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when we have carefully examined it, we perceive one principle unfolding itself gradually through the different clauses, which we might fail to apprehend, if we did not observe how each contributes to the illustration of it.

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What that principle is, I hinted at the close of my last Lecture. St. John had joined together two signs of the birth which is not from above, but from beneath; of the birth that is not of God, but of the devil. Not doing righteousness, was one sign; not loving the brethren, was another. We often set these two signs in opposition. That man, we say, is rigidly just; he holds to the law but he is not affectionate, not loving. That man, we say, is one of the kindest, most charitable, most tender-hearted creatures in the world; but he is sadly wanting in justice; he will always overlook evil rather than punish it. There may be a plea for such language; there are men, doubtless, who have cultivated the sterner virtues, and who have crushed what they think interferes with them; there are men who have been driven by the sight and experience of this severity into the temper which is most directly the reverse of it. But the contradiction is solely the effect of our imperfection; it has no existence in the nature of things. The proof that it has not, is that it does not last, even in those who appear to present the most remarkable specimens of it. The just man becomes unjust from the want of that sympathy which enables him to understand the degrees of criminality in different men; the merciful man becomes unmerciful, because he is without a standard to which he can refer his own acts, and to which he can raise those whom he spares. So it is shown that there is and must be a radical union between these two great human charac

teristics. And so it becomes a most important question in ethics to ascertain the ground of this union, and how it may bear upon our practice.

I spoke to you in my sixth Lecture of the contempt which some had thrown upon the Old Testament, as if it were set aside by the New, and of St. John's assertion, that the word which they had heard from the beginning was that which he was declaring to them. I showed you, at the same time, how he justified the reverence for the New Testament as a higher revelation than the Old, on the ground that the true Brother of men had appeared; that the commandment that each man should love his neighbour as himself had become true in Him and in us; a law actually fulfilled; a law which could be obeyed. The question presents itself here under a new aspect. It is not whether the New Testament has superseded the Old; but whether, if the New Testament sets forth Love as the principle of human action, it does not contradict the Old, in which Righteousness and Law are so prominent. You shall hear St. John's answer. He does not now speak of the commandments which were given on Sinai. He goes back to an earlier record still. This,' he says, 'is the message which ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.'

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Here is the oldest story almost in the Bible. it the story of a great transgression. A transgression implies something to be transgressed. What was that? There were no decrees then; no tables of stone. But there was God's message to men in the very fact of these two men being brothers. 'Ye shall love one another' is involved in

THE FIRST MURDER.

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the very constitution of the universe, in the very existence of a family. Cain proved himself to be of that wicked one,'—to be the servant of the rebel against Right and God, -by this act against his brother. Are Righteousness and Love, then, hostile principles? Is one the mitigation or softening of the other? Is not Love presupposed in Righteousness? Is not an outrage upon Love an outrage upon Righteousness?

He enforces his argument in the second clause of the verse, 'And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.' The story represents the dislike of Cain to Abel as originating in anger against God, because his sacrifice had not been accepted. The Epistle to the Hebrews affirms the sacrifice of Abel to have been good, because it was offered in faith; the sacrifice of Cain to have been evil, because it was offered in unbelief or distrust. St. John asserts the same doctrine in different language. The righteous man of the Old and New Testament equally is the man who trusted in a righteous God; the unrighteous man is the distrustful man. The story represents God as arguing the case with Cain's conscience, as saying, 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?' He refuses to listen to that voice. He turns from the righteous Lord; he hates Him; then he begins to hate his brother, for his faith, for his righteousness. What was the Gospel doctrine but the expansion of this primary history? What was it but the unfolding of a LAW which that history had indicated? What were the experiences of those who accepted it, but this first experience multiplied?

But here was the perplexity. If there were only an

Adam and an Eve, a Cain and Abel, it might be easy enough to say that the loving man was the rule, and the unloving man the exception. How could this be said in an age when the majority-the world at large-was full of hatreds and murders, when there were only a few protestants on behalf of unity? St. John does not blink this difficulty. · Marvel not, my brethren,' he says, ' if the world hate you.' Do not let this fact stagger your faith, that the proportion of haters to lovers seems so enormous. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.' It is not a question to be decided by a poll. It is a question which each man may decide for himself. Is it not the state of Death to hate? Is it not the state of Life to love? Did we not hate because we had been separated from the life of God? Are we not able to love, because we are in communion with the life of God? What then if a frightful number are hating each other? Whosoever hateth his brother, abideth in death.' He is cutting himself off from the universe; he is at war with its law; at war with its Creator and Lawgiver. He goes on: Every one that hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.' The thought of the primal eldest curse' is still present to him. Murder, he says, as that story indicates, is hatred developed into act. Hatred is murder in the heart. But he has been occu→ pied through his whole letter, with

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telling us that the life

of God, the Eternal Life, which was implied in the divine code, but which no divine code could adequately express or make effectual, had been manifested in Jesus Christ. As the code fights with the act, this life fights with the principle. As the code deals out vengeance on the crime which

HOW LOVE IS KNOWN.

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is perpetrated by the murderer's hand, this life is the contradiction of the hatred in the murderer's heart. With that it cannot abide. What, then, must this life, this Eternal life, be?

Last week the question was raised, What does he mean by the Love of which he discourses so much? I said I felt sure that he would not cheat us of an answer, though I doubted whether it would take the form of a definition. In the first verse he produces the answer even in a more direct and formal manner than you would perhaps imagine from our version.

Hereby perceive we Love,' (the words of God are added): 'Because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.' He has been tracing the operation of the law of love, and the transgression of the law of love in former ages. He has fully vindicated the Old Testament from those who say that this law of love is not the one which it recognises. But he agrees with those who exalted the New Testament above the Old, to this extent: he admits that the love which was involved in every true act that had ever been done, which had been the hidden principle of every true life, which was seen in Joseph's tenderness for the brethren who had sold him, in the care of Moses for the people who were ready to stone him, in the burning patriotism of every prophet whom his countrymen put in the stocks or the prison, or doomed to death,—had not yet fully revealed itself. A man of the old time could not say 'I know it.' 'I know it.' He longed to know it; he looked forward to a time when it should be known. The time, says St. John, has come. The blessing is ours. Son of God has laid down His life for us.' By this

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