The Book of Light in the Hand of Love: A plea for the British and Foreign Bible Society / A sermon preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, on Tuesday, April 30, 1872

Transcribed from the 1872 Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer edition by David Price.
A PLEA FOR The British and Foreign Bible Society .
A SERMON
PREACHED IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, ON TUESDAY , APRIL 30 , 1872 .
BY C. J. VAUGHAN, D.D. MASTER OF THE TEMPLE, AND CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.
LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 1872.
1 John i. 5. iv. 16. “ God is Light .” “ God is Love .”
Round these two centres revolves the Theology of St. John.
He is named “the Divine,” the Theologian; and this is his scheme of Theology, his system of Divinity; not an enumeration of doctrines, not an enunciation of Articles, not Calvinism, not Arminianism, not Romanism, and not Protestantism; but just these two principles, higher and deeper than any question which divides parties or distinguishes sects: the first, “God is Light,” and the second, “God is Love.”
We are not saying, God forbid! that two brief maxims, one a metaphor, the other an abstraction, in such sense comprehend Theology as that there shall be no need of express declarations of fact, or of definite revelations of truth, beside or beyond, within or above, them. Nor are we saying—this, too, would be ignorance, as much as irreverence—that this very Epistle of St. John is destitute of method or system or logical coherence; consists only of a few platitudes and a few tautologies, the amiable feeblenesses of a pious old age, encouraging the scoffer’s notion that there is nothing in religion but what comes naturally to every man, whether to originate, to utter, to judge, or to refuse. Of St. John’s writings, more perhaps than of any part of Holy Scripture, is the Divine saying true, “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” That which to the self-sufficient critic is a simplicity bordering on the puerile, is to the experienced Christian rather a profound mystery, of which the Holy Spirit of God keeps the key.