1 John 4

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God

The test of truth--confessing Christ

In the Word of God we are warned against sitting in judgment on others.

Especially are we enjoined not to cultivate a censorious and uncharitable spirit. But in the text Christians seem to be enjoined to exercise their powers of judgment and discrimination in another way. They are called upon to try the spirits whether they are of God. To try a spirit is not to try an individual; it is not to try even a community of men; rather is it to put to the test of enlightened reason some principle they follow as true, some institution they uphold as right.

I. The scientific false prophet; or antiChrist in the schools, especially in connection with the study and interpretation of nature. There are three points in the scientific world that appear to be prominent. These points are--first, that our highest business here is to study nature--that nature at least in relation to this present life is supreme; second, that natural or physical law is absolutely uniform or unbending, and has been so since the creation of the universe; third, that the human race is to be elevated, regenerated, or truly developed from the basis of nature, and in accordance merely with natural laws. Now, if it really were so, we can have no hesitation in saying that the position and claims of the Christian religion are quite incompatible with it. If the dream of such thinkers were destined to be realised, Christianity must slowly fade from the earth, with other superstitions. It is only too evident what the spirit and hope of such systems is. Take the first position--that nature or the visible material scene around us is the supreme influence and power in relation to our life upon the earth. That involves the denial of a Divine revelation. Take the second position--that for incalculable ages Nature has been undeviating in her course. That law maintains its slow, grand march through millions of years, without deviation, acceleration, or interruption. That may be thought a grand idea; but as it is advanced in certain systems, it is not a true one; for it is a shutting out of the miraculous altogether. Take the third position--that man is saved by obedience to natural law, and that the human race will be elevated and ennobled only as men study the laws of nature, and conform themselves to them. That is a doctrine put forth by some. It looks with a sinister and disparaging eye on Christianity and the Church. It does not hesitate sometimes to say that all religions have been a misfortune to the world. When the plague comes this spirit declares that prayer is useless, and that the only thing that can save us is to perfect our sanitary arrangements. This is a spirit of antichrist, for it is the denial of a moral government in the Scriptural sense of the word.

II. The secular false prophet; or antichrist in the kingdoms of the world. In as far as the kingdoms of the world are necessary to maintain order, to suppress violence, and repel invasion, they are the ordinance of God, but in so far as they perpetuate injustice and wrong, of course they cannot be of God; they are babels and antichrists, standing in the way of His kingdom who has the absolute right to rule. Now it is the duty of everyone to whom the light of the gospel comes to become a subject of the kingdom of Christ. That light will show him what is wrong in existing systems. It will show him that some of them are fundamentally wrong, but it will not teach him to remedy that wrong by violence and revolution. The eternal moral principle that truth and justice cannot be permanently advanced by mere physical force, enters into the foundation of Christ’s kingdom. And if anyone asks, How then are we to hold our own in the world? the only answer that can be given is, that it is our duty to do as Christ did. Because God lives all those who have faith in Him will live also.

III. The literary false prophet; or antichrist in the world of letters. This is a time of great thinkers, great writers, great bookmakers. We do not speak of individuals. We have no right to judge them; but their works we may judge, and the spirit of their works we may try whether it is of God or no. Now we know that some of the greatest works in the world are books written in defence of Christianity; but it is also true that some writers of considerable power have taken up positive ground against Christianity and have sufficiently shown that they do not believe that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. They do not believe in Him as the eternal Son of God, and the only Saviour of men. Some of them have written books expressly to deny this. But this is not so much what the text suggests. There are other writers of great power and influence in both hemispheres of the world who occupy rather a negative and undefined position in relation to Christ and Christianity. They have written upon almost every subject of human thought--upon government and the Church, upon history and biography, upon morals and destiny. They have gone round the world to find heroes and representative men, and have said many true and striking things about them; but, strange to say, they have never clearly informed the world as to what they think of Christ. They are unaccountably reticent upon a subject that is the most important of all.

IV. The religious false prophet; or antichrist in the ecclesiastical world. The antichrist of an atheistical, political system; of a poor, blind, hero worship--the worship of mere intellectual ability and unfathomable cunning; and the antichrist of a barren Protestantism which has a name to live while it is dead--such forms as these are little better than the Papacy.

V. The social false prophet; or antichrist in the work of everyday life. That is the most deadly form of antichrist which professes great respect for Christianity, but lives in continual opposition to its principles; and we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that a great amount of the Christian profession of this country seems little more than a mere profession. This is called a Christian country, but look at the woes that are festering in the midst of us; think of the rank worldliness and heartlessness that is baptized into the name of Christ. Is this not the reason why prayer seems unanswered, and troubles are thickening upon the land? (F. Ferguson, D. D.)

Our righteousness exercised in trying the spirits; the test, confessing that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh

I. It properly belongs to the Spirit to “confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” He had much to do with the flesh in which Jesus Christ came. He prepared for Him a body in the Virgin’s womb, so as to secure that He came into the world pure and sinless. And all throughout His sojourn on earth the Spirit ministered to Him as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh”; He could not minister to Him otherwise. It is the flesh, or humanity, of Jesus Christ that brings Him within the range of the Spirit’s gracious care. It was His human experience that the Spirit animated and sustained; and it is with His human experience also that the Spirit deals when He “takes of what is Christ’s and shows it unto us.” His object is to make us one with “Jesus Christ as come in the flesh.” That practically is His confession to us and in us. Let us see what it implies.

1. He identifies us with Jesus Christ in His humiliation. In our Divine regeneration He brings us to be subject to the authority and commandments of God--willingly subject--our nature being renewed into the likeness of His.

2. The Spirit identifies us with Jesus Christ, not only in His humiliation, but in its conditions and liabilities. His coming in the flesh is His consenting to be crucified for us; the Spirit in us confessing Him as come in the flesh makes us willing to be crucified with Him. “In my flesh I shall see God” was the hope of the patriarch Job. It is made sure by Jesus Christ come in the flesh, and by the Spirit confessing in us that He is come.

II. This accordingly is the secret of our present victory over anti-Christian spirits and men: “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them” (verse 4).

1. The victory is a real victory got over the false prophets or teachers, who are not of God, whom the spirit of antichrist inspires. And it is a victory over them personally; not over their doctrines and principles merely, but over themselves--“ye have overcome them.” It is the actual “coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh,” and His actual accomplishment, in the flesh, of all that in the flesh He came for, that they resent and resist. It is that which Satan, the original spirit of antichrist, would fain have set himself to hinder; moving Herod to slay Jesus in His childhood, and Judas to betray Him in his manhood; tempting Jesus to make shipwreck of His integrity. And it is your actual personal participation with Him, as “Jesus Christ come in the flesh”; your being really one with Him in that wondrous humiliation, in its spirit and its fruit; that, so s the emblem of the Church of Christ. There is at it the interchange of a holy and heavenly communion. (James Morgan, D. D.)

The Spirit, and the water, and the blood

We dismiss, without any misgiving, the clause respecting the heavenly Trinity from 1 John 5:7. The sentence is irrelevant to this context, and foreign to the apostle’s mode of conception. It is the Church’s victorious faith in the Son of God, vindicated against the world (1 John 5:1), that the writer here asserts, and to invoke witnesses for this “in heaven” is nothing to the purpose. The contrast present to his thought is not that between heaven and earth as spheres of testimony, but only between the various elements of the testimony itself (1 John 5:6). (For this manner of combining witnesses, comp. John 5:31; John 8:13; John 10:25; John 14:8; John 15:26) The passage of the three heavenly witnesses is now admitted to be a theological gloss, which crept first into the Latin manuscripts of the fifth century, making its way probably from the margin into the text: no Greek codex exhibits it earlier than the fifteenth century. “This,” the apostle writes in 1 John 5:6 --this “Jesus” of whom we “believe that He is the Son of God” (1 John 5:5)--“is He that came through water and blood--Jesus Christ.” By this time “Jesus Christ” and “Jesus the Son of God” had become terms synonymous in true Christian speech. The great controversy of the age turned upon their identification. The Gnostics distinguished Jesus and Christ as human and Divine persons, united at the baptism and severed on the Cross, when Jesus cried, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” St. John asserts, therefore, at every turn the oneness of Jesus Christ; the belief that “Jesus is the Christ” he makes the test of a genuine Christianity (1 John 5:1;comp. 1 John 2:22; 1 John 3:23; 1 John 4:9; 1 John 4:3; 1 John 4:15). The name thus appended to verse 6 is no idle repetition; it is a solemn reassertion and reassumption of the Christian creed in two words--Jesus Christ. And He is Jesus Christ, inasmuch as He “came through water and blood--not in the water only.” The heretics allowed and maintained in their own way that Jesus Christ “came by water” when He received His Messianic anointing at John’s baptism, and the man Jesus thus became the Christ; but the “coming through blood” they abhorred. They regarded the death of the Cross, befalling the human Jesus, as a punishment of shame inflicted on the flesh, in which the Divine or Deiform Christ could have no part. Upon this Corinthian view, the Christ who came through water went away rather than came through blood; they saw in the death upon the Cross nothing that witnessed of the Godhead in Jesus Christ, nothing that spoke of Divine forgiveness and cleansing (1 John 1:7; 1 John 1:9), but an eclipse and abandonment by God, a surrender of the earthly Jesus to the powers of darkness. The simple words, “that came,” are of marked significance in this context; for “the coming One” (ὁ ἐρχόμενος, Matthew 11:3; John 1:15; John 1:27; John 11:27; Hebrews 10:37; Revelation 1:4; Revelation 1:8, etc.) was a standing name for the Messiah, now recognised as the Son of God. “He that came,” therefore, signifies “He who has assumed this character,” who appeared on earth as the Divine Messiah; and St. John declares that He thus appeared disclosing Himself through these two signs--of blood as well as water. So the beginning and the end, the inauguration and consummation of Christ’s ministry, were marked by the two supreme manifestations of His Messiah-ship; and of both events this apostle was a near and deeply interested witness. When he speaks of the Lord as “coming through water and blood,” these are viewed historically as steps in His glorious march, signal epochs in the continuous disclosure of Himself to men, and crises in His past relations to the world; when he says, “in the water and in the blood,” they are apprehended as abiding facts, each making its distinct and living appeal to our faith. This verse stands in much the same relation to the two sacraments as does the related teaching of chs. 3 and 6 in St. John’s Gospel. The two sacraments embody the same truths that are symbolised here. Observing them in the obedience of faith, we associate ourselves visibly with “the water and the blood,” with Christ baptized and crucified, living and dying for us. But to see in these observances the equivalents of the water and blood of this passage, to make the apostle say that the water of baptism and the cup of the Lord’s Supper are the chief witnesses to Him and the essential instruments of our salvation, and that the former sacrament is unavailing without the addition of the latter, is to narrow and belittle his declaration and to empty out its historical content. Nearer to St. John’s thought lies the inference that Christ is our anointed Priest as well as Prophet, making sacrifice for our sin while He is our guide and light of life. To the virtue of His life and teaching must be added the virtue of His passion and death. Had He come “in the water” only, had Jesus Christ stopped short of Calvary and drawn back from the blood baptism, there had been no cleansing from sin for us, no witness to that chief function of His Christhood. This third manifestation of the Son of God--the baptism of the Spirit following on that of water and of blood, a baptism in which Jesus Christ was agent and no longer subject--verified and made good the other two. “And the Spirit,” he says, “is that which beareth witness” (μαρτυροῦν, “the witnessing power”): the water and the blood, though they have so much to say, must have spoken in vain, becoming mere voices of past history, but for this abiding and ever active Witness (John 15:26; John 16:7). The Spirit, whose witness comes last in the order of distinct manifestation, is first in principle; His breath animates the whole testimony; hence He takes the lead in the final enumeration of verse 8. The witness of the water had His silent attestation; the Baptist “testified, saying, I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and it abode upon Him,” etc. (John 1:32). “It is the Spirit,” therefore, “that bears witness”; in all true witness He is operative, and there is no testifying without Him. “For the Spirit is truth,” is “the truth”--Jesus called Him repeatedly “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17; Joh 15:26; 1 John 4:6; comp. John 4:23)--truth in its substance and vital power is lodged with Him; in this element He works; this effluence He ever breathes forth. Practically, the Spirit is the truth; whatever is stated in Christian matters without His attestation, is something less or other than the truth. Such, then, are the “three witnesses” which were gathered “into one” in the Apostle John’s experience, in the history of Jesus Christ and His disciples: “the three” he says. “agree in one,” or more strictly, “amount to the one thing” (καὶ οἱ τρεῖς εἰς τὸ ἔν εἰσου, verse 8); they converge upon this single aim. The Jordan banks, Calvary, the upper chamber in Jerusalem; the beginning, the end of Jesus Christ’s earthly course, and the new beginning which knows no end; His Divine life and words and works, His propitiatory death, the promised and perpetual gift of the Spirit to His Church--these three cohere into one solid and imperishable witness, which is the demonstration alike of history and personal experience and the Spirit of God. They have one outcome, as they have one purpose; and it is this--viz. “that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (verse 11). The apostle has indicated in verses 6-8 what are, to his mind, the proofs of the testimony of Jesus--evidences that must in the end convict and “overcome the world” (verse 5). So far as the general cause of Christianity is concerned this is enough. But it concerns each man to whom this evidence comes to realise for himself the weight and seriousness of the testimony which confronts him. So St. John points with emphasis in verses 9 and 10 to the Author of the three-fold manifestation. “If we receive the witness of men”--if credible human testimony wins our ready assent “the witness of God is greater.” The declaration of the gospel brings every soul that hears it face to face with God (comp. 1 Thessalonians 2:13). And of all subjects on which God might speak to men, of all revelations that He has made, or might conceivably make, to mankind, this, St. John feels, is the supreme and critical matter--“the testimony of God, viz., the fact that He has testified concerning His Son.” The gospel is, in St. Paul’s words, “God’s good news about His Son.” God insists upon our believing this witness; it is that in which He is supremely concerned, and which He asserts and commends to men above all else. Let the man, therefore, who with this evidence before him remains unbelieving, understand what he is about; let him know whom he is rejecting and whom he is contradicting. “He has made God a liar”--he has given the lie to the All-holy and Almighty One, the Lord God of truth. This apostle said the same terrible thing about the impenitent denier of his own sin (1 John 1:10); these two denials are kindred to each other, and run up into the same condition of defiance toward God. On the other hand, “he who believes on the Son of God,” “hearing from the Father and coming” to Christ accordingly (John 6:45), he finds “within himself” the confirmation of the witness he received (verse 10a). The testimony of the Spirit and the water and the blood is no mere historical and objective proof; it enters the man’s own nature, and becomes the regnant, creative factor in the shaping of his soul. The apostle might have added this subjective confirmation as a fourth, experimental witness to the other three; but, to his conception, the sense of inward life and power attained by Christian faith is the very witness of the Spirit, translated into terms of experience, realised and operative in personal consciousness. “The water that I will give,” said Jesus, “will be within him a fountain of water, springing up unto life eternal” (John 4:14). It is thus that the believer on the Son of God sets to his seal that God is true. His testimony is not to the general fact that there is life and troth in Christ; but “this is the witness, that God gave to us life eternal, and this life is in His Son”? (verse 11). This witness of God concerning His Son is not only a truth to be believed or denied, it is a life to be chosen or refused; and on this choice turns the eternal life or death of all to whom Christ offers Himself: “He that hath the Son, hath life; he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life” (verse 12). Life appears everywhere in St. John as a gift, not an acquisition; and faith is a grace rather than a virtue; it is yielding to God’s power rather than the exerting of our own. It is not so much that we apprehend Christ; rather He apprehends us, our souls are laid hold of and possessed by the truth concerning Him. Our part is but to receive God’s bounty pressed upon us in Christ; it is merely to consent to the strong purpose of His love, and allow Him, as St. Paul puts it, to “work in us to will and to work on behalf of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13). As this operation proceeds and the truth concerning Christ takes practical possession of our nature, the assurance of faith, the conviction that we have eternal life in Him, becomes increasingly settled and firm. Rothe finely says, “Faith is not a mere witness on the man’s part to the object of his faith; it is a witness which the man receives from that object … In its first beginnings faith is, no doubt, mainly the acceptance of testimony from without; but the element of trust involved in this acceptance, includes the beginning of an inner experience of that which is believed. This trust arises from the attraction which the object of our faith has exercised upon us; it rests on the consciousness of a vital connection between ourselves and that object. In the measure in which we accept the Divine witness, our inner susceptibility to its working increases, and thus there is formed in us a certainty of faith which rises unassailably above all scepticism.” The language of St. John in this last chapter of his Epistle breathes the force of a spiritual conviction raised to its highest potency. For him perfect love has now cast out fear, and perfect faith has banished every shadow of doubt. “Believing on the name of the Son of God,” he “knows that he has eternal life” (verse 13). With him the transcendental has become the experimental, and no breach is left any more between them. (G. G. Findlay, B. A.)

The gospel record

I. The view here given of the gospel testimony.

1. Unspeakably important.

2. Exceedingly comprehensive.

3. Preeminently gracious.

4. Remarkably distinct and definite.

II. The evidence adduced in confirmation of its truths.

1. The voice from heaven.

2. From earth.

3. Scripture testimony.

4. Personal experience.

III. The claims which it has, as thus established, upon our regards. It claims our earnest attention and most serious study; but, above all, it claims our unwavering faith. This is the main point which is here set forth.

1. The nature of faith. It is nothing more nor less than receiving the Divine testimony, especially concerning Jesus Christ.

2. Its reasonableness.

3. Its importance. Through it we have eternal life.

4. The opposite of faith is unbelief--a sin most heinous in its nature, and most awful in its results. (Expository Outlines.)

The three witnesses

Christianity puts forth very lofty claims. She claims to be the true faith, and the only true one. She avows her teachings to be Divine, and therefore infallible; while for her great Teacher, the Son of God, she demands Divine worship, and the unreserved confidence and obedience of men. Now, to justify such high claims, the gospel ought to produce strong evidence, and it does so. The armoury of external evidences is well stored with weapons of proof. The gospel also bears within itself its own evidence, it has a self-proving power. It is so pure, so holy, so altogether above the inventive capacity of fallen man, that it must be of God. But neither with these external or internal evidences have we to do now, but I call your attention to the three witnesses which are spoken of in the text, three great witnesses still among us, whose evidence proves the truth of our religion, the Divinity of our Lord, and the future supremacy of the faith.

I. Our Lord himself was attested by these three witnesses. If you will carefully read in the twenty ninth chapter of the Book of Exodus, or in the eighth chapter of the Book of Leviticus, you will see that every priest came by the anointing Spirit, by water, and by blood, as a matter of type, and if Jesus Christ be indeed the priest that was for to come, He will be known by these three signs. Godly men in the olden times also well understood that there was no putting away of sin except with these three things; in proof of which we will quote David’s prayer, “Purge me with hyssop”--that is, the hyssop dipped in blood--“and I shall be clean; wash me”--there is the water--“and I shall be whiter than snow”; and then, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free Spirit.” Thus the blood, the water, and the Spirit were recognised of old as necessary to cleanse from guilt, and if Jesus of Nazareth be indeed able to save His people from their sins, He must come with the triple gift--the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Now it was evidently so. Our Lord was attested by the Spirit. The Spirit of God bore witness to Christ in the types and prophecies, “Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost”; and Jesus Christ answers to those prophecies. The Spirit abode with our Lord all His life long, and to crown all, after He had died and risen again, the Holy Ghost gave the fullest witness by descending in full power upon the disciples at Pentecost. It is also manifest that our Lord came with water too. He came not by the water merely as a symbol, but by that which the water meant, by unsullied purity of life. With Jesus also was the blood. This distinguished Him from John the Baptist, who came by water, but Jesus came “not by water only, but by water and blood.” We must not prefer any one of the three witnesses to another, but what a wonderful testimony to Christ was the blood! From the very first He came with blood, for John the Baptist cried, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” In His ministry there was often a clear testimony to His future sufferings and shedding of blood, for to the assembled crowd He said, “Except a man eat My flesh and drink My blood, there is no life in him”; while to His disciples He spake of the decease which He should shortly accomplish at Jerusalem. However pure the life He led, had He never died He could not have been the Saviour appointed to bear the iniquity of us all. The blood was needed to complete the witness. The blood must flow with the water, the suffering with the serving.

II. These three remain as standing witnesses to him to all time. And first, the Holy Spirit is witness at this hour that the religion of Jesus is the truth, and that Jesus is the Son of God. By His Divine energy He convinces men of the truth of the gospel; and these so convinced are not only persons who, through their education, are likely to believe it, but men like Saul of Tarsus, who abhor the whole thing. He pours His influences upon men, and infidelity melts away like the iceberg in the Gulf Stream; He touches the indifferent and careless, and they repent, believe, and obey the Saviour. Then, too, the Spirit goes forth among believers, and by them He bears witness to our Lord and His gospel. How mightily does He comfort the saints! And He does the same when He gives them guidance, enlightenment, and elevation of soul. The next abiding witness in the Church is the water--not the water of baptism, but the new life implanted in Christians, for that is the sense in which John’s Master had used the word “water”: “The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” The world’s conscience knows that the religion of Jesus is the religion of purity, and if professed Christians fall into uncleanness the world knows that such a course of action does not arise out of the religion of Christ, but is diametrically opposite to it. The gospel is perfect, and did we wholly yield to its sway sin would be abhorred by us, and slain in us, and we should live on earth the life of the perfect ones above. The third abiding witness is the blood. The blood of Christ is still on the earth, for when Jesus bled it fell upon the ground and was never gathered up. O earth, thou still art bespattered with the blood of the murdered Son of God, and if thou dost reject Him this will curse thee. But, O humanity, thou art blessed with the drops of that precious blood, and believing in Him it doth save thee. The blood of Jesus, after speaking peace to the conscience, inflames the heart with fervent love, and full often leads men to high deeds of consecration, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, such as can scarce be understood till they are traced back to that amazing love which bled upon the tree.

III. This triple yet united witness is peculiarly forcible within believing hearts. John tells us, “He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself.” Now, these three witnesses bear testimony in our souls abidingly. I speak not of years ago, but of last night, when you prayed, and were heard. Did not the Spirit when He helped you to pray, bear witness that the gospel was no lie? Was not the answer to your prayer good evidence? The next witness in us is the water, or the new and pure life. Do you feel the inner life? You are conscious that you are not what you used to be, you are conscious of a new life within your soul which you never knew till the date of your conversion, and that new life within you is the living and incorruptible seed which liveth and abideth forever. Witnessing within us is also the blood. This is a witness which never fails, speaking in us better things than the blood of Abel. It gives us such peace that we can sweetly live and calmly die. It gives us such access to God that sometimes when we have felt its power we have drawn as near to our Father as if we had seen Him face to face. And oh, what safety the blood causes us to enjoy! We feel that we cannot perish while the crimson canopy of atonement by blood hangs over our head. Thus I have tried to show that these three witnesses testify in our souls; I beg you now to notice their order. The Spirit of God first enters the heart, perhaps long before the man knows that such is the case; the Spirit creates the new life, which repents and seeks the Saviour, that is the water; and that new life flies to the blood of Jesus and obtains peace. Having observed their order, now note their combination. “These three agree in one,” therefore every true believer should have the witness of each one, and if each one does not witness in due time, there is cause for grave suspicion,

IV. These witnesses certify to us the ultimate triumph of our religion. Is the Spirit working through the gospel? then the gospel will win the day, because the Spirit of God is almighty, and complete master over the realm of mind. He has the power to illuminate the intellect, to win the affections, to curb the will, and change the entire nature of man, for He worketh all things after His own pleasure, and, like the wind, He “bloweth where He listeth.” Next, the gospel must conquer, because of the water, which I have explained to be the new life of purity. What says John? “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.” It is impossible for the gospel to be vanquished so long as there remains in the world one soul that is born of God. Living and incorruptible seed abideth forever! Lastly, the gospel must spread and conquer because of the blood. God, the everlasting Father, has promised to Jesus by covenant, of which the blood is the seal, that He “shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.” As surely as Christ died on the Cross, He must sit on a universal throne. (C. H. Spurgeon.)