rect communion which every soul may have with
God, which is the essence of wholesome mysticism. Now that type of
thinking has often in its raptures forgotten plain, pedestrian morality;
but John never commits that error. He never soars so high as to lose
sight of the flat earth below; and whilst he is always inviting us and
enjoining us to dwell in God and abide in Christ, with equal persistence
and force he is preaching to us the plainest duties of elementary
morality.

He illustrates this moral earnestness in my text. The 'little children'
for whom he was so affectionately solicitous were in danger, either from
teachers or from the tendencies native in us all, to substitute
something else for plain, righteous conduct; and the Apostle lovingly
appeals to them with his urgent declaration, that the only thing which
shows a man to be righteous--that is to say, a disciple of Christ--is
his daily life, in conformity with Christ's commands. The errors of
these ancient Asiatics live to-day in new forms, but still substantially
the same. And they are as hard to kill amongst English Nonconformists
like us as they were amongst Asiatic Christians nineteen centuries ago.

I. So let me try just to insist, first of all, on that thought that
doing righteousness is the one test of being a Christian.

Now that word 'righteousness' is a theological word, and by much usage
the lettering has got to be all but obliterated upon it; and it is worn
smooth like sixpences that go from pocket to pocket. Therefore I want,
before I go further, to make this one distinct point, that the New
Testament righteousness is no theological, cloistered, peculiar kind of
excellence, but embraces within its scope, 'whatsoever things are
lovely, whatsoever things are fair, whatsoever things are of good
report'; all that the world calls virtue, all which the world has
combined to praise. There are countries on the earth which are known by
different names to their inhabitants and to foreigners. The
'righteousness' of the New Testament, though it embraces a great deal
more, includes within its map all the territories which belong to
morality or to virtue. The three words cover the same ground, though one
of them covers more than the other two. The New Testament
'righteousness' differs from the moralist's morality, or the world's
virtue, in its scope, inasmuch as it includes our relations to God as
well as to men; it differs in its perspective, inasmuch as it exa