us and God. Christ would overthrow it; there is a great moral change he would accomplish in us, to make us one with him. He would establish a divine harmony in our souls; he would mould us into the spiritual form of the Father. Let his work be done in us, and we shall then honor him in the way he most desires it. The voice of our head is Resolve ye, with penitence and supplication, resolve ye, that henceforth the will of God shall be your law and your guide. To exalt Christ, is to be one in heart, like him, with that God who is Love. It is to love all mankind, to let the great stream which flows down from the head-spring above pass through us. If we shut our gates, and drive back the waters of love, if we indulge enmity or coldness toward any being on earth, we are false to the great Teacher of universal kindness, we exclude one whom Christ receives, for whom he toiled, and bled on the cross. Thus do we dishonor and degrade that very being we would exalt. He who would honor the Saviour, must live a life in consonance with our spiritual head. Nothing less than the entire Christian character, a character pervaded by pure principles, glowing with broad and elevated affections, and expressing itself in incorruptible habits, will make us members of his body. Christ and his church too often present the unsightly spectacle of a head beautiful to the eye, joined to a body dwarfed, feeble, and ghastly. Every member ought to correspond with the head; there should be no schism whatever in the body. The frame should be expanded and erect, the limbs all developed, muscular and strong; and within, the nerves, veins, arteries, all the hidden organs, with their manifold NO. 212. VOL.XVIII. 2 functions, should be in unison with the head. He who does the least thing to promote this divine harmony, does something to honor Jesus Christ. When will the world learn to pay a true homage to its Saviour? When will they forsake this idolatry of creeds, this service of a dead Christ, and come to the altar of the living one. Vainly do we essay to exalt that noble being by empty words, by placing him on a throne visible and glittering to the eye. Christ rejects such adoration. To look thus at him is to go forth and gaze on the cold canopy of heaven in the night-season, and to imagine its twinkling stars, or its chill moon, the best objects it ever can present. Let us go out in the bright day-time. Christ is the sun of the moral heavens; he is the greater light, made to rule the day of human life. The light he radiates, is that of a spotless character; he is the brightness of the Father's glory. We must open to him our inmost being, and receive from him those divine beams; this is the honor due to the Son. What he demands, is, that we believe in a Christ which shall have power to lead us to repentance, to redeem us from iniquity, to render us devout in the closet, and exemplary in the world. Every sincere prayer to the Father, every pious aspiration, every sanctified purpose, every pure motive and enlarged affection, all triumphs over self, sense, and the present, each Christ-like deed we perform, all these exalt the Saviour; they are the great tribute he claims; with them the Father is well pleased; through them we assure to ourselves a life present and everlasting; Christ is thus our acknowledged head on earth, and we shall be joined to his spiritual body in Heaven. Received Version. "7. For there are three that bear Griesbach's Reading. "7. For there are three that bear "8. record: the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." NOTE. It may be asked, why at this day publish a Tract upon this subject? Who now believes in the genuineness of this verse? It may be answered, many do in all parts of the country. It is not only accepted as genuine, but preached from, and commented on, in the pulpit as of divine authority, in proof of the dogma of the Trinity; and this by Doctors of Divinity, and men of no little influence in their respective denominations in the ministry. I acknowledge great indebtedness to that valuable and remarkable work, "Wilson's Concessions of Trinitarians ;" and add my earnest desire that it might be widely circulated in our country. Mr. Wilson has laid our denomination under great obligations. I have endeavored, as far as possible, to verify his citations, where I have used them, and have found them, without exception, accurate. BOSTON: PRINTED BY THURSTON, TORRY AND CO. GROUNDS FOR REJECTING I. JOHN, V. 7. THE object of this tract is to place before the reader the concessions which learned Trinitarian theologians. have made upon the question of the genuineness of this disputed text. Men, second to none in point of thoroughness of investigation, critical ability, and general theological attainment, decided Trinitarians though they be, reject this text, as will be seen, on the express and declared ground, that it is an interpolation. So far, it may at the outset be said, it has long ceased to be, if it even ever was, a merely sectarian question. It is not because Unitarians feel that this passage presents any argument more or less strong for the truth of a dogma which they reject, that they desire to be rid of it, but because the interests of truth, and the interests of our common Christianity alike demand, that nothing be retained in the sacred text which does not belong there. Let this verse be proved to belong there, and it is as much the interest of the Unitarian as it is of the Trinitarian, be its meaning what it may, that it remain where it is. If it does not belong there, it is the interest of the latter quite as much as of the former, that it be set aside or stricken |