The New Testament embodies this unique Apostolic experi- ence. There are critical considerations which give a graduated value to its materials. Some portions are more near the centre than others. Some passages and sections are relegated to the fringe. Some may have a doubtful claim. There is a certain variance in tone : a certain growth : a certain personal element. All this can be allowed for, and rationally examined and classified and estimated. But the main bulk is there, as the record of the impression which was made on those who came within that incomparable and authoritative experience. This is what they said who saw and touched and handled and proved the livin» Presence of the Christ. This is what it came to. This is the thing that happened to them, and this is the language in which they came to express it. They could not say what they had passed through in any other way. They could not find any other type of terms that would adequately convey to themselves or to others the fact which experience had pressed home upon their innermost being.
* George MacDonald, Poetical Works, i. 259.
62 THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD
And how would they express it? What are the words m which they present it ? Well, they could not stop short of an ultimate verdict, which became quite inevitable to all those who came under the supreme experience. They might tremble to say it ; or wonder how it came to be so inevitable ; or brood over it before they said it; or find it break from them in a single outburst of irresistible inspiration. But one and all come to it. One and all say it. One and all feel that nothing short of it will adequately signalize their inward conviction. It was impossible to be inside that experience of living with Jesus, or of seeing Him in His Eisen Reality, without letting their belief culminate and crystallize in a simple victorious expression. The Word had been made Flesh. It was " the Word of God " in human flesh. God had sent forth His Son. " Truly, this was the Christ, the Son of the Highest." " God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son," " the express image of his Person." " We beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father." " God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son ... in the like- ness of sinful flesh, to condemn sin in the flesh." It must come to that. That is the heart and core of the whole matter. That is the joy and the fellowship into which believers are invited by those to whom the Life was manifested — the Eternal Life which was with the Father. '* That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you." " We know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ." " This is the true God, and Eternal Life."
I know what beauty is, for Thou Hast set the world within my heart; Of me Thou madest it a part;
I never loved it more than now.
I know the Sabbath afternoons;
The light asleep upon the graves;
Against the sky the poplar waves; The river murmurs organ tunes.
I know the spring with bud and bell;
The hush in summer woods at night;
Autumn, when leaves let in more light; Fantastic winter's lovely spell.
ST. JOHN I. 14 6z
I know the rapture music gives, Its mystery of ordered tones : Dream-muffled soul, it loves and moans,
And, half-alive, comes in and lives.
And verse I know, whose concord high Of thought and music lifts the soul Where many a glimmering starry slioal
Glides through the Godhead's living sky.
Yea, Beauty's regnant All I know — The imperial head, the thoughtful eyes ; The God-imprisoned harmonies
That out in gracious motions go.
But I leave all, 0 Son of man.
Put off my shoes, and come to Thee, Most lovely Thou of all I see.
Most potent Thou of all that can !
As child forsakes his favourite toy, His sisters' sport, his new-found nest, And, climbing to his mother's breast,
Enjoys yet more his late-left joy —
I lose to find. On fair-browed bride Fair pearls their fairest light afford; So, gathered round Thy glory. Lord,
All glory else is glorified.^
1. " We beheld his glory." St. John is telling us what of his own immediate knowledge he knows — testifying what he had heard, what he had seen with his ej^es, what he had beheld and his hands had handled. An eye-witness to Christ's majesty, he had seen His glory and bears his willing witness to it. Nor must we fancy that he gives us merely a subjective opinion of his own, as if he were teUing us only that the man Jesus was so full of grace and truth in His daily walk that he, looking upon Him admiringly, had been led to conjecture that He was more than man. He testifies not to subjective opinion but to objective fact. And precisely what St. John witnesses is that the Word did become flesh, and dwelt among men, full of grace and truth, and
* George MacDonald.
64 THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD