It is in the mercy of God that Scripture was not completed before the collapse of the Church which its very beginnings in uninspired history present to us had already in great measure taken place:so much so, that in the epistles to the seven churches we could have a picture of its whole after-course exhibited for our admonition. With this many of us are now familiar. By it God has awakened us to realize our position with reference to the passing of the night, and to see that the hands of the clock point to the near approach of morning.

But these epistles are not the only instructions of a like kind, exhortations which have all the character of prophecies, which we who live in the times to which they have especial Application can discern as that. Sometimes, indeed, they are, in fact, upon the face, combined with direct prediction, as in the second epistles, (Thessalonians, Timothy, and Peter,) which, as supplements to the preceding ones, are in direct view of the last days. On the other hand, the second and third epistles of John contain no prediction; yet they too are supplementary, and in them the features of the last times unmistakably appear. Antichrists are such features, as stated in the first epistle; and a warning as to them is prominent in the second. In the third, the Church is seen ruled by a Diotrephes, who withstands the apostle, and rejects and casts out the brethren,-a plain anticipation of what is now history as to the professing church at large.

It is not my purpose at all to take up this at present. The same tendencies and evils manifest themselves continually; and we may find more profitable application in what is nearer to ourselves than Rome. Better still it may be to take up the teaching of the epistle, and let it apply wherever it shall be found to apply. Certainly we can hardly be at a loss to realize its bearing upon our own day, and to many of us it will be of the deepest, saddest interest, as well as of the most practical importance.

The third epistle follows the second in an order which is moral as well as chronological. Together, they meet two contrary tendencies, which unite, however, in opposition to the Spirit of Christ. One is, the laxity which is not love, although it claims to be this, and will find many to concede its claim; the other is, the narrowness which is not faithfulness to Christ, though often masked under such a name. To both, the apostle opposes the love and light which are one in God, and which separated are alike destroyed:what can the love be worth that sets aside truth? or what truth can there be apart from the love which is the greatest truth ?

The union of these is insisted on in both epistles, truth being put foremost in the second, love in the third, neither for a moment any where forgotten. There is recognized the danger of our not holding them together, at least in even balance,-a strange yet a felt difficulty, the pendulum swinging so much more readily from one side to the other than resting in the center ; from laxity to harshness or the reverse is a smaller change than to the faithfulness of love. Love is the energy of the divine nature ; light, the manner of its display :where God acts, He acts in His whole character, although there may be to us a difference in His actions-a predominance of this attribute or that. But thus love itself cannot be described without bringing in other attributes ; and the Word of God needs to describe and define it as the apostle in the first of these epistles does, for in nothing do we mistake more. He gives, therefore, tests and counter-tests :if it be to God, yet "he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ?"if it be to our brother, "by this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God;" and here he has also to add, "and keep His commandments," and, to define further, "for this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous."

Love must have its object, and this is carefully insisted on. It is first of all Christ in whom God has revealed Himself,-thus, then, those who are Christ's-the brethren. It is not that there is no wider range, but here is what characterizes it:"we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." Here the circle marked out shows sufficiently the center from which it is described. Lose the center, and all is lost. It is this, then, on which he insists in the second epistle. If you have not "the doctrine of Christ," you have not Christ, but Antichrist. Thus you must not greet the one who, coming in a Christian guise, brings not the doctrine of Christ. To make this as strong as possible, it is a woman who is warned. Subtlety of intellect is not needed in such a matter, nor official position :it is a question of heart and conscience,-of a soul that knows Christ. If you receive deliberately one who displaces Christ,-if you are an accessory to that displacement, you are "partaker of his evil deeds." Nay, he may be deceived, but you dishonor Christ with your eyes open. Association is in God's sight one of the most serious questions :fellowship with God and with what is opposed to Him cannot go on together.

Thus the second epistle of John comes naturally before the third. First of all, he fixes the center before he marks out the circumference. And Satan too, first of all, aims at the center ; for could he take away that, there is no more any circumference to mark out. People say it is not a question of the Lord's table ; but what table is it where the Lord is denied, or where He is named and insulted together?

But my purpose is not now to pause on this :doubtless even where the honor of the Lord requires separation there may yet be in fulfilling a plain duty a spirit of harshness which already needs the check of the third epistle. We have ever to remember what Christ's people are to Him, and with what discriminating care and tenderness He deals with them. How little, even here, have we learned to distinguish things that differ, and to take forth the precious from the vile ! How many have we repelled from the truth by the lack of grace that we have manifested ! How many have we abandoned to the evil whom we might have drawn out from it had we had a hand to put forth for their help ! Strange it is that those who have learnt their own need of grace can in their conduct toward others act so readily in the spirit of law, and expect to find results which only grace can produce! Sad indeed that we should be so little able to count upon and work in the grace which is in Christians, if they are indeed Christians, and that God's way of loving us out of our sins should be so little known to us ! Strange too that we should hear of that being righteousness which is not grace, as if it were possible from those who have received grace ! We need much searching of heart as to such things, which has engendered a cold, harsh spirit of suspicion, and at best a clear judicial wisdom, which is not the wisdom that winneth souls, but the very opposite. And especially where any departure from what is esteemed a most rigid orthodoxy is in question, tolerance is often counted mere latitudinarianism and indifference; and the needful "separation from evil" is in fact lost in a real biting and devouring one another which ends, naturally, except the mercy of God prevent, in being consumed one of another.

That which the third epistle of John is designed to meet is but the development of such a condition as this, and it will be found by some of us, what all the inspired Word is said to be, " profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." We need, however, for this to have the sharply marked individuality of the "man of God" to profit by it. If for any reason, in any measure, we have resigned our individuality, to become merely part of a mass, Scripture ceases in that measure to have meaning for us. Heart and conscience both belong to the individual alone.

The features of the day of the third of John are easily to be seen in the epistle. First of these, Diotrephes, individual enough he, with his controlling power in the assembly, loving to have the pre-eminence. If the epistle to the Corinthians shows us the Church of God on earth, with the already threatening invasion of primitive order, restless and ambitious spirits, dividing the saints into contentious parties, here we find a further stage, one disputant for power having succeeded (as is commonly the case) in reducing all the rest to obedience to himself. A kind of Romish unity had taken the place of the jangle of many tongues, and they perhaps vaunted it as Rome does, while in reality it was a further stage of decline. One individuality had absorbed into himself the corporate condition, and the assembly practically no longer existed :it was a tool in his hand.

How much for solemn consideration is there in such a state of things existing while yet a living apostle remained on earth ! Doubtless the assembly existed still in form and name,-nay, we see it did. The after-history assures that the " church "-the original meaning, however, soon dying out of the word-became a name to conjure by. Ecclesiasticism grew as the real ecclesia (the assembly) was lost sight of. The " ecclesiastics" were the clergy, from whom the people, or laity, were separated by a continually increasing gulf. When the transformation was complete, the church itself was really but the clergy, the name remaining only as a mystical halo of theoretic sanctity round the heads of the latter.

These things had their roots, then, in the apostles' days ; they were, in fact, fast developing, though by a quiet, noiseless development which startled, as it would seem, few. Nay, to most, perhaps, the growth seemed healthy. How much better than the strife of tongues at Corinth was the rule of Diotrephes! Nor was it yet called "rule;" it was but "pre-eminence ;" and are there not those who rightly, and of God, have the pre-eminence ? who would pull them down from this but those possessed with the spirit of independence-radicals and demagogues ? Had not Paul bidden them, " Obey your leaders?" and was there not true humility in such obedience ? None the less by such means Diotrephes may come to reign,-the parasitic growth of clerisy striking its roots into the very tree which it destroys, nourished by the sap which it perverts from its true purpose.

There is, in truth, but a narrow path for us, and a scarcely sensible line divides between good and evil. Every where are there ways that seem right, and whose ends nevertheless are ways of death. What help, what hope, save in the utter helplessness which needs an almighty arm, and a wisdom only found by those sensible of their folly ? God's Word even, apart from God Himself, what help is there in it? Nevertheless it is through that Word that help is ministered, but written out, as it were, only upon the road in which we travel with Him. Thus the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err in it, while the wisest of theorists may go even the more completely astray.

Are there not " leaders"?Yes, assuredly; Scripture plainly says so (Heb. 13:7, 17, Gr.). Ought we not to "obey " them? Undoubtedly, for here again we have Scripture. Nay, says the apostle, "We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake." (I Thess. 5:12, 13.) Here, "over you " is too strong, however :the word is, " who stand before you "-practically much as in the former passages, "your leaders." But there are such, then ? Yes, and we are to know them, a peculiar and important word:had they "known" a Diotrephes, they would hardly have followed him! If we are to know our guides, then plainly there is no responsibility taken off our shoulders, but the contrary:we are responsible for the guides we allow as such ; we are, first of all, to "know" before we follow, not to follow blindly. And how shall we know a guide but by the guidance? and by what can we judge as to " guidance " but by the Word of God ? So says the apostle once more, " Remember your leaders, who have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose faith follow." Believing obedience to the Word of God, then, must characterize such leaders, and we only follow their faith when the Word of God is to us what it is to them. The guidance is by it, and faith must be in it, not in them, and only those are to be followed who follow it.

Just so there are "teachers," who are special gifts of Christ to His Church :was, then, John the beloved a radical, or possessed with the spirit of independency, when he said, even to babes in Christ, "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things"? And "the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you" (i Jno. 2:20, 27) ? Here only true humility will keep us right; and yet there is no opposition between these things, and no real difficulty either. Any one of the least understanding would say, Certainly, the teacher is not meant to stand between me and the Word of God, but rather to bring it to me, to make plain to me what is there; and when I see this, it is not the teacher I believe, -it is God :I am not dependent on the teacher, though I thank God for him.

It is the truth which accredits the teacher; never, rightly, the teacher the truth :so with the guide ; if he can show me God's path for me, it is well and good, follow I must; but woe be to him who stands between the soul and God, and whom men "obey" upon the warrant of his superior knowledge, wisdom, or holiness! Our " walk " is to be " with God."

This will not satisfy one " who loveth to have the preeminence ; " and therefore he will soon be discerned by such a text. Human authority will be pressed in same way, and the demand for the Word of God treated as pride and independence. Here, the voice of the church becomes a ready resource, and apparently scriptural too :for "if he do not hear the church," he is to "be to thee as a heathen man and a publican." Upon this text ecclesiasticism builds, naturally enough, a lofty edifice upon a narrow foundation, even where there is added to this the words which lie in immediate connection, "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

I do not propose to dwell upon this now :it has been elsewhere done sufficiently. All that need be said about it is, that there is a sphere wherein this authority of the church is to be owned, and beyond which it cannot go, and that we must learn from Scripture the limits of this sphere. Thus, the church cannot define doctrine ; the Word alone is authoritative there. Moreover, the context shows that it is a question of trespass as to which the Lord is speaking. The Church is the witness of God's holiness upon the earth, and must therefore put away wickedness, is under responsibility to do that. How impossible, then, that it could have power against holiness, to give false witness as to what God is, to pervert righteousness, and force men to go with evil! The Church's authority is therefore in due subjection to the Word of God, from which it gets its authority, and conscience is bound by the Word and must listen to the Word:our walk is to be as absolutely with God as if there were no church.

Here, the apostle had written to the church, " But Diotrephes receiveth us not," and his will seems to have been law in it. Did the voice of Diotrephes in the church, which it had no power to resist, in no wise affect the authority of the church's voice which men had to "hear" ? If not, did Diotrephes' evil become good when the church assented to it? It is plain the apostle did not accept the casting out of the brethren, though the church must have accepted it. And if not, how many questions might have to be raised as to any given assembly-judgment ! Conscience is thus exercised at every step, never released from it :conscience, I say, which we must carefully distinguish from mere will; will, apart from conscience, is pride, independence, insubjection ; but a conscience exercised by the Word of God means humility, and the spirit of obedience.

The spirit of ecclesiasticism while it speaks loudly of the Church, cares nothing for the individual members of Christ. Its church is not a living organism, of which the Spirit is the practical unity, but a kind of unorganic mass whose component parts are atoms and no more – molded from without, not from within. With it, conscience is only a troubler, the fruitful cause of strife and division, with its cry, " We must obey God rather than men." In truth, no government can be effectual with such a living machine, except that of its Head, Christ Jesus. And His guides and leaders must be like Himself, – tender of the individual, careful to maintain the sense of responsibility in the soul, nurturers of the life rather than zealots of the form, realizing that the plants of God's garden grow best with the least handling, and that food and sunshine are their first necessities. God gives us guides like these-men who will speak to us the Word of God, and whose faith we can follow.

In truth, it needs faith :the consciousness that one is but in the hand of God, a worker under Him, having but one's own little bit of service to do, and incompetent to measure the result of that, having to leave results with Him, yet confident, in the face of all seeming failure, that no honest work for Him shall be in vain :His part, to order; ours-all of us-to minister, as witnesses and channels of His love to men. Such guides as those of which Scripture speaks, may His people " know," wherever found.

(To be continued.)