“And that reminds me of what I specially admired in your friend—the sagacity with which he penetrated to the root of the matter, declaring that our religion is, in reality, no religion at all (not at least what augurs or priests would call a religion) but only union with a personality, a Lord and Saviour and Friend, who is in us and in whom we are, ‘a very present help in trouble.’ We have no system of sacrifices. For He is our sacrifice offered up once visibly on the cross, and offering Himself up invisibly and continually in the hearts of His faithful disciples. We have no code of laws. For He is our law, uttered by Himself once to the ears of the disciples in the two commandments ‘Love God’ and ‘Love thy neighbour,’ when He shewed them how to make all men ‘neighbours’; and now He utters the same law to our hearts, every moment of our lives, giving us a strong desire to do that which is best for our ‘neighbours,’ and helping us to see what is best, and, seeing it, to do it.” When Clemens said, “He is our sacrifice,” I thought of Paul’s words, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us,” and of “the blood of sprinkling” about which Scaurus had written. And this led me to ask concerning that other tradition which (Scaurus had told me) was written in the fourth gospel alone, about blood and water issuing from Christ’s side. “That,” said Clemens, “was the only passage in your friend’s letter where I was strongly moved to ask you to stop reading that we might talk of it at once. His view was new to me. Yet I confess I had always found it difficult to explain how the writer could call on himself to testify to what he himself had asserted. If Æmilius Scaurus should prove right, that difficulty of mine would be removed. Moreover I cannot but admit that John, or any other disciple, would probably have been prevented by the soldiers from approaching to the cross close enough to distinguish the water from the blood flowing from His side. Yet it came on me as a shock to believe that this particular narrative—to which I attach great importance—was based on a vision. Now the shock is somewhat softened. I have been thinking over your friend’s arguments. He is quite right in saying that in John’s epistle, which may be called an epilogue to his gospel, the words ‘He knoweth,’ as expressed in this particular emphatic phrase, would mean ‘Jesus knoweth.’ The meaning may be the same here. Nevertheless, even if it is so, and even if the narrative describes a vision, I should still feel as certain as ever that this vision expressed the real eternal truth.”