'If we say that we have fellowship
with God, and walk in darkness, we lie.' In that one plain, ugly
word, he tells us the whole truth, frightful as it is, and then he
goes on calmly once more. And again:
'He that saith, I know God, and keepeth not his commandments, is a
liar. He that committeth sin is of the devil. He that hateth his
brother is a murderer. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his
brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he
hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? He that doeth
good is of God; but he that doeth evil has not seen God.'
Such words as these, coming as they do amid the usually quiet and
gentle language of St. John--these are truly words of thunder; going
straight to their mark, tearing off the mask from hypocrisy and self-
deceiving and false religion, and speaking the truth in majesty.
And yet there is no noisiness, no wordiness, about them; nothing like
rant or violence. Such a man is a liar, says St. John: but he says
no more. That is all, and that is enough.
So speaks the true Son of Thunder. And his words, like the thunder,
echo from land to land; and we hear them now, this day, in a foreign
tongue, eighteen hundred years after they were written: while
thousands of bigger, noisier, and frothier words and more violent
books have been lost and forgotten utterly.
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