'I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which
ye had from the beginning.... Again, a new commandment I write unto
you, which thing is true in him and in you.'--1 John ii. 7, 8.
The simplest words may carry the deepest thoughts. Perhaps angels and
little children speak very much alike. This letter, like all of John's
writing, is pellucid in speech, profound in thought, clear and deep,
like the abysses of mid-ocean. His terms are such as a child can
understand; his sentences short and inartificial: he does not reason, he
declares; he has neither argument nor rhetoric, but he teaches us the
deepest truths, and shows us that we get nearer the centre by insight
than by logic.
Now the words that I have taken for my text are very characteristic of
this Apostle's manner. He has a great, wide-reaching truth to proclaim,
and he puts it in the simplest, most inartificial manner, laying side by
side two artless sentences, and stimulates us by the juxtaposition,
leading us to feel after, and so to make our own, the large lessons that
are in them. Let me, then, try to bring these out.