There is more or less trutli in these different readings of the plan of the Ep., and there is a certain measure of agreement among them. But even the simplest schemes do not admit of precise application. One can see that there are certain primary thoughts, especially the great ideas that (iod is light, that God is righteous, that God is love, to which much of the matter of the Ep. naturally relates itself ; and that there are certam paragraphs or series of verses that have on the whole distinct subjects. But the ideas which give a special character to some particular section of the Ep. are not conlined to that section. They meet us again and again, thou''h it may not be
3uite in the same form. The Ep. has its intro- uction, its boily, and its conclusion. It has its ruling thoughts, and it pa^ises from one thought to another by points of transition which can often, if not always, Ix; recognized. In its main contents it has a certain order and succession of ideas. Hut it is an order that follows the way of suggestion, not that of logical connexion. It is not system- atically cjirricd out, neither does it show itself upon the surface. It ha-s the freedom that is juoper to a letter, the unstudied, non-constructive character that belongs to a series of meditations or practical counsels.
5. Indrpendcnce. — This is a question of greater imjiortance. Among the NT writings there is one, though only one, that is at once seen to be of the snnio character as this Epistle. That IB the Fourth Gospel. The reseniuliuice is so great and unmistakable as at once to luggeat ilia question, how the two are related to each
other. In the Epistle we get the same general style as in the Gospel, the same simplicity of l.Tnguage with the same profoundness and ex- altation of thought, the same lofty serenity, the same peculiar structure, the same sententious oi aphoristic tone, the same habit of giving a state- ment both in the alhrmative form and in the nega- tive, and of taking up, repeating, and extending an idea already expressed ; the same way of conveying truth by the use of contrasts, like that between light and darkness, life and death, love and hate ; the same methods of forming sentences and carry- ing the thought forward. There are the same fundamental conceptions, too, of God, Christ, the purpose of the Son's mission, the nature of Hi- work, His relations to God and to man, the chai acter and standing of His disciples, the world, life, death, the present and the future. Many of the terms which are characteristic of the one arc characteristic of the other. Of this class are the following : — a\-i)di)^, dXTj^eta, dfULfyriav ^fiv, dvdpwirOK- t6vo^, yeyftj&ijvai ix, ivroKiri Kaivq, ^urfj, fwr; a/u>ftos, ^edff^at, Kitaixos, /xafrrvpeTv, ^cra^aivuv {k tov davarov ets TTjv i^un/v, fiovoyevris (of Christ), vatdia, wapdKXrjro^, irepf.ira.Tiiv iv t^ ffKori^, irnrrevftf et's, Tra^/ytjtria, ri TTveOfjJi riji a\i]Oeia^, irotetv Trjv aX'^Oeiav, iroteiv TTjif duaprlav, d wovijpus, (TKorla, irwrijp tou Kixrp^ov, t^kvo. 6eov, TtKvla, Ttdivai Trjv \pvxTiv airrov, (paf^poOv, ipu>s, Xapo ireirXiipu/n^n;. Other terms distinctive of the Gospel and the Apocalypse together meet us also in the Ep. ; e.g. dyaw^v, dydinj, dyyi^eiv ^auriic, d\7jdiv6^, yiVihaKCiv, eli/at iK, Beupeiy, fJXipTupia, ^Uvav, viK^v, irXav^v, TT)p(Lv rds ivroXds, rijpelv riiv \i/yov, ipalfeiv. Peculiar syntactical forms, or peculiar uses of familiar foriuulie, which occur in the Gospel, occur also in the Ep., as in the case of tfa, dXX' IVa, etc. There are also many obvions paral- lelisms of thought and expression. Examples of these may be seen in such i)assages of tlie Ep. as — 2" 2" 3" 3'* 3-'' S** 4« 4" 4" b* 5» 5* when com- pared respectively with those pas.sagcs of the Gospel— 5*8" 8« 15>« 8-* 13" 8" d" 6'*' 10'' 5*" 17'.
In view of all this some have denied the char- acter of independence to the Ep., and have spoken of it as a copy of the Gospel which shows all through the imitative hand (Baur). Others, who have not been disposed to go so far as that, have regarded it as a 'companion' to the Gospel, the second part of the Gospel (Michaelis, Storr, Eich- hom), a kind of dedicatory writing meant to go with the (Jospel (Hug, Thiersch, Hausrath, Hof- mann, Ebrard, Ilaupt), a summary or recasting and practical setting of the contents of the Gosjiel (Hoekstra, Holtzmann), a covering letter designed to serve as a kind of introduction to the Gospel (Lightfoot), etc.
Hut there are clear and .signilicant differences between the two writings, notwithstanding this remarkable general similarity. There is no such local colouring in the Ep. as we have in the Gospel. There is no such Hebrew stam|> in the Ep. as there is in the Gosiiel. There is not a single quotation from the OT in the former, while in the hitter we have both citations from the (tT and references to the OT. These diH'erence.s, in- deed, are not conclusive. They may be duo to the natural dill'erence between narrative and let ter, or to the dillerent circumstances and objects of the writings. Hut there is iiiiuli more than tlie.se. The ideas which arc common to both are, in not a few ca.ses, differently put, and have a different aspect.