the Word of Life, he refers to something higher again than the preaching of life, and that he has in view both the manifestation of the life which has taken place in our humanity, and Him who is personally at once the Word and the Life.[133] The proœmium may be thus paraphrased. "That which in all its collective influence was from the beginning as understood by Moses, by Solomon, and Micah;[134] which we have first and above all heard in divinely human utterances, but which we have also seen with these very eyes; which we gazed upon with the full and entranced sight that delights in the object contemplated;[135] and which these hands handled reverentially at His bidding.[136] I speak all this concerning the Word who is also the Life."

Tracts and sheets are often printed in our day with anthologies of texts which are supposed to contain the very essence of the Gospel. But the sweetest scents, it is said, are not distilled exclusively from flowers, for the flower is but an exhalation. The seeds, the leaf, the stem, the very bark should be macerated, because they contain the odoriferous substance in minute sacs. So the purest Christian doctrine is distilled, not only from a few exquisite flowers in a textual anthology, but from the whole substance, so to speak, of the message. Now it will be observed that at the beginning of the Epistle which accompanied the fourth Gospel, our attention is directed not to a sentiment, but to a fact and to a Person. In the collections of texts to which reference has been made, we should probably never find two brief passages which may not unjustly be considered to concentrate the essence of the scheme of salvation more nearly than any others. "The Word was made flesh." "Concerning the Word of Life (and that Life was once manifested, and we have seen and consequently are witnesses and announce to you from Him who sent us that Life, that eternal Life whose it is to have been in eternal relation with the Father, and manifested to us); That which we have seen and heard declare we from Him who sent us unto you, to the end that you too may have fellowship with us."

It would be disrespectful to the theologian of the New Testament to pass by the great dogmatic term never, so far as we are told, applied by our Lord to Himself, but with which St. John begins each of his three principal writings--THE WORD.[137]

Such mountains of erudition have been heaped over this term that it has become difficult to discover the buried thought. The Apostle adopted a word which was already in use in various quarters simply because if, from the nature of the case necessarily inadequate,[138] it was yet more suitable than any other. He also, as profound ancient thinkers conceived, looked into the depths of the human mind, into the first principles of that which is the chief distinction of man from the lower creation--language. The human word, these thinkers taught, is twofold; inner and outer--now as the manifestation to the mind itself of unuttered thought, now as a part of language uttered to others. The word as signifying unuttered thought, the mould in which it exists in the mind, illustrates the eternal relation of the Father to the Son. The word as signifying uttered thought illustrates the relation as conveyed to man by the Incarnation. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten God which is in the bosom of the Father He interpreted Him." For the theologian of the Church Jesus is thus the Word; because He had His being from the Father in a way which presents some analogy to the human word, which is sometimes the inner vesture, sometimes the outward utterance of thought--sometimes the human thought in that language without which man cannot think, sometimes the speech whereby the speaker interprets it to others. Christ is the Word Whom out of the fulness of His thought and being the Father has eternally inspoken and outspoken into personal existence.[139]

One too well knows that such teaching as this runs the risk of appearing uselessly subtle and technical, but its practical value will appear upon reflection. Because it gives us possession of the point of view from which St. John himself surveys, and from which he would have the Church contemplate, the history of the life of our Lord. And indeed for that life the theology of the Word, _i.e._, of the Incarnation, is simply necessary.

For we must agree with M. Renan so far at least as this, that a great life, even as the world counts greatness, is an organic whole with an underlying vitalising idea; which must be construed as such, and cannot be adequately rendered by a mere narration of facts. Without this unifying principle the facts will be not only incoherent but inconsistent. There must be a point of view from which we can embrace the life as one. The great test here, as in art, is the formation of a living, consistent, unmutilated whole.[140]

Thus a general point of view (if we are to use modern language easily capable of being misunderstood we must say a theory) is wanted of the Person, the work, the character of Christ. The synoptical Evangelists had furnished the Church with the narrative of His earthly origin. St. John in his Gospel and Epistle, under the guidance of the Spirit, endowed it with the theory of His Person.

Other points of view have been adopted, from the heresies of the early ages to the speculations of our own. All but St. John's have failed to co-ordinate the elements of the problem. The earlier attempts essayed to read the history upon the assumption that He was merely human or merely divine. They tried in their weary round to unhumanise or undeify the God-Man, to degrade the perfect Deity, to mutilate the perfect Humanity--to present to the adoration of mankind a something neither entirely human nor entirely divine, but an impossible mixture of the two. The truth on these momentous subjects was fused under the fires of controversy. The last centuries have produced theories less subtle and metaphysical, but bolder and more blasphemous. Some have looked upon Him as a pretender or an enthusiast. But the depth and sobriety of His teaching upon ground where we are able to test it--the texture of circumstantial word and work which will bear to be inspected under any microscope or cross-examined by any prosecutor--have almost shamed such blasphemy into respectful silence. Others of later date admit with patronising admiration that the martyr of Calvary is a saint of transcendent excellence. But if He who called Himself Son of God was not much more than saint, He was something less. Indeed He would have been something of three characters; saint, visionary, pretender--at moments the Son of God in His elevated devotion, at other times condescending to something of the practice of the charlatan, His unparalleled presumption only excused by His unparalleled success.

Now the point of view taken by St. John is the only one which is possible or consistent--the only one which reconciles the humiliation and the glory recorded in the Gospels, which harmonises the otherwise insoluble contradictions that beset His Person and His work. One after another, to the question, "what think ye of Christ?" answers are attempted, sometimes angry, sometimes sorrowful, always confused. The frank respectful bewilderment of the better Socinianism, the gay brilliance of French romance, the heavy insolence of German criticism, have woven their revolting or perplexed christologies. The Church still points with a confidence, which only deepens as the ages pass, to the enunciation of the theory of the Saviour's Person by St. John--in his Gospel, "The Word was made flesh"--in his Epistle, "concerning the Word of Life."

FOOTNOTES:

[132] See the noble and enthusiastic preface to the washing of the disciples' feet (John xiii. 1, 2, 3).

[133] The phrase probably means the Logos, the Personal "Word who is at once both the Word and the Life." For the double genitive, the second almost appositional to the first, conf. John ii. 21, xi. 13. This interpretation would seem to be that of Chrysostom. "If then the Word is the Life; and if this Christ who is at once the Word and the Life became flesh; then the Life became flesh." (_In Joan. Evang._ v.)

[134] Gen. i. 1; Prov. viii. 23; Micah v. 2.

[135] Cf. John vi. 36, 40. The word is applied by the angel to the disciples gazing on the Ascension, Acts i. 11. The Transfiguration may be here referred to. Such an incident as that in John vii. 37 attests a vivid delighted remembrance of the Saviour's very attitude.

[136] Luke xxiv. 39; John xx. 27.

[137] Gospel i. 1-14; 1 John i. 1; Apoc. i. 9.

[138] "He hath a name written which _no one knoweth but He Himself_,--and His name is called THE WORD OF GOD" (Apoc. xix. 12, 13). Gibbons' adroit italics may here be noted. "The Logos, TAUGHT in the school of Alexandria BEFORE Christ 100--REVEALED to the Apostle St. John, ANNO DOMINI, 97" (_Decline and Fall_, ch. xxi.). Just so very probably--though whether St. John ever read a page of Philo or Plato we have no means of knowing.

[139] The following table may be found useful:--

[140] _Vie de Jesus_, Int. 4.

DISCOURSE II.

_ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL._

"That which we have heard."--1 JOHN i. 1.

Our argument so far has been that St. John's Gospel is dominated by a central idea and by a theory which harmonises the great and many-sided life which it contains, and which is repeated again at the beginning of the Epistle in a form analogous to that in which it had been cast in the proœmium of the Gospel--allowing for the difference between a history and a document of a more subjective character moulded upon that history.

There is one objection to the accuracy, almost to the veracity, of a life written from such a theory or point of view. It may disdain to be shackled by the bondage of facts. It may become an essay in which possibilities and speculations are mistaken for actual events, and history is superseded by metaphysics. It may degenerate into a romance or prose-poem; if the subject is religious, into a mystic effusion. In the case of the fourth Gospel the cycles in which the narrative moves, the unveiling as of the progress of a drama, are thought by some to confirm the suspicion awakened by the point of view given in its proœmium, and in the opening of the Epistle. The Gospel, it is said, is _ideological_. To us it appears that those who have entered most deeply into the spirit of St. John will most deeply feel the significance of the two words which we place at the head of this discourse--"which we have heard," "which we have seen with our very eyes," (which we contemplated with entranced gaze) "which our hands have handled."

More truly than any other, St. John could say of this letter in the words of an American poet:

"This is not a book--It is I!"

In one so true, so simple, so profound, so oracular, there is a special reason for this prolonged appeal to the senses, and for the place which is assigned to each. In the fact that _hearing_ stands first, there is a reference to one characteristic of that Gospel to which the Epistle throughout refers. Beyond the synoptical Evangelists, St. John records the words of Jesus. The position which _hearing_ holds in the sentence, above and prior to _sight_ and _handling_, indicates the reverential estimation in which the Apostle held his Master's teaching.[141] The expression places us on solid historical ground, because it is a moral demonstration that one like St. John would not have dared to invent whole discourses and place them in the lips of Jesus. Thus in the "_we have heard_" there is a guarantee of the sincerity of the report of the discourses, which forms so large a proportion of the narrative that it practically guarantees the whole Gospel.

On this accusation of ideology against St. John's Gospel, let us make a further remark founded upon the Epistle.

It is said that the Gospel systematically subordinates chronological order and historical sequence of facts to the necessity imposed by the theory of the Word which stands in the forefront of the Epistle and Gospel.

But mystic ideology, indifference to historical veracity as compared with adherence to a conception or theory, is absolutely inconsistent with that strong, simple, severe appeal to the validity of the historical principle of belief upon sufficient evidence which pervades St. John's writings. His Gospel is a tissue woven of many lines of evidence. "Witness" stands in almost every page of that Gospel, and indeed is found there nearly as often as in the whole of the rest of the New Testament. The word occurs _ten_ times in five short verses of the Epistle.[142] There is no possibility of mistaking this prolixity of reiteration in a writer so simple and so sincere as our Apostle. The theologian is an historian. He has no intention of sacrificing history to dogma, and no necessity for doing so. His theory, and that alone, harmonises his facts. His facts have passed in the domain of human history, and have had that evidence of witness which proves that they did so.

A few of the stories of the earliest ages of Christianity have ever been repeated, and rightly so, as affording the most beautiful illustrations of St. John's character, the most simple and truthful idea of the impression left by his character and his work. His tender love for souls, his deathless desire to promote mutual love among his people, are enshrined in two anecdotes which the Church has never forgotten. It has scarcely been noticed that a tradition of not much later date (at least as old as Tertullian, born probably about A.D. 150) credits St. John with a stern reverence for the accuracy of historical truth, and tells us what, in the estimation of those who were near him in time, the Apostle thought of the lawfulness of ideological religious romance. It was said that a presbyter of Asia Minor confessed that he was the author of certain apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla--probably the same strange but unquestionably very ancient document with the same title which is still preserved. The man's motive does not seem to have been selfish. His work was apparently the composition of an ardent and romantic nature passionately attracted by a saint so wonderful as St. Paul.[143] The tradition went on to assert that St. John without hesitation degraded this clerical romance-writer from his ministry. But the offence of the Asiatic presbyter would have been light indeed compared with that of the mendacious Evangelist, who could have deliberately fabricated discourses and narrated miracles which he dared to attribute to the Incarnate Son of God. The guilt of publishing to the Church apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla would have paled before the crimson sin of forging a Gospel.

These considerations upon St. John's prolonged and circumstantial claim to personal acquaintance with the Word made flesh, confirmed by every avenue of communication between man and man--and first in order by the hearing of that sweet yet awful teaching--point to the fourth Gospel again and again. And the simple assertion--"that which we have heard"--accounts for one characteristic of the fourth Gospel which would otherwise be a perplexing enigma--its _dramatic_ vividness and consistency.

This dramatic truth of St. John's narrative, manifested in various developments, deserves careful consideration. There are three notes in the fourth Gospel which indicate either a consummate dramatic instinct or a most faithful record. (1) The delineation of _individual characters_. The Evangelist tells us with no unmeaning distinction, that Jesus "knew all men, and knew what is in man!"[144] For some persons take an apparently profound view of human nature in the abstract. They pass for being sages so long as they confine themselves to sounding generalizations, but they are convicted on the field of life and experience. They claim to know what is in man; but they know it vaguely, as one might be in possession of the outlines of a map, yet totally ignorant of most places within its limits. Others, who mostly affect to be keen men of the world, refrain from generalizations; but they have an insight, which at times is startling, into the characters of the individual men who cross their path. There is a sense in which they superficially seem to know all men, but their knowledge after all is capricious and limited. One class affects to know men, but does not even affect to know man; the other class knows something about man, but is lost in the infinite variety of the world of real men. Our Lord knew both--both the abstract ultimate principles of human nature and the subtle distinctions which mark off every human character from every other. Of this peculiar knowledge he who was brought into the most intimate communion with the Great Teacher was made in some degree a partaker in the course of His earthly ministry. With how few touches yet how clearly are delineated the Baptist, Nathanael, the Samaritan woman, the blind man, Philip, Thomas, Martha and Mary, Pilate! (2) More particularly the _appropriateness_ and _consistency_ of the language used by the various persons introduced in the narrative is, in the case of a writer like St. John, a multiplied proof of historical veracity.[145] For instance, of St. Thomas only one single sentence, containing seven words, is preserved,[146] outside the memorable narrative in the twentieth chapter; yet how unmistakably does that brief sentence indicate the same character--tender, impetuous, loving, yet ever inclined to take the darker view of things because from the very excess of its affection it cannot believe in that which it most desires, and demands accumulated and convincing proof of its own happiness. (3) Further, the _language_ of our Lord which St. John preserves is both morally and intellectually a marvellous witness to the proof of his assertion here in the outset of his Epistle.

This may be exemplified by an illustration from modern literature. Victor Hugo, in his _Légende des Siècles_, has in one passage only placed in our Lord's lips a few words which are not found in the Evangelist.[147] Every one will at once feel that these words ring hollow, that there is in them something exaggerated and factitious--and _that_ although the dramatist had the advantage of having a _type_ of style already constructed for him. People talk as if the representation in detail of a perfect character were a comparatively easy performance. Yet every such representation shows some flaw when closely inspected. For instance, a character in which Shakespeare so evidently delighted as Buckingham, whose end is so noble and martyr-like, is thus described, when on his trial, by a sympathising witness:

"'How did he bear himself?' 'When he was bought again to the bar, to hear, His knell rung out, his judgment, he was struck With such an agony, he sweat extremely, And something spoke in choler, _ill and hasty_; But he fell to himself again, and sweetly In all the rest show'd a most noble patience.'"[148]

Our argument comes to this point. Here is one man of all but the highest rank in dramatic genius, who utterly fails to invent even one sentence which could possibly be taken for an utterance of our Lord. Here is another, the most transcendent in the same order whom the human race has ever known, who tacitly confesses the impossibility of representing a character which shall be "one entire and perfect chrysolite," without speck or flaw. Take yet another instance. Sir Walter Scott appeals for "the fair licence due to the author of a fictitious composition;" and admits that he "cannot pretend to the observation of complete accuracy even in outward costume, much less in the more important points of language and manners."[149] But St. John was evidently a man of no such pretensions as these kings of the human imagination--no Scott or Victor Hugo, much less a Shakespeare. How then--except on the assumption of his being a faithful reporter, of his recording words actually spoken, and witnessing incidents which he had seen with his very eyes and contemplated with loving and admiring reverence--can we account for his having given us long successions of sentences, continuous discourses in which we trace a certain unity and adaptation;[150] and a character which stands alone among all recorded in history or conceived in fiction, by presenting to us an excellence faultless in every detail? We assert that the one answer to this question is boldly given us by St. John in the forefront of his Epistle--"That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes--concerning the Word who is the Life--declare we unto you."

St. John's mode of writing history may profitably be contrasted with that of one who in his own line was a great master, as it has been ably criticised by a distinguished statesman. Voltaire's historical masterpiece is a portion of the life of Maria Theresa, which is unquestionably written from a partly ideological point of view. For, those who have patience to go back to the "sources," and to compare Voltaire's narrative with them, will see the process by which a literary master has produced his effect. The writer works as if he were composing a classical tragedy restricted to the unities of time and place. The three days of the coronation and of the successive votes are brought into one effect, of which we are made to feel that it is due to a magic inspiration of Maria Theresa. Yet, as the great historical critic to whom we refer proceeds to demonstrate, a different charm, very much more real because it comes from truth, may be found in literal historical accuracy without this academic rouge. Writers more conscientious than Voltaire would not have assumed that Maria Theresa was degraded by a husband who was inferior to her. They would not have substituted some pretty and pretentious phrases for the genuine emotion not quite veiled under the official Latin of the Queen. "However high a thing art may be, reality, truth, which is the work of God, is higher!"[151] It is this conviction, this entire intense adhesion to truth, this childlike ingenuousness which has made St. John as an historian attain the higher region which is usually reached by genius alone--which has given us narratives and passages whose ideal beauty or awe is so transcendent or solemn, whose pictorial grandeur or pathos is so inexhaustible, whose philosophical depth is so unfathomable.[152]

He stands with spell-bound delight before his work without the disappointment which ever attends upon men of genius; because that work is not drawn from himself, because he can say three words--which we have _heard_, which we have _seen_ with our eyes, which we have _gazed_ upon.

NOTES.

Ch. i. 2, 4.

Ver. 2. _Us_, _we_.] "The nominative plural first person is not always of _majesty_ but often of _modesty_, when we share our privilege and dignity with others" (_Grotius_). The context must decide what shade of meaning is to be read into the text, _e.g._, here it is the we of modesty, as also (very tenderly and beautifully) in ii. 1, 2, v. 5. It rises into _majesty_ with the majestic, "we announce."

Ver. 4. "_These things._"] Not even the _fellowship_ with the Church and with the Father and with the Son is so much in the Apostle's intention here as the record in the _Gospel_.

_We write unto you._] In days when men's minds were still freshly full of the privilege of free access to the Scriptures, these words suggested (and they naturally enough do so still) the use of the written word, and the guilt of the Church or of individuals in neglecting it. This has been well expressed by an old divine. "That which is able to give us full joy must not be deficient in anything which conduceth to our happiness; but the holy Scriptures give fulness of joy, and therefore the way to happiness is perfectly laid down in them. The _major_ of this syllogism is so clear, that it needs no probation; for who can or will deny, that full joy is only to be had in a state of bliss? The _minor_ is plain from this scripture, and may thus be drawn forth. That which the Apostles aimed at in, may doubtless be attained to by, their writings; for they being inspired of God, it is no other than the end that God purposed in inspiring which they had in writing; and either God Himself is wanting in the means which He hath designed for this end, or these writings contain in them what will yield fulness of joy, and to that end bring us to a state of blessedness.

"How odious is the profaneness of those Christians who neglect the holy Scriptures, and give themselves to reading other books! How many precious hours do many spend, and that not only on work days, but holy days, in foolish romances, fabulous histories, lascivious poems! And why this, but that they may be cheered and delighted, when as full joy is only to be had in these holy books. Alas, the joy you find in those writings is perhaps pernicious, such as tickleth your lust, and promoteth contemplative wickedness. At the best it is but vain, such as only pleaseth the fancy and affecteth the wit; whereas these holy writings (to use David's expression, Psalm xix. 8), are 'right, rejoicing the heart.' Again, are there not many who more set by Plutarch's morals, Seneca's epistles, and suchlike books, than they do by the holy Scriptures? It is true, there are excellent truths in those moral writings of the heathen, but yet they are far short of these sacred books. Those may comfort against outward trouble, but not against inward fears; they may rejoice the mind, but cannot quiet the conscience; they may kindle some flashy sparkles of joy, but they cannot warm the soul with a lasting fire of solid consolation. And truly, if ever God give you a spiritual ear to judge of things aright, you will then acknowledge there are no bells like to those of Aaron, no harp like to that of David, no trumpet like to that of Isaiah, no pipes like to those of the Apostles." (_First Epistle of St. John, unfolded and applied_ by Nathaniel Hardy, D.D., Dean of Rochester, about 1660.)

FOOTNOTES:

[141] The appeal to the senses of _seeing_ and _hearing_ is a trait common to _all_ the group of St. John's writings (John i. 14, xix. 35; 1 John i. 1, 2, iv. 14; Apoc. i. 2). The true reading (καγω Ιωαννης ὁ ακουων και βλεπων ταυτα. Apoc. xxi. 8, where _hearing_ stands before _seeing_) is indicative of John's style.

[142] 1 John v. 6-12.

[143] That the "Acts of Paul and Thecla" are of high antiquity there can be no rational doubt. Tertullian writes: "But if those who read St. Paul's writings rashly use the example of Thecla, to give licence to women to teach and baptize publicly, let them know that a presbyter of Asia Minor, who put together that piece, crowning it with the authority of a Pauline title, convicted by his own confession of doing this from love of St. Paul, was deprived of his orders." (Tertullian, _De Baptismo_, xvii.) On which St. Jerome remarks--"We therefore relegate to the class of apocryphal writings, the περιοδος of Paul and Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion. For how could it be that the sole real companion of the Apostle" (Luke) "while so well acquainted with the rest of the history, should have known nothing of this? And further, Tertullian, who touched so nearly upon those times, records that a certain presbyter in Asia Minor, convicted before _John_ of being the author of that book, and confessing that as a σπουδαστης of the Apostle Paul he had done this from loving devotion to that great memory, was deposed from his ministry." (St. Hieron., _de Script. Eccles._, VII.) See the mass of authority for the antiquity of this document, which gives a considerable degree of probability to the statement about St. John, in _Acta Apost. Apoc._, Edit. Tischendorf.--Proleg. xxi., xxvi.

[144] John iii, 24, 25.

[145] Those who are perplexed by the identity in style and turn of language between the Epistle and the discourse of our Lord in St. John's Gospel may be referred to the writer's remarks in _The Speakers Commentary_ (N. T. iv. 286-89). It should be added that the Epp. to the Seven Churches (Apoc. ii., iii.)--especially to Sardis--interweave sayings of Jesus recorded by the Synoptical evangelists, _e.g._, "as a thief," Apoc. iii. 3, cf. Mark xiii. 37; "book of life," Apoc. iii. 5, cf. Luke x. 20; "confessing a name," Apoc. iii. 5, cf. Matt. x. 32; "He that hath an ear," Apoc. iii. 6, 13, 22, and ii. 7, 11, 17, 29. This phrase, found in each of the seven Epp., occurs nowhere in the fourth Gospel, but constantly in the Synoptics. Cf. Matt. x. 27, xi. 15, xiii. 19, 43; Mark iv. 9, 23, vii. 16; Luke viii. 8, xiv. 35; cf. also "giving power over the nations," Apoc. ii. 26--with the conception in Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 29, 30. The word _repentance_ is nowhere in the fourth Gospel, nor given as part of our Lord's teaching; but we find it Apoc. ii. 5, 16, iii. 3, 19. If the author of the fourth Gospel was also the author of the Apocalypse, his choice of the style which he attributes to the Saviour was at least decided by no lack of knowledge of the Synoptical type of expression, and by no incapacity to use it with freedom and power.

[146] John xi. 16.

[147]

"Qui me suit, aux anges est pareil. Quand un homme a marché tout le jour au soleil Dans un chemin sans puits et sans hôtellerie, S'il ne croit pas quand vient le soir il pleure, il crie, Il est las; sur la terre il tombe haletant. S'il croit en moi, qu'il prie, il peut au même instant. Continuer sa route avec des forces triples."

(_Le Christ et le Tombeau._) Tom. i. 44.

[148] King Henry VIII., Act 2, Sc. 1. Contrast again our Lord before the council with St. Paul before that tribunal. In the case of one of the chief of saints there is the touch of human infirmity, the "something spoken in choler, ill and hasty," the angry and contemptuous "whited wall"--the confession of hasty inconsiderateness (ουκ ἡδειν--ὁτι εστιν αρχιερευς) which led to a violation of a precept of the law (Exod. xxii. 28).

[149] Preface to _Ivanhoe_.

[150] _How_ the great sayings were accurately collected has not been the question before us in this discourse. But it presents little difficulty. It is not absurd to suppose (if we are required to postulate no divine assistance) that notes may have been taken in some form by certain members of the company of disciples. The profoundly thoughtful remark of Irenæus upon his own unfailing recollection of early lessons from Polycarp, would apply with indefinitely greater force to such a pupil as John, of such a teacher as Jesus. "I can thoroughly recollect things so far back better than those which have lately occurred; for lessons which have grown with us since boyhood are compacted into a unity with the very soul itself." (τη ψυχη ἑνουνται αυτη) _Euseb._, v. 29. But above all, whatever subordinate agency may have been employed in the preservation of those precious words, every Christian reverently acknowledges the fulfilment of the Saviour's promise--"The Comforter, the Holy Ghost, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance _whatsoever I have said unto you_" (John xiv. 26).

[151] Duc de Broglie. _Revue des deux Mondes._ 15 Jan. 1882. Coxe, _House of Austria_, vol. iii., chap. xcix., p. 415, sqq.

[152] John xiii. 30, xi. 35, xix. 5, xxii. 29-35.

SECTION II.

GREEK. LATIN.

Και αυτη εστιν ἡ Et hæc est adnuntiatio αγγελια ἡν ακηκοαμεν quam audivimus απ' αυτου, και ab eo, et adnuntiamus αναγγελλομεν ὑμιν, ὁτι vobis, quoniam Deus ὁ Θεος φως εστιν, και lux est, et tenebræ in σκοτια εν αυτω ουκ εστιν eo non sunt ullæ. Si ουδεμια. εαν ειπωμεν dixerimus quoniam societatem ὁτι κοινωνιαν εχομεν μετ' habemus cum αυτου, και εν τω σκοτει eo et in tenebris ambulamus, περιπατωμεν, ψευδομεθα, mentimur, et και ου ποιουμεν την non facimus veritatem: αληθειαν· εαν δε εν si autem in luce ambulamus τω φωτι περιπατωμεν, sicut et ipse ὡς αυτος εστιν εν est in luce, societatem τω φωτι, κοινωνιαν εχομεν habemus ad invicem, μετ' αλληλων, και et sanguis Iesu Christi, το αιμα Ιησου του Filii eius, mundat nos υιου αυτου καθαριζει omni peccato. Si ἡμας απο πασης ἁμαρτιας. dixerimus quoniam Εαν ειπωμεν ὁτι peccatum non habemus, ἁμαρτιαν ουκ εχομεν, ipsi nos seducimus, ἑαυτους πλανωμεν, και et veritas in nobis ἡ αληθεια εν ἡμιν ουκ non est. Si confiteamur εστιν. εαν ὁμολογωμεν peccata nostra, τας ἁμαρτιας ἡμων, fidelis et justus est, πιστος εστι και δικαιος, ut remittat nobis peccata ἱνα ἁφη ἡμιν τας nostra, et emundet ἁμαρτιας, και καθαριση nos ab omni iniquitate. ἡμας απο πασης αδικιας. Si dixerimus εαν ειπωμεν ὁτι ουχ quoniam non peccavimus, ἡμαρτηκαμεν, ψευστην mendacem faciemus ποιουμεν αυτον, και ὁ eum, et verbum λογος αυτου ουκ εστιν εν eius in nobis non est. ἡμιν. Filioli mei, hæc scribo vobis, ut non peccetis: Τεκνια μου, ταυτα sed et si quis peccaverit γραφω ὑμιν, ἱνα μη advocatum habemus ἁμαρτητε· και εαν τις apud Patrem, Iesum ἁμαρτη, παρακλητον Christum iustum et εχομεν προς τον πατερα, ipse est propitiatio pro Ιησουν Χριστον δικαιον· peccatis nostris, non και αυτος ιλασμος εστι pro nostris autem tantum περι των ἁμαρτιων ἡμων· sed etiam pro ου περι των ἡμετερων totius mundi. δε μονον, αλλα και περι ὁλου του κοσμου.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

This then is the message And this is the message which we have which we have heard of Him, and declare heard from Him, and unto you, that announce unto you, God is light, and in that God is light, and Him is no darkness at _in_ Him is _no darkness_ all. If we say that we at all. If we say that have fellowship with we have fellowship Him, and walk in darkness, with him, and walk in we lie, and do not the darkness, we lie, and the truth: but if we do not the truth: but walk in the light, as if we walk in the light, He is in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one we have fellowship one with another, and the with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ blood of Jesus His Son His Son cleanseth us cleanseth us from all from all sin. If we say sin. If we say that that we have no sin, we have no sin, we we deceive ourselves, deceive ourselves, and and the truth is not in the truth is not in us. us. If we confess our If we confess our sins, He is faithful and sins He is faithful and just to forgive us _our_ righteous to forgive us sins, and to cleanse us our sins, and to cleanse from all unrighteousness. us from all unrighteousness. If we say that If we say that we have not sinned, we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in and His word is not in us. My little children, us. My little children, these things write I these things write I unto you, that ye sin unto you, that ye may not. But if any man not sin. And if any sin, we have an man sin, we have advocate with the an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He the righteous: and He is the propitiation for is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our sins; and not for our's only, but also for ours only, but also for _the sins of_ the whole the whole world. world.

ANOTHER VERSION.

And this is the message which we have heard from Him and are announcing unto you that God is light, and darkness in Him there is none. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and are walking in the darkness, we lie and are not doing the truth; but if we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus His Son is purifying us from all sin. If we say that we have not sin, we mislead ourselves and the truth in us is not. If we confess our sins He is faithful and righteous that He may forgive our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned a liar we are making Him, and His word is not in us. My children these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And yet if any may have sinned, an Advocate have we with the Father Jesus Christ _who is_ righteous: and He is propitiation for our sins; yea, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

DISCOURSE III.

_EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT._

"My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world."--1 JOHN ii. 1, 2.

Of the Incarnation of the Word, of the whole previous strain of solemn oracular annunciation, there are two great objects. Rightly understood it at once stimulates and soothes; it supplies inducements to holiness, and yet quiets the accusing heart. (1) It urges to a pervading holiness in each recurring circumstance of life.[153] "That ye may not sin" is the bold universal language of the morality of God. Men only understand moral teaching when it comes with a series of monographs on the virtues, sobriety, chastity, and the rest. Christianity does not overlook these, but it comes first with all-inclusive principles. The morality of man is like the sculptor working line by line and part by part, partially and successively. The morality of God is like nature, and works in every part of the flower and tree with a sort of ubiquitous presence. "These things write we unto you." No dead letter--a living spirit infuses the lines; there is a deathless principle behind the words which will vitalize and permeate all isolated relations and developments of conduct. "These things write we unto you that ye may not sin."

(2) But further, this announcement also soothes. There may be isolated acts of sin against the whole tenor of the higher and nobler life. There may be, God forbid!--but it may be--some glaring act of inconsistency. In this case the Apostle uses a form of expression which includes himself, "we have," and yet points to Christ, not to himself, "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ"--and that in view of His being One who is perfectly and simply righteous; "and He is the propitiation for our sins."

Then, as if suddenly fired by a great thought, St. John's view broadens over the whole world beyond the limits of the comparatively little group of believers whom his words at that time could reach. The Incarnation and Atonement have been before his soul. The Catholic Church is the correlative of the first, humanity of the second. The Paraclete whom he beheld is ever in relation with, ever turned towards the Father.[154] His propitiation _is_, and He _is_ it. It _was_ not simply a fact in history which works on with unexhaustible force. As the Advocate is ever turned towards the Father, so the propitiation lives on with unexhausted life. His intercession is not verbal, temporary, interrupted. The Church, in her best days, never prayed--"Jesus, pray for me!" It is interpretative, continuous, unbroken. In time it is eternally valid, eternally present. In space it extends as far as human need, and therefore takes in every place. "Not for our sins only," but for men universally, "for the whole world."[155]

It is implied then in this passage, that Christ was _intended_ as a propitiation for the whole world; and that He is _fitted_ for satisfying all human wants.

(1) Christ was intended for the whole world. Let us see the Divine intention in one incident of the crucifixion. In that are mingling lines of glory and of humiliation. The King of humanity appears with a scarlet camp-mantle flung contemptuously over His shoulders; but to the eye of faith it is the purple of empire. He is crowned with the acanthus wreath; but the wreath of mockery is the royalty of our race. He is crucified between two thieves; but His cross is a Judgment-Throne, and at His right hand and His left are the two separated worlds of belief and unbelief. All the Evangelists tell us that a superscription, a title of accusation, was written over His cross; two of them add that it was written over Him "in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew" (or in Hebrew, Greek, Latin). In Hebrew--the sacred tongue of patriarchs and seers, of the nation all whose members were in idea and destination those of whom God said, "My prophets." In Greek--the "musical and golden tongue which gave a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of philosophy;" the language of a people whose mission it was to give a principle of fermentation to all races of mankind, susceptible of those subtle and largely indefinable influences which are called collectively Progress. In Latin--the dialect of a people originally the strongest of all the sons of men. The three languages represent the three races and their ideas--revelation, art, literature; progress, war, and jurisprudence. Beneath the title is the thorn-crowned head of the ideal King of humanity.

Wherever these three tendencies of the human race exist, wherever annunciation can be made in human language, wherever there is a heart to sin, a tongue to speak, an eye to read, the cross has a message. The superscription, "written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin," is the historical symbol translated into its dogmatic form by St. John--"He is the propitiation[156] for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world."

FOOTNOTES:

[153] Observe in the Greek the μη ἁμαρτητε, which refers to single acts, not to a continuous state--"that _ye may not sin_."

[154] 1 John ii. 2. As a translation, "towards" seems too pedantic; yet προς is _ad-versus_ rather than _apud_, and with the accusative signifies either the direction of motion, or the relation between two objects. (Donaldson, _Greek Grammar_, 524). We may fittingly call the preposition here προς _pictorial_.

[155] The various meanings of κοσμος are fully traced below on 1 John ii. 17. There is one point in which the notions of κοσμος and αιων intersect. But they may be thus distinguished. The first signifies the world projected in _space_, the second in _time_. The supposition that the form of expression at the close of our verse is elliptical, and to be filled up by the repetition of "for the sins of the whole world" "is not justified by usage, and weakens the force of the passage." (_Epistles of St. John_, Westcott, p. 44.)

[156] As to doctrine. There are three "grand circles" or "families of images" whereby Scripture approaches from different quarters, or surveys from different sides, the benefits of our Lord's meritorious death. These are represented by, are summed up in, three words--απολυτρωσις, καταλλαγη, ιλασμος. The last is found in the text and in iv. 10; nowhere else precisely in that form in the New Testament. "Ιλασμος (expiation or propitiation) and απολυτρωσις (redemption) is fundamentally one single benefit, _i.e._, the restitution of the lost sinner. Απολυτρωσις is in respect of _enemies_; καταλλαγη in respect of _God_. And here again the words ἱλασμ. and καταλλ. differ. _Propitiation_ takes away offences as against _God_. _Reconciliation_ has two sides. It takes away (_a_) God's _indignation_ against _us_, 2 Cor. v. 18, 19; (_b_) _our alienation_ from _God_, 2 Cor. v. 20." (Bengel on Rom. iii. 24. Whoever would rightly understand all that we can know on these great words must study _New Testament Synonyms, Archbp. Trench_, pp. 276-82.)

DISCOURSE IV.

_MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT._

"For the whole world."--1 JOHN ii. 2.

Let us now consider the universal and ineradicable wants of man.

Such a consideration is substantially unaffected by speculation as to the theory of man's origin. Whether the first men are to be looked for by the banks of some icy river feebly shaping their arrowheads of flint, or in godlike and glorious progenitors beside the streams of Eden; whether our ancestors were the result of an inconceivably ancient evolution, or called into existence by a creative act, or sprung from some lower creature elevated in the fulness of time by a majestic inspiration,--at least, as a matter of fact, man has other and deeper wants than those of the back and stomach. Man as he is has five spiritual instincts. _How_ they came to be there, let it be repeated, is not the question. It is the fact of their existence, not the mode of their _genesis_, with which we are now concerned.

(1) There is almost, if not quite, without exception the instinct which may be generally described as the instinct of the Divine. In the wonderful address where St. Paul so fully recognises the influence of geographical circumstance and of climate, he speaks of God "having made out of one blood every nation of men to seek after their Lord, if haply at least" (as might be expected) "they would feel for Him"[157]--like men in darkness groping towards the light. (2) There is the instinct of prayer, the "testimony of the soul naturally Christian." The little child at our knees meets us half way in the first touching lessons in the science of prayer. In danger, when the vessel seems to be sinking in a storm, it is ever as it was in the days of Jonah, when "the mariners cried every man unto his God."[158] (3) There is the instinct of immortality, the desire that our conscious existence should continue beyond death.

"Who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, These thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather swallow'd up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night?"

(4) There is the instinct of morality, call it conscience or what we will. The lowest, most sordid, most materialised languages are never quite without witness to this nobler instinct. Though such languages have lien among the pots, yet their wings are as the wings of a dove that is covered with silver wings and her feathers like gold. The most impoverished vocabularies have words of moral judgment, "good" or "bad;" of praise or blame, "truth and lie;" above all, those august words which recognise a law paramount to all other laws, "I must," "I ought." (5) There is the instinct of _sacrifice_, which, if not absolutely universal, is at least all but so--the sense of impurity and unworthiness, which says by the very fact of bringing a victim. "I am not worthy to come alone; may my guilt be transferred to the representative which I immolate."

(1) Thus then man seeks after God. Philosophy unaided does not succeed in finding Him. The theistic systems marshal their syllogisms; they prove, but do not convince. The pantheistic systems glitter before man's eye; but when he grasps them in his feverish hand, and brushes off the mystic gold dust from the moth's wings, a death's-head mocks him. St. John has found the essence of the whole question, stripped from it all its plausible disguises, and characterises Mahommedan and Judaistic Deism in a few words. Nay, the philosophical deism of Christian countries comes within the scope of his terrible proposition. "Deo erexit Voltairius," was the philosopher's inscription over the porch of a church; but Voltaire had not in any true sense a God to whom he could dedicate it. For St. John tells us--"whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father."[159] Other words there are in his Second Epistle whose full import seems to have been generally overlooked, but which are of solemn significance to those who go out from the camp of Christianity with the idea of finding a more refined morality and a more ethereal spiritualism. "Whosoever goeth forward and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ"; whosoever writes progress on his standard, and goes forward beyond the lines of Christ, loses natural as well as supernatural religion--"he hath not God."[160] (2) Man wants to pray. Poor disinherited child, what master of requests shall he find? Who shall interpret his broken language to God, God's infinite language to him? (3) Man yearns for the assurance of immortal life. This can best be given by one specimen of manhood risen from the grave, one traveller come back from the undiscovered bourne with the breath of eternity on His cheek and its light in His eye; one like Jonah, Himself the living sign and proof that He has been down in the great deeps. (4) Man needs a morality to instruct and elevate conscience. Such a morality must possess these characteristics. It must be _authoritative_, resting upon an absolute will; its teacher must say, not "I think," or "I conclude," but--"verily, verily I say unto you." It must be _unmixed_ with baser and more questionable elements. It must be _pervasive_, laying the strong grasp of its purity on the whole domain of thought and feeling as well as of action. It must be _exemplified_. It must present to us a series of pictures, of object-lessons in which we may see it illustrated. Finally, this morality must be _spiritual_. It must come to man, not like the Jewish Talmud with its seventy thousand precepts which few indeed can ever learn, but with a compendious and condensed, yet all-embracing brevity--with words that are spirit and life. (5) As man knows duty more thoroughly, the instinct of sacrifice will speak with an ever-increasing intensity. "My heart is overwhelmed by the infinite purity of this law. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I; let me find God and be reconciled to Him." When the old Latin spoke of _propitiation_ he thought of something which brought _near (prope)_; his inner thought was--"let God come near to me, that I may be near to God." These five ultimate spiritual wants, these five ineradicable spiritual instincts, _He_ must meet, of whom a master of spiritual truth like St. John can say with his plenitude of insight--"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world."

We shall better understand the fulness of St. John's thought if we proceed to consider that this fitness in Christ for meeting the spiritual wants of humanity is _exclusive_.

Three great religions of the world are more or less _Missionary_. Hinduism, which embraces at least a hundred and ninety millions of souls, is certainly not in any sense missionary. For Hinduism transplanted from its ancient shrines and local superstitions dies like a flower without roots. But Judaism at times has strung itself to a kind of exertion almost inconsistent with its leading idea. The very word "proselyte" attests the unnatural fervour to which it had worked itself up in our Lord's time. The Pharisee was a missionary sent out by pride and consecrated by self-will. "Ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him tenfold more the child of hell than yourselves."[161] Bouddhism has had enormous missionary success from one point of view. Not long ago it was said that it outnumbered Christendom. But it is to be observed that it finds adherents among people of only one type of thought and character.[162] Outside these races it is and must ever be, non-existent. We may except the fanciful perversion of a few idle people in London, Calcutta, or Ceylon, captivated for a season or two by "the light of Asia." We may except also a very few more remarkable cases where the esoteric principle of Bouddhism commends itself to certain profound thinkers stricken with the dreary disease of modern sentiment. Mohammedanism has also, in a limited degree, proved itself a missionary religion, not only by the sword. In British India it counts millions of adherents, and it is still making some progress in India. In other ages whole Christian populations (but belonging to heretical and debased forms of Christianity) have gone over to Mohammedanism. Let us be just to it.[163] It once elevated the pagan Arabs. Even now it elevates the Negro above his fetisch. But it must ever remain a religion for stationary races, with its sterile God and its poor literality, the dead book pressing upon it with a weight of lead. Its merits are these--it inculcates a lofty if sterile Theism; it fulfils the pledge conveyed in the word Moslem, by inspiring a calm if frigid resignation to destiny; it teaches the duty of prayer with a strange impressiveness. But whole realms of thought and feeling are crushed out by its bloody and lustful grasp. It is without purity, without tenderness, and without humility.

Thus then we come back again with a truer insight to the exclusive fitness of Christ to meet the wants of mankind.

Others beside the Incarnate Lord have obtained from a portion of their fellow-men some measure of passionate enthusiasm. Each people has a hero, call him demigod, or what we will. But such men are idolised by one race alone, and are fashioned after its likeness. The very qualities which procure them an apotheosis are precisely those which prove how narrow the type is which they represent; how far they are from speaking to all humanity. A national type is a narrow and exclusive type.

No European, unless effeminated and enfeebled, could really love an Asiatic Messiah. But Christ is loved everywhere. No race or kindred is exempt from the sweet contagion produced by the universal appeal of the universal Saviour. From all languages spoken by the lips of man, hymns of adoration are offered to Him. We read in England the Confessions of St. Augustine. Those words still quiver with the emotions of penitence and praise; still breathe the breath of life. Those ardent affections, those yearnings of personal love to Christ, which filled the heart of Augustine fifteen centuries ago, under the blue sky of Africa, touch us even now under this grey heaven in the fierce hurry of our modern life. But they have in them equally the possibility of touching the Shanar of Tinnevelly, the Negro--even the Bushman, or the native of Terra del Fuego. By a homage of such diversity and such extent we recognise a universal Saviour for the universal wants of universal man, the fitting propitiation for the whole world.

Towards the close of this Epistle St. John oracularly utters three great canons of universal Christian consciousness--"we know," "we know," "we know." Of these three canons the second is--"we know that we are from God, and the world lieth wholly in the wicked one." "A characteristic Johannic exaggeration"! some critic has exclaimed; yet surely even in Christian lands where men lie outside the influences of the Divine society, we have only to read the Police-reports to justify the Apostle. In volumes of travels, again, in the pages of Darwin and Baker, from missionary records in places where the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations, we are told of deeds of lust and blood which almost make us blush to bear the same form with creatures so degraded. Yet the very same missionary records bear witness that in every race which the Gospel proclamation has reached, however low it may be placed in the scale of the ethnologist; deep under the ruins of the fall are the spiritual instincts, the affections which have for their object the infinite God, and for their career the illimitable ages. The shadow of sin is broad indeed. But in the evening light of God's love the shadow of the cross is projected further still into the infinite beyond. Missionary success is therefore sure, if it be slow. The reason is given by St. John. "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world."

NOTES.

Ch. i. 5 to ii. 2.

Ver. 5. The Word, the Life, the Light, are connected in the first chapter as in John i. 3, 4, 5. Upon earth, behind all life is light; in the spiritual world, behind all light is life.

_Darkness._] The schoolmen well said that there is a fourfold darkness--of nature, of ignorance, of misery, of sin. The symbol of light applied to God must designate perfect goodness and beauty, combined with blissful consciousness of it, and transparent luminous clearness of wisdom.

Ver. 7. _The blood of Jesus His Son_] Sc. poured forth. This word (the Blood) denotes more vividly and effectively than any other could do three great realities of the Christian belief--the reality of the Manhood of Jesus, the reality of His sufferings, the reality of His sacrifice. It is dogma; but dogma made pictorial, pathetic, almost passionate. It may be noted that much current thought and feeling around us is just at the opposite extreme. It is a semi-doketism which is manifested in two different forms. (1) Whilst it need not be denied that there are hymns which are pervaded by an ensanguined materialism, and which are calculated to wound reverence, as well as taste; it is clear that much criticism on hymns and sermons, where the "Blood of Jesus" is at all appealed to, has an ultra-refinement which is unscriptural and rationalistic. It is out of touch with St. Paul (Col. i. 14-20), with the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb. ix. 14) (a passage strikingly like this verse), with St. Peter (1 Pet. i. 19), with St. John in this Epistle, with the redeemed in heaven (Apoc. v. 9). (2) A good deal of feeling against representations in sacred art seems to have its origin in this sort of unconscious semi-doketism. It appears to be thought that when representation supersedes symbolism, Christian thought and feeling necessarily lose everything and gain nothing. But surely it ought to be remembered that for a being like man there are two worlds, one of ideas, the other of facts; one of philosophy, the other of history. The one is filled with things which are conceived, the other with things which are done. One contents itself with a shadowy symbol, the other is not satisfied except by a concrete representation. So we venture respectfully to think that the image of the dead Christ is not foreign to Scripture or Scriptural thought; simply because, _as a fact_, He died. Calvary, the tree, the wounds, were not ideal. The crucifixion was not a symbol for dainty and refined abstract theorists. The form of the Crucified was not veiled by silver mists and crowned with roses. He who realises the meaning of the "Blood of Jesus," and is _consistent_, will not be severe upon the expression of the same thought in another form.

"Note that which Estius hath upon the blood of his Son, that in them there is a confutation of three heresies at once: the Manichees, who deny the truth of Christ's human nature, since, as Alexander said of his wound, _clamat me esse hominem_, it proclaimeth me a man, we may say of His blood, for had He not been man He could not have bled, have died; the Ebionites, who deny Him to be God, since, being God's natural Son, He must needs be of the same essence with Himself; and the Nestorians, who make two persons, which, if true, the blood of Christ the man could not have been called the blood of Christ the Son of God."

"That which I conceive here chiefly to be taken notice of is, that our Apostle contents not himself to say the _blood of Jesus Christ_, but he addeth _His Son_, to intimate to us how this blood became available to our cleansing, to wit, as it was the blood not merely of the Son of Mary, the Son of David, the Son of Man, but of Him who was also the Son of God."

"Behold, O sinner, the exceeding love of thy Saviour, who, that He might cleanse thee when polluted in thy blood, was pleased to shed His own blood. Indeed, the pouring out of Christ's blood was a super-excellent work of charity; hence it is that these two are joined together; and when the Scripture speaketh of His love, it presently annexeth His sufferings. We read, that when Christ wept for Lazarus, John xi. 36, the standers by said, "See how He loved him." Surely if His tears, much more His blood, proclaimeth His affection towards us. The Jews were the scribes, the nails were the pens, His body the white paper, and His blood the red ink; and the characters were love, exceeding love, and these so fairly written that he which runs may read them. I shut up this with that of devout Bernard, Behold and look upon the rose of His bloody passion, how His redness bespeaketh His flaming love, there being, as it were, a contention betwixt His passion and affection: this, that it might be hotter; that, that it might be redder. Nor had His sufferings been so red with blood had not His heart been inflamed with love. Oh let us beholding magnify, magnifying admire, and admiring praise Him for His inestimable goodness, saying with the holy Apostle (Rev. i. 5), 'Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His blood, be honour and glory for ever.'"--_Dean Hardy_ (pp. 77, 78.) Observe on this verse its unison of thought and feeling with Apoc. i. 5, xxii. 14.[164]

Chap. ii. 1. _We have an Advocate_] literally Paraclete. One called in to aid him whose cause is to be tried or petition considered. The word is used only by St. John, four times in the Gospel, of the Holy Ghost;[165] once here of Christ.

"And now, O thou drooping sinner, let me bespeak thee in St. Austin's[166] language: Thou committest thy cause to an eloquent lawyer, and art safe; how canst thou miscarry, when thou hast the Word to be thy advocate? Let me put this question to thee: If, when thou sinnest, thou hadst all the angels, saints, confessors, martyrs, in those celestial mansions to beg thy pardon, dost thou think they would not speed? I tell thee, one word out of Christ's mouth is more worth than all their conjoined entreaties. When, therefore, thy daily infirmities discourage thee, or particular falls affright thee, imagine with thyself that thou heardst thy advocate pleading for thee in these or the like expressions: O My loving Father, look upon the face of Thine Anointed; behold the hands, and feet, and side of Thy crucified Christ! I had no sins of My own for which I thus suffered; no, it was for the sins of this penitent wretch, who in My name sued for pardon! Father, I am Thy Son, the Son of Thy love, Thy bosom, who plead with Thee; it is for Thy child, Thy returning penitent child, I plead. That for which I pray is no more than what I paid for; I have merited pardon for all that come to Me! Oh let those merits be imputed, and that pardon granted to this poor sinner! Cheer up, then, thou disconsolate soul, Christ is an advocate for thee, and therefore do not despair, but believe; and believing, rejoice; and rejoicing, triumph."--_Dean Hardy_ (pp. 128, 129). In these days, when petitions to Jesus to pray for us have crept into hymns and are creeping into liturgies, it may be well to note that in the remains of the early saints and in the solemn formulas of the Christian Church, Christ is not asked to pray for us, but to hear our prayers. The Son is prayed to; the Father is prayed to through the Son; the Son is never prayed to pray to the Father. (See Greg. Nazianz., _Oratio_ xxx., _Theologiæ_ iv., _de Filio_. See Thomassin, _Dogm. Theol._, lib. ix., cap. 6, Tom. iv. 220, 227.)

Ver. 2. _Not for ours only._] This large-hearted afterthought reminds one of St. Paul's "corrective and ampliative" addition; of his chivalrous abstinence from exclusiveness in thought or word, when having dictated "Jesus Christ our Lord," his voice falters, and he feels constrained to say--"both theirs, and ours" (1 Cor. i. 2).

FOOTNOTES:

[157] Acts xvii. 27.

[158] Jonah i. 5.

[159] 1 John ii. 28.

[160] 2 John 9.

[161] Matt. xxiii. 15.

[162] Bouddhism, it is now said, appears to be on the wane, and the period for its disappearance is gradually approaching, according to the Boden Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford. In his opinion this creed is "one of rapidly increasing disintegration and decline," and "as a form of popular religion Bouddhism is gradually losing its vitality and hold on the vast populations once loyal to its rule." He computes the number of Bouddhists at 100,000,000; not 400,000,000 as hitherto estimated; and places Christianity numerically at the head of all religions--next Confucianism, thirdly Hinduism, then Bouddhism, and last Mohammedanism. He affirms that the capacity of Bouddhism for resistance must give way before the "mighty forces which are destined to sweep the earth."

[163] That modern English writers have been more than just to Mohammed is proved overwhelmingly by the living Missionary who knows Mohammedanism best.--_Mohammed and Mohammedans_. Dr. Koelle.

[164] The inner meaning of 1 John i. 8 exactly = ὑπακοη και ῥαντισμος (1 Peter i. 2). It is the _obedient_ who are _sprinkled_.

[165] John xiv. 16, 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7.

[166] Aug. _in loc._

SECTION III. (1).

GREEK. LATIN.

Και εν τουτω Et in hoc scimus γινωσκομεν ὁτι εγνωκαμεν quoniam cognovimus αυτον, εαν τας εντολας eum, si mandata eius αυτου τηρωμεν. ὁ λεγων, observemus. Qui dicit ὁτι "Εγνωκα αυτον," se nosse eum et mandata και τας εντολας αυτου eius non custodit, μη τηρων, ψευστης εστιν, mendax est, et και εν τουτω ἡ αληθεια in eo veritas non est: ουκ εστιν· ὁς δ' αν qui autem servat verbum τηρη αυτου τον λογον, eius, vere in eo αληθως εν τουτω ἡ caritas Dei perfecta αγαπη του Θεου τετελειωται. est: in hoc scimus εν τουτω quoniam in ipso sumus. γινωσκομεν ὁτι εν αυτω Qui dicit se in εσμεν. ὁ λεγων εν ipso manere debet sicut αυτω μενειν, οφειλει, ille ambulavit et ipse καθως εκεινος περιεπατησεν, ambulare. και αυτος ουτως περιπατειν.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

And hereby we do And _hereby know_ we know that we know that we _know_ Him, if Him, if we keep His we keep His commandments. commandments. He He that that saith, I know Him, saith, I know Him, and and keepeth not His keepeth not His commandments commandments, is a is a liar, liar, and the truth is and the truth is not in not in Him. But whoso him: but whoso keepeth keepeth His word, His word, in him verily in him verily is the hath the love of God love of God perfected: been perfected. Hereby hereby know we that know we that we we are in Him. He are in Him: he that that saith he abideth saith he abideth in in Him ought himself Him ought himself also also so to walk, even to walk even as He as He walked. walked.

ANOTHER VERSION.

And hereby we do know that we have knowledge of Him, if we observe His commandments. He that saith I have knowledge of Him and observeth not His commandments is a liar, and in this man the truth is not. But whoso observeth His word verily in this man the love of God is perfected. Hereby know we that we are in Him: he that saith he abideth in Him is bound, even as He walked, so also himself to be ever walking.

DISCOURSE V.

_THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK A PERSONAL INFLUENCE._

"He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk even as He also walked."--1 JOHN ii. 6.

This verse is one of those in reading which we may easily fall into the fallacy of mistaking _familiarity_ for knowledge.

Let us bring out its meaning with accuracy.

St. John's hatred of unreality, of lying in every form, leads him to claim in Christians a perfect correspondence between the outward profession and the inward life, as well as the visible manifestation of it. "He that saith" always marks a danger to those who are outwardly in Christian communion. It is the "take notice" of a hidden falsity. He whose claim, possibly whose vaunt, is that he abideth in Christ, has contracted a moral debt of far-reaching significance. St. John seems to pause for a moment. He points to a picture in a page of the scroll which is beside him--the picture of Christ in the Gospel drawn by himself; not a vague magnificence, a mere harmony of colour, but a likeness of absolute historical truth. Every pilgrim of time in the continuous course of his daily walk, outward and inward, has by the possession of that Gospel contracted an obligation to be walking by the one great life-walk of the Pilgrim of eternity. The very depth and intensity of feeling half hushes the Apostle's voice. Instead of the beloved Name which all who love it will easily supply,[167] St. John uses the reverential _He_, the pronoun which specially belongs to Christ in the vocabulary of the Epistle.[168] "He that saith he abideth in Him" is bound, even as He once walked, to be ever walking.

The importance of _example_ in the moral and spiritual life gives emphasis to this canon of St. John.

Such an example as can be sufficient for creatures like ourselves should be at once manifested in concrete form and susceptible of ideal application.

This was felt by a great but unhappily anti-christian thinker, the exponent of a severe and lofty morality. Mr. Mill fully confesses that there may be an elevating and an ennobling influence in a Divine ideal; and thus justifies the apparently startling precept--"be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect."[169] But he considered that some more human model was necessary for the moral striver. He recommends novel-readers, when they are charmed or strengthened by some conception of pure manhood or womanhood, to carry that conception with them into their own lives. He would have them ask themselves in difficult positions, how that strong and lofty man, that tender and unselfish woman, would have behaved in similar circumstances, and so bear about with them a standard of duty at once compendious and affecting. But to this there is one fatal objection--that such an elaborate process of make-believe is practically impossible. A fantastic morality, if it were possible at all, must be a feeble morality. Surely an authentic example will be greatly more valuable.

But _example_, however precious, is made indefinitely more powerful when it is _living_ example, example crowned by personal influence.

So far as the stain of a guilty past can be removed from those who have contracted it; they are improvable and capable of restoration, chiefly, perhaps almost exclusively, by personal influence in some form. When a process of deterioration and decay has set in in any human soul, the germ of a more wholesome growth is introduced in nearly every case, by the transfusion and transplantation of healthier life. We test the soundness or the putrefaction of a soul by its capacity of receiving and assimilating this germ of restoration. A parent is in doubt whether a son is susceptible of renovation, whether he has not become wholly evil. He tries to bring the young man under the personal influence of a friend of noble and sympathetic character. Has his son any capacity left for being touched by such a character; of admiring its strength on one side, its softness on another? When he is in contact with it, when he perceives how pure, how self-sacrificing, how true and straight it is, is there a glow in his face, a trembling of his voice, a moisture in his eye, a wholesome self-humiliation? Or does he repel all this with a sneer and a bitter gibe? Has he that evil attribute which is possessed only by the most deeply corrupt--"they blaspheme, rail at glories"?[170] The Chaplain of a penitentiary records that among the most degraded of its inmates was one miserable creature. The Matron met her with firmness, but with a good will which no hardness could break down, no insolence overcome. One evening after prayers the Chaplain observed this poor outcast stealthily kissing the shadow of the Matron thrown by her candle upon the wall. He saw that the diseased nature was beginning to be capable of assimilating new life, that the victory of wholesome personal influence had begun. He found reason for concluding that his judgment was well founded.

The law of restoration by living example through personal influence pervades the whole of our human relations under God's natural and moral government as truly as the principle of mediation. This law also pervades the system of restoration revealed to us by Christianity. It is one of the chief results of the Incarnation itself. It begins to act upon us first, when the Gospels become something more to us than a mere history, when we realise in some degree how He walked. But it is not complete until we know that all this is not merely of the past, but of the present; that He is not dead, but living; that we may therefore use that little word _is_ about Christ in the lofty sense of St. John--"even as He _is_ pure;" "in Him _is_ no sin;" "even as He _is_ righteous;" "He _is_ the propitiation for our sins." If this is true, as it undoubtedly is, of all good human influence personal and living, is it not true of the Personal and living Christ in an infinitely higher degree? If the shadow of Peter overshadowing the sick had some strange efficacy; if handkerchiefs or aprons from the body of Paul wrought upon the sick and possessed; what may be the spiritual result of contact with Christ Himself? Of one of those men specially gifted to raise struggling natures and of others like him, a true poet lately taken from us has sung in one of his most glorious strains. Matthew Arnold likens mankind to a host inexorably bound by divine appointment to march over mountain and desert to the city of God. But they become entangled in the wilderness through which they march, split into mutinous factions, and are in danger of "battering on the rocks" for ever in vain, of dying one by one in the waste. Then comes the poet's appeal to the "servants of God":--

"In the hour of need Of your fainting dispirited race, Ye like angels appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Eyes rekindling, and prayers Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our file, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march-- On, to the bound of the waste-- On to the City of God."[171]

If all this be true of the personal influence of good and strong men--true in proportion to their goodness and strength--it must be true of the influence of the Strongest and Best with Whom we are brought into personal relation by prayer and sacraments, and by meditation upon the sacred record which tells us what His one life-walk was. Strength is not wanting upon His part, for He is able to save to the uttermost. Pity is not wanting; for to use touching words (attributed to St. Paul in a very ancient apocryphal document), "He alone sympathised with a world that has lost its way."[172]

Let it not be forgotten that in that of which St. John speaks lies the true answer to an objection, formulated by the great anti-christian writer above quoted, and constantly repeated by others. "The ideal of Christian morality," says Mr. Mill, "is negative rather than positive; passive rather than active; innocence rather than nobleness; abstinence from evil, rather than energetic pursuit of good; in its precepts (as has been well said), 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt.'"[173] The answer is this. (1) A true religious system must have a distinct moral code. If not, it would be justly condemned for "expressing itself" (in the words of Mr. Mill's own accusation against Christianity elsewhere) "in language most general, and possessing rather the impressiveness of poetry or eloquence than the precision of legislation." But the necessary formula of precise legislation is, "thou shalt not"; and without this it cannot be precise. (2) But further. To say that Christian legislation is negative, a mere string of "thou shalt nots," is just such a superficial accusation as might be expected from a man who should enter a church upon some rare occasion, and happen to listen to the ten commandments, but fall asleep before he could hear the Epistle and Gospel. The philosopher of duty, Kant, has told us that the peculiarity of a moral principle, of any proposition which states what duty is, is to convey the meaning of an imperative through the form of an indicative. In his own expressive if pedantic language--"its categorical form involves an epitactic meaning." St. John asserts that the Christian "ought to walk even as Christ walked." To every one who receives it, that proposition is therefore precisely equivalent to a _command_--"walk as Christ walked." Is it a negative, passive morality, a mere system of "thou shalt not," which contains such a precept as that? Does not the Christian religion in virtue of this alone enforce a great "thou shalt;" which every man who brings himself within its range will find rising with him in the morning, following him like his shadow all day long, and lying down with him when he goes to rest?

II.

It should be clearly understood that in the words "even as He walked," the Gospel of St. John is both referred to and attested.

For surely to point with any degree of moral seriousness to an example, _is_ to presuppose some clear knowledge and definite record of it. No example can be beautiful or instructive when its shape is lost in darkness. It has indeed been said by a deeply religious writer, "that the likeness of the Christian to Christ is to His character, not to the particular form in which it was historically manifested." And this, of course, is in one sense a truism. But how else except by this historical manifestation can we know the character of Christ in any true sense of the word knowledge? For those who are familiar with the fourth Gospel, the term "walk" was tenderly significant. For if it was used with a reminiscence of the Old Testament and of the language of our Lord,[174] to denote the whole continuous activity of the life of any man inward and outward, there was another signification which became entwined with it. St. John had used the word historically[175] in his Gospel, not without allusion to the Saviour's homelessness on earth, to His itinerant life of beneficence and of teaching.[176] Those who first received this Epistle with deepest reverence as the utterance of the Apostle whom they loved, when they came to the precept--"walk even as He walked"--would ask themselves _how_ did He walk? What do we know of the great rule of life thus proposed to us? The Gospel which accompanied this letter, and with which it was in some way closely connected, was a sufficient and definite answer.

III.

The character of Christ in his Gospel is thus, according to St. John, the loftiest ideal of purity, peace, self-sacrifice, unbroken communion with God; the inexhaustible fountain of regulated thoughts, high aims, holy action, constant prayer.

We may advert to one aspect of this perfection as delineated in the fourth Gospel--our Lord's way of doing small things, or at least things which in human estimation appear to be small.

The fourth chapter of that Gospel contains a marvellous record of word and work. Let us trace that record back to its beginning. There are seeds of spiritual life scattered in many hearts which were destined to yield a rich harvest in due time; there is the account of one sensuous nature, quickened and spiritualised; there are promises which have been for successive centuries as a river of God to weary natures. All these results issue from three words spoken by a tired traveller, sitting naturally over a well--"give me to drink."

We take another instance. There is one passage in St. John's Gospel which divides with the proœmium of his Epistle, the glory of being the loftiest, the most prolonged, the most sustained, in the Apostle's writings.

It is the prelude of a work which might have seemed to be of little moment. Yet all the height of a great ideal is over it, like the vault of heaven; all the power of a Divine purpose is under it, like the strength of the great deep; all the consciousness of His death, of His ascension, of His coming dominion, of His Divine origin, of His session at God's right hand--all the hoarded love in His heart for His own which were in the world--passes by some mysterious transference into that little incident of tenderness and of humiliation. He sets an everlasting mark upon it, not by a basin of gold crusted with gems, nor by mixing precious scents with the water which He poured out, nor by using linen of the finest tissue, but by the absolute perfection of love and dutiful humility in the spirit and in every detail of the whole action. It is one more of those little chinks through which the whole sunshine of heaven streams in upon those who have eyes to see.[177]

The underlying secret of this feature of our Lord's character is told by Himself. "My meat is to be ever doing the will of Him that sent Me, and so when the time comes by one great decisive act to finish His work."[178] All along the course of that life-walk there were smaller preludes to the great act which won our redemption--multitudinous daily little perfect epitomes of love and sacrifice, without which the crowning sacrifice would not have been what it was. The plan of our life must, of course, be constructed on a scale as different as the human from the Divine. Yet there is a true sense in which this lesson of the great life may be applied to us.

The apparently small things of life must not be despised or neglected on account of their smallness, by those who would follow the precept of St. John. Patience and diligence in petty trades, in services called menial, in waiting on the sick and old, in a hundred such works, all come within the sweep of this net, with its lines that look as thin as cobwebs, and which yet for Christian hearts are stronger than fibres of steel--"walk even as He walked." This, too, is our only security. A French poet has told a beautiful tale. Near a river which runs between French and German territory, a blacksmith was at work one snowy night near Christmas time. He was tired out, standing by his forge, and wistfully looking towards his little home, lighted up a short quarter of a mile away, and wife and children waiting for their festal supper, when he should return. It came to the last piece of his work, a rivet which it was difficult to finish properly; for it was of peculiar shape, intended by the contractor who employed him to pin the metal work of a bridge which he was constructing over the river. The smith was sorely tempted to fail in giving honest work, to hurry over a job which seemed at once so troublesome and so trifling. But some good angel whispered to the man that he should do his best. He turned to the forge with a sigh, and never rested until the work was as complete as his skill could make it. The poet carries us on for a year or two. War breaks out. A squadron of the blacksmith's countrymen is driven over the bridge in headlong flight. Men, horses, guns, try its solidity. For a moment or two the whole weight of the mass really hangs upon the one rivet. There are times in life when the whole weight of the soul also hangs upon a rivet; the rivet of sobriety, of purity, of honesty, of command of temper. Possibly we have devoted little or no honest work to it in the years when we should have perfected the work; and so, in the day of trial, the rivet snaps, and we are lost.

There is one word of encouragement which should be finally spoken for the sake of one class of God's servants.

Some are sick, weary, broken, paralysed, it may be slowly dying. What--they sometimes ask--have we to do with this precept? Others who have hope, elasticity, capacity of service, may walk as He walked; but we can scarcely do so. Such persons should remember what walking in the Christian sense is--all life's activity inward and outward. Let them think of Christ upon His cross. He was fixed to it, nailed hand and foot. Nailed; yet never--not when He trod upon the waves, not when He moved upward through the air to His throne--never did He walk more truly because He walked in the way of perfect love. It is just whilst looking at the moveless form upon the tree that we may hear most touchingly the great "thou shalt"--thou shalt walk even as He walked.

IV.

As there is a literal, so there is a mystical walking as Christ walked. This is an idea which deeply pervades St. Paul's writings. Is it His birth? We are born again. Is it His life? We walk with Him in newness of life. Is it His death? We are crucified with Him. Is it His burial? We are buried with Him. Is it His resurrection? We are risen again with Him. Is it His ascension--His very session at God's right hand? "He hath raised us up and made us sit together with Him in heavenly places." They know nothing of St. Paul's mind who know nothing of this image of a soul seen in the very dust of death, loved, pardoned, quickened, elevated, crowned, throned. It was this conception at work from the beginning in the general consciousness of Christians which moulded round itself the order of the Christian year.

It will illustrate this idea for us if we think of the difference between the outside and the inside of a church.

Outside on some high spire we see the light just lingering far up, while the shadows are coldly gathering in the streets below; and we know that it is winter. Again the evening falls warm and golden on the churchyard, and we recognise the touch of summer. But inside it is always God's weather; it is Christ all the year long. Now the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, or circumcised with the knife of the law, manifested to the Gentiles, or manifesting Himself with a glory that breaks through the veil; now the Man tempted in the wilderness; now the victim dying on the cross; now the Victor risen, ascended, sending the Holy Spirit; now for twenty-five Sundays worshipped as the Everlasting Word with the Father and the Holy Ghost. In this mystical following of Christ also, the one perpetual lesson is--"he that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk even as He walked."

NOTES.

Ch. ii. 3-11.

Ver. 4. _A liar._] There are many things which the "sayer" says by the language of his life rather than by his lips to others: many things which he says to himself. "We lead ourselves astray" (i. 8). We "say" I have knowledge of Him, while yet we observe not His commandments. Strange that we can lie to the one being who knows the truth thoroughly--_self_; and having lied, can get the lie believed,--

"Like one, Who having, unto truth, by telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie." _Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2.

Ver. 7. _Fresh._] There are two quite different words alike translated new in A. V.: one of these is the word used here (καινος); the other (νεος). The first always signifies _new_ in quality--intellectual, ethical, spiritual _novelty_--that which is opposed to, which replaces and supersedes, the antiquated, inferior, outworn; _new_ in the world of thought. (Heb. viii. 13 states this with perfect precision.) It may sometimes not inadequately be rendered _fresh_ ("youngly," Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_). The other term (νεος) is simply _recent_; _new_ chronologically in the world of time.

_Which ye heard from the beginning._] Probably a recognition of St. Paul's teaching at Ephesus, and of his Epistle to the Ephesians.

Ver. 8. To many commentators this verse seems almost of insoluble difficulty. Surely, however, the meaning is clear enough for those who will place themselves within the atmosphere of St. John's thought. "Again a fresh commandment I am writing to you" [this commandment, charity, is no unreal and therefore delusive standard of duty]. Taken as one great whole (ὁ) it is true, matter of observable historical fact, because it is realised in Him who gave the commandment; capable of realisation, and even in measure realised in you. [And this can be actually done by Christians, and recognised more and more by others], "because the shadow is drifting by from the landscape even of the world, and the light, the very light, enlighteneth by a new ideal and a new example."

Ver. 10. _Scandal._] In Greek is the rendering of two Hebrew words. (1) That against which we trip and stumble, a stumbling-block; (2) A hook or snare.

Ver. 11. The terrible force of this truly Hebraistic parallelism should be noted.

1. He that hateth his brother _is_ in darkness. 2. " " " walketh in darkness. 3. " " " knoweth not where he goeth. 4. " " " darkness has blinded his eyes.

The third beat of the parallelism contains an allusion to that Cain among the nations, the Jewish people in our Lord's time. (John xii. 35.)

In illustration of the powerful expression, ("darkness has blinded his eyes") the present writer quoted a striking passage from Professor Drummond, who adduces a parallel for the Christian's loss of the spiritual faculty, by the atrophy of organs which takes place in moles, and in the fish in dark caverns. (_Speaker's Commentary, in loc._) But as regards the mole at least, a great observer of Nature entirely denies the alleged atrophy. Mr. Buckland quotes Dr. Lee in a paper, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, where he says,--"the eye of the mole presents us with an instance of an organ which is rudimentary, not by arrest of development, but through disuse, aided perhaps by natural selection." But Mr. Buckland asserts that "the same great Wisdom who made the mole's teeth the most beautiful set of insectivorous teeth among animals, also made its eye fit for the work it has to do. The mole has been designed to prey upon earthworms; they will not come up to the surface to him, so he must go down into the earth to them. For this purpose his eyes are fitted." (_Life of F. Buckland_, pp. 247, 248).

FOOTNOTES:

[167] "Nomen facile supplent credentes, plenum pectus habentes memoriâ Domini."--_Bengel_.

[168] Εκεινος in our Epistle belongs to Christ in every place but one where it occurs (1 John ii. 6, iii. 3, 5, 7, 16, iv. 17; cf. John i. 18, ii. 21). It is very much equivalent to our reverent usage of printing the pronoun which refers to Christ with a capital letter.

[169] Matt. vi. 45.

[170] δοξας βλασφημουντες (2 Peter ii. 10; Jude v. 8).

[171] _Poems by Matthew Arnold_ ("Rugby Chapel," Nov. 1857), vol. ii., pp. 251, 255.

[172] ὁς μονος συνεπαθησεν πλανωμενω κοσμω. _Acta Paul. et Thec._ 16, _Acta. Apost. Apoc._ 47. Edit. Tischendorf.

[173] _On Liberty._ John Stuart Mill (chap. iii.).

[174] John viii. 12-35. For Apostolic usage of the word, see Acts i. 21; Rom. vi. 4; Ephes. ii. 10; Col. iii. 7.

[175] John vii. 1.

[176] "Ambulando docebat."--_Bretschneider_.

[177] John xiii. 1-6.

[178] Ἱνα ποιω ... και τελειωσω (John iv. 34).

SECTION III. (2)

GREEK. LATIN.

Αγαπητοι, ουκ εντολην Carissimi non mandatum καινην γραφω ὑμιν, αλλ' novum scribo εντολην παλαιαν ἡν vobis, sed mandatum ειχετε απ' αρχης· ἡ vetus quod habuistis εντολη ἡ παλαια εστιν ab initio: mandatum ὁ λογος ὁν ηκουσατε. vetus est verbum quod παλιν εντολην καινην audistis. Iterum mandatum γραφω ὑμιν, ὁ εστιν novum scribo αληθες εν αυτω και vobis, quod est verum εν ὑμιν, ὁτι ἡ σκια et in ipso et in vobis, παραγεται και το φως quoniam tenebræ transierunt το αληθινον ηδη φαινει. et lumen verum ὁ λεγων εν τω φωτι jam lucet. Qui dicit ειναι και τον αδελφον se in luce esse et fratrem αυτου μισων εν τη suum odit, in σκοτια εστιν ἑως αρτι. tenebris est usque αγαπων τον αδελφον adhuc. Qui diligit αυτου εν τω φωτι μενει. f ratrem suum in lumine και σκανδαλον εν αυτω manet, et scandalum ουκ εστιν. ὁ δε μισων in eo non est: qui τον αδελφον αυτου εν autem odit fratrem τη σκοτια εστιν και εν suum, in tenebris est, τη σκοτια περιπατει, και et in tenebris ambulat ουκ οιδε που ὑπαγει, et nescit quo eat, ὁτι ἡ σκοτια ετυφλωσεν quoniam tenebræ obcæcaverunt τους οφθαλμους αυτου. oculos eius.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

Brethren, I write Beloved, no new no new commandment commandment write I unto you, but an old unto you, but an old commandment which commandment which ye had from the beginning. ye had from the beginning: The old commandment the old commandment is the word is the word which ye have heard which ye heard. Again, from the beginning. a new commandment Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which I write unto thing is true in Him you, which thing is and in you: because true in Him and in the darkness is passing you: because the darkness away, and the true is past, and the light already shineth. true light now shineth. He that saith he is in He that saith he the light, and hateth is in the light, and his brother, is in the hateth his brother, is darkness even until in darkness even until now. He that loveth now. He that loveth his brother abideth in his brother abideth in the light, and there is the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling none occasion of stumbling in him. But he in him. But he that hateth his brother that hateth his brother is in the darkness, and is in darkness, and walketh in the darkness, walketh in darkness, and knoweth not and knoweth not whither whither he goeth, because he goeth, because the darkness that darkness hath hath blinded his eyes. blinded his eyes.

ANOTHER VERSION.

Beloved, no fresh commandment I am writing unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The commandment, the old commandment, is the word which ye heard. Again, a fresh commandment I am writing unto you, which thing [_as a whole_] is true in Him and in you: because the shadow is drifting by, and the light, the very _light_, is already enlightening. He that saith he is in the light and hateth his brother, in the darkness is he hitherto. He that loveth his brother in the light abideth he, and scandal in him there is not. But he that hateth his brother in the darkness is he, and in the darkness walketh he, and he knoweth not whither he goeth because the darkness hath blinded his eyes.

SECTION III. (3)

GREEK. LATIN.

Γραφω ὑμιν, τεκνια, Scribo vobis, filioli, ὁτι αφεωνται ὑμιν αι quoniam remittentur ἁμαρτιαι δια το ὁνομα vobis, peccata propter αυτου. γραφω ὑμιν, πατερες, nomen eius. Scribo ὁτι εγνωκατε τον vobis, patres, quoniam απ' αρχης. γραφω ὑμιν, cognovistis eum qui νεανισκοι, ὁτι νενικηκατε ab initio est. Scribo τον πονηρον. εγραψα vobis, adolescentes, ὑμιν, παιδια, ὁτι εγνωκατε quoniam vicistis malignum. τον πατερα. εγραψα Scribo vobis, ὑμιν, πατερες, ὁτι infantes, quia cognovistis εγνωκατε τον απ' αρχης. patrem. Scripsi Εγραψα ὑμιν, νεανισκοι, vobis, iuvenes quia ὁτι ισχυροι εστε, και fortes estis et verbum ὁ λογος του Θεου εν Dei in vobis manet et ὑμιν μενει, και νενικηκατε vicistis malignum. Nolite τον πονηρον. μη αγαπατε diligere mundum τον κοσμον, μηδε τα ne que eaquæ in mundo εν τω κοσμω. εαν τις sunt. Si quis diligit αγαπα τον κοσμον, ουκ mundum, non est εστιν ἡ αγαπη του caritas Patris in eo: πατρος εν αυτω· ὁτι quoniam omne quod in παν το εν τω κοσμω, mundo est, concupiscentia ἡ επιθυμια της σαρκος carnis est, et και ἡ επιθυμια των concupiscentia oculorum, οφθαλμων και ἡ αλαζονια et superbia vitæ; του βιου, ουκ quæ non est ex Patre, εστιν εκ του πατρος, sed ex mundo est. Et αλλα εκ του κοσμου εστιν· mundus transibit et και ὁ κοσμος παραγεται concupiscentia eius: και ἡ επιθυμια αυτου· qui autem facit voluntatem ὁ δε ποιων το θελημα Dei, manet in του Θεου μενει εις τον eternum. αιωνα.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

I write unto you, I write unto you, my little children, because little children, because your sins are forgiven your sins are forgiven you for His name's you for His name's sake. I write unto sake. I write unto you, fathers, because you, fathers, because ye have known Him ye know Him that is that is from the beginning. from the beginning. I I write unto you, write unto you, young young men, because ye men, because ye have have overcome the overcome the evil one. wicked one. I write I have written unto unto you, little children, you, little children, because because ye have ye know the known the Father. I Father. I have written have written unto you, unto you, fathers, because fathers, because ye ye know Him have known Him that which is from the is from the beginning. beginning. I have I have written unto written unto you, you, young men, because young men, because ye ye are strong, are strong, and the and the word of God word of God abideth abideth in you, and ye in you, and ye have have overcome the overcome the evil one. wicked one. Love not Love not the world, the world, neither the neither the things that things that are in the are in the world. If world. If any man any man love the love the world, the world, the love of the love of the Father is Father is not in him. not in him. For all For all that is in the that is in the world, world, the lust of the the lust of the flesh, flesh, and the lust of and the lust of the the eyes, and the vainglory eyes, and the pride of of life, is not of life, is not of the Father, the Father, but is of but is of the world. the world. And the And the world passeth world passeth away, away, and the lust and the lust thereof: thereof: but he that but he that doeth the doeth the will of God will of God abideth for abideth for ever. ever.

ANOTHER VERSION.

I am writing unto you, children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake. I am writing unto you, fathers, because ye have knowledge of Him who is from the beginning. I am writing unto you, young men, because ye are conquerors of the wicked one.

I have written unto you, little children, because ye have knowledge of the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have knowledge of Him who is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong and the word of God abideth in you, and ye are conquerors of the wicked one.

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the arrogancy of living, is not from the Father, but from the world is it. And the world is drifting by, and the lust of it: but he that is doing the will of God abideth for ever.

DISCOURSE VI.

_THE WORLD WHICH WE MUST NOT LOVE._

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world."--1 JOHN ii. 15, 16.

An adequate development of words so compressed and pregnant as these would require a separate treatise, or series of treatises.[179] But if we succeed in grasping St. John's conception of _the world_, we shall have a key that will open to us this cabinet of spiritual thought.

In the writings of St. John the world is always found in one or other of four senses, as may be decided by the context. (1) It means the creation,[180] the universe. So our Lord in His High-priestly prayer--"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world."[181] (2) It is used for the earth _locally_ as the place where man resides;[182] and whose soil the Son of God trod for awhile. "I am no more in the world, but these are in the world."[183] (3) It denotes the chief inhabitants of the earth, they to whom the counsels of God mainly point--men universally. Such a transference is common in nearly all languages. Both the inhabitants of a building and the material structure which contains them, are called "a house;" and the inhabitants are frequently bitterly blamed, while the beauty of the structure is passionately admired. In this sense there is a magnificent width in the word _world_. We cannot but feel indignant at attempts to gird its grandeur within the narrow rim of a human system. "The bread that I will give," said He who knew best, "is My flesh which I will give for the life of the world."[184] "He is the propitiation for the whole world," writes the Apostle at the beginning of this chapter. In this sense, if we would imitate Christ, if we would aspire to the Father's perfection, "love not the world" must be tempered by that other tender oracle--"God so loved the world."[185]

In none of these senses can the world here be understood.[186]

There remains then (4) a fourth signification, which has two allied shades of thought. World is employed to cover the whole present existence, with its blended good and evil--susceptible of elevation by grace, susceptible also of deeper depths of sin and ruin. But yet again the indifferent meaning passes into one that is wholly evil, wholly within a region of darkness. The first creation was pronounced by God in each department "good" collectively; when crowned by God's masterpiece in man, "very good."[187] "All things," our Apostle tells us, "were made through Him (the Word), and without Him was not any thing made that was made."[188] But as that was a world wholly good, so is this a world wholly evil. This evil world is not God's creation, drew not its origin from Him. All that is _in_ it came out _from_ it, from nothing _higher_.[189] This wholly evil world is not the material creation; if it were, we should be landed in dualism, or Manicheism. It is not an entity, an actual tangible thing, a creation. It is not of God's world that St. John cries in that last fierce word of abhorrence which he flings at it as he sees the shadowy thing like an evil spirit made visible in an idol's arms--"the world lieth wholly in the evil one."[190]

This anti-world, this caricature of creation, this thing of negations, is spun out of three abuses of the endowment of God's glorious gift of free-will to man; out of three noble instincts ignobly used. _First_, "the lust of the flesh"--of which flesh is the seat, and supplies the organic medium through which it works. The flesh is that softer part of the frame which by the network of the nerves is intensely susceptible of pleasurable and painful sensations; capable of heroic patient submission to the higher principles of conscience and spirit,[191] capable also of frightful rebellion. Of all theologians St. John is the least likely to fall into the exaggeration of libelling the flesh as essentially evil. Is it not he who, whether in his Gospel, or in his Epistles, delights to speak of the _flesh_ of Jesus, to record words in which He refers to it?[192] Still the flesh brings us into contact with all sins which are sins that spring from, and end in, the senses. Shall we ask for a catalogue of particulars from St. John? Nay, we cannot expect that the virgin Apostle, who received the virgin Mother from the Virgin Lord upon the cross, will sully his virgin pen with words so abhorred. When he has uttered _the lust of the flesh_ his shudder is followed by an eloquent silence. We can fill up the blank too well--drunkenness, gluttony, thoughts and motions which spring from deliberate, wilfully cherished, rebellious sensuality; which fill many of us with pain and fear, and wring cries and bitter tears from penitents, and even from saints. The _second_, abuse of free-will, the second element in this world which is not God's world, is the desire of which the eyes are the seat--"the lust of the eyes." To the two sins which we instinctively associate with this phrase--voluptuousness and curiosity of the senses or the soul--Scripture might seem to add _envy_, which derives so much of its aliment from sight. In this lies the Christian's warning against wilfully indulging in evil sights, bad plays, bad books, bad pictures. He who is outwardly the spectator of these things becomes inwardly the actor of them. The eye is, so to speak, the burning-glass of the soul; it draws the rays from their evil brightness to a focus, and may kindle a raging fire in the heart. Under this department comes unregulated spiritual or intellectual curiosity. The first need not trouble us so much as it did Christians in a more believing time. Comparatively very few are in danger from the _planchette_ or from astrology. But surely it is a rash thing for an ordinary mind, without a clear call of duty, without any adequate preparation, to place its faith within the deadly grip of some powerful adversary. People really seem to have absolutely no conscience about reading anything--the last philosophical Life of Christ, or the last romance; of which the titles might be with advantage exchanged, for the philosophical history is a light romance, and the romance is a heavy philosophy. The _third_ constituent in the evil anti-trinity of the anti-world is "the pride" (the arrogancy, gasconade, almost swagger) "of life," of which the lower life[193] is the seat. The thought is not so much of outward pomp and ostentation as of that false pride which arises in the heart. The arrogancy is within; the gasconade plays its "fantastic tricks before high heaven." And each of these three elements (making up as they do collectively all that is "in the world" and springing out of the world) is not a substantive thing, not an original ingredient of man's nature, or among the forms of God's world; it is the perversion of an element which had a use that was noble, or at least innocent. For first comes "the lust of the flesh." Take those two objects to which this lust turns with a fierce and perverted passion. The possession of flesh in itself leads man to crave for the necessary support to his native weakness. The mutual craving for the love of beings so like and so unlike as man and woman, if it be a weakness, has at least a most touching and exquisite side. Again, is not a yearning for beauty gratified through the eyes? Were they not given for the enjoyment, for the teaching, at once high and sweet, of Nature and of Art? Art may be a moral and spiritual discipline. The ideas of Beauty from gifted minds by cunning hands transferred to, and stamped upon, outward things, come from the ancient and uncreated Beauty, whose beauty is as perfect as His truth and strength. Still further; in the lower life, and in its lawful use, there was intended to be a something of quiet satisfaction, a certain restfulness, at times making us happy and triumphant. And lo! for all this, not moderate fare and pure love, not thoughtful curiosity and the sweet pensiveness which is the best tribute to the beautiful--not a wise humility which makes us feel that our times are in God's hands and our means His continual gift--but degraded senses, low art, evil literature, a pride which is as grovelling as it is godless.

These three typical summaries of the evil tendencies in the exercise of free-will correspond with a remarkable fulness to the two narratives of trial which give us the compendium and general outline of all human temptation.

Our Lord's three temptations answer to this division. The lust of the flesh is in essence the rebellion of the lower appetites, inherent to creaturely dependence, against the higher principle or law. The nearest and only conceivable approach to this in the sinless Man would be in His seeking lawful support by unlawful means--procuring food by a miraculous exertion of power, which only would have become sinful, or short of the highest goodness, by some condition of its exercise at that time and in that place. An appeal to the desire for beauty and glory, with an implied hint of using them for God's greater honour, is the essence of the second temptation; the one possible approximation to the "lust of the eyes" in that perfect character. The interior deception of some touch of pride in the visible support of angels wafting the Son of God through the air is Satan's one sinister way of insinuating to the Saviour something akin to "the pride of life."

In the case of the other earlier typical trials it will be observed that while the temptations fit into the same threefold framework, they are placed in an order which exactly reverses that of St. John. For in Eden the first approach is through "pride"; the magnificent promise of elevation in the scale of being, of the knowledge that would win the wonder of the spiritual world. "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."[194] The next step is that which directs the curiosity both of the senses and of the aspiring mind to the object forbidden--"when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise."[195] Then seems to have come some strange and sad rebellion of the lower nature, filling their souls with shame; some bitter revelation of the law of sin in their members; some knowledge that they were contaminated by the "lust of the flesh."[196] The order of the temptation in the narrative of Moses is historical; St. John's order is moral and spiritual, answering to the facts of life. The "lust of the flesh" which may approach the child through childish greed, grows apace. At first it is half unconscious; then it becomes coarse and palpable. In the man's desire acting with unregulated curiosity, through ambition of knowledge at any price, searching out for itself books and other instruments with deliberate desire to kindle lust, the "lust of the eyes" ceases not its fatal influence. The crowning sin of pride with its _selfishness_, which is self apart from God as well as from the brother, finds its place in the "pride of life."

III.

We may now be in a position to see more clearly against _what_ world the Primate of early Christendom pronounced his anathema, and launched his interdict, and why?

_What_ "world" did he denounce?

Clearly _not_ the world as the creation, the universe. Not again the earth locally. God made and ordered all things. Why should we not love them with a holy and a blameless love? Only we should not love them in themselves; we should not cling to them forgetting Him. Suppose that some husband heaped beautiful and costly presents upon his wife whom he loved. At last with the intuition of love he begins to see what is the secret of such cold imitation of love as that icy heart can give. She loves _him_ not--his riches, not the man; his gifts, not the giver. And thus loving with that frigid love which has no heart in it, there is no true love; her heart is another's. Gifts are given that the giver may be loved in them. If it is true that "gifts are nought when givers prove unkind," it is also true that there is a sort of adultery of the heart when the taker is unkind--because the gift is valuable, not because the bestower is dear.[197] And so the world, God's beautiful world, now becomes to us an idol. If we are so lost in the procession of Nature, in the march of law, in the majestic growth, in the stars above and in the plants below, that we forget the Lawgiver, who from such humble beginnings has brought out a world of beauty and order; if with modern poets we find content, calm, happiness, purity, rest, simply in contemplating the glaciers, the waves, and the stars; then we look at the world even in this sense in a way which is a violation of St. John's rule. Yet again, the world which is now condemned is not humanity. There is no real Christianity in taking black views, and speaking bitter things, about the human society to which we belong, and the human nature of which we are partakers. No doubt Christianity believes that man "is very far gone from original righteousness;" that there is a "corruption in the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam." Yet the utterers of unwholesome apophthegms, the suspecters of their kind, are not Christian thinkers. The philosophic historian, whose gorge rose at the doctrine of the Fall, thought much worse of man practically than the Fathers of the Church. They bowed before martyrdom and purity, and believed in them with a child-like faith. For Gibbon, the martyr was not quite so true, nor the virgin quite so pure, nor the saint quite so holy. He Who knew human nature best, Who has thrown that terrible ray of light into the unlit gulf of the heart when He tells us "what proceeds out of the heart of man,"[198] had yet the ear which was the first to hear the trembling of the one chord that yet kept healthful time and tune in the harlot's passionate heart. He believed that man was recoverable; lost, but capable of being found. After all, in this sense there is something worthy of love in man. "God so _loved_" (not so _hated_) "the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." Shall we say that _we_ are to hate the world which He loved?

And now we come to that world which God never loved, never will love, never will reconcile to Himself,--which we are not to love.

This is most important to see; for there is always a danger in setting out with a stricter standard than Christ's, a narrower road than the narrow one which leads to heaven. Experience proves that they who begin with standards of duty which are impossibly high end with standards of duty which are sometimes sadly low. Such men have tried the impracticable, and failed; the practicable seems to be too hard for them ever afterwards. They who begin by anathematising the world in things innocent, indifferent, or even laudable, not rarely end by a reaction of thought which believes that the world is nothing and nowhere.

But there is such a thing as the world in St. John's sense--an evil world brought into existence by the abuse of our free-will; filled by the anti-trinity, by "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."

Let us not confuse "the world" with the earth, with the whole race of man, with general society, with any particular set, however much some sets are to be avoided. Look at the thing fairly. Two people, we will say, go to London, to live there. One, from circumstances of life and position, naturally falls into the highest social circle. Another has introductions to a smaller set, with an apparently more serious connection. Follow the first some evening. He drives to a great gathering. The room which he enters is ablaze with light; jewelled orders sparkle upon men's coats, and fair women move in exquisite dresses. We look at the scene and we say--"what worldly society has the man fallen into!" Perhaps so, in a sense. But about the same time the other walks to a little room with humbler adjuncts, where a grave and apparently serious circle meet together. We are able to look in there also, and we exclaim--"this is serious society, unworldly society." Perhaps so again. Yet let us read the letters of Mary Godolphin. She bore a life unspotted by the world in the dissolute court of Charles II., because the love of the Father was in her. In small serious circles are there no hidden lusts which blaze up in scandals? Is there no vanity, no pride, no hatred? In the world of Charles II.'s court Mary Godolphin lived out of the world which God hated; in the religious world not a few, certainly, live in the world which is not God's. For once more, the world is not so much a place--though at times its power seems to have been drawn into one intense focus, as in the empire of which Rome was the centre, and which may have been in the Apostle's thought in the following verse. In the truest and deepest sense the world consists of our own spiritual surrounding; it is the place which we make for our own souls. No walls that ever were reared can shut out the world from us; the "Nun of Kenmare" found that it followed her into the seemingly spiritual retreat of a severe Order. The world in its essence is subtler and thinner than the most infinitesimal of the bacterian germs in the air. They can be strained off by the exquisite apparatus of a man of science. At a certain height they cease to exist. But the world may be wherever we are; we carry it with us wherever we go, it lasts while our lives last. No consecration can utterly banish it even from within the church's walls; it dares to be round us while we kneel, and follows us into the presence of God.

(2) Why does God hate this "world"--the world in this sense? St. John tells us. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Deep in every heart must be one or other of two loves. There is no room for two master-passions. There is an expulsive power in all true affection. What tenderness and pathos, how much of expostulation, more potent because reserved--"the love of the Father is not in him"! He has told all his "little ones" that he has written to them because they "know the Father." St. John does not use sacred names at random. Even Voltaire felt that there was something almost awful in hearing Newton pronounce the name of God. Such in an incomparably higher degree is the spirit of St. John. In this section he writes of "the love of the _Father_,"[199] and of the "will of _God_."[200] The first title has more sweetness than majesty; the second more majesty than sweetness.[201] He would throw into his plea some of the winningness of one who uses this as a resistless argument with a tempted but loving child--an argument often successful when every other fails. "If you do this, your Father will not love you; you will not be His child." We have but to read this with the hearts of God's dear children. Then we shall find that if the "love not" of this verse contains "words of extirpation;"[202] it ends with others which are intended to draw us with cords of a man, and with bands of love.

FOOTNOTES:

[179] After all deductions for the lack of accurate and searching textual exegesis, perhaps Bossuet's "Traité de la concupiscence, ou Exposition de ces Paroles de Saint Jean, 1 John ii. 15-17" (_Œuvres de Bossuet_, Tom. vii., 380-420), remains unrivalled.

[180] The word κοσμος originally signified ornament (chiefly perhaps of dress); figuratively it came to denote order. It was first applied by Pythagoras to the _universe_, from the conception of the order, which reigns in it (Plut., _de Plac. Phil._, ii. 1). From schools of philosophy it passed into the language of poets and writers of elevated prose. It is somewhat singular that the Romans, possibly from Greek influence, came to apply "mundus" by the same process to _the world_, as it had also originally signified _ornament_, especially of female dress (See Richard Bentley against Boyle, _Opera Philol._, 347-445, and Notes, Humboldt's _Cosmos_, xiii.). In the LXX. κοσμος does not appear as the translation of שׂלָמ its spiritual equivalent in Hebrew; but very often in the sense of "ornament" and "order." (See Tromm., _Concord. Gr. in LXX_., 1, 913), but it is found as _world_ several times in the Apocrypha (Wisdom vi. 26, vii. 18, ix. 3, xi. 18, xv. 14; 2 Mac. iii. 12, vii. 9-23, viii. 18, xiii. 14).

[181] John xvii. 24.

[182] In Hebrew תֵּבֵל habitable globe; translated οικουμενη in LXX. (see Psalm lxxxix. 11).

[183] John v. 11.

[184] John vi. 31; 1 John ii. 2.

[185] John iii. 16. It may be added that these are passages where the _world_ as humanity generally passes into the darker meaning of that portion of it which is actively hostile to God. John xv. 18, 19.

[186] See note on ver. 16 at the end of the next Discourse.

[187] Gen. i. 31.

[188] John i. 3.

[189] The writer does not happen to remember any commentator who has pointed out this subtle but powerful thought, παν το εν τω κοσμω--εκ του κοσμου εστιν (1 John ii. 16).

[190] 1 John v. 19.

[191] John xiv. 1; 1 John iv. 2, 3; 2 John 7.

[192] John vi. 51, 53-56; 1 John iv. 2, 3; 2 John 7.

[193] ἡ αλαζονια του βιου.

[194] Gen. iii. 5.

[195] Gen. iii. 6.

[196] Gen. iii. 7.

[197] S. Augustin., _Tract. in Joann. Epist._

[198] Mark vii. 21.

[199] 1 John ii. 15, 16.

[200] Ibid. ver. 17.

[201] No portion of Prof. Westcott's Commentary is more thorough or more exquisite than his exposition here. (_Epistles of St. John_, 66.)

[202] "_Extirpantia verba._" St. August (in loc.).

DISCOURSE VII.

_USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF THE VANITY OF THE WORLD._

"The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."--1 JOHN ii. 17.

The connection of the passage in which these words occur is not difficult to trace, for those who are used to follow those "roots below the stream," those real rather than verbal links latent in the substance of St. John's thoughts. He addresses those whom he has in view with a paternal authority, as his "sons" in the faith--with an endearing variation as "little children." He reminds them of the wisdom and strength involved in their Christian life. Theirs is the sweetest flower of knowledge--"to know the Father." Theirs is the grandest crown of victory--"to overcome the wicked one." But there remains an enemy in one sense more dangerous than the evil one--the world. By the world in this place we are to understand that element in the material and human sphere, in the region of mingled good and evil, which is external to God, to the influence of His Spirit, to the boundaries of His Church--nay, which frequently passes over those boundaries. In this sense it is, so to speak, a fictitious world, a world of wills separated from God because dominated by self; a shadowy caricature of creation; an anti-kosmos, which the Author of the kosmos has not made. What has been well called "the great love not" rings out--"love not the world." For this admonition two reasons of ever enduring validity are given by St. John. (1) The application of the law of human nature, that two master-passions cannot co-exist in one man. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." (2) The unsatisfactory nature of the world, its incurable transitoriness, its "visible tendency to non-existence." "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof."

It will be well to consider how far this thought of the transitoriness of the world, of its drifting by in ceaseless change, is in itself salutary and Christian, how far it needs to be supplemented and elevated by that which follows and closes the verse.[203]

There can be no doubt, then, that up to a certain point this conviction is a necessary element of Christian thought, feeling, and character; that it is at least among the preliminaries of a saving reception of Christ.

There is in the great majority of the world a surprising and almost incredible levity. There is a disposition to believe in the permanency of that which we have known to continue long, and which has become habitual. There is a tale of a man who was resolved to keep from his children the knowledge of _death_. He was the Governor of a colony, and had lost in succession his wife and many children. Two only, mere infants, were left. He withdrew to a beautiful and secluded island, and tried to barricade his daughters from the fatal knowledge which, when once acquired, darkens the spirit with anticipation. In the ocean-island death was to be a forbidden word. If met with in the pages of a book, and questions were asked, no answer was to be given. If some one expired, the body was to be removed, and the children were to be told that the departed had gone to another country. It does not need much imagination to feel sure that the secret could not be kept; that some fish lying on the coral reef, or some bright bird killed in the tropic forest, gave the little ones the hint of a something that touched the splendour of the sunset with a strange presentiment; that some hour came when, as to the rest of us, so to them, the mute presence would insist upon being made known. Ours is a stranger mode of dealing with ourselves than was the father's way of dealing with his children. We tacitly resolve to play a game of make-believe with ourselves, to forget that which cannot be forgotten, to remove to an incalculable distance that which is inexorably near. And the fear of death with us does not come from the nerves, but from the will. Death ushers us into the presence of God. Those of whom we speak hate and fear death because they fear God, and hate His presence. Now it is necessary for such persons as these to be awakened from their illusion. That which is supremely important for them is to realise that "the world" is indeed "drifting by;" that there is an emptiness in all that is created, a vanity in all that is not eternal; that time is short, eternity long. They must be brought to see that with the world, the "lust thereof" (the concupiscence, the lust of it, which has the world for its object, which belongs to it, and which the world stimulates) passes by also. The world, which is the object of the desire, is a phantom and a shadow; the desire itself must be therefore the phantom of a phantom and the shadow of a shadow.

This conviction has a thousand times over led human souls to the one true abiding centre of eternal reality. It has come in a thousand ways. It has been said that one heard the fifth chapter of Genesis read, with those words eight times repeated over the close of each record of longevity, like the strokes of a funeral bell, "_and he died_;" and that the impression never left him, until he planted his foot upon the rock over the tide of the changing years. Sometimes this conviction is produced by the death of friends--sometimes by the slow discipline of life--sometimes no doubt it may be begun, sometimes deepened, by the preacher's voice upon the watch-night, by the effective ritualism of the tolling bell, of the silent prayer, of the well-selected hymn. And it is right that the world's dancing in, or drinking in, the New Year, should be a hint to Christians to pray it in. This is one of the happy plagiarisms which the Church has made from the world. The heart feels as it never did before the truth of St. John's sad, calm, oracular survey of existence. "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof."

II.

But we have not sounded the depth of the truth--certainly we have not exhausted St. John's meaning--until we have asked something more. Is this conviction alone always a herald of salvation? Is it always, taken by itself, even salutary? Can it never be exaggerated, and become the parent of evils almost greater than those which it supersedes?

We are led by careful study of the Bible to conclude that this sentiment of the flux of things _is_ capable of exaggeration. For there is one important principle which arises from a comparison of the Old Testament with the New in this matter.

It is to be noticed that the Old Testament has indefinitely more which corresponds to the first proposition of the text, without the qualification which follows it, than we can find in the New.

The patriarch Job's experience echoes in our ears. "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."[204] The Funeral Psalms make their melancholy chant. "Behold, Thou hast made my days as it were a span long.... Verily every man living is altogether vanity. For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain.... O spare me a little that I may smile again."[205] Or we read the words of Moses, the man of God, in that ancient psalm of his, that hymn of time and of eternity. All that human speech can say is summed up in four words, the truest, the deepest, the saddest and the most expressive, that ever fell from any mortal pen. "We bring our years to an end, as a sigh."[206] Each life is a sigh between two eternities!

Our point is, that in the New Testament there is greatly less of this element--greatly less of this pathetic moralising upon the vanity and fragility of human life, of which we have only cited a few examples--and that what there is lies in a different atmosphere, with sunnier and more cheerful surroundings. Indeed, in the whole compass of the New Testament there is perhaps but one passage which is set quite in the same key with our familiar declamations upon the uncertainty and shortness of human life--where St. James desires Christians ever to remember in all their projects to make deduction for the will of God, "not knowing what shall be on the morrow."[207] In the New Testament the voice, which wails for a second about the changefulness and misery, is lost in the triumphant music by which it is encompassed. If earthly goods are depreciated, it is not merely because "the load of them troubles, the love of them taints, the loss of them tortures;"[208] it is because better things are ready. There is no lamentation over the change, no clinging to the dead past. The tone is rather one of joyful invitation. "Your raft is going to pieces in the troubled sea of time; step into a gallant ship. The volcanic isle on which you stand is undermined by silent fires; we can promise to bring you with us to a shore of safety where you shall be compassed about with songs of deliverance."

It is no doubt true to urge that this style of thought and language is partly to be ascribed to a desire that the attention of Christians should be fixed on the return of their Lord, rather than upon their own death. But, if we believe Scripture to have been written under Divine guidance, the history of religion may supply us with good grounds for the absence of all exaggeration from its pages in speaking of the misery of life and the transitoriness of the world.

The largest religious experiment in the world, the history of a religion which at one time numerically exceeded Christendom, is a gigantic proof that it is _not_ safe to allow unlimited licence to melancholy speculation. The true symbol for humanity is not a skull and an hour glass.

Some two thousand five hundred years ago, towards the end of the seventh century before Christ, at the foot of the mountains of Nepaul, in the capital of a kingdom of Central India, an infant was born whom the world will never forget. All gifts seemed to be showered on this child. He was the son of a powerful king and heir to his throne. The young Siddhârtha was of rare distinction, brave and beautiful, a thinker and a hero, married to an amiable and fascinating princess. But neither a great position nor domestic happiness could clear away the cloud of melancholy which hung over Siddhârtha, even under that lovely sky. His deep and meditative soul dwelt night and day upon the mystery of existence. He came to the conclusion that the life of the creature is incurably evil from three causes--from the very fact of existence, from desire, and from ignorance. The things revealed by sense are evil. None has that continuance and fixity which is the mark of _Law_, and the attainment of which is the condition of happiness. At last his resolution to leave all his splendour and become an ascetic was irrevocably fixed. One splendid morning the prince drove to a glorious garden. On his road he met a repulsive old man, wrinkled, toothless, bent. Another day, a wretched being wasted with fever crossed his path. Yet a third excursion--and a funeral passes along the road with a corpse on an open bier, and friends wailing as they go. His favourite attendant is obliged in each case to confess that these evils are not exceptional--that old age, sickness, and death, are the fatal conditions of conscious existence for all the sons of men. Then the Prince Royal takes his first step towards becoming the deliverer of humanity. He cries--"woe, woe to the youth which old age must destroy, to the health which sickness must undermine, to the life which has so few days and is so full of evil." Hasty readers are apt to judge that the Prince was on the same track with the Patriarch of Idumea, and with Moses the man of God in the desert--nay, with St. John, when he writes from Ephesus that "the world passeth away, and the lust thereof."

It may be well to reconsider this; to see what contradictory principle lies under utterances which have so much superficial resemblance.

Siddhârtha became known as the Bouddha, the august founder of a great and ancient religion. That religion has of later years been favourably compared with Christianity--yet what are its necessary results, as drawn out for us by those who have studied it most deeply? Scepticism, fanatic hatred of life, incurable sadness in a world fearfully misunderstood; rejection of the personality of man, of God, of the reality of Nature. Strange enigma! The Bouddha sought to win annihilation by good works; everlasting non-being by a life of purity, of alms, of renunciation, of austerity. The prize of his high calling was not everlasting life, but everlasting death; for what else is impersonality, unconsciousness, absorption into the universe, but the negation of human existence? The acceptance of the principles of Bouddhism is simply a sentence of death intellectually, morally, spiritually, almost physically, passed upon the race which submits to the melancholy bondage of its creed of desolation. It is the opium drunkenness of the spiritual world without the dreams that are its temporary consolation. It is enervating without being soft, and contemplative without being profound. It is a religion which is spiritual without recognising the soul, virtuous without the conception of duty, moral without the admission of liberty, charitable without love. It surveys a world without nature, and a universe without God.[209] The human soul under its influence is not so much drunken as asphyxiated by a monotonous unbalanced perpetual repetition of one half of the truth--"the world passeth away, and the lust thereof."

For let us carefully note that St. John adds a qualification which preserves the balance of truth. Over against the dreary contemplation of the perpetual flux of things, he sets a constant course of _doing_--over against the _world_, God in His deepest, truest personality, "_the will of God_"--over against the fact of our having a short time to live, and being full of misery, an everlasting _fixity_, "_he abideth for ever_"--(so well brought out by the old gloss which slipped into the Latin text, "even as God abideth for ever"). As the Lord had taught before, so the disciple now teaches, of the rocklike solidity, of the permanent abiding, under and over him who "_doeth_." Of the devotee who became in his turn the Bouddha, Çakhya-Mouni could not have said one word of the close of our text. "_He_"--but human personality is lost in the triumph of knowledge. "_Doeth the will of God_"--but God is ignored, if not denied.[210] "_Abideth for ever_"--but that is precisely the object of his aversion, the terror from which he wishes to be emancipated at any price, by any self-denial.

It may be supposed that this strain of thought is of little practical importance. It may be of use, indeed, in other lands to the missionary who is brought into contact with forms of Bouddhism in China, India, or Ceylon, but not to us in these countries. In truth it is not so. It is about half a century ago since a great English theologian warned his University that the central principle of Bouddhism was being spread far and wide in Europe from Berlin. This propaganda is not confined to philosophy. It is at work in literature generally, in poetry, in novels, above all in those collections of "Pensées" which have become so extensively popular. The unbelief of the last century advanced with flashing epigrams and defiant songs. With Byron it softened at times into a melancholy which was perhaps partly affected. But with Amiel, and others of our own day, unbelief assumes a sweet and dirge-like tone. The satanic mirth of the past unbelief is exchanged for a satanic melancholy in the present. Many currents of thought run into our hearts, and all are tinged with a darkness before unknown from new substances in the soil which colours the waters. There is little fear of our not hearing enough, great fear of our hearing too much, of the proposition--"the world passeth away, and the lust thereof."

All this may possibly serve as some explanation for the fact that the Christian Church, as such, has no fast for the last day of the year, no festival for New Year's Day except one quite unconnected with the lessons which may be drawn from the flight of time. The death of the old year, the birth of the new year, have touching associations for us. But the Church consecrates no death but that of Jesus and His martyrs, no nativity but that of her Lord, and of one whose birth was directly connected with His own--John the Baptist.[211] A cause of this has been found in the fact that the day had become so deeply contaminated by the abominations of the heathen _Saturnalia_ that it was impossible in the early Church to continue any very marked observation of it. This may well be so; but it is worth considering whether there is not another and deeper reason. Nothing that has now been said can be supposed to militate against the observance of this time by Christians in private, with solemn penitence for the transgressions of the past year, and earnest prayer for that upon which we enter--nothing against the edification of particular congregations by such services as those most striking ones which are held in so many places. But some explanation is supplied why the "Watch-night" is not recognised in the calendar of the Church.

Let us take our verse together as a whole and we have something better than moralising over the flight of time and the transitoriness of the world; something better than vulgarising "vanity of vanities" by vapid iteration.

It is hard to conceive a life in which death and evanescence have nothing that enforces their recognition. Now the removal of one dear to us, now a glance at the obituary with the name of some one of almost the same age as ourselves, brings a sudden shadow over the sunniest field. Yet surely it is not wholesome to encourage the perpetual presence of the cloud. We might impose upon ourselves the penance of being shut up all a winter's night with a corpse, go half crazy with terror of that unearthly presence, and yet be no more spiritual after all.[212] We must learn to look at death in a different way, with new eyes. We all know how different dead faces are. Some speak to us merely of material ugliness, of the sweep of "decay's effacing fingers." In others a new idea seems to light up the face; there is the touch of a superhuman irradiation, of a beauty from a hidden life. We feel that we look on one who has seen Christ, and say--"we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." These two kinds of faces answer to the two different views of life.

Not the transitory, but the permanent; not the fleeting, but the abiding; not death but life, is the conclusion of the whole matter. The Christian life is not an initial spasm followed by a chronic dyspepsia. What does St. John give us as the picture of it exemplified in a believer? Daily, perpetual, constant doing the will of God. This is the end far beyond--somewhat inconsistent with--obstinately morbid meditation and surrounding ourselves with multiplied images of mortality. Lying in a coffin half the night might not lead to that end; nay, it might be a hindrance thereto. Beyond the grave, outside the coffin, is the object at which we are to look. "The current of things temporal," cries Augustine, "sweeps along. But like a tree over that stream has risen our Lord Jesus Christ. He willed to plant Himself as it were over the river. Are you whirled along by the current? Lay hold of the wood. Does the love of the world roll you onward in its course? Lay hold upon Christ. For you He became temporal that you might become eternal. For He was so made temporal as to remain eternal. Join thy heart to the eternity of God, and thou shalt be eternal with Him."

Those who have heard the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel describe the desolation which settles upon the soul which surrenders itself to the impression of the ritual. As the psalm proceeds, at the end of each rhythmical pulsation of thought, each beat of the alternate wings of the parallelism, a light upon the altar is extinguished. As the wail grows sadder the darkness grows deeper. When all the lights are out and the last echo of the strain dies away, there would be something suitable for the penitent's mood in the words--"the world passeth away, and the lust thereof." Upon the altar of the Christian heart there are tapers at first unlighted, and before it a priest in black vestments. But one by one the vestments are exchanged for others which are white; one after another the lamps are lighted slowly and without noise, until gradually, we know not how, the whole place is full of light. And ever sweeter and clearer, calm and happy, with a triumph which is at first repressed and reverential, but which increases as the light becomes diffused, the words are heard strong and quiet--a plain-song now that will swell into an anthem presently--"he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

NOTES.

Ch. ii. 12-17.

Ver. 12, 13, 14. These verses cannot properly be divided so as to embrace three departments of spiritual, answering to three departments of natural, life. All believers are addressed _authoritatively_ as "children" in the faith, _tenderly_ as "little children;" then subdivided into two classes only, "fathers," and "young men." _Confirmation_ is justly found implied here.

Ver. 16. Hardy's comment is quaint, and interesting. "These three are 'all that is in the world;' they are the world's cursed trinity; according to that of the poet,

Ambitiosus honos, et opes, et fœda voluptas; Hæc tria pro trino numine mundus habet,

which wicked men adore and worship as deities; in which regard Lapide opposeth them to the three persons in the blessed Trinity: the lust of the eyes to the Father, who is liberal in communicating His essence to the Son and the Spirit; the lust of the flesh to the Son, whose generation is spiritual and eternal; the pride of life to the Holy Ghost, who is the Spirit of humility. That golden calf, which, being made, was set up and worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness, is not unfitly made use of to represent these: the calf, which is a wanton creature, an emblem of the lust of flesh; the gold of the calf, referring to the lust of the eyes; and the exalting it, to the pride of life. Oh, how do the most of men fall down before this golden calf which the world erecteth."

In tracing the various senses of "the world" we have not dwelt prominently upon the conception of the world as embodied in the Roman Empire, and in the city of Rome as its seat--an empire standing over against the Church as the Kingdom of God. The αλαζονια του βιου may be projected outwardly, and set in a material framework in the gorgeous description of the wealth and luxury of Rome in Apoc. xviii. 11-14. M. Rénan finds in the Apocalypse the cry of horror of a witness who has been at Rome, seen the martyrdom of brethren, and been himself near death. (Apoc. i. 9, vi. 9, xiii. 10, xx. 4; cf. _L'Antechrist_, pp. 197, 199. Surely Apoc. xviii. 20 adds a strong testimony to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul at Rome.) So early a witness as Tertullian gives the story of St. John's having been plunged into the boiling oil without injury to him before his exile at Patmos. (_De Præscr. Hær._, 36). The Apocryphal 'Acta Iohannis' (known to Eusebius and to St. Augustine), relates at length an interview at Rome between Domitian and St. John--not without interest, in spite of some miraculous embellishment. _Acta. Apost. Apoc._ Tischendorf, 266-271.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] παραγεται. It has been said that this is not the real point; that what St. John here describes is not the general attribute of the world as transitory, but its condition at the moment when the Epistle was written, in presence of the manifestation of "the kingdom of God, which was daily shining forth." But surely the world can scarcely be so completely identified with the temporary framework of the Roman Empire; and the _universality_ of the antithesis (ὁ δε ποιων κ.τ.λ.) and its intensely _individual_ form, lead us to take κοσμος in that universal and inclusive signification which alone is of abiding interest to every age.

[204] Job xiv. 1, 2. Cf. x. 20-22.

[205] Such seems to be the meaning of אַבְלִינָה (Ps. xxxix. 14).

[206] Ps. xc. 9.

[207] James iv. 13-17. The passage 1 Pet. i. 25 is taken from the magnificent prophecy in which the fragility of all flesh, transitory as the falling away of the flowers of grass into impalpable dust, is contrasted with the eternity of the word of God. Isa. xl. 6, 7, LXX.

[208] "Possessa onerant, amata inquinant, amissa cruciant."--_St. Bernard_.

[209] The view here taken of Bouddhism follows that of M. J. Barthelemy St. Hilaire. _Le Bouddha et sa Réligion._ Prémière partie, chap. v., pp. 141-182.

[210] "These populations neither deny nor affirm God. They simply ignore Him. To assert that they are atheists would be very much the same thing as to assert that they are anti-Cartesians. As they are neither for nor against Descartes, so they are neither for nor against God. They are just children. A child is neither atheist nor deist. He is nothing."--Voltaire, _Dict. Phil._, Art. _Athêisme_.

[211] It is noteworthy that in the collects in the English Prayer-Book, and indeed in its public formularies generally (outside the Funeral Service, and that for the Visitation of the Sick), there are but two places in which the note of the "world passeth away" is very prominently struck, viz., the Collect for the Fourth Sunday after Easter, and one portion of the prayer for "The Church Militant." One of the most wholesome and beautiful expressions of the salutary convictions arising from Christian perception of this melancholy truth is to be found in Dr. Johnson's "Prayer for the Last Day in the Year," as given in Mr. Stobart's _Daily Services for Christian Households_, pp. 99, 100.

[212] The old "Memento Mori" timepiece of Mary, Queen of Scots, is a watch in the interior of a death's-head, which opens to disclose it. Surely not a symbol likely to make any soul happier or better!

SECTION IV.

GREEK. LATIN.

Παιδια, εσχατη ωρα Filioli, novissima εστιν· και καθως ηκουσατε hora est: et sicut audistis ὁτι ὁ αντιχριστος quia antichristus ερχεται, και νυν αντιχριστοι venit, nunc autem antichristi πολλοι γεγονασιν· multi facti sunt, ὁθεν γινωσκομεν unde scimus quia ὁτι εσχατη ὡρα εστιν. novissima hora est. Εξ ἡμων εξηλθαν, αλλ' Ex nobis prodierunt, ουκ ησαν εξ ἡμων. ει sed non erant ex nobis, γαρ εξ ἡμων ησαν, nam si fuissent ex μεμενηκεισαν αν μεθ' nobis, permansissent ἡμων· αλλ' ἱνα φανερωθωσιν utique nobiscum; sed ὁτι ουκ εισιν ut manifesti sint quoniam παντες εξ ἡμων. Και non sunt omnes ὑμεις χρισμα εχετε απο ex nobis. Sed vos του αγιου, και οιδατε unctionem habetis a παντα. ουκ εγραψα Sancto, et nostis omnia. ὑμιν, ὁτι ουκ οιδατε Non scripsi vobis quasi την αληθειαν, αλλ' ὁτι ignorantibus veritatem, οιδατε αυτην, και ὁτι sed quasi scientibus παν ψευδος εκ της eam, et quoniam omne αληθειας ουκ εστιν. Τις mendacium ex veritate εστιν ὁ ψευστης, ει non est. Quis est mendax, μη ὁ αρνουμενος ὁτι nisi qui negat Ιησους ουκ εστιν ὁ quoniam Iesus non est Χριστος; ουτος εστιν Christus? Hic est ὁ αντιχριστος, ὁ αρνουμενος antichristus, qui negat τον πατερα και Patrem et Filium. τον υιον. πας ὁ αρνουμενος Omnis qui negat Filium τον υιον, ουδε nec Patrem habet: qui τον πατερα εχει. ὁ confitetur Filium, et ὁμολογων τον υιον και Patrem habet. Vos τον πατερα εχει. Ὑμεις quod audistis ab initio, ὁ ηκουσατε απ' αρχης, in vobis permaneat. εν ὑμιν μενετω. εαν Si in vobis permanserit εν ὑμιν μεινη ὁ απ' quod ab initio audistis, αρχης ηκουσατε, και ὑμεις et vos in Filio et Patre εν τω υιω και εν τω manebitis. Et hæc est πατρι μενειτε. και αυτη promissio quam ipse εστιν ἡ επαγγελια, ἡν pollicitus est vobis, αυτος επηγγειλατο ἡμιν, vitam æternam. Hæc την ζωην την αιωνιον. scripsi vobis de his qui ταυτα εγραψα ὑμιν περι seducunt vos. Et vos των πλανωντων ὑμας. unctionem quam accepistis Και ὑμεις το χρισμα ab eo, maneat in ὁ ελαβατε απ' αυτου, vobis; et non necesse μενει εν ὑμιν, και ου habetis ut aliquis χρειαν εχετε ἱνα τις doceat vos, sed sicut διδασκη ὑμας· αλλ' ὡς unctio eius docet vos το αυτου χρισμα διδασκει de omnibus, et verum ὑμας περι παντων, και est, et non est mendacium, αληθες εστιν, και ουκ et sicut docuit εστιν ψευδος· και καθως vos manete in eo. Et εδιδαξεν ὑμας, μενειτε nunc, filioli, manete in εν αυτω. Και νυν, eo, ut cum apparuerit τεκνια, μενετε εν αυτω· habemus fiduciam, et ἱνα ὁταν φανερωθη, non confundamur ab eo σχωμεν παρρησιαν, και in adventu eius. μη αισχυνθωμεν απ' αυτου, εν τη παρουσια αυτου.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

Little children, it is Little children, it is the last time: and as the last hour: and as ye have heard that ye heard that antichrist antichrist shall come, cometh, even now have even now there are there arisen many many antichrists; antichrists; whereby whereby we know that we know that it is the it is the last time. last hour. They went They went out from us, out from us, but they but they were not of were not of us; for if us; for if they had they had been of us, been of us, they would they would have continued _no doubt_ have continued with us: but with us: but _they went out_, that they _they went out_, that might be made manifest they might be made manifest how that they are that they were not not of us. And ye all of us. But ye have have an anointing from an unction from the the Holy One, and ye Holy One, and ye know know all things. I all things. I have not have not written unto written unto you because you because ye know ye know not the not the truth, but because truth, but because ye ye know it, and know it, and that no because no lie is of the lie is of the truth. truth. Who is the liar Who is a liar but he but he that denieth that denieth that Jesus that Jesus is the is the Christ? He is Christ? This is the antichrist, that denieth antichrist, _even_ he that the Father and the Son. denieth the Father and Whosoever denieth the the Son. Whosoever Son, the same hath not denieth the Son, the the Father: [_but_] same hath not the _he that acknowledgeth the Father: he that confesseth Son hath the Father the Son hath also_. Let that therefore the Father also. As abide in you, for you, let that abide which ye have heard in you which ye heard from the beginning. from the beginning. If that which ye have If that which ye heard heard from the beginning from the beginning shall remain in abide in you, ye also you, ye also shall continue shall abide in the Son, in the Son, and and in the Father. in the Father. And And this is the promise this is the promise that which He promised us, He hath promised us, _even_ the life eternal. _even_ eternal life. These things have I These _things_ have I written unto you concerning written unto you concerning them that them that seduce you. would lead you astray. But the anointing And as for you, the which ye have received anointing which ye received of Him abideth in you, of Him abideth and ye need not that in you, and ye need any man teach you: not that any one teach but as the same anointing you; but as His anointing teacheth you of all teacheth you concerning things, and is truth, all things, and and is no lie, and even is true, and is no lie, as it hath taught you, and even as it taught ye shall abide in Him. you, ye abide in Him. And now, little children, And now, _my_ little abide in Him; children, abide in Him; that, when He shall that, if He shall be appear, we may have manifested, we may confidence, and not be have boldness, and not ashamed before Him be ashamed before Him at His coming. at His coming.

ANOTHER VERSION.

Little children, it is a last hour; and as ye heard that antichrist cometh, so now many antichrists are in existence; whereby we know that it is a last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us they would have continued with us: but that they might be made manifest how that all are not of us, _they all went out_. But ye have unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you _this_--"ye know not the truth"--but _this_--"ye know it," and _this_--"every lie is not from the truth." Who is the liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? The antichrist is this, he that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son the same hath not the Father; he that confesseth the Son also hath the Father. As for you--that which ye heard from the beginning let it abide in you. If that abide in you which from the beginning ye heard, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise which He promised us, the life, the eternal _life_. These things have I written unto you concerning those that would mislead you. And as for you--the anointing which ye received from Him abideth in you, and ye have no need that any be teaching you: but as His unction is teaching you continually concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and as it taught you, so shall ye abide in Him. And now, children, abide in Him, that if He shall be manifested we may have boldness and not shrink in shame from Him in His coming.

DISCOURSE VIII.

_KNOWING ALL THINGS._

"But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things."--1 JOHN ii. 20.

There is little of the form of logical argument to which Western readers are habituated in the writings of St. John, steeped as his mind was in Hebraic influences. The inferential "therefore" is not to be found in this Epistle.[213] Yet the diligent reader or expositor finds it more difficult to detach any single sentence, without loss to the general meaning, than in any other writing of the New Testament. The sentence may look almost as if its letters were graven brief and large upon a block of marble, and stood out in oracular isolation--but upon reverent study it will be found that the seemingly lapidary inscription is one of a series with each of which it is indissolubly connected--sometimes limited, sometimes enlarged, always coloured and influenced by that which precedes and follows.

It is peculiarly needful to bear this observation in mind in considering fully the almost startling principle stated in the verse which is prefixed to this discourse. A kind of spiritual omniscience appears to be attributed to believers. Catechisms, confessions, creeds, teachers, preachers, seem to be superseded by a stroke of the Apostle's pen, by what we are half tempted to consider as a magnificent exaggeration. The text sounds as if it outstripped even the fulfilment of the promise of the new covenant contained in Jeremiah's prophecy--"they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them."[214]

The passages just before and after St. John's splendid annunciation[215] in our text are occupied with the subject of Antichrist, here first mentioned in Scripture. In this section of our Epistle Antichrist is (1) _revealed_, and (2) _refuted_.

(1) Antichrist is revealed by the very crisis which the Church was then traversing. From this especially, from the transitory character of a world drifting by them in unceasing mutation, the Apostle is led to consider this as one of those crisis-hours of the Church's history, each of which may be _the_ last hour, and which is assuredly--in the language of primitive Christianity--_a_ last hour. The Apostle therefore exclaims with fatherly affection--"Little children, it is a last hour."[216]

Deep in the heart of the Apostolic Church, because it came from those who had received it from Christ, there was one awful anticipation. St. John in this passage gives it a name. He remembers Who had told the Jews that "if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive."[217] He can announce to them that "as ye have heard this Antichrist cometh, even so now" (precisely as ye have heard) "many antichrists have come into existence and are around you, whereby we know that it is a last hour." The _name_ Antichrist occurs only in these Epistles, and seems purposely intended to denote both one who occupies the place of Christ, and one who is against Christ. In "the Antichrist" the antichristian principle is personally concentrated. The conception of representative-men is one which has become familiar to modern students of the philosophy of history. Such representative-men, at once the products of the past, moulders of the present, and creative of the future, sum up in themselves tendencies and principles good and evil, and project them in a form equally compacted and intensified into the coming generations. Shadows and anticipations of Antichrist the holiest of the Church's sons have sometimes seen, even in the high places of the Church. But it is evident that as yet the Antichrist has not come. For wherever St. John mentions this fearful impersonation of evil, he connects the manifestation of his influence with absolute denial of the true Manhood, of the Messiahship, of the everlasting sonship of Jesus, of the Father, Who is His and our Father.[218] In negation of the Personality of God, in the substitution of a glittering but unreal idea of human goodness and active philanthropy for the historical Christ, we of this age may not improbably hear his advancing footsteps, and foresee the advent of a day when antichristianity shall find its great representative-man.

(2) Antichrist is also refuted by a principle common to the life of Christians and by its result.

The principle by which he is refuted is a gift of insight lodged in the Church at large, and partaken of by all faithful souls.

A hint of a solemn crisis had been conveyed to the Christians of Asia Minor by secessions from the great Christian community. "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us (which they did not, but went out) that they might be made manifest that not all are of us."[219] Not only this. "Yea further, ye yourselves have a hallowing oil from Him who is hallowed, a chrism from the Christ, an unction from the Holy One, even from the Son of God." Chrism (as we are reminded by the most accurate of scholars) is always the _material_ with which anointing is performed, never the _act_ of anointing; it points to the unction of prophets, priests and kings under the Old Testament, in whose sacrifices and mystic language oil symbolises the Holy Spirit as the spirit of joy and freedom. Quite possibly there may be some allusion to a literal use of oil in Baptism and Confirmation, which began at a very early period;[220] though it is equally possible that the material may have arisen from the spiritual, and not in the reverse order. But beyond all question the real predominant reference is to the Holy Ghost. In the chrism here mentioned there is a feature characteristic of St. John's style. For there is first a faint prelusive note which (as we find in several other important subjects[221]) is faintly struck and seems to die away, but is afterwards taken up, and more fully brought out. The full distinct mention of the Holy Spirit comes like a burst of the music of the "Veni Creator," carrying on the fainter prelude when it might seem to have been almost lost. The first reverential, almost timid hint, is succeeded by another, brief but significant--almost dogmatically expressive of the relation of the Holy Spirit to Christ as _His_ Chrism, "the Chrism of Him."[222] We shall presently have a direct mention of the Holy Ghost. "Hereby we know that He abideth in us, from the Spirit which He gave us."[223]

Antichrist is refuted by a result of this great principle of the life of the Holy Spirit in the living Church. "Ye have" chrism from the Christ; Antichrist shall not lay his unhallowing disanointing hand upon you. As a result of this, "ye know all things."[224]

How are we to understand this startling expression?

If we receive any teachers as messengers commissioned by God, it is evident that their message must be communicated to us through the medium of human language. They come to us with minds that have been in contact with a _Mind_ of infinite knowledge, and deliver utterances of universal import. They are therefore under an obligation to use language which is capable of being misunderstood by some persons. Our Lord and His Apostles so spoke at times. Two very different classes of men constantly misinterpret words like those of our text. The rationalist does so with a sinister smile; the fanatic with a cry of hysterical triumph. The first may point his epigram with effective reference to the exaggerated promise which is belied by the ignorance of so many ardent believers; the second may advance his absurd claim to personal infallibility in all things spiritual. Yet an Apostle calmly says--"ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." This, however, is but another asterisk directing the eye to the Master's promise in the Gospel, which is at once the warrant and the explanation of the utterance here. "The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall _teach you all things_, and bring all things to your remembrance, _whatsoever I have said unto you_."[225] The express limitation of the Saviour's promise is the implied limitation of St. John's statement. "The Holy Ghost has been sent, according to this unfailing pledge. He teaches you (and, if He teaches, you know) all things which Christ has said, as far as their substance is written down in a true record--all things of the new creation spoken by our Lord, preserved by the help of the Spirit in the memories of chosen witnesses with unfading freshness, by the same Spirit unfolded and interpreted to you."

We should observe in what spirit and to whom St. John speaks.

He does not speak in the strain which would be adopted by a missionary in addressing men lately brought out of heathenism into the fold of Christ. He does not like a modern preacher or tract-writer at once divide his observations into two parts, one for the converted, one for the unconverted; all are his "dear ones" as beloved, his "sons" as brought into close spiritual relationship with himself. He classes them simply as young and old, with their respective graces of strength and knowledge. All are looked upon as "abiding"; almost the one exhortation is to abide unto the end in a condition upon which all have already entered, and in which some have long continued. We feel throughout the calmness and assurance of a spiritual teacher writing to Christian men who had either been born in the atmosphere of Christian tradition, or had lived in it for many years. They are again and again appealed to on the ground of a common Christian confidence--"we know." They have all the articles of the Christian creed, the great inheritance of a faithful summary of the words and works of Christ. The Gospel which Paul at first preached in Asia Minor was the starting point of the truth which remained among them, illustrated, expanded, applied, but absolutely unaltered.[226] What the Christians whom St. John has in view really want is the revival of familiar truths, not the impartation of new. No spiritual voyage or discovery is needed; they have only to explore well-known regions. The memory and the affections must be stimulated. The truths which have become "cramped and bed-ridden" in the dormitory of the soul must acquire elasticity from exercise. The accumulation of ashes must be blown away, and the spark of fire beneath fanned into flame. This capacity of revival, of expansion, of quickened life, of developed truth, is in the unction common to the faithful, in the latent possibilities of the new birth. The same verse to which we have before referred as the best interpreter of this should be consulted again.[227] There is an instructive distinction between the tenses--"as His unction _is teaching_"--"as it _taught_ you."[228] The teaching was once for all, the creed definite and fixed, the body of truth a sum-total looked upon as one. "The unction _taught_." Once for all the Holy Spirit made known the Incarnation and stamped the recorded words of Christ with His seal. But there are depths of thought about His person which need to be reverently explored. There is an energy in His work which was not exhausted in the few years of its doing, and which is not imprisoned within the brief chronicle in which it is written. There is a spirit and a life in His words. In one aspect they have the strength of the tornado, which advances in a narrow line; but every foot of the column, as if armed with a tooth of steel, grinds and cuts into pieces all which resists it. Those words have also depths of tenderness, depths of wisdom, into which eighteen centuries have looked down and never yet seen the last of their meaning. Advancing time does but broaden the interpretation of the wisdom and the sympathy of those words. Applications of their significance are being discovered by Christian souls in forms as new and manifold as the claims of human need. The Church collectively is like one sanctified mind meditating incessantly upon the Incarnation; attaining more and more to an understanding of that character as it widens in a circle of glory round the form of its historical manifestation--considering how those words may be applied not only to self but to humanity. The new wants of each successive generation bring new help out of that inexhaustible store. The Church may have "decided opinions"; but she has not the "deep slumber" which is said to accompany them. How can _she_ be fast asleep who is ever learning from a teacher Who is always supplying her with fresh and varied lessons? The Church must be ever learning, because the anointing which "taught" once for all is also ever "teaching."

This profound saying is therefore chiefly true of Christians as a whole. Yet each individual believer may surely have a part in it. "There is a teacher in the heart who has also a chair in heaven." "The Holy Spirit who dwells in the justified soul," says a pious writer, "is a great director." May we not add that He is a great catechist? In difficulties, whether worldly, intellectual, or spiritual, thousands for a time helpless and ignorant, in presence of difficulties through which they could not make their way, have found with surprise how true in the sequel our text has become to them.

For we all know how different things, persons, truths, ideas may become, as they are seen at different times and in different lights, as they are seen in relation to God and truth or outside that relation. The bread in Holy Communion is unchanged in _substance_; but some new and glorious relation is superadded to it. It is devoted by its consecration to the noblest _use_ manward and Godward, so that St. Paul speaks of it with hushed reverence as "_The Body_."[229] It seems to be a part of the same law that some one--once perhaps frivolous, common-place, sinful--is taken into the hand of the great High Priest, broken with sorrow and penitence, and blessed; and thereafter he is at once personally the same, and yet another higher and better by that awful consecration to another use. So again with some truth of creed or catechism which we have fallen into the fallacy of supposing that we know because it is familiar. It may be a truth that is sweet or one that is tremendous. It awaits its consecration, its blessing, its transformation into a something which in itself is the same yet which is other to us. That is to say, the familiar truth is old, in itself, in substance and expression. It needs no other, and can have no better formula. To change the formula would be to alter the truth; but to us it is taught newly with a fuller and nobler exposition by the unction which is "ever teaching," whereby we "know all things."

NOTES.

Ch. ii. 18-28.

Ver. 18. A _last hour_,] εσχατη ὡρα. "Hour" is used in all St. John's writings of a definite point of time, which is also providentially fixed. (Cf. John xvii. 1; Apoc. iii. 3.) In something of this elevated signification Shakespeare appears to employ the word in _The Tempest_ in relation to his own life:

_Prospero._ "How's the day?"

_Ariel._ "On the _sixth hour_; at which time, my lord, You said our work should cease."

Each decade of years is here looked upon as a providentially fixed duration of time. The poet intended to retire from the work of imaginative poetry when his life should draw on towards sixty years of age.

Ver. 19. "It doth not appear, nor is it probable, that these antichrists, when gone out from the Apostles, did still pretend to the orthodox faith; and therefore no need for the Apostle to make any provision against it. Nay, it is plainly intimated by the following discourse, that these antichrists being gone forth, did set themselves expressly, directly, against the orthodox, denying that Jesus, whom they did profess, to be the Christ; and therefore the design of this clause is most rationally conceived to be the prevention of that scandal which their horrid apostasy might give to weak Christians; nor could anything more effectually prevent or remove it, than to let them know that these antichristian apostates were never true stars in the firmament of the Church, but only blazing comets, as their falling away did evidently demonstrate."--_Dean Hardy_, 309.

Ver. 19. To use the words of a once famous controversial divine, they may be said to be "of the Church presumptively in their own, and others' opinion, but not really." (_Spalat., lib._ vii., 10, cf. on the whole subject, _St. Aug. Lib. de Bono. Persev._, viii.)

"Let no one count that the good can go forth from the Church; the wind cannot carry away the wheat, nor the storm overthrow the solidly rooted tree. The light chaff is tossed by the wind, the weak trees go down before the blast. 'They went out from us, but they were not of us.'"--_S. Cyp., B. de Simplic._

Ver. 24. _Ye shall abide in the Son, and in the Father._] "If it be asked why the Son is put before the Father, the answer is well returned. Because the Apostle had just before inveighed against those who, though they pretended to acknowledge the Father, yet deny the Son. Though withal there may besides be a double reason assigned: the one to insinuate that the Son is not less than the Father, but that they are equal in essence and dignity. Upon this account most probable it is that the apostolical benediction beginneth with 'The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,' and then followeth 'the love of God the Father.' The other, because, as Beda well glosseth, No man cometh in, or continueth in, the Father but by the Son, who saith of Himself, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.'

"To draw it up, lo, here _Eximia laus doctrinæ_, an high commendation of evangelical doctrine, that it leads up to Christ, and by Him to the Father. The water riseth as high as the spring from whence it floweth. No wonder if the gospel, which cometh from God through Christ, lead us back again through Christ to God; and as by hearing and believing this doctrine we are united to, so by adhering to, and persevering in it, we continue in, the Son and the Father. Suitable to this is that promise of our blessed Saviour, John xiv. 23, 'If any man love Me he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him.'"--_Dean Hardy_, 350.

Ver. 27. The connection of the whole section is well traced by the old divine, whose commentary closes a little below.

"If you compare these three with the eight foregoing verses, you shall find them to be a summary repetition of what is there more largely delivered. There are three hinges upon which the precedent discourse turneth, namely, the peril of antichristian doctrine, the benefit of the Spirit's unction, the duty of perseverance in the Christian faith; and these three are inculcated in these verses. Indeed, where the danger is very great, the admonition cannot be too frequent. When the benefit is of singular advantage, it would be often considered, and a duty which must be performed cannot be too much pressed. No wonder if St. John proposed them in this gemination to our second thoughts. And yet it is not a naked repetition neither, but such as hath a variation and amplification in every particular. The duty is reinforced at the eight-and-twentieth verse, but in another phrase, of 'abiding in Christ,' and with a new motive, drawn from the second coming of Christ. The benefit is reiterated, and much amplified, in the seven-and-twentieth verse, as to its excellency and energy. Finally, the danger is repeated, but with another description of those by whom they were in danger; whilst as before he had called them antichrists for their enmity against Christ, so here, for their malignity against Christians, he calleth them seducers: 'These things have I written to you concerning them that seduce you,' etc."--_Dean Hardy_, 357.

FOOTNOTES:

[213] The ουν in ver. 24 is not recognised by the R. V. nor adopted in Professor Westcott's text. One uncial (A), however, inserts it in 1 John iv. 19. It occurs in 3 John 8. This inferential particle is found with unusual frequency in St. John's Gospel. It does not seem satisfactory to account for this by calling it "one of the beginnings of modern Greek." (B. de Xivrey.) By St. John as an _historian_, the frequent _therefore_ is the spontaneous recognition of a Divine logic of events; of the necessary yet natural sequence of every incident in the life of the "Word made Flesh." The ουν expresses something more than continuity of narrative. It indicates a connection of events so interlinked that each springs from, and is joined with, the preceding, as if it were a conclusion which followed from the premiss of the Divine argument. Now a mind which views _history_ in this light is just the mind which will be _dogmatic_ in theology. The inspired dogmatic theologian will necessarily write in a style different from that of the theologian of the Schools. The style of the former will be _oracular_; that of the latter will be _scholastic, i.e._, inferential, a concatenation of syllogisms. The syllogistic ουν is then naturally absent from St. John's Epistles. The one undoubted exception is 3 John 8, where a practical inference is drawn from an historical statement in ver. 7. The writer may be allowed to refer to _The Speaker's Commentary_, iv., 381.

[214] Jer. xxxi. 34.

[215] Vers. 18, 22.

[216] The last hour is not a date arbitrarily chosen and written down as a man might mark a day for an engagement in a calendar. It is determined by history--by the sum-total of the product of the actions of men who are not the slaves of fatality, who possess free-will, and are not forced to act in a particular way. It is supposed to derogate from the Divine mission of the Apostles if we admit that they might be mistaken as to the chronology of the closing hour of time. But to know that supreme instant would involve a knowledge of the whole plan of God and the whole predetermining motives in the appointment of that day, _i.e._, it would constructively involve _omniscience_. Cf. Mark xiii. 32, and our Lord's profound saying, Acts i. 7.

[217] John v. 43.

[218] 1 John ii. 22, iv. 2, 3; 2 John 7-9.

[219] Ver. 19.

[220] Bingham's _Antiquities_, i., 462-524, 565.

[221] For other instances of this characteristic, see a subject _introduced_ ii. 29, _expanded_ iii. 9--another subject _introduced_ iii. 21, _expanded_ v. 14.

[222] το αυτου χρισμα, ver. 27, _not_ το αυτο ("the same anointing," A. V.) "This most unusual order throws a strong emphasis on the pronoun." (Prof. Westcott.) The writer thankfully quotes this as it seems to him to bring out the dogmatic significance of the word, emphasised as it is by this unusual order--the chrism, the Spirit of _Him_.

[223] 1 John iii. 24.

[224] The reading of the A. V. is received into Tischendorf's text and adopted by the R. V. Another reading omits και and substitutes παντες for παντα so that the passage would run thus, "Ye have an unction from the Holy One. Ye all know (I have not written unto you because ye know not) the truth." As far as the difficulty of παντα is concerned, nothing is gained by the change, as the statement recurs in a slightly varied form in ver. 27.

[225] John xiv. 26.

[226] "Let that abide in you which ye heard from the beginning," 1 John ii. 24. Cf. "Testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand," 1 Pet. v. 12. "Even as our beloved brother Paul has written unto you," 2 Pet. iii. 15. St. Paul has thus the attestation of St. John as well as of St. Peter.

[227] Ver. 27

[228] διδασκει--εδιδαξεν.

[229] 1 Cor. xi. 29.

SECTION V.

GREEK. LATIN.

εαν ειδητε ὁτι Si scitis quoniam δικαιος εστιν, γινωσκετε ὁτι iustus est, scitote quoniam πας ὁ ποιων την δικαιοσυνην omnis qui facit εξ αυτου γεγεννηται. iustitiam ex ipso natus Ιδετε ποταπην αγαπην est. Videte qualem δεδωκεν ἡμιν ὁ πατηρ, ἱνα caritatem dedit nobis τεκνα Θεου κληθωμεν, και Pater ut filii Dei nominemur εσμεν. δια τουτο ὁ κοσμος et simus. ου γινωσκει ἡμας, ὁτι ουκ Propter hoc mundus εγνω αυτον. Αγαπητοι, non novit nos, quia non νυν τεκνα Θεου εσμεν, novit eum. Carissimi, και ουπω εφανερωθη nunc filii Dei sumus τι εσομεθα· οιδαμεν et nondum apparuit ὁτι εαν φανερωθη quid erimus. Scimus ὁμοιοι αυτυ εσομεθα, quoniam cum apparuerit ὁτι οψομεθα αυτον καθως similes ei erimus, εστιν. και πας ὁ εχων quoniam videbimus την ελπιδα ταυτην επ' eum sicuti est. Et αυτυ αγνιζει εαυτον omnis qui habet spem καθως εκεινος αγνος εστιν. hanc in eo sanctificat se, Πας ὁ ποιων την ἁμαρτιαν sicut et ille sanctus est. και την ανομιαν Omnis qui facit peccatum ποιει· και ἡ αμαρτια et iniquitatem facit, εστιν ἡ ανομια. και et peccatum est iniquitas. οιδατε ὁτι εκεινος Et scitis quoniam εφανερωθη ἱνα τας ἁμαρτιας ille apparuit ut αρη, και ἁμαρτια εν αυτω peccata tolerit, et peccatum ουκ εστιν. πας ὁ εν αυτω in eo non est. μενων ουχ ἁμαρτανει· Omnis qui in eo manet πας ὁ ἁμαρτανων ουχ non peccat, et omnis ἑωρακεν αυτον ουδε qui peccat non videt εγνωκεν αυτον. Παιδια, eum nec cognovit eum. μηδεις πλανατω ὑμας· Filioli, nemo vos seducat. ὁ ποιων την δικαιοσυνην Qui facit iustitiam, δικαιος εστιν, καθως iustus est, εκεινος δικαιος εστιν. sicut et ille iustus est: ὁ ποιων την ἁμαρτιαν qui facit peccatum, ex εκ του διαβολου εστιν, diabolo est quoniam ὁτι απ' αρχης ὁ διαβολος ab initio diabolus ἁμαρτανει. εις τουτο peccat. In hoc apparuit εφανερωθη ὁ υιος του Filius Dei, ut Θεου, ἱνα λυση τα εργα dissolvat opera diaboli. του διαβολου. πας ὁ Omnis qui natus est γεγεννημενος εκ του ex Deo peccatum non Θεου ἁμαρτιαν ου ποιει, facit, quoniam semen ὁτι σπερμα αυτου εν ipsius in eo manet, et αυτω μενει· και ου non potest peccare, δυναται ἁμαρτανειν, ὁτι quoniam ex Deo natus est. εκ του Θεου γεγεννηται.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

If ye know that He If ye know that He is righteous, ye know is righteous, ye know that every one that that every one also doeth righteousness is that doeth righteousness born of Him. Behold, is begotten of what manner of love Him. Behold, what the Father hath bestowed manner of love the upon us, that Father hath bestowed we should be called upon us, that we the sons of God: should be called children therefore the world of God: and _such_ knoweth us not, because we are. For this cause it knew Him not. the world knoweth us Beloved, now are we not, because it knew the sons of God, and it Him not. Beloved, doth not yet appear now are we children what we shall be: but of God, and it is not we know that, when yet made manifest He shall appear, we what we shall be. We shall be like Him; for know that, if He shall we shall see Him as He be manifested, we shall is. And every man be like Him; for we that hath this hope in shall see Him even as Him purifieth himself, He is. And every one even as He is pure. that hath this hope _set_ Whosoever committeth on Him purifieth himself, sin transgresseth also even as He is the law: for sin is the pure. Every one that transgression of the doeth sin doeth also law. And ye know lawlessness: and sin that He was manifested is lawlessness. And to take away our sins; ye know that He was and in Him is no sin. manifested to take Whosoever abideth in away sins; and in Him sinneth not: whosoever Him is no sin. Whosoever sinneth hath abideth in Him not seen Him, neither sinneth not: whosoever known Him. Little sinneth hath not children, let no man seen Him, neither deceive you: he that knoweth Him. _My_ doeth righteousness is little children, let no righteous, even as He man lead you astray: is righteous. He that he that doeth righteousness committeth sin is of the is righteous, devil; for the devil even as He is righteous; sinneth from the beginning. he that doeth sin For this purpose is of the devil; for the the Son of God devil sinneth from the was manifested, that beginning. To this He might destroy the end was the Son of works of the devil. God manifested, that Whosoever is born of He might destroy the God doth not commit works of the devil. sin: for His seed remaineth Whosoever is begotten in him: and of God doeth no sin, he cannot sin, because because His seed he is born of God. abideth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is begotten of God.

ANOTHER VERSION.

If ye know that He is righteous, ye are aware that every one who is doing righteousness is born of Him. Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God;--and we are. Because of this the world knoweth us because it knew not Him. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it never yet was manifested what we shall be; but we know that if it shall be manifested we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone that hath this hope _fixed_ on Him is ever purifying himself even as He is pure. Every one that is doing sin, is also doing lawlessness; and, _indeed_, sin is lawlessness. And ye know that He was manifested that He should take away sins; and sin in Him is not. Whosoever abideth in Him is not sinning; every one that is sinning hath not seen Him neither hath known Him. Little children, let no man mislead you; he that is doing righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous: he that is doing sin is of the devil, because the devil is continually sinning from the beginning. Unto this end the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God is not doing sin for his seed abideth in Him, and he is not able to be sinning, because he is born of God.

NOTES.

Ch. ii. 29, iii. 9.

III. ver. 2. "_Hope fixed in Him_" or "_on_ Him."] The English reader should note the capital letter; not hope in our hearts, but hope unfastened from self. Επι σοι Κυριε ηλπισα, is the LXX. translation of Psalm xxx. 1.

_Is ever purifying himself._] "See how he does not do away with freewill; for he says _purifies himself_. Who purifies us but God? Yet God does not purify you when you are unwilling; therefore in joining your will to God you purify yourself." (St. Augustine _in loc._)

_We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is._] "So then we are about to see a certain sight, excelling all beauties of the earth; the beauty of gold, silver, forest, fields--the beauty of sea and air, sun and moon--the beauty of stars--the beauty of angels. Aye, excelling all these, because all these are beautiful only for _it_. What, therefore, shall we be when we shall see all these? What is promised? _We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is._ The tongue hath spoken as it could; let the rest be thought over by the heart" (St. Augustine _in loc._). Cf. 2 Cor. iii. 18. "As the whole body, face, above all eyes of those who look towards the sun are _sunnied_" (insolantur).--_Bengel._

Ver. 3. The ample stores of English divinity contain two sermons, one excellent, one beautiful, upon this verse. The first is by Paley; it is founded upon the leading thought, which he expresses with his usual manly common sense. "There are a class of Christians to whom the admonition of the text is peculiarly necessary. Finding it an easier thing to do good than to expel sins which cleave to their hearts, their affections, or their imaginations; they set their endeavours more towards _beneficence_ than _purity_. Doing good is not the whole of our duty, nor the most difficult part of it. In particular it is not that part of it which is insisted upon in our text." (Paley, Sermon XLIII.) But the second sermon is perhaps the finest which ever came from the pen of South, and he throws into it the full power of his heart and intellect. The bare analysis is this:--

Is it indeed possible for a man to "purify himself"? There is a twofold work of purification. (1) The infusing of the habit of purity into the soul (regeneration or conversion). In this respect, no man can purify himself. (2) The other work of purification is exercising that habit or grace of purity. "God who made, and since new made us, without ourselves, will not yet save us without ourselves." But again, how can a man purify himself to that degree _even as Christ is pure_? _Even as_ denotes similitude of kind, not equality of degree. We are to purify ourselves from the _power_ of sin, and from the _guilt_ of sin. Purification from the _power_ of sin consists in these things. (1) A continually renewed repentance. Every day, every hour, may afford matter for penitential sorrow. "A fountain of sin may well require a fountain of sorrow." Converting repentance must be followed by daily repentance. (2) Purifying ourselves consists in vigilant prevention of acts of sin for the future. The means of effecting this are these. (_a_) Opposing the very first risings of the heart to sin. "The bees may be at work, and very busy within, though we see none of them fly abroad." (_b_) Severe mortifying duties, such as watchings and fastings. (_c_) Frequent and fervent prayer. "A praying heart naturally turns into a purified heart." We are to purify ourselves, also, from the _guilt_ of sin. (1) Negatively. No duty or work within our power to perform can take away the guilt of sin. Those who think so, understand neither "the fiery strictness of the law, nor the spirituality of the Gospel." (2) That which alone can purify us from the _guilt_ of sin is applying the virtue of the blood of Christ to the soul by renewed acts of faith. "It is that alone that is able to wash away the deep stain, and to change the hue of the spiritual Ethiopian." The last consideration is--how the life of heaven and future glory has such a sovereign influence upon this work? [This portion of the sermon falls far below the high standard of the rest, and entirely loses the spirit of St. John's thought.] South's _Sermons_. (Sermon 72, pp. 594-616.)

Ver. 6. _That He might destroy the works of the devil._] The word here used for Satan (διαβολος) is found in John vii. 70, viii. 44, xiii. 2; Apoc. ii. 10, xii. 9, 12, xx. 2, 10. One class of miracles is not specifically recorded by St. John in his Gospel--the dispossession of demoniacs. Probably this terrible affliction was less common in Jerusalem than in Galilee. But the idea of possession is not foreign to his mode of thought. John vi. 70, viii. 44, 48, x. 20, xiii. 27. He here points to the dispossessions, so many of which are recorded by the Synoptics.

III. ver. 9. His _seed abideth in him_.] Of these words only two interpretations appear to be fairly possible. (1) The first would understand "His seed" as "_God's seed_," the stock or family of His children who are the true אֱלהִים זֶרצ, _seed of God_ (Mal. ii. 15). In favour of this interpretation it may be urged: first, that "seed" in the sense of "children, posterity, any one's entire stock and filiation," in perhaps nearly two hundred passages of the LXX., is the Greek rendering of many different Hebrew words. (See σπερμα in Num. xxiv. 20; Deut. xxv. 1; Jer. l. 16; Gen. iii. 15; Isa. xiv. 20, 30, xv. 9; Num. xxiii. 10; 2 Chron. xiv. 27.) Secondly, no inapt meaning is given in the present text by so understanding the word. "He is unable to go on in sin, for _God's_ true stock and family (they who are true to the majesty of their birth) abide in Him." (2) But a second meaning appears preferable. "Seed" (σπερμα) would then be understood as a metaphorical application of the grain in the vegetable world which contains the possible germ of the future plant or tree; and would signify the possibility, or germinal principle, given by the Holy Spirit to the soul in regeneration. For this signification in our passage there is a strong argument, which we have not seen adverted to, in St. John's mode of language and of thought. "His seed abideth in him" (σπερμα αυτου εν αυτω μενει) is really a quotation from the LXX. (ου το σπερμα αυτου εν αυτω--note the repetition of the words Gen. i. 11, 12). Now the Book of Genesis seems to have been the part of the Old Testament which (with the Psalms) was chiefly in St. John's mind in the Epistle. (Cf. 1 John i. 1, Gen. i. 1.--iii. 8, Gen. ii.--iii. 12, Gen. iv. 8--iii. 15, Gen. xxvii. 41.) St. John, also, connects the new birth of the sons of God, as did our Lord, with the birth of the creation, whose first germ was "the Spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters" (Gen. i. 2; John iii. 5). This parallel between the first creation and the second, between creation and regeneration, has always commended itself to profound Christian exegesis as being deeply set in the mind of Scripture. Witness the magnificent lines.

Plebs ut sacra renascatur, Per Hunc unda consecratur, Cui super ferebatur In rerum exordium. Fons, origo pietatis, Fons emundans a peccatis, Fons de fonte Deitatis, Fons sacrator fontium! Adam of St. Victor, Seq. xx., _Pentecoste_.

It is instructive, to study the treatment of our Lord's words (John iii. 5) by a commentator so little mystical as Professor Westcott. St. John, then, might point at this as another hint of regeneration in the parable of creation, viewed spiritually. The world of vegetation in Genesis is divided into two classes. (1) _Herbs_ צֵשֶׂב = all grasses and plants which "_yield seed_." (2) _Trees_ מְּרִי צֵץ = shrubs and arboreous plants which have their seed enclosed in their fruit (Gen. i. 11, 12) Such are the plants of God's planting in His garden. Of each the "seed" from which he sprung, and which he will reproduce unless he becomes barren and blighted, "is in him." "He cannot sin." It is against the basis of his new nature. Of the new creation as of the old, the law is--"his seed is in him."

The rest of this verse is interpreted in the Discourse upon 1 John v. 4.

SECTION VI.

GREEK. LATIN.

Εν τουτω φανερα εστιν In hoc manifesti sunt τα τεκνα του Θεου και filii Dei et filii diaboli. τα τεκνα του διαβολου. Omnis qui non est Πας ὁ μη ποιων δικαιοσυνην iustus non est ex Deo, ουκ εστιν εκ του et qui non diligit Θεου, και ὁ μη αγαπων fratrem suum; quoniam τον αδελφον αυτου· ὁτι hæc est adnuntiatio αυτη εστιν ἡ αγγελια quam audistis ab ἡν ηκουσατε απ' αρχης, initio, ut diligamus alterutrum, ἱνα αγαπωμεν αλληλους· non sicut ου καθως Καιν εκ του Cain ex maligno erat, πονηρου ἡν και εσφαξε et occidit fratrem suum. τον αδελφον αυτου· και Et propter quid occidit χαριν τινος εσφαξεν eum? quoniam opera αυτον; ὁτι τα εργα eius maligna erant, αυτου πονηρα ἡν, τα fratris autem eius δε του αδελφου αυτου iusta. Nolite mirari δικαια. μη θαυμαζετε, fratres si odit nos αδελφοι, ει μισει ὑμας ὁ mundus. Nos scimus κοσμος. Ἡμεις οιδαμεν quoniam translati ὁτι μεταβεβηκαμεν εκ sumus de morte in του θανατου εις την vitam, quoniam diligimus ζωην, ὁτι αγαπωμεν fratres: qui non τους αδελφους· ὁ μη diligit, manet in morte. αγαπων μενει. εν τω Omnis qui odit fratrem θανατω· πας ὁ μισων suum homicida est, et τον αδελφον αυτου scitis quoniam omnis ανθρωποκτονος εστιν· και homicida non habet οιδατε ὁτι πας ανθρωποκτονος vitam æternam in se ουκ εχει ζωην manentem. In hoc αιωνιον εν αυτω μενουσαν. cognovimus caritatem Εν τουτω εγνωκαμεν Dei, quoniam ille pro την αγαπην, ὁτι nobis animam suam εκεινος ὑπερ ἡμων την posuit: et nos debemus ψυχην αυτου εθηκε· και pro fratribus animas ἡμεις οφειλομεν ὑπερ ponere. Qui habuerit των αδελφων τας ψυχας substantiam mundi et θειναι. ὁς δ' ἁν εχη viderit fratrem suum τον βιον του κοσμου necesse habere et και θεωρη τον αδελφον clauserit viscera sua ab αυτου χρειαν εχοντα και eo, quomodo caritas κλειση τα σπλαγχνα Dei manet in eo? αυτου απ' αυτου, πως Filioli non diligamus ἡ αγαπη του Θεου μενει verbo nec lingua sed εν αυτω; τεκνια μη opere et veritate. In αγαπωμεν λογω μηδε hoc cognovimus quoniam γλωσση, αλλ' εργω και ex veritate αληθεια. Και εν τουτω sumus: et in conspectu γινωσκμεν ὁτι εκ της eius suademus corda αληθειας εσμεν, και nostra, quoniam si εμπροσθεν αυτου πεισομεν reprehenderit nos cor τας καρδιας ἡμων· nostrum, major est ὁτι εαν καταγινωσκη Deus corde nostro ἡμων ἡ καρδια, ὁτι et novit omnia. Carissimi μειζων εστιν ὁ Θεος si cor nostrum της καρδιας ἡμων, και non reprehenderit nos, γινωσκει παντα. αγαπητοι, fiduciam habemus ad εαν, ἡ καρδια Deum, et quodcumque ἡμων μη καταγινωσκη petierimus accipiemus ἡμων, παρρησιαν εχομεν abeo, quoniam mandata προς τον Θεον, και ὁ eius custodemus et ea εαν αιτωμεν, λαμβανομεν quæ sunt placita coram παρ' αυτου, ὁτι τας eo facimus. Et hoc εντολας αυτου τηρουμεν, est mandatum eius ut και τα αρεστα ενωπιον credamus in nomine αυτου ποισυμεν. και filii eius Iesu Christi αυτη εστιν ἡ εντολη et diligamus alterutrum αυτου, ἱνα πιστευσωμεν sicut dedit mandatum τω ονοματι του υιου nobis. Et qui servat αυτου Ιησου Χριστου, mandata eius, in illo και αγαπωμεν αλληλους, manet et ipse in eo: et καθως εδωκεν εντολην. in hoc scimus quoniam και ὁ τηρων τας manet in nobis, de εντολας αυτου, εν αυτω spiritu quem dedit μενει, και αυτος εν αυτω. nobis. και εν τουτω γινωσκομεν ὁτι μενει εν ἡμιν, εκ του Πνευματος ου ἡμιν εδωκεν.

AUTHORISED VERSION. REVISED VERSION.

In this the children In this the children of God are manifest, of God are manifest, and the children of the and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness not righteousness is is not of God, neither not of God, neither he he that loveth not his that loveth not his brother. For this is brother. For this is the message that ye the message which ye heard from the beginning, heard from the beginning, that we should that we should love one another. Not love one another: not as Cain, _who_ was of as Cain was of the evil that wicked one, and one, and slew his slew his brother. And brother. And wherefore wherefore slew he slew he him? him? Because his own Because his works works were evil, and were evil, and his his brother's righteous. brother's righteous. Marvel not, my brethren, Marvel not, brethren, if the world hate if the world hateth you. We know that you. We know that we have passed from we have passed out of death unto life, because death into life, because we love the brethren. we love the brethren. He that loveth not _his_ He that loveth not brother abideth in abideth in death. death. Whosoever Whosoever hateth his hateth his brother is a brother is a murderer: murderer: and ye know and ye know that no that no murderer hath murderer hath eternal eternal life abiding in life abiding in him. him. Hereby perceive Hereby know we love, we the love _of God_, because He laid down because He laid down His life for us: and we His life for us: and ought to lay down our we ought to lay down lives for the brethren. _our_ lives for the But whoso hath the brethren. But whoso world's goods, and beholdeth hath this world's good, his brother in and seeth his brother need, and shutteth up have need, and shutteth his compassion from up his bowels him, how doth the love _of compassion_ from him, of God abide in him? how dwelleth the love of _My_ little children, let God in him? My little us not love in word, children, let us not love neither with the in word, neither in tongue; but in deed tongue; but in deed and truth. Hereby and in truth. And shall we know that we hereby we know that are of the truth, and we are of the truth, shall assure our heart and shall assure our before him, whereinsoever hearts before Him. our heart condemn For if our heart condemn us; because God us, God is greater is greater than our than our heart, and heart, and knoweth all knoweth all things. things. Beloved, if Beloved, if our heart our heart condemn us condemn us not, _then_ not, we have boldness have we confidence toward God; and toward God. And whatsoever we ask, whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, we receive of Him, because we keep His because we keep His commandments, and commandments, and do the things that are do those things that pleasing in His sight. are pleasing in His And this is His commandment, sight. And this is His that we commandment, That should believe in the we should believe on name of His Son Jesus the name of His Son Christ, and love one Jesus Christ, and love another, even as He one another, as He gave us commandment. gave us commandment. And he that keepeth And he that keepeth His commandments His commandments abideth in Him, and dwelleth in Him, and He in him. And hereby He in him. And hereby we know that He we know that He abideth in us, by the abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave Spirit which He hath us. given us.

ANOTHER VERSION.

In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil: every one who is not doing righteousness is not of God, neither he that is not loving his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning that ye should love one another. Not as Cain was of the wicked one and slew his brother (_shall we be_). And wherefore slew he him? because his works were evil, but those of his brother righteous. Brethren, marvel not if the world hate you. We know that we have passed over from the death unto the life because we love the brethren. He who loveth not abideth in the death. Every one who hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby know we The Love because He laid down His life for us: and we are bound to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath the living of the world and gazes on his brother having need and shuts out his heart from him, how doth the love of God abide in him? Children let us not love in word, nor with the tongue, but in work and truth. Hereby shall we know that we are of the truth and shall persuade our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemn us God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not then have we boldness toward God, and whatsoever we ask we receive of Him, for we observe His commandments, and are doing those things that are pleasing in His sight. And His commandment is this, that we should believe the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another as He gave commandment. And he who is observing His commandments abideth in Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us--out of the fulness of the Spirit whereof He gave us.

DISCOURSE IX.

_LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS UNLESS APPLIED._

"Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down, our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth."--1 JOHN iii. 16-18.

Even the world sees that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ has very practical results. Even the Christmas which the world keeps is fruitful in two of these results--forgiving and giving. How many of the multitudinous letters at that season contain one or other of these things--either the kindly gift, or the tender of reconciliation; the confession "I was wrong," or the gentle advance "we were both wrong."

Love, charity (as we rather prefer to say), in its effects upon all our relations to others, is the beautiful subject of this section of our Epistle. It begins with the message of love[230] itself--yet another asterisk referring to the Gospel,[231] to the very substance of the teaching which the believers of Ephesus had first received from St. Paul,[232] and which had been emphasized by St. John. This message is announced not merely as a sounding sentiment, but for the purpose of being carried out into action. As in moral subjects virtues and vices are best illustrated by their contraries;[233] so, beside the bright picture of the Son of God, the Apostle points to the sinister likeness of Cain.[234] After some brief and parenthetic words of pathetic consolation, he states as the mark of the great transition from death to life, the existence of love as a pervading spirit effectual in operation.[235] The dark opposite of this is then delineated[236] in consonance with the mode of representation just above.[237] But two such pictures of darkness must not shadow the sunlit gallery of love. There is another--the fairest and brightest. Our love can only be estimated by likeness to it; it is imperfect unless it is conformed to the print of the wounds, unless it can be measured by the standard of the great Self-sacrifice.[238] But if this may be claimed as the one real proof of conformity to Christ, much more is the limited partial sacrifice of "this world's good" required.[239] This spirit, and the conduct which it requires in the long run, will be found to be the test of all solid spiritual comfort,[240] of all true self-condemnation or self-acquittal.[241]

We may say of the verses prefixed to this discourse, that they bring before us charity in its _idea_, in its _example_, in its _characteristics_--in _theory_, in _action_, in _life_.

We have here love in its idea, "hereby know we love." Rather "hereby know we _The Love_."[242]

Here the idea of charity in us runs parallel with that in Christ. It is a subtle but true remark,[243] that there is here no logical inferential particle. "Because He laid down His life for us," is not followed by its natural correlative "therefore we," but by a simple connective "and we." The reason is this, that our duty herein is not a mere cold logical deduction. It is all of one piece with The Love. "We know The Love because He laid down His life for us; _and_ we are in duty bound for the brethren to lay down our lives."

Here, then, is the idea of love, as capable of realisation in us. It is continuous unselfishness, to be crowned by voluntary death, if death is necessary. The beautiful old Church tradition shows that this language was the language of St. John's life. Who has forgotten how the Apostle in his old age is said to have gone on a journey to find the young man who had fled from Ephesus and joined a band of robbers; and to have appealed to the fugitive in words which are the pathetic echo of these--"if needs be I would die for thee as He for us?"

II.

The idea of charity is then practically illustrated by an incident of its opposite. "But whoso hath this world's good, and gazes upon his brother in need, and shuts up his heart against him, how doth the love of God abide in him?"[244] The reason for this descent in thought is wise and sound. High abstract ideas expressed in lofty and transcendent language, are at once necessary and dangerous for creatures like us. They are necessary, because without these grand conceptions our moral language and our moral life would be wanting in dignity, in amplitude, in the inspiration and impulse which are often necessary for duty and always for restoration. But they are dangerous in proportion to their grandeur. Men are apt to mistake the emotion awakened by the very sound of these magnificent expressions of duty for the discharge of the duty itself. Hypocrisy delights in sublime speculations, because it has no intention of their costing anything. Some of the most abject creatures embodied by the masters of romance never fail to parade their sonorous generalizations. One of such characters, as the world will long remember, proclaims that sympathy is one of the holiest principles of our common nature, while he shakes his fist at a beggar.[245]

Every large speculative ideal then is liable to this danger; and he who contemplates it requires to be brought down from his transcendental region to the test of some commonplace duty. This is the latent link of connection in this passage. The ideal of love to which St. John points is the loftiest of all the moral and spiritual emotions which belong to the sentiments of man. Its archetype is in the bosom of God, in the eternal relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. "God is love." Its home in humanity is Christ's heart of fire and flesh; its example is the Incarnation ending in the Cross.

Now of course the question for all but one in thousands is not the attainment of this lofty ideal--laying down his life for the brethren. Now and then, indeed, the physician pays with his own death for the heroic rashness of drawing out from his patient the fatal matter. Sometimes the pastor is cut off by fever contracted in ministering to the sick, or by voluntarily living and working in an unwholesome atmosphere. Once or twice in a decade some heart is as finely touched by the spirit of love as Father Damien, facing the certainty of death from a long slow putrefaction, that a congregation of lepers may enjoy the consolations of faith. St. John here reminds us that the ordinary test of charity is much more commonplace. It is helpful compassion to a brother who is known to be in need, manifested by giving to him something of this world's "good"--of the "living"[246] of this world which he possesses.

III.

We have next the characteristics of love in action. "My sons; let us not love in word nor with the tongue; but in work and truth." There is love in its energy and reality; in its effort and sincerity--active and honest, without indolence and without pretence. We may well be reminded here of another familiar story of St. John at Ephesus. When too old to walk himself to the assembly of the Church, he was carried there. The Apostle who had lain upon the breast of Jesus; who had derived from direct communication with Him those words and thoughts which are the life of the elect; was expected to address the faithful. The light of the Ephesian summer fell upon his white hair; perhaps glittered upon the mitre which tradition has assigned to him. But when he had risen to speak, he only repeated--"little children, love one another." Modern hearers are sometimes tempted to envy the primitive Christians of the Ephesian Church, if for nothing else, yet for the privilege of listening to the shortest sermon upon record in the annals of Christianity. When Christian preachers have behind them the same long series of virgin years, within them the same love of Christ and knowledge of His mysteries; when their very presence evinces the same sad, tender, smiling, weeping, all-embracing sympathy with the wants and sorrows of humanity; they may perhaps venture upon the perilous experiment of contracting their sermons within the same span as St. John's. And when some, who like the hearers at Ephesus, are not prepared for the repetition of an utterance so brief, begin to ask--"why are you always saying this?"--the answer may well be in the spirit of the reply which the aged Apostle is said to have made--"because it is the commandment of the Lord, and sufficient, if it only be fulfilled indeed."

IV.

This passage supplies an argument (capable, as we have seen in the Introduction, of much larger expansion from the Epistle as a whole) against mutilated views, fragmentary versions of the Christian life.

There are four such views which are widely prevalent at the present time.

(1) The _first_ of these is _emotionalism_; which makes the entire Christian life consist in a series or bundle of emotions. Its origin is the desire of having the feelings touched, partly from sheer love of excitement; partly from an idea that _if_ and _when_ we have worked up certain emotions to a fixed point we are saved and safe. This reliance upon feelings is in the last analysis reliance upon self. It is a form of salvation by works; for feelings are inward actions. It is an unhappy anachronism which inverts the order of Scripture; which substitutes peace and grace (the compendious dogma of the heresy of the emotions) for grace and peace, the only order known to St. Paul and St. John.[247] The only spiritual emotions spoken of in this Epistle are joy, confidence, "assuring our hearts before Him":[248] the first as the result of receiving the history of Jesus in the Gospel, the Incarnation, and the blessed communion with God and the Church which it involves; the second as tried by tests of a most practical kind.

(2) The _second_ of these mutilated views of the Christian life is _doctrinalism_--which makes it consist of a series or bundle of doctrines apprehended and expressed correctly, at least according to certain formulas, generally of a narrow and unauthorised character. According to this view the question to be answered is--has one quite correctly understood, can one verbally formulate certain almost scholastic distinctions in the doctrine of justification? The well-known standard--"the Bible only"--must be reduced by the excision of all within the Bible except the writings of St. Paul; and even in this selected portion faith must be entirely guided by certain portions more selected still, so that the question finally may be reduced to this shape--"am I a great deal sounder than St. John and St. James, a little sounder than an unexpurgated St. Paul, as sound as a carefully expurgated edition of the Pauline Epistles?"

(3) The _third_ mutilated view of the Christian life is _humanitarianism_--which makes it a series or bundle of philanthropic actions.

There are some who work for hospitals, or try to bring more light and sweetness into crowded dwelling-houses. Their lives are pure and noble. But the one article of their creed is humanity. Altruism is their highest duty. Their object, so far as they have any object apart from the supreme rule of doing right, is to lay hold on subjective immortality by living on in the recollection of those whom they have helped, whose existence has been soothed and sweetened by their sympathy. With others the case is different. Certain forms of this busy helpfulness--especially in the laudable provision of recreations for the poor--are an innocent interlude in fashionable life; sometimes, alas! a kind of work of supererogation, to atone for the want of devotion or of purity--possibly an untheological survival of a belief in justification by works.

(4) The _fourth_ fragmentary view of the Christian life is _observationism_, which makes it to consist in a bundle or series of observances. Frequent services and communions, perhaps with exquisite forms and in beautifully decorated churches, have their dangers as well as their blessings. However closely linked these observances may be, there must still in every life be interstices between them. How are these filled up? What spirit within connects together, vivifies and unifies, this series of external acts of devotion? They are means to an end. What if the means come to interpose between us and the end--just as a great political thinker has observed that with legal minds the forms of business frequently overshadow the substance of business, which is their end, and for which they were called into existence. And what is the end of our Christian calling? A life pardoned; in process of purification; growing in faith, in love of God and man, in quiet joyful service. Certainly a "rage for ceremonials and statistics," a long list of observances, does not infallibly secure such a life, though it may often be not alone the delighted and continuous expression, but the constant food and support of such a life. But assuredly if men trust in any of these things--in their emotions, in their favourite formulas, in their philanthropic works, in their religious observances--in anything but Christ, they greatly need to go back to the simple text--"His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins."

Now, as we have said above, in distinction from all these fragmentary views, St. John's Epistle is a survey of the completed Christian life, founded upon his Gospel. It is a consummate fruit ripened in the long summers of his experience. It is not a treatise upon the Christian affections, nor a system of doctrine, nor an essay upon works of charity, nor a companion to services.

Yet this wonderful Epistle presupposes at least much that is most precious of all these elements. (1) It is far from being a burst of emotionalism. Yet almost at the outset it speaks of an emotion as being the natural result of rightly received objective truth.[249] St. John recognises feeling, whether of supernatural or natural origin;[250] but he recognises it with a certain majestic reserve. Once only does he seem to be carried away. In a passage to which reference has just been made, after stating the dogma of the Incarnation, he suffuses it with a wealth of emotional colour. It is Christmas in his soul; the bells ring out good tidings of great joy. "These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." (2) This Epistle is no dogmatic summary. Yet combining its proœmium with the other of the fourth Gospel, we have the most perfect statement of the dogma of the Incarnation. As we read thoughtfully on, dogma after dogma stands out in relief. The divinity of the Word, the reality of His manhood, the effect of His atonement, His intercession, His continual presence, the personality of the Holy Spirit, His gifts to us, the relation of the Spirit to Christ, the Holy Trinity--all these find their place in these few pages. If St. John is no mere doctrinalist he is yet the greatest theologian the Church has ever seen. (3) Once more; if the Apostle's Christianity is no mere humanitarian sentiment to encourage the cultivation of miscellaneous acts of good-nature, yet it is deeply pervaded by a sense of the integral connection of practical love of man with the love of God. So much is this the case, that a large gathering of the most emotional of modern sects is said to have gone on with a Bible reading in St. John's Epistle until they came to the words--"we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." The reader immediately closed the book, pronouncing with general assent that the verse was likely to disturb the peace of the children of God. Still St. John puts humanitarianism in its right place as a result of something higher. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." As if he would say--"do not sever the law of social life from the law of supernatural life; do not separate the human fraternity from the Divine Fatherhood." (4) No one can suppose that for St. John religion was a mere string of observances. Indeed, to some his Epistle has given the notion of a man living in an atmosphere where external ordinances and ministries either did not exist at all, or only in almost impalpable forms. Yet in that wonderful manual, "The Imitation of Christ," there is not more than the faintest trace of any of these external things; while no one could possibly argue that the author was ignorant of, or lightly esteemed, the ordinances and sacraments amongst which his life must have been spent. Certainly the fourth Gospel is deeply sacramental. This Epistle, with its calm, unhesitating conviction of the sonship of all to whom it is addressed; with its view of the Christian life as in idea a continuous growth from a birth the secret of whose origin is given in the Gospel; with its expressive hints of sources of grace and power and of a continual presence of Christ; with its deep mystical realisation of the double flow from the pierced side upon the cross, and its thrice-repeated exchange of the _sacramental_ order "_water_ and blood,"[251] for the _historical_ order "_blood_ and water"; unquestionably has the sacramental sense diffused throughout it. The Sacraments are not in obtrusive prominence; yet for those who have eyes to see they lie in deep and tender distances. Such is the view of the Christian life in this letter--a life in which Christ's truth is blended with Christ's love; assimilated by thought, exhaling in worship, softening into sympathy with man's suffering and sorrow. It calls for the believing soul, for the devout heart, for the helping hand. It is the perfect balance in a saintly soul of feeling, creed, communion, and work.

For of work for our fellow man it is that the question is asked half despairingly--"whoso hath this world's good, and seeth" (gazes at)[252] "his brother have need, and shutteth up his heart against him, how doth the love of God[253] dwell in him?" Some can quietly look at the poor brother; they see _him_ in need, but they have not the thoughtful eyes that see _his need_. They may belong to "the sluggard Pity's vision-weaving tribe," who expend a sigh of sentiment upon such spectacles, and nothing more. Or they may be hardened professors of the "dismal science," who have learned to consider a sigh as the luxury of ignorance or of feebleness. But for all practical purposes both these classes interpose a too effectual barrier between their heart and their brother's need. But true Christians are made partakers in Christ of the mystery of human suffering. Even when they are not actually in sight of brethren in want, their ears are ever hearing the ceaseless moaning of the sea of human sorrow, with a sympathy which involves its own measure of pain, though a pain which brings with it abundant compensation. Their inner life has not merely won for itself the partly selfish satisfaction of personal escape from punishment, great as that blessing may be. They have caught something of the meaning of the secret of all love--"we love because He first loved us."[254] In those words is the romance (if we may dare to call it so) of the divine love-tale. Under its influence the face once hard and narrow often becomes radiant and softened; it smiles, or is tearful, in the light of the love of His face who first loved.

It is this principle of St. John which is ever at work in Christian lands. In hospitals it tells us that Christ is ever passing down the wards; that He will have no stinted service; that He must have more for His sick more devotion, a gentler touch, a finer sympathy; that where His hand has broken and blessed, every particle is a sacred thing, and must be treated reverently.

Are there any who are tempted to think that our text has become antiquated; that it no longer holds true in the light of organised charity, of economic science? Let them listen to one who speaks with the weight of years of active benevolence, and with consummate knowledge of its method and duties.[255] "There are men who, in their detestation of roguery, forget that by a wholesale condemnation of charity, they run the risk of driving the honest to despair and of turning them into the very rogues of whom they desire so ardently to be quit. These men are unconsciously playing into the hands of the Socialists and the Anarchists, the only sections of society whose distinct interest it is that misery and starvation should increase. No doubt indiscriminate almsgiving is hurtful to the State as well as to the individual who receives the dole, but not less dangerous would it be to society if the principles of these stern political economists were to be literally accepted by any large number of the rich, and if charity ceased to be practised within the land. We cannot yet afford to shut ourselves up in the castle of philosophic indifference, regardless of the fate of those who have the misfortune to find themselves outside its walls."

NOTES.

Ch. iii. 12-21.

Ver. 12. A second reference to the Book of Genesis within a few lines (see ver. 8). It is characteristic of the historical spirit of St. John that he does not entangle himself with the luxuriant upgrowth of wild fable in which traditional Judaism has ever enveloped the simple narrative of Cain and Abel in Genesis.

Ver. 15. St. John may refer to another passage in Genesis. "And Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob" (Gen. xxvii. 11-41).

Ver. 17. A Rabbinical saying is worth recording as an illustration of the spirit in which the "living of this world" should be held. "He that saith, Mine is thine, and thine is mine, is an idiot; he that saith, Mine is mine, and thine is thine, is moderate; he that saith, Mine is thine, and thine is thine, is charitable; but he that saith, Thine is mine, and mine is mine, is wicked; even though it be only saying it in his heart, to wish it were so." Paulus Fagius. _Sentent. Heb._

Vers. 19, 20, 21. These verses probably present more difficulties than any other portion of this Epistle. (1) For their construction. The following note from a _fasciculus_ (now no longer to be procured) written by a master of sacred studies seems to us to say all that can be said for a rendering different from that of the R. V. and our own.

"Ver. 20: ὁτι εαν καταγινωσκη ἡμων ἡ καρδια, ὁτι μειζων εστιν ὁ Θεος. The difficulty is in the second ὁτι, which is ignored by the Vulgate and A. V. The Revisers (after Hoogeveen, _De Partic._ p. 589, ed. Schütz. and others) point ὁ,τι εαν in the first clause, which they join with the preceding verse: 'and shall assure our heart before him, whereinsoever our heart condemn us; because God' etc. But this is quite inadmissible, since nothing can be plainer than that εαν καταγινωσκη (ver. 20) and εαν μη καταγινωσκη (ver. 21) are both _in protasi_, and in strict correlation with each other. Dean Alford suggests an ellipsis of the verb substantive before the second ὁτι, and would translate: 'Because if our heart condemn us, (it is) because God' etc. He instances such cases as ει τις εν Χριστω, (he is) καινη κτισις, which are quite dissimilar; but the following from St. Chrysostom (T. X. p. 122 B) fully bears out this construction; Ὁ ζυγος μου χρηστος κ.τ.ἑ. ει δε ουκ αισθανη της κουφοτητος, ὉΤΙ προθυμιαν ερρωμενην ουκ εχεις; where I have expunged δηλον before ὁτι on the authority of three out of four MSS. collated for these Homilies, the fourth, with the old Latin version, for ὁτι προθυμιαν reading μη θαυμασης, προθυμιαν γαρ. In my note on that place I have pointed out that the ellipsis is not of δηλον, but of το αιτιον, _causa est, quia_. So in the present instance we might translate: 'For if our heart condemn us, (the reason is) because God is greater,' etc., were it not for the difficulty of explaining how the fact of God's being greater than our heart can be a valid reason for our heart condemning us. I would, therefore, take the second ὁτι for _quod_, not _quia_, and suppose an ellipsis of δηλον, as in 1 Tim. vi. 7, where see note."--_Otium Norvicense_, by Frederic Field, M.A., LL.D. (pp. 153, 15).

Dr. Field s rendering then is: "For if our heart condemn us, (it is evident) that God is greater than our heart."

(2) For the meaning of these verses. All interpretations appear to fall into two classes; as St. John is supposed to aim at (_a_) _soothing_ conscience, or (_b_) _awakening_ it. But may he not really intend to leave people to think over a something which he has purposely omitted, and to apply it as required? The saying "God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things," probably cuts two ways. If my heart condemn me justly, and with truth, much more so does God who is greater than my heart. But, if my conscience is tenderly sensitive, scrupulous because full of love, God's knowledge of my heart tells in this case on the brighter side, as truly as in the other case it told on the darker side. We may lull our heart. "A tranquil God tranquillises all things, and to see His peacefulness is to be at peace." (_St. Bernard in Cant._)

FOOTNOTES:

[230] Ver. 11.

[231] John xv. 12-17. See also the stress laid upon the unity of believers; surely including love as well as doctrine in the great High-Priestly prayer, John xvii. 21-23.

[232] "The message that ye heard _from the beginning_," conf. 1 John ii. 24.

[233] "Contrariorum eadem est scientia."

[234] This is one of the few references to the Old Testament _history_ in St. John's Epistle (Gen. iv. 1-8). To the _theology_ of the Old Testament there are many references; _e.g._, light and life. 1 John i. 1-5; John i. 4; Ps. xxxvi. 9. There is, however, another historical reference a few verses above (1 John iii. 8)--a passage of primary importance because it recognises the whole narrative of the Fall in Genesis, and affords a commentary upon the words of Christ (John viii. 44). The writer has somewhere seen an interesting suggestion that ver. 12 may contain some allusion to the visit of Apollonius of Tyana to Ephesus. Apollonius incited the mob to kill a beggar-man for the purpose of placing himself on a level with Chalcas and others who caused the sacrifice of human victims. The date of this incident would apparently coincide with the closing years of St. John's life (_Philostrat. vita Apollon._, Act. ii., S. 5).

[235] Ver. 14.

[236] Vers. 14, 15.

[237] Ver. 12.

[238] Ver. 16.

[239] Ver. 17.

[240] Vers. 18, 19.

[241] Vers. 20, 21.

[242] "For _The Love_ I rather beseech thee" (Phil. v. 9). The addition in the A.V. (_of God_) rather impairs the sweetness and power, the reverential reserve of the original.

[243] Of Prof. Westcott.

[244] Ver. 17.

[245] It is suggestive that on Quinquagesima Sunday, when 1 Cor. xiii. is the Epistle, St. Luke xviii. 31 sqq., is the Gospel. The lyric of love is joined with a fragment of its epic. That fragment tells us of a love which not only proclaimed itself ready to be sacrificed (Luke