To reawaken this in their consciousness, he repeats, is the object of his epistle. This is to him the first and the chief thing. In it is included all which is necessary for the inner man; since this true divine life comprehends in itself, all which man needs for time and eternity. It is the exhaustless source of satisfaction to the spirit, so formed, so constituted in its very nature, that it can satisfy itself with nothing less than God; can find its true life, its true happiness, only in that fellowship with him which is bestowed alone through his Son. "These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, who believe on the name of the Son of God." [4]

This then was the Apostle's object, that believers might know how much has been bestowed upon them in their faith. True they must, as believers, have known this from the beginning; but then, in human life, all things slide so easily into the mechanical form of habit! The current of life sweeps us along; and though one may indeed abide in the faith, yet he may lose more and more the vivid consciousness of the treasure therein imparted to him. Hence he must ever draw anew from the divine life-fountain opened to him through faith; the consciousness of that which he has therein received, must be continually revived and invigorated; and from faith must the knowledge of that, which was first received in faith, continually develop itself anew. There can be no halting here. Unless the fountain of faith is itself dried up, there must proceed from it a progressive development. Hence he writes to those who have already long believed, as if they were now first to learn, that by believing in Jesus as the Son of God they became partakers of eternal life. Their joy in that divine possession was to be continually renewed and increased. They were again and again to be reminded, that no power of earth can bestow upon them anything higher, anything more; to be thus warned against the treacherous arts of those false teachers, who sought to unsettle them in their faith, commending to them something else as the truth or as a higher truth; to be thereby established in this faith, under all temptations and conflicts.