I was bred as a child and as a boy to look upon Christ as the true and rightful King and Head of our race, the Son of God and the Son of man. When I came to think for myself I found the want, the longing for a perfectly righteous king and head, the deepest of which I was conscious—for a being in whom I could rest, who was in perfect sympathy with me and all men. “Like as the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so longeth my soul after thee, O God. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God,”—these, and the like sayings of the Psalmist, began to have a meaning for me.
Then the teaching which had sunk into me unconsciously rose up and seemed to meet this longing. If that teaching were true, here was He for whom I was in search. I turned to the records of His life and death. I read and considered as well as I could, the character of Christ, what he said of himself and his work; his teachings, his acts, his sufferings. Then I found that this was indeed He. Here was the Head, the King, for whom I had longed. The more I read and thought the more absolutely sure I became of it. This is He. I wanted no other then, I have never wanted another since. Him I can look up to and acknowledge with the most perfect loyalty. He satisfies me wholly. There is no recorded thought, word or deed of his that I would wish to change—that I do not recognize and rejoice in as those of my rightful and righteous King and Head. He has claimed for me, for you, for every man, all that we can ask for or dream of, for He has claimed every one of us for his soldiers and brethren, the acknowledged children of his and our Father and God.
But this loyalty I could never have rendered, no man can ever render, I believe, except to a Son of man. He must be perfect man as well as perfect God to satisfy us—must have dwelt in a body like ours, have felt our sorrows, pains, temptations, weaknesses. He was incarnate by the Spirit of God of the Virgin. In this way I can see how he was indeed perfect God and perfect Man. I can conceive of no other in which he could have been so. The Incarnation is for me the support of all personal holiness, and the key to human history.
What was Christ’s work on earth? He came to make manifest, to make clear to us, the will and nature of this Father, our God. He made that will and nature clear to us as the perfectly loving and long-suffering and righteous will and nature. He came to lead us men, his brethren, back into perfect understanding of and submission to that will—to make us at one with it; and this he did triumphantly by his own perfect obedience to that will, by sacrificing himself even to death for us, because it was the will of his and our Father that he should give himself up wholly and unreservedly; thus, by his one sacrifice, redeeming us and leaving us an example that we too should sacrifice ourselves to Him for our brethren. Thus I believe in the Atonement.
CXIV.
Christ was not only revealed to those who saw him here. He did not only go about doing his Father’s will here on earth for thirty-three years, eighteen hundred years ago, and then leave us. Had this been so, he would certainly in one sense have been revealed, in the only sense in which some orthodox writers seem to teach that he has been revealed. He would have been revealed to certain men, at a certain time, in history, and to us in the accounts which we have of him in the Gospels, through which accounts only we should have had to gain our knowledge of him, judging of such accounts by our own fallible understandings. But He said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.” “I will send my Spirit into your hearts to testify of me;” and He has fulfilled his promise. He is revealed, not in the Bible, not in history, not in or to some men at a certain time, or to a man here and there, but in the heart of you, and of me, and of every man and woman who is now, or ever has been, on this earth. His Spirit is in each of us, striving with us, cheering us, guiding us, strengthening us. At any moment in the lives of any one of us we may prove the fact for ourselves; we may give ourselves up to his guidance, and He will accept the trust, and guide us into the knowledge of God, and of all truth. From this knowledge, (more certain to me than any other, of which I am ten thousand times more sure than I am that Queen Victoria is reigning in England, that I am writing with this pen at this table,) if I could see no other manifestation of Christ in creation, I believe in the Trinity in Unity, the name on which all things in heaven and earth stand, which meets and satisfies the deepest needs and longings of my soul.
The knowledge of this name, of these truths, has come to me, and to all men, in one sense, specially and directly through the Scriptures. I believe that God has given us these Scriptures, this Bible, to instruct us in these the highest of all truths. Therefore I reverence this Bible as I reverence no other book; but I reverence it because it speaks of him, and his dealings with us. The Bible has no charm or power of its own. It may become a chain round men’s necks, an idol in the throne of God, to men who will worship the book, and not Him of whom the book speaks. There are many signs that this is, or is fast becoming, the case with us; but it is our fault, and not the Bible’s fault. We persist in reading our own narrowness and idolatry into it, instead of hearing what it really is saying to us.