Be assured, come what come will. What once lives never dies — what here attains To a beginning, has no end, still gains And never loses aught.^
3. " He that believeth on me " — " Whosoever lelieveth on me." — Christ asks us to believe in Him, but not without first giving us a proof of His belief in us. " I came that they may have life," He said. That life was His life ; He felt it in Himself, felt its infinity. And as He came. He saw the men that He was coming to ; He saw all that was base about them, saw how superficial and how shallow they were. He saw them filled with sin through the love of sin, and yet He said, " I am coming to give Myself through the love of Me, to give them Myself deeper and deeper, little by little, until they shall have received Me perfectly." Look what a faith in the possibilities of human nature the Incarnation implied! The faith of Christ in man — that is what is written in the Incarnation. The faith of Christ in us — that is what is written in the visit of Christ to us, when, coming and standing directly across our path of wickedness and death. He says to us calmly and surely, " I am come that you might have life, the life of holiness which is by love of Me."
^ Browning, Parleyings tvith Certain People.
48o THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
Such life, now abundant and evermore abiding, Christ affords to all who believe on Him. But how is it that believing on Christ thus puts us beyond the reach and power of death ? The entire truth that Christ had in mind was this : that faith in Himself, by its own law, works away from death towards life. For Christ is life ; to believe on a person is to become like that person, or one with him. Hence, to believe on Christ the Life is to become a sharer with Him in whatever He is, therefore in His life. We are told that Christ could not be holden of death ; faith in Him works towards the same freedom.
^ The assimilating power of faith, that is, the power of faith to make those who believe like that in which they believe, is a recognized principle. The whole nature follows the faith, and gravitates towards its object. A moulding process goes on ; faith is the workman and the object of faith is the pattern. Starting within, down amongst the desires and affections, it works outward, till the external man becomes in form, feature, and expression like the absorbing object. We meet men every day in whose faces we see avarice, lust, or conceit, as plainly as if it were imprinted on their foreheads. They have so long thought and felt under the power of these qualities that they are made over into their image. A man who worships money comes to wear the likeness of a money- worshipper down to the tips of his fingers ; his eyes and nose and the very posture of his figure bear witness to the transforming power of faith. The Hindu who worships Brahma sleeping on the stars in immovable calm gets to wear a fixed expression. The mediaeval saints who spent days and nights in contemplation of the crucifix, came to show the very lineaments of the man of sorrows, as art had depicted them, and sometimes, it is said, the very marks of His torture in their own bodies. It is a principle wonderful in its method and power. We are all passing into the likeness of that in which we believe. There is no need that men should be labelled, or that they should make confession with their lips. Very early the faith hangs out a label, and soon the whole man becomes a confession of its truth. You have but to look, and you will see here a voluptuary, there a sluggard; here a miser, there a scholar; here a bigot, there a sceptic ; here a thinker, there a fool ; here a cruel, unjust man, there one kind, generous, true ; here one base throughout, there one radiant with purity. It is wonderful, this power of faith, first moulding, then revealing. It is the power of love directed by will, which together makes up faith ; and as it works out so it
ST. JOHN XI. 25, 26 481
works within, shaping all things there in like manner. It is by this principle that Christ unites men to Himself.^
Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name ? Builder and maker. Thou, of houses not made with hands ! What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same ? Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power
expands ? There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as
before ; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good
more; On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect round.^
* T. T. Hunger, Tlie Freedom of Faith, 281. * Browning, AU VogUr.
ST. JOHN — 31
The Tears of Jesus.