 Chapter 12 of Unspoken Sermons, series 2. The Truth in Jesus by George MacDonald. Ephesians chapter 4, verses 20 through 22. But ye did not so learn Christ, if so be that ye heard Him and were taught in Him even as truth is in Jesus, that ye put away as concerning your former manner of life the old man which waxeth corrupt after the lust of deceit. Here MacDonald inserts a footnote which reads, that is, which is still going to ruin through the love of the lie. Footnote closed. How have we learned Christ? It ought to be a startling thought that we may have learned Him wrong. That must be far worse than not to have learned Him at all. His place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to exercise. The point is, whether we have learned Christ as He taught Himself or as men have taught Him who thought they understood but did not understand Him. Do we think we know Him with notions fleshly after lo mean human fancies and explanations? Or do we indeed know Him after the Spirit in our measure as God knows Him? The Christian religion throughout its history has been open to more corrupt misrepresentation than ever the Jewish could be, for it is higher and wider, so must it yield larger scope to corruption. Have we learned Christ in false statements and corrupted lessons about Him? Or have we learned Himself? Nay, true or false, is only our brain full of things concerning Him, or does He dwell Himself in our hearts? A learnt and ever-being learnt lesson, the power of our life. I have been led to say what I am about to say by a certain utterance of one in the front rank of those who assert that we can know nothing of the infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed, and the utterance is this. The visiting on Adam's descendants through hundreds of generations dreadful penalties for a small transgression which they did not commit, the damning of all men who do not avail themselves of an alleged mode of obtaining forgiveness which most men have never heard of, and the effecting of reconciliation by sacrificing a son who was perfectly innocent to satisfy the assumed necessity for a propitiatory victim, are modes of action which, ascribed to a human ruler, would call forth expressions of abhorrence, and the ascription of them to the ultimate cause of things even not felt to be full of difficulties must become impossible. I do not quote the passage with the design of opposing either clause of its statement, for I entirely agree with it. Almost it fills an absurdity to say so. Neither do I propose addressing a word to the writer of it, or to any who hold with him. The passage bears out what I have often said, that I never yet heard a word from one of that way of thinking which even touched anything I hold. One of my earliest recollections is of beginning to be at strife with the false system here assailed. Such paganism I scorn as heartily in the name of Christ as I scorn it in the name of righteousness. Rather than believe a single point involving its spirit, even with the assurance thereby of such salvation as the system offers, I would join the ranks of those who know nothing and set myself with hopeless heart to what I am now trying with an infinite hope in the help of the pure originating one, to get rid of my miserable mean self comforted only by the chance that death would either leave me without thought more, or reveal something of the ultimate cause which it would not be an insult to him or a dishonor to his creature to hold concerning him. Even such a chance alone might enable one to live. I will not now inquire how it comes that the writer of the passage quoted seems to put forward these so-called beliefs as representing Christianity, or even the creed of those who call themselves Christians. Seeing so many, and some of them of higher rank in literature than himself, believing in Christ with true hearts, believed not one of such things as he has set down, but hold them in at least as great abhorrence as he. His answer would probably be that, even had he been aware of such being the fact, what he had to deal with was the forming and ruling notions of religious society, and that such are the things held by the bulk of both educated and uneducated calling themselves Christians. However many of them may vainly think by an explanatory clause here and there to turn away from the opprobrium of their falsehood while they remain virtually the same. That such are the things so held, I am, alas, unable to deny. It helps nothing, I repeat, that many, thinking little on the matter, use quasi-mitigated forms to express their tenets, and imagine that so they indicate a different class of ideas. It would require but a brief examination to be convinced that they are not merely analogous, they are ultimately identical. But had I to do with the writer, I should ask how it comes that, refusing these dogmas as abominable and in themselves plainly false, yet knowing that they are attributed to men whose teaching has done more to civilize the world than that of any men besides, how it comes that, seeing such teaching as this could not have done so, he has not taken such pains of inquiry as must surely have satisfied a man of his faculty that such was not their teaching, that it was indeed so different and so good that even the forced companionship of such horrible lies as those he has recounted has been unable to destroy its regenerative power. I suppose that he will allow that there was a man named Jesus who died for the truth he taught. Can he believe he died for such an alleged truth as that? Would it not be well, I would ask him, to inquire what he did really teach, according to the primary sources of our knowledge of him? If he answered that the question was uninteresting to him, I should have no more to say. Nor did I now start to speak of him save with the object of making my position plain to those to whom I would speak, those, namely, who call themselves Christians. If of them I should ask, how comes it that such opinions are held concerning the Holy One whose ways you take upon you to set forth? I should be met by most with the answer. These are the things he tells us himself in his word. We have learned them from the scriptures, by many with explanations which seem to them so to explain the things that they are no longer to be reprobated, and by others with remark that better ideas, though largely held, had not yet had time to show themselves as the belief of the thinkers of the nation. Of those whose presentation of Christian doctrine is represented in the quotation above, there are two classes, such as are content it should be so, and such to whom those things are grievous, but who do not see how to get rid of them. To the latter it may be some little comfort to have one who has studied the New Testament for many years and loves it beyond the power of speech to express, declare to them his conviction that there is not an atom of such teaching and the whole lovely divine utterance, that such things are all and altogether the invention of men. Honest invention in part at least, I grant, but yet not true. Thank God we are no wise bound to accept any man's explanation of God's ways and God's doings, however good the man may be, if it do not commend itself to our conscience. The man's conscience may be a better conscience than ours, and his judgment clearer. Nothing the more can we accept while we cannot see good to do so would be to sin. But it is by no means my object to set forth what I believe or do not believe. A time may come for that. My design is now very different indeed. I desire to address those who call themselves Christians and expostulate with them thus. Whatever be your opinions on the greatest of all subjects, is it well that the impression with regard to Christianity made upon your generation should be that of your opinions and not of something beyond opinion? Is Christianity capable of being represented by opinion, even the best? If it were, how many of us are such as God would choose to represent his thoughts and intents by our opinions concerning them? Who is there of his friends whom any thoughtful man would depute to represent his thoughts to his fellows? If you answer, the opinions I hold and by which I represent Christianity are those of the Bible. I reply that none can understand, still less represent the opinions of another, but such is our of the same mind with him. Certainly none who mistake his whole scope and intent so far as in supposing opinion to be the object of any writer in the Bible. Is Christianity a system of articles of belief? Let them be correct as language can give them. Never. So far am I from believing it that I would rather have a man holding, as numbers of you do, what seemed to me the most obnoxious untruths, opinions the most irreverent and gross, if at the same time he lived in the faith of the Son of God, that is, trusted in God as the Son of God trusted in him. Then I would have a man with every one of whose formulas of belief I utterly coincided, but who knew nothing of a daily life and walk with God. The one holding doctrines of devils is yet a child of God. The other holding the doctrines of Christ and his apostles is of the world, yea, of the devil. How? A man hold the doctrine of devils and yet be of God? Yes, for to hold a thing with the intellect is not to believe it. A man's real belief is that which he lives by, and that which the man I mean lives by is the love of God and obedience to his law, so far as he has recognized it. Those hideous doctrines are outside of him. He thinks they are inside, but no matter, they are not true and they cannot really be inside any good man. They are sadly within him, for he cannot love to dwell upon any of those supposed characteristics of his God. He acts and lives, nevertheless, in a measure like the true God. What a man believes is the thing he does. This man would shrink with loathing from actions such as he thinks God justified in doing. Like God, he loves and helps and saves. Will the living God let such a man's opinions damn him? No more than he will let the correct opinions of another, who lives for himself, save him. The best salvation even the latter could give would be but damnation. What I come to and insist upon is that, supposing your theory is right and containing all that is to be believed, yet those theories are not what makes you Christians, if Christians indeed you are. On the contrary, they are, with not a few of you, just what keeps you from being Christians. For when you say that to be saved, a man must hold this or that, then you are leaving the living God in his will and putting trust in some notion about him or his will. To make my meaning clearer, some of you say that we must trust in the finished work of Christ. Or, again, our faith must be in the merits of Christ, in the atonement he has made, in the blood he has shed. All these statements are a simple repudiation of the living Lord, in whom we are told to believe, who, by his presence with us and in us and our obedience to him, lifts us out of darkness into light, and leads us from the kingdom of Satan into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. No manner or amount of belief about him is the faith of the New Testament. With such teaching I have had a life-long acquaintance and declare it most miserably false. Accept the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus, make a man sick of his opinions, he may hold them to doomsday for me. For no opinion, I repeat, is Christianity, and no preaching of any plan of salvation is the preaching of the glorious gospel of the living God. Even if your plan, your theories, were absolutely true, the holding of them with sincerity, the trusting in this or that about Christ, or in anything he did or could do, the trusting in anything but himself, his own living self, is a delusion. Many will grant this heartily, and yet the moment you come to talk with them, you find they insist that to believe in Christ is to believe in the atonement, meaning by that only and altogether their special theory about the atonement. And when you say we must believe in the atoning Christ and cannot possibly believe in any theory concerning the atonement, they go away and denounce you saying, He does not believe in the atonement. If I explain the atonement otherwise than they explain it, they assert that I deny the atonement, nor count it of any consequence that I say I believe in the atoner in my whole heart and soul and strength and mind. This they call contending for the truth. But I refuse an explanation which is not in the New Testament, though they believe it is because they can think of no other. One which seems to me as false and logic as detestable and morals, not to say that there is no spirituality in it whatever, therefore I am not a Christian. Wonder men such as I have quoted refuse the Christianity they suppose believers to represent. I do not say that with this sad folly may not mingle a potent faith in the Lord himself. But I do say that the importance they place on the theory is even more sadly obstructive to true faith than such theories themselves, while the mind is occupied in inquiring. Do I believe or feel this thing right? The true question is forgotten. Have I left all to follow him? To the man who gives himself to the living Lord, every belief will necessarily come right. The Lord himself will see that his disciples believe a right concerning him. If a man cannot trust him for this, what claim can he make the faith in him? It is because he has little or no faith that he has left clinging to preposterous and dishonoring ideas, the traditions of men concerning his father, and neither his teaching nor that of his apostles. The living Christ is to them but a shadow. The all but obliterated Christ of their theories no soul can thoroughly believe in. The disciple of such a Christ rest on his work, or his merits, or his atonement. What I insist upon is that a man's faith shall be in the living, loving, ruling, helping Christ. Devoted to us as much as ever he was, and with all the powers of Godhead for the salvation of his brethren, it is not faith that he did this, that his work wrought that. It is faith in the man who did and is doing everything for us that will save him. Without this he cannot work to heal spiritually any more than he would heal physically when he was present to the eyes of men. Do you ask, what is faith in him? I answer, the leaving of your way, your objects, yourself, and the taking of his and him. The leaving of your trust in men, in money, in opinion, in character, in atonement itself, and doing as he tells you. I can find no words strong enough to serve for the weight of this necessity, this obedience. It is the one terrible heresy of the church that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ. The work of Christ is not the working Christ. Any more than the clothing of Christ is the body of Christ. If the woman who touched the hem of his garment had trusted in the garment and him who wore it, would she have been healed? And the reason that so many who believe about Christ rather than in him gets the comfort they do is that, touching thus the mere hem of his garment, they cannot help believing a little in the live man inside the garment. It is not wonderful that such believers should so often be miserable. They lay themselves down to sleep with nothing but the skirt of his robe in their hand. A robe, too, I say, that never was his. Only by them is supposed his. When they might sleep in peace with the living Lord in their hearts. Instead of so knowing Christ that they have him in them, saving them, they lie wasting themselves in soul-sickening self-examination as to whether they are believers, whether they are really trusting in the atonement, whether they are truly sorry for their sins, the way to madness of the brain and despair of the heart. Some even ponder the imponderable, whether they are of the elect, whether they have an interest in the blood shed for sin, whether theirs is a saving faith. When all the time the man who died for them is waiting to begin to save them from every evil, and first from this self assuming them with trouble about its salvation, he will set them free and take them home to the bosom of the Father if only they will mind what he says to them, which is the beginning, middle, and end of faith. If, instead of searching into the mysteries of corruption in their own charnel houses, they would but awaken a rise from the dead and come out into the light which Christ is waiting to give them, and begin at once to fill them with the fullness of God. But I do not know how to awake and arise. I will tell you. Get up, and do something the Master tells you. So make yourself his disciple at once. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one thing because he said do it, or abstained because he said do not do it. It is simply absurd to say you believe or even want to believe in him if you do not anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having had an atom of influence on your doing or not doing, you have too good ground to consider yourself no disciple of his. Do not, I pray you, worse than waste your time in trying to convince yourself that you are his disciple notwithstanding, that for this reason or that you still have cause to think you believe in him. What though you should succeed in persuading yourself to absolute certainty that you are his disciple, if after all he says to you, why did you not do the things I told you? Depart from me, I do not know you. Instead of trying to persuade yourself if the thing be true, you can make it truer. If it be not true, you can begin at once to make it true to be a disciple of the living one by obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him. We must learn to obey him in everything and so must begin somewhere. Let it be at once and in the very next thing that lies at the door of our conscience. O fools and slow of heart if you think of nothing but Christ and do not set yourselves to do his words. You but build your houses on the sand. What have such teachers not to answer for who have turned your regard away from the direct words of the Lord himself which are spirit and life to contemplate plans of salvation tortured out of the words of his apostles even were those plans as true as they are false. There is but one plan of salvation and that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ that is to take him for what he is our master and his words as if he meant them which assuredly he did. To do his words is to enter into vital relation with him. To obey him is the only way to be one with him. The relation between him and us is an absolute one. It can know how begin to live but in obedience it is obedience. There can be no truth no reality in any initiation of at one meant with him that is not obedience. What? Have I the poorest notion of God and dare think of entering into relations with him the very first of which is not that what he saith I will do. The thing is eternally absurd and comes from the father of lies. I know what he whispers to those to whom such teaching as this is distasteful it is the doctrine of works. But one word of the Lord humbly heard and received will suffice to send all the demons of false theology into the abyss. He says the man who does not do the things he tells him builds his house to fall in utter ruin. He instructs his messengers to go and baptize all nations teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. Tell me it is faith he requires do I not know it and is not faith the highest act of which the human mind is capable but faith in what? Faith in what he is in what he says a faith which can have no existence except in obedience a faith which is obedience to do what he wishes is to put forth faith in him for this the teaching of men has substituted this or that belief about him faith in this or that supposed design of his manifestation in the flesh it was himself and God in him that he manifested but faith in him and his father thus manifested they make altogether secondary to the acceptance of the paltry contrivance of a juggling morality which they attribute to God and his Christ imagining it the atonement and the plan of salvation do you put faith in him I ask or in the doctrines and commandments of men if you say in him is it then possible I return that you do not see that above all things and all thoughts you are bound to obey him do you not mourn that you cannot trust in him as you would that you find it too hard too hard it is for you and too hard it will remain while the thing he tells you to do the things you can do even those you will not try how should you be capable of trusting in the true one while you are know wise true to him how are you to believe he will do his part by you while you are not such as to do your part by him how are you to believe while you are not faithful how I say should you be capable of trusting in him the very thing to make you able to trust in him and so receive all things from him you turn your back upon obedience you decline or at least neglect you say you do not refuse to obey him I care not whether you refuse or not while you do not obey remember the parable I go sir and went not what have you done this day because it was the will of Christ have you dismissed once dismissed an anxious thought for the moral have you ministered to any needy soul or body and kept your right hand from knowing what your left hand did have you begun to leave all and follow him did you set yourself to judge righteous judgment are you being aware of covetousness have you forgiven your enemy are you seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness before all other things are you hungering and thirsting after righteousness have you given to someone that asked of you tell me something that you have done are doing or are trying to do because he told you if you do nothing that he says it is no wonder that you cannot trust in him and are therefore driven to seek refuge in the atonement as if something he had done and not he himself in his doing were the atonement that is not as you understand it what does it matter how you understand or what you understand so long as you are not of one mind with the truth so long as you and God are not one do not atone together how should you understand knowing that you do not heed his word why should I heed your explanation of it you do not his will and so you cannot understand him you do not know him that is why you cannot trust in him you think your common sense enough to let you know what he means your common sense ought to be enough to know itself unequal to the task it is the heart of the child that alone can understand the father would you have me think you guilty of the sin against the holy ghost that you understand Jesus Christ and yet will not obey him that were too dreadful I believe you do not understand him no man can do yet what he tells him right but are you trying obedience is not perfection but trying you count him a hard master and will not stir do you suppose he ever gave a commandment knowing it was of no use for it could not be done he tells us a thing knowing that we must do it or be lost that not his father himself could save us but by getting us at length to do everything he commands for not otherwise can we know life can we learn the holy secret of divine being he knows that you can try and that in your trying and failing he will be able to help you until at length you shall do the will of God even as he does it himself he takes the will in the imperfect deed and makes the deed at last perfect correctest notions without obedience are worthless the doing of the will of God is the way to oneness with God which alone is salvation sitting at the gate of heaven sitting on the footstole of the throne itself yay, clasping the knees of the father you could not be at peace except in every vital movement in every their smallest point of consciousness your heart, your soul, your mind, your brain, your body were one with the living God if you had one brooding thought that was not a joy in him you would not be at peace if you had one desire you could not leave absolutely to his will you would not be at peace you would not be saved therefore could not feel saved God, all in all ours to the fulfilling of our very being is the religion of the perfect, sun-hearted Lord Christ well do I know it is faith that saves us but not faith in any work of God it is faith in God himself if I did not believe God as good as the tenderest human heart the fairest, the purest, the most unselfish human heart could imagine him yay, an infinitude better higher than we as the heavens are higher than the earth believe it not as a proposition or even as a thing I was convinced of but with the responsiveness of condition and being of my whole nature if I did not feel every fiber of heart and brain and body safe with him because he is the father who made me that I am I would not be saved for this faith is salvation it is God and the man one God and man together the vital energy flowing unchecked from the creator into his creature that is the salvation of the creature but the poorest faith in the living God the God revealed in Christ Jesus if it be vital true that is obedient is the beginning of the way to know him and to know him is eternal life if you mean by faith anything of a different kind that faith will not save you a faith for instance that God does not forgive me because he loves me but he loves Jesus Christ cannot save me because it is a falsehood against God if the thing were true such a gospel would be the preaching of a God that was not love therefore in whom was no salvation a God to know whom could not be eternal life such a faith would damn not save a man for it would bind him to a God who is anything but perfect such assertions going by the name of Christianity are nothing but the poor remnants of paganism and it is only with that part of our nature not yet Christian that we are able to believe them so far indeed as it is possible a lie should be believed we must forsake all our fears and distrust for Christ we must receive his teaching heartily nor let the interpretation of it attributed to his apostles make us turn aside from it I say interpretation attributed to them for what they teach is never against what Christ taught though very often the exposition of it is and that from no fault in the apostles but from the grievous fault of those who would understand and even explain rather than obey we may be sure of this that no man will be condemned for any sin that is past that if he be condemned it will be because he would not come to the light when the light came to him because he would not cease to do evil and learn to do well because he hid his unbelief in the garment of a false faith and would not obey because he imputed to himself a righteousness that was not his because he preferred imagining himself a worthy person to confessing himself everywhere in the wrong and repenting we may be sure also of this that if a man becomes the disciple of Christ he will not leave him in ignorance as to what he has to believe he shall know the truth of everything it is needful for him to understand if we do what he tells us his light will go up in our hearts till then we could not understand even if he explained it to us if you cannot trust him to let you know what is right but think you must hold this or that before you can come to him then I justify your doubts on what you call your worst times but which I suspect are your best times in which you come nearest to the truth those namely in which you fear you have no faith so long as a man will not set himself to obey the word spoken the word written the word printed the word read of the Lord Christ I would not take the trouble to convince him concerning the most obnoxious doctrines that they were false as hell it is those who would fain believe but who by such doctrines are hindered whom I would help disputation about things but hides the living Christ who alone can teach the truth who is the truth and the knowledge of whom is life I write for the sake of those whom the false teaching that claims before all to be true has driven away from God as well it might for the God so taught is not a God worthy to believed in a stick or a stone or a devil is all that some of our brethren of mankind have to believe in he who believes in a God not altogether unselfish and good a God who does not do all he can for his creatures belongs to the same class his is not the God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and the fountains of water not the God revealed in Christ if a man see in God any darkness at all and especially if he defend that darkness attempting to justify it as one who respects the person of God I cannot but think his blindness must have followed his mockery of Lord Lord surely if he had been strenuously obeying Jesus he would air now have received the truth that God is light and in him is no darkness a truth which is not acknowledged by calling the darkness attributed to him light and the candle of the Lord in the soul of man darkness it is one thing to believe that God can do nothing wrong quite another to call whatever presumption may attribute to him right the whole secret of progress is the doing of the thing we know there is no other way of progress in the spiritual life no other way of progress in the understanding of that life only as we do can we know is there anything you will not leave for Christ you cannot know him and yet he is the truth the one thing alone that can be known do you not care to be imperfect would you rather keep this or that with imperfection than part with it to be perfect you cannot know Christ for the very principle of his life was the simple absolute relation of realities his one idea was to be a perfect child to his father he who will not part with all for Christ is not worthy of him and cannot know him and the Lord is true and cannot acknowledge him how could he receive to his house as one of his kind a man who prefers something to his father a man who is not for God a man who will strike a bargain with God and say I will give up so much if thou wilt spare me to yield all to him who has only made us and given us everything yea his very self by life and by death such a man counts too much his conduct says I never asked thee to do so much for me and I cannot make the return thou demandest the man will have to be left to himself he must find what it is to be without God those who know God or have begun to catch a far off glimmer of his gloriousness of what he is regard life as insupportable save God be the all in all the first and the last to let their light shine not to force on them their interpretations of God's designs is the duty of Christians towards their fellows if you who set yourself to explain the theory of Christianity had set yourselves instead to do the will of the master the one object for which the gospel was preached to you how different would now be the condition of that portion of the world with which you come into contact had you given yourselves to the understanding of his word that you might do it and not to the querying from it of material wherewith to buttress your systems and many a heart by this time would the name of the Lord be loved where now it remains unknown the word of life would then by you have been held out indeed men undeterred by your explanations of Christianity for you would not be forcing them on their acceptance and attracted by your behavior would be saying to each other as Moses said to himself when he saw the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed I will now turn aside and see this great sight they would be drawing nigh to behold how these Christians love one another and how just and fair they were to every one that had to do with them to note that their goods were the best their weight the surest their prices most reasonable their word most certain that in their families was neither jealousy nor emulation that mammon was not their worshiped that in their homes selfishness was neither the hidden nor the openly ruling principle that their children were as diligently taught to share as some are to save or to lay out only upon self their mothers more anxious less the child should hoard than lest he should squander that in no house of theirs was religion one thing and the daily life another that the ecclesiastic did not think first of his church nor the peer of his privileges what do I hear you say how then shall the world go on the Lord's world will go on and that without you the devil's world will go on and that with you the objection is but another an overwhelming proof of your unbelief either you do not believe the word of the Lord's spake that if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness all things needful will be added to us or what he undertakes does not satisfy you it is not enough you want more you prefer the offers of mammon you are no wise anxious to be saved from the too much that is a snare you want what you call a fortune the freedom of the world you would not live under such restrictions as the Lord might choose to lay upon you if he saw that something might be made of you precious in his sight you would inherit the earth and not by meekness you would have the life of this world sweet come of the life eternal the life that God shares with you what may so much as that comes to you would gladly leave God to look after if only you might be sure of not sharing with the rich man when you die but you find that unable to trust him for this world neither can you trust him for the world to come refusing to obey him in your life how can you trust him for your life hence the various substitutes you seek for faith in him you would hold him to his word bind him by his promises appeal to the atonement to the satisfaction made to his justice as you call it while you will take no trouble to fill the absolutely reasonable and necessary condition yea morally and spiritually imperative condition condition and means in one on which he offers and through which alone he can offer you deliverance from the burden of life into the strength and glory of life that you shall be true and to him obedient children you say Christ has satisfied the law but you will not satisfy him he says come unto me and you will not rise and go to him you say Lord I believe help my unbelief but when he says leave everything behind you and be as I am towards God and you shall have peace and rest you turn away muttering about figurative language if you had been true had been living the life had been Christians indeed you would however little have drawn the world after you in your churches you would be receiving truest nourishment yea strength to live thinking far less of serving God on the Sunday and far more of serving your neighbor in the week the sociable vile the masterful rich the deceitful trader the ambitious poor whom you have attracted to your communities with the offer of a salvation other than the deliverance from sin would not be lording it over them and dragging them down they would be the cleaner and the stronger for their absence while the publicans and the sinners would have been drawn instead and turned into true men and women and the Israelite indeed who is yet more repelled by your general worldliness than by your misrepresentations of God showing him selfish like yourselves who is the purity of the creation the Israelite in whom is no guile would have hastened to the company of the loving men and true eager to learn what it was that made them so good so happy so unselfish so free of care so ready to die so willing to live so hopeful so helpful so careless to possess deferential to possession finding you to hold from the traditional force of false teaching such things as you do he would have said no such beliefs can never account for such mighty results you would have answered search the scriptures and see he would have searched and found not indeed the things you imagine there but things infinitely better and higher things that indeed count for the result he wondered at he would have found such truth as he who has found will hold forever as the only gladness of his being there you would have had your reward for being true Christians in spite of the evil doctrines you had been taught and teaching you would have been taught in return the truth of the matter by him whom your true Christianity had enticed itself and sent to the fountainhead free of the prejudices that disabled your judgment thus delivered from the false notions which could not fail to have stunted your growth hither too how rapid would it not have become if any of you tell me my doctrine is presumptuous that it is contrary to what is taught in the New Testament and what the best of men have always believed I will not therefore proceed to defend even my beliefs the principles on which I try to live much less my opinions I appeal to you instead whether or not I have spoken the truth concerning our paramount obligation to do the word of Christ if you answer that I have not I have nothing more to say there is no other ground on which we can meet but if you allow that it is a prime even if you do not allow it the prime duty then what I insist upon is that you should do it so and not otherwise recommending the knowledge of him I do not attempt to change your opinions if they are wrong the obedience alone on which I insist can enable you to set them right I only pray you to obey and assert that thus only can you fit yourselves for understanding the mind of Christ I say none but he who does right can think right you cannot know Christ to be right until you do as he does as he tells you to do neither can you set him forth until you know him as he means himself to be known that is as he is if you are serving and trusting in mammon how can you know the living God who the source of life is alone to be trusted in if you do not admit that it is the duty of a man to do the word of Christ or if admitting the duty you yet do not care to perform it why should I care to convince you that my doctrine is right what is it to any true man what you think of his doctrine what does it matter what you think of any doctrine if I could convince your judgment your heart remaining as they are I should but add to your condemnation the true heart must see it once that however wrong I may or may not be in other things at least I am right in this that Jesus must be obeyed and at once obeyed in the things he did say it will not long imagine to obey him in things he did not say if a man do what is unpleasing to Christ believing at his will he shall yet gain thereby for it gives the Lord a hold of him which he will use but before he can reach liberty he must be delivered from that falsehood for him who does not choose to see that Christ must be obeyed he must be left to the teaching of the Father who brings all that here and learn of him to Christ that they may learn what he is who has taught them and brought them he will leave no man to his own way however much he may prefer it the Lord did not die to provide a man with the wretched heaven he may invent for himself or accept invented for him by others he died to give him life and bring him to the heaven of the Father's peace the children must share in the essential bliss of the Father and the Son this is and has been the Father's work from the beginning to bring us into the home of his heart where he shares the glories of life with the living one in whom was born life to light men back to the original life this is our destiny and however a man may refuse he will find it hard to fight with God useless to kick against the goads of his love for the Father is goading him or will goad him if needful into life by unrest and trouble hellfire will have its turn if less will not do can any need it more than such as will neither enter the kingdom of heaven themselves nor suffer them to enter that would the old race of the Pharisees is by no means extinct they were Saint Paul's great trouble and are yet to be found in every religious community under the sun the one only thing truly to reconcile all differences is to walk in the light so Saint Paul teaches us in his epistle to the Philippians the third chapter in the sixteenth verse after setting forth the loftiest idea of human endeavor and declaring the summit of his own aspiration he says not this must be your endeavor also or you cannot be saved but if in anything you be otherwise minded God shall reveal even this unto you nevertheless where to we have already attained let us walk by the same observe what widest conceivable scope is given by the apostle to honest opinion even in things of grandest import the one only essential point with him is that where to we have attained what we have seen to be true we walk by that in such walking and in such walking only love will grow truth will grow the soul then first in its genuine element and true relation towards God will see into reality that was before but a blank to it and he who has promised to teach will teach abundantly faster and faster will the glory of the Lord dawn upon the hearts and minds of his people so walking then his people indeed fast and far will the knowledge of him spread truth of action both proceeding and following truth of word will prepare the way before him the man walking and that where to he has attained will be able to think a right the man who does not think right is unable because he has not been walking right only when he begins to do the thing he knows does he begin to be able to think a right then God comes to him in a new and higher way and works along with the spirit he has created the soul without its heaven above its head without its life breath around it without its love treasure in its heart without its origin one with it and bound up in it without its true self and originating life cannot think to any real purpose nor ever would to all eternity when man joins with God then is all impotence and discord cast out until then there can be but jar God is in contest with the gates of hell that open in the man and can but hold his own when the man joins him then is Satan foiled for then first nature receives her necessity no such necessity as she as this law of all laws that God and man are one until they begin to be one in the reality as in the divine idea in the flower as in the root in the finishing as in the issuing creation nothing can go right with the man and God can have no rest from his labor in him as the greatest orbs in heaven are drawn by the least God himself must be held in divine disquiet until every one of his family be brought home to his heart to be one with him in a unity to absolute, profound, far reaching fine and intense to be understood by any but the God from whom it comes yet to be guessed at by the soul from the unspeakableness of its delight when at length it is with the only that can be its own the one that it can possess the one that can possess it for God is the heritage of the soul in the oneness of origin man is the offspring of his making will of his life God himself is his birthplace God is the self that makes the soul able to say I too, I myself this absolute unspeakable bliss of the creature is that for which the son died for which the father suffered with him then only is life itself then only is it right is it one then only is it as designed and necessitated by the eternal life out giving life where to then we have attained let us walk by that same End of Chapter 12 Series 2 According by David Baldwin Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald To my wife son and wind and rain the Lord is to cede his father buried for he is the living word and the quickening spirit Bordeguerra, May 3rd, 1889 the creation in Christ all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made in him was life and the life was the light of men John Chapter 1, Verses 3 and 4 it seems to me that any lover of the gospel given to thinking and especially one accustomed to the effort of uttering thought can hardly have failed to fill dissatisfaction more or less definite with the close of the third verse as here presented to English readers it seems to me in its feebleness unlike and rhetorically unworthy of the rest that it is no worse than pleonastic that is redundant therefore only unnecessary can be no satisfaction to the man who would find perfection if he may in the words of him who was nearer the Lord than any other the phrase that was made seems from its uselessness weak even to foolishness after what precedes all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made my hope was therefore great when I saw in reading the Greek that the shifting of a period would rid me of the pleonasm if there upon any precious result of meaning should follow the change should not merely be justifiable saying that points are of no authority with anyone accustomed to the vagaries of scribes editors and printers but one for which to give thanks to God and I found the change did unfold such a truth that showed the rhetoric itself in accordance with the highest thought of the apostle so glad was I that it added little to my satisfaction to find the change supported by the best manuscripts and versions it could add none to learn that the passage had been and respect of the two readings a cause of much disputation the ground of argument on the side of the common reading seemed to me worse than worthless let us then look at the passage as I think it ought to be translated and after that seek the meaning for the sake of which it was written it is a meaning indeed by no means dependent for its revelation on this passage belonging as it does to the very truth as it is in Jesus but it is therein magnificently expressed by the apostle and differently from anywhere else that is if I am right in the interpretation which suggested itself the moment I saw the probable rhetorical relation of the words all things were made through him and without him was made not one thing that which was made in him was life and the life was the light of men note the antithesis of the through and the in in this grand assertion seems to me to lie more than shadowed the germ of creation and redemption of all the divine in its relation to all the human in attempting to set forth what I find in it I write with no desire to provoke controversy which I loathe with some hope of presenting to the minds of such as have become capable of seeing it the glory of the truth of the father and the son as uttered by this first of seers after the grandest fashion of his insight I am as indifferent to a reputation for orthodoxy as I despise the championship of novelty to the untrue the truth itself must seem unsound for the light that is in them is darkness I believe then that Jesus Christ is the eternal son of the eternal father that from the first of firstness Jesus is the son because God is the father a statement imperfect and unfit because an attempt of human thought to represent that which it cannot grasp yet which it so believes that it must try to utter it even in speech that cannot be right I believe therefore that the father is the greater that if the father had not been the son could not have been I will not apply logic to the thesis nor would I state it now but for the sake of what is to follow the true heart will remember the inadequacy of our speech and our thought also to the things that lie near the unknown root of our existence in saying what I do I only say what Paul implies when he speaks of the Lord giving up the kingdom to his father that God may be all in all I worship the son as the human God the divine the only man deriving his being and power from the father equal with him as a son is the equal at once and the subject of his father but making himself equal to his father in what is most precious in Godhead namely love which is indeed the essence of that statement of the evangelist with which I have now to do a higher thing than the making of the worlds and the things in them which he did by the power of the father not by a self-existence power in himself whence the apostle to whom the Lord must have said things he did not say to the rest or who was better able to receive what he said to all says all things were made not by but through him we must not wonder things into non-entity but try to present them to ourselves after what fashion we are able our shadows of the heavenly for our very beings and understandings and consciousnesses though but shadows in regard to any perfection either of outline or operation are yet shadows of his being his understanding his consciousness and he has cast those shadows they are no more causally our own than his power of creation as ours in our shadow speech then and following with my shadow understanding is best I can the words of the evangelist I say the father and bringing out of the unseen the things that are seen made essential use of the son so that all that exists was created through him what the difference between the part and creation of the father and the part of the son may be who can understand but perhaps we may one day come to see into it a little for I dare hope that through our willed sonship we shall come far nearer ourselves to creating the word creation applied to the loftiest success of human genius seems to me a mockery of humanity itself in process of creation let us read the text again all things were made through him and without him was made not one thing that which was made in him was life you begin to see it the power by which he created the world was given him by his father he had in himself a greater power than that by which he made the world there was something made not through but in him something brought into being by himself here he creates in his grand way in himself as did the father that which was made in him was life what does this mean what is the life the apostle intends many forms of life have come to being through the son but those were results not forms of the life that was brought to existence in him he could not have been employed by the father in creating save in virtue of the life that was in him as to what the life of God is to himself we can only know that we cannot know it even that not being absolute ignorance for no one can see that from its very nature he cannot understand a thing without therein approaching that thing in a most genuine manner as to what the life of God is in relation to us we know that it is the causing life of everything we call life of everything that is and in knowing this we know something of that life by the very forms of its force but the one interminable mystery for I presume the two make but one mystery a mystery that must be a mystery to us forever not because God will not explain it but because God himself could not make us understand it is first how he can be self-existent and next how he can make other beings exist self-existence and creation no man will ever understand again regarding the matter from the side of the creature the cause of his being is antecedent to that being he can therefore have no knowledge of his own creation neither could he understand that which he can do nothing like if we could make ourselves we should understand our creation but to do that we must be God and of all ideas this that with the self dissatisfied painfully circumscribed consciousness I possess I could in any way have caused myself is the most dismal and hopeless nevertheless if I be a child of God I must be like him like him even in the matter of this creative energy there must be something in me that corresponds in its childish way to the eternal might in him but I am forstalling the question now is what was that life the thing made in the sun made by him inside himself not outside him made not through but in him the life that was his own as God's is his own it was I answer that act in him that corresponded in him as the son to the self existence of his father now what is the deepest in God his power no for power could not make him what we mean when we say God evil could of course never create one atom but let us understand very plainly that a being whose essence was only power would be such a negation of the divine that no righteous worship could be offered him his service must be fear and fear only such a being even where he righteous in judgment yet could not be God the God himself whom we love could not be righteous where he not something deeper and better still what we mean by the word but alas how little can language say without seeming to say something wrong in one word God is love love is the deepest depth the essence of his nature at the root of all his being it is not merely that he could not be God but love is the heart in hand of his creation it is his right to create and his power to create as well the love that foresees creation is itself the power to create neither could he be righteous that is fair to his creatures but that his love created them his perfection is his love all his divine rights rest upon his love ah, he is not the great monarch the simplest peasant loving his cow is more divine than any monarch whose monarchy is his glory if God would not punish sin or if he did it for anything but love he would not be the father of Jesus Christ the God who works as Jesus wrought what then I say once more is in Christ correspondent to the creative power of God it must be something that comes also of love and in the son the love must be to the already existent because of that eternal love which has no beginning the father must have the son God could not love could not be love without making things to love Jesus has God to love the love of that son is responsive to the love of the father the response to self existent love is self abnegating love the refusal of himself is that in Jesus which corresponds to the creation of God his love takes action creates in self abjuration in the death of self as motive in the drowning of self in the life of God where it lives only as love what is life in a child is it not perfect response to his parents thorough oneness with them a child at strife with his parents one in whom their will is not his is no child as a child he is dead and his death is manifest in rigidity and contortion his spiritual order is on the way to chaos disintegration has begun death is at work in him see the same child yielding to the will that is righteously above his own see the life begin to flow from his heart through the members see the relaxing limbs see the light rise like a fountain in his eyes and flash from his face life has again it's lordship the life of Christ is this negatively that he does nothing cares for nothing for his own sake positively that he cares with his whole soul for the will the pleasure of his father because his father is his father therefore he will be his child the truth in Jesus is his relation to his father the righteousness of Jesus is his fulfillment of that relation meeting this relation loving his father with his whole being he is not merely alive as born of God but giving himself with perfect will to God choosing to die to himself and live to God he therein creates in himself a new and higher life and standing upon himself has gained the power to awake life the divine shadow of his own in the hearts of us his brothers and sisters who have come from the same birth home as himself namely the heart of his God and our God his father and our father but who without our elder brother to do it first would never have chosen that self-abjuration which is life never have become alive like him to will not from self but with the eternal is to live this choice of his own being in the full knowledge of what he did this active willing to be the son of the father perfect in obedience is that in Jesus which responds and corresponds to the self existence of God Jesus rose at once to the height of his being set himself down on the throne of his nature in the act of subjecting himself to the will of the father as his only good the only reason of his existence when he died on the cross he did that in the wild weather of his outlying provinces in the torture of the body of his revelation which he had done at home in glory and gladness from the infinite beginning for here I can speak only by contradictions he completed and held fast the eternal circle of his existence in saying thy will not mine be done he made himself what he is by deathing himself into the will of the eternal father through which will he was the eternal son thus plunging into the fountain of his own life the everlasting fatherhood and taking the Godhead of the son this is the life that was made in Jesus that which was made in him was life this life self-willed in Jesus is the one thing that makes such life the eternal life the true life possible nay imperative essential to every man woman and child whom the father has sent into the outer that he may go back into the inner world his heart as the self-existent life of the father has given us being so the willed devotion of Jesus is his power to give us eternal life like his own to enable us to do the same there is no life for any man other than the same kind that Jesus has his disciple must live by the same absolute devotion of his will to the fathers then is his life one with the life of the father because we are come out of the divine nature which chooses to be divine we must choose to be divine to be of God to be one with God loving and living as he loves and lives and so be partakers of the divine nature or we perish man cannot originate this life it must be shown him and he must choose it God is the father of Jesus and of us of every possibility of our being but while God is the father of his children Jesus is the father of their sonship for in him is made the life which is sonship to the father the recognition namely in fact and life that the father has his claim upon his sons and daughters we are not and cannot become true sons without our will willing his will our doing following his making it was the will of Jesus to be the thing God willed and meant him that made him the true son of God he was not the son of God because he could not help it but because he willed to be in himself the son that he was in the divine idea so with us we must be the sons we are we are not made to be what we cannot help being sons and daughters are not after such fashion we are sons and daughters in God's claim we must be sons and daughters in our will and we can be sons and daughters saved into the original necessity and bliss of our being only by choosing God for the father he is and doing his will yielding ourselves true sons to the absolute father therein lies human bliss only and essential the working out of this our salvation must be pain and the handing of it down to them who are below must ever be in pain but the eternal form of the will of God in and for us is intensity of bliss and the life was the light of men the life of which I have now spoken became light to men in the appearing of him in whom it came into being the life became light that men might see it and themselves live by choosing that life also by choosing so to live such to be there is always something deeper than anything said a something of which all human all divine words letters, pictures, motion forms are but the outer laminar spheres through which the central reality shines more or less plainly light itself is but the poor outside form of a deeper better thing namely life the life is Christ the light too is Christ but only the body of Christ the life is Christ himself the light is what we see and shall see in him the life is what we may be in him the life is a light by abundant clarity invisible it is the unspeakable unknown it must become light such as men can see before men can know it therefore the obedient human God appeared as the obedient divine man in the works of his father the things that is which his father did doing them humbly before unfriendly brethren the son of the father must take his own form in the substance of flesh that he may be seen of men and so become the light of men not that men may have light but that men may have life that seeing what they could not originate they may through the life that is in them be the hunger after the life of which they are capable and which is essential to their being that the life in them may long for him who is their life and thirst for its own perfection even as root and stem may thirst for the flower for whose sake and through whose presence in them they exist that the child of God may become the son of God by beholding the son the life revealed in light that the radiant heart of the son of God may be the sunlight to his fellows that the idea may be drawn out by the presence and drawing of the ideal that ideal the perfect son of the father was sent to his brethren let us not forget that the devotion of the son could never have been but for the devotion of the father who never seeks his own glory one atom more than does the son who is devoted to the son and to all his sons and daughters with the devotion perfect and eternal with fathomless unselfishness the whole being and doing of Jesus on earth is the same as his being and doing from all eternity that whereby he is the blessed son God of the father God it is the shining out of that life that men might see it it is a being like God doing of the will of God a working of the works of God therefore an unveiling of the father in the son that men may know him it is the prayer of the son to the rest of the sons to come back to the father to be reconciled to the father to behave to the father as he does he seems to me to say I know your father for he is my father I know him because I have been from eternity you do not know him I have come to you to tell you that as I am such is he that he is just like me only greater and better he only is the true original good I am true because I seek nothing but his will he only is all in all I am not all in all my father and I am the son in whom his heart of love is satisfied come home with me and sit with me on the throne of my obedience together we will do his will and be glad with him for his will is the only good you may do with me as you please I will not defend myself because I speak true my witness is unswerving I stand to it come what may if I held my face to my testimony only till danger came close and then prayed the father for twelve legions of angels to deliver me that would be to say the father would do anything for his children until it began to hurt him I bear witness that my father is such as I in the face of death I assert it and dare death to disprove it kill me do what you will and can against me my father is true and I am true in saying that he is true danger or hurt cannot turn me aside from this my witness death can only kill my body he cannot make me his captive father thy will be done the pain will pass it will be but for a time gladly will I suffer that men may know that I live that thou art my life my father that it may not be more than I can bear friends if you think anything less than this could redeem the world or make blessed any child that God has created you know neither the son nor the father the bond of the universe the chain that holds it together the one act of unity the harmony of things the negation of difference the reconciliation of all forms all shows all wandering desires all returning loves the fact at the root of every vision revealing that love is the only good in the world and selfishness the one thing hateful in the city of the living God unutterable is the devotion of the son to the father it is the life of the universe it is not the fact that God created that makes the universe a whole but that he through whom he created them loves him perfectly is eternally content in his father is satisfied to be because his father is with him it is not the fact that God is all in all that unites the universe it is the love of the son to the father for of no onehood comes unity there can be no oneness where there is only one for the very beginnings of unity there must be two without Christ therefore there could be no universe the reconciliation wrought by Jesus is not the primary source of unity of safety to the world that reconciliation was the necessary working out of the eternal antecedent fact the fact making itself potent upon the rest of the family that God and Christ are father and son the father loving the son as only the father can love the son loving the father as only the son can love the prayer of the lord for unity between men and the father and himself springs from the eternal need of love the more I regard it the more I am lost in the wonder and glory of the thing but for the father and the son no two would cure a jot whether it might be the right way for creatures to love because of mere existence but what two creatures would ever have originated the loving I cannot for a moment believe it would have been I even had I come into being as now with an inclination to love selfishness would soon have overborn it but if the father loves the son if the very music that makes the harmony of life lies in the theory of love in the heart of the father but in the fact of it in the burning love in the hearts of father and son then glory be to the father and to the son and to the spirit of both the fatherhood of the father meeting and blending with the sonhood of the son and drawing us up into the glory of their joy to share in the thoughts of love that pass between them in their thoughts of delight the life of Jesus is the light of men revealing to them the father but light is not enough light is for the sake of life we too must have life in ourselves we too must like the life himself live we can live in no way that in which Jesus lived in which life was made in him that way is to give up our life this is the one supreme action of life possible to us for the making of life in ourselves Christ did it of himself and so became light to us that we might be able to do it in ourselves after him and through his originating act we must do it ourselves I say the help that he has given and gives the light and the spirit working of the lord the spirit in our hearts is all in order that we may as we must do it ourselves till then we are not alive life is not made in us the whole strife and labor and agony of the son with every man to die as he died all preaching that aims not at this is a building with wood and hay and stubble if I say not with whole heart my father do with me as thou wilt only help me against myself and for thee if I cannot say I am thy child the inheritor of thy spirit thy being a part of thyself glorious in thee but grown in me let me be thy dog thy horse thy anything thou willest let me be thine in any shape the love that is my father may please to have me let me be thine in any way in my own or another's in no way but thine if we cannot fully as this give ourselves to the father then we have not yet laid hold the faith that a man may may must put in God reaches above earth and sky stretches above the farthest outlying star of the createable universe the question is not at present however of removing mountains a thing that will one day be simple to us but of waking and rising from the dead now when a man truly and perfectly says with Jesus and as Jesus said it thy will be done he closes the everlasting life circle the life of the father and the son flows through him he is a part of the divine organism then is the prayer of the lord in him fulfilled I and them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one the Christ in us is the spirit of the perfect child toward the perfect father the Christ in us is our own true nature made blossom in us by the lord whose life is the light of men that it may become the life of men for our true nature is childhood to the father friends those of you who know or suspect that these things are true let us arise and live arise even in the darkest moments of spiritual stupidity when hope itself sees nothing to hope for let us not trouble ourselves about the cause of our earthliness except we know it to be some unrighteousness in us but go at once to the life never never let us accept this consolation the poor suggestion that the cause of our deadness is physical can it be comfort to know that this body of ours because of the death in it is too much for the spirit which ought not merely to triumph over it but to inspire it with subjection and obedience let us comfort ourselves in the thought of the father and the son so long as there dwells harmony so long as the son loves the father with all the love the father can welcome all is well with the little ones God is all right why should we mind standing in the dark for a minute outside his window of course we miss the endness but there is a bliss of its own in waiting what if the rain be falling and the wind blowing what if we stand alone or more painful still have some dear one beside us sharing our outness what even if the window be not shining because of the curtains of good inscrutable drawn across it let us think to ourselves or say to our friend God is dead nothing can be going wrong however it may look so to heart's unfinished and childness let us say to the lord jesus art thou loving the father in there then we out here will do his will patiently waiting till he open the door we shall not mind the wind or the rain much perhaps thou art saying to the father thy little ones need some wind and rain in a word the flowers do not come out I cannot get them made blessed without a little more winter weather then perhaps the father will say comfort them my son jesus with the memory of thy patience when thou wasst missing me comfort them that thou wasst sure of me when everything about thee seemed so unlike me so unlike the place thou hadst left in a word let us be at peace because peace is at the heart of things peace and utter satisfaction between the father and the son in which peace they call us to share in which peace they promise that at length when they have their good way with us we shall share before us then lies a bliss unspeakable a bliss beyond the thought or invention of man a child who will fall in with the perfect imagination of the father his imagination is one with his creative will the thing that God imagines that thing exists when the created falls in with the will of him who loved him into being then all is well since forward the mighty creation goes on in him upon higher and yet higher levels in more and yet more divine heirs thy will, O God, be done not else is other than loss, than decay, than corruption there is no life but that born of the life that the word made in himself by doing thy will which life is the light of men through that light is born the life of men the same life in them that came first into being in Jesus as he laid down his life so must men lay down their lives that as he liveth they may live also that which was made in him was life and the life is the light of men and yet his own to whom he was sent did not believe him End of Chapter 1 Series 3 Chapter 2 of Unspoken Sermons The Knowing of the Son Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape and ye have not his word abiding in you for whom he hath sent him, ye believe not John Chapter 5 Verses 37 and 38 We shall know one day just how near we come in the New Testament to the very words of the Lord that we have them with a difference I cannot doubt for one thing I do not believe he spoke in Greek he was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and would speak their natural language not that which at best they knew in secondary fashion that the thoughts of God would come out of the heart of Jesus and anything but the mother tongue of the simple men to whom he spoke I cannot thank He may perhaps have spoken to the Jews of Jerusalem in Greek for they were less simple but at present I do not see ground to believe he did again are we bound to believe the John Boanergies who indeed best and in some things alone understood him was able after such a lapse of years in the Gospel supposing the Lord to have spoken to his disciples in Greek the very words in which he uttered the simplest profundities ever heard in the human world I do not say he was not able I say are we bound to believe he was able when the disciples became by the divine presence in their hearts capable of understanding the Lord they remembered things he had said which they had forgotten in which he said them return to their memories but must we believe the evangelist always precisely recorded his words the little differences between their records is answer enough the Gospel of John is the outcome of years and years of remembering recalling and pondering the words of the master one thing understood recalling another we cannot tell of how much the memory in best condition that is with God in the man may not be capable but I do not believe that John would have always given us the very words of the Lord even if, as I do not think he did he had spoken them in Greek God has not cared that we should anywhere have assurance of his very words and that not merely perhaps because of the tendency in his children to word worship false logic and corruption of the truth but because he would not have them blessed by words seeing that words, being human therefore but partially capable could not absolutely contain or express what the Lord meant and that even he must depend for being understood upon the spirit of his disciple seeing it could not give life the letter should not be thrown with power to kill it should be but the hand made to open the door of the truth to the mind that was of the truth then you believe in an individual inspiration to anyone who chooses to lay claim to it yes to everyone who claims it from God not to everyone who claims from men the recognition of his possessing it he who has a thing does not need to have it recognized if I did not believe in a special inspiration to every man who asked for the Holy Spirit the good thing of God I should have to throw aside the whole tell as an imposture for the Lord has, according to that tell, promised such inspiration to those who ask it if an objector has not the spirit he is not inspired with the truth he knows nothing of the words that are spirit and life his objection is less worth heeding than that of a savage to the assertion of a chemist his assent equally is but the blowing of an idle horn but how is one to tell whether it be truth in the spirit of God that is speaking in a man you are not called upon to tell the question for you is whether you have the spirit of Christ yourself the question is for you to put to yourself the question is for you to answer to yourself am I alive with the life of Christ is his spirit dwelling in me everyone who desires to follow the master has the spirit of the master and will receive more that he may follow closer, nearer in his very footsteps he is not called upon to prove to this or that or any man that he has the light of Jesus he has to let his light shine it does not follow that his work is to teach others or that he is able to speak large truths in true forms when the strength or the joy or the pity of the truth urges him let him speak it out and not be afraid content to be condemned for it comfort it that if he mistake the Lord himself will condemn him and save him as by fire the condemnation of his fellow men will not hurt him nor awit the more that it be spoken in the name of Christ if he speak true the Lord will say I sent him for all truth is of him no man can see a true thing to be true but by the Lord the spirit how am I to know that a thing is true by doing what you know to be true and calling nothing true until you see it to be true by shutting your mouth until the truth opens it are you meant to be silent then woe to you if you speak but if I do not take the words attributed to him by the evangelist for the certain absolute very words of a master how am I to know that they represent his truth by seeing in them what corresponds to the plainest truth he speaks and commends itself to the power that is working in you to make of you a true man by their appeal to your power and what is true by their rousing of your conscience if they do not seem to you true either they are not the words of the master or you are not true enough to understand them be certain of this that if any words that are his do not show their truth to you you have not received his message in them they are not yet to you for they are not in you spirit and life they may be the nearest to the truth that words can come they may have served to bring many into contact with the heart of God but for you they remain as yet sealed if yours be a true heart it will revere them because of the probability that they are the words with the meaning of the master behind them to you they are the rock in the desert before Moses spoke to it if you wait your ignorance will not hurt you if you presume to reason from them you are a blind man disputing of that you never saw to reason from a thing not understood is to walk straight into the mire to dare to reason of truth from words that do not show to us that they are true is the presumption of pharisaical hypocrisy only they who are not true are capable of doing it humble mistake will not hurt us the truth is there and the Lord will see that we come to know it we may think we know it when we have scarce a glimpse of it but the error of a true heart will not be allowed to ruin it certainly that heart would not have mistaken the truth except for the untruth yet remaining in it but he who cast out devils will cast out that devil in the saying before us I see enough to enable me to believe that its words embody the mind of Christ if I could not say this I should say the apostle has here put on record a saying of Christ I have not yet been able to recognize the mind of Christ in it therefore I conclude that I cannot have understood it for to understand what is true is to know it true I have yet seen no words credibly reported as the words of Jesus concerning which I dare to say his mind is not therein therefore the words are not his the mind of man can receive any word only in proportion as it is the word of Christ and in proportion as he is one with Christ to him who does verily receive his word it is a power not of argument but of life the words of the Lord are not for the logic that deals with the words as if they were things but for the spiritual logic that reasons from divine thought to divine thought dealing with spiritual facts no thought human or divine can be conveyed from man to man the symbolism of the creation the heavens and the earth are around us that it may be possible for us to speak of the unseen by the scene for the outermost husk of creation has correspondence with the deepest things of the creator he is not a God that hided himself but a God who made that he might reveal he is consistent and one throughout there are things with which an enemy have meddled but there are more things with which no enemy could meddle and by which we may speak of God they may not have revealed him to us but at least when he is revealed they show themselves so much of his nature that we at once use them as spiritual tokens in the commerce of the spirit to help convey to other minds what we may have seen of the unseen belonging to this sort of mediation are the words of the Lord I would now look into and the Father himself which has sent me has borne witness of me ye have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his shape and ye have not his word abiding in you for whom he has sent him ye believe not if Jesus said these words he meant more not less than lies on their surface they cannot be near assertion of what everybody knew neither can their repetition of similar negations be tautological they were not intended to inform the Jews of a fact they would not have dreamed of denying who among them would say he had ever heard God's voice or seen his shape John himself says no man have seen God at any time what is the tone of the passage it is reproach then he reproaches them that they had not seen God when no man have seen God at any time and Paul says no man can see him is there here any paradox there cannot be the sophism no man have seen God ye are to blame that he have not seen God therefore all men blame that they have not seen God if we read no man have seen God but some men ought to have seen him we do not reap such hope for the race as will give the aspect of a revelation to the assurance that not one of those capable of seeing him has ever seen him the one utterance is of John the other of his master if there is any contradiction between them of course the words of John must be thrown out but there can hardly be contradiction since he who says the one thing is recorder of the other as said by his master him to whom he belonged whose disciple he was whom he loved as never man loved man before the word C is used in one sense in the one statement in another sense in the other in the one it means see with the eyes in the other with the soul the one statement is made of all men the other is made to certain of the Jews of Jerusalem concerning themselves it is true that no man have seen God and true that some men ought to have seen him no man have seen him with his bodily eyes these Jews ought to have seen him with their spiritual eyes no man has ever seen God in any outward visible close fitting form of his own he has revealed in no heart saved that of his son but multitudes of men have with their minds or rather their hearts eye seen more or less of God and perhaps every man might have and ought to have seen something of him we cannot follow God into his infinitesimal intensities of spiritual operation any more than into the atomic life potencies that lie deep beyond the eye of the microscope God may be working in the heart of a savage in a way that no wisdom of his wisest, humblest child can see or imagine that it sees many who have never be held the face of God may yet have caught a glimpse of the hem of his garment many who have never seen his shape may yet have seen the vastness of his shadow thousands who have never felt the warmth of its folds have yet been startled by no face only the sight of a sweepy garment vast and white some have dreamed his hand laid upon them who never knew themselves gathered to his bosom the reproach in the words of the Lord is the reproach of men who ought to have had an experience they had not had let us look a little nearer at his words ye have not heard his voice at any time might mean ye have never listened to his voice or ye have never obeyed his voice but the following phrase nor seen his shape keeps us rather to the primary sense of the word here the sound of his voice is unknown to you you have never heard his voice so as to know it for his you have not seen his shape you do not know what he is like plainly he implies you ought to know his voice you ought to know what he is like you have not his word abiding in you the word that is in you from the beginning the word of God in your conscience you have not kept with you it is not dwelling in you by yourselves accepted as the witness of Moses the scripture in which you think you have eternal life does not abide with you is not at home in you it comes to you and goes from you here heed not and forget you do not dwell with it and rude upon it and obey it it finds no acquaintance in you you are not of its kind you are not of those to whom the word of God comes their ears are ready to hear they hunger after the word of the Father on what does the Lord found this his accusation of them is the sign in them of their ignorance of God for whom he have sent him ye believe not how so the Jews might answer have we not asked from thee a sign from heaven and hast thou not point blank refused it the argument of the Lord was indeed of small weight with and of little use to those to whom it most applied for the more it applied the more incapable were they of seeing that it did apply but it would be of great force upon some who stood listening their minds more or less open to the truth and their hearts drawn to the man before them his argument was this if he had ever heard the Father's voice if he had ever known his call if he had ever imagined him or a God anything like him if he had cared for his will so that his word was at home in your hearts you would have known me when you saw me known that I must come from him that I must be his messenger and would have listened to me the least acquaintance with God such as any true heart must have would have made you recognize that I came from the Father of whom you knew that something you would have been capable of knowing me by the light by the word abiding in you by the shape you had beheld however vaguely by the lightness of my face and my voice to those of my Father you would have seen my Father in me you would have known me by the little you knew of him the family feeling would have been awakened you the holy instinct of the same spirit making you know your elder brother that you do not know me now as I stand here speaking to you is that you do not know your own Father even my Father that throughout your lives you have refused to do his will and so have not heard his voice that you have shut your eyes from seeing him and have thought of him only as a partisan of your ambitions if you had loved my Father you would have known his son and I think he might have said if even you had loved your neighbor you would have known me neighbor to the deepest and best in you if the Lord were to appear this day in England as once in Palestine he would not come in the halo of the painters or with that wintery shine of a feminine beauty of sweet weakness in which it is their helpless custom to represent him neither would he probably come or Mason or Gardner he would come in such form and condition as might bear to the present England, Scotland and Ireland a relation like that which the form and condition he then came in bore to the Motley, Judea, Samaria and Galilee if he came thus in form altogether unlooked for who would they be that recognized and received him the idea involves no absurdity he is not far from us at any moment if the old story be indeed more than the best and strongest of the fables that possess the world he might at any moment appear who I ask would be the first to receive him now as then it would of course be the child like in heart the truest, the least selfish they would not be the highest in the estimation of any church for the child like are not yet the many it might not even be those that knew most about the former visit of the master that had pondered every word of the Greek testament the first to cry it is the Lord would be neither good churchman nor good dissenter it would be no one with so little of the mind of Christ as to imagine him caring stupid outside matters it would not be the man that holds by the mooring ring of the letter fast in the quay of what he calls theology and from his rotting deck abuses the presumption of those that go down to the sea and ships lets the wind of the spirit blow where it listeth but never blows him out among its wonders in the deep it would not be he who obeying a command does not care to see reason in the command not he who from the barrenness of soul cannot receive the meaning and will of the master and so fails to fulfill the letter of his word making it of none effect it would certainly if any be those who are likeest the master those namely who did the will of their father and his father that built their house on the rock by hearing and doing his sayings but are there any enough like him to know him at once by the sound of his voice by the look of his face there are multitudes who would at once be taken by a false Christ fashioned after their fancy and would at once reject the lord as a poor imposter one thing is certain they who first recognized him would be those that most loved righteousness and hate it but I would not forget that there are many in whom foolish forms cover a live heart warm toward everything human and divine for the worst fitting and ugliest robe may hide the loveliest form every covering is not a clothing the grass clothes the fields the glory surpassing Solomon's clothes the grass but the traditions of the worthiest elders will not clothe any soul how much less the traditions of the unworthy its true clothing must grow out of the live soul itself some naked souls need but the sight of truth to rush to it as Dante says like a wild beast to his den others heavily clad in the garments the scribes have left behind them and fearful of rending that which is fit only to be trodden underfoot right cautiously approach the truth go round and round it like a shy horse that fears a hidden enemy but let each be true after the fashion possible to him and he shall have the master's praise if the lord were to appear the many who take the common presentation of thing or person for the thing or person could never recognize the new vision as another form of the old the master has been so misrepresented by such as have claimed to present him and especially in the one eternal fact of facts the relation between him and his father that it is impossible they should see any lightness for my part I would believe in no god rather than in such a god as is generally offered for believing in how far those may be to blame who righteously discussed it cast the idea from them nor make inquiry whether something in its may not be true though most must be false neither granted any claim to investigation on the chance that some they call themselves his prophets may have taken spiritual bribes to mingle beauty with infirmities and pure perfection with impure defeature how far those may be to blame it is not my work to inquire some would grasp with gladness the hope that such chance might be proved a fact others would not care to discern upon the palimpsest covered but not obliterated a credible tell of a perfect man revealing a perfect god they are not true enough to desire that to be fact which would immediately demand the modeling of their lives upon a perfect idea and the founding of their every hope upon the same but we all beholding the glory of the lord are changed into the same image