and specially of our text: my view of which will perhaps appear more clearly, if I exhibit a free translation of the passage in which it stands. Beginning, then, from verse 7, the sense of the passage, down to verse 13, appears to be this:" Beloved! let us exercise mutual love! For love is derived from God, and he therefore who possesses it has been quickened by God, and truly knows Him. He who possesses not love, cannot possibly know any thing of God, for God is Love itself." And this Love, St. John goes on to show, he has manifested by a fact of wondrous compassion(verses 9, 10, 11, are parenthetic, proving the assertion in verse 8, and closing with a practical deduction :)-And then he proceeds, in the verses of our text: "No one has ever penetrated to the express vision of God; but if we exercise love towards one another, we realize God within us as our Friend, and are assured of his full complacency towards us. For this is the proof of our friendly union with Him, (of our possessing fully his complacency,) if we find his Spirit-the Spirit of love, that is,(Comp. ch. iii. 24, 23,)-thus actuating us.* The declaration, therefore, of our text is this:

* Comp. ch. iii. 17—19.

third, the closing, personal manifestation, is really and effectually acquainted with Him.

And this is the doctrine of St. John throughout the Epistle from which our text is taken. There were many who boasted a knowledge of God; of his nature, mysteries, and perfections yet their hearts were unsanctified, and thei lives unholy. But he only, argues the Apc stle, who has been quickened and renewed b God-he only who has derived from him Ligh and Love, and Holiness, really knows Him No one has ever seen God as an object of p ception; but, if we experience in our hearts th Love which is his essential principle, then find Him subjectively (experimentally) wit us: we have fellowship with the Father: are intimately acquainted with Him: we h actual intercourse with Him as our Friend; our thoughts and feelings are but the prod and expression, and therefore the evidenc his Spirit dwelling in us. He that exhil disposition like God's disposition, which is shows that he possesses the Spirit of God he that has the Spirit of God, has God's heart revealed to him.

This, I say, is the doctrine of the F

* See 1 John, ii. 4, 9; i. 6; iii. 17.

+ See 1 John, ii. 3, 5; i. 7.

baffle even our closest inspection; whose character, after the longest intimacy, we cannot comprehend; of whom we say emphatically,—I do not understand that man! We are mysteries to one another; we tread the round of life together; we touch in some few points, but never penetrate, or really know each other:

"Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe,

Our hermit spirits dwell, and range apart." Personal perception, then, and frequency of sight, are not the conditions of friendly intimacy. To know a man truly, is to know his mind and heart; to participate of his affections, to enter into his views, to be assimilated to his character. Whence is it that we sometimes meet a person whom at once we sympathize with? who stirs within us a new emotion; towards whom the mind goes forth as towards one long known; and whom it seems to recognize rather than to be made acquainted with? Because his soul has something connatural with our own it is set to the same key, and, therefore, the very first note heard from it awakens every string within our heart. Or, whence again that sacred sympathy of friend with friend, which makes us feel in us feel in his society communing rather with ourselves than with some exterior being: when the same train of

thoughts will rise simultaneously in each separate mind, and a hint, a word, a look almost, will interpret a whole series of feelings and conceptions, and bring them into rapt communion? Because there is a kindred spirit in each—we are moved from the same centre; and the index, therefore, of the one heart corresponds with the index of the other. The soul of our friend has become assimilated to our own; it is transfused into our own; we dwell together in harmony such as none can know but by experience. In one emphatic phrase, we understand each other.

And all this, we see, depends, not so much on frequency of sight, as similarity of taste and disposition: not so much on personal intercourse, as intercourse of mind and heart, by whatsoever medium this be carried on. The conditions of intellectual intimacy, therefore, are not sight, but sympathy: not outward vision, but inward similarity-similarity of taste and feeling, refined by frequent mental intercourse into identity.

And thus it is that we may know God: thus only that we can know him, either now, or in the ages yet to come. By our minds becoming attuned to his; concentric with his; assimilated to his by receiving into our souls that divine

66

seed* which makes us children of our heavenly Father, and whose expansions are the expansions of his moral character-by being born of God ;† becoming "partakers of the Divine Nature," being " renewed in the spirit of our mind," and putting on the new man, which, after God," i. e. according to the image of his moral character, "is created in righteousness and true holiness." Just so far as this similarity of disposition is begun and is advancing in us, shall we know God: just so far as we become acquainted with his thoughts, familiar with his feelings, conformed to his character, so far is God manifested in us in a way far surpassing all objective manifestation either by his works or by his Son. Hereby know we that we dwell in Him and He in us;"" Hereby we do know that we know Him."" If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with Him and with his Son Jesus Christ,"-" and the Father himself loveth us, and comes to us, and manifests himself to us.' "Were I to define Divinity," says an old writer,§ "I should rather call it a divine life, than a divine science: it

66

* 1 John iii. 9.

2 Peter i. 4.

1660.

66

† 1 John iii. 9: v. 18.

John Smith, of Cambridge. Select Discourses,