The Word of Life.
St. John sets forth in his writings no theory of life. He cannot, or does not, formulate his conception of it into a system; he simply feels a power, not of death, but of life, working in his own soul. He is sure there is nothing in the world or beyond the world that can destroy it. Its evident tendency toGod attested its origin fromGod. There might be other media to other men; to him it came through Christ.
I. As a rule of life, bidding us be pure, and unselfish, and kindly affectioned; as a high ideal, stimulating us to forget the things that were behind and to reach forward unto things that were yet before; enlightening us where we saw but dimly; enabling and capacitating us where we Were feeble and incompetent; purifying us where appetite and passion were in danger of blunting the finer perceptions of the heart, the nobler purposes of the soul; laying the foundations of an ampler and higher life, first for the individual and then for society and the race it was thus that the "word of life" presented itself to the mind of St. John. If it had free course; if all who preached it practised it; if the failure of other systems to explain the phenomena of humanity, and still more to relieve its admitted ills and sorrows, were more fairly estimated and more fully known, perhaps it would be thought and seen that Christianity had not said its last word.
II. We first frustrate the grace of God, and do despite to it, trample it under our feet, and then call the Gospel a failure. We make Christian influence impossible, and then ask, Where is it to be found? We first grieve, and finally quench, the Spirit of God, and then say we can recognise no tokens of His presence or His power. And yet, under all these circumstances of disadvantage, there are to be found in palaces and cottages pure, and brave, and noble souls; and where one such soul lives and breathes, diffusing the fragrance of its beneficent influence and the power of its saintly life, there is the proof of the truth of Christ's Gospel, there is the witness that Christ still leaves of Himself in the world. Let us beware of separating religion from morality. When St. Peter has stirred our spiritual impulses by telling us, as St. John also tells us, of the exceeding great and precious promises by which we are, as it were, made partakers of the Divine nature, he at once brings us down from heaven to earth again by saying, "And, besides all this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue"; when St. Paul would pray for the best gifts for his Thessalonian converts, he prays that God would "sanctify them wholly, and that their whole spirit, soul, and body might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Bishop Fraser, University Sermons;p. 154.
Reference: 1 John 1:1-3. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 158.