to that of Jesus, and who when men could best bear them and most needed them was spared to give them to the world. It was the world's greatest example of what Carlyle has noted of an English biographer, "inspired only by love, and the recognition and vision which love can lend." And the result we may put also in Carlyle's words, except that we must heighten his idea of nature: That... Work of his is as a picture by one of Nature's own Artists; the best possible resemblance of a Reality; like the very image thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed it was: let but the mirror be clear, this is the great point; the picture must and will be genuine." 1 Thus, while the author of the fourth gospel has endeavored to efface his personality, so far as self-assertion is concerned, the wonderful insight of it and its realistic. vision of the divine are evident in every line, molding it by the mind of Christ. Other traits there are also, pointing to a still more intimate sharing of the Master's purpose and thought; which, however, we will not go into here.2 III The "Postscript Commendatory." This designation, which has been given by Bishop Lightfoot to the First Epistle of John, fits its character and purpose well. It is a kind of companion piece to the fourth gospel, but whether written before or after is not quite apparent, and couched in words such as a very old man, full of wonderful memories and the ideas of life derived therefrom, would write to friends and disciples so much younger that they are regarded as "little children" (cf. I John ii, 1, 12, 13, 18, etc.) needing guidance in the simplest but at the same time the largest and most vital values. It starts from the same realistic sense of Jesus' divine nature which we have noted in the 1 Carlyle's Essay on Boswell's Johnson, Works, Vol. XXVIII, p. 75. 2 Connected with the "New Surmise "; see preceding, p. 644. gospel; labors, indeed, to express it in the most explicit terms: "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (1 John i, 1, 2). As the object of the gospel was to induce belief (John xx, 31), the object of this postscript commendatory" is to induce fellowship in the Father and the Son, and the communal joy that results therefrom. That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us; yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ; and these things we write, that our joy may be made full" (1 John i, 3, 4). It is as if the "disciple whom Jesus loved," who had received such unusual access of divine light and truth, were minded to make every man a sharer with him in the same, and so unite the world of Christian believers in one spirit and fellowship. "If we walk in the light," he says, "as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another" (i, 7). ९९ NOTE. Its Occasion. As a modern description of its occasion, we may again quote the words of Browning, who puts the epistles of John after the Apocalypse (which he ascribes to him; see next chapter) and before his gospel but, like the gospel, in his old age: Then, for my time grew brief, no message more, No call to write again, I found a way, And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught Men should, for love's sake, in love's strength believe; Or I would pen a letter to a friend. And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more: These words have in mind not only the first epistle of John but the second and third, written by " the elder " respectively to "the elect lady and her children ” (2 John 1), and to "Gaius the beloved” (3 John 1); but the description applies equally to this first epistle. Though anonymous, the epistle leaves no reasonable doubt that it is by the author of the gospel. As a kind of circular Substance of writing intended for the same readers as the gosits Message pel, it does not have occasion for the conventional epistolary address and salutation. Its background is the truth brought to light in the gospel story, and it is written as if the author were fresh from his intimate conversance with the life of Jesus and its deep meanings. This epistle uses the substance of the gospel truth in twoways as an antidote to certain false teachings that are creeping into the churches and as a summary of all that is requisite for eternal life. It is thus controversial — in its absolute way as well as interpretative. 1. Two heresies were endangering the purity of the church in the aged disciple's day. One was that of the Nicolaitans (mentioned by name in Rev. ii, 6, 14, 15), who from a false idea of the sinlessness of Christians and the vileness of the flesh were allowing themselves to indulge in unrestrained licentiousness, as if it were of no moral significance. Against this heresy, which was rampant in Asia Minor, his condemnation is emphatic and unsparing (see i, 5; ii, 6, 15, 17; iii, 3-10). Equally so is his condemnation of another heresy, introduced by Cerinthus (the name does not occur in Scripture), whom he designates as Antichrist. This man had a theory which denied the divine nature of Jesus, distinguishing the historical Jesus from the transcendent Christ, and thus dissolving his personality in philosophic speculation. Against this the writer, fresh from his memories of the Master, opposes strenuous opposition, insisting on the truth that Jesus is the Christ, who has come in the flesh (see ii, 18-23; iv, 1-6; 13-15; V, I-12). It may be seen how eminently fitting, at the late day when the epistle was written, this testimony of the beloved disciple who had seen and heard and touched Jesus was, in order to meet the newer needs. 2. As interpretative of the gospel truth, the epistle evinces a notable purpose to resolve its vital principles into plain terms and to propose many simple but searching tests of truth or falsity in life and faith. These tests, beginning with Hereby we know," or "perceive" (cf. ii, 3, 5; iii, 16, 19, 24; iv, 2, 6, 13), are a very characteristic feature. The keynote of the epistle is love. It is this writer alone, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," of all the New Testament writers, who says plainly that God is love, and who makes the sweeping deduction that he who loves abides in God and God in him (iv, 8, 16), -an assertion that it requires a daring thinker to make. The test of the genuineness of such love is our love for our brother whom we have seen rather than of God whom we have not seen (iv, 20); that is, the completed fellowship for the sake of which the epistle is written. On the indications and tests of this Christian love the author's language is very absolute and emphatic. As if it were the one "word" in which the whole literature of the Bible is concentrated, he commends love as the new commandment, comprising the whole duty of man (ii, 8). The second and third epistles of John, both very short, are addressed to private persons. To "the elect lady and The Other her children," who are addressed in the second Epistles epistle, he gives his favorite exhortation, "that we love one another" (vs. 5), and warns against countenancing or receiving any deceiver or "antichrist" who walks not in the spirit of this fundamental virtue (vss. 7, 10). Gaius the beloved, who is addressed in the third epistle, is commended for receiving and aiding some itinerant Christian teachers, in contrast to a certain Diotrephes, apparently a domineering layman in the church, who had been morose and inhospitable toward such. Both of these epistles, though addressed to individuals, seem intended also for church counsels; and in both the writer calls himself "the elder." CHAPTER XII THE RESURGENCE OF PROPHECY [Near the end of the first century] PROPHECY ROPHECY was the most vital and spiritual element of the Old Testament literature. It was through the prophets that, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. says, God spoke "by divers portions and in divers manners to the fathers. We have seen how the literary prophecy took its rise and ran its course in Israel.1 Its era of about three centuries, from near the middle of the eighth to the middle of the fifth century B.C., was involved with that most momentous era of the people's history during which they suffered dissolution as a political state and reinstatement as a church; in which reinstatement the majority of the people were dispersed among the nations while their religious and educational capital remained at Jerusalem. In all this period before the dispersion the main object of prophetic activity, most clearly expressed in the Second Isaiah, was to commit the Jewish race to their ordained destiny as "the Servant of Jehovah," a conscience-bearing and missionary race. Afterward, however, prophecy, in this more specific sense, gradually subsided. The people became more interested in their past than in their future. The lack of prophetic vision, the dearth of the forward look, came to be deeply felt and deplored by the devout. "We see not our signs," mourned one of the psalmists; "there is no more any prophet; neither is there among us any that knoweth how long" (Psa. lxxiv, 9). The missionary zeal had given way to exclusiveness and 1 See Book I, Chapters IV-VI. |