^ C. C. Albertson, College SermonSy 45. ' J. Laidlaw, StHdi€s in ike Parables, 339.
292 TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?
brief record of our Lord's teaching, contained in the four Gospels, we have it twenty-five times. In St. John's Gospel alone it occurs seventeen times. In this very chapter we read it five times over. No doubt it was ringing in St. Peter's ears when he spoke. Christ's words of eternal life were words about the nature of that life which He came into the world to proclaim, — a life begun in the soul by faith while we live, and perfected in glory when we die. They were words about the way in which this eternal life is provided for sinful man, even the way of His atoning death, as our Substitute, on the Cross. They were words about the terms on which this eternal life is made our own, if we feel our need of it, even the terms of simple faith. As Latimer said, it is but " believe and have." They were words about the training and discipline on the way to eternal life, which are so much needed by man and so richly provided, even the renewing and sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost. They were words about the comforts and encouragements by the way, even Christ's daily help, sympathy, and watchful care.
]I Christ is the source of spiritual life to all who believe in His name. The idea of Divine personality carries with it the idea of revelation, as all our modern discussions show. If the power that is behind the world is a personal power — a character or moral will, and not a mere bhnd force issuing endlessly into space, it cannot, in its very nature, but make itself known to man. And so the Word of God, God in Christ, becomes the essential correlative of the idea of God. If, in other words, there is an eternal life, a moral sphere beyond the present, of which the present is only a faint reflection, this can be known to us only through its expressions in such an one as Christ. That others have a spiritual life like ours we know only through communion with them in word or act. That there is a spiritual life, transcending the world and embracing an eternal hfe, on which the world and humanity rest, and out of which all good that is in the world or man comes, we can know only through its coming near to us in word or act. This is what the Apostles felt Christ had done for them. He had not merely spoken to them of an eternal life. He had not said, " It is a part of My teaching that there is such a life." The Pharisees might have said this But all He said or did was the revelation of this life. They felt themselves, in contact with Him, to be at the same time in contact with a sphere of spiritual being above the world. And so the assurance of the eternal life can only come to any of us straight out of the words
ST. JOHN VI. 68 293
of Christ rather than out of any other source. The word of Christ is the highest evidence for us that there is any higher life at all, any ground of existence that is really eternal beneath all the changes of experience. If we cannot rest here, or get convic- tion here, as we look at Christ, we cannot rest anywhere, or touch the eternal as by faintest contact. In Him, in communion with His spirit, in all that He had ever said to them, the Apostles felt themselves assured of a higher being. They felt the outflow of the eternal life bathing their souls and suffusing them with its own deep serenity. This was why they could not go away with others. Where else could they turn ? " Thou, 0 Christ, art the only true light of our souls. Thou hast the words of eternal life."i
"2. What did Jesus purpose to do ? We see what He is doing among men, but the question is. What did He purpose to do ? Some men go all through life without a purpose. But most of us form a purpose before we have passed far into the years of youth. With one, it is to make a fortune, with another to win fame, with others, to carve, or paint, or write, or fight, or build, or heal, or plough. Now what did Jesus conceive His life's task to be ? Our wonder increases when we learn that He seriously purposed to found a kingdom, to destroy the works of evil, to institute the reign of love among men and among nations, to redeem society by bringing back to goodness and to God all the individuals of which society is composed. Did any other ever undertake a task like that ? Compared with it, the emancipation of a race of slaves, or even the founding of a new nation, is a small thing. Go a little further into His life and we find He purposed and professed to solve the three greatest and gravest problems of life— the_ problems of sin, and sorrow, and death. Now look at His philosophy, His theology. His metaphysics. His ethics. His system, whatever it may be called. His Gospel, let us say, and you will see, potentially if not actually, the materials out of which all this is to be done. There is love, pure and sacrificial, upon which to found a kingdom in the hearts of men, love as the basis of a new brotherhood ; there is grace abounding much more than ever sin abounded ; inward strength and comfort for the heart with sorrow laden ; and there is immortality with which to face the fearful phantasm of death. All these elements