2. Next, this passage tells us that the character of Christ is the character of God. We cannot read the Gospels without a sense of the infinite piety, tenderness, holiness, and magnanimity of Jesus. Were the Gospels but a pure human idyll, still the picture they present of the character of Christ would be the loveliest known to man. The character of Christ is the character of God. He who told the stories of the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son, is God speaking out of the infinite tenderness of the Divine heart. He who healed the leper, blessed the Magdalene, forgave the thief, is God in His relation to human frailty, folly, and sin. The way in which Christ thought and acted is the precise measure of the way in which God thinks and acts. All theologies must come to that test.
^ All that our faith in the Incarnation warrants us in assert- ing is, that in Jesus Christ we have " authentic tidings of invisible things," — that in Him the Divine and human are so united and blent that we can draw certain and reliable conclusions as to the nature of God, so far as that nature can and need be known by us. Think what this means ! Think what the difference is between saying, " Jesus is only a man seeking God, — adding one more to the many guesses as to the nature of God " ; and saying, "In Jesus we see God seeking man^ and seeking him out of pure love in order to save him " ; " Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners " ; " The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." True : there may, there mmt be, mysteries in the Divine Nature far beyond what even the Incarnation can tell us. The Incarnation tells us all that we need to know. When we " have told its isles of light, and fancied all beyond," there must yet be heights and depths, in that High and Lofty
» W. Bright, The Law of Faith, 118.
ST. JOHN I. I 17
One who inhabiteth eternity, which no fancy, however soaring, can penetrate.^
^ If preachers still speak as though the Jehovah of a barbarous people were the true God whom Jesus called the Father in heaven, reject their message, for they know not what they say. If from this or that isolated saying of Christ or His Apostles visions of future torture have been evolved which revolt the human heart, and outrage its sense of pity, apply to them this simple test — Would Jesus have done this even to the most sinful of men ? And if you know that Jesus would not have done it, you may be sure that God will not do it either. " I and my Father are One," said Christ; between God and Christ there is perfect moral accord, absolute spiritual identity. " The Word was with God, and the Word was God." 2
fl Henry Ward Beecher put before the Church the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ which to me seems absolutely irrefutable. He did not merely gather texts strewn here and there over the Bible page, and piece them together and say, "This Book tells me that He was God, and I must believe it because the Book says it." No; he went back into his own experience, into the experience of the Christian Church. And what did he find ? He found there, unmistakably, a great yearning after God, a yearning so deep and persistent that only one thing could be concluded — that God put it there, and put it there as a ground of expectation that He would answer the craving which He had created. And out of that came clearly and necessarily the conclusion that the God who made man thus to need and yearn after Himself must answer him, must come to him, or must cease to be God. Thus it was that, arguing from Christian experience, Beecher learned that it was reasonable and obligatory for the God who made man to come to him, and speak to him, and work for him, and die for him. Then bringing these observations and reasonings to the light of the Scriptural revelation, and looking at the historic Christ from the standpoint of human cravings and needs, Beecher could not escape the conclusion that the Christ portrayed in the Gospels was God's answer to man's necessity. And in grateful surprise he cried, " Why, this is God ! There is not a single thing I would have in God but I find in Christ. There is not a single thing in Christ I would not like to have in God. Why, this is, this must be, God ! I worship and I adore." ^
1 D. J. Vaughan, The Present Trial of Faith, 47.
2 W. J. Dawson, The Reproach of Christ, 33. ' Charles A. Berry, 159.
ST. JOHN — 2
i8 THE WORD
In Christ I feel the heart of God
Throbbing from heaven through earth;
Life stirs again within the clod, Eenewed in beauteous birth ;
The soul springs up, a flower of prayer,
Breathing His breath out on the air.
In Christ I touch the hand of God, From His pure height reached down,