pose that he may force us to forsake all confidence in our feelings, natural and acquired, in our philosophy, in our humility, in our religion; on purpose that we may fly from ourselves to the Eternal God, who has what we have not, who is what we are not. "God is Love,' is not a proposition uttered in a sudden ecstasy; it is the final revelation to which all others have been tending. Without it all others are mere deceptions and contradictions. Without it there is no ground for individual faith or individual conduct to stand upon. Without it there is no human society. Without it there is nothing left for us but Devil Worship or Atheism.

Some people calling themselves Christians dare to speak of the Incarnation of Christ and the Death of Christ, as it they restrained or modified this primary test, by the application of which St. John discovered what is the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error. Hear how the Apostle speaks of Christ's manifestation. The statement is familiar to us. It has gone through the whole Epistle. I have tried to examine each word in it accurately. But I wish you to think of it in this connexion. 'Herein was manifested the love of God to us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through. Him.' What Christ did was not to create love in God, but to show it forth. If we believe in Him as St. John bids us believe in Him, we confess that God is Love; only when we do so, are we partakers of His life, or, as it is expressed here, ‘ do we live through Him.'

Then comes the full assertion of that great ethical principle which I have been endeavouring to develop in all these Lectures: 'Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but

that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' The reversal of this principle, the notion that in some way or other our love to God is the ground of His love to us, and the kindred notion that in some way or other He is to be propitiated to us, seem to me fatal to all sound ethical teaching and ethical practice. They are driving numbers to a system of Ethics from which the idea of God is excluded altogether; to Ethics, therefore, which will be consistently and throughout what the Christian Ethics are inconsistently, of this world and for the world; based upon selfishness and terminating in selfishness.

• St. John lays the axe to the root of selfishness: 'Beloved,' he says, 'if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.' The emphasis, I think, should be laid on the word ought. He affirms, as he did before, that Love is the law of the universe; that in loving, we do not perform an act of supererogation, but merely submit to a duty. If God so loved us, not to love is to resist a power which is at every moment acting upon us, and impelling us to all sympathy and all sacrifice.

Thus we are led back to the point from which we started. It seemed wonderful to speak of our dwelling in God, more wonderful to speak of God dwelling in us. But we have been taught by degrees why such language is necessary, why we cannot shrink from it without shrinking from the obligations which our existence as members of a human society involves. To maintain that God is unseen and yet most real; that His Love is the ground of our love; that we only love when we submit to His operations; what is this but to affirm and adopt St. John's doctrine in the length and breadth of it? He announces it therefore as

demonstrated in this sentence, "No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.' And he repeats also the 24th verse of the last chapter with which I began this Lecture, 'By this we know that we dwell in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.'

to be tried by their What His Spirit is;

are yielding to it or

Other spirits, we have said, were likeness or unlikeness to His Spirit. how we may understand whether we to some other; we have now learnt. We have been carried far out of the region of rapping and table turning. Questions about spiritual communications and spiritual life are nothing less than questions what we ourselves will be, whether we would have Hatred or Love to rule over us now and ever.

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And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 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. 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. 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. We love him, because he first loved us. 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? And this com mandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

THE question presented itself to us in the last Lecture, 'When St. John bade the disciples at Ephesus love one ' another, did he mean that the world beyond their circle 6 was to be excluded from their love?' I was not in haste to answer this question. I contented myself with hinting that the exercise of love is most difficult towards those with whom we are most in contact. St. John, however, does 'We have seen,' he says,

not leave us long in suspense. ' and do testify, that the Father sent the Son (to be) a Saviour of the world.' That is the truth which became evident to the little band of disciples while they were showing love one to another; that is the witness which they were bearing;

THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD.

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they existed only to bear it. The blessing which they were inheriting was a blessing for the world. He who was the ground of their fellowship, the author and finisher of their faith, was the Saviour of the world.

Let us consider this testimony of theirs more attentively. The name Saviour' was not with them, if it is with us, a technical name, a name out of which the life had departed; a Saviour was one who saves,-saves from actual misery and bondage. What actual misery or bondage had they been saved from? Is it not a misery that men of the same flesh and blood should be living as if they had nothing in common, nothing to bind them to each other, as if each stood in the other's way? They had been saved from this misery; they had found a common interest, a common Lord. They had looked upon God as far off from them, in the hours when they felt most they could not live without Him; they had found Him sometimes fearfully near, when they wished they could drive Him to an infinite distance. They had been saved from the thought that God and they were separated; they had been saved from the wish that He should be separated from them. The name God with us had become the dearest of all names to them. And yet the reverence for God, as the perfect Goodness, as the great enemy of all that was not good in them and the universe, had become immeasurably deeper than it had ever been. Why? Because the Father had sent the Son; because they had believed that He who was with them, their helper and deliverer, was the Son of God; the Son in whom that Being of absolute goodness delighted; because they had learnt to call Him, in Christ, their Father. This was salvation; what more did they want?