S6 RELIABILITY OF THE REDEEMER
house. You clung to that faith when the rest went. I knew it all the time, and I never said a word to contradict you, because it was a true and sure hope, truer and surer and sweeter than you knew. If it had not been so, I would have told you ; but it is so. This time you may let your hearts go free ; beyond death there are no disappointments." ^
Still on the lips of all we question,
The finger of God's silence lies ; Will the lost hands in ours be folded ?
Will the shut eyelids ever rise ? Oh, friend, no proof beyond this yearning.
This outreach of our hearts we need; God will not mock the hope He giveth,
No love He prompts shall vainly plead. Then let us stretch our hands in darkness,
And call our loved ones o'er and o'er> Some day their arms will close about us,
And the old voices speak once more.
There are many matters in the short parenthetical sentence, and they all make for strength. Let us touch four things — Christ's Knowledge, His Tenderness, His Confirmation of our Human Instincts, and His Encouragement.
1. Christ's knowledge. — The text is a simple parenthesis in the midst of one of His greatest teachings, but it seems more than the most elaborate argument. He is speaking about the future life as the hope and consolation of those whom death bereaves, and He affirms concerning it some very definite things — things which are a clear addition to human knowledge about it. And the manner of His affirmation is as remarkable as its matter. He calmly assumes His own certain knowledge. He is not an inquirer about the unseen world. He does not, like Plato, rest His teachings upon reasonings and probabilities. He speaks with absolute certainty. Clearly He believed Himself to have certain knowledge.
We have in this testimony of Jesus our surest guarantee of
the existence of the heavenly world. Others have guessed, hoped,
dreamed, speculated, poetized about heaven: Jesiis knows. For
He has come down from heaven. The world into which our dead
* W. Robertson Nicoll, 77i< Lamp o/Sacri/iu, 155.
ST. JOHN XIV. 2 87
pass one by one, the veil closing instantly behind them without a sign or token sent back to tell us how they fare, the world into which our prayers are sent evoking no audible response — He has dwelt in that world, ruled over it, and is the Master of its secrets ; and He calls it paradise, He calls it My Fathers house. " I speak unto you," He says, " the things that I have seen with the Father. . . . We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen." So He declared to Nicodemus, referring to heavenly as well as to earthly things. How these quiet words of Jesus reassure us, bewildered with the haze of our modern doubt !
^ Away down in the darkness, in the heart of the great steamer, the engineer stands. He never sees how the vessel moves. He does not know where she is going. It is not his duty to know. It is his only to answer every signal, to start his engine, to quicken or slow its motion, to reverse it, just as he is directed by the one whose part it is to see. He has nothing whatever to do with the vessel's course. He sees not an inch of the sea.
It is not our part to guide our life in this world, amid its tangled afiairs. It is ours just to do our duty, our Master's bidding. Christ's hand is on the helm. He sees all the future. He pilots us. Let us learn to thank God that we cannot know the future, that we need not know it. Christ knows it, and it is better to go on in the dark with Him, letting Him lead, than to go alone in the light, and choose our own path.^
Who knows ? God knows : and what He knows
Is well and best. The darkness hideth not from Him, but glows Clear as the morning or the evening rose
Of east or west.
Wherefore man's strength is to sit still:
Not wasting care To antedate to-morrow's good or ill; Yet watching meekly, watching with goodwill,
Watching to prayer.
Some rising or some setting ray
From east or west, If not to-day, why then another day Will light each dove upon the homeward way
Safe to her nest.^
* J. R. Miller, Glimpses through Life's Windows, 85. » 0. G. Rossetti, Poems, 138.
88 RELIABILITY OF THE REDEEMER
2. Christ's tenderness. — " If it were not so, I would have told you." It is a parenthesis of singular significance and emphasis, full of human considerateness and tenderness. It is a measure of the greatness of the revelation which He was making to them. He would not trifle with this great human hope of immortality. Had there been no such satisfaction for it He would have told them. It was impossible for Him to deceive them with a false or uncertain hope, or to permit them to be deceived. He came to teach them about spiritual realities, and this was one of them.
^ Somewhere in the East Tennessee mountains a craggy blufif of limestone rises sheer from the plain, some five hundred feet in height. At its base lies the peaceful valley stretching away into the distance. A storm gathers on the horizon. The clouds fly rapidly together, the lightning leaps, there is one terrific thunder-clap. The bluff echoes the roar of the storm. Down on the side of the bluff a stunted bush is growing from the scanty soil that has drifted into a fissure of rock. On the bush a bird sits and swings and sings. The bluff echoes the song of the bird. At the base of the cliff a little child has fallen on the stones and is crying over the hurt of the fall. The bluff echoes the child's cry. Yonder in the cabin door a woman sits at her work, and as she works, the words of an old hymn float out on the open air. The bluff echoes the woman's hymn. Christ is like the echoing bluff. He catches every note that issues from human hearts, and in responding He joins the strength of the rock to a tenderness that beats swift and helpful sympathy for every sob and song that trembles in the air about Him.