Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/99

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CHRIST: PROPHET
91

Let the Bible itself dwell in you—Christ's own word in Christ's own tone—the truth as it was in Jesus—truth dissolved in love, and redolent of sanctity.


In Christ's word there is both Christ's doctrine and Christ's heart,—the fact which He announces, and the feeling with which He proclaims it; and in order to be really Biblical, in order to be completely Christian, we must unite the two. If a man wants either, just to that extent Christ's word does not dwell in him.


Thus the word reveals the Divine Essence; His incarnation makes that Life, that Love, that Light, which is eternally resident in God obvious to souls that steadily contemplate Himself. These terms Life, Love, Light—so abstract, so simple, so suggestive—meet in God; but they meet also in Jesus Christ. They do not only make Him the centre of a philosophy; they belong to the mystic language of faith more truly than to the abstract terminalogy of speculative thought. They draw hearts to Jesus; they invest Him with a higher than any intellectual beauty.


What do we know about the world unseen? What reasonings, what curiosity, what misgivings there have been concerning that impenetrable mystery! Out of this mystery and vagueness and vastness comes the human form of the Divine Redeemer. He assures us that there is an unmixed and endless life, and that all we have to do to secure it is, to trust ourselves to Him who came to declare it and to confer it.


Jesus Christ hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.