Prophets and seers had caught flashes of light that penetrated the darkness. Poets and singers had imprisoned strains of lovely music which had been heard by their souls. Lofty and pure spirits had seen tracings of His thought, suggestions of the work of an unseen Mind. Men had stood in reverent awe before what they felt was the movement of His hand and arm. Bit by bit, like the piecing together of a beautiful mosaic, they had reverently striven to put together their different parts, and to complete the picture of the Most High God. That is the pathos of man's quest, that the deeper pathos of all early history. But at the last He came, the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of His Person. Forth from the bosom of God and in infinite glory of heaven, He stepped into our world. He gathered together every ray of light, every touch of beauty, every suggestion of the infinite which had ever visited man and set them all in their proper place. By word and deed and life He unveiled the mystery, interpreted the character, manifested the name. And as men gazed at the completed picture, behold ! it was the face of a Father.
^ "What and who is Jesus Christ ? In reverence and humility let us give our answer. He is the meeting of the Divine and human — the presence of God in humanity, the perfection of humanity in God ; the Divine made human, the human shown to be capable of union with the Divine ; the utterance, therefore, of the nearness and the love of God, and of the possibility of man. Once in the ages came the wondrous life, once in the stretch of history the face of Jesus shone in Palestine, and His feet left their blessed impress upon earth ; but what that life made manifest had been for ever true. Its truth was timeless, the truth of all eternity. The love of God, the possibihty of man, — these two which made the Christhood, — these two, not two but one, had been the element in which all life was lived, all knowledge known, all growth attained. Oh, how little men have made it, and how great it is ! Around all life which ever has been lived there has been poured for ever the life of the loving Deity and the ideal humanity. All partial excellence, all learning, all brotherhood, all hope, has been bosomed on this changeless, this unchanging Being which
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has stretched from the forgotten beginning to the unguessed end.^
2. God in Christ still speaks to us. While criticism has been raging round the letter of the gospel narrative, the voice of the Son of God has been calmly speaking in that narrative, in un- earthly tones, with supernatural and supreme authority, and has been extorting from human thoughts and consciences the old exclamation, " Truly this was the Son of God ! " His words provoke allegiance and obedience by their own inherent force ; they too, by His gracious condescension, are supported by all the mass of past miracle and present fulfilment of prophecy and manifest grace which here have an overwhelming corroboration. He has put His seal on all the utterances of God in the past, has reaffirmed all the great revelations they declare, has shown us His Father, and has brought the Father home to us by word and deed ; and in His word we are brought into direct communication with His Father and our Father, with His God and our God, and so our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
^ You never get to the end of Christ's words. There is some- thing always behind. They pass into proverbs, they pass into laws, they pass into doctrine, they pass into consolation ; but they never pass away, and after all the use that is made of them, they are still not exhausted.^
^ At first one's conceptions of Christ are abstract to a great extent ; they ought to become more and more concrete. To find ourselves any nearer the belief that we have an High Priest, once a man, now passed into the heavens, and whom the heavens will contain till the restitution of all things, ought to be a glad thought. We feel His workings, His efficacies. I thought to-day, when I was weary, of His saying, " In the world ye shall have tribulation, but in me ye shall have peace." We feel it. Say not in thine heart, " Who shall ascend into heaven, that is, to bring Christ down from above ? Behold, the word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart." This to me has always been a marvellous explication of the mystery of faith — the incarnate Word, the truth, the life, the syllable, and the essence.
Whate'er we hope, by faith we have Future and past subsisting now.
1 Phillips Brooks : Memories of His Life, 481. ^ Dean Stanley.
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But as experience advances we ought to get nearer to the realiza- tion of " Whom, not having seen, we love ; and in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Should we not be able to speak of Him, and feel towards Him something as certainly as of a living friend whom we knew to be in the next room ? ^