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Number <l.OpY I
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
Edited by Rev. W. R. NicoLL, Editor London Expositor.
Th's series consists of Expository Lectures on ALL* THE BOOKS
OF THE BIBLE by the foremost Preachers and Theologians of the day.
While regard is had up to the latest results of Scholarship, the volumes
will be essentially popular, and adapted to general readers quite as much
as to the clergy. Six volumes published a year, in large ciown 8vo
volumes of about 450 pages each, strongly bound. Price per vol $1.50,
Six Volumes for 1889.
THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. By Rev. Alexander Plummkr,
D. 1:.
THE BOOK OF ISAIAH. Vol. i (chapters 1-39). By Rev. George
Adam Smith.
THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIAXS. By Rev. Prof. G. G.
FiNDLAY.
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. By Rt. Rev. W. Alexander,
D. D.
THE BOOK OF REVELATION'. By Rev. Prof. William Mil-
LIGAN.
THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. By Rev.
Marcus Dods, D. D,
Six Volumes Published in 1888.
COLOSSIANS AND PHILEMON. By Rev. Alex. Maclaren,D.D.
Sr. MARK. By Rev. G. A. Chadwick, D. D.
GENESIS. By Rev. Marcus Dods, D. D.
I. AND II. SAMUEL. By Rev. Prof. W. G. Blaikie, D. D.
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Edwards, D. D.
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THE
EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.
TWENTY-ONE DISCOURSES,
SSlitli (Svcck '^!Ltxt, (Komparvttibe "^cr^ton^i, aixi ^oits
Clucfl-g (Excgctial.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER, D.D., D.C.L.,
BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD,
LORD BISHOP OF DERRY AND RAFHOE.
NEW YORK:
A. C ARMSTRONG AND SON,
714, BR®ADWAY.
PREFACE.
IT is now many years ago since I entered upon a
study of the Epistles of St. John, as serious and
prolonged as was consistent with the often distracting
cares of an Irish Bishop. Such fruit as my labours
produced enjoyed the advantage of appearing in the
last volume of the Speaker's Commentary in i88l.
Since that period I have frequently turned again to
these Epistles — subsequent reflection or study not
seldom filling in gaps in my knowledge, or leading
me to modify former interpretations. When invited
last year to resume my old work, I therefore embraced
willingly the opportunity which was presented to me.
Let me briefly state the method pursued in this book.
I. The First Part contains four Discourses.
(i) In the first Discourse I have tried to place the
reader in the historical surroundings from which (unless
all early Church history is unreal, a past that never was
present) these Epistles emanated.
(2) In the second Discourse I compare the Epistle
with the Gospel. This is the true point of orientation
for the commentator. Call the connection between
the two documents what we may ; be the Epistle
PREFACE.
the Hieronymian interpretation precisely as it stood, not
preface, appendix, moral and devotional commentary,
or accompanying encyclical address to the Churches,
which were " the nurslings of John " ; that connection is
constant and pervasive. Unless this principle is firmly
grasped, we not only lose a defence and confirmation of
the Gospel, but dissolve the whole consistency of the
Epistle, and leave it floating — the thinnest cloud in the
whole cloudland of mystic idealism.
(3) The third Discourse deals with the polemical
element in these Epistles. Some commentators indeed,
like the excellent Henry Hammond, " spy out Gnostics
where there are none." They confuse us with uncouth
names, and conjure up the ghosts of long-forgotten
errors until we seem to hear a theological bedlam, or to
see theological scarecrows. Yet Gnosticism, Doketism,
Cerinthianism, certainly sprang from the teeming soil
of Ephesian thought ; and without a recognition of this
fact, we shall never understand the Epistle. Un-
doubtedly, if the Apostle had addressed himself only
to contemporary error, his great Epistle would have
become completely obsolete for us. To subsequent
ages an antiquated polemical treatise is like a fossil
scorpion with a sting of stone. But a divinely taught
polemic under transitory forms of error finds principles
as lasting as human nature.
(4) The object of the fourth Discourse is to bring
out the image of St. John's soul — the essentials of the
spiritual life to be found in those precious chapters which
still continue to be an element of the life of the Church.
PREFACE. vii
Such a view, if at all accurate, will enable the
reader to contemplate the whole of the Epistle with
the sense of completeness, of remoteness, and of
unity which arises from a general survey apart from
particular difficulties. An ancient legend insisted that
St. John exercised miraculous power in blending again
into one the broken pieces of a precious stone. We
may try in an humble way to bring these fragmentary
particles of spiritual gem-dust together, and fuse them
into one.
II. The plan pursued in the second part is this.
The First Epistle (of which only I need now speak) is
divided into ten sections.
The sections are thus arranged —
(i) The text is given in Greek. In this matter I
make no pretence to original research ; and have
simply adopted Tischendorf's text, with occasional
amendments from Dr. Scrivener or Prof. Westcott.
At one time I might have been tempted to follow
Lachmann ; but experience taught me that he is
^'audacior quam limatior," and I held my hand. The
advantage to every studious reader of having the
divine original close by him for comparison is too
obvious to need a word more.
With the Greek I have placed in parallel columns
the translations most useful for ordinary readers — the
Latin, the English A.V. and R.V. The Latin text is
that of the " Codex Amiatinus," after Tischendorf's
splendid edition of 1854. In this the reader will find,
PREFACE.
more than a hundred and twenty years after the death
of St. Jerome^ an interpretation more dihgent and more
accurate than that which is suppHed by the ordinary
Vulgate text. The saint felt *'the peril of presuming
to judge others where he himself would be judged
by all ; of changing the tongue of the old, and carrying
back a world which was growing hoary to the initial
essay of infancy." The Latin is of that form to
which ancient Latin Church writers gave the name of
'^ nisticitas." But it is a happy — I had almost said a
divine — rusticity. In translating from the Hebrew
of the Old Testament, St. Jerome has given a new
life, a strange tenderness or awful cadence, to prophets
and psalmists. The voice of the fields is the voice of
Heaven also. The tongue of the people is for once
the tongue of God. This Hebraistic Latin or Latinised
Hebrew forms the strongest link in that mysterious
yet most real spell wherewith the Latin of the Church
enthrals the soul of the w^orld. But to return to our
immediate subject. The student can seldom go wrong
by more than a hair's breadth when he has before
him three such translations. In the first column
stands St. Jerome's vigorous Latin. The second con-
tains the English A.V., of which each clause seems
to be guarded by the spirits of the holy dead, as well
as by the love of the living Church ; and to tell the
innovator that he " does wrong to show it violence,
being so majestical." The third column offers to view
the scholarlike — if sometimes just a little pedantic and
provoking — accuracy of the R.V. To this comparison
PRE FA CE.
of versions I attach much significance. Every transla-
tion is an additional commentary, every good translation
the best of commentaries.
I have ventured v^^ith much hesitation to add upon
another column in each section a translation draw^n up
by myself for my ov^n private use ; the greater portion
of which was made a year or two before the publica-
tion of the R.V. Its right to be here is this, that it
affords the best key to my meaning in any place
where the exposition may be imperfectly expressed.^
(2) One or more Discourses are attached to most of
the sections. In these I may have seemed sometimes
to have given myself a wide scope, but I have tried to
make a sound and careful exegesis the basis of each.
And I have throughout considered myself bound to
draw out some great leading idea of St. John with
conscientious care.
(2) The Discourses (or if there be no Discourse in
* I venture to call attention to the rendering " verj'." It enables the
translator to mark the important distinction between two words :
d\r]dri$, factually true and real, as opposed to that which in point
of fact is mendacious ; dXi^dLuds, ideally true and real, that which
alone realizes the idea imperfectly expressed by something else. This
is one of St. John's favourite words. In regard to dydir-r] I have not
had the courage of my convictions. The word "charity" seems to me
almost providentially preserved for the rendering of that term. It is
not without a purpose that ^p<as is so rigorously excluded from the
New Testament. The objection that " charity " conveys to ordinary
English people the notion of mere material alms is of little weight.
If "charity" is sometimes a little nwfalh'c, is not "love " sometimes
a little maundering ? I agree with Canon Evans that the word,
Strictly speaking, should be always translated "charity" when alone,
"love" when in regimen. Yet I have not been bold enough to put
'^God is charity " for " God is ioVe."
PREFACE.
the section, the text and versions) are followed by short
notes, chiefly exegetical, in which I have not willingly
passed by any real difficulty.
I have not wished to cumber my pages with constant
quotations. But in former years I have read, in some
cases with much care, the following commentators — St.
Augustine's Tractahis, St. John Chrysostom's Homilies
on the Gospel (full of hints upon the Epistles), Cornelius
a Lapide; of older post-Reformation commentators, the
excellent Henry Hammond, the eloquent Dean Hardy,
the precious fragments in Pole's Synopsis — above all, the
inimitable Bengel ; of moderns, Dusterdieck, Huther,
Ebrard, Neander ; more recently. Professor Westcott,
whose subtle and exquisite scholarship deserves the
gratitude of every student of St. John. Of Haupt I
know nothing, with the exception of an analysis of
the Epistle, which is stamped with the highest praise
of so refined and competent a judge as Archdeacon
Farrar. But having read this list fairly in past
years, I am now content to have before me nothing
but a Greek Testament, the Grammars of Winer and
Donaldson, the New Testament lexicons of Bretsch-
neider, Grimm, and Mintert, with Tromm's ^'Concor-
dantia LXX." For, on the whole, I really prefer St.
John to his commentators. And I hope I am not
ungrateful for help which I have received from
them, when I say that I now seem to myself to under-
stand him better without the dissonance of their
many voices. ^'Johannem nisi ex Johanne ipso
non intellexeris."
PREFACE.
III. It only remains to commend this book, such
as it is, not only to theological students, but to
general readers, who I hope will not be alarmed
by a few Greek words here and there.
I began my fuller study of St. John's Epistle in the
noonday of life; I am closing it with the sunset in
my eyes. I pray God to sanctify this poor attempt to
the edification of souls, and the good of the Church.
And I ask all who may find it useful, to offer their
intercessions for a blessing upon the book, and
upon its author.
WILLIAM DERRY AND RAPHOE.
The Palace, Londonderry,
February 6th, 1889.
Merciful God, we beseech Thee to cast Thy bright beams of
light upon Thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine
of Thy blessed Apostle and Evangelist St. John, may so walk in
the light of Thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of
everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PPIEFACE •••-•«•- 9 m V
PART I,
DISCOURSE I.
The Surroundings of the First Epistle of St. John 3
DISCOURSE II.
The Connection of the Epistle with the Gospel of
St. John --------- 21
DISCOURSE III.
The Polemical Element in the First Epistle of
St. John .--------39
DISCOURSE IV.-
The Image of St. John's Soul in His Epistle - 54
xiv CONTENTS.
PART II,
PAGE
Some General Rules for the Interpretation of the
First Epistle of St. John ----- 75
SECTION I.
Text and Versions --------79
DISCOURSE I.
Analysis and Theory of St. John's Gospel • - 80
DISCOURSE II.
St. John's Gospel Historical not Ideological • • 88
SECTION II.
Text and Versions .•--•-••100
DISCOURSE IIL
Extent of the Atonement --•••• 102
DISCOURSE IV.
Missionary Application of the Extent o^ the Atone-
ment • •-----••- io5
SECTION III. (i)
Text and Versions - • • • - • • •I17
DISCOURSE V.
The Influence of the Great Life Walk a Personal
Influence - - - • • • • • -118
SECTION III. (2)
Text and Versions • • • • • • * -ISS
CONTENTS. XV
SECTION III. (3)
PAGE
Text and Versions - - - - • • - -134
DISCOURSE VL
The World which we must not Love - • • • 136
DISCOURSE VII.
Use and Abuse of the Sense of the Vanity of the
"World .-----•-- 149
SECTION IV.
Text and Versions -----••• 164
DISCOURSE VIII.
Knowing All Things --••••- 166
SECTION V.
Text and Versions ------•• 179
SECTION VI.
Texts and Versions- ----••- 185
DISCOURSE IX.
Lofty Ideals Perilous unless Applied- • • » 180
SECTION VII.
Text and Versions ---••••• 204
SECTION VIII,
Text and Versions -•••-•••207
DISCOURSE X.
Boldness in the Day of Judgment » . . - 210
xvi COyTEiYTS.
SECTION IX.
PAGE
Text and Versions ----•••. 220
DISCOURSE XI.
Birth and Victory ---.•••• 223
I DISCOURSE XII.
The Gospel as a Gospel of Witness; the Three
Witnesses - - - - - -- - - 236
DISCOURSE XIII.
The Witness of Men (applied to the Resurrection)- 241
DISCOURSE XIV.
Sin unto Death ----•••- 254
DISCOURSE XV.'
The Terrible Truism which has no Exception - - 260
SECTION X.
Text and Versions --•••••- 274
SECOND EPISTLE,
Text and Versions -----•-. 279
DISCOURSE XVI
Theology and Life in Kyria's Letter - • • - 282
THIRD EPISTLE,
Text and Versions -----••- 297
DISCOURSE XVII.
The Quietness of True Religion - - • • - 300
PART I.
"JOHANNIS EpISTOI.^, ULTIMUSQUE PRIM^ VEPSICULUS, IN FpHESQM
IMPRIMIS CONVENIUNT,"
(Bengel in Act. xix. 21.)
DISCOURSE I.
THE SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF
ST. JOHN.
" Little children, keep yoursel.es from idols." — I John v. 21.
AFTER the example of a writer of genius, preachers
and essayists for the last forty years have con-
stantly applied — or misapplied — some lines from one
of the greatest of Christian poems. Dante writes
of St. John —
"As he, who looks intent,
And strives with searching ken, how he may see
The sun in his eclipse, and, through decline
Of seeing, loseth power of sight : so 1
Gazed on that last resplendence." *
The poet meant to be understood of the Apostle's
spiritual splendour of soul, of the absorption of his
intellect and heart in his conception of the Person of
Christ and of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. By
these expositors of Dante the image is transferred to
the style and structure of his writings. But confusion
of thought is not magnificence, and mere obscurity is
never sunlike. A blurred sphere and undecided outline
is not characteristic of the sun even in eclipse. Dante
never intended us to understand that St. John as a writer
' Gary's Dante, Paradiso, xxv. 1 1 7. Stanley's Sermons and Essays
on the Aposlolic Age, 242.
4 SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
was distinguished by a beautiful vagueness of senti-
ment, by bright but tremulously drawn lines of
dogmatic creed. It is indeed certain that round St.
John himself, at the time when he wrote, there were
many minds affected by this vague mysticism. For
them, beyond the scanty region of the known, there
was a world of darkness whose shadows they desired
to penetrate. For them this little island of life was
surrounded by waters into whose depths they affected
to gaze. They were drawn by a mystic attraction to
things which they themselves called the '^shadows,"
the ''depths," the "silences." But for St. John these
shadows were a negation of the message which he
delivered that " God is light, and darkness in Him is
none." These silences were the contradiction of the
Word who has once for all interpreted God. These
depths were '' depths of Satan." ^ For the men who
were thus enamoured of indefiniteness, of shifting senti-
ments and flexible creeds, were Gnostic heretics. Now
St. John's style, as such, has not the artful variety, the
perfect balance in the masses of composition, the
finished logical cohesion of the Greek classical writers.
Yet it can be loftily or pathetically impressive. It can
touch the problems and processes of the moral and
spiritual world with a pencil-tip of deathless light, or
compress them into symbols which are solemnly or
awfully picturesque.^ Above all St. John has the
faculty of enshrining dogma in forms of statement
which are firm and precise — accurate enough to be
envied by philosophers, subtle enough to defy the
passage of heresy through their finely drawn yet
powerful lines. Thus in the beginning of his Gospel
' Apoc. ii. 24. 'John xiii. 30 cf. I John ii. II.
V. 21.] SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 5
all false thought upon the Person of Him who is the
living theology of His Church is refuted by anticipa-
tion— that which in itself or in its certain consequences
unhumanises or undeifies the God Man ; that which
denies the singularity of the One Person who was
Incarnate, or the reality and entireness of the Man-
hood of Him who fixed His Tabernacle ^ of humanity
in us. ^
It is therefore a mistake to look upon the First
Epistle of St. John as a creedless composite of mis-
cellaneous sweetnesses, a disconnected rhapsody upon
philanthropy. And it will be well to enter upon a
serious perusal of it, with a conviction that it did not
drop from the sk}^ upon an unknown place, at an
unknown time, with an unknown purpose. We can
arrive at some definite conclusions as to the circum-
stances from which it arose, and the sphere in which
it was written — at least if we are entitled to say that
we have done so in the case of almost any other ancient
document of the same nature.
Our simplest plan will be, in the first instance, to
trace in the briefest outline the career of St. John after
the Ascension of our Lord, so far as it can be followed
certainly by Scripture, or with the highest probabiliry
from early Church history. We shall then be better
^ iffKTjvcocrev eu ijpuf.
* This characteristic of St. John's style is powerfully expressed by
the great hymn-writer of the Latin Church,
*' Hebet sensus exors styli ;
Stylo scribit lam subtili,
Fide tam catholica,
Ne de Verbo salutari
Posset quicquam refragari
Pravitas haeretica."
Adam of St, Victor, Sc-r. xxxii.
6 SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
able to estimate the degree in which the Epistle fits
into the framework of local thought and circumstances
in which we desire to place it.
Much of this biography can best be drawn out by
tracing the contrast between St. John and St. Peter,
which is conveyed with such subtle and exquisite
beauty in the closing chapter of the fourth Gospel.
The contrast between the two Apostles is one of
history and of character.
Historically the work done by each of them for the
Church differs in a remarkable way from the other.
We might have anticipated for one so dear to our
Lord a distinguished part in spreading the Gospel
among the nations of the world. The tone of thought
revealed in parts of his Gospel might even have seemed
to indicate a remarkable aptitude for such a task.
St. John's peculiar appreciation of the visit of the
Greeks to Jesus, and his preservation of words which
show such deep insight into Greek religious ideas,
would apparently promise a great missionary, at least
to men of lofty speculative thought.^ But in the Acts
of the Apostles St. John is first overshadowed, then
effaced, by the heroes of the missionary epic, St. Peter
and St. Paul. After the close of the Gospels he is
mentioned five times only. Once his name occurs in
a list of the Apostles.^ Thrice he passes before us
with Peter.^ Once again (the first and kst time when
we hear of St. John in personal relation with St. Paul)
he appears in the Epistle to the Galatians with two
others, James and Cephas, as reputed to be pi.Mars of
the Church.^ But whilst we read in the Acts of his
taking a certain part in miracles, in preaching, in
' John xii. 20—34, tsj ecially ver. 24. ^ Acts iii. 4, v. 13, viii. 14.
2 Acts i. 13. ^ Gal. ii. 9.
V.2I.] SUKROUNBINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 7
confirmation ; while his boldness is acknowledged by
adversaries of the faith ; not a line of his individual
teaching is recorded. He walks in silence by the side
of the Apostle who was more fitted to be a missionary
pioneer.^
With the materials at our command, it is difficult
to say how St. John was employed whilst the first
great advance of the cross was in progress. We know
for certain that he was at Jerusalem during the second
visit of St. Paul. But there is no reason for conjecturing
that he was in that city when it was visited by St. Paul
on his last voyage ^ (a.d. 6o) ; while we shall presently
have occasion to show how markedly the Church
tradition connects St. John with Ephesus.
We have next to point out that this contrast in
the history of the Apostles is the result of a contrast
in their characters. This contrast is brought out with
a marvellous prophetic symbolism in the miraculous
draught of fishes after the Resurrection.
First as regards St. Peter.
" When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he
girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked), and
did cast himself into the sea." ^ His was the warm
^ Acts iii. 4, iv. 13, viii. 14. The singular and interesting manu-
script of Patmos (Ai irepiodoi toD deoKoyod) attributed to St. John's
disciple, Prochorus, seems to recognise that St. John's chief mission
was not that of working miracles. Even in a kind of duel of prodigies
between him and the sinister magician of Patmos, the following
occurs. "Kynops asked a young man in the rrnltiiude where his
father then was. 'My father is dead,' he rephtd, 'he went down
yonder in a storm.' Turning to John, the magician said, — Come,
bring up this young man's father from the dead.' 'I have not come
here,' answered the Apcstle, 'to raise the dead, but to deliver the
living from their errors.' "
^ Gal. ii. 9; Acts xxi. 17, sqq.
* John XXI. 7.
8 SURROCuVDINGS OF THE FIRS 7 EPISTLE.
energy, the forward impulse of young life, the free
bold plunge of an impetuous and chivalrous nature into
the waters which are nations and peoples. In he must;
on he will. The prophecy which follows the thrice
renewed restitution of the fallen Apostle is as follows :
" Verily, verily, I say unto thee. When thou w^ast young,
thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest :
but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth
thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee
whither thou wouldest not. This spake He, signifying
by what death He should glorify God, and when He
had spoken this, He saith unto him, Follow Me."^
This, we are told, is obscure ; but it is obscure only
as to details. To St. Peter it could have conveyed no
other impression than that it foretold his martyrdom.
" When thou wast young," points to the tract of 3^ears
up to old age. It has been said that forty is the old
age of youth, fifty the youth of old age. But our Lord
does not actually define old age by any precise date.
He takes what has occurred as a type of Peter's
youthfulness of heart and frame — " girding himself,"
Vv^ith rapid action, as he had done shortly before ;
" walking," as he had walked on the white beach of
the lake in the early dawn; "whither thou wouldest,"
as when he had cried with impetuous half defiant
independence, " I go a fishing," invited by the auguries
of the morning, and of the water. The form of ex-
pression seems to indicate that Simon Peter was not
to go far into the dark and frozen land ; that he
was to be growing old, rather than absolutely old.^
Then should he stretch forth his hands, with the
* Ibid., vers. 17, 18, 19.
* The beginning of old age wculd account sufficiently for the
antitipati^.n of death in 2 Pettr i. 13, 14, 15.
V.2I.] SUI^ROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 9
cignified resignation of one who yields manfully to
that from which nature would willingly escape. ^' This
spake He/' adds the evangelist, ^'signify'ng by what
death he shall glorify God." ^ What fatal temptation
leads so many commentators to minimise such a pre-
diction as this ? If the prophecy were the product of
a later hand added after the martyrdom of St. Peter,
it certainly would have wanted its present inimitable
impress of distance and reserve.
It is in the context of this passage that we read
most fully and truly the contrast of our Apostle's nature
with that of St. Peter. St. John, as Chrysostom has
told us in deathless words, was loftier, saw more
deeply, pierced right into and through spiritual truths,^
was more the lover of Jesus than of Christ, as Peter
was more the lover of Christ than of Jesus. Below
the different work of the two men, and determining it,
was this essential difference of nature, which they carried
with them into the region of grace. St. John was not
so much the great missionary with his sacred restless-
ness; not so much the oratorical expositor of prophecy
with his pointed proofs of correspondence between
prediction and fulfilment, and his passionate declama-
tion driving in the conviction of guilt like a sting that
pricked the conscience. He was the theologian ; the
quiet master of the secrets of the spiritual life ; the
calm strong controversialist who excludes error by
constructing truth. The work of such a spirit as his
was rather Hke the finest product of venerable and
' Zo^daei ver. 19. The lifelike shall (not should) is part of the many
minute but vivid touches which make the whole of this scene so full
of motion and reality — " I go a fishing " (ver. 3) ; " about two hundred
cubits " (ver. 8) ; the accurate " beach " (ver. 4).
^ diopariKUTepos. S. Jcann. Chrysost. — Ham, in Joann,
10 SUJ^ROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
long established Churches. One gentle word of Jesus
sums up the biography of long years which apparently
were without the crowded vicissitudes to which other
Apostles were exposed. If the old Church history is
true, St. John was either not called upon to die for Jesus,
or escaped from that death by a miracle. That one
word of the Lord was to become a sort of motto of
St. John. It occurs some twenty-six times in the brief
pages of these Epistles. " If I will that he abide " —
abide in the bark, in the Church, in one spot, in life, in
spiritual communion with Me. It is to be remembered
finally, that not only spiritual, but ecclesiastical con-
solidation is attributed to St. John by the voice of
history. He occupied himself with the visitation of
his Churches and the development of Episcopacy. So
in the sunset of the Apostolic age stands before us the
mitred form of John the Divine. Early Christianity
had three successive capitals — Jerusalem, Antioch,
Ephesus. Surely, so long as St. John lived, men
looked for a Primate of Christendom not at Rome but
at Ephesus.
How different were the two deaths ! It was as if
in His words our Lord allowed His two Apostles to
look into a magic glass, wherein one saw dimly the
hurrying feet, the prelude to execution which even
the saint wills not ; the other the calm life, the gathered
disciples, the quiet sinking to rest. In the clear
obscure of that prophecy we may discern the outline
of Peter's cross, the bowed figure of the saintly old
man. Let us be thankful that John ^^ tarriccV He
has left the Church three pictures that can never fade
— in the Gospel the picture of Christ, in the Epistles
the picture of his own soul, in the Apocalypse the
picture of Heaven.
V.2I.] SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 11
So far we have relied almost exclusively upon in-
dications supplied by Scripture. We now turn to
Church history to fill in some particulars of interest.
Ancient tradition unhesitatingly believed that the
latter years of St. John's prolonged life, were spent in
the city of Ephesus, or province of Asia Minor, with
the Virgin-Mother, the sacred legacy from the ^cross,
under his fostering care for a longer or shorter portion
of those years. Manifestly he would not have gone to
Ephesus during the lifetime of St. Paul. Various circum-
stances point to the period of his abode there as begin-
ning a little after the fall of Jerusalem (a.d. Gy). He
lived on until towards the close of the first century of
the Christian era, possibly two years later (a.d. 102)
With the date of the Apocalypse we are not directly
concerned, though we refer it to a very late period in
St. John's career, believing that the Apostle did not
return from Patmos until just after Domitian's death.
The date of the Gospel may be placed between a.d.
80 and 90. And the First Epistle accompanied the
Gospel, as we shall see in a subsequent discourse.
The Epistle then, like the Gospel, and contempora-
neously with it, saw the light in Ephesus, or in its
vicinity. This is proved by three pieces of evidence
of the most unquestionable solidity.
(i) The opening chapters of the Apocalypse con-
tain an argument, which cannot be explained away
for the connection of St. John with Asia Minor and
with Ephesus. And the argument is independent of
the authorship of that wonderful book. Whoever wrote
the Book of the Revelation must have felt the most
absolute conviction of St. John's abode in Ephesus
and temporary exile to Patmos. To have written with
a special view of acquiring a hold upon the Churches
12 SUJ^ROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
of Asia Minor, while assuming from the very first as
fact what tJicy, more than any other Churches in the
world, must have known to h& fiction, would have been
to invite immediate and contemptuous rejection. The
three earliest chapters of the Revelation are unintelli-
gible, except as the real or assumed utterance of a
Primate (in later language) of the Churches of Asia
Minor. To the inhabitants of the barren and remote
isle of Patmos, Rome and Ephesus almost represented
the world ; their rocky nest among the waters was
scarcely visited except as a brief resting-place for
those who sailed from one of those great cities to the
other, or for occasional traders from Corinth.
(2) The second evidence is the fragment of the
Epistle of Irenseus to Florinus preserved in the fifth
book of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. Irenaeus
mentions no dim tradition, appeals to no past which
was never present. He has but to question his own
recollections of Polycarp, whom he remembered in
early life. " Where he sat to talk, his way, his manner
of life, his personal appearance, how he used to tell of
his intimacy with John, and with the others who had
seen the L-ord."^ Irenaeus elsewhere distinctly says
that '' John himself issued the Gospel while living at
Ephesus in Asia Minor, and that he survived in that
city until Trajan's time." ^
(3) The third great historical evidence which con-
nects St. John with Ephesus is that of Polycrates,
Bishop of Ephesus, who wrote a synodical epistle to
Victor and the Roman Church on the quartodeciman
question, toward the close of the second century.
Pol^^crates speaks of the great ashes which sleep in
' Ap. Euseb. H. E., v. 20. ^ ^^^.,^ Halves., lib. iii., ch. I.
V.2I.] SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 13
Asia Minor until the Advent of the Lord, when He
shall raise up His saints. He proceeds to mention
Philip who sleeps in Hierapolis ; two of his daughters ;
a third who takes her rest in Ephesus, and "John
moreover, who leaned upon the breast of Jesus, who
was a high priest bearing the radiant plate of gold
upon his forehead." ^
This threefold evidence would seem to render the
sojourn of St. John at Ephesus for many 3^ears one
of the most solidly attested facts of earlier Church
history.
It will be necessary for our purpose to sketch the
general condition of Ephesus in St. John's time.
A traveller coming from Antioch of Pisidia (as St. Paul
did A.D. 54) descended from the mountain chain which
separates the Meander from the Cayster. He passed
down by a narrow ravine to the ^^ Asian meadow "
celebrated by Homer. There, rising from the valley,
partly running up the slope of Mount Coressus, and
again higher along the shoulder of Mount Prion,
the traveller saw the great city of Ephesus towering
upon the hills, with widely scattered suburbs. In the
first century the population was immense, and included
a strange mixture of races and religions. Large
numbers of Jews wer^ settled there, and seem to
have possessed a full religious organisation under a
High Priest or Chief Rabbi. But the prevailing super-
* Upeds TO ireraXov Tre^ope/ccis — "Pontifex ejus (sc. Domini) auream
laminam in fronte habens." So translated by S. Hieron. Lib. de Vir.
Ilhist, xlv. The ireToXov is the LXX. rendering of l*""^, the pro-
jecting leaf or plate of radiant gold (Exod. xxviii. 26, xxxix. 30),
associated with the " mitre " (Lev. viii. 9). Whether Pol3'crates
speaks literall}', or wishes to convey by a metaphor the impression
of holiness radiating from St. John's face, we pre bably cannot decide.
14 SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
stition was the worship of the Ephesian Artemis. The
great temple, the priesthood whose chief seems to have
enjoyed a royal or quasi-royal rank, the afQuence of
pilgrims at certain seasons of the year, the industries
connected with objects of devotion, supported a swarm
of devotees, whose fanaticism was intensified by their
material interest in a vast religious establishment.
Ephesus boasted of being a theocratic city, the possessor
and keeper of a temple glorified by art as well as by
devotion. It had a civic calendar marked by a round
of splendid festivities associated with the cultus of the
goddess. Yet the moral reputation of the city stood
at the lowest point, even in the estimation of Greeks.
The Greek 'character was effeminated in Ionia by
Asiatic manners, and Ephesus was the most dissolute
city of Ionia. Its once superb schools of art became
infected by the ostentatious vulgarity of an ever-increas-
ing parvenu opulence. The place was chiefly divided
between dissipation and a degrading form of literature.
Dancing and music were heard day and night ; a pro-
tracted revel was visible in the streets. Lascivious
romances whose infamy was proverbial were largely
sold and passed from hand to hand. Yet there were
not a few of a different character. In that divine
climate, the very lassitude, which was the reaction from
excessive amusement and perpetual sunshine, disposed
many minds to seek for refuge in the shadows of a
visionary world. Some who had received or inherited
Christianity from Aquila and Priscilla, or from St. Paul
himself, thirty or forty years before, had contaminated
the purity of the faith with inferior elements derived
from the contagion of local heresy, or from the infiltra-
tion of pagan thought. The Ionian intellect seems to
have delighted in imaginative metaphysics; and for
V.2I.] SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 15
minds undisciplined by true logic or the training of
severe science imaginative metaphysics is a dangerous
form of mental recreation. The adept becomes the
slave of his own formulae, and drifts into partial insanity
by a process which seems to himself to be one of in-
disputable reasoning. Other influences outside Chris-
tianity ran in the same direction. Amulets were
bought by trembling believers. Astrological calculations
were received wdth the irresistible fascination of terror.
Systems of magic, incantations, forms of exorcism, tradi-
tions of theosophy, communications with demons — all that
we should now sum up under the head of spiritualism —
laid their spell upon thousands. No Christian reader
of the nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles
will be inclined to doubt that beneath all this mass of
superstition and imposture there lay some dark reality
of evil power. At all events the extent of these practices,
these ^' curious arts " in Ephesus at the time of St. Paul's
visit, is clearly proved by the extent of the local literature
which spiritualism put forth. The value of the books
of magic which were burned by penitents of this class,
is estimated by St. Luke at fifty thousand pieces of
silver — probably about thirteen hundred and fifty
pounds of our money ! ^
Let us now consider what ideas or allusions in the
Epistles of St. John coincide with, and fit into, this
Ephesian contexture of life and thought.
We shall have occasion in the third discourse to
refer to forms of Christian heresy or of semi-Christian
* Acts xix. 20, 21. In this description of Ephesus the writer has
constantly had in view the passages to which he referred in the
Speaker's Commentary, N.T., iv., 274, 276. He has also studied M.
Kenan's Saint Paul, chap, xii., and the authorities cited in the notes,
PP- 329r ZS^'
i6 SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
speculation indisputably pointed to by St. John, and
prevalent in Asia Minor when the Apostle wrote. But
besides this, several other points of contact with Ephesus
can be detected in the Epistles before us. (i) The first
Epistle closes with a sharp decisive warning, expressed
in a form which could only have been employed when
those who were addressed habitually lived in an atmo-
sphere saturated with idolatr}^, where the social tempta-
tions to come to terms with idolatrous practices were
powerful and ubiquitous. This was no doubt true of
many other places at the time, but it w^as pre-eminently
true of Ephesus. Certain of the Gnostic Christian sects
in Ionia held lax views about '' eating things sacrificed
unto idols/' although fornication was a general accom-
paniment of such a compliance. Two of the angels of
the Seven Churches of Asia w^ithin the Ephesian group
— the angels of Pergamum and of Thyatira — receive
especial admonition from the Lord upon this subject.
These considerations prove that the command, "Chil-
dren, guard yourselves from the idols," had a very
special suitability to the conditions of life in Ephesus.
(2) The population of Ephesus was of a very composite
kind. Many were attracted to the capital of Ionia by its
reputation as the capital of the pleasures of the world.
It was also the centre of an enormous trade by land and
sea. Ephesus, Alexandria, Antioch and Corinth were
the four cities where at that period all races and all
religions of civilised men were most largely represented.
Now the First Epistle of St. John has a peculiar breadth
in its representation of the purposes of God. Christ
is not merely the fulfilment of the hopes of one particular
people. The Church is not merely destined to be the
home of a handful of spiritual citizens. The Atonement
is as w ide as the race of man. '' He is the propitiation
V.2I.] SURROUXDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE. 17
for the whole world;" "we have seen, ar.d bear
witness that the Father sent the Son as Saviour of the
world." ^ A cosmopolitan population is addressed in a
cosmopolitan epistle. (3) We have seen that the gaiety
and sunshine of Ephesus was sometimes darkened by
the shadows of a world of magic, that for some natures
Ionia was a land haunted by spiritual terrors. He
must be a hasty student who fails to connect the
extraordinary narrative in the nineteenth chapter of
the Acts with the ample and awful recognition in the
Epistle to the Ephesians of the mysterous conflict in
the Christian life against evil intelligences, real, though
unseen.^ The brilliant rationalist may dispose of such
things by the convenient and compendious method
of a sneer. '' Such narratives as that " (of St. Paul's
struggle with the exorcists at Ephesus) '' are dis-
agreeable little spots in everything that is done by the
people. Though we cannot do a thousandth part of
what St. Paul did, we have a system of physiology and
of medicine very superior to his." ^ Perhaps he had
a system of spiritual diagnosis very superior to ours.
In the epistle to the Angel of the Church of Thyatira,
mention is made of " the woman Jezebel, which calleth
herself a prophetess,"^ who led astray the servants of
Christ. St. John surely addresses himself to a com-
munity where influences precisely of this kind exist,
and are recognised when he writes, — " Beloved, believe
^ St. John ii. 2, iv. 14.
2 **We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against," etc
Eph. vi. 12-17.
^ Sai)it Paul, Renan, 31S, 319,
* For the almost certain reference here to the Chaldean S3-bil Sam-
bethe, see Apoc. ii. 20, Archdeacon Lee's note in Speakers Coninientary,
N.T., iv. 527, 534, 535, and Dean Blakesley (art. Thyatira^ Diet, of
the Bible).
2
l8 SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE.
not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are
of God : because many false prophets are gone out
into the world. . . . Every spirit that confesseth not
Jesus is not of God."^ The Church or Churches,
which the First Epistle directly contemplates, did not
consist of men just converted. Its whole language
supposes Christians, some of whom had grown old
and were ''fathers" in the faith, while ethers w^ho
were younger enjoyed the privilege of having been born
and brought up in a Christian atmosphere. They
are reminded again and again, with a reiteration which
would be unaccountable if it had no special significance,
that the commandment " that which they heard," '' the
w^ord," "the message," is the same which they had
from the beginning''"" Now this will exactly suit the
circumstances of a Church like the Ephesian, to which
another Apostle had originally preached the Gospel
many years before.^
* I John iv. I, 3.
2 I John ii. 7, ii. 24, iii. 1 1 ; 2 John v. 5, 6. The passage in
ii. 24 is a specimen of that simple emphasis, that presentation of a
truth or duty under two aspects, which St. John often produces
merely by an inversion of the order of the words. " Ye— what ye
heard ixova the beginning let it abide in you. If what from the Z)^^m-
niy^g ye heard abide in you " (6 rjKOvaaTe dw dpxv^ . . . 8 dw' dpxvs
ilKoucrare). The emphasis in the first clause is upon the /art" of their
having heard the message ; in the second upon this feature of the
message— that it was given in the beginning of Christianity amongst
them, and kept unchanged until the present time.
3 Acts xviii. 18-21. To these general links connecting our Epistles
with Eph'esus, a few of less importance, yet not without significance,
may be added. The name of Demetrius (3 John 1 2) is certainly sugges-
tive of the holy city of the earth-mother (Actsxix. 24, 38). Vitruvius
assigns the completion of the temple of Ephesus to an architect of
the name, and calls him "servus Dianse." St. John in his Gospel
adopts, as if instinctively, the computation of time which was used
in Asia Minor (John iv. 6, xix. 4— Hefel. Martyrium S. Polycarp.
V.2I.] SURROUNDINGS OF THE FJRST EPISTLE. 19
On the whole, we have in favour of assigning these
Epistles to Ionian and Ephesian surroundings a con-
siderable amount of external evidence. The general
characteristics of the First Epistle consonant with the
view of their origin which we have advocated are
briefly these, (i) It is addressed to readers who were
encompassed by peculiar temptations to make a
compromise with idolatry. (2) It has an ampHtude
and generality of tone which befitted one who wrote
to a Church which embraced members from many
countries, and was thus in contact with men of many
races and religions. (3) It has a peculiar solemnity
of reference to the invisible world of spiritual evil and
to its terrible influence upon the human mind. (4) The
Epistle is pervaded by a desire to have it recognised
that the creed and law of practice which it asserts is
absolutely one with that which had been proclaimed by
earlier heralds of the cross to the same community.
Every one of these characteristics is consistent with
the destination of the Epistle for the Christians of
Ephesus in the first instance. Its polemical element,
which we are presently to discuss, adds to an accumula-
xxi.). On the same principle he speaks in the Apocalypse of " day
and night" (Apoc. iv. 8, vii. 15, xii. 10, xiv, 11, xx. 10); St. Paul, on
the other hand, speaks of "night and day" (l Tim. v. 5). It is a
very real indication of the accuracy of the report of words in the Acts
that, while St. Luke himself uses either form indifferently (Luke ii. 37,
xviii. 2), St. Paul, as quoted by him, always says " night and day " (Acts
XX. 31, xxvi. 7). Is it merely fanciful to conjecture that the unusual
dyadomoLQv (3 John ii) may be an allusion to the astrological language
in which alone the term is ever used outside a very few instances in
the sacred writers ? " He only is under a good star, and has beneficent
omens for his life." Balbillus, one of the m.ost famous astrologers
of antiquity, the confidant of Nero and Vespasian, was an Ephesian,
and almost supreme in Ephesus, not long before St. John's arrival
there. Sueton., Ncyon., 36.
20 SURROUNDINGS OF THE FIRST EPISTLE,
tion of coincidences which no ingenuity can volatilise
away. The Epistle meets Ephesian circumstances; it
also strikes at Ionian heresies.
Aia-so-Louk/ the modern name of Ephesus, appears
to be derived from two Greek words which speak of
St. John the divine, the theologian of the Church. As
the memory of the Apostle haunts the city where he
so long Hved, even in its fall and long decay under its
Turkish conquerors, — and the fatal spread of the
malaria from the marshes of the Cayster — so a memory
of the place seem.s to rest in turn upon the Epistle,
and we read it more satisfactorily while we assign to
it the origin attributed to it by Christian antiquity,
and keep that memory before our minds.
' Aia-so-Louk, a corruption of B,-^lo% 6e6\oyos, holy theologian (or
ayia deoXoyov, holy city of the theolcgiatt). Some scholars, however,
assert that the word is often pronounced and written aiaslyk, with the
common Turkish termination lyk. See 5. Paul (Renan, 342, note 2),
DISCOURSE II.
THE CONNECTION- OF THE EPISTLE WITH THE
GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.
Svj^dSi'trt fih yap dWriXocs to evayyeXiov Kal r) eiTLffTok^,
Dionys. Alexandr. ap Eiiseb.^ H. E., vii., 25.
"And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."
— I John i. 4.
FROM the wholesale burning of books at Ephesas,
as a consequence of awakened convictions, the
most pregnant of all commentators upon the New Testa-
ment has drawn a powerful lesson. " True religion,"
says the writer, "puts bad books out of the way."
Ephesus at great expense burnt curious and evil volumes,
and the '^ word of God grew and prevailed." And he
proceeds to show how just in the very matter where
Ephesus had manifested such costly penitence, she was
rewarded by being made a sort of depository of the
most precious books which ever came from human pens.
St. Paul addresses a letter to the Ephesians. Timothy
was Bishop of Ephesus when the two great pastoral
Epistles were sent to him.^ All St. John's writings
point to the same place. The Gospel and Epistles
' Bengel, on Acts xix. 19, 20, finds a reference to manuscripts of
some of the synoptical Gospels and of the Epistles in 2 Tim. iv. 13,
and conjectures that, after St. Paul's martyrdom, Timothy carried
Lhem with him to Ephesus.
22 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
were written there, or with primary reference to the
capital of lonia.^ The Apocalypse was in all proba-
bility first read at Ephesus.
Of this group of Ephesian books we select two of
primary importance — the Gospel and First Epistle of
St. John. Let us dwell upon the close and thorough
connection of the two documents, upon the interpre-
tation of the Epistle by the Gospel, by whatever name
we may prefer to designate the connection.
It is said indeed by a very high authority, that while
the ^' whole Epistle is permeated with thoughts of the
person and work of Christ," yet ''direct references
to facts of the Gospel are singularly rare." More
particularly it is stated that " we find here none of
the foundation and (so to speak) crucial events sum-
marised in the earliest Christian confession as we
still find them in the Apostle's creed." And among
these events are placed, "the Birth of the Virgin Mary,
the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the
Session, the Coming to Judgment."
To us there seems to be some exaggeration in this
way of putting the matter. A writing which accom-
panied a sacred history, and which was a spiritual com-
ment upon that very history, was not likely to repeat
the history upon which it commented, just in the
same shape. Surely the Birth is the necessary con-
dition of having come in the flesh. The incident of
the piercing of the side, and the water and blood
' Renan's curious theory that Rom. xvi. i-i6 is a sheet of the
Epistle to the Ephesians accidentally misplaced, rests upon a sup-
posed prevalence of Ephesian names in the case of those who are
greeted. Archdeacon Gifibrd's refutation, and his solution of an
unquestionable difficulty, seems entirely satisfactory. {Speaker'^
Commi'hiary, in tdc.y vol. iii., New Testament.)
i. 4.] WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 23
which flowed from it, is distinctly spoken of; and in
that the Crucifixion is impHed. Shrinking with shame
from Jesus at His Coming, which is spoken of in
another verse, has no meaning unless that Coming be
to Judgment.^ The sixth chapter is, if we may so say,
the section of ^' the Blood," in the fourth Gospel. That
section standing in the Gospel, standing in the great
Sacrament of the Church, standing in the perpetually
cleansing and purifying efficacy of the Atonement — ever
present as a witness, which becomes personal, because
identified with a Living Personality ^ — finds its echo and
counterpart in the Epistle towards the beginning and
near the close.^
We now turn to that which is the most conclusive
evidence of connection between two documents — one
historical, the other moral and spiritual — of which
literary composition is capable. Let us suppose that
a writer of profound thoughtfulness has finished, after
long elaboration, the historical record of an eventful
and many-sided life — a life of supreme importance to
a nation, or to the general thought and progress of
humanity. The book is sent to the representatives
of some community or school. The ideas which its
subject has uttered to the world, from their breadth and
from the occasional obscurity of expression incident to
* It has become usual to say that the Epistle does not advert to
John iii. or John vi. To us it seems that every mention of the Birth
of God is a reference to John iii. (i John ii. 23, iii. 9, iv. 7, v. I-4. )
The word alfia. occurs once only in the fourth Gospel outside the
sixth chapter (xix. 34; for i. 13 belongs to physiology). Four times
we find it in that chapter — vi, 53, 54, 55, 56. Each mention of the
** Blood " in connection with our Lord does advert to John vi.
^ The masc. part. 01 /xapTvpodPTes is surely very remarkable with the
three neuters (ro rveO/xa, rb voojp, rb aliia.) I John v. 7, 8.
2 I John i. 7, v. 6, 8.
24 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
all great spiritual utterances, need some elucidation.
The plan is really exhaustive, and combines the facts
of the life with a full insight into their relations ; but it
may easily be missed by any but thoughtful readers. The
author will accompany this main work by something
which in modern language w^e might call an introduction,
or appendix, or advertisement, or explanatory pamphlet,
or encyclical letter. Now the ancient form of literary
composition rendered books packed with thourht doubly
difficult both to read and write ; for they did not admit
foot-notes, or marginal analyses, or abstracts. St. John
then practically says, first to his readers in Asia Minor,
then to the Church for ever — ^'with this life of Jesus
I send you not only thoughts for your spiritual benefit,
moulded round His teaching, but something more ; I
send you an abstract^ a compendium of contents, at
the beginning of this letter; I also send you at its
close a key to the plan on which my Gospel is con-
ceived." And surely a careful reader of the Gospel
at its first publication would have desired assistance
exactly of this nature. He would have wished to have
a synopsis of contents, short but comprehensive, and
a synoptical view of the author's plan — of the idea
which guided him in his choice of incidents so momen-
tous and of teaching so varied.
We have in the First Epistle two synopses of the
Gospel which correspond with a perfect precision to
these claims.^ We have : (i) a synopsis of the contents
of the Gospel ; (2) a synoptical view of the conception
from which it was written.
I. We find in the Epistle at the very outset a synopsis
of the contents of the Gospel.
* See note A. at the end of this Discourse, which shows that tliere
are, in truth, four such summaries.
i.4.3 WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 25
''That which was 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 — /
speak concerning the Word who is the Life — that
which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you
also."
What are the contents of the Gospel ? (i) A lofty
and dogmatic procemhun, which tells us of '' the Word
who was in the beginning with God — in Whom
was life." (2) Discourses and utterances, sometimes
running on through pages, sometimes brief and broken.
(3) Works, sometimes miraculous, sometimes wrought
into the common contexture of human life — looks,
influences, seen by the very eyes of St. John and
others, gazed upon with ever deepening joy and wonder.
(4) Incidents which proved that all this issued from
One who was intensely human ; that it was as real
as life and humanity — historical not visionary ; the
doing and the effluence of a Manhood which could
be, and which was, grasped by human hands.
Such is a synopsis of the Gospel precisely as it is
given in the beginning of the First Epistle, (i) The
Epistle mentions first, '' that which was from the
beginning." There is the compendium of the pro-
oemium of the Gospel. (2) One of the most important
constituent parts of the Gospel is to be found in its
ample preservation of dialogues, in which the Saviour is
one interlocutor ; of monologues spoken to the hushed
hearts of the disciples, or to the listening Pleart of
the Father, yet not in tones so low that their love did
not find it audible. This element of the narrative is
summed up by the writer of the Epistle in two words — •
" That which we heard." ^ (3) The works of bene-
' 6 6.KT]xiap.eu.
26 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
volence or power, the doings and sufferings ; the
pathos or joy which spring up from them in the souls
of the disciples, occupy a large portion of the Gospel.
All these come under the heading, " that which we
have seen with our eyes,^ that which we gazed upon,"^
with one unbroken gaze of wonder as so beautiful,
and of awe as so divine.^ (4) The assertion of the
reality of the Manhood^ of Him who was yet the Life
manifested — a reality through all His words, works,
sufferings — finds its strong, bold summary in this com-
pendium of the contents of the Gospel, " and our hands
have handled." Nay, a still shorter compendium fol-
lows : (i) The Life with the Father. (2) The Life
manifested.^
2. But we have more than a S3^nopsis which embraces
the contents of the Gospel at the beginning of the
' 6 ewpaKa^iev tols ocpdaX/JLoTs rjfjiQv.
^ John XX. 20.
' 8 iOeaadfX'sda, I John i. I. The same word is used in John i. 14.
* John xix. 27 would express this in the most palpable form. But
it is constantly understood through the Gospel. The tenacity of
Doketic error is evident from the fact that Chrysostom, preaching at
Antioch, speaks of it as a popular error in his day. A little later,
orthodox ears were somewhat offended by some beautiful lines of a
Greek sacred poet, too little known among us, who combines in a
singular degree Roman gravity with Greek grace. St. Rcmanus
(a.d. 491) represents our Lord as saying of the sinful woman who
became a penitent,
TTjJ' ppe^acrav 'Cx^V
h ovK 'i^p^^e ^vdos
\j/L\ots Tore Tols ddxpuaiv,
"Which with her tears, then pure,
Wetted the feet the sea-depth wetted not.**
{Spicil. Salesmen. Edidit T. B. Pitra, S. Romanits, xvi. 13, Cant, de
Passione. I20. )
* I John i. 2. The Life with the Father = John i. I, 14.
The Life manifcsti-d =John i. 14 to end.
i.4.] WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 27
Epistle. We have towards its close a second synopsis
of the whole framework of the Gospel ; not now the
theory of the Person of Christ, which in such a life was
necessarily placed at its beginning, but of the human
conception which pervaded the EvangeHst's composition.
The second synopsis, not of the contents of the
Gospel, but of the aim and conception which it assumed
ill the form into which it was moulded by St. John,
is given by the Epistle with a fulness which omits
scarcely a paragraph of the Gospel. In the space of
six verses of the fifth chapter the word witnesSy as
verb or substantive, is repeated ten times.-^ The sim-
plicity of St. John's artless rhetoric can make no more
emphatic claim on our attention. The Gospel is indeed
a tissue woven out of many lines of evidence human
and divine. Compress its purpose into one single
word. No doubt it is supremely the Gospel of the
Divinity of Jesus. But, next to that, it may best be
defined as the Gospel of Witness. These witnesses
we may take in the order of the Epistle. St. John
feels that his Gospel is more than a book ; it is a past
made everlastingly present. Such as the great Life
was in history, so it stands for ever. Jesus is ''the
propitiation, is righteous," ''is here"^ So the great
influences round His Person, the manifold witnesses
of His Life, stand witnessing for ever in the Gospel
and in the Church. What are these ? (i) The Spirit
is ever witnessing. So our Lord in the Gospel —
*' when the Comforter is come. He shall witness of
' The A.V. (l John v. 6-12) obscures this by a too great sensitive-
ness to monotony. The language of the verses is varied unfortunately
by "bear record" (ver, 7), "hath testified" (ver. 9), " believeth not
the record " (ver. 10), "this is the record " (ver. II).
2 I John ii. 2-29, iii. 7, iv. 3, v. 20.
28 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
Me." ^ No one can doubt that the Spirit is one
pre-eminent subject of the Gospel. Indeed, teaching
about Him, above all as the witness to Christ, occu-
pies three unbroken chapters in one place.^ (2) The
water is ever witnessing. So long as St. John's
Gospel lasts, and permeates the Church with its influ-
ence, the water must so testify. There is scarcely
a paragraph of it where water is not ; almost always
with some relation to Christ. The witness of the
Baptist ^ is, " I baptize with water." The Jordan itself
bears witness that all its waters cannot give that which
He bestows who is ^' preferred before " John.* Is not
the water of Cana that was made wine a witness to His
glory ? ^ The birth of '^ water and of the Spirit," •
is another witness. And so in the Gospel section after
section. The water of Jacob's well ; the water of the
pool of Bethesda; the waters of the sea of Gahlee, with
their stormy waves upon which He walked ; the water
outpoured at the feast of tabernacles, with its application
to the river of living water ; the water of Siloam ; the
water poured into the basin, when Jesus washed the
disciples' feet ; the water which, with the blood, streamed
from the riven side upon the cross ; the water of the
sea of Galilee in its gentler mood, when Jesus showed
Himself on its beach to the seven ; as long as all this
is recorded in the Gospel, as long as the sacrament
of Baptism, with its visible water and its invisible
grace w^orking in the regenerate, abides among the
' John XV. 26.
2 John xiv., XV., xvi., Cf. vii. 39. The witness of the Spirit in the
Apostolic ministry vi^ill be found John xx, 22,
3 John i. 19.
*Johni. 16, 31,33.
•John ii, 9, iv. 46.
® John iii. 5.
1. 4. J WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN; 29
faithful ;— so long is the water ever witnessing.^ (3)
The Blood is ever " witnessing." Expiation once for
all ; purification continually from the blood outpoured ;
drinking the blood of the Son of Man by participation
in the sacrament of His love, with the grace and
strength that it gives day by day to innumerable souls ;
the Gospel concentrated into that great sacrifice ; the
Church's gifts of benediction summarised in the un-
speakable Gift ; this is the unceasing witness of the
Blood. (4) " The witness of men " fills the Gospel from
beginning to end. The glorious series of confessions
wrung from willing and unwilling hearts form the
points of division round which the whole narrative
may be grouped. Let us think of all those attestations
which He between the Baptist's precious testimony
with the sv;eet yet fainter utterances of Andrew, Philip,
Nathanael, and the perfect creed of Christendom con-
densed into the burning words of Thomas — '' my Lord
and my God." ^ What a range of feeling and faith ;
what a variety of attestation coming from human souls,
sometimes wrung from them half unwillingly, some-
times uttered at crisis-moments with an impulse that
could not be resisted ! The witness of men in the
Gospel, and the assurance of one testimony that was to
be given by the Apostles individually and collectively,^
besides the evidences already named includes the
following — the witness of Nicodemus, of the Samaritan
woman, of the Samaritans, of the impotent man at the
pool of Bethesda, of Simon Peter, of the officers of the
» John iv. 5, 7, II, 12, V. I, 8, vi. 19, vn. 35, 37, ix. 7, xiii. i, 14,
xix 34, xxi. I, 8. In the other great Johannic book water is con-
stantly mentioned. Apoc. vii. 7, xiv. 7, xvi. 5, xxi. 6, xxii. I, xxii. 17.
'^John i. 19, 29, 32, 34, 35, 36, 41, 45, 47, xix. 27.
• John XV. 27,
30 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
Jewish authorities, of the bhnd man, of Pilate.^ (5)
The " witness of God " occupies also a great position
in the fourth Gospel. That witness may be said to
be given in five forms : the witness of the Father^^
of Christ Himself,^ of the Holy Spirit/ of Scripture/ of
miracles.® This great cloud of witnesses, human and
divine, finds its appropriate completion in another sub-
jective witness.'' The whole body of evidence passes
from the region of the intellectual to that of the moral
and spiritual life. The evidence acquires that evidentness
which is to all our knowledge what the sap is to the
tree. The faithful carries it in his heart ; it goes about
with him, rests with him day and night, is close to
him in life and death. He, the principle of whose
being is belief ever going out of itself and resting its
acts of faith on the Son of God, has all that manifold
witness in him.^
It would be easy to enlarge upon the verbal connec-
tion between the Epistle before us and the Gospel
which it accompanied. We might draw out (as has
' John iii. 2. The Baptist's final witness (iii. 25, 33, iv. 39, 42,
V. 15, vi. 68, 69, vii. 46, xix. 4, 6). Note, too, the accentuation of
the idea of witness (John v. 31, 39), It is to be regretted that the
R.V. also has sometimes obscured this important term by substituting
a different English word, e.g., " the word of the woman who testified'*
(John iv. 39).
2 John viii. 18, xii. 28.
3 Ibid. viii. 17, 18.
^ Ibid. XV. 26.
^ Ibid. V. 39, 46, xix. 35, 36, 37.
6 Ibid. V. 36.
^ This sixth witness (i John v. lo) exactly answers to John xx.
•* 6 Tnardiuv els tov mov. kt\ (v. lo). The construction is different in
the words which im.mediatel}' follow (6 fir] Triareiccv tcD 6€(^), not even
givirg Him credence, r.ct ie/ic zing Him, much less Lelievjng on Him.
i. 4.] WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 31
often been done) a list of quotations from the Gospel,
a whole common treasury of mystic language ; but we
prefer to leave an undivided impression upon the mind.
A document which gives us a synopsis of the contents
of another document at the beginning, and a synoptical
analysis of its predominant idea at the close, covering
the entire w^ork, and capable of absorbing every part
of it (except some necessary adjuncts of a rich and
crowded narrative), has a connection with it which is
vital and integral. The Epistle is at once an abstract
of the contents of the Gospel, and a key to its purport.
To the Gospel, at least to it and the Epistle considered
as integrally one, the Apostle refers when he says :
" these things write we unto you." ^
St. John had asserted that one end of his declaration
was to make his readers hold fast " fellowship with us,"
i.e.y with the Church as the Apostolic Church ; aye, and
' The view here advocated of the relation of the Epist!e to the
Gospel of St. John, and of the brief but complete anal3^tical synopsis
in the opening words of the Epistle, appears to us to represent the
earliest known interpretation as given by the author of the famous
fragment of the Muratorian Canon, the first catalogue of the books
of the N. T. (written between the middle and close of the second
century). After his statement of the circumstances which led to
the composition of the fourth Gospel, and an assertion of the
perfect internal unity of the Evangelical narratives, the author of the
fragment proceeds. "What wonder then if John brings forward each
matter, point by point, with such consecutive order (tarn constanter
singula), even in his Epistles saying, when he comes to write in Lis
own person (dicens in semetipso), * what we have seen with our
eyes, and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these
things have we written.' For thus, in orderly arrangement and con-
secutive language he professes himself not only an eye-witness, but
a hearer, and yet further a writer of the wonderful things of the
Lord." [So we understand the writer. " Sic enim non solum
visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium
Domini, per ordinem profitetur." The fragment, with copious annota-
tions, may be found in Reltquce Sacrce, Routh, Tom. i., 394, 434.]
32 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
that fellowship of ours is ^'with the Father, and with
His Son Jesus Christ;" ''and these things," he con-
tinues (with special reference to his Gospel, as spoken
of in his opening words), ''we write unto you, that your
joy may be fulfilled."
There is as truly a joy as a " patience and comfort
of the Scriptures." The Apostle here speaks of " your
joy," but that implied his also.
All great hterature, like all else that is beautiful, is a
"joy for ever." To the true student his books are
this. But this is so only with a few really great books.
We are not speaking of works of exact science. Butler,
Pascal, Bacon, Shakespeare, Homer, Scott, theirs is work
of which congenial spirits never grow quite tired. But
to be capable of giving out joy, books must have been
written with it. The Scotch poet tells us, that no poet
ever found the Muse, until he had learned to walk beside
the brook, and "no think long." That which is not
thought over with pleasure ; that which, as it gradually
rises before the author in its unity, does not fill him
with delight ; will never permanently give pleasure to
readers. He must know joy before he can say — " these
things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."
The book that is to give joy must be a part of a
man's self. That is just what most books are not.
They are laborious, diligent, useful perhaps ; they
are not interesting or delightful. How touching it
is, when the poor old stift' hand must write, and the
overworked brain think, for bread ! Is there any-
thing so pathetic in literature as Scott setting his back
bravely to the wall, and forcing from his imagination
the reluctant creations which used to issue with such
splendid profusion from its haunted chambers ?
Of the conditions under which an inspired writer
i.4.] WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 33
pursued his labours we know but little. But some
conditions are apparent in the books of St. John with
which we are now concerned. The fourth Gospel
is a book written without arriere pensee, without
literary conceit, without the paralysing dread of criti-
cism. What verdict the polished society of Ephesus
would pronounce ; what sneers would circulate in
philosophic quarters ; what the numerous heretics
v/ould murmur in their conventicles ; what critics
within the Church might venture to whisper, missing
perhaps favourite thoughts and catch-words ; ^ St. John
cared no more than if he were dead. He communed
with the memories of the past ; he listened for the
music of the Voice which had been the teacher of his
life. To be faithful to these memories, to recall these
w^ords, to be true to Jesus, was his one aim. No one
can doubt that the Gospel was written with a full
dehght. No one who is capable of feeHng, ever has
doubted that it was written as if with " a feather
dropped from an angel's wing ; " that without aiming
at anything but truth, it attains in parts at least a trans-
cendent beauty. At the close of the prooemium, after
the completest theological formula which the Church
has ever possessed — the still, even pressure of a tide
of thought — we have a parenthetic sentence, like the
splendid unexpected rush and swell of a sudden wave
("we beheld the glory, the glory as of the Only- Be-
gotten of the Father ") ; then after the parenthesis a
' For whatever reason, four classical terms (if we may so call
them) of the Christian religion are excluded, or nearly excluded, from
the Gospel of St. John, and from its companion document. Churchy
Gospel, repentance, occur nowhere. Grace only once (John i. 14; see,
however, 2 John 3; Apoc. i. 4; xxii. 21), faith as a substantive only
once, (i John v. 4, but in Apoc. ii. 13-19; xiii. lO; xiv. 123.)
34 THE CONNECTION OE THE EPISTLE
soft and murmuring fall of the whole great tide ('* full
of grace and truth "). Can we suppose that the Apostle
hung over his sentence with literary zest? The
number of writers is small who can give us an ever-
lasting truth by a single word, a single pencil touch ;
who, having their mind loaded with thought, are wise
enough to keep that strong and eloquent silence which
is the prerogative only of the highest genius. St.
John gives us one of these everlasting pictures, of
these inexhaustible symbols, in three little words —
'^ He then having received the sop, went immediately
out, and it was nighty^ Do we suppose that he ad-
mired the perfect effect of that powerful self-restraint ?
Just before the crucifixion he writes — ''Then came Jesus
forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe,
and Pilate saith unto them, Behold the Man!"^ The
pathos, the majesty, the royalty of sorrow, the admira-
tion and pity of Pilate, have been for centuries the
inspiration of Christian art. Did St. John congratulate
himself upon the image of sorrow and of beauty which
stands for ever in these lines ? With St. John as a
writer it is as with St. John delineated in the fresco
at Padua by the genius of Giotto. The form of the
ascending saint is made visible through a reticulation
of rays of light in colours as splendid as ever came
from mortal pencil ; but the rays issue entirely from
the Saviour, whose face and form are full before him.
The feeling of the Church has always been that the
Gospel of St. John was a solemn work of faith and
prayer. The oldest extant fragment upon the canon
of the New Testament tells us that the Gospel was
undertaken after earnest invitations from the brethren
and the bishops, with solemn united fasting ; not with-
' Tjv bk vv^. John xiii. 30. ^ John xix. 5.
i.4.] WITH THE GOSPEL OE ST. JOHN. 35
out special revelation to Andrew the Apostle that
John was to do the work.-^ A later and much less
important document connected in its origin with Patmos
embodies one beautiful legend about the composition
of the Gospel. It tells how the Apostle was about to
leave Patmos for Ephesus ; how the Christians of the
island besought him to leave in writing an account of
the Incarnation, and mysterious life of the Son of God ;
how St. John and his chosen friends went forth from
the haunts of men about a mile, and halted in a quiet
spot called the gorge of Rest, ^ and then ascended the
mountain which overhung it. There they remained
three days. *^ Then," writes Prochorus, '' he ordered
me to go down to the town for paper and ink. And
after two days I found him standing rapt in prayer.
Said he to me — ^ take the ink and paper, and stand on
my right hand.' And I did so. And there was a great
lightning and thunder, so that the mountain shook.
And I fell on the ground as if dead. Whereupon John
stretched forth his hand and took hold of me, and
said — ' stand up at this spot at my right hand.' After
which he prayed again, and after his prayer said unto
me — 'son Prochorus, what thou hearest from my mouth,
write upon the sheets.' And having opened his mouth
as he was standing praying, and looking up to heaven,
he began to say — 'in the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'
And so following on, he spake in order, standing as
he was, and I wrote sitting."^
• Canon. Murator. (apud Routh., Reliq. Sacrai^ Tom. i., 394).
* kv Toiru rjavxv Xe70yU.eV 0; KaTairavaLS.
' This passage is translated from the Greek text of the manuscript
of Patmos, attributed to Prochorus, as given by M. Guerin. (Descrip-'
Hon de VIsle de Patmos, pp. 25-29.)
36 THE CONNECTION OF THE EPISTLE
True instinct which tells us that the Gospel of St.
John was the fruit of prayer as well as of memory ;
that it was thought out in some valley of rest, some
hush among the hills ; that it came from a solemn joy
which it breathed forth upon others ! " These things
write I unto you, that your joy may be fulfilled."
Generation after generation it has been so. In the
numbers numberless of the Redeemed, there can be
very few who have not been brightened by the joy of
that book. Still, at one funeral after another, hearts
are soothed by the word in it which says — " I am the
Resurrection and the Life." Still the sorrowful and
the dying ask to hear again and again — " let not j^our
heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." A brave
young officer sent to the war in Africa, from a regiment
at home, where he had caused grief by his extravagance,
penitent, and dying in his tent, during the fatal day
of Isandula, scrawled in pencil — ''dying, dear father
and mother — happy — for Jesus says, * He that cometh
to Me I will in no wise cast out.'" Our English
Communion Office, with its divine beauty, is a texture
shot through and through with golden threads from
the discourse at Capernaum. Still are the disciples
glad when they see the Lord in that record. It is the
book of the Church's smiles ; it is the gladness of the
saints ; it is the purest fountain of joy in all the litera-
ture of earth.
Note A.
The thorough connection of the Epistle with the Gospel may
be made more clear by the following tabulated analysis : —
The (A) beginni7ig and (B) the close of the P^pistle contain
tivo abstracts, longer and shorter, of the contents and bearing
of the Gospel.
i.4.] WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. 37
A.
J. — I John i. I.
1. "That which was from the beginning — concerning the
Word of Life " -= John i. 1-15.
2. [a] "Which we have /z^^r^s?" = John i. 38, 39, 42, 47,
50, 51, ii. 4, 7, 8, 16, 19, iii. 3, 22, iv. 7, 39, 48, 50, v. 6, 47,
vi. 5, 70,'vii. 6, 39, viii. 7, 58, ix. 3, 41, x. i, 39, xi. 4, 45,
xii. 7, 50, xiii. 6, 38, xiv., xvii., xviii. 14, -^"j, xix. 11, 26, 27,
28, 30, XX. 15, 16, 17, 19, 21, 2T^, 27, 29, xxi. 5, 6, 10, 12, 22.
(-$) ** Which we have seen with our eyes ^* =]oh.n. i. 29, ^6,
39, ii. II, vi. 2, 14, 19, ix., xi. 44, xiii. 4, 5, xvii. i, xviii. 6,
xix. 5, 17, 18, 34, 38, XX. 5, 14, 20, 25, 29, xxi. I, 14.
(c) '* Which we gazed upon ^^ = ibid.
{d) "Which we have handled" = John xx. 27 (refers also
to a synoptical Gospel, Luke xxiv. 39, 40).
n. — I John i. 2.
1. " The Life was manifested " = John i. 29 — xxi. 25.
2. {a) " We have seen " = (A z. 2 {b) ).
{b) "And bear witness "= John i. 7, 19, ij, iii. 2, 27, ^^y
iv. 39, vi. 69, xx. 28, 30, 31, xxi. 24.
{c) " And declare unto you " = John ;passhn.
" The Life, the Eternal Life, which
N " Was with the Father "= John i. 1-4.
3 " And was manifested unto us " = ']6hnJ>asszm.
B.
/. — I John v. 6-10.
Summary of the Gospel as a Gospel of wttiiess.
1. " The Spirit beareth witness ' ' = John i. ■}i'2, xiv., xv., xx. 22.
2. "The water beareth witness "= John i. 2^, ii. 9, iii. 5, iv.
13, 14, v. I, 9, vi. 19, vii. 2^"], ix. 7, xiii. 5, xix. 34, xxi. i.
3. "The blood beareth witness " = John vi. 53, 54, 55, 56,
xix. 34.
4. " The witness of men " = (A. ii. i {b) ) Also John i. 45, 49,
iii. 2, iv. 39, vii. 46, xii. 12, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, xviii. 38, xix. 35,
XX. 28.
38 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.
5. *' The witness of God " =
{a) Scripture = John i. 45, v. 39, 46, xix. t^^, y],
{h) Christ's own = John viii. 17, 18, 46, xv. 30, xviii. 37,
{c) His Father's = John v. '^'], viii. 18, xii. 28.
{d) His works = John v. 36, x. 25, xv. 24.
n. — I John V. 20.
We know (/.^., by the Gospel) that —
1. "The Son of God is come" ij^K^v)^ *'has come and is
here."
Note. — *n{<3 = )5^Ka), LXX. Psalm xl. 7. *'Vento symbolum
quasi Domini Jesu fuit." (Bengel on Heb. x. 7), the Ich Dien
of the Son of the Father — eycb yap Ik tov Beov i^rjkOov Ka\ rJKco.
*' I came forth from God, and am here" (John viii. 4) = John
i. 29 — xxi. 2^ (John xiv. 18, 21, 2^, xvi. 16, 22, form part of
the thought "is here").
2. "And hath given us an understanding " = gift of the
Spirit, John xiv., xv., xvi. (especially 13, 16).
3. " This is the very God and eternal Life "=John i. i, 4.
The whole Gospel of St. John brings out these primary
principles of the Faith, —
That the Son of God has come. That He is now and ever
present with His people. That the Holy Spirit gives them a
new faculty of spiritual discernment. That Christ is the very
God and the Life of men.
DISCOURSE III.
THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE
OF ST. JOHN
"Dum Magistri super pectus
Fontem haurit intellectus
Et doctrinae flumina,
Fiunt, ipso situ loci,
Verbo fides, auris voci,
Meus Deo contermina.
**Unde mentis per excessus,
Carnis, sensus super gressu%
Errorumqiie tttibila,
Contra veri solis lumen
Visum cordis et acumen
Figit velut aquila."
Adam of Si. Victor^ Seq. xxxii.
" Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is of God. Every spirit that confesseth not [that] Jesus Christ [is
come in the flesh] is not of God."' — I John iv. 2, 3.
A DISCUSSION (however far from technical com-
pleteness) of the polemical element in St. John's
Epistle, probably seems likely to be destitute of
interest or of instruction, except to ecclesiastical or
philosophical antiquarians. Those who beheve the
Epistle to be a divine book must, however, take a
different view of the matter. St. John was not merely
dealing with forms of human error which were local
and foituitous. In refuting them he was enunciating
] rinciples of universal inipoit, of almost inimitable
40 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
application. Let us pass by those obscure sects, those
subtle curiosities of error, which the diligence of minute
research has excavated from the masses of erudition
under which they have been buried ; which theologians,
like other antiquarians, have sometimes labelled with
names at once uncouth and imaginative. Let us fix our
attention upon such broad and well-defined features of
heresy as credible witnesses have indelibly fixed upon
the contemporaneous heretical thought of Asia Minor;
and we shall see not only a great precision in St. John's
words, but a radiant image of truth, which is equally
adapted to enlighten us in the peculiar dangers of our age.
Controversy is the condition under which all truth
must be held, which is not in necessary subject-matter —
which is not either mathematical or physical. In the
case of the second, controversy is active, until the fact
of the physical law is established beyond the possibility
of rational discussion ; until self-consistent thought
can only think upon the postulate of its admission.
Now in these departments all the argument is on one
side. We are not in a state of suspended speculation,
leaning neither to affirmation nor denial, which is doubt.
We are not in the position of inclining either to one side
or the other, by an almost impalpable overplus of evi-
dence, which is suspicion; or by those additions to this
slender stock, which convert suspicion into opinion. We
are not merely yielding a strong adhesion to one side,
while we must yet admit, to ourselves at least, that our
knowledge is not perfect, nor absolutely manifest — which
is the mental and moral position of belief. In necessary
subject-matter, we know and see with that perfect in-
tellectual vision for which controversy is impossible.^
' " Proprium est credentis ut cum assensu cogitet." *' The intellect
of him who believes ascents to the thing believed, not because he
iv. 2, 3.] FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN. 41
The region of belief must therefore, in our present
condition, be a region from which controversy cannot
be excluded.
Religious controversialists may be divided into three
classes, for each of which we may find an emblem in
the animal creation. The first are the nuisances, at
times the numerous nuisances, of Churches. These
controversialists delight in showing that the convictions
of persons whom they happen to dislike, can, more
or less plausibly, be pressed to unpopular conclusions.
They are incessant fault-finders. Some of them, if they
had an opportunity, might delight in finding the sun
guilty in his daily worship of the many-coloured
ritualism of the western clouds. Controversialists of
this class, if minute are venomous, and capable of
inflicting a degree of pain quite out of proportion to
their strength. Their emblem, may be found some-
where in the range of ''every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth." The second class of controversialists
is of a much higher nature. Their emblem is the hawk
with his bright eye, with the forward throw of his
pinions, his rushing flight along the woodland skirt,
his unerring stroke. Such hawks of the Churches,
whose delight is in pouncing upon fallacies, fulfil an
important function. They rid us of tribes of mis-
chievous winged errors. The third class of contro-
versialists is that which embraces St. John supremely —
such minds also as Augustine's in his loftiest and most
sees that thing either in itself or by logical reference to first self-
evident principles; but because it is so far convinced by Divine
authority as to assent to things which. it does not see, and on account
of the dominance of the will in setting the intellect in motion." This
sentence is taken from a passage of Aquinas which appears to be oi
great and permanent value. Summa Theolog. 2*, 2^ quaest. i. art. 4.
quasst. V. art, 2.
42 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
inspired moments, such as those which have endowed
the Church with the Nicene Creed. Of such the eagle
is the emblem. Over the grosser atmosphere of earthly
anger or imperfect motives, over the clouds of error,
poised in the light of the True Sun, with the eagle's
upward wing and the eagle's sunward eye, St. John
looks upon the truth. He is indeed the eagle of the
four Evangelists, the eagle of God. If the eagle could
speak with our language, his style would have some-
thing of the purity of the sky and of the brightness
of the light. He would warn his nestlings against
losing their way in the banks of clouds that lie below
him so far. At times he might show that there is a
danger or an error whose position he might indicate
by the sweep of his wing, or by descending for a
moment to strike.
There are then polemics in the Epistle and in the
Gospel of St. John. But we refuse to hunt down some
obscure heresy in every sentence. It will be enough
to indicate the master heresy of Asia Minor, to which
St. John undoubtedly refers, with its intellectual and
moral perils. In so doing, we shall find the very truth
which our own generation especially needs.
The prophetic words addressed by St. Paul to the
Church of Ephesus thirty years before the date of
this Epistle had found only too complete a fulfilment.
" From among their own selves," at Ephesus in parti-
cular, through the Churches of Asia Minor in general,
men had arisen " speaking perverse things, to draw
away the disciples after them." ^ The prediction began
to justify itself when Timothy was Bishop of Ephesus
only five or six years later. A few significant words
* Acts XX. 3a
V. 2, 3-] FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN. 43
in the First Epistle to Timothy let us see the heretical
influences that were at work. St. Paul speaks with
the solemnity of a closing charge when he warns
Timothy against what were at once ^ "profane bab-
blings," and " antitheses of the Gnosis which is falsely
so called." In an earlier portion of the same Epistle
the young Bishop is exhorted to charge certain men
not to teach a ^' different doctrine," neither to give
'' heed to myths and genealogies," out of whose endless
mazes no intellect entangled in them can ever find
its way. ^ Those commentators put us on a false scent
who would have us look after Judaizing error, Jewish
"stemmata." The reference is not to Judaistic ritualism,
but to semi-Pagan philosophical speculation. The
'^ genealogies " are systems of divine potencies which
the Gnostics (and probably some Jewish Rabbis of
Gnosticising tendency) called " aeons," ^ and so the
earliest Christian writers understood the word.
Now without entering into the details of Gnosticism,
this may be said of its general method and purpose.
It aspired at once to accept and to transform the
Christian creed ; to elevate its faith into a philosophy,
a knowledge — and then to make this knowledge cashier
and supersede faith, love, holiness, redemption itself.
This system was strangely eclectic, and amalgamated
certain elements not only of Greek and Egyptian, but
of Persian and Indian Pantheistic thought. It was
' ras jSejSTjXous K€vo<pci}vias, Kal avrid^a^is ttjs \pevbtavv[iov yvdjaecjs.
I Tim. vi. 20. The "antitheses" may either touch with slight sarcasm
upon pompous pretensions to scientific logical method ; or may denote
the really self-contradictor}'- character of these elaborate compositions;
or again, their polemical opposition to the Christian creed.
^ IxvdoLS Kul yeveaXoyiats d-rrepavTOLS. I Tim. i. 3, 4.
^ Irenseus quotas I Tim. i. 4, and interprets it of the Gnostic
' aeons.' Adv, Hmes., i. Procem.
44 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
infected throughout with dualism and doketism.
Dualism held that all good and evil in the universe
proceeded from two first principles, good and evil.
Matter was the power of evil whose home is in the
region of darkness. Minds which started from this
fundamental view could only accept the Incarnation
provisionally and with reserve, and must at once pro-
ceed to explain it away. ^'The Word was made flesh;"
but the Word of God, the True Light, could not be
personally united to an actual material system called a
human body, plunged in the world of matter, darkened
and contaminated by its immersion. The human flesh
in which Jesus appeared to be seen was fictitious.
Redemption was a drama with a shadow for its hero.
The phantom of a redeemer was nailed to the phantom
of a cross. Philosophical dualism logically became
theological doketism. Doketism logically evaporated
dogmas, sacraments, duties, redemption/
It may be objected that this doketism has been a
mere temporary and local aberration of the human
intellect ; a metaphysical curiosity, with no real roots
in human nature. If so/ its refutation is an obsolete
piece of an obsolete controversy ; and the Epistle in
some of its most vital portions is a dead letter.
' Few phenomena of criticism are more unaccountable than the
desire to evade any acknowledgment of the historical existence of
these singular heresies. Not long after St. John's death, Polycarp, in
writing to the Philippians, quotes I John iv. 3, and proceeds to show
that doketism had consummated its work down to the last fibres of
the root of the creed, by two negations — no resurrection of the body,
no judgment. (Polycarp, Epist. ad Philip., vii.) Ignatius twice deals
with the Doketae at length. To the Trallians he delivers what may
be called an antidoketic creed, concluding in the tone of one who was
wounded by what he was daily hearing. " Be deaf then when any
man speaks unto you without Jesus Christ, who is of Mary, who truly
was born, truly suffered under Pontius Pilate, truly was crucified and
iv. 2, 3.] FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN. 45
Now of course literal doketism is past and gone,
dead and buried. The progress of the human mind,
the slow and resistless influence of the logic of common
sense, the wholesome influence of the sciences of
observation in correcting visionary metaphysics, have
swept away aeons, emanations, dualism, ^ and the rest.
But a subtler, and to modern minds infinitely more
attractive, doketism is round us, and accepted, as far
as words go, with a passionate enthusiasm.
What is this doketism ?
Let us refer to the history and to the language of a
mind of singular subtlety and power. .
In George Eliot's early career she was induced to
prepare for the press a translation of Strauss's mythical
explanation of the Life of Jesus. It is no disrespect to
so great a memory to say, that at that period of her
career, at least. Miss Evans must have been unequal
to grapple with such a work, if she desired to do so
from a Christian point of view. She had not apparently
studied the history or the structure of the Gospels.
"What she knew of their meaning she had imbibed from
an antiquated and unscientific school of theologians.
The faith of a sciolist engaged in a struggle for its life
-died, trul^' also was raised from the dead. But if some who are un-
believing say that He suffered apparently, as if in vision, being
visionary themselves, why am I a prisoner ? why do I choose to fiii^lit
with wild beasts ? " (Ignat., Ep. ad Trail., iv. x.) The play upon the
name doketae cannot be mistaken (Xiyovaiu rb doKelv irtirovOtvai auTov,
avTol 6vTts TO doKelv). Ignatius v^rrites to another Church — "What
profited it me if one praiseth me but blasphemeth my Lord, not
confessing that He bears true human flesh. They abstain from
Eucharist and prayer, because they confess not that the Eucharist is
flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ."' (Ep. ad Smyrn., v. vi. vii.)
1 The elder Mr. Mil!, however, appears to have seriously leaned to
this as a conceivable solution of the contradictory phenomena of
existence.
46 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
with the fatal strength of a critical giant instructed in
the negative lore of all ages, and sharpened by hatred
of the Christian religion, met with the result which was
to be expected. Her faith expired, not without some
painful throes. She fell a victim to the fallacy of
youthful conceit — / cannot answer this or that objec-
tion, therefore it is unanswerable. She wrote at first
that she was " Strauss-sick." It made her ill to dissect
the beautiful story of the crucifixion. She took to her-
self a consolation singular in the circumstances. The
sight of an ivory crucifix, and of a pathetic picture of
the Passion, made her capable of enduring the first
shock of the loss which her heart had sustained. That
is, she found comfort in looking at tangible reminders
of a scene which had ceased to be an historical reality,
of a sufferer who had faded from a living Redeemer
into the spectre of a visionary past. After a time,
however, she feels able to propose to herself and others
*'a new starting point. We can never have a satis-
factory basis for the history of the man Jesus, but that
negation does not affect the Idea of the Christ, either
in its historical influence, or its great symbolic mean-
ings." ^ Yes ! a Christ who has no history, of whom
we do not possess one undoubted word, of whom we
know, and can know, nothing ; who has no flesh of fact,
no blood of fife ; an idea, not a man ; this is the Christ
of modern doketism. The method of this widely
diffused school is to separate the sentiments of admira-
tion which the history inspires from the history itself;
to sever the ideas of the faith from the facts of the
faith, and then to present the ideas thus surviving the
dissolvents of criticism, as at once the refutation of
the facts and the substitute for them.
> Life vol. ii., 359, 3G0.
iv. 2, 3.] FIRST EPISTLE OF ST JOHN. 47
This may be pretty writing, though false and
illogical writing is rarely even that; but a little
consideration will show that this new starting point
is not even a plausible substitute for the old belief
(l) We question simple believers in the first instance.
We ask them what is the great religious power in
Christianity for themselves, and for others like-minded ?
What makes people pure, good, self-denying, nurses of
the sick, missionaries to the heathen ? They will tell
us that the power lies, not in any doketic idea of a
Christ-life which was never lived, but in ** the conviction
that that idea was really and perfectly incarnated in an
actual career," ^ of which we have a record literally and
absolutely true in all essential particulars. When we
turn to the past of the Church, we find that as it is
with these persons, so it has ever been with the saints.
For instance, we hear St. Paul speaking of his whole
life. He tells us that " whether we went out of our-
selves it was unto God, or whether we be sober, it is
for you ; " that is to say, such a life has two aspects,
one God-ward, one man-ward. Its God-ward aspect
is a noble insanity, its man-ward aspect a noble
sanity ; the first with its beautiful enthusiasm, the
second with its saving common sense. What is the
source of this ? ^^ For the love of Christ constraineth
us," — forces the whole stream of fife to flow between
these two banks without the deviations of selfishness —
** because we thus judge, that He died for all, that they
which live should no longer live unto themselves, but
to Him who for their sakes died and rose again." ^ It
was the real unselfish life of a real unselfish Man which
' Much use has here been made of a truly remarkable article in the
Spectator, Jan. 31st, 1885.
2-2 Cor. V. 13-15.
48 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
made such a life as that of St. Paul a possibility. Or
we may think of the first begimiing of St. John's love
for our Lord. When he turned to the past, he
remembered one bright day about ten in the morning,
when the real Jesus turned to him and to another with
a real look, and said WMth a human voice, " what seek
ye ? " and then — '' come, and ye shall see." ^ It was
' the real living love that won the only kind of love
which could enable the old man to write as he did
in this Epistle so many years afterwards — "we love
because He first loved us." ^
(2) We address ourselves next to those who look
at Christ simply as an ideal. We venture to put to
them a definite question. You believe that there is no
solid basis for the history of the man Jesus ; that His
life as an historical reality is lost in a dazzling mist
of legend and adoration. Has the idea of a Christ,
divorced from all accompaniment of authentic fact,
unfixed in a definite historical form, uncontinued in an
abiding existence, been operative or inoperative for
yourselves ? Has it been a practical power and motive,
or an occasional and evanescent sentiment? There
can be no doubt about the answer. It is not a make-
belief but a belief which gives purity and power. It
is not an ideal of Jesus but the blood of Jesus which
cleanseth us from all sin.
There are other lessons of abiding practical importance
to be drawn from the polemical elements in St. John's
Epistle. These, however, we can only buefly indicate
because we wish to leave an undivided impression of
that which seems to be St. John's chief object con-
troversiaUy. There were Gnostics in Asia Minor for
* John i. 43. I John iv 79.
iv. 2, 3.] FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHiV. 49
whom the mere knowledge of certain supposed sph-itual
truths was all in all, as there are those amongst our-
selves who care for little but what are called clear
views. For such St. John writes — " and hereby we
do know that we know Him, if we keep His command-
ments." ^ There were heretics in and about Ephesus
who conceived that the special favour of God, or the
illumination which they obtained by junction with the
sect to which they had '^ gone out " from the Church,
neutralised the poison of sin, and made innocuous for
them that which might have been deadly for others.
They suffered, as they thought, no more contamination
by it, than " gold by lying upon the dunghill " (to use
a favourite metaphor of their own), St. John utters
a principle which cleaves through every fallacy in every
age, which says or insinuates that sin subjective can in
any case cease to be sin objective. ^' Whosoever com-
mitteth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is the
transgression of the law. All unrighteousness is sin."^
Possibly within the Church itself, certainly among the
sectarians without it, there was a disposition to lessen
the glory of the Incarnation, by looking upon the
Atonement as narrow and partial in its aim. St. John's
unhesitating statement is that " He is the propitiation
for the whole world." Thus does the eagle of the
Church ever fix his gaze above the clouds of error,
upon the Sun of universal truth.
Above all, over and through his negation of
temporary and local errors about the person of Christ,
St. John leads the Church in all ages to the" true Christ,
Cerinthus, in a form which seems to us eccentric and
revolting, proclaimed a Jesus not born of a virgin,
temporarily endowed with the sovereign power of the
' I John ii. 3. ^ I John ni. 4, v. 17.
4
50 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
Christ, deprived of Him before his passion and resur-
rection, while the Christ remained spiritual and im-
passible. He taught a commonplace Jesus. At the
beginning of his Epistle and Gospel, John " wings his
soul, and leads his readers onward and upward." He
is like a man who stands upon the shore and looks
upon town and coast and bay. Then another takes the
man off with him far to sea. All that he surveyed
before is now lost to him ; and as he gazes ever ocean-
ward, he does not stay his eye upon any intervening
object, but lets it range over the infinite azure. So
the Apostle leads us above all creation, and transports
us to the ages before it ; makes us raise our eyes, not
suffering us to find any end in the stretch above, since
end is none.^ That ^'in the beginning," "from the
beginning," of the Epistle and Gospel, includes nothing
short of the eternal God. The doketics of many shades
proclaimed an ideological, a misty Christ. " Every
spirit which confesseth Jesus Christ as in flesh having
come is of God, and every spirit which confesseth not
Jesus, is not of God." ^' Many deceivers have gone
out into the world, they who confess not Jesus Christ
coming in flesh." ^ Such a Christ of mist as these
words warn us against is again shaped by more
powerful intellects and touched with tenderer lights.
But the shadowy Christ of George Eliot and of Mill is
equally arraigned by the hand of St. John. Each
believer may well think within himself— I must die, and
that, it may be, very soon ; I must be alone with God,
and my own soul ; with that which I am, and have
been ; with my memories, and w^ith my sins. In that
' Every one who reads Creek should refer to the magnificent pas-
sag:-, S.Joaiin. Cliiysos., jii Joanu.. Il0'i:il. ii. 4.
^ I John iv. 2 ; 2 John v. 7. See notes on the passages.
IV. 2, 30 FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN. $1
hour the weird desolate language of the Psalmist will
find its realisation : " lover and friend hast thou put from
me, and mine acquaintance are — darkness:' ^ Then we
want, and then we may find, a real Saviour. Then
we shall know that if we have only a doketic Christ, we
shall indeed be alone— for '' except ye eat the flesh of
the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life
in you." ^
NOTE.
The two following extracts, in addition to what has
been already said in this discourse, will supply the reader
with that which it is most necessary for him to know
upon the heresies of Asia Minor. I. " Two principal
heresies upon the nature of Christ then prevailed, each
diametrically opposite to the other, as well as to the
Catholic faith. One was the heresy of the Doketse,
which destroyed the verity of the Human Nature in
Christ ; the other was the heresy of the Ebionites, who
denied the Divine Nature, and the eternal Generation,
and inclined to press the observation of the ceremonial
law. Ancient writers allow these as heresies of the
first century ; all admit that they were powerful in the
age of Ignatius. Hence Theodoret {Prooem.) divided
the books of these heresies into two categories. In
the first he included those who put forward the idea
of a second Creator, and asserted that the Lord had
appeared illusively. In the second he placed those
who maintained that the Lord was merely a man.
Of the first, Jerome observed {Adv. Lucijer. xxiji.)
' that while the Apostles yet remained upon the earth,
while the blocd of Christ was almost smoking upon
' Psalm IviiJ. l8. ^ John vj. 53.
52 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE
the sod of Judaea, some asserted that the body of the
Lord was a phantom.' Of the second, the same writer
remarked that ' St. John, at the invitation of the bishops
of Asia Minor, wrote his Gospel against Cerinthus and
other heretics — and especially against the dogma of the
Ebionites then rising into existence, who asserted that
Christ did not exist before Mary.' Epiphanius notes
that these heresies were mainly of Asia Minor {(prjfxl 8e
ev TTj 'Acria), Hceres. Ivi." (Pearson, Vindic. Ignat.y ii.,
c. i., p. 351b
2. ^' Two of these sects or schools are very ancient,
and seem to have been referred to by St. John. The
first is that of the Naassenians or Ophites. The
antiquity of this sect is guaranteed to us by the author
of the Pkilosophumena, who represents them as the real
founders of Gnosticism. *' Later," he says, " they were
called Gnostics, pretending that they only knew the
depths." (To this allusion is made Apoc. ii. 24, which
would identify these sectaries with the Balaamites and
Nicolaitans.) The second of these great heresies of
Asia Minor is the doketic. The publication of the
Philosophujnena has furnished us with much more
precise information about their tenets. We need not
say much about the divine emanation — the fall of
souls into matter, their corporeal captivity, their final
rehabilitation (these are merely the ordinary Gnostic
ideas). But we may follow what they assert about the
Saviour and His manifestation in the world. They
admit in Him the only Son of the Father (6 ixovo^evi]^
7rat9 avwOev alcovio^), who descended to the reign of
shadows and the Virgin's wonb, where He clothed
Himself in a gross, human material body. But this
was a vestment of no integrally personal and permanent
chiracter; it was, indeed, a sort of masquerade, an
iv. 2, 3.] FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN. 53
artifice or fiction imagined to deceive the pi'ince of this
world. The Saviour at His baptism received a second
birth, and clad Himself with a subtler texture of body,
formed in the bosom of the waters — if that can be
termed a body which was but a fantastic texture woven
or framed upon the model of His earthly body. During
the hours of the Passion, the flesh formed in Mary's
womb, and it alone, was nailed to the tree. The great
Archon or Demiurgus, whose work that flesh was, was
played upon and deceived, in pouring His wrath
only upon the work of His hands. For the soul, or
spiritual substance, which had been wounded in the
flesh of the Saviour, extricated itself from this as from
an unmeet and hateful vesture ; and itself contributing
to nailing it to the cross, triumphed by that very flesh
over principalities and powers. It did not, however,
remain naked, but clad in the subtler form which it
had assumied in its baptismal second birth {Philosoph.,
viii. 10). What is remarkable in this theory is, first,
the admission of the reality of the terrestrial body,
formed in the Virgin's womb, and then nailed to the
cross. The negation is only of the real and permanent
union of this body with the heavenly spirit which
inhabits it. We shall, further, note the importance
which it attaches to the Saviour's baptism, and the part
played by water, as if an intermediate element between
flesh and spirit. This may bear upon I John v. 8."
[This passage is from a Dissertation — les Trois
Tcmoins Celestes, in a collection of religious and literary
papers by French scholars (Tom. ii., Sept. 18^8, pp.
388-392). The author, since deceased, was the Abbe
Le Hir, M. Renan's instructor in Hebrew at Saint
Sulpice, and pronounced by his pupil one of the first
of European Hebraists and scientific theologians.]
DISCOURSE IV.
THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL IN HIS EPISTLE,
" He that loveth pureness of heart, for the grace of his lips
the king shall be his friend." — Prov. xxii. II.
6 defxiXios. ... 6 5evT€pos adircjieipos, — Apoc. xxi. 19.
"We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he
that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth
him not. And we know that we are of God, and the whole world
lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and
hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true,
and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This
is the true God and eternal life." — I John v. 18-20.
MUCH has been said in the last few 3^ears of a
series of subtle and delicate experiments in
sound. Means have been devised of doing for the
ear something analogous to that which glasses do for
another sense, and of making the results palpable by
a system of notation. We are told that every tree
for instance, according to its foliage, its position, and
the direction of the winds, has its own prevalent note
or tone, which can be marked down, and its tunbre
made first visible by this notation, and then audible.
So is it with the souls of the saints of God, and chiefly
of the Apostles. Each has its own note, the prevalent
ke}^ on which its peculiar music is set. Or we may
employ another image which possibly has St. John's
own authority. Each of the twelve has his own
emblem among the twelve vast and precious foundation
V. 18-20.] THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL. 55
Stones which underHe the whole wall of the Church.
St. John may thus differ from St. Peter, as the sap-
phire's azure differs from the jasper's strength and
radiance. Each is beautiful, but with its own charac-
teristic tint of beauty.^
We propose to examine the peculiarities of St. John's
spiritual nature which may be traced in this Epistle.
We try to form some conception of the key on which
it is set, of the colour which it reflects in the light of
heaven, of the image of a soul which it presents. In
this attempt we cannot be deceived. St. John is so
transparently honest ; he takes such a deep, almost
terribly severe view of truth. We find him using an ex-
pression about truth which is perhaps without a parallel
in any other writer. " If we say that we have fellow-
ship with Him and walk in darkness we lie, and are
not doing the trutJir ^ The truth then for him is some-
thing co-extensive with our whole nature and whole
life. Truth is not only to be spoken — that is but a
fragmentary manifestation of it. It is to be done. It
would have been for him the darkest of lies to have
put forth a spiritual commentary on his Gospel which
was not realised in himself. In the Epistle, no doubt,
he uses the first person singular sparingly, modestly in-
cluding himself in the simple we of Christian association.
Yet we are as sure of the perfect accuracy of the picture
of his soul, of the music in his heart which he makes
visible and audible in his letter, as we are that he
heard the voice of many waters, and saw the city
coming down from God out of heaven ; as sure, as if
at the close of this fifth chapter he had added with the
* Apoc. xxi. 19, 20.
'^ I John i. 6, cf. John iii. 21. It is characteristic of St. John's
style Uiat doing a lie is found in Apoc. xxi. 27, xxii. 15.
56 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
triumphant emphasis of truth, in his simple and stately
way, '' I John heard these things and saw them." ^
He closes this letter with a threefold affirmation of
certain primary postulates of the Christian Hfe ; of its
purity, 2 of its privilege^ of its Presence,^ — " we know,"
'' we know," *' we know." In each case the plural might
be exchanged for the singular. He says " ive know/'
because he is sure " / know."
In studying the Epistles of St. John we may well
ask what we see and hear therein of St. John's cha-
racter, (i) as a sacred writer, (2) as a saintly soul.
I.
We consider first the indications in the Epistle of
the Apostle's character as a sacred writer.
For help in this direction we do not turn with much
satisfaction to essays or annotations pervaded by the
modern spirit. The textual criticism of minute scholar-
ship is no doubt much, but it is not all. Aorists are
made for man, not man for the aorist. He indeed who
has not traced every fibre of the sacred text with
grammar and lexicon cannot quite honestly claim to
be an expositor of it. But in the case of a book like
Scripture this, after all, is but an important preliminary.
The frigid subtlety of the commentator who always
seems to have the questions for a divinity examination
before his eyes, fails in the glow and elevation neces-
sary to bring us into communion with the spirit of St.
John. Led by such guides, the Apostle passes under
our review as a third-rate writer of a magnificent
language in decadence, not as the greatest of theologians
» Apoc. xxii. 8. ^ Ibid. 19.
* I John V. 18. ■• ?;/ce(, ' has come, — and is here." — Ibid. 20.
V. 18-20.] IN HIS EPISTIE. 57
and masters of the spiritual life — with whatever defects
of literary style, at once the Plato of the twelve in
one region, and the Aristotle in the other ; the first by
his *4ofty inspiration," the second by his "judicious
utilitarianism." The deepest thought of the Church '
has been brooding for seventeen centuries over these
pregnant and many-sided words, so many of which
are the very words of Christ. To separate ourselves
from this vast and beautiful commentary is to place
ourselves out of the atmosphere in which we can best
feel the influence of St. John.
Let us read Chrysostom's description of the style
and thought of the author of the fourth Gospel. ''The
son of thunder, the loved of Christ, the pillar of the
Churches, who leaned on Jesus' bosom, makes his
entrance. He plays no drama, he covers his head
with no mask. Yet he wears array of inimitable beauty.
For he comes having his feet shod with the preparation
of the Gospel of peace, and his loins girt, not with
fleece dyed in purple, or bedroppcd with gold, but
woven through and through with, and composed of, the
truth itself He will now appear before us, not drama-
tically, for with him there is no theatrical effect or
fiction, but with his head bared he tells the bare truth.
All these things he will speak with absolute accuracy,
being the friend of the King Himself — aye, having the
King speaking within him, and hearing all things
from Him which He heareth from the Father ; as He
saith — 'you I have called friends, for all things that I
have heard from My Father, I have made known unto
you.' Wherefore, as if we all at once saw one stooping
down from yonder heaven, and promising to tell us
truly of things there, we should all flock to listen to
him, so let us now dispose ourselves. For it is from
58 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
up there that this man speaks down to us. And the
fisherman is not carried away by the whirling current
of his own exuberant verbosity ; but all that he utters
is with the steadfast accuracy of truth, and as if he
stood upon a rock he budges not. All time is his
witness. Seest thou the boldness, and the great
authority of his words ! how he utters nothing by way
of doubtful conjecture, but all demonstratively, as if
passing sentence. Very lofty is this Apostle, and full
of dogmas, and lingers over them more than over
other things ! "^ This admirable passage, with its
fresh and noble enthusiasm, nowhere reminds us of
the glacial subtleties of the schools. It is the utterance
of an expositor who spoke the language in which his
master wrote, and breathed the same spiritual atmo-
sphere. It is scarcely less true of the Epistle than of
the Gospel of St. John.
Here also ^' he is full of dogmas," here again he is
the theologian of the Church. But we are not to
estimate the amount of dogma merely by the number
of words in which it is expressed. Dogma, indeed, is
not really composed of isolated texts — as pollen showered
from conifers and germs scattered from mosses, acci-
dentally brought together and compacted, are found
upon chemical analysis to make up certain lumps of
coal. It is primary and structural. The Divinity
and Incarnation of Jesus pervade the First Epistle.
Its whole structure is Trinitarian? It contains two of
' 5. Joann. Chrysost, in Johan., Homil. iii., Tom. viii., 25, 36,
Edit. Migne.
2 Huther, while rejecting with all impartial critics the interpolation
(; John V. 7), writes thus: "when we embrace in one survey the
contents of the Epistle as a whole, it is certainly easy to aciapt the
conception of the three Heavenly witnesses to one place after another
in the document. But it dops pot fpllow that t-he mention of it just
V, 18-20.] IN HIS E PIS TIE. 59
the three great three-word dogmatic utterances of the
New Testament about the nature of God (the first
being in the fourth Gospel) — '^ God is Spirit," *' God
is light/' " God is love." The chief dogmatic state-
ments of the Atonement are found in these few chapters.
^'The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all
sin." ^' We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the Righteous." *^ He is the propitiation for the
whole world." " God loved us, and sent His Son the
propitiation for our sins." Where the Apostle passes
on to deal with the spiritual life, he once more " is full
of dogmas," i.e., of eternal self-evidenced oracular
sentences, spoken as if ^' down from heaven," or by
one " whose foot is upon a rock," — apparently identical
propositions, all-inclusive, the dogmas of moral and
spiritual life, as those upon the Trinity, the Incarnation,
the Atonement, are of strictly theological truth. A
further characteristic of St. John as a sacred writer in
his Epistle is, that he appears to indicate throughout
the moral and spiritual conditions which were necessary
for receiving the Gospel with which he endowed the
Church as the life of their life. These conditions are
three. The first is spiritiiality^ submission to the teach-
ing of the Spirit, that they may know by it the meaning
of the words of Jesus — the "anointing" of the Holy
Ghost, which is ever ^' teaching all things " that He
said.^ The second condition is purity^ at least, the
continuing effort after self-purification which is incum-
bent even upon those who have received the great
pardon.^ This involves the following in life's daily
here would be in its right place." {Handbuch uber der drei Briefe des
Johannes. Dr. J. E. Huther.)
* I John ii. 20.
^ I John i. 7, iii. 3,
6o THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
walk of the One perfect life-walk,' the imitation of that
which is supremely good,^ ^' incarnated in an actual
earthly career." All must be purity, or effort after
purity, on the side of those who would read aright the
Gospel of the immaculate Lamb of God. The third
condition for such readers is love — charity. When he
comes to deal fully with that great theme, the eagle of
God wheels far out of sight. In the depths of His
Eternal Being, *' God is love." ^ Then this truth comes
closer to us as believers. It stands completely and for
ever manifested in its work in us,^ because " God hath
sent" (a mission in the past, but with abiding conse-
quences/ '* His Son, His only-begotten Son into the
world, that we may live through Him." Yet again, he
rises higher from the manifestation of this love to the
eternal and essential principle in which it stands present
for ever. " In this is the love, not that we loved God,
but that God loved us, and once for all sent His Son a
propitiation for our sins."^ Then follows the manifesta-
tion of our love. *^ If God so loved us, we also are
bound to love one another." Do we think it strange
that St. John does not first draw the lesson — '' if God
so loved us, we also are bound to love God " ? It has
been in his heart all along, but he utters it in his own
way, in the solemn pathetic question — " he that loveth
' I John ii. 6.
^ " Imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good "
(3 John 12). A comparison of this verse with John xxi. 24 would
lead to the supposition that the writer of the letter is quoting the
Gospel, and assumes an intimate knowledge of it on the part of Caius,
See Discourse XVII. Part ii. of this vol.
' See note A at the end of this discourse.
* I John iv. 9.
* a.vi(TTa\KiV.
V. 18-20.] IN HIS EPISTIE. 6i
not his brother whom he hath seen, God whom he
hath not seen how can he love ? " ^ Yet once more he
sums up the creed in a few short words. " We have
believed the. love that God hath in us." ^ Truly and
deeply has it been said that this creed of the heart,
suffused with the softest tints and sweetest colours,
goes to the root of all heresies upon the Incarnation,
whether in St. John's time or later. That God should
give up His Son by sending Him forth in humanity; that
the Word made flesh should humble Himself to the death
upon the cross, the Sinless offer Himself for sinners,
this is what heresy cannot bring itself to understand.
It is the excess of such love which makes it incredible.
"We have believed the love" is the whole faith of a
Christian man. It is St. John's creed in three words.^
Such are the chief characteristics of St. John as a
sacred writer, which may be traced in his Epistle.
These characteristics of the author imply corresponding
characteristics of the man. He who states with such
inevitable precision, with such noble and self-contained
enthusiasm, the great dogmas of the Christian faith,
the great laws of the Christian life, must himself have
entirely believed them. He who insists upon these
conditions in the readers of his Gospel, must himself
have aimed at, and possessed, spirituality, purity, and
love.
II.
We proceed to look at the First Epistle as a picture
of the soul of its author.
(i) His was a life free from the dominion of wilful
and habitual sin of any kind. " Whosover is born of
* I John iv. 20.
* I John iv. 16.
* ir€TriaTfVKafj.ev Tr)i> dydirrjv, I John iv. 1 6.
62 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
God doth not commit sin, and he cannot continue
sinning." *' Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not;
whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known
Him." A man so entirely true, if conscious to himself
of any reigning sin, dare not have dehberately written
these words.
(2) But if St. John's was a hfe free from subjection
to any form of the power of sin, he shows us that
sanctity is not sinlessness, in language which it is alike
unwise and unsafe to attempt to explain away, ^* If
we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." "If
we say that we have not sinned and are not sinners, we
make Him a liar." But so long as we do not fall back
into darkness, the blood of Jesus is ever purifying us
from all sin. This he has written that the fulness of
the Christian life may be realised in believers ; that
each step of their walk may follow the blessed foot-
prints of the most holy life ; that each successive act
of a consecrated existence may be free from sin.-^ And
yet, if any fail in some such single act,^ if he swerve, for
a moment, from the " true tenour " of the course which
he is shaping, there is no reason to despair. Beautiful
humility of this pure and lofty soul ! How tenderly,
with what lowly graciousness he places himself among '
those who have and who need an Advocate. ^' Mark
John's humility," cries St. Augustine; '^he says not ^ ye
have,* nor 'ye have me,^ nor even ^ ye have Christ.'
But he puts forward Christ, not himself; and he says
1 For the aor. conj. in this place as distinguished from the pres.
conj. cf. John v. 20, 23, vi. 28, 29, 30. Professor Westcott's refined
scholarship corrects the error of many commentators, " that the Apostle
is simply warning us not to draw encouragement for license from the
doctrine of forgiveness." The tense is decisive against this, the
thought is of the single oci not of the siate.
*idv Tis afjidpTT], I John ii. I.
V. I8-20.] IN HIS EPISTIE. 63
^we have/ not ^ ye have/ thus placing himself in the
rank of sinners." ^ Nor does St. John cover himself
under the subterfuges by which men at different times
have tried to get rid of a truth so humiliating to
spiritual pride — sometimes by asserting that they so
stand accepted in Christ that no sin is accounted to
them for such ; sometimes by pleading personal exemp-
tion for themselves as believers.
This Epistle stands alone in the New Testament in
being addressed to two generations — one of which after
conversion had grown old in a Christian atmosphere,
whilst the other had been educated from the cradle
under the influences of the Christian Church. It is
therefore natural that such a letter should give pro-
minence to the constant need of pardon. It certainly
does not speak so much of the great initial pardon,^ as
of the continuing pardons needed by human frailty. In
dwelling upon pardon once given, upon sanctification
once begun, men are possibly apt to forget the pardon
that is daily wanting, the purification that is never to
cease. We are to walk daily from pardon to pardon,
from purification to purification. Yesterday's surrender
of self to Christ may grow ineffectual if it be not re-
newed to-day. This is sometimes said to be a humilia-
ting view of the Christian life. Perhaps so — but it is
the view of the Church, which places in its offices a
daily confession of sin ; of St. John in this Epistle ;
nay, of Him who teaches us, after our prayers for bread
day by day, to pray for a daily forgiveness. This may
be more humiliating, but it is safer teaching than that
which proclaims a pardon to be appropriated in a
moment for all sins past, present, and to come.
' /// Epist. Johann., Tract, I.
* Z John ii, 12, is, of course, an important exception.
64 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
This humility may be traced incidentally in other
regions of the Christian life. Thus he speaks of the
possibility at least of his being among those who might
"shrink with shame from Christ in His coming." He
does not disdain to write as if, in hours of spiritual
depression, there were tests by which he too might
need to lull and " persuade his heart before God." ^
(3) St. John again has a boundless faith in prayer.
It is the key put into the child's hand by which he
may let himself into the house, and come into his
Father's presence when he will, at any hour of the
night or day. And prayer made according to the
conditions which God has laid down is never quite
lost. The particular thing asked for may not indeed
be given ; but the substance of the request, the holier
wish, the better purpose underlying its weakness and
imperfection, never fails to be granted. ^
(4) All but superficial readers must perceive that in
the writings and character of St. John there is from
time to time a tonic and wholesome severity. Art and
modern literature have agreed to bestow upon the
Apostle of love the features of a languid and inert
tenderness. It is forgotten that St. John was the son
of thunder; that he could once wish to bring down
fire from heaven; and that the natural character is trans-
figured not inverted by grace. The Apostle uses great
plainness of speech. For him a lie is a lie, and dark-
ness is never courteously called light. He abhors and
shudders at those heresies which rob the soul first of
Christ, and then of God. ^ Those who undermine the
1 I John iii. 19, 20.
^ See Prof. Westcott's v^aluable note on i John v. 15. The very
things literally asked for would be ra. alTTjOtyra, not ra alrri/jiaTa.
^ 2 John II.
V. I8-20.] IN HIS EPISTLE, 65
Incarnation are for him not interesting and original
speculators, but " lying prophets." He underlines his
warnings against such men with his roughest and
blackest pencil mark. ^' Whoso sayeth to him 'good
speed' hath fellowship with his ivorks, those wicked
works " ^ — for such heresy is not simply one work, but
a series of works. The schismatic prelate or pretender
Diotrephes may *' babble ; " but his babblings are
wicked words for all that, and are in truth the '' works
which he is doing."
The influence of every great Christian teacher lasts
long beyond the day of his death. *It is felt in a
general tone and spirit, in a special appropriation of
certain parts of the creed, in a peculiar method of the
Christian life. This influence is very discernible in
the remains of two disciples of St. John, ^ Ignatius and
Polycarp. In writing to the Ephesians, Ignatius does
not indeed explicitly refer to St. John's Epistle, as
he does to that of St. Paul to the Ephesians. But he
draws in a few bold lines a picture of the Christian
life which is imbued with the very spirit of St. John.
The character which the Apostle loved was quiet
and real ; w^e feel that his heart is not with " him that
sayeth." ^ So Ignatius writes — *' it is better to keep
silence, and yet to be^ than to talk and not to be. It is
good to teach if ' he that sayeth doeth.' He who has
gotten to himself the w^ord of Jesus truly is able to hear
the silence of Jesus also, so that he may act through
that which he speaks, and be hiown through- the things
wherein he is silent. Let us therefore do all things
as in His presence who dwelleth in us, that we may
1 3 John 10.
' Mart. Ignat, i. 5. Hieron^ de Script. Eccles., xvii.
b Xiyuv, I John ii. 4, 6, 9.
66 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
be His temple, and that He may be in us our God."
This is the very spirit of St. John. We feel in it at
once his severe common sense and his glorious mysticism.
We must add that the influence of St. John may be
traced in matters which are often considered alien to
his simple and spiritual piety. It seems that Episcopacy
was consolidated and extended under his fostering
care. The language of his disciple Ignatius, upon the
necessit}^ of union with the Episcopate is, after all
conceivable deductions, of startling strength. A few
decades could not possibly have removed Ignatius so
far from the lines marked out to him by St. John as
he must have advanced, if this teaching upon Church
government was a new departure. And with this con-
ception of Church government we must associate other
matters also. The immediate successors of St. John,
who had learned from his lips, held deep sacramental
views. The Eucharist is '^ the bread of God, the
bread of heaven, the bread of life, the flesh of Christ."
Again Ignatius cries — " desire to use one Eucharist,
for one is the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
one cup unto oneness of His blood, one altar, as one
Bishop, with the Presbytery and deacons."^ Hints
are not wanting that sweetness and life in public
worship derived inspiration from the same quarter.
The language of Ignatius is deeply tinged with his
passion for music. ^ The beautiful story, how he set
* Ignat Epist. ad Ephes., xv., cf. I John ii. I4, iv. 9, 17, iii. 2.
' S. Ignat. Epist. ad Philad., iv. ; cf. Epist. ad Swyrn, vii. ; Epist.
ad Ephes., xx.
^ The most elaborate passage in the Ignatian remains is probably
this. "Let your Presbytery be fitted together harmoniously with
the Bishop as chords with the cithara. Hereby in your symphonious
love Jesus Christ is sung in concord. Taking your part man by man
become one choir, that being barmonidusly atcordant in your like-
V. I8-20.] IN HIS EPISTLE. 67
down, immediately after a vision, the melody to which
he had heard the angels chanting, and caused it to be
used in his church at Antioch, attests the impression
of enthusiasm and care for sacred song which was
associated with the memory of Ignatius.^ Nor can we
be surprised at these features of Ephesian Christianity,
when we remember who was the founder of those
Churches. He was the writer of three books. These
books come to us with a continuous living interpre-
tation of more than seventeen centuries of historical
Christianity. From the fourth Gospel in large measure
has arisen the sacramental instinct, from the Apocalypse
the aesthetic instinct, which has been certainly exag-
gerated both in the East and West. The third and
sixth chapters of St. John's Gospel permeate every
baptismal and eucharistic office. Given an inspired
book which represents the worship of the redeemed
as one of perfect majesty and beauty, men may well
in the presence of noble churches and stately liturgies,
adopt the words of our great English Christian poet —
" things which shed upon the outward frame
Of worship glory and grace — which who shall blame
That ever look'd to heaven for final rest?"
The third book in this group of writings supplies
the sweet and quiet spirituality which is the foundation
of every regenerate nature.
Such is the image of the soul which is presented to us
by St. John himself. It is based upon a firm conviction
of the nature of God, of the Divinity, the Incarnation,
mindedness, having received in unity the chromatic music of God
(xp^fj-a Qeov AajSoVres), ye may sing with one voice through Jesus
Christ unto the Father." — Ep/sL ad Ephes., iv. The same mage is
differently applied, Epist, ad Philad,^ i.
1 The story is giveti by Socrates. (^Hist.y vi. 8.)
68 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
the Atonement of our Lord. It is spiritual. It is pure,
or being purified. The highest theological truth — " God
is Love " — supremely realised in the Holy Trinity,
supremely manifested in the sending forth of God's
only Son, becomes the law of its common social life,
made visible in gentle patience, in giving and forgiving.^
Such a life will be free from the degradation of
habitual sin. Yet it is at best an imperfect representa-
tion of the one perfect life.^ It needs unceasing purifi-
cation by the blood of Jesus, the continual advocacy
of One who is sinless. Such a nature, however full of
charity, v/ill not be weakly indulgent to vital error or
to ambitious schism ; ^ for it knows the value of truth
and unit3^ It feels the sweetness of a calm conscience,
and of a simple belief in the efficacy of prayer. Over
every such life — over all the grief that may be, all the
temptation that must be — is the purifying hope of a great
Advent, the ennobling assurance of a perfect victory,
the knowledge that if we continue true to the principle
of our new birth we are safe. And our safety is, not
that we keep ourselves, but that we are kept by arms
which are as soft as love, and as strong as eternity.*
These Epistles are full of instruction and of comfort
for us, just because they are written in an atmosphere
of the Church which, in one respect at least, resembles
our own. There is in them no reference whatever to
a continuance of miraculous powers, to raptures, or to
extraordinary phenomena. All in them which is super-
natural continues even to this day, in the possession
of an inspired record, in sacramental grace, in the
* I John iv. 7, 12.
* I John ii. 6, 9, i. 7-10, ii, I, 2.
* I John i. 7, ii. 2, iv. 3, 6 ; 2 John 7-II ; 3 John 9, 10.
* I John ill. 19, V. 14, 15, iv. 2, 3, v. 4, 5, 18.
V. 18-20.] IN niS EPISTLE. 69
pardon and holiness, the peace and strength of believers.
The apocryphal "Acts of John" contain some fragments
of real beauty almost lost in questionable stories and
prolix declamation. It is probably not literally true
that when St. John in early life wished to make himself
a hom.e, his Lord said to him, '' I have need of thee,
John ; " that that thriUing voice once came to him,
wafted over the still darkened sea — " John, hadst thou
not been Mine, I would have suffered thee to marry." ^
But the Epistle shows us much more effectually that
he had a pure heart and virgin will. It is scarcely
probable that the son of Zebedee ever drained a cup
of hemlock with impunity ; but he bore within him an
effectual charm against the poison of sin.^ We of this
nineteenth century may smile when we read that he
possessed the power of turning leaves into gold, of
transmuting pebbles into jewels, of fusing shattered
gems into one ; but he carried with him wherever he
went that most excellent gift of charity, which makes
the commonest things of earth radiant with beauty.^
' These sentences do not go so far as the mischievous and anti-
scriptural legend of later ascetic heretics, who marred the beauty and
the purpose of the miracle at Cana, by asserting that John was the
bridegroom, and that our Lord took him away from his bride.
Acta Joliannis, XXI. Act. Apost. Apoc, Tisch., 275).
^ This legend no doubt arose from the promise — "if they drink any
deadly thing it shall not hurt them " (Mark xvi. 18).
" Virus fidens sorbuit." Adam of St. Victor, Seq. XXXIIL
•"Aurum hie de frondibus,
Gemmas de silicibus,
Fractis de fragminibus,
Fecit firmas." — Ibid.
There is something interesting in the persistency of legends about
St. John's power over gems, when connected with the passage,
flashing all over with the light of precious stones, whose exquisite
disposition is the wonder of lapidaries. Apoc. xxi. 18, 22.
70 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL
He may not actually have praised his Master during
his last hour in words which seem to us not quite
unworthy even of such lips — " Thou art the only Lord,
the root of immortality, the fountain of incorruption.
Thou who madest our rough wild nature soft and quiet,
who deliveredst me from the imagination of the moment,
and didst keep me safe within the guard of that which
abideth for ever." But such thoughts in life or death
were never far from him for whom Christ was the Word
and the Life ; who knew that w^hile " the world passeth
away and the lust thereof, he that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever." ^
May we so look upon this image of the Apostle's
soul in his Epistle that we may reflect something of
its brightness ! May w^e be able to think, as we turn
to this threefold assertion of knowledge — "/ know
something of the security of this keeping.^ / know
something of the sweetness of being in the Church,
that isle of light surrounded by a darkened world.^ /
know something of the beauty of the perfect human
life recorded by St. John, something of the continued
presence of the Son of God, something of the new
sense which He gives, that we may know Him who
is the Very God.* Blessed exchange not to be vaunted
loudly, but spoken reverently in our own hearts — the
exchange of we, for L There is much divinity in these
pronouns.^
* See note B at the end of the Discourse.
' I John V. i8.
■ Ibid. V. 19.
* Ibid. V. 20.
* Said by Luther of Psalm xxii. I*
V. 18-20.] iTV HIS EPISTLE, 71
NOTES.
Note A.
I John iv. 8, 9, 10. Modern theological schools of a
Calvinistic bias have tended to overlook the conception of the
nature of God as essential or substantive Love, and to consider
love only as nia?t(fested in redemption. Socinianising inter-
preters understand the proposition to mean that God is simply
and exclusively benevolent. (On the inadequacy of this, see
Butler, Anal., Part I., ch. iii., and Dissertation II. of the Nature
of Virtue.) The highest Christian thought has ever recog-
nised that the proposition ' God is Love ' necessarily involves
the august truth that God ii sole is not solitary. (" Credimur
et confitemur omnipotentem Trinitatem — unum Deum solum
non solitariujn.'" Concil. Tolet., vi. i.) ** Let it not be sup-
posed," said St. Bernard, "that I here accoun-t Love as an
attribute or accident, but as the Divine essence — no new
doctrine, seeing that St. John saith 'God is love.' It may
rightly be said both thatZoz'e is God, and that love is the gift
of God, For Love gives love ; the essential Love gives that
which is accidental. When Love signifies the Giver, it is the
name of His essence ; when it signifies His gift, it is the name
of a quality or attribute" (^S*. Bernard., de dil. Deo, xii.).
"This is nobly said. God is love. Thus love is the eternal
law whereby all things were created and are governed — where-
with He who is the law of all things is unto Himself His own
law, and that a law of love — wherewith He bindeth His Trinity
into Unity." {Tkomassi?i. Dogni, TkeoL^ lib. iii., 23.)
Note B.
7] p'l^a TY]^ aOavavlas Ka\ fj irrjyr) rrj^ d(f)dapaLas' 6 rrju eprjfiov koX
dypi(io6(7crav (f)v(nv T]pa>v rjpepov kcu rjai'xiov TTOirjcras, 6 tt]s TrpocrKalpov
(fiavTaaios pvcrdpevo^ p.e Kai els ttjv «et pivovcrav (Ppovprjaas {Acta
jfohannis, 21). These sentences are surely not without fresh-
ness and power. One other passage is worth translating,
because it seems to have just that imaginative cast which
makes the Greek Liturgies, like so much else that is Greek,
stand midway betweeti the Hast arid West; atid because it
72 THE IMAGE OF ST. JOHN'S SOUL.
apparently refers to St. John's Gospel. " Jesus ! Thou who
hast woven this coronal with Thy plaiting, who hast blended
these many flowers into the flower of Thy presence, not blown
through by the winds of any storm ; Thou who hast scattered
thickly abroad the seed of these words of Thine" — [Acta
Johaniiis^ 17}.
PART II.
SOME GENERAL RULES FOR THE INTER-
PRETATION OF THE FIRST EPISTLE OF
ST. JOHN.
I. Subject Matter.
(l) 'T^HE Epistle is to be read through with constant
J. reference to the G"o5/>^/. In \Nh2ii precise form
the former is related to the latter (whether as a preface
or as an appendix, as a spiritual commentary or an
encycUcal) 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.,
I John i. I, cf. John i. 1-14 ; i John v. 9, " witness of
men," cf. John i. 15-36, 41, 45. 49, "i- 2, 27-36,
iv. 29-42, vi. 62>, 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 diJi^^cnce of the reader. The *' root
76 GENERAL RULES FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF
below the stream ' can only be traced by our bending
over the water until it becomes translucent to us.
E,g. I 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, II, V. 3 (ad. fin.), 4.
II. Language.
I. 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 suhstantized participle with article
0 has in St. John the sense of the continuous and con-
stitutive temper and conduct of any man, the principle
of his moral and spiritual life — e.g., 6 Xe'ycov, he who
is ever vaunting, ii. 4 ; 7ra9 o fiiocov, every one the
abiding principle of whose life is hatred, iii. 15 ; Tra?
o ayaTTcbv, 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
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST JOHN. 77
or in its results, ox frequently repeated — e.g., i John ii. 6,
iii. 8, 9, V. 18. (Winer, Gr. of N. T. Diction^ Part 3,
xliv., 348.
{b) IheAorisf.
This tense is generally used either of a thing occur-
ring 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 e- past time, and the adjunct (t-
future time, i.e., the act is fixed off within certain limits
of previous and consequent time (Donaldson, Gr. Gr.y
427, B. 2). The aorist is used with most significant
accuracy in the Epistle of St. John, e.g.y ii. 6, 1 1, 2"^,
iv. 10, V. 18.
{c) The Perfect.
The Perfect denotes action absolutely past which
lasts bn 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 intro-
duced in advance of the second, denoting the highest
point to which the thought is thrown up by the tide of
thought, e.g., I John ii. 4, 5, 6, v. 1 1, v. 27.
(3) The preparatory touch upon the chord which
announces a theme to be amplified afcerwards, — e.g.y
78 GENERAL RULES FOR INTERPRETATION.
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., I 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 Hne,
" Solers scribit idiota."
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DISCOURSE I.
ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF ST. JOHNS GOSPEL.
"Of the Word of Life."— i John i, I.
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.^ 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 Lord of Life/' or ''the Lord
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 begiiining of the creation.
* See the noble and enthusiastic preface to the washing of the
disciples' feet (John xiii. I, 2, 3).
i. I.] ANALYSIS OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. 8i
Other considerations are decisive in favour of the last
interpretation.
(i) We have already adverted to the lofty and trans-
cendental 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 every-
where to be read with the Gospel before us, and the
language of the Epistle to be connected with that of the
Gospel. The prooemium 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 state-
ment 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 im-
pression ; 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 concep-
tions 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, but surely not of seeing and
handling it. (4) It is a noteworthy fact that the Gospel
6
82 ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF
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 prooemium
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.^ The prooemium may be
thus paraphrased. " That which in all its collective
influence was from the beginning as understood by
Moses, by Solomon, and Micah ; ^ 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
dehghts in the object contemplated ; ^ and which these
hands handled reverentially at His bidding.'' 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 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." (/« Joan.
Evaitg. V.)
2 Qen. i. I ; Prov. viii. 23 ; Micah v. 2.
' Cf. John vi. 36, 40. The word is applied by the angel to the
disciples gazing on the Ascension, Acts i, ii. The Transfiguration
may be here referred to. Such an incident as that in John vii. 37
attests a vivid delighted remembrance of the Savic urs very attitude.
* Luke xxiv. 39 ; John xx, 27.
i. I.] S7\ JOHN'S GOSPEL. 83
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 begin-
ning 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.-^
Such mountains of erudition have been heaped over
this term that it has become difficult to discover the
' Gospel i. 1-14; I John i. I ; Apoc. i. 9.
ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF
buried thought. The Apostle adopted a word which
was ah-eady in use in various quarters simply because
if, from the nature of the case necessarily inadequate/
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 re-
lation 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
&ny 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
' " 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 1 00— 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
i. I.] ST. JOHNS GOSPEL. 85
eternally inspoken and outspoken into personal ex-
istence/
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. Be-
cause 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.y 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
^ The following table may be found useful :-^
THE WORD IN ST. JOHN IS OPPOSED.
(A) To the Gnostic Word, (A) Uncreated and Eternal.
created and temporal as " In the beginning was
the Word."
(B) To the Platonic Word, (B) Personal and Divine.
ideal and abstract as '• The Word was God."
"He"— "His."
(C) To the Judaistic and Phi- (C) Creative and First Cause.
Ionic Word — the type ^^ " All things were made
and idea of God in by Him."
creation ....
(D) To the Dualistic Word — (D) Unique and Universally
limitedly and partially ^g Creative. "Without Him
instrumental in creation . was not anything made
that hath been made."
(E) To the Dokctic Word— (E) Real and Permanent. "The
impalpable and visionary Word became flesh."
86 ANALYSIS AND THEORY OF
life as one. The great test here, as in art, is the
formation of a living, consistent, unmutilated whole. ^
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
' Vie de Jestts, Int. 4.
i. I.] 6-7: JOHN'S GOSPEL. 87
the martyr of Calvary is a saint of transcendent ex-
cellence. 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 cha-
racters ; 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."
DISCOURSE II.
ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL.
"That which we have heard." — I John i. I.
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
Hfe 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 prooemium of the
Gospel — allowing for the difference between a history
and a document of a more subjective character moulded
upon that histc-ry.
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 de-
generate 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 prooemium, and in the opening of
the Epistle. The Gospel, it is said, is ideological. To
us it appears that those who have entered most deerly
into the spirit of St. John will most deeply feel the
1. I.] ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL NOT IDEOLOGICAL. 89
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.^ 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 ^^ive 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.
^ 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 ; I John i.
I, 2, iv. 14; Apoc. i. 2). The true reading («:d7(b 'Iwdvvrfs 6 aKouojv
KoX ^Xeiruv ravra. Apoc. xxi. 8, where hearing sisiiC^ before seeing)
is indicative of John's style.
90 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL
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 vera-
city 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 per-
vades St. John's writings. His Gospel is a tissue woven
of many Hnes 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 tett times in five short
verses of the Epistle.^ There is no possibility of mis-
taking 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 Chris-
tianity 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
^ I John V. 6.12.
i.I.] HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL. 91
later date (at least as old as TertuUian, born a.d. 90)
credits St. John with a stern reverence for the accuracy
of kistorical 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
andThecla — probably the same strange but unquestion-
ably 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 passion-
ately attracted by a saint so wonderful as St. Paul.^
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
' That the "Acts of Paul and Thecla" are of high antiquity there
can be no rationaldoubt. Tertullian writes : " But if those who read
St. Paul's writings rashl}^ 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 Bapiismo, xvii.) On which St. Jerome remarks — " We therefore
relegate to the class of apocryphal writings, the TreptoSos 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 con-
fessing that as a aiTovbaaTrjs of the Apostle Paul he had done this
from loving devotion to that great memory, was deposed from his
ministry." (St. Hieron., de Soipt Eccles., VII.) See the mass of
authority for the antiquity of this document, which gives a consider-
able degree of prolability to the statement about St. John, in Ada
Apost. Apoc, Edit. Tischeiidorf. — Prolcg. xxi., xxvi.
92 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL
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 com-
munication 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 vivid-
ness 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, (i) The delineation o^ individual
characters. The Evangelist tells us with no unmeaning
distinction, that Jesus " knew all men, and knew what
is in man ! " ^ 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 fife 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 aficct to be keen men of the world, refrain from
* John iii. 24, 25.
i.i.] HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL.
93
generalizations ; but they have an insight, which at
times is startHng, 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 ulti-
mate principles of human nature and the subtle distinc-
tions 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.^ For instance, of St. Thomas
' 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
Speaker's Comnmiiary (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. ZT, "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
11. 7, II, 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. IS, 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. If the author of the
94 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL
only one single sentence, containing seven words, is
preserved,^ 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. Further, the language of our Lord
which St. John preserves is both morally and intel-
lectually 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 Le'gende des
Slides, has in one passage only placed in our Lord's
lips a few words which are not found in the Evangelist.^
Every one will at once feel that these words ring hollow,
that there is in them something exaggerated and facti-
tious— and ///rt/ 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
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.
' John xi. i6.
^ " Qui me suit, aux anges est pareil.
Quand un homme a marche tout le jour an soleil
Dans un chemin sans puits et sans hotellerie,
S'il ne croit pas quand vient le soir il pleure, il crie,
II est las; sur la terre il tombe haletant.
S'il croit en moi, qu'il prie, il pent au meme instant.
Continuer sa route avec des forces triples."'
(Le Christ el le Tombeau.) Tom. i. 44,
i. I.] HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL. 95
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 extremel}'-,
And something spoke in choler, ill and hasty ;
But he ftll to himself again, and sweetly
In all the rest show'd a most noble patience.'"*
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."^ 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
^ King Henry VIII., Act 2, Sc. I. 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 inconsiderate-
ness {ovK rjdeiv — oTt earlv dpxi-^p^i>s) which led to a violation of a
precept of t.ie law (Exod, xxii. 28).
- Preface to Ivanhoe,
96 ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL
— 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 rever-
ence— can we account for his having given us long
successions of sentences, continuous discourses in
which we trace a certain unity and adaptation ; ^ 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 dis-
tinguished statesman. Voltaire's historical masterpiece
is a portion of the life of Maria Theresa, which is un-
' How the great sayings were accurately collected has not been
the question before us in this discourse. But it presents little difti-
culty. 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 Irenaeus 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." {ttj \pvxv ^^ovprai
aiT-f) Euscb., 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 H0I3' Ghost, He ehall teach j'ou all
things, and bring all things to your remembrance whaidotivcr I have
baid unto you '" (John xiv. 26).
i. I.] HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL. 97
questionably 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 ! " ^ 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 inexhaust-
ible, whose philosophical depth is so unfathomable.^
He stands with spell-bound delight before his work
' Due de Broglie. Revue des deux Mondes. 15 Jan. 1882. Coxe,
House of Austria, vol. iii., chr.p. xcix., p, 415, sqq.
John xiii. 30, xi. 35, xlx. 5, xxii. 29-35.
98 ST. fOHN'S GOSPEL
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 heardy which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have gazed uDon.
NOTES.
Ch. i. 2, 4.
Ver. 2. USy weJ] ** The nominative plural first person is not
always of majesty but often of modesty^ when we share our
privilege and dignity with others" {Grotzus). 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. i, 2, v. 5. It rises into majesty with the
majestic, " we announce."
Ver. 4. '■' These things y^ Not even they^/Zc'WJ/^T^ 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.
JVe write unto youi] 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 happi-
ness ; but the holy Scriptures give fulness of joy, and there-
fore 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 7ninor is plain from this scripture, and
may thus be drawn forth. That which the Apostle^ 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 blessed-
ness.
" How odious is the profaneness of those Christians who
i. I.] HISTORICAL NOT IDEOLOGICAL, 99
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 consola-
tion. 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.)
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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." — I John ii. I, 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 induce-
ments to holiness, and yet quiets the accusing heart,
(i) It urges to a pervading holiness in each recurring
circumstance of Hfe.^ "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 3^ou." No dead letter — •
a living spirit infuses the lines ; there is a deathless
principle behind the words which will vitalize and
' Observe in the Greek the /xt; d;ua/3T7?re, which refers to single acts,
not to a continuous state — " that ye may not sin."
ii. 1,2.] EXTENT OF THE ATOAEMENT. 103
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 in-
consistency. 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 Incar-
nation 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.^
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 Hfe. 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
• I John ii. 2. As a translation, "towards" seems too pedantic ;
3xt TT/sos 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 ■npb% pictorial.
I04 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.
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." ^
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.
(l) 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 ro3^alty 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
' The various meanings of Kbaaos are fully traced below on I John
ii. 17. There is one point in which the notions of Koa/xos and al(Lv
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.)
ii.1,2.] EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT. 105
people whose mission it was to give a principle of fer-
mentation 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 ^
for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the
whole world."
' 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 —
diroXvTpucTLS, KaraWayrj, i\aa/x6s. The last is found in the text and in
iv. 10 ; nowhere else precisely in that form in the New Testament.
'' IXaa/xos (expiation or propitiation) and dTroXvTpcocris (redemption) is
fundamentally one single benefit, i.e., the restitution of the lost sinner.
' Air oXvTpua IS is in respect of enemies ; KaraWayt] in respect of God.
And here again the words IXaafi. and KaraXX. 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; (d) our
alienatioti 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." — I 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
genesiSy with which we are now concerned.
(l) 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
piade out of one blood every nation of men to seek
ii. 2.] MISSIONARY APPLICATION. 107
after their Lord, if haply at least " (as might be
expected) ^' they would feel for Him"^ — 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." ^
(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 con-
science 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 voca-
bularies 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, 'M must," "I ought." (5) There is
the instinct oi sacrifice^ which, if not absolutely universal,
is at least all but so — the sense of impurity and un-
worthiness, 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."
* Acts xvii. 27. ^ Jonah i. 5.
io8 MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT
(i) 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 in-
scription 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." ^
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 WTites
progress on his standard, and goes forward beyond
the lines of Christ, loses natural as well as supernatural
religion — " he hath not God."^ (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
' I Jolin ii. 28. " 2 John 9.
ii.2.] OF THE ATONEMENT, 109
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 — wdth 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 some-
thing 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
no MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT
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
Hke 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."^ 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 onlyone type of thought and character.^ Outside these
races it is and must ever be, non-existent. We may ex-
cept the fanciful perversion of a few idle people in London,
Calcutta, or Ceylon, captivated for a season or two by
' Matt, xxiii. 15.
* Bouddhism, it is now said, appears to be on the wane, and the
period for its disappearance 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 Bouddhistsat 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 " mighly forces which are
destined to sweep the earth."
ii 2.] OF THE ATONEMENT, III
'' the light of Asia." We may except also a very few
more remarkable cases where the esoteric principle or
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.^ It once ele-
vated 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 im-
pressiveness. But whole realms of thought and feehng
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 or
passionate enthusiasm. Each people has a hero during
this Hfe, call him demigod, or what we will. But such
men are idolised by one race alone. The very qualities
* That modern English writers have been more than just to
Mohammed is proved overv^rhehningly by the living Missionary who
knows Mohammedanism h&^i.— Mohammed and Mohammedans. Dr.
Koello.
112 MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT
which procure them an apotheosis are precisely those
which prove how narrow the type is which they repre-
sent ; 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. Augus-
tine. 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 pro-
pitiation for the whole world.
Towards the close of this Epistle St. John oracularly
utters three great canons of universal Christian con-
sciousness— "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 sock;ty, we have only to read the Police-reports to
justify the Apostle. In volumes of travels, again, in the
ii.2.] OF THE ATONEMENT. 113
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 mis-
sionary 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.
Da7'kness.'\ The schoolmen well said that there is a four-
fold darkness — of nature, of ignorance, of misery, of sin. The
symbol of light applied to God must designate perfect good-
ness and beauty, combined with blissful consciousness of it,
and transparent luminous clearness of wisdom.
Ver. 7. The blood of Jesus His Sort] Sc. poured forth.
This word (the Blood) denotes more vividly and effectively
than any other could do three great realities of the Chris-
tian 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
8
114 MISSIONARY APPLICATION OF THE EXTENT
around us is just at the opposite extreme. It is a semi-
doketism which is manifested in two different forms, (i) 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 (i 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 symbolisfn.
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 v/ounds, 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, claniat Die esse
hommem, 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 den}^ Him to be God, since, being God's
natural Son, He must needs be of the same essence with Him-
self; and the Nestorians, who make two persons, which, if
fi.2.] OF THE ATONEMENT, 1 15
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 Scrip-
ture 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. 'jj, 78.) Observe on this verse its unison
of thought and feeling with Apoc. i. 5, xxii. 14.
Chap. ii. I. 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 ; ^ once here of Christ.
" And now, O thou drooping sinner, let me bespeak thee in
^ John xiv. 16, 26, XV. 26, xvi. 7,
n6 MISSIONAJ^Y APPLICATION.
St. Austin's ^ 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., Theologice iv., de Filio. See Thomassin,
Dogm. TheoL, lib. ix., cap. 6, Tom. iv. 220, zz"].)
Ver. 2. Not for ours onlyJ] This large-hearted after-
thought 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" (i Cor. i. 2).
' Auc:. in loc.
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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." — I 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 correspond-
ence 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 con-
tracted 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
i.e.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 1 19
voice. Instead of the beloved Name which all who love
it will easily supply/ St. John uses the reverential He, the
pronoun which specially belongs to Christ in the vocabu-
larly of the Epistle.^ ^' He that saith he abideth in Him "
is bound, even as He once walked, to be ever walking.
I.
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 there-
fore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven
is perfect." ^ But he considered that some more human
model was necessary for the moral striven He re-
commends novel-readers, when they are charmed or
strengthened by some conception of pure manhood or
womanhood, to carr}^ that conception with them into
their own lives. He would have them ask them-
selves 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
^ " Nomen facile supplent credentes, plenum pectus habentes
memoria Domini." — Bejigel.
- 'B/feiros in our Epistle belongs to Christ in every place but one
where it occurs (l John ii. 6, iii. 3, 5, 7, 16, iv. 17 ; of. 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.
3 Matt. vi. 45.
120 THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK
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 y 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 ex-
clusively, b}^ personal influence in some form. When
a process of deterioration and decay has set in in any
hum.an 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 cha-
racter. 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-sacri-
ficing, 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."^ The
^ 6^4'as l3\a(7qj7}fj.ouures (2 Peter ii, 10 ; Judc v. 8).
"•6.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE.
121
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 hving ;
that we may therefore use that little word is about
Christ in the lofty sense of St. John—'' even as He
/5 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
122 THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK
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 " : —
"Then 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 wordj
Weariness not on your brow.
E3^es rekindling, and pra3^ers
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." '
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
' Poems by Matthew Arnold ("Rugby Chapel/' Nov. 1857),
vol. ii., pp. 251, 255.
ii.6.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE, 1 23
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."^
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
moraUty," says Mr. Mill, *Ms 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.' "^ The answer is this, (i) 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
* 8s if.bvo% ffweTradqaev T\avcjij.hi>} k8(J[xi^. Acta Paul, et Thee. 1 6,
Ada. Apost. Apoc. 47. Edit. Tischendorf.
2 On Liberty. John Stuart Mill (chap. iii.).
124 THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK
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 expres-
sive 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 there-
fore 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
ii.6.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 125
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/ 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 his-
torically^ in his Gospel, not without allusion to the
Saviour's homelessness on earth, to His itinerant life
of beneficence and of teaching.^ 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, ac-
cording to St. John, the loftiest ideal of purity, peace,
self-sacrifice, unbroken communion with God ; the inex-
haustible 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 mar-
vellous record of word aiid work. Let us trace that
' John viii. 12-35. ^oi" Apostolic usage of the word, see Acts i. 21 ;
Rom. vi. 4; Ephes. ii. 10; Col. iii. 7.
* John vii, I.
• "Auibulando docebat," — Brefsihneider,
126 THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK
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 prooemium
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, net 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 sun-
shine of heaven streams in upon those who have eyes
to see.-^
' John xiii. 1-6.
ii. 6.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 2^
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." ^ 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 apphed to us.
The apparently small things of fife 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
^ "Iva TToiu) . . /cat reXetwcrw (John iv. 34).
128 THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK
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 encouragemient 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 think — 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,
ii. 6.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE. 1 29
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 church-
yard, 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
9
ISO THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK
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 Ever-
lasting 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. So. 2.
Ver. 7. FreshJ] There are two quite different words alike
translated new in A. V. : one of these is the word used here
(Kaii/09); the other (yeos). The first always signifies /z^ze; in
quaUty — 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 yr^j/z ("3^oungly,'' Shakespeare,
Coriolafius). The other term {yio^) is simply receiit ; 7iew
chronologically in the world of time.
TVhi'ch ye heard f}'om the beginning.'] Probably a recog-
nition of St. Paul's teaching at Ephesus, and of his Epistle to
the Ephesians.
ii. 6.] A PERSONAL INFLUENCE, 131
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 atmo-
sphere of St. John's thought. " Again a fresh commandment
I am w-riting to you" [this commandment, charity, is no unreal
and therefore delusive standard of duty]. Taken as one
great " whole " (6) " it is true," matter of observable historical
fact, because it is realised in Him w^ho gave the command-
ment ; capable of realisation, and even in measure realised in
you. [And this can be actually done by Christians, and re-
cognised 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. Sca7idal.~\ In Greek is the rendering of two
Hebrew words, (i) That against which we trip and stumble,
a stumbling-block ; (2) A hook or snare.
Ver. II. 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, w^ho 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 Conuneiitary, 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
132 THE INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT LIFE WALK,
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).
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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." — i John
ii. 15, 16.
AN adequate development of words so compressed
and pregnant as these would require a separate
treatise, or series of treatises.^ 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.
I.
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, (i) It means the creation,^ the universe.
' After all deduc'ions for the lack of accurate and searching textual
exegesis, perhaps Bossuet's "Traite de la concupiscence, ou Exposition
de ces Paroles de Saint Jean, I John ii. 15-17 " {CEuvres de Bossuet^
Tom. vii., 380-420), remains unrivalled.
^ The word Kdn/nos 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. i). From schools of philo-
sophy it passed into the language of poets and writers of elevated
prose. It is somewhat singular that the Romans, perhaps from Greek
influence, came to apply "mundus" by the same process to the ivorld,
as it had also originally signified ornament, especially of female die^s
ii. 15, i6.] THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE. 137
So our Lord in His High-priestly prayer — ''Thou
lovedst Me before the foundation of the world." ^ (2) It
is used for the earth locally as the place where man
resides;^ and whose soil the Son of God trod for
awhile. '' I am no more in the world, but these are
in the world." ^ (3) It denotes the chief inhabitants of
the earth, they to whom the counsels of God mainly
point — men universally. Such a transference is com-
mon 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 struc-
ture 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."* " 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." ^
(See Richard Bentley against Boyle, Opera PhiloL, 347-445, and Notes,
Humboldt's Cosmos, xiii.). In the LXX. Koa/u-os does not appear
as the translation of uhw its spiritual equivalent in Hebrew ; but
very often in the sense of " ornament " and "order." (See Troram.,
Concord. Or. in LXX., I, 913), but it is found as zi^or/^/ 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.
•* John xvii. 24.
* In Hebrew 7'17\ habitable globe; translated okov/xevr) in LXX.
(see Psalm Ixxxix. Ii).
^ John V. II.
* John vi. 31 ; 1 John ii. 3.
" John iii. 16. It may be added that these are p.issages where the
138 THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE
In none of these senses can the world here be under-
stood.^
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, sus-
ceptible 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 depart-
ment " good " collectively ; when crowned by God's
masterpiece in man, "very good."^ ^'All things," our
Apostle tells us, " were made through Him (the Word),
and without Him was not any thing made that was
made."^ 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 Iiighcr} 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."^
This anti-world, this caricature of creation, this
world as humanity generally passes into the darker meaning of that
portion of it which is actively hostile to God. John xv. i8, 19.
* See note on ver. 16 at the end of the next Discourse.
2 Gen. i. 31.
» John i. 3.
* The writer does not happen to remember any commentator who
has pointed out this subtle but powerful thought, vav rii i» T^
k6(7(i(^—U rod KoaiJLOV icrlv (1 John ii. 16).
» I John V. 19.
ii. 15, 16.] THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE. 139
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 sub-
mission to the higher principles of conscience and
spirit/ 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 Jlesh of Jesus, to
record words in which He refers to it ?^ 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
' * Johh^ivn ; 1 John iv. 2, 3 ; 2'Jchn 7T
* John vi. 51, 53-56; I John iv. 2, 3 ; 2 John 7.
140 THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE.
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 befiev-
ing 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 advan-
tage 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^ 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
' 7] iXa^QvlcL TOO j3ioo._
ii. 15, i6.] THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE. 141
world) is not a substantive thing, not an original in-
gredient 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 teach-
ing, 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 in-
tended 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.
142 THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE,
The lust of the flesh is in essence the rebelHon 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."^ 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 e^^es, and a tree to be
desired to make one wise." ^ Then seems to have come
^ Gen. iii. 5. ^ cei,, }|j, 5, - -
ii. 15, i6.] THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE. 143
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." ^ 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 ivJiat 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
» Gen. iii. 7^
144 THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE.
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.^ And so the world,
God's beautiful world, now becomes to us an idol. If
we are so lost in the possession 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 w^ith modern poets we find
content, calm, happiness, purity, rest, simply in con-
templating 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 par-
takers. 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 doc-
trine of the Fall, thovght much worse of man practically
' S. Augustin., Tract, injoami, Epist.
ii. 15, i6.] THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE. 145
than the Fathers of the Church. They bowed before
martyrdom and purity, and beheved in them with a
child-hke 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 unht gulf
of the heart when He tells us '* what proceeds out of
the heart of man," ^ 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 cap-
able 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 laud-
able, 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
' Mark vii. 21.
10
146 THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE,
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 circum-
stances 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 httle 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 IL, 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
ii. 15, i6.] THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE. 147
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 where-
ever 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 " Httle ones " that he has
written to them because they " know the Father."
St. John dees 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 ;' *
and of the "will of God:' ^ The first title has more
sweetness than majesty ; the second more majesty than
' I Jdiii ii. 15. 16. 2 it,i(j ^^j.. 17.
148 THE WORLD WE MUST NOT LOVE.
sweetness.^ 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
'Move not" of this verse contains ''words of extirpa-
tion ; " ^ it ends with others which are intended to draw
us with cords of a man, and with bands of love.
* No portion of Prof. Westcott's Commentary is more thorough
or more exquisite than his exposition here. {Epistles of St. John, 66.)
* 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."— I 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
ISO USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
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, (i) 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 m 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.'^
I.
There can be no doubt, then, that up to a certain
point this conviction is a necessary element of Chris-
tian 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 sur-
prising and almost incredible levity. There is a dis-
position 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
* irapdyeTai. 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 utuveisality of the antithesis (6 5e iroiCbv k.t.\.)
and its intensely individual form, lead us to take Koafxos in that
universal and inclusive signification which alone is of abiding interest
to every ajc.
ii. 17.] THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. 151
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 "^o 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 on the coral reef, or some
bright bird 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 inex-
orably 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.
152 USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
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 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 im.pression 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 con-
viction alone always a herald of salvation ? Is it
ii. 17.] THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. 153
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 in-
definitely more which corresponds to the first proposi-
tion 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
dovN^n, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and
never continueth in one stay." ^ 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." ^ 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." ^ 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,
^ Job xiv. I, 2. Cf. X. 20-22.
2 Such seems to be the meaning of HivlX (Ps. xxxix. 14).
' Ps. xc. 9.
154 USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
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." ^ In the New Testa-
ment 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 ; " ^ 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 langucge is partly to be ascribed to a desire that
the attention of Christians should be fixed on the ret-rn
of their Lord, rather than upon their own death. But,
' James iv. 13-17. The passage I Pet. i. 25 is taken from the magni-
ficent prophecy in which the fragility of all llesh, 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.
'^ " Possessa onerant, amata inquinant, ainisc>a cruciant." — St.
Bernard.
ii. 17.] THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. 155
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 ex-
ceeded Christendom, is a gigantic proof that it is not
safe to allow unlimited licence to melancholy specula-
tion. 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 Siddhartha
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 Siddhartha, 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
frcm three causes — the very fact of existence, desire,
and ignorance. The things revealed by sense are evil.
None has that continuance and fixity which are the
marks 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
156 USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
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, sick-
ness, 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 con-
tradictory principle lies under utterances which have
so much superficial resemblance.
Siddhartha 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 fife of purity, of alms, of renunciation, of
austerity. The prize of his high calling was not ever-
lasting life, but everlasting death ; for what else is
ii. 17.] THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. 157
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.-^ 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 qualifi-
cation 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 ever-
lasting y?x//y, ^^ he abideth jor 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 rock-
hke sohdity, of the permanent abiding, under and over
him who " doethy Of the devotee who became in his
' The view here taken of Bouddhism follows that of M. J, Barthe-
Icmy St. Hiiaire. Le Boucidha et sa Religion. Premiere partie, chap
v., pp. 141-182.
158 USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
turn the Bouddha, ^akhya-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.^
*^ 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 col-
lections of Pensees" 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
' " 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-Caitesians. As they
are neither for nor against De^caries, so they are neither for nor
against God. They are just children. A child is neither atheist nor
deist. He is nothing." — Voltaire, Diet. Flul., Art. Athei6me.
ii. 17.] THE VAN IT V OF THE WORLD. 159
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 conse-
crates 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.^
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
' 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
tri.th is to be found in Dr. Johnson's " Pra3'er for the Last Day in
the Year," as given in Mr. Stobart's Daily Services for Christian
tioiiseliolds, pp. 99, 1 00.
i6o USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
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 ; some-
thing better than vulgarising 'Canity of vanities" by
vapid iteration.
• It is hard to conceive a life in which death and
evanescence have nothing that enforces their recog-
nition. 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. 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
fife.
Not the transitory, but the permanent; not the fleet-
ing, but the abiding ; not death but life, is the con-
clusion 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
ii. 17.] THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. 161
exemplified in a believer? Daily, perpetual, constant
doing the will of Gcd. This is the end far beyond —
someM hat inconsistent with — obstinately morbid medita-
tion 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 hke a tree over that stream has risen our Lord
Jesus Christ. He wdlled to plant Himself as it were
over the river. Are you w^hirled 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 alter-
nate 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 some-
thing 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 hghted slowly
and without noise, until gradually, we know not how,
II
l62 USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF
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."
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, opes, et foeda voluptas;
Haec 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
crecteth."
In tracing the various senses of ** the world " we have not
dwelt prominently upon the conception of the world as embodied
ii. 17.] THE VANITY OF THE WORLD. 163
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 aka^ov'ia rov ^iov may be projected outwardly, and
set in a material framework in the gorgeous description of the
wealth and luxury of Rome in Apoc. xyiii. 11 -14. M. Renan
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 Frcescr, Hcer.,
36). The Apocryphal 'Acta lohannis ' (known to Eusebius
and to St. Augustine), relates at length an inter\'iew at Rome
betw-een Domitian and St. John — not without interest, in spite
of some miraculous embellishment. Acta. A^ost. AJ>oc.
Tischendorf, 266-271.
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DISCOURSE VIII.
KNOWING ALL THINGS,
"But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all
things." — I 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.^ Yet the diligent reader
* The olv in ver. 24 is not recognised by the R. V. nor adopted
in Professor Westcott's text. One uncial (A), however, inserts it
in I 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 begin-
nings 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 o^v expresses
something more than continuity of narrative. It indicates a connec-
tion 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 olv is
then naturall}' 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 Speakers Commentary, iv., 381,
ii.20. KNOWING ALL THINGS, 167
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 Vv'hich 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."^
The passages just before and after St. Johji's splendid
annunciation ^ in our text are occupied with the subject
of Antichrist, here first mentioned in Scripture. In
this section of our Epistle Antichrist is (i) revealed^
and (2) refuted,
(i) Antichrist is revealed by the very crisis which
the Church was then traversing. From this especially,
fi-om the transitory character of a world drifting by
i Jer. xxxi. 34. "^ Vers. 18, 22.
1 68 KNOWING ALL THINGS.
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."^
Deep in the heart of the Apostohc 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." ^ 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,
^ 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 ouni-
science. Cf. Mark xiii. 32, and our Lord's profound sayi:ig, Acts i. 7.
2 John V. 43.
ii.20.] KNOWING ALL THINGS. 169
and creative of the future, sum up in themselves ten-
dencies 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 some-
times seen, even in the high places of the Church.
But it is evident that as yet the Antichrist has not
come. For v^herever St. John mentions this fearful
impersonation of evil, he connects the manifestation
of his influence with absolute denial of the true Man-
hood, of the Messiahship, of the everlasting sonship
of Jesus, of the Father, Who is His and our Father.^
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." ^ Not only this. " Yea further, ye your-
selves have a hallowing oil from Him who is hallowed,
a chrism from the Christ, an unction from the Holy One,
* I John ii. 22, iv. 2, 3 ; 2 John 7-9.
2 Ve:. 19.
I70 KNOWING ALL THINGS.
even from the Son of God." Chrism (as we are reminded
by the most accurate of scholars) is always the material
W'ith 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 mjystic 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;^
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 ^) 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." ^ We shall presently have a
direct mention of the Holy Ghost. " Hereby we know
1 Bingham's Antiquities.^ i., 462-524, 565.
^ For other instances of this characteristic, see a subject introduced
ii. 29, expanded iii. 9 — another subject introduced iii. 21, expanded v.
H-
^ TO avrov xptT^'a, ver. 27, not to o.vt6 ("the same anointing," A. V.)
"This most unusual order throws astrong emphasis on the pronoun."
(Prof. Wcstcctt.) The writer tl ankfullj^ quotes tVis as it seems to
him to bring out the dogmatic significance of the word, empbr.s sed
as it is by this ui.usual order— the chrism, the Spirit of Bini.
ii.20.] KNOWING ALL THINGS. 171
that He abideth in us, from the Spirit which He gave
us."i
Antichrist is refuted by a result of this great prin-
ciple 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." ^
How are we to understand this startling expression ?
If we receive any teachers as messengers commis-
sioned 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 imp3rt. They are there-
fore 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 effec-
tive 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
* I John iii. 24.
2 The reading of the A. V, is received into Tischendorfs text and
adopted by the R. V. Another reading omits koX and substitutes
Trdfres for Trdvra 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
irdPTa is concerned, nothing is gained by the change, as the statement
recurs in a slightly varied form in ver. 27.
172 KNOWING ALL THINGS.
asterisk directing the eye to the Master's promise in
the Gospel, which is at once the warrant and the ex-
planation 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 ^^ The express limita-
tion 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 w^hich
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
' John xiv, 26,
ii.2o.] KNOWING ALL THINGS. 173
teacher writing to Christian men who had either been
born in the atmosphere of Christian tradition, or
had hved 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 faith-
ful 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 remxained
among them, illustrated, expanded, applied, but abso-
lutely unaltered.'^ 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 of
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 fife, 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. ^ There is an in-
structive distinction between the tenses — ''as His
unction is teaching " — " as it taught you." ^ The teaching
1 "Let that abide in 3"ou which ye heard from the beginning,"
I John ii. 24. Cf. " Testifying that this is the true grace of God where-
in ye stand," I 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.
2 Ver. 27
* 5i5dcr/ce£— eSt'Sa^ei'.
174 KNOWING ALL THINGS.
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 signi-
ficance 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 inexhaust b'e 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 a?le?p who is ever learning from a
teacher Who is always supplying her with fresh and
varied lessons ? The Church must be ever iearng,in
ii 20.] KNOWING ALL THINGS. 175
because the anointing which '^taught" once for all is
also ever ''teaching."
This profound saying is therefore x:hiefly 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, intf^Uectual, 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 man-
ward and Godward, so that St. Paul speaks of it with
hushed reverence as " The BodyT'^ 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
* I Cor. xi. 29.
176 KNOWING ALL THINGS,
or one that is tremendous. It awaits its consecration,
its blessirg, its transformation into a som.ething 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 upction which is
'' ever teaching," whereby we ^'know all things."
NOTES.
Ch. ii. 18-28,
Ver. 18. A lasi hour,'] iaxaTT] copa. ''Hour" is used in
all St. John's writings of a definite point of time, which is
also providentially fixed. (Cf. John xvii. i ; Apoc. iii. 3.) In
something of this elevated signification Shakespeare appears
to employ the word in T/ie Te?iipest in relation to his own life :
Prospero. " How's the day ? "
Ariel. "On the sixili 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
KNOWING ALL THINGS. 177
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." [S^alal,
lib. vii., 10, cf. on the whole subject, SL Aztg. Lib. de Bono.
Persez'., 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. CyJ>., B. de
Simp lie.
Ver. 24. Ye shall abide in the Son, a?zdi?i 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 in-
veighed against those who, though they pretended to acknow-
ledge 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 foUoweth
'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 Exiinia laus doctrincB, 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 fioweth. 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 per-
severing in it, we continue in, the Son and the Father. Suitable
to this is that promise of our blessed Saviour, John xiv. 2;^^
* 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.
12
178 KNOWING ALL THINGS.
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 wdth 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 con-
sidered, and a duty w'hich 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 amplifica-
tion 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 miOtive, drawn from the second
coming of Christ. The benefit is reiterated, and much
amplified, in the seven-and-twentieth verse, as to its ex-
cellency 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 y 357.
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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. 'Etti crol Kvpie
rjXivia-a, is the LXX. translation of Psalm xxx. i.
Is ever ;ptcrifying himself r^ " 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 iit loc.)
We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He isi\
*' 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). — Beiigel.
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 en-
deavours more towards benefi.cence than purity. Doing good
1 82 NOTES.
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, (i) 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 ih.e.;poiver of sin consists in
these things, (i) 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.*
Convening 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 leirt to sin. ** The
bees may be at work, and very busy wi hli, 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. (i) 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.)
NOTES. 183
Ver. 6. That He might destroy the wo7^ks of the devzl.'\
The word here used for Satan {diajBoXos) is given 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. 2"/.
He here points to the dispossessions, so many of which are
recorded by the Synoptics.
III. ver. 9. His seed abideth 171 hz'jn.'] Of these words
only two interpretations appear to be fairly possible, (i) The
first would understand "His seed" as " God's seed,^^ the^
stock or family of His children who are the true CH^.^ n.T^ seed
of God (Mai. ii. 15). In favour of this intrepretation 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 cmtpiia in
Num. xxiv. 20; Deut. xxv. i; Jer. 1. 16; Gen. iii. 15;
Isa. xiv. 22 \ Num. xxiii. 10; Isa. xv. 9 ; 2 Chron. xiv. 2"] \
Isa. xiv. 30.) 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 " (o-Trepjua) 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 " [(nrepfxa avrov evalrco /xevet) is really a quotation
from the LXX. {ov to (nreppa avrov iv avra — 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 chiefiy in St. John's mind in the Epistle.
(Cf. I John i. 1, Gen. i. i. — 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
1 84 NOTES,
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,
(i) Herbs 3'*'^ = all grasses and plants which '^ yield seedS
(2) Trees *■■}?) fy = 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
I John V. 4«
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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 * itself — yet another asterisk refer-
ring to the Gospel,^ to the very substance of the teaching
which the believers of Ephesus had first received from
St. Paul,^ and which had been emphasized by St. John,
' Ver. II.
"^ 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.
^ "The messuage that ye heard /ro/w the beginningy' coni. i John '
ii. 24.
tOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS UNLESS A PL LI ED. 1S9
This message is announced not merely as a so;,nd-
ing sentiment, but for the purpose of being ciirricd
out into action. As in moral subjects virtues and .ices
are best illustrated by their contraries^; so, beside the
bright picture of the Son of God, the Apostle points
to the sinister likeness of Cain.- 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 effec-
tual in operation.^ The dark opposite of this is then
delineated * in consonance with the mode of representa-
tion just above.^ 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.^
But if this may be claimed as the one real proof of
conformity to Christ, much more is the limited partial
* "Contrariorum eadem est scientia."
2 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 Testa-
ment there are many references; e.g., light and life. I John i. I-S ;
John i. 4 ; Ps. xxxvi. 9. There is, however, another historical refer-
ence a few verses above (l 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 ApoUonius of
Tyana to Ephesus. ApoUonius 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).
3 Ver. 14. * Ver. 12.
« Vers. H, 15. * Ver. 16.
190 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
sacrifice of ^'this world's good " required.^ This spirit,
and the conduct which it requires in the long run, will
be found to be the test of all solid spiritual comfort,^ of
all true self-condemnation or self-acquittal.^
We may say of the verses prefixed to this discourse,
that they bring before us charity in its idca^ in its
example^ in its characteristics — in theory^ in action, in
life.
I.
We have here love in its idea, "hereby know we
love." Rather ^'hereby know we The LoveT"^
Here the idea of charity in us runs parallel with that
in Christ. It is a subtle but true remark,^ 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 beauti-
ful 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
' Ver. 17.
2 Vers. 18, 19.
* Vers. 20, 21.
< " 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.
^ Of Prof. Wettcott.
iii. 16.18.] UNLESS APPLIED. 191
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 ? " ^ 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 necessar}^, because without these grand con-
ceptions 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 specula-
tions, because it has no intention of their costing any-
thing. Some of the most abject creatures em.bodied
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.^
» Ver. 17,
* It is suggestive that on Quinquagesima Sunday, when I Cor. xiii.
is the Epistle, St. Luke xviii. 31 sqq., is the Gospel. The lyric of love
is joined vsith a fragment of its epic. That fragment tells us of a
192 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
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 thou-
sands 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 congrega-
tion 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" ^ of this world which he possesses.
love which not only proclaimed itself ready to be sacrificed (Luke
xviii. 31-33), but condescended individually to the blind importunate
mendicant who sat by the wa3-side begging (vers. 35-43).
• The word here is /Si'cs not fw??. '• B:os period of life ; hence
the means by which it is sustained, means of life."' (Ar^hlp. Ticncii.)
Hi. 16-18.]
UNLESS APPLIED '93
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
guttered upon the mitre which tradition has assigned
to him. But when he had risen to speak, he only re-
peated—" 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, smihng,
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 Uke the hearers at Ephesus, are not prepared for
It is to be wished that the R. V. had either kept "the good" of
the A. v., or adopted the word "Uving"— the translation of §ios m
Mark xii. 44; Luke xxi. 4.
13
194 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
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 pre-
valent at the present time.
(l) 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 woiks;
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.^
The only spiritual emotions spoken of in this Epistle
are joy, confidence, assuring our hearts before Him" :^
the first as the result of receiving the history of Jesus
in the Gospel, the Incarnation, and the blessed com-
munion with God and the Church which it involves ;
the second as tried by tests of a most practical kind.
* 2 John 3.
' I John i. 4, ii. 28, iii. 21, iv. 17, v. 14, iii. 19.
iii. i6-i8.] UNLESS APPLIED. 195
(2) The next of these mutilated views of the Christian
Hfe is doctrinalistn — which makes it consist of a series
or bundle of doctrines apprehended and expressed cor-
rectly, 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 justifi-
cation ? 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
kumanitarianism — 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 fives 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 oiT 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 laud-
able provision of recreations for the poor — are an
innocent interlude in fashionable life; som.etimes, alas I
a kind of work of superercgatior, to atone for the want
196 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
of devotion or of purity — possibly an untheological
survival of a belief in justification by works.
4. A third fragmentary view of the Christian life is
observationism, which makes it to consist in a bundle
or series of observances. Frequent services and com-
munions, 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 exist-
ence. 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
iii. i6-i8,] UNLESS APPLIED. 197
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, (i) 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.* St. John
recognises feeling, whether of supernatural or natural
origin;^ 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 w^ealth 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 procemium with the other of the fourth
Gospel, we have the most perf'?ct statement of the
dogma of the Incarnation. As we read thoughtfully
on, dogma after dogma stands cut in relief. The
divinity of the Word, the reality of His manhood, the
effect of His atonement. His intercession, His con-
tinual 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
' I John i. 4.
^ TO (T7rXd7xi'a (ver. 17). This however is the only occurrence of
the word in St. John's writings. The substantive cnr\dyxi'J- = <^>^'^^ions,
is found in classical poets. But the verb a-rrXayxv'-^ofia.L occurs only in
LXX. and New Testament — and thus, like ayairrj, is almost born within
the circle of revealed truth. The new dispensation so rich in the
mercy of God (Luke i. 78), so fruitful in mercy from man to man, may
well claim a new vocabulary in the department of tenderness and
pity.
198 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
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 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 a Divine Father-
hood." (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 Uving 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 scarcely 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 hfe 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 ad-
iii.i6-i8.] UNLESS APPLIED, 199
dressed ; with its view of the Christian hfe 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 pre-
sence of Christ ; with its deep m3^£tical realisation of
the double flow from the pierced side upon the cross,
and its thrice-repeated exchange of the sacramental
order " water and blood, "^ 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, exhahng in worship, softening
into sympathy with man's suffering and sorrow. It
calls for the believing soul, the devout heart, the help-
ing 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)^ "his brother have need,
and shutteth up his heart against him, how doth the
love of God ^ 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-w^eaving tribe,"
who expend a sigh of sentiment upon such spectacles,
and nothing more. Or they may be hardened pro-
fessors of the ''dismal science," who have learned to
* I John V. 6, conf. John xix. 34.
^ 6ea>prj, ver. 1 7.
3 " The love of which God is at once the olject, and the author, and
the pattern," (Prof. Westcott.)
200 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
consider a sigh as the luxury of ignorance or of feeble-
ness. 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 sufftrring.
Even when they are not actually in sight of brethren
in want, their ears are ever hearing the ceaseless moan-
ing of the sea ot 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 w^on 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."^ 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. ^ " There are men
' 1 Jchn iv. 19, ''■ Lord Mcath.
iii. i6-i8. UNLESS APPLIED. 201
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 illus-
tration 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
202 LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS
charitable ; buthe 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. Senfeiit. Heb.
Vers. 19, 20, 21. These verses probably present more diffi-
culties than any other portion of this Epistle, (i) 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 : 6Vt iav KarayivuxTKr] rjfxoov rj Kapbia, on fxeL^cov €<jt\v 6
Q(6s. The difficulty is in the second 6Vi, which is ignored by
the Vulgate and A. V. The Revisers (after Hoogeveen, Be
Fartic. p. 589, ed. Schiitz. and others) point o,ri lav 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 \av Karayivwa-KT} (ver. 20) and
eav fXT) KarayivdoaKT] (ver. 2i) are both z'n ;protasi, and in strict
correlation with each other. Dean Alford suggests an ellipsis
c,i the verb substantive before the second 6Vi, and would trans-
late : ' Because if our heart condemn us, (it is) because God *
etc. He instances such ca<ies as d ns iv XptaTco, (he is) Kaivrj
KTiais, which are quite dissimilar ; but the following from
St. Chrysostom (T. X. p. 122 B) fully bears out this construc-
tion ; *0 ^vyos pov )(pr]aT6s K.r.i. ei fie oIk aladcvrj rrjs KovporrjTos,
■'OTI 7Tpo6vixLav eppcopevrjv ovK e'xeis ; where I have expunged drjXov
before 6Vi on the authority of three out of four MSS. collated
for these Homilies, the fourth, with the old Latin version, for
on irpoBvplav reading prj OavpcKjjjs, TrpoSvpiav yup. In my note
on that place I have pointed out that the ellipsis is not of
b^Xov, but of TO aiTLov, 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 cur heart can be a valid reason for our heart condemning
us. I would, therefore, take the second on for quod, wotquia,
and suppose an ellipsis of brfkov, as in i Tim. vi, 7, where see
note." — Otiuni Noi'viccnse, by Frederic Field, M.A., LL.D.
(PP- 1.53, 15).
Dr. Field's rendering then is : " For if our heart condemn
us, (it is evident) that God is greater than our heart."
203
in. 16-18.] UNLESS APPLIED.
(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) awakenzjig 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 con-
science 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. Ber7tard in Cant,)
o -"-.1-.^^ >>|^- 53^.Sx ^_f -^.^ r:-^ -.-^ s^ si ?:
E t:3 1- u 5 "T" D S r^ <« >--C o c z cs oj S -o oj tn 2 > '^ -^
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2o6 NOTES.
NOTES.
Ch. iv. I, 7.
Ver. I. Believe not any s^irit'\ fxfj iravrl irvev^xart TrtoT-everf.
The different constructions of iria-reveiu in St. John must be
carefully noted, {a) With dative as here — " believe not such
an one; " take him not upon trust, at his own word ; credit
him not with veracity. So in the Gospel, our Lord continually
complains that the Jews did not even believe Him on His
word — strong and clear as that word was with all the freshness
of Heaven, and all the transparency of truth. John v. 38,
46, viii. 45, 46, X. 2>1'
{b) Triareveiv 6iV=to make an act of faith in, to repose in as
divine. John iii. 36, iv. 39, vi. 35, xi. 25 ; i John v. 10.
(c) With an accusative=to be persuaded of the thing — to
believe it with an implied conviction of permanence in the
persuasion — as in the beautiful verse (iv. 16) — " we are fully
persuaded of the love of God," we make it the creed of our
heart. TreTnanvKafiev Tr{V dydnrjv.
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14
DISCOURSE X.
BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT,
"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in
the Day of Judgment : because as He is, so are we in this world." —
I John iv. 17.
IT has been so often repeated that St. John's
eschatology is idealized and spiritual, that people
now seldom pause to ask what is meant by the words.
Those who repeat them most frequently seem to think
that the idealized means that which will never come
into the region of historical fact, and that the spiritual
is best defined as the unreal. Yet^ without postulating
the Johannic authorship of the Apocalypse — where the
Judgment is described with the m.ost awful accompani-
ments of outward solemnity^ — there are two places in
this Epistle which are allowed to drop out of view, but
which bring us face to face with the visible manifesta-
tions of an external Advent. It is a peculiarity of
St. John's style (as we have frequently seen) to strike
some chord of thought, so to speak, before its time;
to allow the prelusive note to float away, until suddenly,
after a time, it surprises us by coming back again with
a fuller and bolder resonance. " And now, my sons,"^
(had the Apostle said) "abide in Him, that if He shall
be manifested, we may have confidence, and not be
^ Apoc. XX. 12, 13. 2 I John ii. 28.
iv.i7.] BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 2ii
ashamed shrinking from Him^ at His coming." ^ In
our text the same thought is resumed, and the reality
of the Coming and Judgment in its external manifesta-
tion as emphatically given as in any other part of the
New Testament.'
We may here speak of the conception of the Day of
the Judgment : of the fear with which that conception
is encompassed ; and of the sole means of the removal
of that fear which St. John recognises.
I.
We examine the general conception of "the Day of
the Judgment," as given in the New Testament.
As there is that which with terrible emphasis is
marked off as ''the Judgment,"* ''the Parousia," so
there are other judgments or advents of a preparatory
character. As there are phenomena known as mock
suns, or haloes round the moon, so there are fainter
reflections ringed round the Advent, the Judgment.^
» aX(sxvvGO:iJ.^v ott' aircv, see Jerem. xii. 13 (for ^ r"f3). Prof.
Westcott happily quotes, "as a guilty thing surprised."
2 Coming, ev rrj irapovaia aiiToO. The word is not found else-
where in the Johannic group of writings. But by his use of it here,
St. John falls into Hne with the whole array of apostolic witnesses—
with St. Matthew (xxiv. 3-27, 37, 39) ; with" St. Paul (passim) ; with
St. James (v. 7, 8); with St. Peter (2 Peter i. 16, iii. 4-12). This
fact may well warn critics of the precarious character of theories
founded upon " the negative phenomena of the books of the New
Testament." (See Professor Westcotfs excellent note, T/ic Epistles
of SI. John, ^o.)
3 (^^ rri vfiepg. T^s /f/)t'(T€ws)— "in the Day of the Judgment —
of. Apoc.'xiv. 7. We have "in the Judgment" (Matt. xii. 41, 42
Lukex. 14, xi. 31, 32)— the indefinite "day of judgment" (Matt. x.
15, xi. 22, 24; Mark vi. ii).
* 2 Pet. ii. 9, iii. 7— but " The Day of The Judgment," here only.
5 Cf. our Lord's words— " henceforth (ott' dpTi) ye shall see the Son
of Man coming:' Matt. xxvi. 64.)
212 BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
Thus, in the development of history, there are suc-
cessive cycles of continuing judgment ; preparatory
advents ; less completed crises^ as even the world calls
them.
But against one somewhat widely-spread way of
blotting the Day of the Judgment from the calendar
of the future — so far as believers are concerned —
we should be on our guard. Some good men think
themselves entitled to reason thus — " I am a Christian.
I shall be an assessor in the judgment. For me there
is, therefore, no judgment day." And it is even held
out as an inducement to others to close with this con-
clusion, that they " shall be delivered from the bugbear
of judgment."
The origin of this notion seems to be in certain
universal tendencies of modern religious thought.
The idolatry of the immediate — the prompt creation
of effect — is the perpetual snare of revivalism. Revi^
valism is thence fatally bound at once to follow the tide
of emotion, and to increase the volume of the waters
by which it is swept along. But the religious emotion
of this generation has one characteristic by which it
is distinguished from that of previous centuries. The
revivalism of the past in all Churches rode upon the
dark waves of fear. It worked upon human nature by
exaggerated material descriptions of hell, by solemn
appeals to the throne of Judgment. Certain schools
of biblical criticism have enabled men to steel them-
selves against this form of preaching. An age of soft
humanitarian sentiment — superficial, and incHned to
forget that perfect Goodness may be a very real cause
of fear — must be stirred by emotions, of a different kind.
The infinite sweetness of our Father's heart — the con-
clusions^ iilogically but effectively drawn from this, of
iv. 17.] BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 213
an Infinite good-nature, with its easy-going pardon,
reconciliation all round, and exemption from all that
is unpleasant — these, and such as these, are the only
available materials for creating a great volume of
emotion. An invertebrate creed ; punishment either
annihilated or mitigated ; judgment, changed from a
solemn and universal assize, a bar at which every
soul must stand, to a splendid, and — for all who can say
I am saved — a triumphant pageant in which they have
no anxious concern; these are the readiest instruments,
the most powerful leverage, with which to work exten-
sively upon masses of men at the present time. And
the seventh article of the Apostles' Creed must pass
into the limbo of exploded superstition.
The only appeal to Scripture which such persons
make, with any show of pkusibility, is contained in an
exposition of our Lord's teaching in a part of the fifth
chapter of the fourth Gospel.^ But clearly there are
three Resurrection scenes which may be discriminated
in those words. The first is spiritual, a present
awakening of dead souls,^ in those with whom the
Son of Man is brought into contact in His earthly
ministry. The second is a department of the same
spiritual Resurrection. The Son of God, with that
mysterious gift of Life in Himself,^ has within Him a
perpetual spring of rejuvenescence for a faded and dying
world. A renewal of hearts is in process during all
the days of time, a passage for soul after soul out of
death into life.^ The third scene is the general Resur-
rection and general Judgment.^ The first was the
resurrection of comparatively ftw ; the second of many
» John V. 21, 29. 2 Ver. 21. ^ Ver. 26.
* Ver. 24. 6 Ver. 28, 29.
214 BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
the third of all. If it is said that the believer ^^ cometh
not into judgment!^ the word in that place plainly
signifies condemnation}
Clear and plain above all such subtleties ring out the
awe-inspiring words: "it is appointed unto men once
to die, but after this the Judgment ; " '^ we must all
appear before the judgment-seat of Christ."^
Reason supplies us with two great arguments for the
General Judgment. One from the conscience of history,
so to speak ; the other from the individual conscience.
I. General history points to a general judgment.
If there is no such judgment to come, then there is
no one definite moral purpose in human society.
Progress would be a melancholy word, a deceptive
appearance, a stream that has no issue, a road that
leads nowhere. No one who believes that there is a
Personal God, Who guides the course of human affairs,
can come to the conclusion that the generations of man
are to go on for ever without a winding-up, which shall
decide upon the doings of all who take part in human
life. In the philosophy of nature, the affirmation or
denial of purpose is the affirmation or denial of God.
So in the philosophy of history. Society without the
* The writer ventures to lament the substitution of "judgment"
for "condemnation," ver. 24. R.V. It is a verbal consistency, or
minute accuracy, purchased at the heavy price of a false thought,
suggested to many readers who are not scholars. "In John's
language /cptVis is, {a) thsit judgment which came in pain and misery
to those who rejected the salvation oftered to mankind by Christ,
iii. 19, K.T.X., tpx^(^6ai els KpiaLV, to fall into the state of one thus
condemned, v. 24. {b) Judgment of condemnation to the wicked,
with ensuing rejection, v. 29." Grimm. Lex. N.T. 247. Between
this passage of the fourth Gospel and Apoc. xx., there is a marvellous
inner harmony of thought. "The first resurrection" (ver. 6) «
John V. '21, 26; then vv. II, 12, 13 = John v. 28, 29. .
' Heb. Ik. 27; 2 Cor. v. 10, of. Rom. xiv. 10; Apoc. xx. II, 12, 13.
iv. 17] BOLDNESS IN THE DA V OF JUDGMENT, 215
General Judgment would be a chaos of random facts,
a thing without rational retrospect or definite end — i.e.y
without God. If man is under the government of God,
human history is a drama, long-drawn, and of infinite
variety, with inconceivably numerous actors. But a
drama must have a last act. The last act of the drama
of history is ^' The Day of the Judgment."
2. The other argument is derived from the individual
conscience.
Conscience, as a matter of fact, has two voices.
One is imperative ; it tells us what we are to do. One
is prophetic, and warns us of something which we are
to receive. If there is to be no Day of the General
Judgment, then the million prophecies of conscience
will be belied, and our nature prove to be mendacious
to its very roots.
There is no essential article of the Christian creed
like this which can be isolated from the rest, and treated
as if it stood alone. There is a solidarity of each with all
the rest. Any which is isolated is in danger itself, and
leaves the others exposed. For they have an internal
harmony and congruit}^ They do not form a hotch-
pot of credenda. They are not so many beliefs but
one belief. Thus the isolation of articles is perilous.
For, when we try to grasp and to defend one of
them, we have no means left of measuring it but by
terms of comparison which are drawn from ourselves,
which must therefore be finite, and by the inadequacy
of the scale which they present, appear to render the
article of faith thus detached incredible. Moreover,
each article of our creed is a revelation of the Divine
attributes, which meet together in unity. To divide
the attributes by dividing the form in which they are
revealed to us, is to belie and falsify the attribute; to
2i6 BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
give a monstrous development to one by not taking
into account some other which is its balance and com-
pensation. Thus, many men deny the truth of a
punishment which involves final separation from God.
They glory in the legal judgment which "dismisses hell
with costs." But they do so by fixing their attention
exclusively upon the one dogma which reveals one
attribute of God. They isolate it from the Fall, from
the Redemption by Christ, from the gravity of sin, from
the truth that all whom the message of the Gospel
reaches may avoid the penal consequences of sin. It
is impossible to face the dogma of eternal separation
from God without facing the dogma of Redemption.
For Redemption involves in its very idea the intensity
of sin, which needed the sacrifice of the Son of God ;
and further, the fact that the offer of salvation is so
free and wide that it cannot be put away without a
terrible wilfulness.
In dealing with many of the articles of the creed,
there are opposite extremes. Exaggeration leads to a
revenge upon them which is, perhaps, more perilous
than neglect. Thus, as regards eternal punishment, in
one country ghastly exaggerations were prevalent. It
was assumed that the vast majority of mankind "are
destined to everlasting punishment " ; that " the floor of
hell is crawled over by hosts of babies a span long."
The inconsistency of such views with the love of God,
and with the best instincts of man, was victoriously and
passionately demonstrated. Then unbelief turned upon
the dogma itself, and argued, with wide acceptance,
that "with the overthrow of this conception goes the
whole redemption-plan, the Incarnation, the Atonement,
the Resurrection, and the grand climax of the Church-
scheme, the General Judgment." But the alleged article
iv. 17.] BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 217
of faith was simply an exaggeration of that faith, and
the objections lay altogether against the exaggeration
of it
II.
We have now to speak of the removal of that terror
which accompanies the conception of the Day of the
Judgment, and of the sole means of that emancipation
which St. John recognises. For terror there is in every
point of the repeated descriptions of Scripture — in the
surroundings, in the summons, in the tribunal, in the
trial, in one of the two sentences.
'' God is love," writes St. John, '^ and he that abideth
in love abideth in God : and God abideth in him. In
this [abiding], love stands perfected with us,^ and the
object is nothing less than this," not that we may be
exempted from judgment, but that '' we may have bold-
ness in the Day of the Judgment." Boldness ! It is the
splendid word which denotes the citizen's right of free
speech, the masculine privilege of courageous liberty.^
It is the tender word which expresses the child's
unhesitating confidence, in '*sa3ang all out" to the
parent. The ground of the boldness is conformity to
Christ. Because ''as He /"s," with that vivid idealizing
sense, frequent in St. John when he uses it of our
Lord — "as He is," delineated in the fourth Gospel, seen
*>e^' r,fji<2v — God's love in itself is perfected. It might be made as
perfect as man's nature will admit by an instantaneous act; but God
works jointly, in companionslap with us. The grace of God "pre-
venting us that we may will, works with us when we will." The
essential idea of /ierd is companionship or connexion. (See Donaldson,
Gr. Gr., 50, 52 a.)
2 iXevdepias i] TroXt's /xearrj Kai irapprjaias yiyverai. (Plat., Rep., 557 B).
The word is derived from irdv and pr/aLs.
2i8 BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT.
by " the eye of the heart " ^ with constant reverence in
the soul, with adoring wonder in heaven, perfectly true,
pure, and righteous — "even so" (not, of course, with
any equality in degree to that consummate ideal, but
with a likeness ever growing, an aspiration ever
advancing^) — "so are we in this world," purifying
ourselves as He is pure.
Let us draw to a definite point our considerations
upon the Judgment, and the Apostle's sweet encourage-
ment for the " day of wrath, that dreadful day."
It is of the essence of the Christian faith to believe
that the Son of God, in the Human Nature which He
assumed, and which He has borne into heaven, shall
come again, and gather all before Him, and pass
sentence of condemnation or of peace according to their
works. To hold this is necessary to prevent terrible
doubts of the very existence of God ; to guard us against
sin, in view of that solemn account ; to comfort us under
affliction.
What a thought for us, if we would but meditate
upon it I Often we complain of a commonplace life, of
mean and petty employment. How can it be so, when
at the end we, and those with whom we live, must
look upon that great, overwhelming sight ! Not an
eye that shall not see Him, not a knee that shall not
bow, not an ear that shall not hear the sentence. The
heart might sink and the imagination quail under the
burden of the supernatural existence which we cannot
escape. One of two looks we must turn upon the
Crucified — one willing as that which we cast on some
glorious picture, on the enchantment of the sky ; the
other unwilling and abject. We should weep first with
' Ephes. i. i8. 2 Cf. Matt. v. 48.
iv. 17.] BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 219
Zechariah's mourners, with tears at once bitter because
they are for sin, and sweet because they are for Christ.
But, above all things, let us hear how St. John sings
us the sweet low hymn that breathes consolation
through the terrible fall of the triple hammer-stroke of
the rhyme in the Dies tree. We must seek to lead upon
earth a life laid on the lines of Christ's. Then, when the
Day of the Judgment comes ; when the cross of fire (so,
at least, the early Christians thought) shall stand in
the black vault ; when the sacred wounds of Him who
w^as pierced shall stream over with a light beyond
dawn or sunset ; we shall find that the discipline of
life is complete, that God's love after all its long work-
ing with us stands perfected, so that we shall be able,
as citizens of the kingdom, as children of the Father,
to say out all. A Christlike character in an un-
Christlike world — this is the cure of the disease of
terror. Any other is but the medicine of a quack.
*' There is no fear in love; but the perfect love casteth
out fear, because fear brings punishment; and he that
feareth is not made perfect in love." ^
We may well close with that pregnant commentar}''
on this verse which tells us of the four possible con-
ditions of a human soul — " without either fear or love ;
with fear, without love ; with fear and love ; with love,
without fear." *
NOTES.
Ch. iv. 7, V. 3.
Ver. 3. This verse should divide about the middle.
» Ver. 18.
2 Bengel. The writer must acknowledge his obligation to Pro-
fessor Westcott, whose exposition gives us a peculiar conception of
the depth of St. John's teaching here. {The Epistles of St. John^
J49-I53)-
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DISCOURSE XI.
3IRTH AND VICTORY.
"And His commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is
born of God overcometh the world : and this is the victory that over-
cometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the
world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ? " — -
I John v. 3, 4, 5.
ST. JOHN here connects the Christian Birth with
Victory. He tells us that of the supernatural life
the destined and (so to speak) natural end is conquest.
Now in this there is a contrast between the law of
nature and the law of grace. No doubt the first is
marvellous. It may even, if we will, in one sense be
termed a victory ; for it is the proof of a successful
contest with the blind fatalities of natural environment.
It is in itself the conquest of a something which
has conquered a world below it. The first faint cry
of the baby is a wail no doubt ; but in its very utterance
there is a half triumphant undertone. Boyhood, youth,
opening manhood — at least in those who are physically
and intellectually gifted — generally possess some share
of " the rapture of the strife " with nature and with
their contemporaries.
" Youth hath triumphal mornings ; its days bound
From night as from a victory."
But sooner or later that which pessimists style ^^ the
martyrdom of life " sets in. However brightly the
224 BIRTH AND VICTORY.
drama opens, the last scene is always tragic. Our
natural birth inevitably ends in defeat.
A birth and a defeat is thus the epitome of each life
which is naturally brought into the field of our present
human existence. The defeat is sighed over, some-
times consummated, in every cradle ; it is attested by
every grave.
But if birth and defeat is the motto of the natural
life, Birth and victory is the motto of every one
born into the city of God.
This victory is spoken of in our verses as a victory
along the whole line. It is the conquest of the collective
Church, of the whole mass of regenerate humanity, so
far as it has been true to the principle of its birth ^ —
the conquest of the Faith which is " The Faith of us^^ ^
who are knit together in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of the Son of God, Christ our Lord.
But it is something more than that. The general vic-
tory is also a victory in detail. Every true individual
believer shares in it.^ The battle is a battle of soldiers.
The abstract ideal victory is realised and made concrete
in each life of struggle which is a life of enduring faith.
The triumph is not merely one of a school, or of a
party. The question rings with a triumphant challenge
down the ranks — '' who is the ever-conqueror of the
world, but the ever-behever that Jesus is the Son of
God?"
We are thus brought to two of St. John's great
master-conceptions, both of which came to him from
hearing the Lord who is the Life — both of which are
* This is expressed, after St. John's fashion, by the neuter, nap rb
'^eyevvriixevov e/c tov GeoO. ver. 4.
'^ i) IT IffT IS r//^wi', ver. 4.
' 6 j'tKcD;' Toj' Koaixov, 6 wicrTevoov, ver. 5*
V.3-5-] BIRTH AND VICTORY. 225
to be read in connection with the fourth Gospel — the
Christian's Birth and his victory.
I.
The Apostle introduces the idea of the Birth which
has its origin from God precisely by the same process
to which attention has already been more than once
directed.
St. John frequently mentions some great subject ; at
first hke a musician who with perfect command of his
instrument, touches what seems to be an almost random
key, faintly, as if incidentally and half wandering from
his theme. But just as the sound appears to be
absorbed by the purpose of the composition, or all but
lost in the distance, the same chord is struck again
more decidedly ; and then, after more or less interval,
is brought out with a music so full and sonorous, that
we perceive that it has been one of the master's lead-
ing ideas from the very first. So, when the subject
is first spoken of, we hear — " every one that doeth
righteousness is born of Him." ^ The subject is sus-
pended for a while ; then comes a somewhat more
marked reference. " Whosoever is born of God is
not a doer of sin ; and he cannot continue sinning,
because of God he is born." There is yet one more
tender recurrence to the favourite theme — " every one
that loveth is born of God." ^ Then, finally here at
last the chord, so often struck, grown bolder since the
prelude, gathers all the music round it. It interweaves
with itself another strain which has similarly been
gaining amplitude of volume in its course, until we
have a gr^eat Te Deunt, dominated by two chords of
» I John ii. 29. « I John iv. 7.
15
226 BIRTH AND VICTORY,
Birth and Victory. ''This is the conquest that has
conquered the world — the Faith which is of us."
We shall never come to any adequate notion of St.
John's conception of the Birth of God, without tracing
the place in his Gospel to which his asterisk in this place
refers. To one passage only can we turn — our Lord's
conversation with Nicodemus. '' Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God — except a man
be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God." ^ The germ of the idea of entrance
into the city, the kingdom of God, by means of a new
birth, is in that storehouse of theological conceptions, the
psalter. There is one psalm of a Korahite seer, enigmat-
ical it may be, shadowed with the darkness of a divine
compression,^ obscure from the glory that rings it round,
and from the gush of joy in its few and broken words.
The 87th Psalm is the psalm of the font, the hymn of
regeneration. The nations once of the world are men-
tioned among them that know the Lord. They are
counted when He writeth up the peoples. Glorious
things are spoken of the City of God. Three times
over the burden of the song is the new birth by which
the aliens were made free of Sion.
This one was born there,
This one and that one was born in her,
This one was born there.^
All joyous life is thus brought into the city of the
new-born. '* The singers, the solemn dances, the fresh
* John iii. 5.
* <r065/3a alvLy/LLaTwOrjs Kai (tkot€li'i2s elpT]fxtvos. Euseb.
» Dp*""!^.^ nj. Ver. 4.
rH^-lk' l^^'i<\ C-\^. Ver. 5.
DK'"1p.1 nj. Ver. 6. Psalm Ixxxvii.
V.3-5-] BIRTH AND VICTORY. 227
and glancing springs, are in thee."^ Hence, from the
notification of rrien being born again in order to see and
enter into the kingdom, our Lord, as if in surprise,
meets the Pharisee's question — ''how can these things
be ? " — with another — " art thou that teacher in Israel,
and understandest not these things ? " Jesus tells His
Church for ever that every one of His disciples must
be brought into contact with two worlds, with two in-
fluences— one outward, the other inward ; one material,
the other spiritual; one earthly, the other heavenly;
one visible and sacramental, the other invisible and
divine. Out of these he must come forth new-born.
Of course it may be said that *' the water " here
coupled with the Spirit is figurative. But let it be
observed first, that from the very constitution of St.
John's intellectual and moral being things outward and
visible were not annihilated by the spiritual transpar-
ency which he imparted to them. Water, literal water,
is everywhere in his writings. In his Gospel more
especially he seems to be ever seeing, ever hearing it.
He loved it from the associations of his own early life,
and from the mention made of it by his Master. And
as in the Gospel water is, so to speak, one of the three
great factors and centres of the book ; ^ so now in the
Epistle, it still seems to glance and murmur before
him. ^' The water" is one of the three abiding
* " Both they who sing and they who dance,
With Eacied song are there;
In thee fierh brooks and soft streams glance,
And all my fountains clear."
Milton, Paraphrase Ps. Ixxxvii. 7.
This, on the wl ole, seems to be considered the most tenable in-
terpretation.
2 John i, 26, il 6, 9, iii. 5-22, iv. 6-16, v. 3, vii. 37, 39, ix. 7, xiii.
1-5, xix. 34.
228 BIRTH AND VICTORY.
witnesses in the Epistle also. Surely, then, our
Apostle would be eminently unlikel}^ to express " the
Spirit of God " without the outward water by '' water
and the Spirit." But above all. Christians should be-
ware of a " licentious and deluding alchemy of in-
terpretation which maketh of anything whatsoever it
listeth." In immortal words — "when the letter of the
law hath two things plainly and expressly specified,
water and the Spirit ; water, as a duty required on our
part, the Spirit, as a gift which God bestoweth ; there
is danger in so presuming to interpret it, as if the
clause which concerneth ourselves were more than
needed. We may by such rare expositions attain
perhaps in the end to be thought witty, but with ill
advice."^
But, it will further be asked, whether we bring the
Saviour's saying — ^' except any one be born again of
water and the Spirit" — into direct connection with the
baptism of infants ? Above all, whether we are not
encouraging every baptised person to hold that some-
how or other he will have a part in the victory of the
regenerate ?
We need no other answer than that which is implied
in the very force of the word here used by St. John —
*' all that is born of God conquereth the world."
**That is born" is the participle perfect.''^ The force
of the perfect is not simply past action, but such action
lasting on in its effects. Our text, then, speaks only
» Hooker, E. P., V. lix. (4).
2 So the perfect is used throughout, yeyevurjrai. ii. 29, iii. 9, iv. 7.
TTcif TO yeyevv-qixivov, V. 4. Very remarkably below, iras 6 yeyevvTjfi^pos
— dXXd 6 y€vvr)6eU iK rou GeoG ; the first of the regenerate man who
continues in that condition of grace, the second of the Begotten Son
of God who keeps His servant. 1 John v. 18.
v.3-5.] BIRTH AND VICTORY, 229
of those who having been born again intc the kingdom
continue in a corresponding condition, and unfold the
Hfe which they have received. The Saviour spoke first
and chiefly of the initial act. The Apostle's circum-
stances, now in his old age, naturally led him to look
on from that. St. John is no " idolater of the immediate."
Has the gift received by his spiritual children worn
long and lasted well ? What of the new life which
should have issued from the New Birth ? Regenerate
in the past, are they renewed in the present ?
This simple piece of exegesis lets us at once perceive
that another verse in this Epistle, often considered of
almost hopeless perplexity, is in truth only the perfection
of sanctified (nay, it may be said, of moral) common-
sense ; an intuition of moral and spiritual instinct.
^'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin: for his
seed remaineth in him ; and he cannot sin, because he is
born of God." We have just seen the real significance of
the words ^' he that is born of God " — he for whom his
past birth lasts on in its effects. '^ He doeth not sin," is
not a sin-doer, makes it not his ''trade," as an old com-
mentator says. Nay, '^ he is not able to be " (to keep
on) '' sinning." " He cannot sin." He cannot ! There
is no physical impossibility. Angels will not sweep
him away upon their resistless pinions. The Spirit
will not hold him by the hand as if with a mailed grasp,
until the blood spirts from his finger-tips, that he may
not take the wine-cup, or walk out to the guilty assigna-
tion. The compulsion of God is Hke that which is
exercised upon us by some pathetic wounded-looking
face that gazes after us with a sweet reproach. Tell the
honest poor man with a large family of some safe and
expeditious way of transferring his neighbour's money
to his own pocket. He will answer, '' I cannot steal;"
230 BIRTH AND VICTORY.
that is, ^' I cannot steal, however much it may physically
be within my capacity, without a burning shame, an
agony to my nature worse than death." On some day
of fierce heat, hold a draught of iced wine to a total
abstainer, and invite him to drink. ^' I cannot," will be
his reply. Cannot ! He can, so far as his hand goes ;
he cannot, without doing violence to a conviction, to a
promise, to his own sense of truth. And he who con-
tinues in the fulness of his God-given Birth " does not
do sin," ^' cannot be sinning." Not that he is sinless,
not that he never fails, or does not sometimes fall ; not
that sin ceases to be sin to him, because he thinks that
he has a standing in Christ. But he cannot go on in
sin without being untrue to his birth ; without a stain
upon that finer, whiter, more sensitive conscience,
which is called " spirit " in a son of God ; without a
convulsion in his whole being which is the precursor
of death, or an insensibility which is death actually
begun.
How many such texts as these are practically useless
to most of us I The armoury of God is full of keen
swords which we refrain from handling, because they
have been misused by others. None is more neglected
than this. The fanatic has shrieked out — ^' sin in my
case ! " I cannot sin. / m.ay hold a sin in my bosom ;
and God may hold me in His arms for all that. At least,
I may hold that which would be a sin in you and most
others ; but to me it is not sin." On the other hand,
stupid goodness maunders out some unintelligible para-
phrase, until pew and reader yawn from very weariness.
Divine truth in its purity and plainness is thus dis-
credited by the exaggeration of the one, or buried in
the leaden winding-sheet of the stupidity of the other.
In leaving this portion of our subject we may com-
v.3-5.1 BIRTH AND VICTORY. 23 »
pare the view latent in the very idea of infant baptism
with that of the leader of a well-known sect upon the
beginnings of the spiritual life in children.
*' May not children grow up into salvation, without
knowing the exact moment of their conversion ? " asks
''General" Booth. His answer is— " yes, it may be
so; and we trust that in the future this will be the
usual way in which children may be brought to Christ."
The writer goes on to tell us how the New Birth will
take place in future. " When the conditions named in
the first pages of this volume are complied with — when
the parents are godly, and the children are surrounded
by holy influences and examples from their birth, and
trained up in the spirit of their early dedication — they
will doubtless come to know and love and trust their
Saviour in the ordinary course of things. The Holy
Ghost will take possession of them from the first.
Mothers and fathers will, as it were, put them into the
Saviour's arms in their swaddHng clothes, and He will
take them, and bless them, and sanctify them from the
very womb, and make them His own, without their
knowing the hour or the place when they pass from the
kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. In
fact, with such little ones it shall never be very dark,
for their natural biith shall be, as it were, in the
spiritual twilight, which begins with the dim dawn, and
increases gradually until the noonday brightness is
reached; so answering to the prophetic description,
'The path of the just is as the shining light, that
shineth more and more unto the perfect day.' " ^
No one will deny that this is tenderiy and beautifully
1 Training of children ; or How to Make the Children into Saints
and Soldiers of Jesus Christ. By the General of the Salvation Army.
London : Salvation Army Book Stores, pp. 162, 163.
233 BIRTH AND VICTORY.
written. But objections to its teaching will crowd
upon the mind of thoughtful Christians. It seems to
defer to a period in the future, to a new era incalculably
di tant, when Christendom shall be absorbed in Salva-
tionism, that which St. John in his day contemplated
as the normal condition of believers, which the Church
has always held to be capable of realization, which has
been actually realized in no few whom most of us must
have known. Further; the fountain-heads of thought,
hke those of the Nile, are wrapped in obscurity. By
what process grace may work with the very young is
an insoluble problem in psychology, which Chris-
tianity has not revealed. We know nothing further
than that Christ blessed little children. That blessing
was impartial, for it was communicated to all who were
brought to Him ; it was real, otherwise He would not
have blessed them at all. That He conveys to them
such grace as they are capable of receiving is all that
w^e can know. And yet again ; the Salvationist theory
exalts parents and surroundings into the place of Christ.
It deposes His sacrament, which lies at the root of St.
John's language, and boasts that it will secure Christ's
end, apparently without any recognition of Christ's
means,
II.
The second great idea in the verses at the head of
this discourse is Victory, The intended issue of the
New Birth is conquest — " all that is born of God con-
quers the world."
The idea of victory is almost* exclusively confined
1 Not quite, cf. Rom. viii. 37, xii. 21 ; i Cor. xv. 55, 57. The sub-
stantive vUri occurs only I John v. 4. A slightly different form (j/Z/cos)
is in Matt. xii. 20; i Cor. xv. 54, 55, 57.
v.3-5.] BIRTH AND VICTORY, 233
to St. John's writings. The idea is first expressed by
Jesus "be of good cheer: I have conquered the
world." ^ The first prelusive touch in the Epistle,
hints at the fulfilment of the Saviour's comfortable word .
in one class of the Apostle's spiritual children. " I
write unto you, young men, because ye have conquered
the wicked one. I have written unto you, young men,
because ye have conquered the wicked one." ^ Next,
a bolder and ampler strain — ''ye are of God, little
children, and have conquered them : because greater is
He that is in you, than he that is in the world." ^ Then
with a magnificent persistence, the trum.pet of Christ
wakens echoes to its music all down and round the
defile through w^hich the host is passing—" all that is
born of God conquereth the world : and this is the
conquest that has conquered the worid — the Faith
which is ours." * When, in St. John's other great book,
we pass with the seer into Patmos, the air is, indeed,
" full of noises and sweet sounds." But dominant over
all is a storm of triumph, a passionate exultation of
victory. Thus each epistle to each of the seven Churches
closes with a promise " to him that conquereth.'^
The text promises two forms of victory.
I. A victory is promised to the Church universal.
*' All that is born of God conquereth the world." This
conquest is concentrated in, almost identified with " the
Faith." Primarily, in this place, the term (here alone
1 John xvi. 33.
2 I John ii. 13, 14.
* I John iv. 4.
< It does not seem possible to convey to the English reader the four-
fold harping upon the word (i John v. 4, 5) by any other rendering.
" The victory that hath overcome the world " (R.V.) fails in this. The
noble translation of i/ircpvi.KQti€v (Rom. viii. 27), happily retained by
the Revisers, is rendered consistent by the translation hei-e proposed.
234 BIRTH AND VICTORY.
found in our Epistle) is not the faith by ivhich we believe,
but the Faith which is beheved — as in some other places ;^
not faith subjective, but The Faith objectively. Here is
the dogmatic principle. The Faith involves definite
knowledge of definite principles. The religious know-
ledge, which is not capable of being put into definite
propositions, we need not trouble ourselves greatly
about. But we are guarded from over-dogmatism. The
word " of us " which follows " the Faith " is a mediating
link between the objective and the subjective. First, we
possess this Faith as a common heritage. Then, as in
the Apostle's creed we begin to individualise this common
possession by prefixing ^' I believe " to every article of it.
Then the victory contained in the creed, the victory which
the creed is (for more truly again than of Duty may it be
said of Faith, " thou who mi victory " ^), is made over to
each who believes. Each, and each alone, who in soul
is ever believing, in practice is ever victorious.
This declaration is full of promise for missionary work.
There is no system of error, however ancient, subtle, or
highly organised, which must not go down before the
strong collective life of the regenerate. No less en-
couraging is it at home. No form of sin is incapable of
being overthrown. No school of anti-Christian thought
is invulnerable or invincible. There are other apostates
besides Julian who will cry — '' Galilaee, vicisti ! "
2. The second victory promised is individual, for
each of us. Not only where cathedral-spires lift high
the triumphant cross ; on battle-fields which have
added kingdoms to Christendom ; by the martyr's stake,
or in the arena of the Coliseum, have these words proved
* Apoc. ii. 13, xiv. 12.
* ^' Thou who art victory 1 "
Wordsworth, Odt to Duty,
V.3-5-] BIRTH AND VICTORY. 235
true. The victory comes down to us. In hospitals, in
shops, in courts, in ships, in sick-rooms, they are fulfilled
for us. We see their truth in the patience, sweet-
ness, resignation, of little children, of old men, of weak
women. They give a high consecration and a glorious
meaning to much of the suffering that we see. What,
we are sometimes tempted to cry — is this Christ's
Army ? are these His soldiers, who can go anywhere
and do anything ? Poor weary ones ! with white
lips, and the beads of death-sweat on their faces, and
the thorns of pain ringed like a crown round their
foreheads ; so wan, so worn, so tired, so suffering, that
even our love dares not pray for them to live a little
longer yet. Are these the elect of the elect, the van-
guard of the regenerate, who carry the flag of the cross
where its folds are waved by the storm of battle ; whom
St. John sees advancing up the slope with such a burst
of cheers and such a swell of music that the words —
" this is the conquest " — spring spontaneously from his
lips ? Perhaps the angels answer with a voice which
we cannot hear — " whatsoever is born of God con-
quereth the v/orld." May we fight so manfully that
each may render if not his " pure " yet his purified
"soul unto his captain Christ,
Under whose colours he hath fought so long : *'
— that we may know something of the great text in the
Epistle to the Romans, with its matchless translation
— " we are more than conquerors through Him who
loved us"^ — that arrogance of victory which is at once
so splendid and so saintly.
* Rom. viii. 37,
DISCOURSE XII.
THE GOSPEL AS A GOSPEL OF WITNESS; THE
THREE WITNESSES.
** It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.
For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and
the blood ; and these three agree in one. If we receive the witness
of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God
which He hath testified of His Son. He that believeth on the Son
of God hath the witness in himself." — i John v. 6-io,
IT has been said that Apostles and apostolic men
were as far as possible removed from common-
sense, and have no conception of evidence in our
acceptation of the word. About this statement there is
scarcely even superficial plausibility. Common-sense
is the measure of ordinary human tact among palpable
realities. In relation to human existence it is the balance
of the estimative faculties ; the instinctive summary of
inductions which makes us rightly credulous and
rightly incredulous, which teaches us the supreme
lesson of life, when to say ^^yes," and when to say
"no." Uncommon sense is superhuman tact among no
less real but at present impalpable realities ; the spiritual
faculty of forming spiritual inductions aright. So St.
John among the three great canons of primary truth
with which he closes his Epistle writes — '^we know
that the Son of God hath come and is present, and hath
given us understanding, that we know Him who is
V.6-I0.] THE GOSPEL AS A GOSPEL OF WITNESS. 237
t
true."^ So with evidences. Apostles did not draw
them out with the same logical precision, or rather not
in the same logical form. Yet they rested their con-
clusions upon the same abiding principle of evidence,
the primary axiom of our entire social life, that there
is a degree of human evidence which practically cannot
deceive. ''If we receive the witness of men." The
form of expression implies that we certainly do.^
Peculiar difficulty has been felt in understanding the
paragraph. And one portion of it remains difficult
after any explanation. But we shall succeed in ap-
prehending it as a whole only upon condition of taking
one guiding principle of interpretation with us.
The word witness is St. John's central thought here.
He is determined to beat it into our thoughts by the
most unsparing iteration. He repeats it ten times
over, as substantive or verb, in six verses.^ His object
is to turn our attention to his Gospel, and to this dis-
tinguishing feature of it — its being from beginning to
end a Gospel of witness. This witness he declares to
be fivefold, (i) The witness of the Spirit, of which
the fourth Gospel is pre-eminently full. (2) The wit-
ness of the Divine Humanity, of the God-Man who is
not man deified, but God humanified. This verse is no
* 8e8(jjK€v i]/xLU didvoiau 'Iva yLvd'aKO/mev k.t.X. I John v. 20. N. T,
lexicographers gives as its meaning intelligetitia (ehisicht). See
Grimm. Bretsc/m., s.v.) Prof. Westcott remarks that "generally
nouns which express intellectual powers are rare in St. John's
writings." But didvoia is the word by which the LXX. translate the
Hebrew 27^ and has thus a moral and emotional tinge imparted to it.
We may compare the sense in which Aristotle uses it in his Poetics
for the cast of thought, or general sentiment. (Poet, vi.)
^ e/ TTju fiaprvpiav t<2v dvdpthiruiv XafjLJSdpofxeu. I John v. 9.
' The A. V. (very unhappily) tried to minin-.ise this reiteration
by the introduction of synonyms in four places — "bear record,"
"record^* (vv. 7, 10, il), '^'hath testified (ver. 9}.
238 777^ GOSPEL AS A GOSPEL OF WITNESS;
doubt partly polemical, against heretics of the day, who
would clip the great picture of the Gospel, and force it
into the petty frame of their theory. This is He (the
Apostle urges) who came on the stage of the world's and
the Church's history ^ as the Messiah, under the condi-
tion, so to speak, of water and blood ;^ bringing w4th him,
accompanied by, not the water only, but the water and
the blood.^ Cerinthus separated the Christ, the divine
-£on, from Jesus the holy but mortal man. The two,
the divine potency and the human existence, met at
the waters of Jordan, on the day of the Baptism, when
the Christ united himself to Jesus. But the union
was brief and unessential. Before the crucifixion, the
divine ideal Christ withdrew. The man suffered. The
impassible immortal potency was far away in heaven.
St. John denies the fortuitous juxta-position of two
accidentally-united existences. We worship one Lord
Jesus Christ, attested not only by Baptism in Jordan,
the witness of water, but by the death on Calvary, the
witness of blood. He came by water and blood, as
the means by which His office was manifested ; but
with the water and with the blood, as the sphere in
which He exercises that office. When we turn to the
Gospel, and look at the pierced side, we read of blood
and water, the order of actual history and ph3^siological
fact. Here St. John takes the ideal, mystical, sacra-
mental order, water and blood — cleansing and redemp-
tion— and the sacraments which perpetually symbolise
and convey them. Thus we have Spirit, water, blood.
Three are they who are ever witnessing."* These are
> 6 k\Q<i}v.
^ hi vdaTOs Kal a'i/xaros.
• oiK €i> T(^ Vdari /xjvov, dXX* ev rep OSari Kai iv tc^ ot/ACor*.
* rpds ii<tiv 01 iJiafTvpovvTcs, vier. 7.
V.6-IO.] THE THREE WITNESSES. 239
three great centres round which St. John's Gospel
turns.^ These are the three genuine witnesses, the
trinity of witness, the shadow of the Trinity in heaven.
(3) Again the fourth Gospel is a Gospel of human
witness, a tissue woven out of many lines of human
attestation. It records the cries of human souls over-
heard and noted down at the supreme crisis-moment,
from the Baptist, Philip, and Nathanael, to the everlast-
ing spontaneous creed of Christendom on its knees
before Jesus, the cry of Thomas ever rushing molten
from a heart of fire — '^ my Lord and my God." (4) But
if we receive, as we assuredly must and do receive, the
overpowering and soul-subduing mass of attesting human
evidence, how much more must we receive the Divine
witness, the witness of God so conspicuously exhibited
in the Gospel of St. John ! " The witness of God is
greater, because this " (even the history in the pages
to which he adverts) "is the witness ; because" (I say
with triumphant reiteration) '' He hath witnessed con-
cerning His Son."^ This witness of God in the last
Gospel is given in four forms — by Scripture,^ by the
Father,* by the Son Himself,^ by His works,® (5) This
great volume of witness is consummated and brought
home by another. He who not merely coldly assents
to the v/ord of Christ, but Hfts the whole burden of his
^ The Water, John iii. 5, cf. i. 26-33, ii. 9, iii. 23, iv. 13, v. 4, ix. 7,
The Blood, vi. 53, 54, 56, xix. 34. 'Ihe Spirit, vii. 39, xiv., xv., xvi.,
XX. 22. The water centres in Baptism (iii. 5) ; the blood is s3'mboUsed,
exhibited, in Holy Coimniinion (vi.) : the Spirit is perpetually making
them effective.
cfrt ai/n7 ioTiv i] fiapTvpia. ToO Geot) OTi iiefMaprvprjKev wepl rov vlou
airroZ, ver. 9.
3 V. 39, 46, etc. » viii. 17, !&
vii 18 xii, 25, • ver. 36
240 THE GOSPEL AS A GOSPEL OF WITNESS.
belief on to the Son of God/ hath the witness in him.
That which was logical and external becomes internal
and experimental.
In this ever-memorable passage, all know that an
interpolation has taken place. The words — " in heaven
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these
three are one. And there are three that bear witness in
earth " — are a gloss. A great sentence of one of the
first of critics may well reassure any weak believers who
dread the candour of Christian criticism, or suppose that
it has impaired the evidence for the great dogma of the
Trinity. ** If the fourth century knew that text, let it
come in, in God's name ; but if that age did not know
it, then Arianism in its height was beaten down
without the help of that verse ; and, let the fact prove
as it will, the doctrine is unshaken."^ The human
material with which they have been clamped should
not blind us to the value of the heavenly jewels which
seemed to be marred by their earthly setting.
It is constantly said — as we think with considerable
misapprehension — that in his Epistle St. John may
imply, but does not refer directly to any particular inci-
dent in, his Gospel. It is our conviction that St. John
very specially includes the Resurrection — the central
point of the evidences of Christianity — among the things
attested by the witness of men. We propose in another
discourse to examine the Resurrection from St. John's
point of view.
1 6 TTicrrefc wj' e^s rhv vlbv tov Qeov, ver. 10,
■ Bentley, Letter of January 1st, 1717,
DISCOURSE XIII.
THE WITNESS OF MEN {APPLIED TO THE
RES URRECTION),
" If we receive the witness of men." — I John v. 9,
AT an early period in the Christian Church the
passage in which these words occur, was selected
as a fitting Epistle for the First Sunday after Easter,
when believers may be supposed to review the whole
body of witness to the risen Lord and to triumph in
the victory of faith. It will afford one of the best
illustrations of that which is covered by the compre-
hensive canon — " if we receive the witness of men " —
if we consider the unity of essential principles in the
narratives of the Resurrection, and draw the natural
conclusions from them.
I.
Let us note the unity of essential principles in the
narratives of the Resurrection.
St. Matthew hastens on from Jerusalem to the ap-
pearance in Galilee. '' Behold ! He goeth before you
into Galilee!^ is, in some sense, the key of the 28th
chapter. St. Luke, on the other hand, speaks only of
manifestations in Jerusalem or its neighbourhood.
Now St. John's Resurrection history falls in the
20th chapter into four pieces, with three manifestations
in Jerusalem. The 2 1st chapter (the appendix-chapttr)
16
242 THE WITNESS OF MEN
also falls into four pieces, with one manifestation to
the seven disciples in Galilee.
St. John makes no profession of telling us all the
appearances which were known to the Church, or even
all of which he was personally cognisant. In the
treasures of the old man's memory there were many
more which, for whatever reason, he did not write.
But these distinct continuous specimens of a permitted
communing with the eternal glorified Hfe (supplemented
on subsequent thought by another in the last chapter)
are as good as three or four hundred for the great
purpose of the Apostle. ^' These are written that ye
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God."i
Throughout St. John's narrative every impartial
reader will find delicacy of thought, abundance of
matter, minuteness of detail. He will find something
more. While he feels that he is not in cloudland or
dreamland, he will yet recognise that he walks in a
land which is wonderful, because the central figure in
it is One whose name is Wonderful. The fact is fact,
and yet it is something more. For a short time poetry
and history are absolutely coincident. Here, if any-
where, is Herder's saying true, that? the fourth Gospel
seems to be written with a feather which has dropped
from an angel's wing.
The unity in essential principles which has been
claimed for these narratives taken together is not a
lifeless identity in details. It is scarcely to be worked
out by the dissecting-maps of elaborate harmonies.
It is not the imaginative unity which is poetry; nor
the mechanical unity, which is fabrication; nor the
' The writer is entirely persuaded that St. John in chap. xx. 30, 31,
refers to the Resuryeclioii "signs," and not to miracles geneially.
V.9.] APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION. 243
passionless unity, which is commended in a police-
report. It is not the thin unity of plain-song ; it is
the rich unity of dissimilar tones blended into a fugue.
This unity may be considered in two essential agree-
ments of the four Resurrection histories.
I. All the Evangelists agree in reticence on one
point — in abstinence from one claim.
If any of us were framing for himself a body of such
evidence for the Resurrection as should almost extort
acquiescence, he would assuredly insist that the Lord
should have been seen and recognised after the Resur-
rection by miscellaneous crowds — or, at the very least,
by hostile individuals. Not only by a tender Mary
Magdalene, an impulsive Peter, a rapt John, a Thomas
through all his unbelief nervously anxious to be con-
vinced. Let Him be seen by Pilate, by Caiaphas, by
some of the Roman soldiers, of the priests, of the
Jewish populace. Certainly, if the Evangelists had
simply aimed at effective presentation of evidence, they
would have put forward statements of this kind.
But the apostolic principle — the apostoHc canon of
Resurrection evidence — was very different. St. Luke
has preserved it for us, as it is given by St. Peter.
" Him God raised up the third day, and gave Him to
be made manifest after He rose again from the dead,
not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before
of God, even to us."^ He shall, indeed, appear again
* Acts X. 41, 42. It is to be regretted that the R. V. has not boldly
given us such an arrangement of the words in this important passage
as would at once connect " made manifest " with " after He rose again
from the dead," and avoid making the Apostle state that the chosen
witnesses ate and drank with Christ after the Resurrection. St. Peter
mentions that particular characteristic of the Apostles which made
them judges not to be gainsayed of the identity of the Risen One
with Him v/ith whom they used to eat and drink.
244 THE WITNESS OF MEN"
to all the people, to every eye ; but that shall be at the
great Advent. St. John, with his ideal tenderness, has
preserved a word of Jesus, which gives us St. Peter's
canon of Resurrection evidence, in a lovelier and more
spiritual form. Christ as He rose at Easter should be
visible, but only to the eye of love, only to the eye which
life fills with tears and heaven with light — *' yet a little
while, and the world seeth Me no more ; but ye see
Me. . . He that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father,
and I will manifest Myself to Him/'^ Round that ideal
canon St. John's Resurrection-history is twined with
undying tendrils. Those words may be written by us
with our softest pencils over the 20th and 2ist chapters
of the fourth Gospel. There is — very possibly there
can be — under our present human conditions, no mani-
festation of Him who was dead and now liveth, except
to belief, or to that kind of doubt which springs from
love.
That which is true of St. John is true of all the
Evangelists.
They take that Gospel, which is the life of their
life. They bare its bosom to the stab of Celsus,^ to the
bitter sneer plagiarised by Renan — •" why did He not
appear to all, to His judges and enemies ? Why only to
one excitable woman, and a circle of His initiated ? "
' John xi\'. 19-21.
^ Tt's TovTo eWev ; yvvT) -ndpOLaTpos, koL el ris dWos tQv e/c ttjs avTrjs
yorjrtias. "Ore /xev rjirLarelTo ii> aufjiaTi irdcriv dvLdr]v (freeh', without
restraint) eKi^pvTTtv, ore 8k tt'kttlv dv iaxvpau iraptlx^^ ^^ veKpCjv dvaards
iul jj-bvLp yvpai'ijj zeal rols eavrou Ocaaiwrah (adepts, initiated) Kpvj35r]v
TrapecpaivtTb) . , . ixPV'^ eiirep 6vt(vs dtiav bvvajxiv eK(pTJvai rjdeXiv 6
'Iija-ovs avTols rcis iirripedcn Kal t^ KaradcKdaavTi Kai oXws wdaiv 6(p07,vai,
[Cclsus, ap. Ottg., 2, 55, 59, 70, 63.] The passage is given in
lUidolph Anger's invaluable5>'«o/'i-/s Evang. cum locis qui supersunt
farallelis lilierarum et traditionum Evang. Irenceo. antiquiorum. p. 254,
V.9. APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION. 245
''The hallucination of a h3^sterical woman endowed
Christendom with a risen God." ^ An apocryphal Gospel
unconsciously violates this apostolic, or rather divine
canon, by stating that Jesus gave His grave-clothes to
one of the High Priest's servants.^ There was every
reason but one why St. John and the other Evangelists
should have narrated such stories. There was only one
reason why they should not, but that was all-sufficient.
Their Master was the Truth as well as the Life. They
dared not lie.
Here, then, is one essential accordance in the narra-
tives of the Resurrection. They record no appearances
of Jesus to enemies or to unbelievers.
2. A second unity of essential principle will be found
in the impression produced upon the witnesses.
There was, indeed, a moment of terror at the sepul-
chre, when they had seen the angel clothed in the long
white garment. " The}^ trembled, and were amazed ;
neither said they anything to any man ; for they were
afraid." So writes St. Mark.^ And no such word ever
formed the close of a Gospel ! On the Easter Sunday
evening there was another moment when they were
'' terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had
seen a spirit." ^ But this passes away like a shadow. For
man, the Risen Jesus turns doubt into faith, faith into joy.
For woman. He turns sorrow into joy. From the sacred
wounds joy rains over into their souls. *' He showed
' 7W7J TrdpoLCTTpos, Celsus. "Moments sacres ou la passion d'une
hallucinee donne an monde un Dieu ressuscite." Renan, Fte de
Jesus, 434.
2 " Post Resurrectionem . . . Dominusquim ddsset sindonem servo
sacerdotis " — Evang. ad Heb. — Matt, xxvii. 59. — R. Ai.gcr, Sy.iopsis
Evang., 288.
8 Mark xvi. 8.
* Luke xxiv. 37.
246 THE WITNESS OF MEN
them His hands and His feet . . . while they yet believed
not for joy and \londered." '* He showed unto them
His hands and His side. Then were the disciples
glad when they saw the Lord."^ Each face of those
who beheld Him wore after that a smile through all
tears and forms of death. " Come," cried the great
Swedish singer, gazing upon the dead face of a holy
friend, " come and see this great sight. Here is a
woman who has seen Christ." Many of us know what
she meant, for we too have looked upon those dear to
us who have seen Christ. Over all the awful stillness —
under all the cold whiteness as of snow or marble —
that strange soft light, that subdued radiance, what shall
we call it ? wonder, love, sweetness, pardon, purity,
rest, worship, discovery. The poor face often dimmed
with tears, tears of penitence, of pain, of sorrow, some
perhaps which we caused to flow, is looking upon a
great sight. Of such the beautiful text is true, written
by a sacred poet in a language of which to many verbs
are pictures. '^ They looked unto Him, and were
lightenedy^ That meeting of lights without a name it
is which makes up what angels call joy. There re-
mained some of that light on all who had seen the
Risen Lord. Each might say — " have I not seen
Jesus Christ our Lord ? "
This effect, like every effect, had a cause.
Scripture implies in the Risen Jesus a form with all
heaviness and suffering lifted off it — with the glory, fresh-
ness, elasticity, of the new life, overflowing with beauty
and power. He had a voice with some of the pathos of
affection, making its sweet concession to human sensi-
bility: saying, "Mary," ''Thomas," "Simon, son of
* Luke xxiv. 41 ; John xx. 20. • Ps. xxxiv. 15,
V.9.] APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION. 247
Jonas." He had a presence at once so majestic that
they durst not question Him, yet so full of magnetic
attraction that Magdalene clings to His feet, and Peter
flings Himself into the waters when he is sure that it
is the Lord.-^
Now let it be remarked that this consideration entirely
disposes of that afterthought of critical ingenuity which
has taken the place of the base old Jewish theory —
" His disciples came by night, and stole Him away." ^
That theory, indeed, has been blown into space by
Christian apologetics. And now not a few are turning
to the solution that He did not really die upon the
cross, but was taken down alive.
There are other, and more than sufficient refuta-
tions. One from the character of the august Sufferer,
who would not have deigned to receive adoration upon
false pretences. One from the minute observation by
St. John of the physiological effect of the thrust of the
soldier's lance, to which he also reverts in the context.
But here, we only ask what effect the appearance of
the Saviour among His disciples, supposing that He
had not died, must unquestionably have had.
He would only have been taken down from the cross
something more than thirty hours. His brow punctured
with the crown of thorns ; the wounds in hands, feet,
and side, yet unhealed ; the back raw and torn with
scourges ; the frame cramped by the frightful tension
of six long hours — a lacerated and shattered man,
awakened to agony by the coolness of the sepulchre
and by the pungency of the spices ; a spectral, trembling,
fevered, lamed, skulking thing — could that have seemed
the Prince of Life, the Lord of Glory, the Bright and
* John xxi. 12, cf. 7. ^ Matt, xxviii. 13.
248 THE WITNESS OF MEN
Morning Star ? Those who had seen Him in Gethse-
mane and on the cross, and then on Easter, and during
the forty days, can scarcely speak of His Resurrection
without using language which attains to more than
lyrical elevation. Think of St. Peter's anthemlike burst.
*' Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who hath begotten us again to a lively hope,
by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."
Think of the words which St. John heard Him utter.
*'I am the First and the Living, and behold! I became
dead, and I am, living unto the ages of ages." ^
Let us, then, fix our attention upon the unity of
all the Resurrection narratives in these two essential
principles, (i) The appearances of the Risen Lord to
belief and love only. (2) The impression common to
all the narrators of glory on His part, of joy on theirs.
We shall be ready to believe that this was part of the
great body of proof which was in the Apostle's mind,
when pointing to the Gospel with which this Epistle
was associated, he wrote of this human but most con-
vincing testimony — "if we receive," as assuredly we
do, "the witness of men" — of evangelists among the
number.
II.
Too often such discussions as these end unpractically
enough, loo often
*' When the critic has done his best,
The peari of price at reason's test
On the Professor's lecture table
Lies, dust and ashes levigable."
But, after all, we may well ask : can we afford to
dispense with this well-balanced probability ? Is it
I Ptt. i. 3, 4; Apoc. i. 17, 18.
V.9.] APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION. 249
well for us to face life and death without taking it,
in some form, into the account ?
Now at the present moment, it may safely be said
that, for the best and noblest intellects imbued with
the modern philosoph}^, as for the best and noblest of
old who were imbued with the ancient philosophy, ex-
ternal to Christian revelation, immortality is still, as
before, a fair chance, a beautiful " perhaps," a splendid
possibility. Evolutionism is growing and maturing
somewhere another Butler, who will write in another,
and possibly more satisfying chapter, than that least
convincing of any in the Analogy — " of a Future State."
What has Darwinism to say on the matter ?
Much. Natural selection seems to be a pitiless
w^orker ; its instrument is death. But, when we
broaden our survey, the sum-total of the result is
everywhere advance — what is mainly worthy of notice,
in man the advance of goodness and virtue. For of
goodness, as of freedom,
" The battle once begun
Though baftled oft, is always won.**
Humanity has had to travel thousands of miles, inch
by inch, towards the light. We have made such progress
that we can see that in time, relatively short, we shall
be in noonday. After long ages of strife, of victory
for hard hearts and strong sinews, goodness begins to
wipe away the sweat of agony from her brow ; and will
stand, sweet, smiling, triumphant in the world. A
gracious life is free for man ; generation after genera-
tion a softer ideal stands before us, and we can con-
ceive a day when '* the meek shall inherit the earth."
Do not say that evolution, if proved a oittmnce, brutalises
man. Far from it. It Hfts him from below out of the
250 THE WITNESS OF MEN
brute creation. What theology calls original sin,
n^odern philosophy the brute inheritance — the ape, and
the goat, and the tiger — is dying out of man. The per-
fecting of human nature and of human society stands out
as the goal of creation. In a sense, all creation waits for
the manifestation of the sons of God. Nor need the true
Darwinian necessarily fear materialism. "Livers secrete
bile — brains secrete thought," is smart and plausible, but
it is shallow. Brain and thought are, no doubt, con-
nected— but the connection is of simultaneousness, of
two things in concordance indeed, but not related as
cause and effect. If cerebral physiology speaks of
annihilation when the brain is destroyed, she speaks
ignorantly and without a brief.
The greatest thinkers in the Natural Religion
department of the new philosophy seem then to be
very much in the same position as those in the same
department of the old. For immortality there is a
sublime probability. With man, and man's advance
in goodness and virtue as the goal of creation, who
shall say that the thing so long provided for, the goal
of creation, is likely to perish ? Annihilation is a
hypothesis ; immortality is a hypothesis. But im-
mortality is the more likely as well as the more beauti-
ful of the two. We may believe in it, not as a thing
demonstrated, but as an act of faith that " God will
not put us to permanent intellectual confusion," ^
But we may well ask whether it is wise and well to
refuse to intrench this probability behind another. Is it
likely that He who has so much care for us as to make
us the goal of a drama a million times more complex
than our fathers dreamed of; who lets us see that
' See 2 he Dci^iiny of Man, viewed in the light of his origin, by John
Fiske, especially the three remarkable chapters pp. 96-119.
V.9.] APPLIED TO THE RESURRECTION. 251
He has not removed us out of his sight ; will leave
Himself, and with Himself our hopes, without witness
in history ? History is especially human ; human
evidence the branch of moral science of which man is
master — for man is the best interpreter of man. The
primary axiom of family, of social, of legal, of moral
life, is, that there is a kind and degree of human
evidence which we ought not to refuse ; that if
credulity is voracious in belief, incredulity is no less
voracious in negation ; that if there is a credulity which
is simple, there is an incredulity which is unreasonable
and perilous. Is it then well to grope for the keys of
death in darkness, and turn from the hand that holds
them out ; to face the ugly realities of the pit with less
consolation than is the portion of our inheritance in the
faith of Christ ?
"The disciples," John tells us, "went away again
unto their own hom.e. But Mary was standing without
at the sepulchre weeping." ^ Weeping ! What else
is possible while we are outside^ while we stand — ■
what else until we stoop down from our proud grief to
the sepulchre, humble our speculative pride, and con-
descend to gaze at the death of Jesus face to face ?
When we do so, we forget the hundred voices that tell
us that the Resurrection is partly invented, partly
imagined, partly ideally true. We may not see angels
in white, nor hear their " why weepest thou ? " But
assuredly we shall hear a sweeter voice, and a stronger
than theirs ; and our name will be on it, and His name
will rush to our lips in the language most expressive
to us — as Mary said unto Him in Hebrew^ Rabboni.
* John XX. 10, II.
^ The word 'E(ipaicrTl had unfortunately dropped out of the T. R,
John XX. 16.
252 THE WITNESS OF MEN
Then we shall find that the grey of morning is passing ;
that the thin thread of scarlet upon the distant hills is
deepening into dawn ; that in that world where Christ
is the dominant law the ruling principle is not natural
selection which works through death, but supernatural
selection which works through life ; that ''because He
lives, we shall live also." ^
With the reception of the witness of men then, and
among them of such men as the writer of the fourth
Gospel, all follows. For Christ,
"Earth breaks up — time drops away;—
In flows Heaven with its new day
Of endless life, when He who trod,
Very Man and very God,
This earth in weakness, shame, and pain,
Dying the death whose signs remain
Up yonder on the accursed tree ;
Shall come again, no more to be
Of captivity the thrall —
But the true God all in all,
King of kings, and Lord of lords,
As His servant John received the words—
' I died, and live for evermore.' "'
For us there comes the hope in Paradise — the con-
nection with the living dead — the pulsation through the
isthmus of the Church, from sea to sea, from us to
them — the tears not without smiles as we think of the
long summer-day when Christ who is our life shall
appear — the manifestation of the sons of God, when
'' them that sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him."
Our resurrection shall be a fact of history, because His
is a fact of history ; and we receive it as such — partly
from the reasonable motive of reasonable human belief
en sufficient evidence for practical conviction.
All the long chain of manifold witness to Christ is
' John xiv. 19.
V.9.] APPLIED TO THE RESLRRECTION. 253
consummated and crowned when it passes into the
inner world of the individual life. '' He that believeth
on the Son of God, hath the witness in him," />., in
himself!^ Correlative to this, stands a terrible truth.
He of whom we must conceive that he believes not
God,^ has made Him a liar — nothing less ; for his time
for receiving Christ came, and went, and with this
crisis his unbeUef stands a completed present act as
the result of his past;^ unbelief stretching over to
the completed witness of God concerning His Son ; ^ —
human unbelief co-extensive with divine witness.
But that sweet witness in a man's self is not merely
in books or syllogisms. It is the creed of a living soul.
It lies folded within a man's heart, and never dies-
part of the great principle of victory ^ fought and won
over again in each true hfe ®— until the man dies, and
ceasing then only because he sees that which is the
object of its witness.
* kv iavTi^, ver. lO.
ov TreTTLffTevKev
. Ibid.
* ets T»)i' fiapTvpidv fiv /xe/jLapTvprjKev 6 Geo? Trepl rod vtoO airoO. Ibid,
* Trap TO yeyevvr]/j.evov e*c rod QeoO, viKq. tov Kdcrpiov, ver. 4.
* With the neuter in ver. 4, contrast the individualising masculine
in ver. 5, rts ianv 6 vikQv.
DISCOURSE XIV.
SIN UNTO DEATH.
"There is a sin unto death." — i John v. 17.
THE Church has ever spoken of seven deadly sins.
Here is the ugly catalogue. Pride, covetousness,
lust, envy, gluttony, hatred, sloth. Many of us pray
often " from fornication and all other deadly sin, Good
Lord deliver us." This language rightly understood is
sound and true ; yet, without careful thought, the term
may lead us into two errors.
1. On hearing of deadly sin we are apt instinctively
to oppose it to venial. But we cannot define by any
quantitative test what venial sin may be for any given
soul. To do that w^e must know the complete history
of each soul ; and the complete genealogy, conception,
birth, and autobiography of each sin. Men catch at
the term venial because they love to minimise a thing
so tremendous as sin. The world sides with the
casuists whom it satirises ; and speaks of a " white
lie," of a foible, of an inaccuracy, when " the * white lie '
may be that of St. Peter, the foible that of David, and
the inaccuracy that of Ananias ! "
2. There is a second mistake into which we often
fall in speaking of deadly sin. Our imagination nearly
always assumes some one definite outward act; some
single individual sin. 1 his may partly be due to a
V.I 7] SIN UNTO DEATH. 255
seemingly slight mistranslation in the text. It should
not run " there is a sin/' but '* there is sin unto" {e.g.j
in the direction of towards) '' death."
The text means something deeper and further-reach-
ing than any single sin, deadly though it may be justly
called.
The author of the fourth Gospel learned a whole
mystic language from the life of Jesus. Death, in the
great Master's vocabulary, was more than a single
action. It was again wholly different from bodily death
by the visitation of God. There are two realms for
man's soul co-extensive with the universe and with
itself. One which leads towards God is called Life;
one which leads from Him is called Death. There is
a radiant passage by which the soul is translated from
the death which is death indeed, to the life which is
life indeed. There is another passage by which we
pass from life to death ; i.e., fall back towards spiritual
(which is not necessarily eternal) death.
There is then a general condition and contexture ;
there is an atmosphere and position of soul in which
the true life flickers, and is on the way to death. One
who visited an island on the coast of Scotland has told
how he found in a valley open to the spray of the
north-west ocean a clump of fir trees. For a time
they grew well, until they became high enough to catch
the prevalent blast. They were still standing, but had
taken a fixed set, and were reddened as if singed by
the breath of fire. The island glen might be *' swept
on starry nights by balms of spring ; " the summer sun
as it sank might touch the poor stems with a momen-
tary radiance. The trees were still living, but only
with that cortical vitality which is the tree's death in
life. Their doom was evident ; they could have but a
256 SIN UNTO DEATH.
few more seasons. If the traveller cared some years
hence to visit that islet set in stormy waters, he would
find the firs blanched like a skeleton's bones. Nothing
remained for them but the sure fall, and the fated
rottenness.
The analogy indeed is not complete. The tree in
such surroundings must die; it can make for itself
no new condition of existence ; it can hear no sweet
question on the breeze that washes throug-h the grove,
" why will ye die ? " It cannot look upward — as it is
scourged by the driving spray, and tormented by the
fierce wind — and cry, *' O God of my life, give me fife."
It has no will; it cannot transplant itself. But the
human tree can root itself in a happier place. Some
divine spring may clothe it with green again. As it
was passing from life toward death, so by the grace
of God in prayers and sacraments, through penitence
and faith, it may pass from death to Hfe.
The Church then is not wrong when she speaks
of '^ deadly sin." The number seven is not merely a
mystic fancy. But the seven " deadly sins " are seven
attributes of the whole character ; seven master-ideas ;
seven general conditions of a human soul alienated
from God ; seven forms of aversion from true life, and
of reversion to true death. The style of St. John has
often been called '' senile ; " it certainly has the oracular
and sententious quietude of old age in its almost lapidary
repose. Yet a terrible light sometimes leaps from its
simple and stately lines. Are there not a hundred
hearts among us who know that as years pass they
are drifting further and further from Him who is the
Life ? Will they not allow that St. John was right
when, looking round the range of the Church, he asserted
that there is such a thing as " sm unto death ? '*
V. 17.] S7N UNTO DEATH, 257
It may be useful to take that one of the seven deadly
sins which people are the most surprised to find in
the list.
How and why is sloth deadly sin ?
There is a distinction between sloth as vice and sloth
as sin. The deadly sin of sloth often exists where the
vice has no place. The sleepy m.usic of Thomson's
*' Castle of Indolence " does not describe the slumber
of the spiritual sluggard. Spiritual sloth is want of
care and of love for all things in the spiritual order.
Its conceptions are shallow and hasty. For it the
Church is a department of the civil service ; her wor-
ship and rites are submitted to, as one submits to a
minor surgical operation. Prayer is the waste of a few
minutes daily in concession to a sentiment which it
might require trouble to eradicate. .For the slothful
Christian, saints are incorrigibly stupid ; martyrs in-
corrigibly obstinate ; clergymen incorrigibly profes-
sional ; missionaries incorrigibly restless ; sisterhoods
incorrigibly tender; white lips that can just whisper
Jesus incorrigibly awful. For the slothful, God, Christ,
death, judgment have no real significance. The Atone-
ment is a plank far away to be clutched by dying
fingers in the article of death, that we may gurgle out
" yes," when asked " are you happy " ? Hell is an
ugly word, Heaven a beautiful one which means a sky
or an Utopia. Apathy in all spiritual thought, languor
in every work of God, fear of injudicious and expensive
zeal ; secret dislike of those whose fervour puts us to
shame, and a miserable adroitness in keeping out of
their way; such are the signs of the spirit of sloth.
And with this a long series of sins of omission —
'^slumbering and sleeping while the Bridegroom
tarries" — '^unprofitable servants."
17
258 SIN UNTO DEATH.
We have said that the vice of sloth is generally
distinct from the sin. There is, however, one day of
the week on which the sin is apt to wear the drowsy
features of the vice — Sunday. If there is any day on
which we might be supposed to do something towards
the spiritual world it must be Sunday. Yet what have
any of us done for God on any Sunday ? Probably
we can scarcely tell. We slept late, we lingered over
pur dressing, we never thought of Holy Communion ;
after Church (if we went there) we loitered with
friends ; we lounged in the Park ; we whiled away
an hour at lunch ; we turned over a novel, with secret
dishke of the benevolent arrangements which give
the postman some rest. Such have been in the main
our past Sundays. Such will be our others, more or
fewer, till the arrival of a date written in a calendar
which eye hath not seen. The last evening of the
closing year is called by an old poet, "the twilight
of two years, nor past, nor next." What shall we call
the last Sunday of our year of life ?
Turn to the first chapter of St. Mark. Think of
that day of our Lord's ministry which is recorded more
fully than any other. What a day ! First that teaching
in the Synagogue, when men ''were astonished," not
at His volubility, but at His " doctrine," drawn from
depths of thought. Then the awful meeting with the
powers of the world unseen. Next the utterance of
the words in the sick room which renovated the fevered
frame. Afterwards an interval for the simple festival
of home. And then we see the sin, the sorrow, the
sufferings crowded at the door. A few hours more,
while yet there is but the pale dawn before the meteor
sunrise of Syria, He rises from sleep to plunge His
wearied brow in the dews of prayer. And finally the
V.I7.] SIN UNTO DEATH. 259
intrusion of others upon that sacred solitude, and the
work of preaching, helping, pitying, healing closes in
upon Him again with a circle which is of steel, because
it is duty — of delight, because it is love. O the divine
monotony of one of those golden days of God upon
earth ! And yet we are offended because He who is
the same for ever, sends from heaven that message
with its terrible plainness — ^' because thou art lukewarm,
I will spue thee out of my mouth." We are angry that
the Church classes sloth as deadly sin, when the
Church's Master has said — ^' thou wicked and slothfid
DISCOURSE XV.
THE TERRIBLE TRUISM WHICH HAS NO
EXCEPTION.
"All unrighteousness is sin : and there is a sin not unto death.'* —
I John v. 17.
LET us begin by detaching awhile from its context
this oracular utterance : ^' all unrighteousness
is sin." Is this true universally, or is it not ?
A clear consistent answer is necessary, because a
strange form of the doctrine of indulgences (long
whispered in the ears) has lately been proclaimed from
the housetops, with a considerable measure of apparent
acceptance.
Here is the singular dispensation from St. John's
rigorous canon to which we refer.
Three such indulgences have been accorded at various
times to certain favoured classes or persons, (i) ^'The
moral law does not exist for the elect." This was the
doctrine of certain Gnostics in St. John's day ; of certain
fanatics in every age. (2) '' Things absolutely for-
bidden to the mass of mankind, are allowable for people
of commanding rank." Accommodating Prelates, and
accommodating Reformers have left the burden of
defending these ignoble concessions to future genera-
tions. (3) A yet baser dispensation has been freely
given by very vulgar casuists. "The chosen of
V.I 7.] THE TERRIBLE TRUISM. 261
Fortune " — the men at whose magic touch every stock
seems to rise — may be allowed unusual fcrms of en-
joying the unusual success which has crowned their
career.
Such are, or such were^ the dispensations from St.
John's canon permitted to themselves, or to others,
by the elect of Heaven!^ by the elect of station, and
by the elect oi fotiime.
Another election hath obtained the perilous exception
now — the election of genius. Those who endow the
world with music, with art, with romance, with poetry,
are entitled to the reversion. " All unrighteousness is
sin " — except for them, (i) The indulgence is no longer
valid for those who effect intimac}- with heaven (partly
perhaps because it is suspected that there is no
heaven to be intimate with). (2) The indulgence is
not extended to the men who apparently rule over
nations, since it has been discovered that nations rule
over them. (3) It is not accorded to the constructors
of fortunes ; they are too many, and too uninteresting,
though possibly figures could be conceived almost
capable of buying it. But (generally speaking) men
of these three classes must pace along the dust of the
narrow road by the signpost of the law, if they would
escape the censure of society.
For genius alone there is no such inconvenient
restriction. Many men, of course, deliberately prefer
the ^'primrose path," but they can no more avoid
indignant hisses by the way than they can extinguish
the '' everlasting bonfire " at the awful close of their
journey. With the man of genius it seems that it is
otherwise. He shall "walk in the ways of his heart, and
in the sight of his ej^es ; " but, " for all these things "
the tribunals of certain schools of a delicate criticism
262 THE TERRIBLE TRUISM
(delicate criticism can be so indelicate !) will never allow
him "to be brought into judgment." Some literary
oracles, biographers, or reviewers, are not content to
keep a reverential silence, and to murmur a secret prayer.
They will drag into light the saddest, the meanest, the
most selfish doings of genius. Not the least service
to his generation, and to English literature, of the true
poet and critic lately taken from us,^ was the superb
scorn, the exquisite wit, with which his indignant
purity transfixed such doctrines. A strange winged
thing, no doubt, genius sometimes is ; alternately beat-
ing the abyss with splendid pinions, and eating dust
which is the ^'serpent's meat." But for all that, we
cannot see with the critic when he tries to prove
that the reptile's crawling is part of the angel's flight ;
and the dust on which he grovels one with the infinite
purity of the azure distances.
The arguments of the apologists for moral eccentricity
of genius may be thus summed up : — The man of
genius bestows upon humanity gifts which are on a
different line from any other. He enriches it on the
side where it is poorest ; the side of the Ideal. But
the very temperament in virtue of which a man is
capable of such transcendent work makes him pas-
sionate and capricious. To be imaginative is to be
exceptional ; and these exceptional beings live for man-
kind rather than for themselves. When their conduct
comes to be discussed, the only question is whether
that conduct was adapted to forward the superb self-
development which is of such inestimable value to the
world. If the gratification of any desire was necessary
for that self-development, genius itself being the judge,
* Mr. Matthew Arnold.
V. 170 WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION. 263
the cause is ended. In winning that gratification hearts
may be broken, souls defiled, lives wrecked. The
daintiest songs of the man of genius may rise to the
accompaniment of domestic sobs, and the music which
he seems to warble at the gates of heaven may be
trilled over the white upturned face of one who has died
in misery. What matter ! Morality is so icy, and
so intolerant ; its doctrines have the ungentlemanlike
rigour of the Athanasian Creed. Genius breaks hearts
with such supreme gracefulness, such perfect wit, that
they are arrant Philistines who refuse to smile.
We who have the text full in our mind answer all
this in the words of the old man of Ephesus. For
all that angel-softness which he learned from the
heart of Christ, his voice is as strong as it is sweet
and calm. Over all the storm of passion, over all the
babble of successive sophistries, clear and eternal it
rings out — ^^ all unrighteousness is sin." To which
the apologist, little abashed, replies — *'of course we
all know that; quite true as a general rule, but then
men of genius have bought a splendid dispensation
by paying a splendid price, and so their inconsistencies
are not sin."
There are two assumptions at the root of this
apology for the aberrations of genius which should
be examined. (l) The temperament of men of genius
is held to constitute an excuse from which there is
no appeal. Such men indeed are sometimes not slow
to put forward this plea for themselves. No doubt
there are trials peculiar to every temperament. Those
of men of genius are probably very great. They are
children of the sunshine and of the storm ; the grey
monotony of ordinary life is distasteful to them. Things
which others find it easy to accept convulse their
264 THE TERRIBLE TRUISM
sensitive organisation. Many can produce their finest
works only on condition of being sheltered where no
bills shall find their way by the post ; where no sound,
not even the crowing of cocks, shall break the haunted
silence. If the letter comes in one case, and if the
cock crows in the other, the first may possibly never
be remembered, but the second is never forgotten.
For this, as for every other form of human temper-
ament— that of the dunce, as well as of the genius —
allowance must in truth be made. In that one of the
lives of the English Poets, where the great moralist
has gone nearest to making concessions to this fallacy
of temperament, he utters this just warning. *^ No
wise man will easily presume to say, had I been in
Savage's condition I should have lived better than
Savage." But we must not bring in the temperament
of the man of genius as the standard of his conduct,
unless we are prepared to admit the same standard
in every other case. God is no respecter of persons.
For each, conscience is of the same texture, law of
the same material. As all have the same cross of
infinite mercy, the same judgment of perfect impar-
tiality, so have they the same law of inexorable duty.
(2) The necessary disorder and feverishness of high
literary and artistic inspiration is a second postulate
of the pleas to which I refer. But, is it true that
disorder creates inspiration ; or is a condition of it ?
All great work is ordered work ; and in producing
it the faculties must be exercised harmoniously and
with order. True inspiration, therefore, should not be
caricatured into a flushed and dishevelled thing.
Labour always precedes it. It has been prepared for
by education. And that education would have been
painful but for the glorious efQorescence of materials
V. 17. WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION. 265
collected and assimilated, which is the compensation
for any toil. The very dissatisfaction with its own
performances, the result of the lofty ideal which
is inseparable from genius, is at once a stimulus
and a balm. The man of genius apparently writes,
or paints, as the birds sing, or as the spring colours
the flowers; but his subject has long possessed his
mind, and the inspiration is the child of thought
and of ordered labour. Destroying the peace of one's
own family or of another's, being flushed with the
preoccupation of guilty passion, will not accelerate,
but retard the advent of those happy moments which
are not without reason called creative. Thus, the
inspiration of genius is akin to the inspiration of
prophecy. The prophet tutored himself by a fitting
education. He became assimilated to the noble things
in the future which he foresaw. Isaiah's heart
grew royal; his style wore the majesty of a king,
before he sang the King of sorrow with His infinite
pathos, and the King of righteousness with His infinite
glory. Many prophets attuned their spirits by listen-
ing to such music as lulls, not inflames passion. Others
walked where '* beauty born of murmuring sound "
might pass into their strain. Think of Ezekiel by
the river of Chebar, with the soft sweep of waters
in his ear, and their cool breath upon his cheek.
Think of St. John with the shaft of light from heaven's
opened door upon his upturned brow, and the boom
of the iEgean upon the rocks of Patmos around him.
" The note of the heathen seer " (said the greatest
preacher of the Greek Church) ^* is to be contorted,
constrained, excited, like a maniac ; the note of a
prophet is to be wakeful, self-possessed, nobly self-
conscious." We may apply this test to the distinction
266 THE TERRIBLE TRUISM
between genius, and the dissipated affectation of
genius.
Let us then refuse our assent to a doctrine of
indulgences apphed to genius on the ground of temper-
ament or of Kterary and artistic inspiration. '' Why," we
are often asked, '' why force your narrow judgment upon
an angry or a laughing w^orld ? " What have you to do
with the conduct of gifted men ? Genius means exube-
rant. Why ''blame the Niagara River" because it will
not assume the pace and manner of " a Dutch canal " ?
Never indeed should we force that judgment upon any,
unless they force it upon us. Let us avoid as far as
we may posthumous gossip over the grave of genius.
It is an unwholesome curiosity which rewards the black-
bird for that bubbling song of ecstasy in the thicket,
by gloating upon the ugly worm which he swallows
greedily after the shower. The pen or pencil has
dropped from the cold fingers. After all its thought
and sin, after all its toil and agony, the soul is with
its Judge. Let the painter of the lovely picture, the
writer of the deathless words, be for us like the priest.
The washing of regeneration is no less wrought through
the unworthy minister ; the precious gift is no less con-
veyed when a polluted hand has broken the bread and
blessed the cup. But if w^e are forced to speak, let us
refuse to accept an ex post facto morality invented to
excuse a worthless absolution. Especially so when
the most sacred of all rights is concerned. It is not
enough to say that a man of genius dissents from the
received standard of conduct. He cannot make fugi-
tive inclination the only principle of a connection which
he promised to recognise as paramount. A passage in
the Psalms/ has been called ''The catechism of Heavea."
' See Ps. XV. Cf. Ps. xxiv. 3-7.
V. 17.] WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION-. 267
^'The catechism of Fame" differs from ''the catechism
of Heaven." " Who shall ascend unto the hill of
Fame?" ''He that possesses genius." "Who shall
ascend unto the hill of the Lord ? " " He that hath
clean hands, and a pure heart; He that hath sworn
to his neighbour and disappointeth him not " (or disap-
pointeth her not) "though it were to his own hindrance "
— aye, to the hindrance of his self-development. Strange
that the rough Hebrew should still have to teach us
chivalry as well as religion ! In St. John's Epistle we
find the two great axioms about sin, in its two essential
aspects. ^' Sin is the transgression of the law : " there
is its aspect chiefly Godward, " All unrighteousness "
(mainly injustice, denial of the rights of others) "is
sin : " there is its aspect chiefly manward.
Yes, the principle of the text is rigid, inexorable,
eternal. Nothing can make its way out of those
terrible meshes. It is without favour, without excep-
tion. It gives no dispensation, and proclaims no
indulgences, to the man of genius, or to any other.
If it were otherwise, the righteous God, the Author of
creation and redemption, would be dethroned. And
that is a graver thing than to dethrone even the author
of "Queen Mab," and of "The Epipsychidion." Here
is the jurisprudence of the "great white Throne"
summed up in four words : " all unrighteousness is sin^
So far, in the last discourse, and in this, we have
ventured to isolate these two great principles from
their context. But this process is always attended
with peculiar loss in St. John's waitings. And as some
may think perhaps that the promise ^ is falsified we
must here run the risk of bringing in another thread
' I John V. 15.
268 THE TERRIBLE TRUISM
of thought. Yet indeed the whole paragraph^ has
its source in an intense faith in the efficacy of prayer^
specially as exercised in intercessory prayer.
(i) The efficacy of prayer.^ This is the very sign
of contrast with, of opposition to, the modern spirit,
which is the negation oi prayer.
What is the real value of prayer ?
Very little, says the modern spirit. Prayer is the
stimulant, the Dutch courage of the moral world.
Prayer is a powder, not because it is efficacious, but
because it is believed to be so.
A modern Rabbi, with nothing of his Judaism left but
a rabid antipathy to the Founder of the Church, guided
by Spinoza and Kant, has turned fiercely upon the Lord's
prayer.^ He takes those petitions which stand alone
among the liturgies of earth in being capable of being
translated into every language. He cuts off one pearl
after another from the string. Take one specimen.
^^ Our Father which art in Heaven." Heaven ! the very
name has a breath of magic, a suggestion of beauty, of
grandeur, of purity in it. It moves us as nothing else
can. We instinctively lift our heads ; the brow grows
proud of that splendid home, and the eye is wetted with
a tear and lighted with a ray, as it looks into those
depths of golden sunset w'hich are full for the young of
the radiant mystery of life, for the old of the pathetic
mystery of death."* Yes, but for modern science Heaven
means air, or atmosphere, and the address itself is con-
' I John V. 14, 18.
"" Vv. 14, 15.
^ Historical and Critical Commentary on Leviticus. By M. M.
Kalisch. Parti. Theology of the Past and Future, 431, 438.
■^ This is denied by De Wette {Ueher die Religion, Vorlesungen,
106).
V. 17.] WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION, 269
tradictory. ^' Forgive us." But surely the guilt can-
not be forgiven, except by the person against whom
it is committed. There is no other forgiveness. A
mother (whose daughter went out upon the cruel
London streets) carried into execution a thought be-
stowed upon her by the inexhaustible ingenuity of love.
The poor woman got her own photograph taken, and
a friend managed to have copies of it hung in several
halls and haunts of infamy with these words clearly
written below — "come home, I forgive you." The
tender subtlety of love was successful at last ; and the
poor haggard outcast's face was touched by her mother's
lips. *' But the heart of God," says this enemy of prayer,
''is not as a woman's heart." (Pardon the words, O
loving Father! Thou who hast said "Yea, she may
forget, yet will I not forget thee." Pardon, O pierced
Human Love ! who hast graven the name of every
soul on the palm.s of Thy hands with the nails of the
crucifixion.) Repentance subjectively seems a reality
when mother and child meet with a burst of passionate
tears, and the polluted brow feels purified by their
molten downfall ; but repentance objectively is seen to
be an absurdity by every one who grasps the con-
ception of law. The penitential Psalms may be the
lyrics of repentance, the Gospel for the third Sunday
after Trinity its idyll, the cross its symbol, the wounds
of Christ its theology and inspiration. But the course
of Nature, the hard logic of life is its refutation — the
flames that burn, the waves that drown, the machine
that crushes, the society that condemns, and that neither
can, nor will forgive.
Enough, and more than enough of this. The monster
of ignorance who has never learnt a prayer, has hitherto
been looked upon as one of the saddest of sights. But
270 THE TERRIBLE TRUISM
there is something sadder — the monster of over-cultiva-
tion, the wreck of schools, the priggish fanatic of god-
lessness. Alas ! for the nature which has become like
a plant artificially trained and twisted to turn away from
the light. Alas ! for the heart which has hardened itself
into stone until it cannot beat faster, or soar higher,
even when men are saying with happy enthusiasm,
or when the organ is lifting upward to the heaven of
heavens the cry which is at once the creed of an ever-
lasting dogma and the hymn of a triumphant hope —
*' with Thee is the well of Life, and in Thy light shall
vi^e see light" Now having heard the answer of the
modern spirit to the question '' what is the real value
of prayer?" think of the answer of the spirit of the
Church as given by St. John in this paragraph. That
answer is not drawn out in a syllogism. St. John
appeals to our consciousness of a divine life. " That ye
may know that ye have eternal life." This knowledge
issues in confidence^ i.e.y literally the sweet possibility
of saying out all to God. And this confidence is never
disappointed for any believing child of God. " If we
know that He hear us, we know that w^e have the
petitions that we desired of Him." ^
On the 1 6th verse we need only say, that the great-
ness of our brother's spiritual need does not cease to
be a title to our sympathy. St. John is not speaking
of all requests, but of the fulness of brotherly inter-
cession.
One question and one warning in conclusion ; and that
question is this. Do we take part in this great ministry
of love ? Is our voice heard in the full music of the
' The form of expression indicates not necessarily the very things
asked, but tie spii ilual essence and substance.
V. 17.] WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION. 271
prayers of intercession that are ever going up to the
Throne, and bringing down the gift of Ufe ? Do we
pray for others ?
In one sense all who know true affection and the
sweetness of true prayer do pray for others. We have
never loved with supreme affection any for whom we
have not interceded, whose names we have not bap-
tized in the fountain of prayer. Prayer takes up a
tablet from the hand of love written over with names ;
that tablet death itself can only break when the heart
has turned Sadducee.
Jesus (we sometimes think) gives one strange proof
of the love which yet passeth knowledge. ''Now Jesus
loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus ; " " when He
had heard therefore" [O that strange therefore !] "that
Lazarus was sick, He abode two days still in the same
place where He was." Ah ! sometimes not two days,
but two years, and sometimes evermore, He seems to
remain. When the income dwindles with the dwindling
span of life ; when the best beloved must leave us for
many years, and carries away our sunshine with him ;
when the life of a husband is in danger — then we pray ;
" O Father, for Jesu's sake spare that precious hfe ;
enable me to provide for these helpless ones ; bless
these children in their going out and coming in, and let
me see them once again before the night com.eth, and
my hands are folded for the long rest." Yes, but have
we prayed at our Communion " because of that Holy
Sacram^ent in it, and with it," that He would give them
the grace which they need — the life which shall save
them from sin unto death ? Round us, close to us in
our homes, there are cold hands, hearts that beat feebl3\
Let us fulfil St. Jchn's teaching, by praying to Him
who is the life that He would chafe those cold hands
272 THE TERRIBLE TRUISM
with His hand of love, and quicken those dying hearts
by contact with that wounded heart which is a Heart
of fire.
NOTES
Ch. V. 3-17.
Ver. 3. This section should begin with the words *' And
His commandments are not heavy" — and should not be
separated from what follows, because they give one reason
of the victory whereof he proceeds to speak. " His command-
ments are not heavy, for all that is born of God conquereth
the world." What a picture of the sweetness of a life of ser-
vice ! What a gentle smile must have been on the old man's
face as he said, " His commandments are not grievous ! "
Vers. 7, 8, This passage with its apparent obscurity, and
famous interpolation, demands some additional notice. As
to criticis77i and zatef^pretatlon.
(i) Critically. Since the publication of J. J. Griesbach's
celebrated work {^Diatribe in locum i John v. 7, 8, Tom. ii.,
N.T. Halle: 1806), first German, and latterly English,
opinion has become absolutely unanimous in agreeing with
Griesbach that "the words included between brackets are
spurious, and should .therefore be eliminated from the Sacred
Text." Even the famous Roman Catholic scholar, Scholts,
in his great critical edition of the New Testament, in two
volumes (Bonn: 1836), boldly dropped the disputed passage
from the text. The interpolated passage has certainly no
support in any uncial manuscript, or ancient version, or
Greek Father of the four first centuries. (2) As to ititer-
;pr elation, the faith has lost nothing by the honesty of her
wisest defenders. The whole of the genuine passage is
intensely Trinitarian. The interpolation is nothing but an
exposition written into the text. The three genuine witnesses
do really point to the Three Witnesses in Heaven. Bengel's
saying expresses the permanent feeling of Christendom, which
no criticism can do away with : " This trine array of witnesses
on earth is supported by, and has above and beneath it the
Trinity, which is Heavenly, archetypal, fundamental, ever-
lasting." The whole context recognizes three special works
of the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. "This is the
V. 1 7.] WHICH HAS NO EXCEPTION. 273
witness of God," i.e. of the Father (ver. 9); "this is He that
came by water and blood," i.e. the Son (ver. 6); "it is the
Spirit that witnesseth," i.e. the Holy Ghost {ibid.').
A fuller examination of this passage, from a polemical point
of view, will be found in the third of the introductory discourses.
It will be well, however, to indicate here the immediate con-
troversial reference in the Spirit, the water, and the blood.
There is abundant proof that the popular heretical philosophy
of Asia Minor struck Christianity precisely in three vital
places. It denied —
(i) The Incarnation — consequently
(2) The Redemption — consequently
(3) The Sacraments.
But the mention of the water and the blood in connection
with the Person of the Son Incarnate and Crucified established
exactly these three points. Narrated as it was by an eye-
witness, it established : —
(i) The reality of the Incarnation — consequently
(2) The reality of Redemption — for the blood of Jesus
cleanses from all sin (i John i. 7) — consequently
(3) The reality of Sacraments.
We have articulate evidence of the denial of the two sacra-
ments by the Docetic idealists of Asia Minor. The Philoso-
^humena tells us of the view of baptism held by one of their
principal sects. "According to them the promise of the
laver of regeneration is nothing more than the introduction
into the * unfading pleasure ' of him that is washed (as they
say) with living water, and anointed with * chrism that
speaketh not.'"^ The testimony of Ignatius is express as
to the other sacrament. " From Eucharist and prayer they
abstain on account of not confessing that the Eucharist is
flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ which suffered for our sins."
• — i^Ep. ad Smyrn. vii.)
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NOTES.
Ch. V. 18-21.
Ver. 18, 19, 20. Three seals are affixed to the close of this
Epistle— three postulates of the spiritual reason ; three primary
canons of spiritual perception and knowledge. Each is marked
by the emphatic " we know," which is stamped at the opening
of its first line. The first '* we know," is of a sense of purity
made possible to the Christian through the keeping by Him
Who is the one Begotten of God. The evil one cannot touch him
with the contaminating touch which implies connection. The
second ''we know" involves a sense oi ^privilege ; the true
conviction that by God's power, and love, we are brought into
a sphere of light, out of the darkness in which a sinful world
has become as if cradled on the lap of the evil one. The third
"we know " is the deep consciousness of the very Presence
of the Son of God in and with His Church. And with this
comes all the inner life— supremely a new way of looking at
things, a new possibility of thought, a new cast of thought
and sentiment, "understanding" (Sidi/oia). Words denoting
intellectual faculties and processes are rare in St. John.
This word is used in the sense just given in Plat., Re^.y 511,
and Arist., Poet., vi. (in the last, however, rather of the se72ti'
me?it of the piece than of the author), "He hath given us
understanding that we know continuously the very [God]."
And in "His Son Jesus Christ [this is the very God and
eternal life] we are in the very God." This interpretation
of the passage is supported by the position of the pronoun
which cannot be referred naturally to any subject but Jesus
Christ. Waterland quotes Irenaeus. "No man can know
God unless God has taught him ; that is to say, that without
God, God cannot be known." ^
Ver. 21. The Epistle closes with a short, sternly affectionate
exhortation. " Children, guard yourselves " (the aoristimpera-
tive of immediate final decision) "from the idols." These
words are natural in the atmosphere of Ephesus (Acts xix.
26, 27). The Author of the Apocalypse has a like hatred
of idols. (Apoc. ii. 14, 15, ix. 20, xx. 1-8, xxii. 15.)
* Moyer Lecture, vi.
276 NOTES.
It would appear that the Gnostics allowed people to eat
freely things sacrificed to idols. Modern, like ancient un-
belief, has sometimes attributed to St. John a determination
to exalt the Master whom he knew to be a man to an equality
with God. But this is morally inconsistent with the Apostle's
unaffected shrinking from idolatry in every form. (See
Speaker's Commentary , N. T,, iv., 347).
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN,
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DISCOURSE XVI.
. THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER.
"The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the
truth . . . Grace be with you, mercy and peace, from God the Father
and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and
love." — 2 John, 3.
OF old God addressed men in tones that, were so to
speak, distant. Sometimes He spoke with the
stern precision of law or ritual ; sometimes in the dark
and lofty utterances of prophets ; sometimes through
the subtle voices of history, which lend themselves to
different interpretations. But in the New Testament He
whom no man hath seen at any time, "interpreted,"^
Himself with a sweet familiarity. It is of a piece with
the dispensation of condescendence, that the mysteries
of the kingdom of heaven should come to us in such
large measure through epistles. For a letter is just the
result of taking up one's pen to converse with one who
is absent, a familiar talk with a friend.
Of the epistles in our New Testament, a few are
addressed to individuals. The effect of three of these
letters upon the Church, and even upon the world, has
been great. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus,
according to the most prevalent interpretation of them,
have been felt in the outward organization of the
Church. The Epistle to Philemon, with its eager
' John i. 18.
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER, 283
tenderness, its softness as of a woman's heart, its
chivalrous courtesy, has told in another direction.
With all its freedom from the rashness of social revo-
lution ; its almost painful abstinence (as abolitionists
have sometimes confessed to feeling) from actual invec-
tive against slavery in the abstract ; that letter is yet
pervaded by thoughts whose issue can only be worked
out by the liberty of the slave. The word emancipation
may not be pronounced, but it hovers upon the Apostle's
lips.
The second Epistle is, in our judgment, a letter to an
individual. Certainly we are unable to find in its whole
contents any probable allusion to a Church personified
as a lady.^ It is, as we read it, addressed to Kyria, an
Ephesian lady, or one who lived in the circle of Ephesian
influence. It was sent by the Apostle during an
absence from Ephesus. That absence might have been
for the purpose of one of the visitations of the Churches
of Asia Minor, which (as we are told by ancient Church
writers) the Apostle was in the habit of holding.
Possibly, however, in the case of a writer so brief and
so reserved in the expression of personal sentiment as
St. John, the gush and sunshine of anticipated joy at
the close of this note might tempt us to think of a rift
^ There is no doubt a large amount of authority for this view that
St. John addresses a Church personified. It has the support of sacred
critics so different as Bishop Wordsworth and Bishop Lightfoot.
{Ep, to Colossians and Philemon, 305), and Professor Wcstcott seems
(with some hesitation) to lean to it. But there is also a great body
of support, ancient and modern, for the literal view. (Clcni. Alex.,
Adunbr. ad ii. Joan., Op., iii. lOii.) So Athanasius, or the author of
"Synopsis S.S." in Athanasius, O//*., iv. 410. See also the heading
of the A. V. (" He exhorlclh a certain honourable matron, with her
children.") For reasons for accepting Kyria rather than Electa as
the name, see Speaker's Commeniary, iv. 335.
284 THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER
in some sky that had been long darkened ; of the close
of some protracted separation, soon to be forgotten in
a happy meeting. " Having many things to write unto
you, I would not do so by means of paper and ink ;
but I hope to come unto you, and to speak face to
,face that our joy may be fulfilled." ^ The expression
misrht not seem unsuitable for a return from exile.
Several touches of language and feeling in the latter
point to the conclusion that Kyria was a widow.
There is no menticn of her husband, the father of her
children. In the case of a writer who uses the names of
God with such subtle and tender suitability, the associa-
tion of Kyria's '' children walking in truth" with " even
as we received commandment from the FatherJ^ may
well point to Him who was for them the Father of the
fatherless. We need not with some expositors draw
the sad conclusion that St. John affectionately hints that
there were others of the family who could not be in-
cluded in this joyful message. But it would seem
highly probable from the language used that there were
several sons, and also that Kyria had no daughters.
Over these sons who had lost one earthly parent, the
Apostle rejoices with the heart of a father in God. He
bursts out with his eureka, the eureka not of a philo-
sopher, but of a saint. " I rejoiced exceedingly that I
found - certain of the number of thy children walking
in truth."
While we may not trace in this little Epistle the same
fountain of wide-spreading influence as in others to
which we have referred ; while we feel that, like its
author, its work is deep and silent rather than com-
manding, reflection will also lead us to the conclusion
* VLf. 12. * evp-qKa, vcr. 4.
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER, 285
that it is worthy of the Apostle who was looked upon
as one of the '' pillars " of the faith. ^
I. Let us reQect that this letter is addressed by the
aged Apostle to a widow, and concerns her family.
It is significant that Kyria was, in all probability, a
widow of Ephesus.
Too many of us have more or less acquaintance with
one department of French literature. A Parisian widow
is too often the questionable heroine of some shameful
romance, to have read which is enough to taint the
virginity of the young imagination. Ephesus was the
Paris of Ionia. Petronius was the Daudet or Zola of
his day. An Ephesian widow is the heroine of one
of the most cynically corrupt of his stories.
But ''where sin abounded, grace did more than
abound." Strange that fir-st in an epistle to a Bishop
of the Church of Ephesus, St. Paul should have pre-
sented us with that picture of a Christian widow —
*' she that is a widow, indeed, and desolate, who hath
her hope set on God, and continueth in prayer night
and day " — yet who, if she has the devotion, the almost
entire absorption in God, of Anna, the daughter of
Phanuel, ^ leaves upon the track of her daily road to
heaven the trophies of Dorcas — "having brought up
children well, used hospitaUty to strangers, washed the
saints* feet, relieved the afflicted, diligently followed
every good work." ^ Such widows are the leaders of
the long procession of women, veiled or unveiled, with
vows or without them, who have ministered to Jesus
through the ages. Christ has a beautiful art of turn-
ing the affliction of His daughters into the consolation
* "James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to he. pillars" Gal. ii. ^
' Luke ii. 36.
• 1 Tim. V. 3, 5, 10.
286 THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER.
of suffering. When life's fairest hopes are disappointed
by falsehood, by cruel circumstances, by death ; the
broken heart is soothed by the love of Christ, the only
love which is proof against death and change. The
consolation thus received is the most unselfish of gifts.
It overflows, and is lavishly poured out upon the sick
and weary. With St. Paul's picture of a widow of this
kind, contrast another by the same hand which hangs
close beside it. The younger Ephesian widow, such
as Petronius described, was known by St. Paul also.
If any count the Apostle as a fanatic, destitute of all
knowledge of the world because he Uved above it, let
them look at those lines, which are full of such caustic
power, as they hit off the characteristics of certain idle
and wanton affecters of a sorrow which they never
felt.^ What a distance between such widows and Kyria,
*' beloved for the truth's sake which abideth in us ! " ^
But the short letter of St. John is addressed to Kyria's
family as well as to herself ^' The elder to the ex-
cellent Kyria and her children." ^
There is one question which we naturally ask about
every school and form of religion. It is the question
which a great English Professor of Divinity used to
ask his pupils to put in a homely form about every
religious scheme and mode of utterance — " will it
wash well ? " Is it an influence which seems to be
productive and lasting? Does it abide through time
and trials? Is it capable of being passed on to another
generation? Are plans, services, organizations, preach-
ings, classes, vital or showy ? Are they fads to meet
fancies, or works to supply wants ? Is that which we
hold such sober, solid truth, that wise piety can say
* I Tim. V. 6-11, 12, 13. "^ 2 John 2. ^ Ver. I.
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER, 287
of it, half in benediction, half in prophecy^ — " the truth
which abideth in us ; yea, and with us it shall be for
ever ? "
2. We turn to the contents of the Epistle.
We shall be better able to appreciate the value of
these, if we consider the state of Christian hterature
at that time.
What had Christians to read and carry about with
them ? The excellent work of the Bible Society was
physically impossible for long centuries to come. No
doubt the LXX. version of the Old Testament was
widely spread. In every great city of the Roman
Empire there was a vast population of Jews. Many of
these were baptized into the Church, and carried into it
with them their passionate belief in the Old Testament.
The Christians of the time and place to which we refer
could, probably, with little trouble, if not read, yet hear
the Old Covenant and able expositions of it. But they
had not copies of the entire New Testament, Indeed,
if all the New Testament was then written, it cer-
tainly was not collected into one volume, nor con-
stituted one supreme authority. '' Many barbarous
nations," says a very ancient Father, '' believe in Christ
without written record, having salvation impressed
through the Spirit in their hearts, and diligently pre-
serving the old tradition." ^ Possibly a Church or single
believer had one synoptical Gospel. At Ephcsus
Christians had doubtless been catechised in, and were
deeply imbued with, St. John's view of the Person, work,
and teaching of our Lord. This had now been moulded
into shape, and definitely committed to writing in that
' 5td TT^v aX-qdeiav TtjV p.hov<Tav iv rjjxiv, Kui fj^iO' iffxuv ecrat ds rbv
alCjvx. 2 John ver. 2.
^ lrei;a;U3j Ha'r., iii. 4.
288 THEOLOGY AND LIFE LN KYRIA'S LETTER,
glorious Gospel, the Church's Holy of Holies, St.
John's Gospel. For them and for their contemporaries
there was a Hving realization of the Gospel. They
had heard it from eye-witnesses. They had passed
into the wonderland of God. The earth on which
Jesus trod had blossomed into miracle. The air was
haunted by the echoes of His voice. They had, pro-
bably, also a certain number of the Epistles of St.
Paul. The Christians of Ephesus would have a special
interest in their own Epistle to the Ephesians, and in
the two which were written to their first Bishop, Timothy
They had also (whether written or not) impressed
upon their memories by their weekly Eucharist, the
liturgical Canon of consecration according to the
Ephesian usage — from which, and not the Roman, the
Spanish and Gallican seem to be derived. The Ephesian
Christians had also the first Epistle of St. John, which
in some form accompanied the Gospel, and is, indeed,
a picture of spiritual life drawn from it. But let us
remember that the Epistle is not of a character to be
very quickly or readily learned by heart. Its subtle,
latent links of connection do not present many grap-
pling hooks for the memory to fasten itself to. Copies
also must have been comparatively few.
Now let us see how the second Epistle may well
have been related to the first.
Supremely, and above all else, the first Epistle con-
tained three warnings, very necessary for those times.
(i) There was a danger of losing the true Christy the
Word made Flesh, Who for the forgiveness of our sins
did shed out of His most precious side both water and
blood — in a false, because shadowy and ideal Christ.
(2) There was danger of losing true love, and therefore
spiritual life, with truth. (3) With the true Christ and
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER. 289
true love there was a danger of losing the true com-
niandment — love of God and of the brethren. Now
in the second Epistle these very three warnings were
written on a leaflet in a form more calculated for circu-
lation and for remembrance, (i) Against the peril of
faith, of losing the true Christ. '^ Many deceivers are
gone out into the world — they who confess not Jesus
Christ coming in flesh. This is the deceiver and the
antichrist."^ With the true Christ, the true doctrine
of Christ would also vanish, and with it all living hold
upon God. Progress was the watchword ; but it was
in reality regress. " Every one who abideth not in the
doctrine of Christ hath not God."^ (2) Against the
peril of losing love. *^ I beseech thee, Kyria . . . that
we love one another." ^ (3) Against the peril of losing
the trite commandment (the great spiritual principle of
charity), or the true commandments ^ (that principle in
the details of life). ^' And this is love, that we walk
after His commandments. This is the commandment,
that even as ye heard from the beginning ye should
walk in it." ^
Here then were the chief practical elements of the
first Epistle contracted into a brief and easily remem-
bered shape.
Easily remembered, too, was the stern, practical pro-
hibition of the intimacies of hospitality with those
who came to the home of the Christian, in the capacity
of emissaries of the antichrist above indicated. '* Re-
* Ver. 7. 2 Ver. 9. « Ver. 5.
* Commandments and comniandment — Love strives to realise in
detail every separate expression of ihe will of God." (Prof. Westcott,
Epistles of St. John, 217),
Ver. 6.
19
290 THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER,
ceive him not into your house, and good speed salute
him not with." ^
Many are offended with this. No doubt Christianity
is the rehgion of love — ''the epiphany of the sweet-
naturedness and philanthropy of God."^ We very
often look upon heresy or unbelief with the tolerance of
curiosity rather than of love. At all events, the Gospel
has its intolerance as well as tolerance. St. John cer-
tainly had this. It is not a true conception in art which
invests him with the mawkish sweetness of perpetual
youth. There is a sense in which he was a son of
Thunder to the last. He who believes and knows must
formulate a dogma. A dogma frozen by formality, or
soured by hate, or narrowed by stupidity, makes a
bigot. In reading the Church History of the first four
centuries we are often tempted to ask, why all this
subtlety, this theology-spinning, this dogma-hammer-
ing ? The answer stands out clear above the mists of
controversy. Without all this the Church would have
lost the conception of Christ, and thus finally Christ
Himself St. John's denunciations have had a function
in Christendom as well as his love.
* It is, probably, the existence of these verses(vv. lo, ll) which acts
as a stimulus to many liberal Christian commentators in favour of the
ultra-mystical view, that the lady addressed in this Epistle is a
Church personified. It should be carefully noted that St. John
speaks of a formal summons, so to speak, from an emissary of anti-
christ as such, {el ris tpx^Tai wpbs Vfj.as, ver. lo), St. John, also, must
have detected a danger in the very g-ntleness of Kyria's character,
cr in the disposition of some of her children. So much, indeed, might
; ce n implied in the sudden, solemn, and rather startling warning, which
( nt "cated constant continuous care {^Xkirere eavrov^), so that they
t:hould not in some momentary impulse, under the charm of some
c-cceiver, lose what they had wrought, and with it reward in fulness
(ra fJLi) aTToXearjTe, ver. lO}.
^ Titus iii. 4.
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER, 291
3. There are two most precious indications of the
highest Christian truth with which we may conclude.
We have prefixed to this. Epistle that beautiful
Apostohc salutation which is found in two only among
the Epistles of St. Paul.^ After that simple, but exqui-
site expression of blessing merged in prophecy — " the
truth which abideth in us — yes ! and with us it shall
be for ever " — there comes another verse set in the same
key. " There shall be with us grace, mercy, peace, from
God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of the
Father, in truth " of thought, '' and love " of life.^
This rush and reduplication of words is not very like
the usual reserve and absence of emotional excitement
in St. John's style. Can it be that something (possibly
the glorious death of martyrdom by which Timothy
died) led St. John to use words which were probably
familiar to Ephesian Christians ?
However this may be, let us Hve by and learn from
those lovely words. Our poverty wants grace, our
guilt wants mercy, our misery wants peace. Let us ever
keep the Apostle's order. Do not let us put peace, our
feeling of peace, first. The emotionalists' is a topsy-turvy
theology. Apostles do not say '' peace and grace/' but
*' grace and peace."
One more— in an age which substitutes an ideal
something called the spirit of Christianity for Christ,
let us hold fast to that which is the essence of the
Gospel and the kernel of our three creeds. '' To confess
Jesus Christ coming in flesh." ^ Couple with this a
canon of the First Epistle—" confesseth Jesus Christ
» I Tim. i. I ; 2 Tim. i. 2.
^ "Effrat /i,e'9' \)ix.!hv xapis, 'i\^o%, et/)?>7?, K.r.X. 2 John ver. 3.
^ 'ItjctoOj' Xptcr, hv kpxpixevov iv aapKi. 2 John ver. 7.
292 THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER.
come in flesh." ^ The second is the Incarnation fact
with its abiding consequences ; the first, the Incarna-
tion principle ever living in a Person, Who will also be
personally manifested. This is the substance of the
Gospels ; this the life of prayers and sacraments ; this
the expectation of the saints.
NOTES.
Ver. I. The Elder.'] This word has played a great part
in an important controversy. It is argued that the Elder of
this and of the Third Epistle is the author indeed of the first
Epistle and of the Gospel, but cannot be the Apostle St. John,
who would not, (it is alleged,) call himself 6 npea-^vTepos.
And Eusebius {LT.B., lib. iii., cap. ult.) preserves a fragment
from Papias, which he misunderstands to indicate that there
were two Johns (see Riggenbach, Leben J^esu, 59, 60). But
even if the word be Presbyter, and points to an ecclesiastical
title, it might stand precisely on the same footing as St. Peter's
language — " the elders among you I exhort, who am z. fellow
elder ^' (i Pet. v. i). The Elder at the opening of the Second
and Third Epistles of St. John, may well signify the aged
Apostle, the oldest of the company of Jesus, the one living
representative of the traditions of Galilee and Jerusalem.
Ver. 7. The seducer.] 6 -nkavo^. The almost technical force
of this word would be adequately appreciated only by readers
more or less imbued with Jewish ideas. It was indeed the
really strong motive m the terrible game which the Jewish
priests played in bringing about the death of our Lord. The
process against the Mesith, "seducer," is drawn out in the
Talmud with an effrontery at once puerile and revolting. The
man accused oi seduction was to be drawn into conversation,
while two witnesses were hidden in the next room,— and
candles were to be lighted, as if accidentally, close by him,
that the witnesses might be sure that they had seen, as well as
heard the heretic. He was to be called upon to retract his
heretical pravity. If he refused, he was to be brought before
the Council, and stoned if the verdict was against him. The
* 'It/o-oOv Xpia-Tov ev aapd i\T]Xv66Ta. I John iv. «.
THEOLOGY AND LIFE IN KYRIA'S LETTER. 293
Talmudists add that this was the legal process carried out
against Jesus : that He was condemned upon the testimony
of two witnesses ; and that the crime of " misleading " was the
only one which was thus formally dealt with. (See references
to the Talmud of Jerusalem, and that of Babylon, Vie de Jesus,
Renan, 394, N. i). The Gospels tell us that the accusation
against our Lord was "misleading:" and the terrible word
in the verse which we are examining was actually applied to
Him, (f/ceti/os' 6 TrXavos', Matt, xxvii. 63 ; TrXam tov oy\ov, John
vii. \2 \ \i,r] Kai vficls TzeTikavrjaOe ; John vii. 47).
** Excepting some minutiae, the product of the Rabbinical
imagination, the narrative of the Evangelists answers, point
by point, to the process actually laid down by the Talmud "
(Renan, ut sup.).
Ver. 9. Every one who leadeth forwardP\ nas 6 irpodycov
is certainly the true reading here ; the commander himself
pushing boldly onward, and also carrying others with him.
The allasion is polemical to the vaunted progress of the
Gnostic teachers.
*' The doctrine which is Christ' s.*^~\ What is that ? John
vii. 16, 17. The doctrine which Christ emphatically called
" My doctrine," " the doctrine." No doubt the word (dLdaxr))
sometimes means the act, sometimes the mode, of teaching
(Mark xii. 38 ; i Cor. xiv. 6) ; but " it underwent a transforma-
tion which converted it into a term synonymous with dogmatic
teaching," with the body of faithful doctrine which was the
ultimate type and norm to which all statements must be con-
formed. (Tit. i. 9; Rom. vi., xvi. 17 ; see also Matt. xvi. 12 ;
Acts V. 28, xvii. 19; Heb. xiii. 2.) It is much to be regretted
that in the R.V. the word " doctrine " has disappeared from
all these passages, Romans xvi. 17 alone excepted. St. John's
language in this verse seems quite decisive.
THE THIRD EPISTLE OF ST JOHN.
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DISCOURSE XVII.
THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION.
"The elder unto the well beloved Gaius. . . . He that doeth good
is of God ; but he that doeth evil hath not seen God," — 3 John I, 1 1.
THE mere analysis of this note must necessarily
present a meagre outline. There is a brief
expression of pleasure at the tidings of the sweet and
gracious hospitality of Gaius which was brought by
certain missionary brethren to Ephesus, coupled with
the assurance of the truth and consistency of his whole
walk. The haughty rejection of Apostolic letters of
communion by Diotrephes is mentioned with a burst
of indignation. A contract to Diotrephes is found in
Demetrius, with the threefold witness to a life so
worthy of imitation. A brief greeting- and we have
done with the last wTitten words of St. John which
the Church possesses.
Let us first see whether, without passing over the
bounds of historical probability, we can fill up this
bare outline with some colouring of circumstance.
To two of the three individuals named in this Epistle
we seem to have some clue.
The Gams addressed is, of cour.-e, Cains in Latin,
a very common praenomen, no doubt.
THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION. 30'
Three persons of the name appear in the New
Testament^ — unless we suppose St. John's Caius to
be a fourth. But the generous and beautiful hospi-
tality adverted to in this note is entirely of a piece
with the character of him of whom St. Paul had
written, " Gaius, mine host, and of the whole Church." ^
We know further, from one of the most ancient and
authentic documents of Christian literature, that the
Church of Corinth (to which this Caius belonged) was,
just at the period when St. John wrote, in a lament-
able state of schismatic confusion. Diotrephes may,
at such a period, have been aspiring to put forward
his claim at Corinth; and may, in his ambitious
proceedings, have rejected from communion the brethren
whom St. John had sent to Caius.^ A yet more
interesting reflection is suggested by a writing of
considerable authority. The writer of the '^ Synopsis
of Holy Scripture," which stands amongst the Works
of Athanasms, says— "the Gospel according to John
was both dictated by John the Apostle and beloved
when in exile at Patm^os, and by him was published
in Ephesus, through Caius the beloved and friend of the
Apostles, of whom Paul also writing to the Romans
» Caius, a Macedonian (Acts xix. 29) ; Caius of Derbe (Acts xx. 4) ;
Caius of Corinth (Rom. xvi. 23 ; I Cor. i. 14).
- Rom. xvi. 23.
3 No doubt ver. lo presents some difficulty. Voyages betv/een
Corinth were regularly and easily performed. Still it is scarcely
probable that the aged Apostle shou'd have ccntemp'ated such a
voyage. But the form {iav ^M purposely expresses possibility
rather than probability- the smallest amount of presumption— if I
shall come, which is not quite impossible. (Donaldson, Gr. Gr., "Con-
ditional Propositions." 501.) The hope of seeing Caius " face to face "
(ver. 14) contains no objection, as it may refer to a visit o Caius to
Ephesus.
302 THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION.
saith, Caius mine host, and of the whole Church^ ^ This
would give a very marked significance to one touch
in this Third Epistle of St. John. The phrase here
''and we bear witness also, and ye knoiv that our
•witness is true^^ — clearly points back to the closing
attestation of the Gospel — '' and we know that his witness
is true." ^ He counts upon a quick recognition of a
common memory.^
Demetrius is, of course, a name redolent of the
worship of Demeter the Earth-Mother, and of
Ephesian surroundings. No reader of the New Testa-
ment needs to be reminded of the riot at Ephesus,
which is told at such length in the history of St. Paul's
voyages by St. Luke. The conjecture that the agita-
tor of the turbulent guild of silversmiths who made
silver shrines of Diana may have become the Deme-
trius, the object of St. John's lofty commendation, is
by no means improbable. There is a peculiar fulness
in the narrative of the Acts, and an amplitude and
exactness in the reports of the speeches of Demetrius
and of the town- clerk which betray both unusually
detailed information, and a feeling on the part of the
writer that the subject was one of much interest for
many readers. The very words of Demetrius about
Paul evince that uneasy sense of the powers of
fascination possessed by the Apostle which is often
the first timid witness of reluctant conviction.* The
* " Synopsis S.S." '76. (S. Athanas., 0/>/>., iv. 433. Edit. Migne.)
^ Read together 3 John 12, and John xxi. 24.
^ The writer had worked out his conclusions about Caius indepen-
dently before he happened to read Bengel's note. " Caius Corinthi d&
quo Rom. xvi. 23, vel huic Caio, Johannis amico, fuit simillimus in
hospitalite — vel idem; — si idem, ex Achaia in Asiam migravit, vel
Corinthum Johannes hanc epistolaom misit."
■* " Almost throughout all A^ia this Paul hath persuaded and turned
THE .QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIC ON. 303
whole story would be of thrilling interest to those
who, knowing well what Demetrius had become, were
here told what he once had been. In a very ancient
document (the so-called ''Apostolic Constitutions")^
we read that '* Demetrius was appointed Bishop of
Philadelphia by me," i.e., by the Apostle John. To the
Bishop of that city, so often shaken by the earthquakes
of that volcanic city, came the commendation — '* I know
thy works that thou didst keep My word ; " and the
assuring promise that he should, when the victory was
won, have the solidity and permanence of "a pillar"
in a "temple"^ that no convulsion could shake down.
The witness then, which stands on record for the
Bishop of Philadelphia, is threefold ; the threefold
witness of the First Epistle on a reduced scale — the
witness of the world ;^ the witness of the Truth itself,
even of Jesus ; * the witness of the Church — including
John.^
II.
We may now advert to the contents and general style
of this letter.
I. As to its contents.
I. It supplies us with a valuable test of Christian
life, in what may be called the Christian instinct of
missionary affection, possessed in such full measure by
Caius.^
away much people, saying, that they be no gods, which are made
with hands." — Acts xix. 26.
* vii. 46.
* Apoc. iii. 7, 8, 12.
8 " All men."
* Kat xjTT a\}Tr\% Tr\% aXtjOeias, i.e., Jesus (Apoc. iii. 7> 12),
* " And we al5o bear witness." 3 John 12.
« 3 John 5, 6, 7.
304 THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION.
This, indeed, is an ingredient of Christian character.
Do we admire and feel attracted by missionaries? They
are knight-errants of the Faith ; leaders of the *' forlorn
hope " of Christ's cause ; bearers of the flag of the cross
through the storms of battle. Do we wish to honour
and to help them, and feel ennobled by doing so ?
He who has no almost enthusiastic regard for mission-
aries has not the spirit of primitive Christianity within
his breast.
2. The Church is beset with different dangers from
very different quarters. The second Epistle of St. John
has its bold unmistakable warning of danger from the
philosophical atmosphere which is not only round
the Church, but necessarily finds its way within. Those
who assume to be leaders of intellectual and even
of spiritual progress sometimes lead away from Christ.
The test of scientific truth is accordance with the pro-
position which embodies the last discovery ; the test of
religious truth is accordance with the proposition which
embodies the first discovery, />., ^'the doctrine of Christ."
Progress outside this is regress ; it is desertion first
of Christ, ultimately of God.^ As the second Epistle
warns the Church of peril from speculative ambition^
so the third Epistle marks a danger from personal
ambition^ arrogating to itself undue authority within
the Church. Diotrephes in all probability was a
bishop. At Rome there has been a permanent
Diotrephes in the office of the Papacy ; how much this
has had to say to the dislocation of Christendom, Gcd
knows. But there are other smaller and more vulgar
continuators of Diotrephes, who occupy no Vatican.
Priests ! But there are priests in different senses. The
' 2 Jchn 9. ^ 3 John 9, 10.
THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION. 305
priest who stands to minister in holy things, the true
Lcitourgos, is rightly so-called. But there is an arro-
gant priestship which would do violence to conscience,
and interpose rudely between God and the soul. Priests
in this sense are called by different names. They are
clad in different dresses — some in chasubles, some in
frock-coats, some in petticoats. ^' Down with priest-
craft," is even the cry of many of them. The priest
who stands to offer sacrifice may or may not be a priest
in the evil sense ; the priest (who abjures the name)
who is a master of religious small-talk of the popular
kind, and winds people to his own ends round his little
finger by using them deftly, is often the modern edition
of Diotrephes.
3. This brief Epistle contains one of those apparently
mere spiritual truisjns, which make St. John the most
powerful and comprehensive of all spiritual teachers.
He had suggested a warning to Caius, which serves
as the hnk to connect the example of Diotrephes
which he has denounced, with that of Demetrius which
he is about to commend. " Beloved ! " he cries, " imitate
not that which is evil, but that which is good." A
glorious little " Imitation of Christ," a compression of
his own Gospel, the record of the Great Example in
three words P Then follows this absolutely exhaus-
tive division, which covers the whole moral and
spiritual world. " He that doeth good," (the v/hole
principle of whose moral hfe is this,) " is of," has his
origin from, "God ; " " he that doeth evil hath not seen
God," sees Him not as a consequence o having spiri-
tually looked upon Him. Here, at last, we have the
flight of the eagle's wing, the glance of the eagle's eye,
* HifJiov , . . rS iyaOdv, 3 John I U
20
3o6 THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION.
Especially valuable are these words, almost at the close
of the Apostolic age and of the New Testament Scrip-
ture. They help us to keep the delicate balance of
truth ; they guard us against all abuse of the precious
doctrines of grace. Several texts are miiiilaied ; more
are conveniently dropped out. How seldom does one see
the whole context quoted, in tracts and sheets, of that
most blessed passage — ^' if we walk in the light, as
He is in the light, the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth
us from all sin .^ " How often do we see these words
at all — ** he that doeth good is of God, but he that doeth
evil hath not seen God ?" Perhaps it maybe a linger-
ing suspicion that a text which comes out of a very
short Epistle is worth very httle. Perhaps doctrinalism
a outrance considers that the sentiment "savours of
w^orks." But, at all events, there is terrible decisive-
ness about these antithetic proposit'ons. For each life
is described in section and in plan by one or other
of the two. The whole complicated series of thought,
actions, habits, purposes, summed up in the words life
and character, is a continuous stream issuing from the
man who does every moment of his existence. The
stream is either pure, bright, cleansing, gladdening,
capable of being tracked by a thread of emerald
wherever it flows; or it carries with it on its course
blackness, bitterness, and barrenness. Men must be
plainly dealt with. They may hold any creed, or
follow any round of religious practices. There are
creeds which are nobly true, others which are false
and feeble — practices which are beautiful and elevating,
others which are petty and unprofitable. They may
repeat the shiboleth ever so accurately ; and follow the
observances ever so closely. They may sing hymns
until their throats are hoarse, and beat drums until
THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION. 307
their wrists are sore. But St. John's propositions
ring out, loud and clear, and syllable themselves in
questions, which one day or other the conscience will
put to us with terrible distinctness. Are you one who
is ever doing good ; or one who is not doing good ?
" God be merciful to me a sinner ! " may well rush to
our lips. But that^ when opportunity is given, must be
followed by another prayer. Not only — "wash away
my sins." Something more. '* Fill and purify me with
Thy Spirit, that, pardoned and renewed, I may become
good, and be doing good." It is sometimes said that
the Church is full of souls " dying of their morality."
Is it not at least equally true to say that the Church is
full of souls dying of their spirituality ? That is —
souls dying in one case of unreal morality ; in the other
of unreal spirituality, which juggles with spiritual
words, making a sham out of them. Morality which
is not spiritual, is imperfect ; spirituality which is
not moralized through and through is of the spirit
of evil.
It is a great thing that in these last sentences, written
with a trembling hand, which shrank from the labour
of pen and ink,^ the Apostle should have lifted a word
(probably current in the social atmosphere of Ephesus
among spiritualists and astrologers ^), from the low
associations with which it was undeservedly associated ;
and should have rung out high and clear the Gospel's
everlasting justification, the final harmony of the teach-
ing of grace — ''he that doeth good is of God."
J 3 John 13.
2 The verb dyadoiroietv is found in a few places in the LXX. and
New Testament. " Amongst profane writers, astrologers only used
this verb. They signified by it, / offer a good ometi. So in Proclus
and others." See Bretsch. and Grimm, s. v. 6.'yo.dovoie(ji,
3o8 THE QUIETNESS OF TRUE RELIGION.
II.
The style of the third Epistle of St. John is certainly
that of an old man. It is reserved in language and in
doctrine. God is thrice and thrice only mentioned.*
Jesus is not once expressly uttered. But
**, , . They are not empty-hearted whose low sound
Reverbs no hoUowness."'
In religion, as in everything else, we are earnest, not
by aiming at earnestness, but by aiming at an object.
Religious language should be deep and real, rather
than demonstrative. It is not safe to play with sacred
names. To pronounce them at random for the purpose
of being effective and impressive is to take them in
vain. What a wealth of reverential love there is in that
— *' for the sake of the Name ! " ^ Old copyists some-
times thought to improve upon the impressiveness of
Apostles by cramming in sacred names. They only
maimed what they touched with clumsy hand. A
deeper sense of the Sacramental Presence is in the
hushed, awful, reverence of '^not discerning the Body,"
than in the interpolated " not discerning of the Lord's
Body." Even so ^' The Name," perhaps, speaks more
to the heart, and implies more than ''His Name.'-
It is, indeed, the " beautiful Name," by the which
we are called. And sometimes in sermons, or in
Eucharistic " Gloria in Excelsis," or in hymns that
have come from such as St. Bernard, or in sick
rooms, it shall go up with our sweetest music, and
waken our tenderest thoughts, and be "as ointment
»" Worthily of God" ver. 6; "is of God— hath not seen God'
Ver. II.
^ Ver. 7.
THE QUIETNESS OE TRIE RELIGION. 309
poured forth." But what an underlying Gospel, what
an intense suppressed flame there is behind these quiet
words ! This letter says nothing of rapture, or pro-
phecy, of miracle. It lies in the atmosphere of the
Church, as we find it even now. It has a word for
friendship. It seeks to individualise its benediction.^
A hush of evening rests upon the note. May such an
evening close upon our old age !
NOTES.
Ver. 2. . . thy soulP\ Strange diflBculty seems to be felt in
some quarters about the word -^vxr), as used by our Lord and
the Apostles. The difficulty arises from a singular argument
advanced by M. Renan. He maintains that Christ and His
first followers knew nothing of "the soul" as the immortal
principle in man — that in him which is capable of being saved
or lost. It was simply either the animal natural life,^ (Matt. ii.
20) ; or at most the vague Greek imm.ortality of the shadows,
as opposed to the later Hebrew Resurrection-life. But there
are very numerous passages in the New Testament where
" soul " can only be used for " life as created by God ; ' thinking
substance, different from the body and indestructible by death,
created with possibilities of eternal happiness or misery.
(The following passages are decisive— Matt. x. 28, xi. 29;
Acts ii. 27; Heb. xiii. 17; i Pet. i. 9, 22, ii. 11, 25; Jas. i. 21,
V. 20; Apoc. vi. 9, XX. 4; 3 John 2.)
^ " The friends salute thee : salute the friends by name,'' ver. 14.
The mention of friendship is net ccmmon in the New Testament.
Beautiful exceptions will be found in Luke xii. 4; John jd. II,
XV. 14, 15 ; of. Acts xxvii. 3.
* As indicated by breathing — from fvxu.
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Joseph Parker, D.D.
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John Pulsford. [D.D
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REV, PR. HEWRY B, SMITH'S WORKS-
systemofchristian theology
By Henry B. Smith, D.D., LL.D. Edited by Wm. S. Karr, D.D.
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HENRY BOYNTON SMITH— His Life and Work. Edited by his
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13
PREACHING AND PASTORAL WORK.
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HoiniletlGal and Pastoral Lectures.
Delivered in St. PauVs Cathedral before the Church Homiletical Society
With a Preface by the Rt. R37. C. J. ELLICOTT, T>.\i,,
Editor of New Testa/nent Couwientary for English Readers.
Contents.
The Preparation of a Sermon.
By the LORD BISHOP 01 ROCHESTER.
The End or Object of a Sermon.
By the Ri^ht Rev. BISHOP RYAN, D.E
Homely Hints on Preaching.
By the Very Rev. DEAN HOWSON, D.D.
On the Emotions in Preaching.
By the LORD ARCHBISHOP of YORK.
What Constitutes a Plain Sermon.
By the LORD BISHOP of CARLISLE.
The Preparation of Sermons for ViHage* Congregations.
By the Rev. CANON HEURTLEY, D.D.
The Preacher's Gifts.
By the Rev. E. GARBETT, M.A.
Study in its Bearing on Preaching.
BytheRe-7. CANNON BARRY, D.D., D.C.L.
The Study of Holy Scripture with a view to the Preparation of
Sermons. By the Very Rev. DEAN PEROWNE, D.D.
Texts t their Interpretation, Misinterpretation and Misapplica-
tion. By the Ven. ARCHDEACON PEROWNE, B.D.
Prophecy in its Relation to Preaching.
By the Very. Rev. DEAN FREMANTLE, D.D.
Parish Work in its Relation to the Cure of Souls.
By the Rev. CANON BERNARD, M.A.
Pastoral Visitation.
By the Rev. PREBENDARY CADMAN, M.A.
Pastoral Dealings with Individuals.
By the Rev. CANON HOW, M.A.
Cottage Lectures.
By the BISHOP of OSSORY.
How to Re;i,ch Working Men.
By the Rev. PREBENDARY MACDONALD, M.A.
Parochial Temperance Work as Part of the Cure of Souls.
By the Rev. CANON ELLISON, M.A.
The Temptations of the Ministry.
By the LORD BISHOP of RANGOON.
The Responsibilities of the Ministry.
By the Rev. F. PIGOU, D.D,
The Results of the Ministry.
By the Rev. CANON HOARE, M.A.
Copies sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of pric*.
STANDARD RELIGIOUS WORKS.
Sacred Hislor j Im tlis Creation to tlie Giving of Ik Law.
By Rev. E. P. Humphrey, D. D., LL.D., ofLouisville, Ky., and sometime
Professor of Biblical and Church History in Danville Theological Sem-
inary. Large octavo, 5 o pages, cloth, $2 50.
"This treatise bears wi:;ness to the author's thorough acquaintance with
his theme, resulting from a carcul study of every verse and line of the Hibie
bearing upon it, and irom a comprehensive reading of the literature oa all
sides of the subject. It cannot fail to delight as well the theoiogian and
scholar as the ordinary reader. Its style, though of course didactic, is
neither cumbersome nor magisterial, but pleasing, elegant, and perjuasive.
The order followed in the arrangement of the matter is perfect ; the double
index of topics and t^ixts referred to or interpreted is thorough and com-
plete. T/ie book itself is a very armory of %oeapons^ oil of the most iiiodern
date. Every line of the book teems xuith interest and instruction.'''' — A'dW
York Chiirchman.
" A solid body of old fashioned harning and orthodox divinity, tha' zuill
delight thousands of readers zaho I'ke the old ring of the ''ripe scholar.^
Two good indexes of topics a id t.'xts equip the work for further tisefuliiess.
A fart fr Din its claim to be history in the strict sense of the luord, the work
is one of the best we are familiar with for those who wish to keep substan-
tially unaltered the tr ant ion Iz-iewofhuman history from Adam to Moses.
One cannot read Dr. Humphrey'' s book without edification and enjoyment
op his lucid style. ^'' — New York Critic.
" A careful perusal of this book will bring welcome assistance to preach-
ers of the Word who wish to broaden and deepen their comprehension of
D.vine truth ; it will bring fresh suggestions to careful and devout students
of the Bibl-3, and it will clear asvay the mists from the vision of many seri-
ous and candid doubters."- — Christian Standard.
'^ Here are results of study, of profound thought, of ripe scholarship, of
uns-iUefving loyalty to the Word, such cs are not excelled in any other work
we know. His book, we are sure, will satisfy every one zvho truly himgers
for sacred knowledge. It is eminently a book for the time, and such a work
by such a hand is worthy to stand on every study-table Oy the Bible and
concordance.'''' — Cincinnati Herald and Presbyter.
THE SYSTEM OF THEOLOGY
Contained in the Westmiu'^ter Shorter Catechism. Opened and Explained
by Rev. Drs. A. A. and J. AspiNVVALL Hodge. i2mo, $1.00.
^' Many wi J be glad to have m a bo ^k of less than two hundred pages a
clear exposition of the doctrines taught by this Church; it is ititen.i.ed as a
text-book til the home, in the Sabbath-schools, and i7i our seminaries.''^ — N.Y.
Observer.
"This volume may bo read with profit by Christians ol any school of the-
ology." — Methodist I^e:ord.
" There is enough theology in this compact little book to satisfy the most
exacting readei-." — Philadelphia Press.
THE DAWN OF THE MODERN MISSION.
By Rev. Wm. Fleming Stevenson, D. D., author of " Praying and Waiting." i2ino
vol., cloth, 90 .-ts.
Copies sf7it by ntuil, post-paid, on receipt 0/ pri.f.
A. C. A.^MSTRONG & SON, 714 Broadway, New York.
HUMAN LIFE AND RELIGION,
THE GIST OF IT: A PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN LIFE.
With a full Analysis and Index, making it a convenient handbook foi
reference. By Rev. Thos. E. Barr, and an Introduction by Rev.
D. S. Gregory, D.D., ex-President of Lake Forest University.
4CO pages, i2mo, cloth, $1.50.
The object of this treatise is to present in a popular but systematic form the
several factors in the great problem of life, and to set forth the Christian religion as its
only sufficient solution.
Part I. considers THE FACTS OF LIFE in answer to these five questions:
What am I ? Where am I? Whence am I? Whither am I Going? What
IS MY Relation to my Situation, my Origin, my Future ? The discussion of
these questions is based on a wide sweep of investigation, and is so arranged that each
successive page marks a positive advance in the progress of the argument, until with
the summation of the final chapter the answer is complete.
Part II. logically rounds out the volume by giving THE INTERPRETATION
OF THE FACTS. Here the author examines,^rjif. The Fundamental Requisites
OF AN Interpretation ; secondly. The Schemes Proposed ; and concludes with the
proof that Christianiiy alone is able to meet all the tests.
THE WORK IS FOR ALL CLASSES, and will appeal to student and scholar alike.
But its main purpose is to reach that large class among the people which desires and
needs a simple, clear-cut discussion of the practical question of faith, from the stand-
point of every-day life. Of these, Dr. Gregory says in his Introduction : " They
luill find the book tiniquc. There is no other with which we are acquainted that
atteinpts to cover its groiind. * * * It will be found a connected and sustained
argument throughout, organized into a complete whole of thought. * * «• It will
help to lead out of the shadows of the skepticism of the age into the clear light of the
Sun of Righteousness."
Rev. Dr. FRANCIS L. PA TTON says : '' I heartily conctir with
Dr. Gregory in the desire Jie expresses to see Mr. Burr's work in print.
It is designed to meet the objections 7vhich men are constantly confronted
with in regard to the Christian religion. Mr. Barr has done his work
carefully, conscientiously, and well."
ANOTHER EMINENT CRITIC says: " This is an tmique
and very remarkable work. It shows maturity of thought, great scientific
skill and acuteness in arrangement and analysis, and a ivide sweep of
investigation. It is, in my judgment, a masterly treatise on the ground
problem of human life."
Copies settt by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price by Publishers,
A. C. ARMSTRONG & SON, 714 Broadway, New York*
STANDARD RELIGIOUS WORKS.
" A MANUAL OF PREACHING. '
Rev. Franklin W. Fisk, D.D., Professor of Sacred Rhetoric in Chicago
Theological Semuiary. Crown octavo vol. , cloth. $1.50.
This woik sets forth and illustrates the principles and rules of Homiletics in a brief
and practical manner. Although chiefly designed for theological students and young
ministers, it is believed that the treatise will be of service to older pastors. Referenct
is made to the most recent literature, both of the pulpit and of works on Homiletics.
The method followed in the volume is, first, to take a sermon in pieces and inspect its
principal parts, and then to show how to gather materials and form a sermon. 1 he aim
has been to make the work, in a brief and practical way, as helpful as possible to the
preacher.
"Many will welcome this manual for its clear, logical and thorough presentation
of the whole subject." — N. Y. Independent.
Chicago Interior ■s,-a.ys: "The book is precisely what it claims to be — a practical
manual of Preiching. Tts style is simple and perspicuous, and just what the author com-
mends in the sermon. On every page the meaning stares the reader full in the face."
Presbyterian Review : " fiack of this modest manual lie twenty-five years of diligent
study and valuable experience. The volume carries on every page the characteristics
that we should expect to find in it. It is tmpretending, direct, honest, manly. Its
pages are full .of references to authorities and illustrations."
REVIVALS: HOW AND WHEN?
By Rev. W. W. Newell, D.D. With steel portrait, i vol., i2mo.
$1.25. (3d thousand.)
This is no ordinary book on the sub'ect of Revivals of Religion. It does not com-
mend great excitement followed by depressing apathy. It favors a religious quicken-
ing and an ingathermg of souls every passing year. It does not commend a theory. It
is eminently practical. It gives the exact experience of persons who, in the greatest
variety of seemingly hopeless conditions, have been taught of the Lord just how to
secure a spiritual blcssinc^. It shows how the Revival has been secured and conducted
in the Church, the Household, the Bibxe Class, the Sabbath School, the Missionary and
the Temperance circle.
ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON'S BIOGRAPHY.
With Notes and Selections from his Writings. By William Blair, D.D„
Handsomely bouna in white parchment, gilt top and side. $1.25. •
"The memoir is admirably composed, . , . the general contents include va-f
rious rare spiritual treasures, in which the mind of Leighton was so fi-uitful." — Nev)\
York Churchman. '
RELIGION IN ENGLAND, FROM 1800 TO 1850,
A History with Postscript on Subsequent Events. By John StougH-
'J'ON, D.D. 2 vols., crown 8vo. .$5.00. Uniform with
Stoughton's History of Religion in England,
From the Opening of the Long Parliament to the End of the Eighteenth
Century. 6 vols., crown 8vo. $15.00.
The London Academy says : " On the whole, it may be safely .^^aid that this work
will lo iv- be the standard authority on the import.-nt subject on which it treats, and
that it will be read with pleasure and mstnictnm not only by those who may sympa-
thize with all the views of the author, but by many who regard the history ol religion
6 m a very different stnnd-point."
Copies sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price.
IMPORTANT RELIGIOUS WORKS.
MR. SPURGEON'S NEW BOOK:
The Cheque-Bookof the Bank of Faith.
BEING PRECIOUS PROMISES ARRANGED FOR DAILY USE.
With Brief Experimental Comments. Nearly 4C0 pages, i2mo, $1 50.
" When it is state i that this luell-Hajne i l-ook contains a Scripture Prom-
ise for each day in the year, commented on, in his best van, by the prince
of practical and expt rimental preachers, ei- oitgh has been said to commend it
as first in its class.'" — N. Y. Christian Intelligencer.
''It 13 done in the great preacher's ininiitable style, and SPEAKS HOME
ON EVXRY PAGE to the heart and need of the believer." — N. Y. Lidepend^t.
^^ Mr Spurgcon^ s words are so pi am, his style so sparklini^, and his
spirit so devout, that the reading of his prodtictions is almost sure to excite
a mental gloxu and awaken holy aspirations. This book is brimful of
quickening, soothing, soul-lifting potuer."—'^. Y. Witness.
" As there are three hundred and sixty-fivj cheques in this book, the man
who makes right use of them is rich indeed." — N. Y. Observer.
Palestine in the Time of CSirist
By Edmund Stapfer, D. D., of the Protestant Faculty, Paris. With map,
and plans Uniform with Stanley'' s "■Sinai and Palestine.''^ Crown
8vo, cloth, $2.50.
" There is so juiich here of accurate learning, and of matter extremely
valuable in respect to the personal and every -day life of the people, that ''it
fills a place not filled'' by ajiy other volume within our knowledge. It is an
excellent book for reference for all who would like to interpret biblical
passages for homiletic purposes with minute ajid accurate statement.''' —
N. Y. Christian Advocate and Journal.
" Dr. Stapfer may be congratulated on the successful way in which he
has accomplished his task. He has studied the diversified topics he treats
of, and has generally drawn his material from the best authorities, arrang-
ing it in lucid order. Few guides will be found more useful in surveying
the varied details into which a comprehensive subject leads him. There is
no English book that can be put beside it as occupying the same ground." —
London Athe7i(p.u7n.
"De Pressense's Brilliant Book."
THE ANCIENT WORLD AND CHRISTIANITY. By E. de Pressense,
D. D., author of a " I'tudy of Origins," etc. Cr. 8vo, 500 pages, $1.75.
"It is an admirable hand-book of comparative religion. It is a sub-
stantial, learned, and instructive treatment of a most important subject. " —
British Weekly.
"■A brilliant book. . . . Ao one luho opens the book is likely to fail
to admire the' ingetiuity of the treatment of the beliefs of the primitive
man." ~ 'London Literary W^orld.
"Brilliant in style, lucid in exposition, comprehensive in philosophic
grasp, it presents a fair specimen of what modern scholarship and scientific
thought can accomplish, together with a firm belief in the fundamental
propositions o{ Chris\.ia.mty." —Boston Advertiser.
"This book is a great treasury of gathered learning, presented in a pop.
ular form."— A". Y. Observer.
Cop:, s sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price.
A. C. ARMSTt^ONG a ^ON, 714 Broadway, New York.
Date Due
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BS2805 .A379
The Epistles of St. John; twenty-one
■ nf!'."';5/°".It'^.°'?9''^^' Seminary-Speer Library
1 1012 00067 0804
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