It is coming more and more to be seen that such religious progress as man has made is not so much his endeavour to find God, as God's endeavour to find him ; that it is more satisfactory to represent man's religious history as a continuous knocking on the part of God at the door of man's heart than as a continuous spontaneous search on man's part after God. To Christians, indeed, no other view is at all possible; for of course to represent the relation between man and God as search on man's part instead of revelation on God's part would be to empty the idea of God of all meaning.
^ The sunlight travels far from its source in the deep of heaven — so far that, though it can be expressed in figures, the imagination fails to take in the magnitude of the sum ; but when the rays of light have travelled unimpeded so far, and come to the door of my eye, if I shut that door — a thin film of flesh — the light is kept out, and I remain in darkness. Alas ! the Light that travelled so far, and came so near — the Light that sought entrance into my heart, and that I kept out — was the Light of lifeli
Behold, I knock! Methinks if on My face
Thou would st but rest thine eyes,
Wouldst mark the crown of thorns, the sharp nails trace.
Thou couldst not Me despise ! Thee have I yearned for with a love so strong, Thee have I sought so earnestly and long; My road led from a cross unto this place;
Behold, I knock !
* W. Arnot, The Anchor of the Soul, 278.
138 THE WAITING GUEST
2. But we have in the text a hint of the Divine long-suffering, which does not merely knock, and then, if it be not opened to it
v' at once, go away and leave us to ourselves, to our own impenitence and hardness of heart. Christ rather, as one who knows that He has a message which it supremely concerns men that they should receive, and who will therefore take no denial, knocks, and, not being admitted, knocks again, with all the importunity of love. " Behold ! I stand at the door and knock." There is in the words a revelation of an infinite long-suffering and patience. The door has long been fastened ; we have, like some lazy servant, thought that if we did not answer the knock, the Knocker would go away when He was weary. But we have miscalculated the elasticity and the unfailingness of that patient Christ's love. Kejected, He
V abides ; spurned. He returns.
^ There is a familiar picture by Holman Hunt that paints the idea of our text. There is shown a cottage neglected, falling into ruin. In front of the window tall thistles spring up, and long grass waves on the pathway, leading to the door overgrown with moss and rank poisonous weeds. In front of the fast-closed door with rusted hinges a tall and stately figure stands amid the night dews and the darkness with a face that tells of toil and long, weary waiting, and one hand uplifted to knock and another bearing a light that may perhaps flash through sonte of the chinks of the door. It is Christ, the Son of God, seeking to get into our sinful hearts.^
3. Christ does not only knock ; He also speaks ; He makes His " voice " to be heard — a more precious benefit still ! It is true, indeed, that we cannot in our interpretation draw any strict line of distinction between Christ knocking and Christ speaking. Both represent His dealings of infinite love with souls for winning them to receive Him ; yet at the same time, considering that in this natural world a knock may be anyone's, and on any errand, while the voice accompanying that knock would at once designate who it was that stood without, and with what intention, we have a right, so far as we may venture to distinguish between the two, to see in the voice the more inward appeal, the closer dealing of Christ with the soul, speaking directly by His Spirit to the spirit of the man; in the knocking those more outward gracious dealings, of
^ W. G. Elmslie, Memoir mid Sermons^ 86.
REVELATION iii. 20 139
sorrow and joy, of sickness and health, and the like, which He sends and, sending, uses for the bringing of His elect, in one way or another, by smooth paths or by rough, to Himself. The " voice " very often will interpret and make intelligible the purpose of the "knock."
Will anyone venture to say, " This mysterious voice has never uttered itself to spiritual ear of mine " ? Is it indeed so ? Have we then never had our times of gracious visitation ? Assuredly we all have had them, and not seldom. We may indeed have missed them and their meaning altogether ; but the times them- selves not the less have been ours — times of a great joy, and times of a great sorrow ; times when our God has given to us so much, and times when He has taken away so much; times of weary sickness, and times of unlooked-for recovery; times with no ominous hour for long years knocking at our door with its tidings of mishap; or times when we have had sorrow upon sorrow ; times when we have been made to enter on the miserable possession of our past sins ; times when we have walked in the glorio:\s liberty of the children of God; times when the world was sweet unto us, and when the world was bitter ; times when we walked compassed with troops of friends, and times when lonely paths were appointed for our treading. Has not our God been speaking to us in all this joy and in all this sorrow ? He can gently speak as well as loudly knock; and happy is the man who has ears to hear. In every gracious thought that visits us, in every yearning after better things, in every solemn resolution for the days to come, in every tender memory of days gone by, Christ is standing before our door, saying, "It is I."