By blessed ways before untrod, To lift us to our crown;
Victory that only perfect is
Through loving sacrifice, like His.
Holding His hand, my steadied feet
May walk the air, the seas; On life and death His smile falls sweet,
Lights up all mysteries: Stranger nor exile can I be In new worlds where He leadeth me.
Not my Christ only; He is ours;
Humanity's close bond ; Key to its vast, unopened powers.
Dream of our dreams beyond. What yet we shall be none can tell : Now are we His, and all is well.^
3. Lastly, in this truth we have the guarantee of authority and 'permanence in the Christian religion. If religion is a need of the soul, and a primal fact in human life, we must have a centre of authority in religion which is immovable and immutable amid the impermanent elements of human thought. We demand that the truth which involves the most solemn of all issues shall be permanent ; that its evolution shall be complete ; that it shall be the sure word of prophecy, changeless and steadfast amid all the change of time and thought. And in Christ that Word is spoken. He speaks with authority, and not as the scribes. He is " the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." No man ever yet took the Word as his guide without finding in that Word a complete code of directions for life and death ; and something more than a code of directions — an inner light by which the
1 Lucy Larcom.
ST. JOHN I. I 19
spirit lived and walked in the light, as God is in the light. He, who in sundry times and divers manners, spake to us by the Prophets, has at last spoken to us by His Son. God's last Word is Christ. Rest here : " He who hath known me hath known the Father also."
^ If Jesus was not God, Christianity is not a religion, but a contribution to moral philosophy. It is in this latter way that it appeals to you. But mankind wants a religion : and it is as a religion that Christianity works in the world.^
(1) How impermanent human thought is, we all know. Men are continually shedding their beliefs and opinions as trees shed their bark, and snakes their skins, in the process of growth. In the rapid march of human knowledge mankind is like a great army which casts its baggage away that it may move unencumbered towards the battles of the future. No man thinks in mid-life what he thought in youth. The great teachers of the world themselves have no abiding word, and often their latest teaching is a direct' recantation of their earliest. But we all feel that in a true Divine religion no such process of change could be tolerated. We cannot have one religion for youth and another for age ; a truth that may be true to-day and false to-morrow ; a voice that contradicts itself, a revelation that varies in its message with the varying tastes of men. No ; we ask, and justly ask, for religion a changeless, abiding, authoritative voice that will speak through all our perplexities the sure Word by which the soul may live. Listen, then, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Here is thge true authoritative voice.
Across the sea, along the shore,
In numbers more and ever more,
From lonely hut and busy town,
The valley through, the mountain down,
What was it ye went out to see,
Ye silly folk of Galilee ?
The reed that in the wind doth shake?
The weed that washes in the lake ?
The reeds that waver, the weeds that float ? —
A young man preaching in a boat.
^ Life and Letters of Mandcll Creighton, ii. 256.
20 THE WORD
What was it ye went out to hear, By sea and land, from far and near ? A teacher? Kather seek the feet Of those who sit in Moses' seat. Go humbly seek, and bow to them, Far off in great Jerusalem. From them that in her courts ye saw, Her perfect doctors of the law, What is it ye came here to note ? — A young man preaching in a boat.
A prophet ! Boys and women weak !
Declare, or cease to rave ; Whence is it he hath learned to speak ?
Say, who his doctrine gave ?
A prophet? Prophet wherefore he
Of all in Israel tribes? He teacheth with authority,
And not as do the scriles}
(2) This Word of God has indeed illumined and quickened all men and all races in their several degrees, Buddha and Confucius and Zoroaster, Zeno and Pythagoras, Indians and Persians, Baby- lonians and Egyptians, Greeks and Komans. He has been present in universal history, as He has been present in every individual soul of man. But nevertheless He has specially visited one family, one race. There was a prerogative tribe selected in due time from the rest, a first-fruits of the nations of the earth, a peculiar people consecrated to God. Though there be many tributaries, the main stream of religious history runs in this channel. To this nation the Word of God came as to His own inheritance, spake as to His own household — spake by lawgivers and prophets, by priests and kings, spake in divers stages and divers manners, spake with an intensity and a power and a directness, with a continuity and a fulness, with which He spake to no other nation besides. In neither case was the response equal to the appeal. Among the nations at large " the light " shone " in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not " : to the descendants of Abraham " he came as to his own " vine- yard ; yet " his own received him not." Nevertheless among both ^ Clough, Poemst 46.