The Father and His Little Children. " JOHN'S EPISTLES. CONDITION OF THOSE TO WHOM THE FIRST EPISTLE " AND HREE Epistles are attributed to the Apostle John; the first a general Epistle, the other two addressed to private friends. These two private letters were not received as apostolic in the early church without opposition. Some denied their apostolic origin; others doubted it; but on the whole, the preponderating judgment was that they were the production of John; and accordingly they took their place among the sacred writings of the New Covenant. All three letters belong to the period of his old age. They present a most wonderful combination of simplicity and moral intenseness, and are marvellously fitted to enkindle and sustain the longing after holiness. The FIRST EPISTLE (for essentially it is an epistle, though it has neither introductory greeting nor benediction at the close) as it comes into our hands, is loosened from all personal and local associations. The Apostle does not name himself. He does not specify to whom or on what occasion he writes. Were I to form a conjecture where not only 146 TO WHOM THE FIRST EPISTLE WAS SENT. the document itself but even tradition is silent, it would be -either that it was sent forth about the same time with his Gospel, as a companion writing (as possibly the Second Epistle of Peter may have accompanied the Gospel of Mark), or that it was a circular letter designed for the churches among whom he had spent many years, and to whom he had delivered his apostolic testimony, and that it was written when age and weakness had rendered him unable to visit them personally. Either way it presupposes that he had already borne his full testimony to the great Christian facts. It mediates between the Gospel and the Book of Revelation, having something in common with each. It exhibits what in a good sense may be called the philosophy of the Gospel. Its scope is shown forth in the opening words, which tell us how the Apostles saw the Life Eternal-how they tasted it, and handled it, and understood what it meant,-and how they declared it to others, that they also might have communion in it, not merely knowing about it, but living therein. sur Though we are unable to tell the original destination of the Epistle, we can form a tolerably clear idea of the condition of those to whom it was sent. They were believers in the Son of God. Some of them were children; some were young men; some were fathers. They were rounded by a heathen population that still clung to the old immoralities and idolatries. They stood in close personal relations to the Apostle. Many of them probably "owed their own selves" to him. A rich and deep spiritual life existed among them. At the same time certain evils were beginning to appear, and the seeds of other evils were being sown. False prophets and false apostles were rising up here and there. An "arrogant licentiousness" was beginning to show itself in some quarters. There was danger of the weakening of brotherly love among them, and of its degenerating into a mere selfish sentimentalism, cherished because it was a luxury. Some were becoming dissatisfied with the Gospel itself, and were going forth again to form new fellowships, hostile to Jesus Christ. At the same time the churches had to maintain a constant and uncompromising conflict with "the world," whose threatenings, allurements, seductions, and wiles never ceased. Some things require special notice. Already the word "knowledge" was beginning to assert itself against the word "faith." Some men within the bosom of the Church, falling out of sympathy with their brethren, and others outside of it who had been in some measure attracted to Christ and Christianity (for the most part cultured and wealthy, if we may judge from a later time), were becoming dissatisfied with teaching which they deemed common-place, and craved something more gratifying to the speculative intellect. It was out of this craving that Gnosticism in the Church grew, which was a fresh attempt to solve questions respecting the Divine nature, the creation of the universe, the origin of evil, and so on, that had baffled the keenest intellects of former ages, and to become as gods in knowledge. We may understand the craving from what we observe in the present day, in which under modern conditions we still meet the ancient demand for a "scientific" religion. Possibly, in those far-away days, the cry for "knowledge was in part a protest against the indolent credulity and contented ignorance of many professing believers, whose faith was becoming torpid. In part it was the expression of a desire which the Gospel itself created. But in part also it indicated a wrong spiritual condition, a vain curiosity. sundered from moral earnestness, a preference for speculation over holiness, a half-belief in salvation by knowledge rather than by faith. The men who prided themselves upon being "men of knowledge," looked down on simple believers as weak, very much as the Rationalist does to-day, and had but the slightest perception of the transcendent beauty of holiness, if indeed they were not altogether blind to it. In meeting this tendency, which in process of time made the word "knowledge" the symbol of a subtle antichristianism, John casts no slight upon the word, but, on the contrary, treats it as a very noble one, and uses it with honour. Thus he writes: "Hereby we do know that we know Him;" "Hereby we know that we are in Him;" "We have known and believed" God's love; and, not to multiply examples, "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true." Just as in his Gospel he rescues the word Logos from antichristian uses, so in this Epistle he rescues the word " Know," and aims at making his "little children" Gnostics in the Divine sense. Knowledge is excellent, but the path to it is not through intellectual speculation, however keen and subtle, but through faith in Jesus Christ and subjection to Him, according to those most Johannine words in the Gospel of Matthew, "Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." Side by side with the craving after "knowledge," a tendency in opposition to moral law was also beginning to show itself. We have nothing to do with "obeying," they said; if you talk of that, you bring us again under the yoke of bondage; what have we to do with "Law"? Under the Gospel we are set free from all restraints. They did not know what this meaneth, "I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;" nor did they desire to say, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God; yea, Thy law is within my heart." THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 149 The tendency which showed itself thus is not peculiar to any age or country, but belongs to human nature. At the same time it specially besets those who overvalue knowledge, when the head works without aid from the heart and the moral nature; they unconsciously make their knowledge a substitute for love, obedience, and holiness—or at least they give knowledge the precedence. Here lay one of the dangers of John's time, and he warns his "children" against it. That is not true knowledge, he says, which can let one go on sinning. Knowing and sinning are in direct antagonism. "He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Truth cannot be held by the intellect unless it is also loved by the heart and submitted to by the will-the proof being that it is practised in the life. No foothold is left by the Apostle for antinomianism, or turning the grace of God into licentiousness. It is not merely put in this way, We ought to be holy; but, with the firmest decisiveness, He that doeth righteousness is the righteous man; he that committeth sin is of the devil. It is not knowledge singly and alone that is to be regarded, then; but knowledge issuing in holy obedience to the Divine will. The subject which was coming to engross speculative thought in the Christian Church, and which did so for generations, was the Person of the Redeemer: as, in our own day, the battle between faith and unbelief, retreating from other points, is being waged again round this central Figure. This witness is true that there is no spiritual controversy which, "in its deepest roots and latest issues, may not be traced back to a fundamental difference of opinion as to the person of Jesus." Looking upon Him as represented in the Evangelic narrative, men found themselves in the presence of mystery. It did not seem that they could satisfactorily class Him with themselves; and yet there were difficulties |