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ever ; and for ever is His Kingdom enduring. And through all the endless ages which we have a right to hope we shall see, there will never come a point in which it will not remain as true as it is at this moment : " No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see him ; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." Christ is for ever the Giver of life, in the heavens as on earth. There all the blessedness and the existence, which is the substratum and condition of the blessedness, are ours only because, wavelet by wavelet, throbbing out as from a central fountain, there flows into the redeemed a life communicated by Christ Himself.
If The immortality which Christ proclaimed in His own Person and life had indeed been adumbrated in deeds of valour and lives of heroic self-sacrifice, but as a revelation of life, of the true and proper life of man, it was as new as it has ever since been unique. " I am come that they might have life " was the burden of all He taught and did and suffered : and but for that " coming " it is impossible to conceive of our eyes being opened to the measureless possibilities of our spiritual life. When St. Paul exclaimed in the simple rendering of Luther, " Christ is my life," he defined what immortality really is. The triumph lies in the instinct to triumph; the extension of life in the quality of the life.i
^ To be a Christian is to have a new life in the soul. Christ Himself lives in each one who believes in Him. St. Paul puts it very graphically when he says that he is dead, crucified with Christ, that is, as to his old life. Then he adds : " Yet I live ; and yet no longer I, but Ctirist liveth in me : and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me." These words reveal the secret of St. Paul's wonderful life. It was Christ living in him that made him the man he was. This is the secret of every transfigured life. There is no other way to get it. We must open our heart and let Christ enter into us and fill us. He is ever eager to do this, and will possess us just as far as we yield our life up to Him.^
» T. J. Hardy, TTie Gospel of Fain, * j, r. Miller.
72 THE TREE OF LIFE
III.
Access for the Victor.
"To him that overcometh."
Whilst access to the tree of life is a gift, we cannot miss the fact that there is a condition — the gift is only " to him that over- cometh." In all God's greater gifts there is a certain condition of congruity. These noble things cannot be passed from hand to hand like sums of money ; even Christ can give only to those who are in a condition to receive. " If ye forgive not," He said, " neither will your Father forgive you." Now, as to this condition of overcoming, it tells us how St. John conceived of the Christian life. To him it was a course of overcoming the world and one's self, and he found its earliest impulse in that great victory of the cross.
1. Here is life promised in all its range and detail ; in all its clear meaning and wide power : life through all eternity. But how hard a promise it is : " to him that overcometh will I give," leaving all with ourselves. Christ does not say here — I give thee life that thou mayest overcome ; but, Overcome and the life will be thine. The responsibility, the start, the strain He leaves upon our own wills ; even as His Apostle intends, where he says, not "accept the faith," but "fight the good fight of faith." Yes, it is stern ; but how true to our experience. Did we ever pass through a temptation in which we did not feel : Here even God cannot go before us, nor stand instead of us. Otherwise it were not worth the name of temptation; it were not in any wise our temptation. For who is it that is to be tempted, tested, put to proof and trial ? Is it God or Christ ? It is ourselves. But precisely as the loneliness and rigour of such an experience come home to us, God has begun to fulfil His promise of life. For it is in the bare realization of ourselves — and all the more if it even come upon us for the moment without any religious miti- gation of its solitude and its pain — it is in this very moment, of lonely responsibility and unmitigated strain, that life begins. It is the necessity and prerogative of our manhood that in its moral
REVELATION ii. 7 73
conflicts, God, who has assuredly called us and is ready to help us, must wait for a decision and victory which shall be our own. However clear His call, — and all our salvation starts from that, — however near His help, we have to decide, we have to overcome.