T[ A company of young men were once met at supper in the old days of Athens, and Socrates, the great teacher of morality, was present. The conversation turned on their guest. " Socrates," said Alcibiades, " is like the figure of the Wood-god which you see in the workshops of sculptors : if you open it, you shall find it filled with images of all the gods." That was the highest praise which in those days of heathen worship it was possible to give to a human being. It was as much as to say that all the forms of Divine life imagined and worshipped at that time were to be found in the one life of Socrates. And, far off, it may be taken as an outshadowing of the reality presented to us in this word of St. Paul concerning Christ.2
If In Tennyson's " Palace of Art " we have the story of how a soul tried to satisfy herself with an environment completely beautiful. Art and Literature were drawn upon lavishly to make her a meet dwelling-place. But into this paradise of all beauty despair crept, and made havoc. Fear fell like a blight, and the question of questions came to be
What is it that will take away my sin, And save me lest I die ?
At last, come to her true self, and awake to her need of God,
" Make me a cottage in a vale," she said, "Where I may mourn and pray."
Yet Tennyson had too wide a vision of the truth to make an end
1 John Guyse. 3 A. Macleod.
36 THE SUM OF SAVING KNOWLEDGE
there. He honours the " first needs " in his poem, but he is careful to leave room for all that enriches life. And so he makes his penitent soul ask as a last request,
Yet pull not down my palace towers, that are So lightly, beautifully built: Perchance I may return with others there When I have purged my guilt.1
i. To know Jesus Christ. It is perfectly possible to know the things that are said about Christ, and not to know Him about whom these things are said. Theological cobwebs have been wrapped round the gracious figure of Christ with disastrous results. He must be known — by personal, persistent, private communion; by long, intense contemplation — known as He was known to Loyola, on whose upturned face and uplifted hands the very stigmata of the Cross started out.
1. To know Jesus Christ is to knoiu man in ideal development. In Him we behold our human nature fully inspired and possessed by God. He is at once a revelation of God and a manifestation of human perfection. As much of God as could be held in a human mind and heart, and shown in human virtues, was found in Christ Jesus. He is the Son of Man, the only perfect specimen of humanity that has lived upon the earth, the ideal of what we ought to be, and the type of the new creation.
If The Cross had become the unchanging centre of my thoughts, but these, as they revolved around it, had gradually, yet surely: formed for themselves an orbit widely diverging from the circle in which Christian consciousness is wont to move. The Cross, as I looked at it more and more intently, became to me the revelation of a loving and a suffering God. I learnt to look upon the sacrifice of the death of Christ, not only as being the al' sufficient satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, but also oh the everlasting witness to God's sympathy vnth man. The mystery of the Cross did not, it is true, ex-plain any one of the enigmas connected with our mortal existence and destiny, but it linked itself in my spirit with them all. It was itself an enigma flung down by God alongside the sorrowful problem of human life, the confession of Omnipotence itself to some stern reality of misery
and wrong.2
1 Arch. Alexander. a Dora GreenwelL
i CORINTHIANS n. 2 37
2. To know Christ is to know God. Christ reveals God to us. The life of Christ shows us the holiness of God ; the patience of Christ shows us the longsuffering of God ; the compassion of Christ shows us the mercy of God ; the tenderness of Christ shows us the gentleness of God; the sympathy of Christ opens to us the very heart of God : while the death of Christ reveals to us the justice of God.
Here hast thou found me, oh mine enemy !
And yet rejoice not thou, by strength shall none prevail.
By noon thine arrows fly, None faileth of its mark ; thou dost not tire ; And yet rejoice not thou ! Each shaft of fire That finds me here becomes a living nail. What strength of thine, what skill can now avail To tear me from the Cross ? My soul and heart Are fastened here! I feel the cloven dart Pierce keenly through. What hands have power to wring Me hence ? What voice can now so sweetly sing To lure my spirit from its rest ? Oh now
Eejoice my soul, for thou Hast trodden down thy foeman's strength through pain.1
ii. To know Jesus Christ crucified.
Education, Plato tells us, is the turning away of the soul from the images, shadows, simulacra of things, to the facts and verities of real existence. Education is not increase of knowledge, nor is it the quickening and strengthening of one faculty, such as the intellect. Education is the awakening and unfolding of the whole nature, due regard being had to those capacities which belong to the higher range. Nothing contributes more to man's education than the discovery of a great fact, the recognition and contemplation of a great thought. It uplifts, expands, and augments the entire being. Now "Christ crucified" is the greatest, the most transcendent fact in the whole universe. It is the master-thought of the Eternal. To know Christ crucified is to know the meaning of life. The death of Christ is the solving power of the mystery of the universe. It is also to know how to live and how to die. The Cross is the moral lever for the world. It lifts men above the power of sin.