^ " 0 ye hypocrites," said Christ to the Pharisees, " ye can discern the face of the sky ; but can ye not discern the signs of the times ? " At first it seems hard that men should be con-
38o TRUTH AND FREEDOM
demned for not having insight enough to discern the signs of the times, that is, to see what were the really important circum- stances in their surroundings and what was the line of conduct, of thought and action, which would make them useful to their day and generation. But the justice of the condemnation be- comes evident when we realize that such want of discernment is due, not to merely intellectual limitations, but to that lack of truthfulness of soul which alone makes a man open to the inner meaning of the facts before him. In truth, men often go through life only half-awake, or seeing as in dreams only the pictures evoked by their own desires and feelings ; and thus that which is most important in the experiences of their own lives is all but entirely lost to them.^
3. What, then, is the Truth which Christ says shall make us free ? Truth is the vital law or principle of life. " If ye continue in my word ... ye shall know the truth." Clearly, this sequence of ideas regards truth as the vital principle of life. It is not a theory, a calculation, an abstraction, a logical deduction, but a practical continuing in the word of life. When a man has discovered the word which fulfils his life he has found the very soul and essence of truth. In no other way can truth be found, in no other way can it be satisfactorily tested.
(1) The essential truth for the seed that is sown in the ground consists in the vital principle in virtue of which it germinates and unfolds its own proper life. By this principle it is distinguished from all the other products of the world, and receives its own charter of individual existence. The truth of the barley seed lies in that principle by which it unfolds its particular and distinctive qualities, and produces wholesome barley, and not something else. The truth of the rose tree is held in the principle which distinguishes it from all other flower- ing plants, and causes it to produce the beauty of the rose. Plainly enough, the truth of any and every plant does not consist in what botany discourses about them, but in the vital principle which gives them distinctive existence and perfection of life. The principle is, of course, as wide as creation. The essential truth for all created things lies in the potent principle in which they "live and move and have their being." In the
* E. Caird, Lay Sermons Delivered cU Balliol College, 30.
ST. JOHN VIII. 32, 36 381
last issue, universal truth is the eternal pulse of the life of God.
(2) The truth of intellect lies, therefore, not in any discoveries or theories of the human mind, but in the deeper laws by which the mind itself is constituted and developed. The things that are essential to mind, not the theories that are incidental to it, are its truth. The things that cannot be denied without contra- dicting the being of thought are indisputable truth. Among these are the ideas of order, arrangement, cause and effect, and universal relation.
(3) When we carry this principle into the province of the human spirit, we reach the deepest home of truth, the last word upon which all others depend, to which all others are subjugated, and in which all others are completed. The truth for the human spirit is that which is experienced and realized by it as the energy and satisfaction of its own life ; that which, in flowing through its being, imparts inspiration, expansion, and potency. For example, the consciousness of an indwelling God, the pulse of a universal moral law, and the potencies of immortahty, are vital elements of our spiritual nature, being essential to spiritual self-realization. The spirit of man cannot deny these without committing spiritual suicide. These are as fundamental a part of spiritual being as order and relation are of intellectual being. It is in spiritual life, and there alone, that the truth of the spirit can be tested and approved. The word of Jesus Christ answers this test; for it has been proved by man's spiritual nature to give life, and to give it abundantly. No arguments in the world can countervail a fact like this. As the principle of life for a tree constitutes the truth of that tree, so the proved principle of life for the spirit of man constitutes the truth for his spirit. In the word of Christ the vital principle of spiritual life is given in its perfect form ; the indwelling God is invested with supreme glory, the consciousness of moral law is uplifted into its perfected grandeur, and the pulse of immortal life is flushed with the final energy of demonstration and revelation. In Jesus Christ the spiritual life of man has experienced a power and development unknown to it before. " As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name." For the spirit (which is the only rightful judge), this proof is irrefragable,