calculable good in human hearts, it has failed to achieve that victory over evil for which its first leaders hoped. While our present moral and religious life owes it a debt quite beyond our reckoning, it is not the sole source of our best attainments in thought and character. And in other lands we discern it now as one among several religions, some of them founded on traditions still more ancient, exercising wide sway over the thoughts of men, recorded in venerable literatures, and embodying principles not easily to be dislodged from the social organisations which have grown up under their influence.

To the first disciples, however, no such considerations were present. They were full of ardour in their own age, and of confidence in the future. Their whole being was quickened with the vivid affections which had been awakened in their souls. To them a new energy had visibly appeared. They had felt it enter their own lives and re-shape their very natures they saw it around them, advancing from city to city and land to land, saving men from darkness and error, bringing them into the glory of truth, lifting them out of sin and sorrow, and filling them with a rapture of love, trust, and joy. To us Christianity is often something abstract and impersonal. In one aspect, it is a great historical generalisation. But the early believers spoke of Christ, and they thought of a person, not a movement. To them Christianity was a life, not an organisation, or a tendency, or the impalpable spirit of an

age. They looked upon the changes which Christ had wrought, and they saw in them a mighty manifestation of the moral and spiritual forces which held the world together, which gave consistency to the outward universe, and shaped the destinies of history. In Christ who had been sent by God, God showed himself to man-' he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.' The power which wrought his wondrous works was not his own,-' I can do nothing of myself' it was the Father's. The life which flowed from him into the heart of the disciple, had first flowed into him from God, and all power for word or work was derived from on high. So to have Jesus in the heart, to have his light, his love, was to have God; it was to be born from above, to be begotten of God.

This parallelism of the Christian's experience with Christ's had already been the theme of the impassioned teaching of the apostle Paul. But the mode of expression was different. To him the crisis of Messiah's career had been his death and resurrection. These events, accordingly, supplied the figure for the believer who was 'dead to sin' but alive unto God in Christ Jesus,' 'crucified with Christ,'' crucified unto the world,'' buried with him through baptism into death,' ' raised with Christ,' and even made to sit with him in the heavenly places.' The Johannine language is moulded on another type; the ideal correspondence is expressed

1

1 Rom. 611; Gal. 220, 14; Rom. 64; Col. 31; Ephes. 26. Whatever be the literary origin of the last two passages, they certainly embody Pauline ideas.

in a new idiom, but the same experience lies behind it. The phraseology starts from the conception of the Messianic 'Son';-'whosoever believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is begotten (or born) of God'-—but it becomes the description of the ideal Christian. In the Synoptic teaching, to be the sons of God is the final goal of the disciples' endeavour blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God'; 'love your enemies, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven.' The Johannine writings present birth 'from above '-to be begotten or born of God'— as the actual condition of the believer. This likewise is in accordance with the language of Paul, 'for as many as are led by the spirit of God, these are sons of God' (Rom. 814). For John, the chief mark of such birth is love: 'love is of God, and whosoever loveth is begotten (or born) of God, and knoweth God,' 1 John 47, and such birth carries with it tremendous consequences :—

1 John 39, Whosoever is begotten (or born) of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin because he is begotten of God.

518, We know that whosoever is begotten of God sinneth not. Such permanent power was there in this august generation, that the writer who had seen it at work among the men and women, the shopkeepers and craftsmen, the masters and slaves, who made up the

I The word is used of physical birth, John 346, 1837; of spiritual in the same colloquy with Nicodemus 33-7, and often elsewhere. Of Jesus it is not used in the spiritual sense unless I John 518 be applied to him (with Westcott and others).

Churches of Asia, could explicitly claim sinlessness for those who were thus divinely born. Doubtless there was a sense in which Jesus was designated the only begotten Son'1; but 'as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God,' so that the Letter declares,' Beloved, now are we the children of God.' The world might be hostile or ignorant; but the children of God rest in God's love, and into the sublime fellowship of life between Jesus and the Father they also enter, 'that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us.' 3

2

The progress of Christianity already gave a wider scope to this aim than had been realised at the outset of its preaching. The Gospel had been carried along the Mediterranean. It had appealed to men of every race; its effects were limited to no single nationality. Already Paul beheld it transcending differences of class, sex, and country: the Greek and the Jew, the barbarian and the Scythian, the free and the enslaved, all obeyed its call and felt its power. The Christian recognised in his own case, and he observed in others, a vital change. Life, habits, thoughts, affections, all were altered. The immediate source of all this was Christ, and the purpose of Christianity seemed unlimited and without distinction. It must embrace all human kind; in

1 John 118, 316 18; 1 John 49 'only-begotten' apparently in the sense of 'only,' Luke 712, 842, 988

2 John 112; 1 John 3a.

3 John 1721.

the language of the Baptist, John 129, 'Behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.' The Gospel, then, has a universal significance; and the place of the Gentiles is assured. To the Samaritan woman is delivered the charter of universal religion :

John 421 23-24, The hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.

The hour cometh and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and truth.

Why is not this uttered in the Temple, in the hearing of priest and Levite? It is because it represents not so much a protest against the unspiritual worship under the Law, as the release of religion from all local and traditional forms, and the new conception of it as a spiritual relation into which all might enter. The Samaritan woman with her five husbands the symbol (it is supposed) of the settlers of five nationalities each with their own god is the typical figure of heathenism, which

12 Kings 1724, Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. The sixth husband who is no husband, denotes the schismatic worship on Mt. Gerizim. So Pfleiderer, Urchristenth, 2nd ed. 1902, vol. ii., p. 356, following Hengstenberg; Jean Réville, Le Quatrième Évangile, 1901, p. 150. Further highly interesting developments of allegory in the whole scene are traced by Abbott, Encycl. Bibl. 'Gospels,' ii. 1801. If Dr. Abbott's illustrative use of Philo be admitted, it would seem that there was a regular vocabulary of symbolism well established, and presumably intelligible to those who were trained in these peculiar modes of thought. The key may be sometimes applied in the wrong way; but of the presence of this element there can be no doubt. This is the real answer to the plea of Dr. Dods, Expositor's Greek Test., vol. i., p. 679, 'The writer professes to produce certain facts which have powerfully influenced the minds of men, and have produced faith. If