I.

Here also "he is full of dogmas," here again he is the theologian of the Church. But we are not to estimate the amount of dogma merely by the number of words in which it is expressed. Dogma, indeed, is not really composed of isolated texts--as pollen showered from conifers and germs scattered from mosses, accidentally brought together and compacted, are found upon chemical analysis to make up certain lumps of coal. It is primary and structural. The Divinity and Incarnation of Jesus pervade the First Epistle. Its whole structure is _Trinitarian_.[94] It contains two of the three great three-word dogmatic utterances of the New Testament about the nature of God (the first being in the fourth Gospel)--"God is Spirit," "God is light," "God is love." The chief dogmatic statements of the Atonement are found in these few chapters. "The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin." "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous." "He is the propitiation for the whole world." "God loved us, and sent His Son the propitiation for our sins." Where the Apostle passes on to deal with the spiritual life, he once more "is full of dogmas," _i.e._, of eternal self-evidenced oracular sentences, spoken as if "down from heaven," or by one "whose foot is upon a rock,"--apparently identical propositions, all-inclusive, the dogmas of moral and spiritual life, as those upon the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, are of strictly theological truth. A further characteristic of St. John as a sacred writer in his Epistle is, that he appears to indicate throughout the moral and spiritual conditions which were necessary for receiving the Gospel with which he endowed the Church as the life of their life. These conditions are three. The first is _spirituality_, submission to the teaching of the Spirit, that they may know by it the meaning of the words of Jesus--the "anointing" of the Holy Ghost, which is ever "teaching all things" that He said.[95] The second condition is _purity_, at least, the continuing effort after self-purification which is incumbent even upon those who have received the great pardon.[96] This involves the following in life's daily walk of the One perfect life-walk,[97] the imitation of that which is supremely good,[98] "incarnated in an actual earthly career." All must be purity, or effort after purity, on the side of those who would read aright the Gospel of the immaculate Lamb of God. The third condition for such readers is love--_charity_. When he comes to deal fully with that great theme, the eagle of God wheels far out of sight. In the depths of His Eternal Being, "God is love."[99] Then this truth comes closer to us as believers. It stands completely and for ever _manifested_ in its work _in us_,[100] because "God _hath sent_" (a mission in the past, but with abiding consequences)[101] "His Son, His only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live through Him." Yet again, he rises higher from the _manifestation_ of this love to the eternal and essential principle in which it stands present for ever. "In this _is_ the love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and once for all sent His Son a propitiation for our sins."[102] Then follows the manifestation of _our_ love. "If God so loved us, we also are bound to love one another." Do we think it strange that St. John does not first draw the lesson--"if God so loved us, we also are bound to love God"? It has been in his heart all along, but he utters it in his own way, in the solemn pathetic question--"he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, God whom he hath not seen how can he love?"[103] Yet once more he sums up the creed in a few short words. "We have believed the love that God hath in us."[104] Truly and deeply has it been said that this creed of the heart, suffused with the softest tints and sweetest colours, goes to the root of all heresies upon the Incarnation, whether in St. John's time or later. That God should give up His Son by sending Him forth in humanity; that the Word made flesh should humble Himself to the death upon the cross, the Sinless offer Himself for sinners, this is what heresy cannot bring itself to understand. It is the excess of such love which makes it incredible. "We have believed the love" is the whole faith of a Christian man. It is St. John's creed in three words.[105]