worthiness to bear His Name and to wear His livery. And once more He extends His pierced Hand to pardon, and He offers His Body and His Blood to strengthen our souls for such work as may be needed to make us more like Himself. Surely those of us will most thankfully receive Christ's inestimable benefit, in becoming the great Sacrifice for sin, and, by His Presence within the soul, the hope of Glory, who have known what it is to try, ever so feebly, "to follow in the blessed steps of His most holy Life." a Col. i. 27. SERMON XXXI. TRUTH THE BOND OF LOVE. 2 ST. JOHN I, 2. The Elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth; for the Truth's sake, Which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever. How OW much is implied, very often, by the phrase or style with which a letter is begun or ended! How different is the formal "Sir" from "My dear Sir;" and, again, how much does this differ from the intimacy which addresses by a Christian name! How many shades of feeling are represented by "Your obedient servant," "Your faithful servant," "Yours truly," "Yours very faithfully," "Yours affectionately," "Yours most affectionately"! Those different styles mean a great deal; and as it is now, so it was in the Apostolic age. The opening words of St. John's Second Epistle are full of interest of this kind. They introduce us to a whole department of private or personal feeling, just as truly as any letter we may receive by the post to-morrow morning. How does the writer describe himself? "John, an Apostle of Jesus Christ," or "John, a servant of Jesus Christ?" No; this is the style of other Apostles: of St. Paul, St. Peter, St. James, St. Jude. St. John calls himself simply "the Elder," both in this and "anti his third letter, to Gaius. Perhaps the word had better be rendered" Presbyter," as indeed it stands in the original. It has led some persons to suppose, both in ancient and modern times, that these two Epistles were not written by the Apostle John at all, but by a Presbyter named John, who lived at Ephesus at the same time as the Apostle. But to say nothing of the prevailing belief of the Church, this opinion is not fairly borne out by the contents of the Epistles themselves. To mention one particular only, it is inconsistent with the tone of Apostolical authority in which the writer refers to the "many deceivers who have come into the world" as christs" in the Second Epistle, and to Diotrephes, with his passion for pre-eminence, in the Third. The truth would appear to be that St. John calls himself by way of endearment "the Presbyter," when writing to a family with which he has been long on terms of intimacy. Nothing is more welcome to persons of simple character who are in high office than an opportunity of laying its formalities aside; they like to address others and to be themselves addressed in their personal capacity, or by a title in which there is more affection than form. Every one knows how largely this might be illustrated from the annals of royalty; and years before St. John wrote, St. Peter had set the example of dropping his Apostolic title when writing to his brethren in Christ's work. "The elders," or presbyters," which are among you I exhort, who am also a presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ." And so it would seem that, just as we might speak of some one person as "the Vicar," or " the Colonel," as if there was no one else in the world who held these offices, so St. John was known in the family to which he writes by the affectionately familiar title of "the Presbyter." the Presbyter." And he introduces c CI St. Pet. v. I. himself to them by a description around which so much. affection had gathered, and which seemed to have acquired a new appropriateness in his advanced age. Although in the eye of the whole Christian Church he filled the great place of an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and as such had jurisdiction over the whole body of the faithful; although he had been admitted by the Divine Master to an intimacy of affection shared with no other Apostle; although he was now the only surviving representative of the Sacred College; yet he puts out of sight this weight of high station and of untold responsibility; and when he would pour out his heart to the chosen mother and her children, he calls himself by a name which at once puts them at their ease with him. He is simply "the Presbyter." To whom does he write? "The Presbyter to the elect lady and her children." There is no sufficient reason for supposing, with some writers, that by "elect lady" St. John is personifying a particular Christian Church. He is writing to an actual individual: to a Christian mother and her family. It may be that the word translated "lady" is really a proper name, "Kyria." But this would not affect the idea we must form of her position and character. She was an elderly person, probably a widow, living with her grown-up children. When St. John says that she was loved by "all them that knew the truth," he makes it plain that her name was at least well known in the Asiatic Churches, and that she was a person of real and high excellence. There were many such good women in the Church of the Apostolic age. What Dorcas was to St. Peter; a what Lydia of Philippi, and Phoebe of Cenchrea, and Priscilla,d and many others, were to St. Paul, such was this Christian lady to St. John. Long before this, as it b Acts xvi. 14, 15. c Rom. xvi. I. a Acts ix. 36-39. is probable, the Blessed Virgin Mother, whom our Lord, speaking from His Cross, had committed to the care of the most beloved of His disciples, had been taken to her rest. And the "elect lady and her children, whom he loved in the truth," would have helped to brighten, with human affection, the later years of the aged Saint who had thus outlived all his contemporaries. Here then, within the sacred canon, is an Apostolic letter; and to whom is it written? Not to Apostolic Christendom, as was St. John's First Epistle; not to some separate Church of more or less importance, as were most of St. Paul's Epistles; not to great bishops, as were the pastoral instructions to Timothy and Titus; not to a fellow-labourer with Apostles, as the letter to Philemon; not to a Christian, whose works of charity were witnessed before the Church, alike by brethren and by strangers, as was St. John's last correspondent, Gaius. St. John writes to a lady and her children, living apparently in retirement, with no public title to a claim on the attention of the Apostle. And thus, in the Bible itself, we are face to face with a relationship of intimate friendship, which might have existed, and the like of which does constantly exist, in our own days not less truly than in those of the Apostles. The Christianity of Ephesus under St. John's eyes was not an ideal and abstract thing, acting upon men and upon life quite differently from anything we witness now. Then as now it was a living practical influence; a domestic friend, multiplying, modifying, colouring, brightening, purifying the daily relations of life. It came home to Christians in the first century as it comes home to them in the nineteenth, as a bond of friendship. In this view, and with an eye to practical guidance, St. John's affectionate address to the Christian mother and her family deserves careful attention. |