Thus, for St. John, the Incarnation is not so much a new and supernatural event in human history as a natural event in Divine history.  It has its roots in Eternity.  It is the manifestation of "What was from the beginning" - the self- unfolding in humanity and to humanity of the Eternal Divine Life (1^1,2)

    In like manner, the sacrifice of Calvary brought no new thing into being.  It did not reveal a new love of God toward men: it was the inevitable self-manifestation of all the Love latent in the depths of the Divine nature (4⁹).  So at His Second Advent, Christ will only be "manifested."  He is here, though unperceived by the world (3¹); and all the glory that will then shine out from Him is already in Him.  The splendour of the Parousia will simply be a manifestation of the reality (3²).  Then also the children of God will be "manifested" (3²).  "What they shall be" is what they essentially are; but as the bulb hidden in the earth unfolds itself in the perfect flower, so what they now are will then appear.

    These are characteristic examples of the Johannine point of view; and it is evident that where it prevails the eschatological idea cannot hold more than a secondary place.  The fashion of thought is not historical or scenic, but genetic and ideal.  Events are contemplated only as the embodiment of eternal principles.  For St. John there is but one Life - the Eternal; and there is but one world - the world of the ideal, which is also the only real (avlhqei,a, avlhqino,j).  The phenomenal is but the changing vesture of the essential; the temporal, of the everlasting.

    Yet St. John is not an idealist pure and simple.  For him, events are not merely symbols, history is not allegory.  The Incarnation is a historical fact, not merely a parable of eternal truth, declaring the capacity of human nature for the divinest life.  The Parousia is not the evolution of an idea, not the gradual dawning on the world of the true glory of the Spirit of Christ, but a definite future event.  When St. John says that "The world passeth away," this signifies, not the inherent transitoriness of all that belongs to "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vain-glory of life," but the conviction that the present mundane order is near to dissolution.  St. John has an eschatology² and as is natural, it is more pronounced in the Epistle than in the Gospel.³  It may be said, indeed, that the whole atmosphere of the Epistle is impregnated with the eschatological element.  It is written in full and vivid view of the last things.

    I.  "The world is passing away" (2¹⁷), and the time in which the Apostle and his readers are living is "the last hour" (2¹⁸ evsca,th w[ra evsti,n).  This is one of a family of phrases descended from the ~ymiY"h; tyrix]a; of the Old Testament, and the use of the derivatives in the New Testament is as elastic⁴ as that of their original in the Old.  Sometimes, from the Old Testament point of view, they denote the Messianic Age foretold by the prophets - the Gospel dispensation, in which all preceding stages of the world's history are consummated without any suggestion of its end. (Thus, "In the last days," Acts 2¹⁷; "At the end of the days," Heb. 1¹; "At the end of the times," I Pet. 1²⁰)  Sometimes, the Gospel age being itself regarded as preparatory to something beyond, there is a reference, more or less definite, to its penultimate stages, which are to be marked by various woes, and especially by the uprising of many false teachers (e.g. 2 Tim. 3¹, 2 Pet. 3^3,4, Jude ¹⁸).  Sometimes, again, the reference is to the definite crisis which is to be the end of the present age and the beginning of that which is to come (I Pet. 1⁵ "in the last time"; "the last day," John 6^39,40,44,54, 7³⁷, 11²⁴, 12⁴⁸.

    Obviously "the last hour" of our text falls under the second⁵ class of these usages.  Not only is it true that "the world is passing away and the lust thereof"; already the last hour of its day is running its course.  At any moment we must be prepared to hear the clock strike and the great hammer of God's judgments ring out above a doomed world the announcement that all that has been the desire of its flesh, the desire of its eyes, and the boast of its life, is no more.

    II.  The Apostle next adduces from the existing state of things the proof that the age in which he and his readers are living is the "last hour."  "Children, it is the last hour: and as ye heard that Antichrist cometh, even so now many antichrists have arisen; from which we perceive that it is the last hour" (2¹⁸).  In the New Testament the time immediately preceding the Second Advent is regarded as one of much and various tribulation, both for the Church and for the world; but the special symptom of the approaching end of the present era is, as has been said, the appearance of false Messiahs and false teachers.⁶  These beliefs are equally developed in Jewish (in relation to the advent of the Messiah) and Jewish-Christian apocalyptic.  But in the apocalyptic literature the manifold hostile forces are regarded as concentrated in one chief and head.  As all that makes for the Kingdom of God and the salvation of God's people is personified in the Messiah, so all the powers of ungodliness are united in one ideal figure, Antichrist.  The accounts of this anti-Messianic personage are by no means uniform; but they are sufficient to establish the probability, if not the certainty, that the conception did not originate in the Christian Church, but that there was already in the popular Jewish eschatology a fully developed legend of Antichrist, which was accepted and amplified in current Christian belief.  And, indeed, the expectation of the appearing of Antichrist, and of his appearing as a definite signal of the approaching Parousia, had formed a distinct element in the earliest Apostolic teaching of St. Paul (2 Thess. 2⁵); while St. John's words, "Ye have heard that Antichrist cometh," seem to imply that the information had been obtained from some authoritative source, and, at all events, assume that his readers were well acquainted with, and probably concurred in, the belief as commonly held.

    He now declares to them that this sign of the "last hour" is already visible, although not entirely in the anticipated form:  "As ye have heard that Antichrist cometh, even so now many antichrists have arisen."  And he explains that by these "many antichrists" he means the heretical teachers to whom, and to whose doctrine, he definitely refers (2²², 4³, 2 John ⁷).  The question thus arises, what relation he intends these "many antichrists" to be understood as holding to the Antichrist.  Is Antichrist already come in the activity of these false teachers?  Does this, in fact, constitute the fulfilment of all that the idea of Antichrist stood for?  Or does he still sanction the popular belief in a personal Antichrist of whom these were only the forerunners, manifesting the same forces at work as should afterwards culminate in him?  While the latter may be said to be the traditional view, it is certainly not established by any of the "antichrist" passages in the Epistle.  On the contrary, the impression these convey is that of an implied correction, a tacit superseding of the popular belief.  Thus in the present passage, when one gives due weight to the solemn and definite assertion, "It is the last hour," and when we observe the existence of the "many antichrists" adduced as a fact corresponding as closely as possible (kaqw,j . . . kai,) to the accepted belief that "Antichrist cometh," and the unqualified fashion in which this is brought forward a second time as the unmistakable mark (o[qen ginw,skomen) of "the last hour," the intended inference clearly seems to be that everything really signified by the current belief concerning Antichrist was already being realised.

    The other passages point to the same conclusion.  In 4³ Antichrist is alluded to simply as a matter of common report (tou/to, evstin to. tou/ VAnticri,stou: "This is that matter of Antichrist, regarding which ye have heard that it cometh; and now already is it in the world").  In 2 John ⁷ it is definitely said of those who deny that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, "This is he that leadeth astray, and the Antichrist."  Upon the whole, it seems evident that for the Apostle the present time is already the age of Antichrist, and that he alludes to the traditional belief only for the purpose of conveying more pointedly his own conviction, that the end of all things is at hand, and of dispelling the notion that some more sensational development is to be looked for before the "last hour" shall actually have arrived.  This deeper spiritualising of the traditional conception and application of it to the tendencies already at work is thoroughly Johannine.

    It is significant, moreover, that it is not in the World, but in perversions of Christianity, that St. John finds the embodiment of the idea of Antichrist.⁷  He has been writing of the Church's conflict with the world and its ideals (2^15-17); but now he points to a danger more subtle and more critical, originating within the Church itself.  The great pagan world fought against Christ with its own weapons - pleasures seductive to the flesh, possessions and pursuits and splendours alluring to the eye, pomps and distinctions tempting to human vanity; but this enemy fights Christ in Christ's own name, using as its weapon, not the passion of pagan superstition or the sneering pride of pagan philosophy, but the corruption of Christian truth.

    To such an antagonist the name Antichrist exactly corresponds; for this properly signifies one who opposes Christ by assuming the guise of Christ.⁸  According to the popular conception, Antichrist would claim to be personally the Christ; his claims would imply the denial of the Messiahship of Jesus, and open war against Christianity as such.  And though the false teachers whom the Apostle has in view did not ostensibly set up an "opposition" Christ, he asserts, nevertheless, that this is what they virtually did.  It is another Christ they preach, and the supreme danger of the movement is that it assumes to be what it is not - Christian.  Thus, in fact, it is the revelation of "The Man of Sin" who "as God sitteth in the Temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2^3,4).  And not less strikingly apposite to the conception of Antichrist in the Epistle is the symbolical figure by which he is portrayed in the Apocalypse (Rev. 13¹¹).  The "Beast" had two horns like a lamb (is evidently, therefore, a counterfeit of the Lamb), but "He spake as a dragon."  He is the mouthpiece of the Father of lies; in him Satan has "transformed himself into an angel of light, to deceive, if it might be, the very elect."

    The whole subsequent history of the Church attests the unerring insight with which St. John has interpreted the essential significance of the legendary Antichrist.  The traditional identification of the Papacy with Antichrist was based on a crudely literal conception of prophecy and its fulfilment.  It erred in being too specific and too exclusive; but in so far as it expressed the truth that the Antichrist is always found in the corruptions of the Church itself, it gave a radically sound interpretation of the Johannine thought.

    In the following verse the Apostle accounts for the secession of the antichrists from the Church.  "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but (they went out from us) that it might be made manifest that none of them were of us "⁹ (2¹⁹).  "They were outwardly of our number, but partakers of our life - of our fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ - they never were; therefore it was that they went out from us."

    It would, of course, be out of the question to deduce from these words the Cyprianic dogma, extra ecclesiam nulla salus.  That any Christian might be actuated by a genuinely Christian motive in separating himself from the external fellowship of the Church did not and could not present itself as a possibility to the imagination of St. John or of any of the Apostles.  But it would be illegitimate to infer from this what judgment they would have pronounced upon the actual developments of history, had they been able to anticipate these.  They were not required to face the specific question, what the Church is, in what variety of forms its essential unity may subsist, or what, in every case, is involved in outward separation from its communion.  Here it is antichristianity, not schism, that is in question.  These separatists were not antichrists, because they were outside of the Church; they were outside of the Church because they were antichrists.

    On the other hand, the Apostle expressly asserts that their separation from the body of the faithful was nothing more than a symptom.  It brought no new moral element into operation; it was only the hatching of the serpent from the egg.  These false teachers had not renounced the truth; for the truth they had never possessed.  They had not fallen from the communion of the Church; for to the communion of its inner life they had never belonged.  Otherwise, the Apostle argues, what had happened could not have happened.  Naturally, we ask what is the ground of this reasoning?  It seems unreasonable to say that "The words do not admit of any theoretical deduction" (Westcott).¹⁰  One is tempted to ask, Why?  "The test of experience," it is said, "is laid down as final."  But a test, to be applicable in any instance, must be one which is applicable in every similar instance.  It must bring individual cases under some common law.  Although here the Apostle lays down no general thesis, but pronounces judgment in a particular case, that judgment must proceed upon some theoretical ground.  And if his argument is, that the visible decline and fall of these heretical teachers from their Christian standing were sufficient proof that they had never been in vital fellowship with Christ and His Church, one fails to see what force there is in the reasoning, except on the assumption of the indefectibility of all who truly belong to the Divine society.  In point of fact, this assumption is strictly involved in St. John's doctrine of the Divine Begetting.  If he asserts that the "begotten of God" cannot sin "because His seed abideth in him" (3⁹), equally would he assert that, for the same reason, the begotten of God cannot become an antichrist, denying the Father and the Son (2²²).  The whole verse has its motive in the feeling that the emergence of these false teachers from the bosom of the Church demanded explanation.  Some of the Apostle's readers might be tempted on that account to give a readier credence to their doctrine, since those who break forth from within are always more apt to secure a following than those who assail the Church from without.  To others, again, the fact that men could thus apparently fall away from Christian faith and fellowship might occasion serious perplexity and misgiving.  St. John's words meet either case.  They supply an impressive warning against giving ear to schismatic teachers; and they afford the needed explanation of their falling away.  But their chief purpose is the latter.  "Do not grieve that they went out from us; let not this shake your confidence that none shall pluck the Good Shepherd's sheep out of His hand."  Nay, the Apostle has a further word of reassurance for the disquieted.  The secession of the antichrists was wholly a benefit.  It was but their unmasking; and this, again, was only the fulfilment of the Divine purpose (i[na fanerwqw/sin), which is ever the purity and edification of the Church.

    The distinguishing feature of St. John's mental individuality is, as has been said, that he so instinctively leans to the ideal and spiritual in his contemplation of life, grasping what is of universal significance rather than dwelling upon historical movements and embodiments.  Yet, as has also been said, he is no mere idealist.  To regard him as one whose thought moves in a world of abstractions, for whom the facts of Christianity are only symbols of absolute spiritual Truth, is a complete mistake.  His true distinction as a thinker lies in the success with which he unites the two strains of thought, the ideal and the historical.  This has been exemplified in his conception of Antichrist.  Tacitly waving aside the lurid figure of the popular imagination, he grasps the essential truth that is expressed by the name and the idea of Antichrist, and finds its fulfilment in the heretical teaching which substituted for the Christ of the Gospel the fantastic product of Docetic speculations.  Yet he does not rarefy Antichrist into a mere symbol.  This birth of antichristian falsehood is to him the real advent of the Antichrist; and in it he reads the manifest token that the World's day has well-nigh run its appointed course.  And it is necessary to bear in mind the existence of this twofold strain of thought in the Apostle, when we consider his representation of the events with which "the last hour" is to be brought to an end - the coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment.  On the one hand, these are conceived by St. John, in a quite peculiar degree, as present spiritual realities; on the other hand, they are still firmly held as objective future events; and the reconciliation of these diverse, but not inconsistent, points of view is found in his conception of history as the manifestation to actual experience of what, in essence and principle, already exists.

    This is the key to the Johannine doctrine of the Parousia.¹¹  That doctrine is primarily spiritual, not eschatological.  The substitution in the Fourth Gospel of the Supper Discourse (John 14-16) for the apocalyptic chapters in the Synoptics is, however we may explain it, profoundly significant.  It is not a Christ coming on the clouds of heaven that is presented, but a Christ who has come and is ever coming to dwell in closest fellowship with His people.  He departed as to His bodily presence only to come nearer and be with them always in the power of His Spirit.  His disciples were to hear no more the voice of their Teacher addressing to them words of Eternal Life; but this was only that He might come again as the very Spirit of Truth, a well-spring of Light from within, giving them "an understanding" to know Him that is true.  The direct influence of His visible example was to be taken away only that He might dwell in them and they in Him, in a community of inward life like that of the vine and its branches.  Formerly Christ had come to "tabernacle" with men, henceforward He would come to take up His abode with them for ever.  Formerly He had been still external to them, now He was to be the life of their lives - an inward source of light, moral inspiration, and strength.  The complete, vital, and permanent union of Christ and His people, which had been prevented by the limitations of a local and corporeal state of existence, would be achieved when for these there was substituted the direct access of spirit to spirit.  It was expedient that He should go away in order thus to come again.

    Yet St. John by no means discards the primitive New Testament belief in the Parousia as a historical fact of the future.  With him it scarcely predominates over the whole scene as with St. Paul; but still it is the great mountain-peak at the end of the valley.  It is so in the Fourth Gospel, "Every one that seeth the Son and believeth in Him hath eternal life" - has already experienced a spiritual resurrection from death into life; but Christ will also "raise him up at the last day" (John 6⁴⁰).  If Christ's abiding-place (monh,) is in those that love Him and keep His word (John 14²³), there is also a Father's House in which there are many abiding-places (monai,), whither He goes to prepare a place for them, and whence He will come again to receive them unto Himself; that where He is, there they may be also (John 14^2,3).  Still more is this emphasised in the Epistle: here the atmosphere is more pervasively eschatological than in the Gospel.  If, since the writing of St. Paul's earlier Epistles, there has been an abatement in the general expectation of the speedy coming of Christ, that expectation, in the mind of the author of this Epistle at least, has been vigorously revived.  So far from its being true that "The Church is firmly established as an institution in the world, and looks forward to a period of continued existence,"¹² the times are very evil; Antichrist has come.  The command, "Love not the world," is sharpened by the assurance that the world is on the verge, aye, in the process of dissolution (para,getai, 2¹⁷).  The dread of being put to shame in the presence of the Lord at His impending Advent enforces the exhortation to "abide in Him" (2²⁸); and the hope of their being made partakers of His manifested glory is the consummation of all that is implied in our being now the children of God (3^2,3).

    But these two strains of thought unite in a third that this future crisis will only be the inevitable manifestation of the existing reality.  The Parousia will no more than the Incarnation be the advent of a strange Presence in the world.¹³  Expectant souls will behold its dawning,

                "Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken."

    Such a manifestation may be conceived as effected simply by a change in the mode or medium of perception.  There will be that change which we dimly signify (not fully comprehending what the words denote) when we say that faith will become sight.  Christ and the things of the spiritual universe will become the objects of a more direct consciousness.  Now, Faith and Sense are at variance.  The things that are seen and temporal appeal to one set of faculties; things unseen and eternal to another.  We believe, but we believe against appearances.  Then Faith and Sense will coincide.  All false and misleading appearances will vanish for ever, all that we now take on trust will then be evident, when, every obstructing veil removed, we stand with open face in the presence of the eternal realities.  But all this, while it is implied, does not exhaust the significance of the Parousia, neither, indeed, is it the chief factor in the conception of it.  The Parousia takes place, not only through an increased power or a different mode of perception in men, but primarily through a different mode of self-revelation on the part of Christ.  If there is a  withdrawing of a veil from the human eye, there is also an unveiling of the Divine Face.  As to the manner of Christ's appearing, the Epistle is silent, except for the simple, sublime, and satisfying words (satisfying because they pass all understanding), "We shall see Him as He is."  As to its significance we are not left in doubt.  It is a historical event; occurring once for all; affecting simultaneously all mankind; the consummation of all Divine purpose that has governed human existence; the final crisis in the history of the Church, of the World, and of every man.

    The Parousia is the coming of Christ to Judgment.  In St. John's conception of judgment we must recognise the same dual tendency of thought that has already been remarked upon.  In distinction from other New Testament writers, St. John regards judgment as essentially a present fact of life.  He sees Christ always arid of necessity judging men - or, rather, compelling men to judge themselves.  For judgment He is come into the world (John 9³⁹) it is the inevitable issue of His coming.  By their attitude towards Christ men involuntarily but inevitably classify themselves, reveal what spirit they are of, automatically register themselves as being, or as not being, "of the Truth" (John 18³⁷).  "He that believeth not is judged already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God" (John 3¹⁸).  Judgment is not the assigning of a character to men from without; it is the revelation of character from within.  Judgment is classification, a sifting of the wheat from the chaff.¹⁴  And this is not future but present; for, in its essence, it is self-revelation, self-classification, self-separation.  And nowhere is this thought of judgment so exhaustively developed and applied as in our Epistle.  Though the word is not used, the writer from first to last does almost nothing else than declare and apply the three great tests, - Righteousness, Love, Belief, - in the presence of which men infallibly reveal themselves as being "of God" or "of the world," as "knowing God" or "knowing not God," as "of the truth" or as "liars."  Yet, none the less, the Apostle indubitably looks forward to a future "Day of Judgment" (4¹⁷).  And I cannot agree with the criticism that this is simply an unconscious concession to orthodoxy, and that it is impossible to reconcile the idea of a future judgment, adopted from the current theology, with what we must regard as the distinctive Johannine view.¹⁵  For here again the underlying thought is that judgment to come will be only the full manifestation of the judgment that now is, that is to say, of the principles by whose operation men are in reality approved or condemned already.  Such manifestation is obviously necessary.  It is true that men are immediately judged, sifted out, and classified by their relation to Christ, yet this, as spiritual fact, is hidden from the general sense of mankind; and though it will be progressively vindicated in the world by the work of the Spirit in convicting the world of sin "because they believe not on Me," yet plainly, as regards the unconvicted, the vindication must be consummated hereafter.  It is true that on St. John's own presuppositions the vindication cannot even then be complete.  Spiritual truth cannot be received by unspiritual men, here or hereafter; not even a Day of Judgment can effect in those who are unenlightened by the Spirit of Truth a recognition of the essential sin and shame of rejecting Christ.  But I can find no shadow of reason for asserting that St. John's view of Judgment, as in principle a present fact of life, is inherently irreconcilable with the common doctrine of the New Testament, that the consciousness of those who now reject Christ will hereafter contain a very awful testimony of God's reprobation.

    The present judgment and classification of men by their relation to Christ is, moreover, a fact that is by no means fully realised even by the faith of Christians.  Now are we the children of God; but it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.  Only the intenser realisation of what Christ is can bring the fuller manifestation, even to ourselves, of what we are.  In this glad sense the Parousia must be a Day of Judgment to the children of God.  The Christian's faith, when he sees Christ as He is, will then appear to himself a far grander thing than it does now.  What looks mean and meagre in the semi-darkness of this life will shine forth like the sun at the rising of the Sun.  And, further, it must be said that the whole Epistle looks forward, clearly and inevitably, to a Judgment to come.  Its practical aim is preparation for Judgment by self-judgment.  It is an Epistle of tests - an Epistle that wages war against self-deception of every kind.  There must be a Day when all self-deception shall cease, and when all reality shall be manifested.  Without this certainty the whole tenor and purpose of the Epistle would be stultified.

    Lastly, Christ's coming is a coming to salvation.  We close our study of the eschatology of the Epistle with the great passage on the consummation of the Christian life:  "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God: and such we are.  For this cause the world doth not recognise us, because it did not recognise Him.  Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.  We know that if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (3^1,2).¹⁶  In the preceding verse (2²⁹) the Apostle begins the second chief division of the Epistle that in which the Christian life is considered as the life of Divine sonship.  And this life is characterised, first of all, by Righteousness (2²⁹-3¹⁰).  But the orderly development of this theme is immediately arrested by the contemplation of its grandeur.  That such a title should be ours because the full Divine reality it signifies is ours - that we should be called, and that we verily are, the children¹⁷ of God - what manner of love!¹⁸  But having asserted this amazing truth, the Apostle, with the quick imagination of sympathy, apprehends a possible perplexity in his readers minds:  "If we are children of God in title and in fact, why does no ray of glory shine upon us?  Why is it that, instead of winning the recognition and homage of the world, we are the objects of its contempt?"  The answer is that it is precisely because we are the children of God.  The world loves its own (John 15¹⁹); no glimpse of the essential glory of the spiritual visits its darkened mind.  And the supreme proof of this is, that it was blind to the glory of the only-begotten Son Himself (cf. I Cor. 1²³, 2⁸, 2 Cor. 4⁴; contrariwise, John 1¹⁴).  If He Who was the Light of the world was so little known by the world; if He Who was ineffable Love was so little loved; if He Who was the Prince of Life received so scanty homage; if the world could see no brightness of the Father's glory irradiating the humble exterior of the Son of Man - what wonder that it does not recognise, in us, the children of God?  This leads on to the magnificent assurance of the following verse: "Beloved" (the Apostle's heart is moved with solicitude by the thought of the consolation needed, with triumph by the thought of that he is about to give), "now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.  We know that if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; because we shall see Him as He is."  Here, once more, the peculiarly Johannine idea of "manifestation" is strikingly employed.  "What we shall be" will be essentially what we now are - children of God.  No new element will be added to the regenerate nature.  All is there that ever will be there.  As every faculty and every feature of the full-grown man are possessed by the newborn child, so the Image of God's Son is already formed in every one that is "begotten of God " - is there in embryo, in organic completeness, awaiting its full development.  But the epoch of full development is not now.  It is, according to St. John, at the Parousia.  When Christ - the Christ Who already is in the world - shall be manifested, then also the children of God, who are in the world, will be manifested as being what they are.  They will not be invested with a glory from without so much as manifested from within.  They also will have come to their Mount of Transfiguration; inward reality will break forth in a visible splendour that will, in some sense and degree, manifest even to the world the essential glory of their nature.

    This is no vague hope or questionable hypothesis.  It is triumphant certainty: "We know¹⁹ that we shall be like Him; because we shall see Him as He is."  The principle implied is certain and universal.  Vision becomes assimilation.  We transfer to and fix upon our own souls the beauty and the goodness on which we gaze.  Such is the psychological principle of the Christian's sanctification in this life.  Beholding with unveiled face the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3¹⁸, Ex. 34²⁹).  And when He is manifested, "we shall behold Him as He is."  The words suggest what is beyond full comprehension.  We know whom we shall behold - Him,²⁰ - not Deity in its essence, not the Invisible Father, not another and unfamiliar Christ, a new out-shining of the Father's glory - but Jesus Christ.

    But we shall see Him as He is.  Is not the Christ, then, who "tabernacled among us," Christ "as He is"?  And when we behold His glory, "the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," do we not behold Him as He is?  Assuredly.  In the most essential element of the case there can be no change in what is beheld or in the kind of beholding.  The glory of the Divine is spiritual - the glory of goodness, of love beyond measure, and of purity without stain.  And spiritual things can never be otherwise than spiritually discerned.  Yet, obviously, this is not the whole thought of the passage.  The vision of the future is, in some fashion, corporeal as well as spiritual.  In it Sense and Faith will co-operate.  It will then have ceased to be expedient that Christ should go away in order that the Spirit of Truth may come.  We shall possess in the same experience His manifested presence and the inward ministry of the Spirit.  Perception, now dim and wavering, will be intense and vivid.  Vision will be freed from all obscurations of sin.  It will be as when sunshine draws forth the glow of colour in a landscape that has been lying under a pall of cloud.

    "We shall truly behold the True."  And, seeing Him as He is, "we shall be like Him."  There will be sudden development.  It will be like passing at a stride from subarctic regions to the tropics.  Under the direct rays of the Sun of Righteousness "buds of earth" will become "flowers of Heaven."  All that is within the children of God will answer to Christ's call; every half-developed lineament of holy character will shine out in the light of His countenance; the whole Christ-likeness latent in them will come forth, vivid and glorious.  Vision will beget likeness, and likeness, again, give clearness to vision, their endless interaction securing endless progress towards the inexhaustible fulness of Christ.

    And as the vision is in some sense corporeal as well as spiritual, so also is the assimilation (Phil. 3²¹).  Even of this body of flesh and blood the soul is, in wonderful measure, the sculptor.  Faces are made pure by purity of heart.  Strength and nobility sit upon the countenance, when high resolve and heroic endeavour fill the mind.  There is a calmness of feature which is an index to peace in the soul; a dignity and beauty which patient suffering alone gives; and when some strong tide of the spirit is sweeping through a man's heart, it alters the fashion of his countenance, causes his very form and figure to dilate, and makes the weakest like an angel of God.  These facts, so far as they go, are a prophecy, and, indeed, a beginning of that final transfiguration by which Christ "shall fashion the body of our humiliation into the likeness of the body of His glory."  The very idea of the Spiritual Body is that it perfectly represents the character to which it belongs.  As the material body is strong or weak, comely or uncomely, according to the animal vitality, so is the spiritual body according to the spiritual vitality that animates it.  The outward man will take the mould of the inward man, and will share with it its perfected likeness to the glorified manhood of Jesus Christ.

    Such is the furthest view opened to our hope by the eschatology of the Epistle, and it is that which, of all others, has proved most entrancing to the imagination and stimulating to the aspiration of the children of God.  "We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is."

    And though it may appear as being, just where it is introduced, a digression from the main line of thought, - a magnificent development of a side issue, - this is not really so.  It is a certainty that is contained in the Christian's consciousness of indissoluble union with Christ.  And from the contemplation of that union in its perfect future manifestation, the Apostle brings us back by an inevitable transition to the test of its present reality:  "Every one that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.

    It is unnecessary for the interpretation of the Epistle to enter upon all the complexities of the Antichrist problem.  The leading points, however, may be briefly stated.  The name Antichrist is not older than the N .T., but the idea is pre-Christian.  Recent investigation (especially by Bousset) has all gone to show how composite and how gradually developed the legend of Antichrist was.  Gunkel (Schopfung und Chaos) finds its ultimate origin in the primitive and widely diffused dragon-myth, which, he maintains, reached and impregnated Hebrew soil, in the form of the Babylonian Epos of the monster Tiamat, who was overcome by the Creator (Marduk), but who, it was believed, would again rise in revolt, only to be finally destroyed (for criticism of this theory, however, see Kautzsch's article, "Religion of Israel," in DB, Extra Vol. p. 670).  But even if it be allowed that this myth is alluded to in sundry passages of O.T. poetry, and has supplied certain materials to the imagery of the Apocalypse, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that it had any important part in familiarising the Jewish mind with the idea of an arch-enemy of God, or in the actual development of the idea.  There is similarity, if not historical connection, between the later conception of Antichrist and Ezekiel's prophecy of a tremendous onslaught, led by Gog the prince of the land of Magog, against the resettled land of Israel, that is to say, after the dawn of the Messianic Age (cf. Ezek. 38-39 and Rev. 20⁷ sqq.).  But it is in the apocalyptic parts of the Book of Daniel that the lineaments of the future Antichrist are clearly discemible, and especially in the idealised representations of Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. 7-9; 11; 12).  It is probable that these predictions, while inspired by fear and hatred of Antiochus, and in part applicable to him, point also to some ideal impersonation of evil.  It is at least clear that they furnish material which was worked up in the subsequent development of the Eschatological Antichrist.  In later Jewish Apocalyptic this development is carried forward (Sibylline Oracles, Fourth Ezra, Apocalypse of Baruch, Ascension of Isaiah, Book of Jubilees. For references, v. DB iii. 227).  But in the interval between the Old and the New Testament, the Jewish belief in Antichrist has been strangely influenced by the Beliar myths (Bousset, Der Antichrist, pp. 99 sqq.).  The Antichrist is no longer of human origin, but becomes demonic.  Beliar is a wicked angel, ruler of the empire of the air, who has become prince of this world ("Berial angelus magnus, rex huius mundi . . . descendet e firmamento suo . . . et venient cum eo omnes potestates huius mundi," Asc. Isa. 4².  For other references, v. Bousset, and Milligan's Thessalonians, pp. 161, 162).  Bousset identifies the Beliar of 2 Cor. 6¹⁵ with Antichrist.  But if this identification is right, Beliar cannot have been to St. Paul angel or demon; for with him Antichrist is distinctly o` a;nqrwpoj th/j avnomi,aj.  The belief as current in the first century A.D., is that Antichrist would not appear before the Fall of Rome; that he would then appear among the Jews proclaim himself as God, and claim to be worshipped in the Temple at Jerusalem; that Elijah would appear, and be slain by him; that he would be born of the tribe of Dan (cf. Gen. 49¹⁷, Deut. 33²², Jer. 8¹⁶.  The Apocalypse omits Dan from the list of the Tribes); that his reign would last three and a half years; that the faithful Jews, or all the Church, would flee into the wilderness, whither Antichrist would pursue them; that he would then be slain by the Lord with the Breath of His mouth (Isa. 11⁴).²¹