Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God 1 John 4:1-3 The test of truth -- confessing Christ F. Ferguson, D. D. In the Word of God we are warned against sitting in judgment on others. Especially are we enjoined not to cultivate a censorious and uncharitable spirit. But in the text Christians seem to be enjoined to exercise their powers of judgment and discrimination in another way. They are called upon to try the spirits whether they are of God. To try a spirit is not to try an individual; it is not to try even a community of men; rather is it to put to the test of enlightened reason some principle they follow as true, some institution they uphold as right. I. THE SCIENTIFIC FALSE PROPHET; or antiChrist in the schools, especially in connection with the study and interpretation of nature. There are three points in the scientific world that appear to be prominent. These points are — first, that our highest business here is to study nature — that nature at least in relation to this present life is supreme; second, that natural or physical law is absolutely uniform or unbending, and has been so since the creation of the universe; third, that the human race is to be elevated, regenerated, or truly developed from the basis of nature, and in accordance merely with natural laws. Now, if it really were so, we can have no hesitation in saying that the position and claims of the Christian religion are quite incompatible with it. If the dream of such thinkers were destined to be realised, Christianity must slowly fade from the earth, with other superstitions. It is only too evident what the spirit and hope of such systems is. Take the first position — that nature or the visible material scene around us is the supreme influence and power in relation to our life upon the earth. That involves the denial of a Divine revelation. Take the second position — that for incalculable ages Nature has been undeviating in her course. That law maintains its slow, grand march through millions of years, without deviation, acceleration, or interruption. That may be thought a grand idea; but as it is advanced in certain systems, it is not a true one; for it is a shutting out of the miraculous altogether. Take the third position — that man is saved by obedience to natural law, and that the human race will be elevated and ennobled only as men study the laws of nature, and conform themselves to them. That is a doctrine put forth by some. It looks with a sinister and disparaging eye on Christianity and the Church. It does not hesitate sometimes to say that all religions have been a misfortune to the world. When the plague comes this spirit declares that prayer is useless, and that the only thing that can save us is to perfect our sanitary arrangements. This is a spirit of antichrist, for it is the denial of a moral government in the Scriptural sense of the word. II. THE SECULAR FALSE PROPHET; or antichrist in the kingdoms of the world. In as far as the kingdoms of the world are necessary to maintain order, to suppress violence, and repel invasion, they are the ordinance of God, but in so far as they perpetuate injustice and wrong, of course they cannot be of God; they are babels and antichrists, standing in the way of His kingdom who has the absolute right to rule. Now it is the duty of everyone to whom the light of the gospel comes to become a subject of the kingdom of Christ. That light will show him what is wrong in existing systems. It will show him that some of them are fundamentally wrong, but it will not teach him to remedy that wrong by violence and revolution. The eternal moral principle that truth and justice cannot be permanently advanced by mere physical force, enters into the foundation of Christ's kingdom. And if anyone asks, How then are we to hold our own in the world? the only answer that can be given is, that it is our duty to do as Christ did. Because God lives all those who have faith in Him will live also. III. THE LITERARY FALSE PROPHET; or antichrist in the world of letters. This is a time of great thinkers, great writers, great bookmakers. We do not speak of individuals. We have no right to judge them; but their works we may judge, and the spirit of their works we may try whether it is of God or no. Now we know that some of the greatest works in the world are books written in defence of Christianity; but it is also true that some writers of considerable power have taken up positive ground against Christianity and have sufficiently shown that they do not believe that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. They do not believe in Him as the eternal Son of God, and the only Saviour of men. Some of them have written books expressly to deny this. But this is not so much what the text suggests. There are other writers of great power and influence in both hemispheres of the world who occupy rather a negative and undefined position in relation to Christ and Christianity. They have written upon almost every subject of human thought — upon government and the Church, upon history and biography, upon morals and destiny. They have gone round the world to find heroes and representative men, and have said many true and striking things about them; but, strange to say, they have never clearly informed the world as to what they think of Christ. They are unaccountably reticent upon a subject that is the most important of all. IV. THE RELIGIOUS FALSE PROPHET; or antichrist in the ecclesiastical world. The antichrist of an atheistical, political system; of a poor, blind, hero worship — the worship of mere intellectual ability and unfathomable cunning; and the antichrist of a barren Protestantism which has a name to live while it is dead — such forms as these are little better than the Papacy. V. THE SOCIAL FALSE PROPHET; or antichrist in the work of everyday life. That is the most deadly form of antichrist which professes great respect for Christianity, but lives in continual opposition to its principles; and we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that a great amount of the Christian profession of this country seems little more than a mere profession. This is called a Christian country, but look at the woes that are festering in the midst of us; think of the rank worldliness and heartlessness that is baptized into the name of Christ. Is this not the reason why prayer seems unanswered, and troubles are thickening upon the land? ( F. Ferguson, D. D. )

Benson Commentary 1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1 . Because the Gnostics and other heretics, in the first age, to gain the greater credit to their erroneous doctrines, assumed to themselves the character and authority of inspired teachers, John put his disciples in mind, ( 1 John 2:27 ,) that they had an unction from the Holy Spirit, by which they were enabled to judge with certainty, both of teachers and of their doctrine. He therefore, in this chapter, commands them not to believe rashly every teacher who pretended to be inspired, but to try the inspiration by which any preacher professed to speak, whether it was from God or from evil spirits; that after trial they might know whom it was their duty to attend to, and whom they ought to disregard and reject. And to secure them, as far as possible, from being deceived, he especially desires them to consider whether the teacher, who came to them, pretending to inspiration, held the great and fundamental doctrines of the gospel, which all the teachers, really inspired of God, regularly and uniformly maintained. His words may be paraphrased as follows: Believe not every spirit — By which any teacher is, or professes to be, actuated: or, believe not every teacher who pretends to be inspired by the Spirit of God; but try the spirits — Namely, whether they are of God — By the rule which God hath given. We are to try all spirits by the written word: To the law and to the testimony! If any man speak not according to these, the spirit which actuates him is not of God. Because many false prophets — Or false teachers; are gone forth into the world — With an intention to draw disciples after them. 1 John 4:2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 1 John 4:2 . Hereby — By the following plain mark; know ye the Spirit of God — In a teacher. Every spirit — Of a teacher; that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God — Doddridge, with many other commentators, reads this clause, Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ, who is come in the flesh, is of God: that is, that confesseth him to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, and that both with heart and voice, sincerely believing him to be such, and behaving to him and confessing him as such, though this might expose them to the loss of all things, even of their property, liberty, and lives. This must be acknowledged to be a perfectly Scriptural and very proper mark of trial, proving those in whom it was found to be possessed of the Spirit of God and of Christ. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged, though the original words, ? ???????? ?????? ??????? ?? ????? ????????? , might bear this rendering, they much more favour the sense given them in our translation, signifying, literally and exactly, that confesseth Jesus Christ hath come in the flesh. This imports two things: 1st, That Jesus is the Christ, whose coming was foretold by the Jewish prophets, in opposition to the unbelieving Jews; a truth which those who confessed, whether in Judea or in the Gentile countries, exposed themselves to the danger of having their goods spoiled, and their bodies imprisoned, if not also tortured and put to death. So that those who voluntarily made this confession, manifested that they preferred Christ and his gospel to all other things whatever. The clause imports, 2d, That this great personage, the Messiah, the Son of God, had really come in the flesh, and had a real human nature, in opposition to a sect which arose very early in the Christian Church, called the Docetæ, who would not allow that Christ had a real body, and that he really suffered, died, and rose again. This sect St. John seems to have had in his eye throughout this epistle. Hence, in the very beginning of it, he speaks of seeing, hearing, and handling Christ; and here, to the fundamental article of Jesus’s being the Messiah, he adds, that he came in the flesh; with which doctrine his atoning for sin by the sacrifice of himself, and his rising from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep, were closely and necessarily connected, and therefore the acknowledgment of it was a point of the greatest importance. The Socinians indeed contend, that to confess Jesus Christ hath come in the flesh, means simply to confess that he was a mere man: and from this they infer that he had no existence before he was conceived of his mother. In proof of their sense of the clause, they cite Hebrews 2:14 , where the writer says he partook of our flesh and blood. Now, though it may be true that these words import nothing more than that Christ was a man, like other men, St. John’s words, hath come in the flesh, have evidently a more extensive meaning. For, as Bishop Horsley observes, the sense of a proposition ariseth, not from the meaning of a single word contained in it, but from the union of the whole into one sentence, especially if that union suggests any circumstance by which the sense of the proposition is modified. This is the case of the clause, hath come in the flesh; words which, while they specify the manner of his coming, imply that he might have come in a different manner if he had pleased. Accordingly the apostle hath used the verb to come in that sense 1 John 5:6 . This is he who came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by the water and the blood. For his meaning plainly is, that Jesus came attested as the Christ by water and blood jointly, although he might have come attested by either of these separately; and that Jesus existed as the Christ before he came attested by the water and the blood. Thus the clause, hath come in the flesh, implies that he might have come in another manner than in the flesh, namely, in the form of God, as mentioned Php 2:6-7 . It implies that he existed before he came in the flesh, and chose to come in that manner, rather than in any other; consequently that he is more than a mere man. That Jesus Christ might have come in another manner, was the opinion of Clemens Romanus, one of the apostolical fathers mentioned Php 4:3 : for in his epistle to the Corinthians, he saith, “The sceptre of the majesty of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, came not in the pride of pomp and arrogance, although he had it in his power; but in humility, as the Holy Spirit spake concerning him.” See Macknight, and Bishop Horsley’s 5th letter to Priestley. 1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. 1 John 4:3 . Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh — That doth not acknowledge him to be the true Messiah, as above observed, and that he came in that particular manner, though he might have come otherwise; is not of Gods — “To determine whether the Socinian interpretation of the clause, hath come in the flesh, expresses the apostle’s meaning, let that interpretation be substituted for the expression of which it is the interpretation, and the passages under consideration will run thus: 1 John 4:2 , Every spirit, every teacher, calling himself inspired, who confesseth Jesus Christ hath come a mere man, is from God; 1 John 4:3 , And every spirit who doth not confess Jesus Christ hath come a mere man, is not from God. Wherefore, as St. John is here giving marks by which true and false teachers were to be distinguished, if the Socinian sense of the phrase, hath come in the flesh, be just, he hath made it the mark of a true teacher, that he confesseth Jesus Christ as a mere man; and the mark of a false teacher, that he doth not confess Jesus Christ as a mere man, but affirmeth that he is more than a mere man; consequently, by so doing, St. John has condemned himself as a false teacher; because, having declared ( 1 John 4:15 ; 1 John 5:5 ) that Jesus Christ is the Song of Solomon of God, he hath confessed that he is more than a mere man.” And also in his gospel, having told us, ( John 1:14 ,) that the Word (who he had said, 1 John 4:1 , was with God and was God ) was made flesh and dwelt among us, and they beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, “he hath certainly confessed that Jesus Christ is more than a mere man: for whose glory did the apostles behold, if it was not the glory of the Word made flesh, the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth? Wherefore, John having confessed that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, he cannot be supposed to have branded those teachers as deceivers, who did not confess Jesus Christ to be a mere man, but affirmed him to be more than a man; because, by so doing, he would have condemned himself as a false teacher.” And this is that spirit of antichrist which ye have heard, &c. — “From this, as well as from John 2:18 , it appears that antichrist is not any particular person, nor any particular succession of persons in the church, but a general name for all false teachers in every age, who disseminate doctrines contrary to those taught by the apostles; especially if these doctrines have a tendency to derogate from Christ’s character and actions as the Saviour of the world.” — Macknight. 1 John 4:4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. 1 John 4:4-6 . Ye — Who abide in the truth taught you from the beginning; are of God, and have overcome them — Namely, these seducers, in all their snares and delusions: that is, the doctrine to which you adhere has prevailed against those who deserve the name of antichrist, (as undoubtedly all who oppose the Christian interest in some measure did,) and as you have the true miraculous gifts of the Spirit among you, to which they falsely pretend, it is soon seen that the advantage is clearly on your side. Because greater is he that is in you — Namely, the Spirit of Christ; than he — The spirit of antichrist; that is in the world — The Son of God, who stands at the head of that interest in which you are embarked, and who aids you by the mighty communications of his Spirit, is infinitely too strong for Satan, the great head of the apostacy, and for all his confederates. Thus, the issue of the divine government will be, that truth and virtue shall be finally victorious over error and wickedness, because God, the Patron of truth and virtue, possesseth far greater power and wisdom than the evil spirits who promote error and wickedness. They — Those false teachers; are of the world — Of the number of those that know not God; therefore speak they of the world — From the principle, wisdom, and spirit, that actuate worldly men; and, of consequence, the world heareth them — Namely, with approbation. “Lest the faithful should be discouraged by the success which false teachers oftentimes have in spreading their errors, the apostle observes that their success arises generally from their accommodating their doctrines to the prejudices and evil inclinations of the world. Wherefore, from the prevalence of any doctrine no argument can be drawn in favour of its truth.” We — Apostles; are of God — Immediately taught and sent by him, and have approved ourselves to be so by such irresistible evidence, that I may now venture to say, he who knoweth God — And experiences the governing influence of his fear and love, heareth and regardeth us; but he who is not of God heareth not us — Neither believes nor obeys our word; but, by rejecting our testimony, attended as it is with such evidence, he proves himself destitute of all true religion. Hereby we know — From what is said 1 John 4:2-6 ; the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error — “This mark, by which St. John directed his disciples to judge of teachers, is not to be understood of their hearkening to the apostles personally, but of their receiving their doctrine with that submission which was due to persons inspired by the Spirit of God. Wherefore, though the apostles be all dead, yet as they still speak in their divinely-inspired writings, John, in this passage, declares that their writings are the test by which the disciples of Christ are to judge both of teachers and of their doctrine.” 1 John 4:5 They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. 1 John 4:6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. 1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 1 John 4:7-8 . Let us love one another — From the doctrine he has just been defending, he draws this exhortation: as if he had said, Think it not enough speculatively to admit the Christian doctrine, but let it be your great care to acknowledge it practically, and especially with respect to that most important article, brotherly love. The frequency and earnestness with which the apostle, in the present epistle, inculcates this love, is very remarkable. The greatest part of this chapter, and of chapter 3., is employed in pressing this duty. See also 1 John 2:8-11 . For love is of God — Is from him as its source, and particularly enjoined by him as a duty of the greatest importance, and of absolute necessity, in order to our pleasing and imitating him. And every one that loveth is born of God — Every one, in whose heart this divine principle reigns, and conquers the selfish and contrary passions, shows by it that he is regenerated and transformed into the divine image; and that he knoweth God — By the teaching of his Holy Spirit, as the God of love, infinitely amiable in himself, and infinitely loving to his people. On the other hand, he that loveth not, whatever he may pretend, knoweth not God — Has no experimental and saving knowledge of him; for God is love — Its great fountain and exemplar. He enjoins it by his law, and produces and cherishes it by the influences of his Spirit; and the due contemplation of him will naturally inflame our hearts with love to his divine majesty, and to our fellow-creatures for his sake, whose creatures they are, and especially to his children, who love him, bear his image, and are peculiarly dear to him. This little sentence, God is love, brought St. John more sweetness, even in the time he was writing it, says Bengelius, than the whole world can bring. God is often styled holy, righteous, wise; but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom, in the abstract, as he is said to be love: intimating that this is his darling, his reigning attribute; the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections. 1 John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 1 John 4:9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 1 John 4:9 . In this was manifested the love of God — Namely, most eminently above all other instances thereof; because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world — That is, evidently, sent him, who was his only-begotten Son before he was sent. “This,” as Macknight justly observes. “is an allusion to our Lord’s words, John 3:16 , God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, &c. Christ is called God’s only-begotten Son, to distinguish him from all others, who in Scripture are called the sons of God; and to heighten our idea of God’s love to us, in giving a person of such dignity, and so beloved of God, to die for us. It is supposed, that by giving Christ the title of God’s only-begotten Son in this passage, the apostle intended to overturn the error of Ebion and Cerinthus, who affirmed that Christ was not God’s Son by nature, but that, like other good men, he was honoured with the title of God’s Son on account of his virtues; in which opinion these heresiarchs have been followed by some in modern times. They, however, who hold this opinion ought to show a reason why the epithet of the only begotten is appropriated to Christ.” That we might live through him — That the sentence of condemnation to the second death, to which we were obnoxious, might be reversed, and that being justified by living faith, and regenerated by the quickening Spirit of God, we might live a spiritual life in the divine favour, and in union with Christ here, and might be conducted to eternal life hereafter. 1 John 4:10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 1 John 4:10-12 . Herein is love — Worthy of our highest admiration; not that we loved God — First; for we were, on the contrary, in a state of enmity to him, in which, if we had remained unsolicited and untouched by his love and grace, we should have persisted and perished; but that he loved us — First, ( 1 John 4:19 ,) without any merit or motive in us to induce him to do it; and, in his boundless compassion to our necessities and miseries; sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins — That is, to make atonement to his injured justice for them by offering himself as a sacrifice, and so to introduce us into his favour on honourable terms. If God so loved us — With such a transcendent, free, and inconceivable love; we ought also to love one another — In imitation of his divine example, from a sense of the happy state into which we are brought, and in gratitude to him for so inestimable a favour. And it is of the greater importance that we should do this, because it is absolutely necessary in order to our having fellowship with him. For no man hath seen God at any time — Nor indeed can see him, since he is in his own nature invisible; nor can any one have any knowledge of him, or intercourse with him by his senses, or any information concerning his will and the way of pleasing him by any visible appearance of him, or converse with him; yet, from what his only-begotten Son hath taught us, we know that if we love one another — In consequence of first loving him; God dwelleth ????? , abideth, in us — This is treated of 1 John 4:13-16 ; and his love is perfected — Has its full effect; in us — This is treated of 1 John 4:17-19 . 1 John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 1 John 4:12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. 1 John 4:13-14 . Hereby — ?? ????? , by this, we know — Have full proof; that we dwell, ??????? , we abide in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit — In the enlightening, quickening, renewing, and comforting influences thereof. Some commentators understand the apostle as speaking here of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit; but surely these gifts, of whatever kind they might be, never were to any man a certain evidence of his possessing real piety and union with God, as is manifest from our Lord’s words, ( Matthew 7:22 ,) Many will say to me in that day of final judgment, We have prophesied in thy name, &c. then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, &c. And St. Paul ( 1 Corinthians 13:2 ) declares, that though a man had such a measure of miracle-working faith, that he could remove mountains, yet if he had not love to God and mankind, it would profit him nothing. The ordinary graces of the Spirit, such as are enumerated Galatians 5:22-23 ; Ephesians 5:9 ; Colossians 3:12-17 ; Romans 12:9-21 , are certain evidences of a person’s being a child of God; but the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are not, inasmuch as they sometimes have been and still may be possessed by persons destitute of true religion. And we have seen — Or known; by undoubted evidence, ourselves; and therefore do boldly testify to others; that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world — And that it is in and by him alone, how proudly soever the unbelieving and carnal world may reject and disdain him, that present and eternal salvation can be obtained. These things are the foundation and the criteria of our abiding in God and God in us, namely, the communion of the Spirit, spoken of 1 John 4:13 , and the confession of the Son, 1 John 4:15 . 1 John 4:14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. 1 John 4:15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 1 John 4:15-17 . Whosoever shall — From a principle of loving faith, openly confess — In the face of all opposition and danger, maintaining this profession with resolution and zeal, and acting in conformity to it; that Jesus is the Son of God — The Christ, the Saviour of the world; God abideth in him, and he in God — There is a blessed union between God and his soul, so that it is, in the language of Scripture, the habitation of God; who, as it were, lives and walks in him, Ephesians 2:22 ; 1 Corinthians 3:16 ; 2 Corinthians 6:18 . And we have known and believed — By the influence of the same Spirit; the love that God hath to us — And hath manifested, not only by giving his Son to die for us, ( 1 John 4:9-10 ,) but by making us his children in and through his Son, 1 John 3:1 . God is love — The apostle repeats what he had declared 1 John 4:8 , where see the note; and he that abideth in love — Namely, in love to God, his people, and all mankind; abideth in God, and God in him — His union and communion with God are hereby continued and increased. Herein — Or hereby, that is, by the continuance of this communion with God; is our love made perfect — We are brought to love him with all our hearts, and our neighbour as ourselves; that we may have — That is, so that we shall have; boldness in the day of judgment — When all the stout-hearted shall tremble; because as he, Christ, is, so are we — Who are fathers in Christ; in this world — Even while we live on earth, so far as the imperfections of this mortal life, to which we are here confined, will admit. 1 John 4:16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. 1 John 4:17 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. 1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18-19 . There is no fear in love — No slavish or tormenting fear, diffidence, or distrust, can be where love reigns; but perfect, mature love casteth out such fear, because such fear hath torment — And so is inconsistent with the happiness of love. He that feareth is not made perfect in love — In the sense above explained. Study therefore to increase more and more in that noble affection of love to God, and you will find your happiness increasing in proportion to it. Observe, reader, a mere natural man has neither the fear nor love of God; one that is awakened and convinced of sin, has fear without love; a babe in Christ, love and fear; a father in Christ, love without fear. We love him, because he first loved us — This is the sum of all religion, the genuine model of Christianity. None can say more; why should any one say less, or speak less intelligibly? 1 John 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us. 1 John 4:20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? 1 John 4:20-21 . If any man say, I love God — And even say it with the utmost confidence; and hateth his brother — Which he will do more or less, if he do not love him; he is a liar — He affirms what is false, although, perhaps, he may not know it to be so; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen — Who is daily presented to his senses to raise his esteem, or move his kindness or compassion toward him; how can he love God, whom he hath not seen? — Whose excellences are not the objects of his senses, but are discovered imperfectly from his works of creation, providence, and grace, or from the declarations and promises of his word; his invisible nature being an obstacle to our loving him, which our weak and carnal minds cannot be expected easily to conquer. Indeed, we never could love him unless, as the apostle observes, his love were shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us. And this commandment have we from him — Both from God and Christ; that he who loveth God, love his brother in Christ also — That is, every one, whatever his opinions or modes of worship may be, purely because he is the child and bears the image of God. Bigotry is properly the want of this pure and universal love. A bigot only loves those who embrace his opinions, and he loves them for that, not for Christ’s sake. 1 John 4:21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary 1 John 4:1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 1 John 4:2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: Chapter 3 THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN 1 John 4:2-3 A DISCUSSION (however far from technical completeness) 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 believe 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 fortuitous. In refuting them he was enunciating principles of universal import, of almost illimitable 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 evidence, 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 intellectual vision for which controversy is impossible. 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 somewhere 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 mischievous winged errors. The third class of controversialists is that which embraces St. John supremely-such minds also as Augustine’s in his loftiest and most 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 something 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 was 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 particular, 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 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 once "profane babblings," 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 Judaising 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 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 proceed 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. 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 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-I cannot answer this or that objection, 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 herself 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 a 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 satisfactory 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 meanings." 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 life; 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 admiration 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. 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. (1) 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 ourselves it was unto God, or whether we be sober, it is for you"; that is to say, such a life has two aspects, one Godward, one manward. Its Godward aspect is a noble insanity, its manward 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 life 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 made such a life as that of St. Paul a possibility. Or we may think of the first beginning 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 with 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 a 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 briefly indicate, because we wish to leave an undivided impression of that which seems to be St. John’s chief object controversially. There were Gnostics in Asia Minor for whom the mere knowledge of certain supposed spiritual truths was all in all, as there are those amongst ourselves 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 commandments." 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 committeth 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 Christ, deprived of Him before His passion and resurrection, while the Christ remained spiritual and impassible. 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 oceanward, 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 with my sins. In that 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. 1. 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 Doketae, 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. Lucifer.,’ 23) ‘that while the Apostles yet remained upon the earth, while the blood of Christ was almost smoking upon the sod of Judea, 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 ( ???? ??? ). ‘Haeres.,’ 56 (Pearson, "Vindic. Ignat.," 2, 100, 1, p. 351). 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 ‘Philosophumena,’ 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 in Revelation 2:24 , 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 ‘Philosophumena’ has furnished us with 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 manifestationin the world. They admit in Him the only Son of the Father ( ?? ????????? ???? ?????? ??????? ), who descended to the region of shadows and the Virgin’s womb, where He clothed Himself in a gross, human material body. But this was a vestment of no integrally personal and permanent character; it was, indeed, a sort of masquerade, an artifice or fiction imagined to deceive the prince 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 assumed in its baptismal second birth (‘Philosoph.,’ 8:10). 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 1 John 5:8 ." [This passage is from a "Dissertation-les Trois Temoins Celestes," in a collection of religious and literary papers by French scholars (Tom. 2., Sept., 1868, 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.] 1 John 4:17 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. Chapter 14 BOLDNESS IN THE DAY OF JUDGMENT 1 John 4:17 IT has been so often repeated that St. John’s eschatology is idealised 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 idealised 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 most awful accompaniments of outward solemnity { Revelation 20:12-13 } -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 manifestations 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," { 1 John 2:28 } (had the Apostle said) "abide in Him, that if He shall be manifested, we may have confidence, and not be 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 manifestation as emphatically given as in any other part of the New Testament. We may here speak of the conception of the Day of 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 halos round the moon, so there are fainter reflections ringed round the Advent, the Judgment. Thus, in the development of history, there are successive 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 conclusion, 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. Revivalism 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 themselves against this form of preaching. An age of soft humanitarian sentiment-superficial and inclined 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 conclusions, illogically but effectively drawn from this, of 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 extensively 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 plausibility, is contained in an exposition of our Lord’s teaching in a part of the fifth chapter of the fourth Gospel. { John 5:21 ; John 5:29 } But clearly there are three Resurrection scenes which may be discriminated in those words. The first is spiritual, a present awakening of dead souls, ( John 5:21 ) 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, ( John 5:26 ) 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 ( John 5:24 ) Resurrection and general Judgment. ( John 5:28-29 ) The first was the resurrection of comparatively few; the second of many; 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. 1. 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 forever 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 General Judgment would be a chaos of random facts, a thing without rational retrospect or definite end-i.e., 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 congruity. They do not form a hotchpot 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 give a monstrous development to one by not taking into account some other which is its balance and compensation. 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 century 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 inc