Our great task, to learn His creed. have been produced and perpetuated in the world without a veritable apprehension of that which He knew and taught concerning God and man. To have this apprehension clearly formed within us must be our ardent and joyful intellectual endeavour. We are not to rest content with the study of single words and separate phrases. The limitations of language, the conditions of transmission, will always expose us to error if we follow that course. The truth as it is in Jesus does not lie in fragments, but in the rounded whole.1 We must get back to the unity and integrity of the thoughts of Jesus, the creed of Christ. The broad outline of His vision of things human and divine, the central verities which appear firm and unchangeable in all the reports of His teaching, the point of view from which He discerned and interpreted the mystery of life, - that is what we must seek. And when we find it, we must take our stand there as men who feel the solid ground beneath their feet. Illustrations and confirmations we may gather from science and history and philosophy. But the rock of certainty is the mind of Jesus, expressed in His living words and in His speak1 See Appendix, note 45. ing life. Beyond this we need not and we cannot go. Here is the ultimatum. This is the truth, we say to men, because Jesus knew it, and said it, and lived it. live in Him to know His But one thing we may not, we dare not, for- We must get. The condition of apprehending, and how much more of preaching, the truth revealed by doctrine. Christ is that we abide in Him. The word of Jesus in the mind of one who does not do the will of Jesus, lies like seed-corn in a mummy's hand. It is only by dwelling with Him and receiving His character, His personality so profoundly, so vitally that it shall be with us as if, in His own words, we had partaken of His flesh and His blood, as if His sacred humanity had been interwoven with the very fibres of our heart and pulsed with secret power in all our veins, - it is thus only that we can be enabled to see His teaching as it is, and set it forth with luminous conviction to the souls of men. And if ever we ourselves become afraid of our own task, and shrink from it; if the scepticism of our age appalls us and chills us to the very marrow; if we question whether a gospel so simple, so absolute, as that which is committed to us can find acceptance in such a world, at such a time as this, - be sure it is Return to because we have gotten out of fellowship with Him who is our Peace and our Hope, our Light and our Strength. A Christless man can never preach Christ. We have been anxious and troubled about many things, and have forgotten the one thing needful. Peace we must have before we can have power. Let us straightway return, in prayer, in meditation, in trust, in faithful simple-hearted obedience, to Him who is the only centre of Peace because He is the only source of authority. "I have a life in Christ to live, I have a death in Christ to die; And must I wait till science give Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet And hear Thine awful voice repeat 1 John Campbell Shairp. Has the potter's moulded shape Leap of man's quickened heart, Throe of his thought's escape, Stings of his soul which dart "Through the barrier of flesh, till keen She climbs from the calm and clear Through turbidity all between From the known to the unknown here, "Then life is to wake and not sleep, "Where, amid what strifes and storms Power is Love - transports, transforms Who aspired from worst to best, Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms." - ROBERT BROWNING, Reverie. |