Many are offended with this. No doubt Christianity is the religion of love--"the epiphany of the sweet-naturedness and philanthropy of God."[366] We very often look upon heresy or unbelief with the tolerance of curiosity rather than of love. At all events, the Gospel has its intolerance as well as tolerance. St. John certainly had this. It is not a true conception in art which invests him with the mawkish sweetness of perpetual youth. There is a sense in which he was a son of Thunder to the last. He who believes and knows must formulate a dogma. A dogma frozen by formality, or soured by hate, or narrowed by stupidity, makes a bigot. In reading the Church History of the first four centuries we are often tempted to ask, why all this subtlety, this theology-spinning, this dogma-hammering? The answer stands out clear above the mists of controversy. Without all this the Church would have lost the conception of Christ, and thus finally Christ Himself. St. John's denunciations have had a function in Christendom as well as his love. 3. There are two most precious indications of the highest Christian truth with which we may conclude. We have prefixed to this Epistle that beautiful Apostolic salutation which is found in two only among the Epistles of St. Paul.[367] After that simple, but exquisite expression of blessing merged in prophecy--"the truth which abideth in us--yes! and with us it shall be for ever"[368]--there comes another verse set in the same key. "There shall be with us grace, mercy, peace, from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth" of thought, "and love" of life.[369] This rush and reduplication of words is not very like the usual reserve and absence of emotional excitement in St. John's style. Can it be that something (possibly the glorious death of martyrdom by which Timothy died) led St. John to use words which were probably familiar to Ephesian Christians? However this may be, let us live by and learn from those lovely words. Our poverty wants _grace_, our guilt wants _mercy_, our misery wants _peace_. Let us ever keep the Apostle's order. Do not let us put _peace_, our feeling of peace, first. The emotionalists' is a topsy-turvy theology. Apostles do not say "peace and grace," but "grace and peace." One more--in an age which substitutes an ideal something called the spirit of Christianity for Christ, let us hold fast to that which is the essence of the Gospel and the kernel of our three creeds. "To confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh."[370] Couple with this a canon of the First Epistle--"confesseth Jesus Christ _come_ in flesh."[371] The second is the Incarnation _fact_ with its abiding consequences; the first, the Incarnation _principle_ ever living in a Person, Who will also be personally manifested. This is the substance of the Gospels; this the life of prayers and sacraments; this the expectation of the saints. NOTES.