St. John's hatred of unreality, of lying in every form, leads him to claim in Christians a perfect correspondence between the outward profession and the inward life, as well as the visible manifestation of it. "He that saith" always marks a danger to those who are outwardly in Christian communion. It is the "take notice" of a hidden falsity. He whose claim, possibly whose vaunt, is that he abideth in Christ, has contracted a moral debt of far-reaching significance. St. John seems to pause for a moment. He points to a picture in a page of the scroll which is beside him--the picture of Christ in the Gospel drawn by himself; not a vague magnificence, a mere harmony of colour, but a likeness of absolute historical truth. Every pilgrim of time in the continuous course of his daily walk, outward and inward, has by the possession of that Gospel contracted an obligation to be walking by the one great life-walk of the Pilgrim of eternity. The very depth and intensity of feeling half hushes the Apostle's voice. Instead of the beloved Name which all who love it will easily supply,[167] St. John uses the reverential _He_, the pronoun which specially belongs to Christ in the vocabulary of the Epistle.[168] "He that saith he abideth in Him" is bound, even as He once walked, to be ever walking. I. The importance of _example_ in the moral and spiritual life gives emphasis to this canon of St. John. Such an example as can be sufficient for creatures like ourselves should be at once manifested in concrete form and susceptible of ideal application. This was felt by a great but unhappily anti-christian thinker, the exponent of a severe and lofty morality. Mr. Mill fully confesses that there may be an elevating and an ennobling influence in a Divine ideal; and thus justifies the apparently startling precept--"be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect."[169] But he considered that some more human model was necessary for the moral striver. He recommends novel-readers, when they are charmed or strengthened by some conception of pure manhood or womanhood, to carry that conception with them into their own lives. He would have them ask themselves in difficult positions, how that strong and lofty man, that tender and unselfish woman, would have behaved in similar circumstances, and so bear about with them a standard of duty at once compendious and affecting. But to this there is one fatal objection--that such an elaborate process of make-believe is practically impossible. A fantastic morality, if it were possible at all, must be a feeble morality. Surely an authentic example will be greatly more valuable. But _example_, however precious, is made indefinitely more powerful when it is _living_ example, example crowned by personal influence.