admiration, hope, and love by which Wordsworth says that we live. Love
especially is intimately connected with faith. And as the Christian
life is to be considered as, above all things, a state of union with
Christ, and of His members with one another, love of the brethren is
inseparable from love of God. So intimate is this union, that hatred
towards any human being cannot exist in the same heart as love to God.
The mystical union is indeed rather a bond between Christ and the
Church, and between man and man as members of Christ, than between
Christ and individual souls. Our Lord's prayer is "that they all may
be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also
may be one in us." The personal relation between the soul and Christ
is not to be denied; but it can only be enjoyed when the person has
"come to himself" as a member of a body. This involves an inward
transit from the false isolated self to the larger life of sympathy
and love which alone makes us persons. Those who are thus living
according to their true nature are rewarded with an intense
unshakeable conviction which makes them independent of external
evidences. Like the blind man who was healed, they can say, "One thing
I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." The words "we know" are
repeated again and again in the first Epistle, with an emphasis which
leaves no room for doubt that the evangelist was willing to throw the
main weight of his belief on this inner assurance, and to attribute it
without hesitation to the promised presence of the Comforter. We must
observe, however, that this knowledge or illumination is
_progressive_. This is proved by the passages already quoted about the
work of the Holy Spirit. It is also implied by the words, "This is
life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
Christ whom Thou hast sent." Eternal life is not [Greek: gnôsis],
knowledge as a possession, but the state of acquiring knowledge
([Greek: hina gignôskôsin]). It is significant, I think, that St. John,