But when we quote words like " learned obedience by the things which he suffered," we must not be satisfied that we have
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got at the writer's whole meaning when we have pointed out the emphasis on our Lord's humanity ; for this is the same writer who had just before been saying :
"Brightness of the Father's glory,"
which is not the description of you or me ;
"Express image of his person/'
which is not my photograph or yours ;
" Upholding all things by the word of his power,"
which is an Atlas task which our little arms have not even collectively undertaken ;
"By himself making purgation of sins,"
which, to judge by the climax of the speech, is a more difficult task than the maintenance of the cosmic order, and therefore is not for you or me. Moreover, this is the very same writer who will presently be speaking of Jesus Christ under the strange and far from human terms of
"Yesterday, to-day and forever,"
which apply to no human creature and do not connote human nature.^
2. Because our life is in time and passes away, there is always a pathos about the end of anything which concerns us. An end will ever suggest a loss and a comparative failure, because it speaks of work done which must needs be seen to be lower than the highest. Apart from the faith which grasps the things eternal, the pathos becomes tragedy as each end points to the last end — death. Why do we shrink from the end of ourselves? Because, since, " man has forever," he can " look before and after," and he feels, inevitably, after the eternal. We shudder at our endings because of our capacity for immortality, and it is by the law of our own nature that we refuse to drop head foremost into the abyss of nothingness. That is one of many reasons why this message from Him who is both beginning and end comes to the human soul as a voice from heaven. It leads man to find his final rest in the bosom of the Eternal Christ.
^ J. Rendel Harris, The Sufferings and the Glory (1914), 72.
374 THE ALPHA AND THE- OMEGA
^ In his journal for 22nd December 1867 — the year after his wife's tragically sudden death — Carlyle wrote :
" The last stage of life's journey is necessarily dark, sad, and carried on under steadily increasing difficulties. We are alone ; all our loved ones and cheering fellow-pilgrims gone. Our strength is failing, wasting more and more ; day is sinking on us ; night coming, not metaphorically only. The road, to our growing weakness, dimness, injurability of every kind, becomes more and more obstructed, intricate, difficult to feet and eyes ; a road among brakes and brambles, swamps and stumbling places ; no welcome shine of a human cottage with its hospitable candle now alight for us in these waste solitudes. Our eyes, if we have any light, rest only on the eternal stars. Thus we stagger on, impediments increas- ing, force diminishing, till at length there is equality between the terms, and we do all infallibly arrive. So it has been from the beginning ; so it will be to the end — forever a mystery and miracle before which human intellect falls dumh. Do we reach those stars then ? Do we sink in those swamps amid the dance of dying dreams ? Is the threshold we step over but the hrink in that instance, and our home thenceforth an infinite Inane ? God, our Eternal Maker, alone knows, and it shall be as He wills, not as we would. His mercy be upon us ! What a natural human aspiration I " ^
Earth breaks up, time drops away,
In flows heaven, with its new day
Of endless life, when He who trod,
Very man and very God,
This earth in weakness, shame and pain,
Dying the death whose signs remain
Up yonder on the accursed tree —
Shall come again, no more to be
Of captivity the thrall,
But the one God, all in all.
King of kings, and Lord of lords.
As His servant John received the words,
"I died, and live for evermore."
III.
Man's Alphabet.
1. There is nothing we can think of in God that we do not possess in Jesus. We say to Him, as the psalmist said to 1 J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, 1834-1881, ii. 361.
REVELATION xxii. 13 375
Jehovah, " Thou art my Lord, I have no good beyond thee." We look at Jesus in all His relations with men, and supremely when He hangs on the cross, and we are compelled to confess, " Behold our God ! " That is what we mean by the word " God." In Jesus dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. What more can there be ?
Thou, O Christ, art all I want; More than all in Thee I find.
In the unveiling of the character, the purpose, the heart, the will of Him whom we adore as God over all, Jesus is our Alpha and our Omega.
^ All the great controversies which have raged round the Person of Jesus Christ have not been able to obscure His message or diminish His power over the hearts of men. He speaks to-day, as He spoke long ages ago, through the voice of a living religious experience. As men look, not back to Him as they are often urged to do, but up to Him, they find the beginning of a new life and the inspiration to a nobler service. The memory of His words and the example of His deeds remain an undying source of inspiration. But the true servant of Christ finds more in Him than this, precious and effective though it is. His living presence with the soul of man has become in the case of multitudes an experience which cannot be gainsaid. In the eyes of the Apostles Jesus claimed to fulfil the functions of the Old Testament Messiah, to judge the world, to forgive sins, and to be the Lord of life and death. These are the prerogatives of God Himself, and yet the modern Christian sees no incongruity in granting the claim. That the claim should be contested is natural enough, and the appeal in proof of it is still, as it was in the early days, to the experience of those who have known Christ for themselves, and to the effect which He has produced in and through them. ... In a sense which is true of no other personality in history, Jesus Christ still lives and still speaks to the hearts of men. The truth of His message each man may test for himself, not by the process of historical inquiry and criticism alone, but by those deeper and more subtle processes, obedience and faith. There is a charm about His demeanour and a simplicity about His words that will always appeal to the student. But to know Him in all His power and beauty it is necessary to become not merely a student, but a disciple. To the inner Sanctuary of His presence there is only one password — My Lord and my God.^