without difficulty the place which Jesus holds in the writer's faith. The interest of these documents is all the greater that the author himself is deeply concerned to show that that place can be historically justified.

The Christian religion has to do with what he calls eternal life. This life has been manifested, and has become an experience and a possession of men. The writer himself shares in it, and it is his desire and the purpose of his epistle that his readers should share in it also. What we have seen and heard we announce to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ' (1. I 3). This co-ordination of the Son with the Father, which we have traced in all the New Testament writings from the epistles to the Thessalonians onward, is peculiarly characteristic of the epistles of John. The Son and the Father are terms of absolute significance; there is only one Son as there is only one Father, and the salvation of men depends upon a relation to the Son and the Father in which neither can be

conceived apart from the other. 'God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life, he who has not the Son of God has not the life' (1. 5). He who denies the Son has not the Father either, but he who confesses the Son has the Father also (1. 2 23). The perfect Christian life is that of those who abide in the Son and in the Father (1. 2 24). 'We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we 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' (1. 5 20). This is

the language, not of theology, but of spiritual experience, and it shows, with a clearness which cannot be mistaken, the place which Jesus holds in the religious life of the apostle. He owes to Him as to God, or he owes to God in and through Him alone, all that he calls truth and life. It is this incomparable significance of Christ, this experimentally ascertained fact, that He is to God what no other is, and therefore discharges in the carrying out of God's redeeming work functions on which no other can intrude, which is represented when He is designated the only-begotten Son (1.4). It is perhaps an outcome of it that the apostle never calls Christians. sons of God; the title Son is reserved for the Onlybegotten, on whom all are dependent for their knowledge of the Father; the other members of the family are not vioì (sons) to John, but tékva (children). It even leads to such an unparalleled expression as we find in the salutation of the second epistle: Grace, mercy, peace shall be with you from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

The fellowship with the Father and the Son in which eternal life consists is maintained by walking in the light. When Christians walk in the light, it is made evident in two results: first, their unity is maintained— they have fellowship one with other; second, their holiness is promoted—the blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses them from all sin (1. 17). Sin is that which mars fellowship with God, and makes it impossible; and if eternal life can only be realised in divine fellowship, then the work of the Son of God, in putting such fellowship within our reach, must be in its very essence a work

F

related to sin. This may be said without exaggeration

to be the burden of the first epistle. My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. 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 whole world' (1. 2 1f.). 'I write to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake' (1. 2 12). These two ideas the eternal life into which men are initiated by Christ; and the propitiation for sins on which it is dependent-are combined in the wonderful passage in I. 4 in I. 49, where both are interpreted as manifestations of the love of God. In this was the love of God manifested in our case, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins.' When we put these various utterances together we see the universal and absolute significance of Jesus in the faith of the writer. Jesus determines everything in the relations of God and man, not only eventually or once for all, but continuously; His blood cleanses, in the present tense; if any man sin, we have an advocate for the emergency; Christians are those who are in the Son (1. 25), and who abide in Him (1. 2). The full apostolic testimony is that the Father has sent His Son as Saviour of the world (1.414). It is only excessive familiarity which can deaden our minds to assertions so stupendous. There is nothing like them elsewhere in Scripture. No earlier messenger of God, Moses, Elijah, or Isaiah, has any

thing analogous said of him. The conception of a prophet does not help us in the very least to appreciate the conception of the only-begotten Son, who is the Saviour of the world because He is the propitiation for its sins. He cannot be understood except as one who confronts men in the truth, love, and power of God-not one of ourselves, to whom we owe no more, at least in kind, than we owe to each other; but one through whom, and through whom alone, God enlightens, redeems and quickens men. The idea of His exaltation is not so constantly expressed as in the epistles of Paul, but His Parousia or manifestation in glory is expected, and the consummation of all Christian hopes is connected with it. The believer is so to live that he may not be ashamed before Him at His coming (1. 2 28), nay, that he may have boldness in the day of judgment (1. 4 17): we know that if He shall be manifested we shall be like Him; and having this hope set upon Him we must purify ourselves as He was pure (1. 3 2.).

And yet, side by side with this presentation of Jesus, which may be said to be at once transcendent and experimental, we find a persistent emphasis laid on the reality of His human life. The epistle is a testimony to one who had lived as man among men, and everything that imperils this historical basis of Christianity imperils the Christian life itself. This at least is how the matter is conceived by the author. He is the only New Testament writer who uses the term antichrist; and the antichrist is identified by him with the denial of Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh (1. 2 18-22, 48, II. verse 7). The reference in these passages is to the mode of

thought which is usually associated with the name of Cerinthus. Cerinthus distinguished Jesus from the Christ.1 The Christ was a divine being who descended from heaven and was associated with Jesus from His baptism. onward; this is what is meant by coming through the water.' But according to Cerinthus, he came through the water only; he was not indissolubly associated with Jesus so as to pass also through His agony and death. He did not come in the water and in the blood. This is the mode of thought which, to the writer, is 'antichrist,' a denial of the essential facts on which Christianity depends for its being. For him the only Christ is Jesus; the only fatal lie is that which declares that Jesus is not the Christ (1.2 22). He has what might almost be called a dogmatic test for 'spirits' speaking in the Church: every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ as come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not of God (1. 4). The one victor over the world is he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God, the Jesus who came in the water and in the blood, and whose whole life from the baptism to the passion, unquestioned in its historical reality, is perpetuated in the Church, in its spiritual meaning and virtue, in the Christian sacraments-Baptism answering to 'the water' and the Supper to the blood.' What has been already said about the Son as standing in some sort of co-ordination with the Father-about His confronting men as the Saviour of the world, the propitiation for all sin, the sole bearer of eternal life-is not to be put into any kind of

2

1 Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. i. 21.

2 See Expositor, May 1908. Article by the writer.