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 hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: for he that biddeth him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds,” 2 John ix. 11. Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the love which he celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. “God is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe,” 1 Tim. iv. 10. A fatal “specially!” “Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith,” Gal. vi. 10. An equally pregnant “especially!” “A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself,” Titus iii. 10, 11. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,” John iii. 36. “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast into the sea,” Mark ix. 42; Matt. xviii. 6. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned,” Mark xvi. 16. The distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible and faith as it has exhibited itself in later times, is only the distinction between the bud and the plant. In the bud I cannot so plainly see what is obvious in the matured plant; and yet the plant lay already in the bud. But that which is obvious, sophists of course will not condescend to recognise; they confine themselves to the distinction between explicit and implicit existence,—wilfully overlooking their essential identity.

Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into persecution, where the power of faith meets with no contradiction, where it does not find itself in collision with a power foreign to faith,