ligion,-demonstrations which have made, I fear, more infidels than converts. The apostle's demonstration proceeds thus: In the verse preceding my text, he states his proposition (though not for the first time), that "Jesus is the Son of God;" Then he adds "This is he that came by water and blood, Jésus the Christ ;-not by the water only, but by the water and the blood;" that is, this is he who in the fulness of the time is come, according to the early promise of his coming, Jesus, by water and blood proved to be the Christ, - not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. That this is the true exposition of the text,that the coming by water and blood, as our public translation gives the passage, is com-. ing with the evidence of the water and the blood, proving that he was the Christ, appears from the distinct explication which immediately follows of the whole evidence, of which the water and the blood make principal parts. For thus the apostle proceeds: "And the spirit beareth witness (or more literally, the spirit is a thing witnessing), because the spirit is truth.", The word "spirit" signifies here, as in many other places, the gift of tongues, and other extraordinary endowments, preternaturally conferred by the agency of the Spirit, not on the apostles only, but on believers in general in the apostolic age. When the word signifies the Divine person, the epithet Holy is usually joined with it. .This spirit is a "thing witnessing," besides the water and the. blood, because this " spirit is truth." It is the completion of a promise: These extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, consisting in an improvement of the faculties of the mind for the apprehension of divine truth, and in enlargements of its command over the bodily organs (as in the gift of tongues) for the propagation of it, were an evident completion of the promise given by our Lord to the apostles, expressly in the character of the son of God, that after his return to the Father he would send the Spirit to lead them into all truth. These gifts, therefore, the fulfilment of that promise, were the truth making good the. words ; which truth proved the sincerity and veracity of the giver of the promise, and established his pretensions. Thus, this spirit, because it was truth, was a thing bearing witness together with the water and the blood. The apostle goes on: "For there are three which bear record in heaven (i. e. there are three in heaven which bear record), → the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in the earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." I shall not enter into argument in defence of the verse containing the testimony of the Three in heaven. It has indeed of late years been brought under suspicion; and the authenticity of it has been given up by men of great learning and unquestioned piety; even among the orthodox. the orthodox. But I conceive that the exposition which I shall give of the entire passage will best vindicate the sincerity of the text as it stands, against the exceptions of an over-subtle criticism in these late ages, contradicting the explicit testimony of St. Jerome, that critical reviser of the Latin version in the fourth century, or, at the latest, in the very beginning of the fifth, corroborated as it is by the citations of still earlier fathers. -- "There are three," says the apostle (for these I assume as his genuine words), "There are three in heaven that bear record," record to this fact, that Jesus is. the Christ,- the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost." The Father bare witness by his own voice from heaven, twice declaring Jesus his beloved Son, first, after his baptism, when he came up out of the river; and again at the transfiguration: A third time the Father bare witness, when he sent his angel to Jesus in agony in the garden. The Eternal Word bare witness, by the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Jesus bodily, by that plenitude of strength and power with which he was supplied for the performance of his miracles, and the endurance in his frail and mortal body of the fire of the Father's wrath: The Word bare witness, perhaps more indirectly, - still the Word bare witness, by the preternatural darkness which for three hours obscured the sun, while Jesus hung in torment upon the cross,in the quaking of the earth, the VOL. I. rending of the rocks, and the opening of the graves, to liberate the bodies of the saints which appeared in the holy city after our Lord's resurrection: For these extraordinary convulsions of the material world must be ascribed to that power by which God in the beginning created it, and still directs the course of it, that is, to the immediate act of the Word; for." by him all things were made, and he upholdeth all things by the Word of his own power." The Holy Ghost bare witness, by the acknowledgment of the infant Jesus, made, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, by the mouths of his servants and instruments Simeon and Anna; and more directly, by his visible descent upon the adult Jesus at his baptism, and upon the apostles of Jesus after the ascension of their Lord. Thus the Three in heaven bare witness; and these three, the apostle adds, are one, a consentient testimony; for that unity is all that is requisite to the purpose of the apostle's present argument. It is remarkable, however, that he describes the unity of the testimony of the three celestial and the three terrestrial witnesses in different terms, one in the unity of |