2. "Him whom I have believed," says St. Paul. What is belief ? What is it to believe Him ? Christ Jesus makes certain claims. He claims to bring the secret key to every life. He claims that every life discovers itself in Him, and finds its com- pleteness in Him. He claims that He supplies to every man the requisite light and atmosphere for the individual task. He claims that He reveals the face of the Eternal. He claims that He in- carnates the love and goodness of the Godhead. He claims that by the love revealed in His humiliation He redeems from guilt and sin and moral impotence, and that He endows life with the strength and quietness of an immortal hope. These are the Master's claims. What, then, is belief ? Belief is just the willingness to receive the claims as a great hypothesis, and to subject them to the proof of actual life. Faith in religion is somewhat equivalent to experiment in science. Faith is not the heedless and thoughtless swallowing of dogma, but the reverent testing of a profession. Faith is not the blinding of the judg- ment, it is rather the application of the judgment to the super- lative work of proving the " bona fides " of the Lord. Faith is not the laying of the powers to sleep; it is rather the arousing of the powers to the greatest task to which they can ever be addressed. Faith is not credulity ; it is experiment. " Prove me now, saith the Lord."
^ S. D. Gordon, Qtciet Talks cm. Service, 78.
192 THE PRACTICE OF ASSURANCE
^ Hall Caine tells us that Kossetti was not an atheist, but simply one with a suspended judgment; in face of death his attitude was one of waiting, he did not know. Now the great work of Jesus Christ touching the doctrine of immortality was to convert it from a speculation into a certainty. The evidence for His resurrection, which carries with it the doctrine of our incor- ruptibility and immortality, is overwhelming ; as one has said, it is the best authenticated fact in history. The Christian is one who knows. The Spirit of God has so opened up to our con- sciousness the truth of Christ's teaching, the fact of His resurrec- tion, that we are as satisfied of our continued and permanent existence as we are that we exist at all. The nearer we live to Christ, the more deeply we drink into His Spirit, the more the assurance of eternal life grows upon us.^
II.
St, Paul's Experience.
•' I know him whom I have believed."
1. St. Paul has made and is making the experiment. He has confided, ventured, believed, and he has staked his all upon the test, " Whom I have believed." And with what result ? "I know him ! " There emerges a certain experience. " I know him ! " It is a wealthy word, " I know ! " It implies, in the first place, a faint perception of the outlines of things ; " men as trees walking." The impenetrable mist begins to yield something, and we discern outlines, and movements, little glimpses of road, a suggestion of sky-line, and some sense of gracious law and order. " I have believed." " I know." " Now I know in part." Ah, but it is much more than dim perception of outline, it is the recognition of a Person. " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." That is it. The experiment which begins in trembling tests issues in a warm and loving companion- ship. Let the experiment be continued, and the recognition ripens into intimacy, into a holy and familiar friendship that nothing can dissolve.
^ Our knowledge of Christ is somewhat like climbing one of our Welsh mountains. When you are at the base you see but
1 W. L. "VVatkinson.
2 TIMOTHY I. 12 193
little ; the mountain itself appears to be but one half as high as it really is. Confined in a little valley you discover scarcely anything but the rippHng brooks as they descend into tlie stream at the base of the mountain. Climb the first rising knoll, and the valley lengthens and widens beneath your feet. Go up higher, and higher still, till you stand upon the summit of one of the great roots that start out as spurs from the sides of the mountain, you see the county, perhaps very many miles around, and you are delighted with the widening prospect. But go onward, and onward, and how the scene enlarges till at last when you are on the summit, and look east, west, north, and south, you see almost all England lying before you. Now, the Christian life is of the same order. When we first believe in Christ we see but little of Him. The higher we climb, the more we discover of His excellen- cies and His beauties.^
2. Thus the ultimate ground of Christian certainty lies in the positive facts of Christian experience. We all know the value and authority of experience in other directions. No certainty is so absolute as that which comes in this way. The sights I have seen with my own eyes ; the words I have heard with my own ears ; the thoughts which have passed through my own brain ; the pains and pleasures, the joys and sorrows which I have felt in my own heart — these facts to me are certain, as no other facts can be. And, in the realm of religion, experience brings with it the same certainty as it brings in any other sphere. There are some persons who try to disparage the value of experience in religious matters. They admit its importance in the ordinary regions of science, for ever since the days of Lord Bacon experiment has been the acknowledged test of truth. But, unlike Lord Bacon himself, they appear to think that it has no value, and no authority when we come to speak of spiritual things. And so, when a Christian appeals to his own experience, they smile at his childishness, as if he ought to know that experience really has nothing to do with the matter. But surely that is a very unscientific way of dealing with that great body of human experience which is furnished by the history of Christianity. The expert in chemistry or biology will not allow an outsider to criticize facts of which personally he knows nothing ; and in like manner the man who knows nothing by experience of Jesus