' Dante, Inferno, xxvi. (traus. by Shadwell).
ST. JOHN XVII. 3 267
a father, or mother, or friend, whom we love and value above every one else ; whose ways and thoughts we are thoroughly acquainted with ; and who, we feel, knows us thoroughly, feels with us, cares for us, and longs for our being happy>
3. It is knowledge of God in Christ. — The great want of humanity is the knowledge of God. This want is met by Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Christ has power over all that He might give eternal life. It is He that gives eternal life: it is He that gives the knowledge of the only true God which is eternal life. There is nothing that tends to life in the knowledge you have apart from Him. For the knowledge of the true God and for eternal life we are utterly and entirely dependent on Jesus Christ. Christ came to give us this knowledge, and how did He give it? Not simply by telling us certain truths or teaching certain doctrines about God, but by living among us, as God-man in the flesh breathing our cerulean air, and speaking our human speech, loving us with a human heart, and healing and helping us with human hands, and then telling us that he who had seen Him had seen the Father. This is eternal life, that we should see the glory of God — the love of God — in the face of Jesus Christ.
^ The latest taken away of those who made the happiness of my Oxford life was Kobert Gandell, who ended his days at Wells, of which cathedral he was Canon : — but who was chiefly known at Oxford (where he had passed all his time), first, as Michel Fellow of Queen's ; then, as Tutor of Magdalen Hall and Fellow of Hertford College; but especially as Hebrew Lecturer, and Professor of Syriac and Arabic. I have never known a man who with severe recondite learning combined in a more exquisite degree that peculiar Theological instinct without which an English Hebraist is no better than, — in fact is scarcely as good as, — a learned Jew.^
^ " Jesus Christ whom thou didst send." He is the key to the difficulty which we all must feel more or less when we speak of knowing God. For us men in this human life the knowledge of the Father is the knowledge of the Son, the knowledge of God is the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We have before us in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ the satisfaction of this need of a divinity
^ R. "W. Church, Village Sermons, 143.
' J. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, i. p. xxii.
268 LIFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
which is, if not nearer, at least more apparent, to our human life, and more possible for mortal men to approach. We have before us in the Gospels the pictui'e of God clothed with humanity — treading the streets of an earthly city, living that very life of struggle which seems at first sight to be at the very opposite pole of existence from God. Again and again, through the prison bars of that humanity, there flashed forth the light of the divinity that was in Him ; but His life was a human life — a life like yours and mine ; a life which felt pain and disappointment and temptation, and a life consequently which, though at far distance, it is possible for us to know and to imitate.^
4. What is it to know Christ? Is it to trust Him? Not simply that, if we trust only in something He did long ago. Is it to love Him ? Not simply that, if we love Him only as He stands far back in the past, for the redemption He achieved then. What is it to know Him ? It is to have Him pressing Himself, with all the power that ever was in Him still in Him, upon our hearts to-day. It is to be conscious that He is for ever taking my life afresh and impressing Himself upon it afresh. It is to hear Him calling to me, not down the centuries from long ago, but from here — close at my side, with a voice that is newly lifted to-day, an invitation that is newly given to-day. It is not to be inspired by what He was, but to feel His power now coming straight from the living heart of Him to me. It is to experience, not the reflex influence of what He did far back in the history of mankind, but the direct influence of what He does. It is to discern, amid the figures which crowd the canvas of our life, that One Figure moving ceaselessly to and fro. The Eeal Presence, if you like. To know Christ in this sense — that every moment He comes with a new ministry to snatch me out of my littleness into His greatness— that is eternal life. To know Christ in this sense — that He gives the secret of life newly to me ever and ever again — that is eternal life. To know Christ in this sense — that He repeats to-day every blessing He bestowed in other days, changing the form of it to meet the changing need, answering to every hour's requirement with grace newly-born out of His great and loving heart — to know Him so is to take life from Him now, is eternal life.^