Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise — Silent, upon a peak in Darien.^
^ It is a new world into which a man is led forth when Christ is formed in him ; when his life is joined, by the bonds of
* The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, 8.
i8o IN CHRIST A NEW CREATION
a living fellowship, with the life of the Son of Man. There is a new creation; the morning stars are singing together and the sons of God are shouting for joy. No one ever knows how beautiful this world is, how fair its fields, how glorious its skies, till he has looked upon it with eyes anointed by a great affection. Under the spell of such a revelation all tasks are sweet, all burdens light. Into this liberty of the glory of the sons of God may some of you who labour and are heavy-laden be led by Him who is th^ Way and the Truth and the Life ! ^
1. Christ is new. — Consider the difference between what Christ is to St. Paul now and what He was to him in the old perse- cuting days. In those old days Jesus of Nazareth was to him a mere atom of humanity, a single individual out of countless multitudes who had lived and suffered and died upon the earth ; and not even that any longer, for He was blotted out by death, nothing remaining of Him but the mere empty name of a dead impostor, made use of by some superstitious people to attempt to overturn the time-honoured fabric of the Hebrew faith. What is He now ? Atom of humanity ? No : the very God, He is the sun in the heavens, the centre of all light, and Hfe, and love, and power.
From the moment that the light above the brightness of the sun shone upon the spirit of St. Paul, he ceased to identify Christ with the flesh He had worn on earth, and now identified Him with the God over all whom in that flesh He had revealed. And in making the Christ whom he had despised the centre of his life, round which it all revolved. His will its law. His glory its aim. His smile its light, His love its motive power — if he was re- proached by others with being eccentric, he was content to be able to say : " Whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God."
New creatures; the Creator still the Same For ever and for ever: therefore we Win hope from God's unsearchable decree
And glorify His still unchanging Name.
We too are still the same: and still our claim, Our trust, our stay, is Jesus, none but He: He still the Same regards us, and still we
Mount toward Him in old love's accustomed flame. ^ W. Gladden, fVhere does the Sky Begin, 201.
2 COR. V. 17 181
We know Thy wounded Hands: and Thou dost know Our praying bands, our hands that clasp and cling
To hold Thee fast and not to let Thee go.
All else be new then, Lord, as Thou hast said: Since it is Thou, we dare not be afraid.
Our King of old and still our Self-same King,*
2. God is new. — Man has seen God in Christ as man never saw God before. It is fashionable for intellectual men, or rather — for the fashion of this world's thought changes — a few years ago it used to be in good intellectual form for men to say, " We may believe that God exists, but we cannot know anything of God." That passing fashion of thought, however, was fatally illogical, because the very words which were in vogue in some quarters about God, such as, " He is the unknown and unknowable Power," really affirmed something, of which we have some latent idea, about the unknown God. And we may have real though finite knowledge of infinite things. I can know what light is by a single ray in my eye, although I cannot contain in my eye the infinite flood of light which fills all space. And I may know God by a single beam of truth in my soul, although I cannot know God in His infinitude of being. To us who are capable, then, of receiving truth from God because we are made in the image of God, Jesus Christ brought a new revelation of the essential and eternal character of God. And what was that revelation ? Not an image of Deity for the Holy Place of the Temple, in which was no likeness of God. Not a map of the Divine attributes, as they are found in the books of the Schoolmen. Not a form of God which we may look upon and worship as a picture of Divinity in our imaginations. Jesus is never depicted pointing His disciples to the sky, as we do, when we say to our children, "God is there, Heaven is up above." You cannot find in the teaching of Jesus one word about God's nature which is addressed to these bodily senses. But when Philip said, "Shew us the Father," — poor bewildered disciple, finding the truth he had been learning too great for him, and thinking. If I could only know the Father, if I could only see God as I see man, — then Jesus said, "Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip ? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."