May we so look upon this image of the Apostle's soul in his Epistle that we may reflect something of its brightness! May we be able to think, as we turn to this threefold assertion of knowledge--"_I_ know something of the security of this keeping.[128] _I_ know something of the sweetness of being in the Church, that isle of light surrounded by a darkened world.[129] _I_ know something of the beauty of the perfect human life recorded by St. John, something of the continued presence of the Son of God, something of the new sense which He gives, that we may know Him who is the Very God."[130] Blessed exchange not to be vaunted loudly, but spoken reverently in our own hearts--the exchange of we, for I. There is much divinity in these pronouns.[131]
1 John iv. 8, 9, 10. Modern theological schools of a Calvinistic bias have tended to overlook the conception of the nature of God as essential or substantive Love, and to consider love only as _manifested_ in redemption. Socinianising interpreters understand the proposition to mean that God is simply and exclusively benevolent. (On the inadequacy of this, see Butler, _Anal._, Part I., ch. iii., and Dissertation II. of the Nature of Virtue.) The highest Christian thought has ever recognised that the proposition 'God is Love' necessarily involves the august truth that God if _sole_ is not _solitary_. ("Credimur et confitemur omnipotentem Trinitatem--unum Deum _solum_ non _solitarium_." Concil. Tolet., vi. 1.) "Let it not be supposed," said St. Bernard, "that I here account Love as an attribute or accident, but as the Divine essence--no new doctrine, seeing that St. John saith 'God is love.' It may rightly be said both that _Love_ is _God_, and that love is _the gift of God_. For Love gives love; the essential Love gives that which is accidental. When Love signifies the Giver, it is the name of His essence; when it signifies His gift, it is the name of a quality or attribute." (_S. Bernard., de dil. Deo_, xii.). "This is nobly said. God is love. Thus love is the eternal law whereby all things were created and are governed--wherewith He who is the law of all things is unto Himself His own law, and that a law of love--wherewith He bindeth His Trinity into Unity." (_Thomassin. Dogm. Theol._, lib. iii., 23.)