ST. JOHN XVI. 23 257
" What wilt thou that I should do unto thee ? Be it unto thee even as thou wilt."
*ff We all know with what confidence the clerk of a business house goes to a bank with a draft " in the name " of his firm. If he were to present it in his own name, that would be a very- different affair. The demand made on behalf of the firm is instantly honoured. We can see that there is all the difference in this instance between acting in a private, and acting in a public capacity. To ask as belonging to a business corporation for the purposes of that corporation is one thing. To ask as a private individual, with merely personal ends in view, is quite another thing.i
* A. W. Robinson, The Voice of Joy and Health, 68.
ST. JOHN (2) — 17
Life in the Knowledge of God.
«59
Literature.
Allen (T.), Children of the Resurrection, 72. Armstrong (R. A.), Memoir and Sermons, 248. Barry (A.), Sermons preached at Westminster Abbey, 3, 71. Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, i. 140. Clark (H. W.), Meanings and Methods of the Spiritual Life, 14. Crump (W. W.), A Buried Sphinx, 1. Eyton (R.), The Apostles' Creed, 195. How (W. W.), The Knowledge of God, 3. • Jowett (J. H.), Thirsting for the Springs, 114. Kingsley (C), Sermons for the Times, 14. Lambert (B.), Memoir, Sermons, and Lectures, 129. Lonsdale (J.), Sermons, 162.
Lyttelton (A. T.), College and University Sermons, 1. M'^Leod (M. J.), TJie Unsearchable Riches, 93. Pearce (J.), The Alabaster Box, 70.
Sandford (C. W.), Counsel to English Cliurchmen Abroad, 194. Sinclair (W. M.), Christ and our Times, 91. Swann (N. E. E.), New Lights on the Old Faith, 169. Walpole (G. H. S.), Vital Religion, 1. Christian World Pulpit, xxxiii. 21 (Brooks) ; xxxviii. 291 (Leitch) ;
Ixviii. 259 (Home) ; Ixxiii. 153 (Home) ; Ixxx. 81 (Alexander). Churchman's Pulpit : Easter Day and Season, xi. 314. Scotch Sermons (1880), 324 (Semple), 365 (Stevenson). Treasury (New York), xiv. 759 (Scudder).
stt>
Life in the Knowledge of God.
And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ. — John xvii. 3.
1. The prayer of Christ from which this text is taken is in some respects the most precious relic of the past. We have here the words which Christ addressed to God in the critical hour of His life — the words in which He uttered the deepest feehng and thought of His Spirit, clarified and concentrated by the prospect of death. Even among the prayers of Christ this stands by itself as that in which He gathered up the retrospect of His past and surveyed the future of His Church; in which, as if already dying, He solemnly presented to the Father Himself, His work, and His people, Eecognizing the grandeur of the occasion, we may be disposed to agree with Melanchthon, who, when giving his last lecture, shortly before his death, said: " There is no voice which has ever been heard, either in heaven or in earth, more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime, than this prayer offered up by the Son of God Himself." ^
2. The essence of eternal life is here defined and represented
as consisting in the knowledge of the only true God, and of Jesus
Christ His messenger, knowledge being taken comprehensively as
including faith, love, and worship, and the emphasis lying on the
objects of such knowledge. The Christian religion is described in
opposition to paganism on the one hand, with its many gods, and
to Judaism on the other, which, believing in the one true God,
rejected the claims of Jesus to be the Christ. It is further so
described as to exclude by anticipation Arian and Socinian views
of the Person of Christ. The names of God and of Jesus are put
on a level as objects of religious regard, whereby an importance
^ Marcus Dods, The Gospel of St. John, 247. afii
262 LIFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
is assigned to the latter incompatible with the dogma that Jesus is a mere man.
3, It may seem strange that, in addressing His Father, Jesus should deem it needful to explain wherein eternal life consists ; and some, to get rid of the difficulty, have supposed that the sentence is an explanatory reflection interwoven into the prayer by the Evangelist. Yet the words were perfectly appropriate in the mouth of Jesus Himself. The first clause is a confession by the man Jesus of His own faith in God His Father as the supreme object of knowledge ; and the whole sentence is really an argu- ment in support of the prayer, Glorify Thy Son. The force of the declaration lies in what it implies respecting the existing ignorance of men concerning the Father and His Son. It is as if Jesus said : Father, Thou knowest that eternal life consists in knowing Thee and Me. Look around, then, and see how few possess such knowledge. The heathen world knoweth Thee not — it worships idols; the Jewish world is equally ignorant of Thee in spirit and in truth ; for while boasting of knowing Thee, it rejects Me. The whole world is overspread with a dark veil of ignorance and superstition. Take Me out of it, therefore, not because I am weary of its sin and darkness, but that I may be- come to it a sun. Hitherto My efforts to illuminate the darkness have met with small success. Grant Me a position from which I can send forth light over all the earth.