men, the testimony of God is greater for this is the testimony of God, which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the testimony in himself: he that believeth not God, hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the testimony that God hath testified of his Son. And this is the testimony, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."-I am far from proposing such a translation, as one at all admissible according to the idiomatic proprieties of our language; but mention it, merely to make the observation of some interpreters intelligible to the English reader. They allege that the words " He that believeth on the Son of God hath the testimony in himself," mean simply that the believer has the truth or doctrine of God abiding in him. Now this is certainly true, and the same statement, in other terms, is frequent in the scriptures. This same apostle, for example, in a preceding part of the same epistle, says "Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning: if that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father." Yet it is evident that John means by the expression, not the testimony considered simply in itself, but the testimony considered as containing in it, and bringing with it, evidence of its being from God. This is clear from verse 9. "If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater;" where the point in

comparison is not the thing testified, but the credit due to the testifier :-the import of the words being, not that what is testified by God is greater (although this is also true,) than any thing testified by man; but that the credit due to God as a witness is greater than the credit due to man as a witness; that what HE testifies ought to be received with infinitely more implicit confidence. When, therefore, in this connexion, it is added, "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the testimony in himself," the meaning must be, not merely that he has the truth testified in his mind, abstractedly from every consideration of its origin and its evidence, but that he has it there, as the testimony of God, evincing itself in his own experience to be divine. He has received it as divine; and he has it in himself as proved to be so. The testimony stands connected with the evidence of its original; and the apostle's expression evidently implies that the believer has both in himself, the truth, associated with its evidence,the truth, as its own witness. It dwells in him, with all its self-evidencing power. It "effectually worketh in him," approving itself, in his own consciousness, as "the power of God unto his salvation :"-and in this he has evidence of its divinity, such as no reasonings, however subtle, can shake, and of which no adversary, however powerful, can deprive him. In his soul and conscience he knows that "God is in that testimony of a truth." This divine and divinely authenticated

testimony dwells in him :—and, while it is the fountain of his peace and joy, and the firm basis of his hopes, it is the principle of his progressive purity in heart, and obedient subjection in life. His experience establishes his faith. He "knows" by it "that he has eternal life;" and he "believes”—continues to believe -"on the Name of the Son of God."

There are many things which present themselves as suitable to be said, in closing such a subject. I cannot, however, enlarge; and the practical complexion of the latter parts of the discussion renders it the less neces

sary that I should. Amongst the readers of this

little work, there may be, in greater or smaller proportions, three classes, to each of whom I may address a few parting words. They are the confident, the diffident, and the careless.

1. To the first of these classes I would say I have no objections to confidence. The Bible speaks of it as the believer's privilege. I have no objection to its rising to assurance, to full assurance,-to its even assuming this form at the very outset, and maintaining it to the end of the course; inasmuch as we have seen it to be the gracious design of God that his people should "know that they have eternal life;"and the case is quite conceivable,-nay more, whatever there may be in believers themselves to hinder its being uniformly realized, there is not only nothing in

the word of God to prevent it, but every thing to warrant and produce it,-of so clear and simple a perception, and so strong and stedfast a belief, being obtained from the very first, and continued ever afterwards, of the freeness and fulness of the grace of God in Christ, as shall keep the believer in the scriptural enjoyment of unshaken confidence to the last. It is not the fault of God or of his gospel, that it is not always thus. It is in neither that we are straitened, but in ourselves.-It will be well for the confident, however, to attend to the three following simple inquiries.-1. Are you sure your confidence is resting on the true foundation,-on the genuine apostolic gospel, the simple testimony of God concerning his Son?-on the finished work of Jesus, held forth in that testimony as the divinely approved and therefore only ground of acceptance for sinners? Many, you must be well aware, have had confidence in error. See then that your foundation be right. This is the first concern. If this be wrong, all is wrong. Examine well the divine record, which reveals the ground of hope with all simplicity, requiring only simplicity on the sinner's part to understand it; and see that your confidence be founded in THE TRUTH.-Then, supposing your conceptions of the gospel to be according to the simplicity of apostolic statement, let me ask you-2. Is your confidence humble? You may fancy it hardly necessary to ask such a question, after

H

you have said that your confidence rests exclusively on the finished work of the Just One.

Be it so. All

I wish you to remember is, that if it really do rest there, it will be humble; and that the humble-minded character of your confidence is one of the evidences that this is indeed its foundation. But I have known persons, who have evidently prided themselves in their simple views of the truth; who have made a righteousness of their clear notions; who, instead of living in a habitually lowly dependence on what the truth reveals, have plumed themselves on their emancipation from the enthralling mysticism of human systems, and have looked down, with a cold-hearted superciliousness, on all who, in their statements of the gospel, have not come fully up to their standard. Yes I have known such persons;-pharisaical foes of pharisaism; uttering, in the spirit of the pharisee, the language of the publican; humbling themselves in words, with a conscious self-elation at their humbling themselves so well; professing to trust exclusively in the righteousness of Christ, but secretly, and unavowedly to themselves, confiding in their very zeal for the exclusion of their own; in one word, "trusting in themselves that they are right and despising others,"—a description of character within a syllable of the pharisee's in expression, and quite as little remote from it in principle and state of mind. Those who have been taught by the grace of God to build their hopes on the work of