UNSPOKEN SERMONS SERIES TWO
THESE ALSO AFTER EIGHTEEN YEARS TO MY WIFE
CORAGGIO, BORDIGHERA
January 1885
THE WAY.
'If thou wouldest be perfect.'—ST. MATTHEW xix 21.
For reasons many and profound, amongst the least because of the fragmentary nature of the records, he who would read them without the candle of the Lord—that is, the light of truth in his inward parts— must not merely fall into a thousand errors—a thing for such a one of less moment—but must fail utterly of perceiving and understanding the life therein struggling to reveal itself—the life, that is, of the Son of Man, the thought, the feeling, the intent of the Lord himself, that by which he lived, that which is himself, that which he poured out for us. Yet the one thing he has to do with is this life of Jesus, his inner nature and being, manifested through his outer life, according to the power of sight in the spiritual eye that looks thereupon.
In contemplating the incident revealing that life of which I would now endeavour to unfold the truth, my readers who do not study the Greek Testament must use the revised version. Had I not known and rejoiced in it long before the revision appeared, I should have owed the revisers endless gratitude, if for nothing more than the genuine reading of St. Matthew's report of the story of the youth who came to our Lord. Whoever does not welcome the change must fail to see its preciousness.
Reading then from the revised version, we find in St. Matthew the commencement of the conversation between Jesus and the young man very different from that given in the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke. There is not for that the smallest necessity for rejecting either account; they blend perfectly, and it is to me a joy unspeakable to have both. Put together they give a completed conversation. Here it is as I read it; let my fellow students look to the differing, far from opposing, reports, and see how naturally they combine.
'Good Master,' said the kneeling youth, and is interrupted by the
Master:—