There is little of the form of logical argument to which Western readers are habituated in the writings of St. John, steeped as his mind was in Hebraic influences. The inferential "therefore" is not to be found in this Epistle.[213] Yet the diligent reader or expositor finds it more difficult to detach any single sentence, without loss to the general meaning, than in any other writing of the New Testament. The sentence may look almost as if its letters were graven brief and large upon a block of marble, and stood out in oracular isolation--but upon reverent study it will be found that the seemingly lapidary inscription is one of a series with each of which it is indissolubly connected--sometimes limited, sometimes enlarged, always coloured and influenced by that which precedes and follows. It is peculiarly needful to bear this observation in mind in considering fully the almost startling principle stated in the verse which is prefixed to this discourse. A kind of spiritual omniscience appears to be attributed to believers. Catechisms, confessions, creeds, teachers, preachers, seem to be superseded by a stroke of the Apostle's pen, by what we are half tempted to consider as a magnificent exaggeration. The text sounds as if it outstripped even the fulfilment of the promise of the new covenant contained in Jeremiah's prophecy--"they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them."[214] The passages just before and after St. John's splendid annunciation[215] in our text are occupied with the subject of Antichrist, here first mentioned in Scripture. In this section of our Epistle Antichrist is (1) _revealed_, and (2) _refuted_. (1) Antichrist is revealed by the very crisis which the Church was then traversing. From this especially, from the transitory character of a world drifting by them in unceasing mutation, the Apostle is led to consider this as one of those crisis-hours of the Church's history, each of which may be _the_ last hour, and which is assuredly--in the language of primitive Christianity--_a_ last hour. The Apostle therefore exclaims with fatherly affection--"Little children, it is a last hour."[216]