Nowhere do the Scriptures furnish a definition of Life; but for the most part the Biblical conception of spiritual life is derived directly from experience.  It denotes a rich complex of thought, emotion, and activity, in which man is conscious of that which fulfils the highest idea of his being.  Life consists in the enjoyment of God's favour (Ps. 30⁵); it is the result of loving God and obeying His voice (Deut. 30^19,20); it is the fruit of true wisdom (Prov. 3¹⁸), and of the fear of the Lord (Prov. 14²⁷).  Everywhere in the Old Testament, Life is conceived as the enjoyment of those blessings that flow to men from a vivid experience of God's favour and fellowship.  It is upon these things men live, and altogether therein is the life of the Spirit (Isa. 38¹⁶).  Nor is it otherwise in the New Testament.  Life is an experience of the supreme and eternal blessings of the Kingdom of God.  It is the goal toward which men are to struggle onward by the narrow way (Matt. 7¹⁴); for the attainment of which no sacrifice is to be deemed too costly, because in its possession every sacrifice is more than plentifully recompensed (Mark 10³⁰).  The door of entrance to it is repentance (Acts 11¹⁸), and the way of attainment, patient continuance in well-doing (Rom. 2⁷).  It is the end of that emancipation from sin and servantship to God of which holiness is the immediate fruit (Rom. 6²²); the harvest which they reap who sow unto the Spirit (Gal. 6⁸); the prize of which we are to lay hold by fighting the good fight of faith (1 Tim. 6¹²).  In these and in all kindred passages the conception of Life is derived directly from the data of actual or anticipated experience.  Life is a result, not a cause.  It is conscious participation in the highest good for which man is made, which he can find only when his whole nature has been redeemed from the dominion of false ideals, and has been harmonised with the Divine order, by the perfect knowledge and love of God, and by unhampered and enthusiastic devotion to His will.

    Now the definition of life, so conceived, will simply be a generalisation from its phenomena, that is, from its functions and characteristics as experienced and observed in the living organism.  Thus in the physical sphere, the physiologist finds that such organisms invariably exhibit the phenomena of Assimilation, Waste, Reproduction, and Growth, and defines Life as the co-ordination of these functions.  The biologist, again, regarding the phenomena from a different point of view, reaches the wider generalisation that life is correspondence to environment, "the continuous adjustment of internal to external relations" (Spencer).

    In the same way, spiritual life may be defined as a correspondence of spiritual faculty to spiritual environment, the right relation of trust, love, and hope, of conscience, affection, and will, to their true Divine objects. "The mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace" (Rom. 8⁶).  Or it may be defined physiologically by the functions and energies with which it is identified; it is "Righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghosts (Rom. 14²⁷; cf. Gal. 5^22,23).  And our Epistle, more than any other New Testament writing, patiently places beneath our hands the material for such a definition of Life.  Its subject-matter consists chiefly in the delineation of Eternal Life, positively and negatively, by means of its invariable and unmistakable characteristics,¹ Righteousness, Love, and Belief of the Truth.  These are its primary functions.  Confronted by the Truth of God in the person of Jesus Christ, every one in whom the Life is quickened believes beholds in Jesus the Incarnate Son of God; confronted by the Will of God, as moral duty or commandment, he obeys; confronted by human need, he loves, not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth (3¹⁸).  Life, accordingly, might be defined from the Epistle as consisting in Belief, Obedience, and Love, as the co-existence of these in conscious activity, carrying with it a joyful assurance of present fellowship with God (3^19-24, 4^15-18) and of its glorious consummation in the future (3²).

    Yet any definition from such a point of view would omit all that is most distinctive in the Johannine conception of Life.  According to that conception, Life is cause, not effect; not phenomenon, but essence; not conscious experience, but that which underlies and produces experience.  Eternal Life does not consist in the moral activities of Belief, Obedience, and Love, and still less is it a consequence flowing from the activities; it is the animating principle that is manifested in them, of which they are the fruits and evidences.  Instead of "This do and thou shalt live" (Luke 10²⁸), St. John says conversely, "Every one that doeth righteousness is² begotten of God"; instead of "The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1¹⁷), "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is² begotten of God."  The human activity - doing righteousness, believing, loving - is the result and the proof of life already imparted, not the condition or the means of its attainment.

    Thus the Johannine conception of spiritual Life is completely analogous to the commonly-held conception of physical Life.  Physical Life, as has been said, may be defined from its phenomena.  It is correspondence to environment; or it is the association, in a definite individual form, of Assimilation, Waste, Reproduction, and Growth.  Such a definition covers all the phenomena that distinguish the organic from the inorganic; and if no other existence than that of phenomena is recognised, it represents the furthest limit of thought on the subject.  But the mind does not naturally rest in such a definition.  We intuitively assume a something behind the phenomena, an entity of which they are the manifestation.  To the ordinary way of thinking, the "continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations" is not a definition of what Life is, but merely a highly generalised statement of what Life does.  Life is not correspondence to environment; it is what determines such correspondence.  What Life is in itself we may not be able to say.  Indeed, we cannot say.  It is the mystic principle, the natura naturans, of which Nature is at once the revelation and the veil.  Science fails to throw a ray of light across the gulf between Life and Death.  But the idea of Life as an animating principle, the essence in which inhere all the potencies developed in the living organism, is one which, though it expresses what science is confessedly ignorant of, is necessary to science itself.

    This conception of physical Life is by no means foreign to Biblical thought. The "life," the animating principle of the bodily organism vp,n, is in the "blood" (Gen. 9⁴, Lev. 17¹¹ etc.).  God is the fountain of all Life (Ps. 36⁹); and to every creature (Ps. 104³⁰), as to man (Gen. 2⁷), it is a direct impartation by God's own quickening Breath.  But it is not until we come to the Johannine writings that we find this mode of conception expressly applied to the spiritual Life.  And we shall now proceed to consider how it is expressed and applied in our Epistle.

    The designation most frequently employed is simply "the Life" (h` zwh,, 1<sup>1,2</sup>, 3<sup>14</sup>, 5<sup>12,16</sup>).  Elsewhere the Life is qualitatively described as "eternal" (zwh. aivw,nioj, 3<sup>15</sup>, 5<sup>11,13</sup>).  Twice (1<sup>2</sup>, 2<sup>25</sup>) the form h` zwh. h` aivw,nioj is used, by which the separate ideas of "life" and "eternal" are more distinctly emphasised.  A comparison of these passages makes it certain that these forms of locution are used quite interchangeably.  The ideas of duration and futurity which are originally and properly expressed by the adjective aivw,nioj³ have become in Johannine usage only one element, and that not the primary element, in its significance.  Always Life is regarded as a present reality (e.g. 3¹⁴, 5¹²); and the adjective "eternal" is added even when the reference to its present possession is most emphatic (3¹⁵ "Ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him)."  Eternal Life is not any kind of life prolonged ad infinitum.  The life of a Dives, though he should be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously through everlasting ages, would come never one inch nearer to the idea of Eternal Life.  The category of time recedes before that of moral quality.  Eternal Life is one kind of life, the highest, the Divine kind of life, irrespective of its duration.  It is the kind of Life that is perfectly manifested in Christ (1², 5¹¹).  Every hour of His history belonged to the eternal order.  Every word He spoke, every deed of obedience and love He did, was an outgoing of Eternal Life.  The Divine nature was in it.  And in whomsoever it exists, whether in heaven or on earth, the possession of that nature which produces thoughts, motives and desires, words and deeds, like His, is Eternal Life.

    But though, abstractly, the idea of Eternal Life might be considered as timeless, it would not be accurate so to describe the Apostle's actual conception of it.  It was from "the Beginning" in the "Word"(1¹).  It is the absolute Divine Life (5²⁰), therefore imperishable.  It stands in triumphant contrast to the pathetic ephemeralities of the worldly life (2¹⁷).  And while there is no passage in the Epistle (not even 2²⁵) where Life, with or without the adjective "eternal," does not primarily signify a present spiritual state rather than a future immortal felicity, the latter is not only implicit in the very conception of Eternal Life as the summum bonum, but comes fully to light in the vision of the impending Parousia (2^17,28, 3², 4¹⁷).

    Of this Life, God, the Father revealed in Christ, is the sole and absolute source.  He is the true God and Eternal⁴ Life (5²⁰).  Eternal Life is His gift⁵ to men; potentially, when He "sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him" (4⁹); actually, when we believe in His name (5¹³).  For of this Life, again, Christ is the sole mediator.  If "the witness is that God gave us Eternal Life," this is because "this Life is in His Son" (5¹¹).  By the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten Son the Eternal Life in its Divine fulness became incorporate with humanity, and remains a fountain of regenerative power to "as many as receive Him" (John 1¹²).  And here St. John's doctrine of the Logos enables him to carry New Testament thought on this subject a step further than the Pauline view of Christ as the Second Adam and the "Man from heaven" (I Cor. 15^22,45-49).  In what sense the Life of God is in Christ and is mediated through Him, is unfolded in the opening verses of the Epistle, where it is said that the subject of the entire Apostolic announcement is "the Word of Life" (peri. tou/ lo,gou th/j zwh/j, 1¹), this announcement being possible because "the Life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the Life, the Eternal Life, which was in relation to the Father, and was manifested unto us" (1²).

    Here the mediation of Life through the historic Christ (1¹) is grounded in the relation, eternally subsisting within the Godhead itself, of the Word to the Father (1²).  For, whatever be the exact interpretation of the title, "the Word of Life,"⁶ the main intention of the whole passage is to identify the Life manifested and seen in Christ with "the Life, the Eternal Life, which existed in relation to the Father" (h[tij h=n pro.j to.n qeo,n).⁷  And that this refers to the Life of the pre-incarnate Logos, is plain from the exact parallelism of expression employed regarding the Logos Himself (o` lo,goj h=n pro.j to.n qeo,n, John 1²).  In the Gospel it is said that the Logos existed "toward" (pro,j) God, that is, as a personality distinct from God, yet eternally and by necessity in relation to God.  Here the same statement is made with regard to the Life that is in the Logos. That "the Logos existed in relation to God," and that "the Life existed in relation to the Father," are practically equivalent statements.⁸  The latter interprets the former.  The Logos is that Person whose Life from everlasting was found in His fellowship with the Father, in that continual perfect recipiency toward the Father which corresponds to the continual and complete self-impartation of the Father toward Him.  It is thus that Christ is the one and only mediator of the Divine Life.  It is His own relation to the Father that He reproduces in men (John 1¹², 17²³).  The Life that was manifested in His Incarnation and that is given to men through Him is no other than that which He had as the pre-incarnate Word in His eternal fellowship with the Father.⁹

    We proceed next to the teaching of the Epistle regarding the communication of this Life to men.  (a) The necessity of Regeneration is fundamental to the whole theological scheme.  Life, which consists in union with God - which is nothing else than participation in the Divine Nature - is not inherent in man as he is naturally constituted.  The state of every man is a priori that of death, of spiritual separation from God; and those who know that they have Eternal Life know that it is theirs because "they have passed from death into life "¹⁰ (3¹⁴).  For those to whom the Apostle is writing, and with whom he includes himself, the recognition of their present state as one of Life is heightened by the remembrance of a former state which they now see to have been one of Death.  And the same contrast between an original self-nature that is averse to the highest good and a new nature that desires and pursues it, is present in all Christian consciousness, though it may not be connected with the memory of a definitely marked transition.  Between these opposite poles, Death and Life, all Christian experience moves.  Always it is an experience of salvation; of Life as haunted by the shadow of Death; of good as a triumph over potential evils, a "following" which is also a "fleeing" (I Tim. 6¹¹).

    (b)  This transition from Death into Life is effected by that act of Divine self-communication which in the Epistle is constantly and exclusively expressed by the word "beget" (genna/n).¹¹  The word, nowhere defined or expounded, is in itself of far-reaching significance.  It implies not only that salvation - Life - has its ultimate origin in God, but that its communication, by whatsoever means, is directly and wholly His act.  The human subject of this act cannot, indeed, be regarded as merely passive; but only because the gift communicated is itself the gift of Life, of power, and activity.

    Whatever human response of faith, love, and obedience there is to Divine truth and grace, the power to make that response is "begotten" of God.  It is not the product of man's own character, but of the new life imparted to him.  Whatever action of the human will there is in passing from death into life, the human will is necessarily moved therein by the Divine Will.  Death cannot make response to life.  The Divine Begetting is antecedent to all else (cf. John 1¹³).

    (c) As to the instrumentality, Divine or human, through which this regenerative act is wrought, the Epistle is silent.  And at this point there is a gap in its system of thought which, so far as I am aware, has not been adequately recognised.  For while, on the one hand, the Divine Begetting is everywhere regarded simply as the immediate act of God as the Father, on the other hand the Son has been sent "that we might live through Him"¹² (4⁹), and the Life which God gave to men is "in Him" (5¹¹); but no attempt is made to supply the requisite link of connection between the mediating of Life by the Son and the immediate begetting of Life by the Father.

    If it be asked how God begets in men that Life which is "in His Son," or what necessity or efficacy the Incarnation of the Son has in relation to the Divine Begetting, the Epistle supplies no answer.¹³  The truth is that here we find the most noticeable lacuna in the theology of the Epistle - its silence regarding the work of the Spirit as the immediate agent in regeneration.  The Johannine thought of the Father as the final but also the direct source of Life, and of the Son as its sole medium, leads on imperatively to the Trinitarian doctrine of the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, and given to men as the Spirit of Christ.  The same Holy Ghost who was the author of the Incarnation, who begat the full Life of God in the humanity of Jesus, is now given by Him to men to beget and foster in them the same Life that is in Him.  This is the supreme gift of the Incarnation, that by the power of the Divine Spirit the Life of God has received perfect and permanent embodiment in our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, and that by the power of the same Divine Spirit acting upon men through the revelation of Christ, and breathed into their souls by Christ, they are "begotten of God" unto Life Eternal.

    (d) Those who are "begotten of God" are ipso facto the "children of God" (te,kna qeou/). This te,kna qeou/ is peculiarly Johannine,¹⁴ and is to be distinguished from the Pauline "sons of God"¹⁵ (ui`oi,), which is never applied by St. John to Christians.  While the latter title emphasises the status of sonship (ui`oqesi,a) bestowed on believers, the Johannine te,kna¹⁶ connotes, primarily, the direct communication of the Father's own Divine nature; and, secondarily, the fact that the nature thus communicated has not as yet reached its full stature, but contains the promise of a future and glorious development.  We are children of God, but what it fully is to be children of God is not yet made manifest (3²).

    It is, indeed, the surpassing dignity thus bestowed upon us, the sublimity, beyond all understanding, of the privilege, that first calls forth the Apostle's exclamation of amazement (3¹).  That we should be called the children of God¹⁷ - "Behold, what manner of love!"  But instantly the subjoined "and such we are" (kai. evsme,n) arises from the Apostle's heart, asseverating that the title, magnificent as it is, is no more than the truth.  And in how completely literal a sense the Apostle's conception of the Divine Begetting is to be taken appears very strikingly in 3⁹.  "Everyone that is begotten of God doeth not sin, because His seed abideth in him."  This unique spe,rma auvtou/ (" His seed") has been variously¹⁸ explained; but unquestionably it signifies the new life-principle which is the formative element of the "new man," the te,knon qeou/.  It is the Divine germ that enfolds in itself all the potencies of "what we shall be," the last perfection of the redeemed and glorified children of God.

    This abides in him who has received it.  It stamps its own character upon human life, and determines its whole development.¹⁹

    (e) This Life, as it streams through humanity, creates a family-fellowship (koivwni,a) at once human and Divine.  In its human aspect this fellowship is conceived on spiritual much rather than on ecclesiastical lines.  It is realised in the actual Christian community, and there only.  But there spurious elements may intrude themselves; as is proved when schism reveals those who, though they have belonged to the external organisation, have never been genuinely partakers of its life (2¹⁹).²⁰  Only among those who walk in the same Light of God does true fellowship exist (1⁷).  These are truly "brethren," and are knit together by the duties (3¹⁶) and the instincts (5¹) of mutual love, and of mutual watchfulness and intercession (5¹⁶).

    But this human relationship grows out of a Divine.  It is the fellowship of those who are in fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ - who "abide" in God, and God in them.  No thought is more closely interwoven with the whole texture of the Epistle than this of the Divine Immanence, by which the Life of God is sustained and nourished in those who are "begotten" of God; and no word is more characteristic of the Johannine vocabulary, alike in Gospel and Epistles, than that by which it is expressed "abide" (me,nein).²¹

    Between the Fourth Gospel and our Epistle, however, there is a noticeable difference in the statement of this great doctrine.²²  In the Epistle the formula almost exclusively employed and constantly repeated are these "God abides in us," "We abide in God," "God abides in us and we in Him."  In the Gospel, on the other hand, the reciprocal indwelling is that of Christ and His disciples (John 15^4-l0), which has its Divine counterpart in His "abiding" in the Father (15¹⁰) and the Father's abiding in Him (14¹⁰, 17²³).  This diversity is consistent with the point of view occupied in the two documents respectively.  The Gospel is Christocentric, the Epistle Theocentric.  In the Gospel we ascend from the historic revelation, the visible Christ, to that conception of the invisible God which He embodies.  In the Epistle we start from that conception.  Instead of the concrete presentment of the living Christ, there is an immediate intuition of the Divine nature revealed in Him.  While the theme common to both is the "Word of Life," the special theme of the Gospel is the Word who reveals and imparts the Life; in the Epistle it is the Life revealed and imparted by the Word.  To discover in this traces of the Monarchianism²³ of the second century is unwarrantable.  For here Christian thought is merely following its natural and inevitable course.  It has not been able to rest in any merely Messianic conception of Christ's Person and character.  It has realised that the question of questions still is - What is God? and that the ultimate significance of the life lived from Bethlehem to Calvary is the answer which it supplies to that question - "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."  Thus, while the aim of the gospel is to display the divinity of Christ, it is the converse of this which is chiefly presented in the Epistle; instead of the metaphysical God-likeness of Christ, it is the moral Christ-likeness of God.  And it is the writer's immediate contemplation of the moral nature of God and his governing idea of salvation as participation in that nature that inevitably cause him to carry up the thought of the indwelling Christ to the ultimate truth of the indwelling God.

    Yet, while this diversity of view exists, there can be no doubt, it seems to me, that the whole conception in the Epistle has had its origin in the Gospel similitude of the Vine and the branches (John 15^1-10).  According to the analogy there presented, the vitalising union by which the influx of Divine Life is maintained in those who are "begotten" of God, consists in two activities, not identical, not separable, but reciprocal - God's abiding in us, and our abiding in Him.  These are two distinct actions, Divine and human, yet so bound up together in the unity of life that either or both can always be predicated regarding the same persons and certified by the same signs the three great tests of Righteousness, Love, and Belief which meet us everywhere in the Epistle.²⁴

    The "abiding" of God in us is the continuous and progressive action of that same self-reproducing energy of the Divine nature the initial act of which is the Divine Begetting.  By the same power and mode of Divine action Life is originated and sustained.  The Epistle, it is true, seems to give two slightly diverse conceptions of this matter.  As the human parent once for all imparts his own nature to his offspring, so, in virtue of the Divine Begetting, the Divine nature is permanently imparted to the children of God (3⁹ "His" i.e. God's, "seed abideth in him").  But, whereas in the human relationship the life-germ thus communicated is developed in a separate and independent existence, in the higher relationship it is not so.  The life imparted is dependent for its sustenance and growth upon a continuous influx of life from the parent-source.  Thus the analogy followed is taken from the facts of vegetable rather than of animal life; originally, as has been said, from the similitude of the Vine and the branches.  The branches of a tree are actually children of the tree.  Structurally, a branch is a smaller tree rooted in a larger.  Even a single leaf with its stalk is simply a miniature tree, exactly resembling what the parent tree was ill its first stage of growth, except that it derives its sustenance from the parent tree instead of from the soil.  Thus a great vine is, in fact, an immense colony or fellowship of vines possessing a common life.  It is the sap of the parent vine that vitalises all the branches, "weaves all the green and golden lacework of their foliage, unfolds all their blossoms, mellows all their clusters, and is perfected in their fruitfulness."  So does the Life of God vitalise him in whom He abides, sustaining and fostering in him those energies Righteousness, Love, and Truth, - which are the Divine nature itself.  The language used is in no sense or degree figurative.  Rather are the Divine Begetting and Indwelling the realities of which all creaturely begettings and in-dwellings are only emblems.  Though the manner of it is inexplicable, as all vital processes are, this actual communication of the actual Life of God is the core of the Johannine theology.

    But this abiding of God in us has as its necessary counterpart our abiding in Him.  In this reciprocity of action, priority and causality belong, as always, to God, without whom we can do nothing; yet not so that the human activity is a mere automatic product of the Divine.  We can invite or reject the Divine Presence; keep within or avoid the sphere of Divine influence; open or obstruct the channels through which the Divine Life may flow into ours.  Hence, "abiding in God" is made a subject of instruction and imperative exhortation (2^27,28; cf. 2¹⁵, 5^18,21).  And when the word "abide" (me,nein) is thus used, the idea of persistence or steadfast purpose, which is inherent in it, comes into view.  As the abiding of God in us is the persistent and purposeful action by which the Divine nature influences ours, so our abiding in God is the persistent and purposeful submission of ourselves to that action.  The only means of doing this which the Epistle expressly emphasises is steadfast retention of and adherence to the truth as it is announced in the Apostolic Gospel (2²⁴; cf. John 8³¹) and as it is witnessed by the Spirit (2²⁷).  Yet, although "keeping God's commandments," "abiding in love," and "confessing" Christ are exhibited primarily as the requisite effects and tests of our abiding in God, these effects become in their turn means.  It is by these that practical effect is given to the message of the gospel and the teaching of the Spirit; and thus only is the channel of communication kept clear between the source and the receptacle of Life.

    This study of the Epistle's doctrine in detail entirely sustains the preliminary view of the Johannine conception of Life with which we began.  Life is conceived, fundamentally, not as the complex of phenomena observable in the living organism, but as the principle or essence that underlies and produces these.  So spiritual Life is not simply the collective whole of the qualities, activities, and experiences of the spiritual man; it is the essence in which these qualities inhere, and from which these activities and experiences proceed.

    But now we can advance to a more concrete conception.  What is this Life?  The Apostle says only that God, the true God revealed in Christ, is Eternal Life.  And only this can be the ultimate definition.  Life of every grade is the result of a Divine Immanence; and Eternal Life is the Immanence of God in moral beings created after His own likeness.  And, although the Epistle does not directly represent the Holy Spirit as the agent of this Divine Immanence, Christian Theology in doing so has only taken the next step in an inevitable process of thought.  Eternal Life is the Divine nature reproducing itself in human nature; is the energy of the Spirit of God, of the Father and of the Son, in the spiritual nature of man.

    This whole Johannine conception of Life as an essence or animating principle is subjected to vigorous criticism.  From the Ritschlian standpoint it is objected that this idea of Life is purely philosophical, that it is not given in religious experience, but seeks to interpret it in accordance with certain philosophical presuppositions.²⁵  This is so far true.  Life in St. John's sense is not an object of conscious experience, but is an inference from experience.  It is like the wind which is known only by the sound thereof (John 3⁸).  But it is true also that the philosophy presupposed is not the philosophy of the schools.  The idea of Life as an essence or principle is natural to the thought, and is presupposed in the ordinary language of all mankind.  To this extent, we are all naturally metaphysicians.  It is to produce a pure phenomenalist that a philosophical discipline is needed.

    Thus, while it is true that early Christian thought was, in certain directions, influenced and fertilised by contact with Hellenism, and while it may be true that the Johannine doctrine of Life, in particular, has been formed under the influence of principles and modes of thought indirectly borrowed from Greek philosophy,²⁶ it is to be remembered that the tendency to infer causes from effects and to reason from phenomena to essence was not the peculiar property of the Greek intellect.  St. John's conception of Life was certain, sooner or later, to emerge in Christian theology; for New Testament thought it lies in the natural line of development.

    It is implicit in that whole strain of thought in our Lord's Synoptic teaching which regards doing as only the outcome of being, and which is emphasised in such utterances as "Either make the tree good and its fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by its fruit" (Matt. 12³³).  It is implicitly contained, moreover, in the whole Pauline doctrine of the new creation and of the mystical indwelling of Christ in the members of His Body.  And it is not difficult to imagine how, as the fruit of further reflection upon the facts of Christian experience, it became with St. John a clear and dominant idea.  Just as we have in the Johannine doctrine of the Logos the last result, within the New Testament period, of the Church's endeavour to furnish a rationale of its own experience in relation to the Person of Christ, so the Johannine doctrine of the Life is the ripest fruit, within the same period, of the Church's reflection upon its own characteristics, of its endeavour to find a conception intellectually adequate to the new experiences of faith, holiness, and love which it possessed, and which it was conscious of as forming the one essential distinction between its own life and the life of the world.  When the Christian compared himself with his former self, how were the new vision of truth, the new aims and affections that arose out of the depths of a new nature to be accounted for?  Or, when he compared himself with the "World lying in the Wicked One," how came it that he saw where others were blind, worshipped where others scoffed; that he stood on this side, others on that, of a great gulf going down to the foundations of the moral universe?  Christian instinct had from the first repudiated personal superiority of nature as the answer.  St. Paul had found the solution of the riddle in a Divine predestination, fulfilling itself in the operation of a supernatural Divine grace.  The Johannine conception of regeneration combines and transcends both.  The efficient source of all faith, righteousness, and love is a new life-principle which is nothing else than the Life of God begotten in the centre of the human personality.  In this alone the children of God differ from others.  It is not because they believe, do righteousness, and love their brother, that they are "begotten of God," but because they are begotten of God that they believe, love, and do righteousness.  The Life is behind and within all.

    Finally, the question remains as to the nature of the change wrought in man by the Divine Begetting.  On this point also the Johannine doctrine has been vigorously criticised.  Thus Dr. Scott in his Fourth Gospel distinguishes two strains of doctrine in St. John: one which is purely ethical and religious and in the line of Synoptic teaching, according to which "the power of Christ when it takes hold of a human life effects a renewal of the whole moral nature," so that he "enters on a new life under the influence of new motives and thoughts and desires" (p. 280); another which is mystical and philosophical, according to which "not so much his mind and will as the very substance of which his being is formed must be changed" (p. 281).  In the one view the birth from above is regarded as "a moral regeneration answering to the meta,noia of the Synoptic teaching," in the other, as "a transmutation of nature," "a magical and semi-physical change."²⁷  Without discussing the alleged twofold strain of doctrine, but accepting what Dr. Scott calls the mystical and philosophical as being the peculiarly and genuinely Johannine, we take so different a view of it as to maintain that the renewal of the whole moral nature (due weight being given to both words) is the very truth it teaches with singular emphasis and precision.

    It implies a renewal of nature.  Dr. Scott is right in asserting that according to this doctrine more is required for man's moral renewal than the presentation of new truths and motives.  The very capacity of response to these is required; and the only possible alternative to the Johannine doctrine is the familiar one, that this capacity is inherent in the constitution of human nature itself (although this only leads back to the impasse - how it comes that the possession of a common capacity displays such diversity of result).  But this alternative St. John emphatically rejects, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh."  The chord in man's moral nature that responds to Christ and to the truths and motives of His gospel is silent, is broken.  It must be restrung; and it is restrung in those who are "begotten of the Spirit."  Only by this direct Divine agency is a renewal of the "moral temper," a "radical change of mind," effected.  This for St. John, as for the profoundest Christian thought of subsequent times, is the unique feature of the moral regeneration of which Christ is the author.  Character is renewed, not as in other religions and ethical systems, by the sole influence of new truths and motives, but by the renewal of the soul, the moral nature itself.  All presentation of truth is unavailing without this concurrent Divine operation from within.  Admittedly, there is no prominent development of this view in the Synoptics.  The Synoptic attitude is that of the evangelist who delivers his message to men, trusting that it may awaken a responsive chord in their hearts, and who presses it home in urgent endeavour to touch that chord.  St. John's attitude is that of the theologian.  His doctrine is the result of reflection upon the diverse and opposite issues of evangelism - that result being that man's response to the Truth and Grace of Christ is due, in every instance, to a higher will than his own, is, indeed, the sign and proof that he is "begotten of God."

    But the Divine Begetting is the renewal of the moral nature.  It can by no means be conceded that it implies a change in the very substance of which man s being is formed;²⁸ not, at least, if by this is meant an organic change in the constitution of human nature, or that the regenerate man is something more or other than man.  The children of God are distinguished by no superhuman deeds or capacities.  Instead of walking in darkness they walk in the Light; instead of doing sin they do righteousness; instead of hating they love; instead of denying, they confess Jesus as the Divine, and seek to walk even as He walked, and to purify themselves as He is pure.  But these things they do because their moral nature has been renewed.  The wineskin, so to say, remains the same, but is filled with new wine.  No new faculty is created, but every faculty becomes the organ of a new moral life; faith, hope, and love rest upon new objects; conscience receives new light, and the will a new direction and force.  And what St. John really teaches is that this transformation of moral character is explicable only by a renewal of the moral nature is due to a change in the sub-conscious region of personal being, which is wrought directly by Divine influence, and which can be conceived only as the communication of a new life-principle.  The point at issue is clearly brought out by the criticism which Dr. Scott brings against the Johannine view of regeneration as implying a change which is "semi-physical."  The epithet does not seem happily chosen.  If by "physical" is meant what is of the material or corporeal order, the statement cannot be admitted (cf. John 3⁶, 4²⁴).  But if it is intended to signify that which constitutes and conveys the fu,sij, the nature or life-principle of the subject, the modification of the adjective is uncalled for.  St. John's conception of life is not semi-, but wholly "physical."  It is the conception of a vital essence in which inhere all the energies that form right moral character, just as there is a corporeal life-principle by which the development of the body, with all its characteristics and functions, is determined.  It may be said, indeed, that the crucial truth of the Johannine conception of Life and Regeneration is, that it is at once spiritual or ethical and, in the sense which has just been defined, physical.²⁹  The life communicated is a new moral life; a life which is manifested in a new view of sin and righteousness; in a new view of Christ and of God; in new desire and power to do the Will of God, to love one another and to conquer the world.  And the doctrine of St. John is the fullest recognition in the New Testament that the conscious experiences and activities of the Christian life are ultimately rooted in that deeper region of human personality where God works His own mysterious and inscrutable work of begetting in human nature, and of renewing and replenishing in it, the energies of the Divine Life.