ves that he was distinctively of God. He who fails to perceive
the peculiar glory of Christ proves thereby that he was alienated
and blinded by sin and darkness, distinctively of the evil one.
Varying the expression to illustrate the thought, if the light and
warmth of a living love of God were in a soul, it would
necessarily, when brought into contact with the concentrated
radiance of Divinity incarnated and beaming in Christ, effect a
more fervent, conscious, and abiding union with the Father than
could be known before he was thus revealed. But if iniquities,
sinful lusts, possessing the soul, had made it hard and cold, even
the blaze of spotless virtues and miraculous endowments in the
manifesting Messiah would be the radiation of light upon darkness
insensible to it. Therefore, the presentation of the Divine
contents of the soul or character of Jesus to different persons
was an unerring test of their previous moral state: the good would
apprehend him with a thrill of unison, the bad would not. To have
the Son, to have the Father, to have the truth, to have eternal
life, all are the same thing: hence, where one is predicated or
denied all are predicated or denied.

Continuing our investigation, we shall find the distinction drawn
of a sensual or perishing life and a spiritual or eternal life.
The term world (kosmos) is used by John apparently in two
different senses. First, it seems to signify all mankind, divided
sometimes into the unbelievers and the Christians. "Christ is the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world." "God sent not his Son to condemn the
world, but that the world through him might be saved." It is
undeniable that "world" here means not the earth, but the men on
the earth. Secondly, "world" in the dialect of John means all the
evil, all the vitiating power, of the material creation. "Now
shall the Prince of this world be cast out." It is not meant that
this is the devil's world, because John declares in the beginning
that God made it; but he means that all diabolic influence comes
from the darkness of matter fighting against the light of
Divinity, and by a figure he says "world," meaning the evils in
the world, meaning all the follies, vanities, sins, seductive
influences, of the dark and earthy, the temporal and sensual. In
this case the love of the world means almost precisely what is
expressed by the modern word worldliness. "Love not the world