1 W. B. Selbie, Life and Teaching of Jesus Christy 167.
1^6 THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA
2. We have no hesitation in going to Jesus for the final solution of any problem which may arise in connexion with man's relations to the Unseen, or with his most practical relations with his fellows. We do not think of Jesus as tentative and temporary, as affording us the best guidance up to date, but ultimately to be surpassed or superseded. We take the most complicated questions of our age — race problems, industrial perplexities, political ques- tions, social questions — we take them all to Jesus, certain that His spirit, if seriously and conscientiously applied to them, will infallibly lead to an ultimate solution. We do not expect to find our questions answered in so many words in the teaching of Jesus. But the principle, the controlling spirit, has been given in Him, and we are confident that the spirit of Jesus is adequate to guide us to such a solution that, if we obey, we shall find the Kingdom of God coming, and at length see His will done in earth, as it is in heaven.
\ Mr. Higginson reports an interesting conversation between Emerson and Whittier. The former had remarked that the world had not yet seen the highest development of manhood.
" Does thee think so ? " said Whittier. " I suppose thee would admit that Jesus Christ is the highest development our world has seen ? "
" Yes, yes, but not the highest it will see."
"Does thee think the world has yet reached the ideals the Christ has set for mankind ? "
" No, no, I think not "
" Then is it not the part of wisdom to be content with what has been given us, till we have lived up to that ideal ? And when we need something higher. Infinite Wisdom will supply our needs." ^
Yea thro' life, death, thro* sorrow and thro' sinning He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed:
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.^
3. But Jesus is not only the unveiling of the ideal for our- selves and for all men ; He is also the inspiration to achieve it. It is because we have discovered in Him the mightiest force of which we are aware, a force whose potencies we never seem to
^ H. S. Coflfin, University Sermons, 43. 8 F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.
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exhaust, that we are driven to confess that He is the Alpha and the Omega. Were Jesus any less to us than final He could not enlist all our loyalty and command our entire consecration. He draws from us all the reverence, all the confidence, all the adora- tion, all the self-dedication of which we are capable.
A soul enters on the higher life, passes by the doorway of conversion from disobedience to obedience. When does that soul find Christ ? Is it after it has passed, by some power of its own, over the threshold, that there, on the inside, it finds the Lord waiting to be its leader ? Oh no ! it looks back and cannot tell the moment when it was not led by Him. It came, but He called. It answered, but first He spoke. Yes, we begin, but Christ always began before us. He is the Alpha of our religious life, antedating every act of man's obedience by the eternal promptings of His spirit and the eternal freeness of His grace. And then He is its Omega too. We may go far in the eternal developments of holiness, but we can never outgo Him. He will be present at the end of every period of everlasting progress, to round and close it for us and to introduce us to a new one as He introduced us to the first, for He is exhaustless.
^ The fault of our religion is that we do not know enough of Christ. May God grant that, if we have at all learned how He begins the Christian life in man, we may go on learning new lessons of His wondrous power every day, till some day, in the perfect world, we learn the perfect lesson of how He can glorify a poor, weak, human creature with Himself, and, gathering all its culture into Him, take our souls for His and be our Omega, our End as He has been our Beginning, the last complete fulfilment of the last prayer that we shall ever pray, when prayer ceases because need has ceased forever ! ^
^ The mystic union between Christ and His Church unfolded by St. Paul was the inspiration of Lord Eadstock's life. St. Paul saw the Church of his vision "without spot or wrinkle or any such thing," while the individual " believer " was declared to be "complete" in Christ. In that completeness Christ "has per- fected for ever them that are sanctified," although such "com- pleteness " is not apparent in our present imperfect and temporary condition, our want of experience causing limitations in the apprehension of these divine truths.^
' Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, 326. 2 Mrs. E. Trotter, Lord Eadstock (1894), 86.
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^ No imitation of Christ can be according to the Gospel if it is anything else than an aspect of the life of faith. The task of the disciple is not in the narrower sense to copy Jesus, but to receive His spirit, understand His mind, and let Him be formed within. Disciples are to preach, through a life of love, Christ's life ; and through faith He begets in His followers a likeness to Himself, so that in a relative and mediate sense, disciples are fitted to be examples founded on the Spirit of Jesus. Christ cannot be followed by imitating Him in externals. Christian ethics pre- suppose the Christian Gospel — obedience follows from knowing Christ as our life and our hope, and the faultless fulfilment of daily vocation is founded on an inner principle of faith and love, not on that of external copying Him, who is the contemporary of all the ages, and is exhausted by none. Scripture exhorts men to exclusive loyalty toward the Master, to a possession of the mind of Christ, to a change by beholding Him, to strenuousness in following Him, to a putting on of Christ or the new man, to following in His steps, as well as to the retention of hope. But all these rest on inward faith and love as their root, arise from a heart touched by Christ's Holy Spirit, and from the spiritual insight and purity of moral perception thereby created.^ * D. Butler, Thomas a Kempis, 57.