Scripture is not given to us merely to make us know something about God in Christ, nor only in order that we may have faith in the Christ thus revealed to us, but for a further end--great, glorious, but, blessed be His Name! not distant--namely, that we may have life in His name.' Life' is deep, mystical, inexplicable by any other words than itself. It includes pardon, holiness, well-being, immortality, Heaven; but it is more than they all.
This life comes into our dead hearts and quickens them by union ,with God. That which is joined to God lives. Each being according to its nature, is, on condition of the divine power acting upon it. This bit of wood upon which I put my hand, and the hand which I put upon it, would equally crumble into nothingness if they were separated from God.
You can separate your wills and your spiritual nature from Him, and thus separated you are dead in trespasses and in sins.' And, O brother! the message comes to you: there is life in that great Christ, in His name'; that is to say, in that revealed character of His by which He is made known to us as the Christ and the Son of God.
Union with Him in His Sonship will bring life into dead hearts. He is the true Prometheus' who has come from Heaven with fire,' the fire of the divine Life in the reed' of His humanity, and He imparts it to us all if we will. He lays Himself upon us, as the prophet laid himself on the little child in the upper chamber; and lip to lip, and beating heart to dead heart, He touches our death, and it is quickened into life.
The condition on which that great Name will bring to us life is simply our faith. Do you believe in Him, and trust yourself to Him, as He who came to fulfil all that prophet, priest, and king, sacrifice, altar, and Temple of old times prophesied and looked for? Do you trust in Him as the Son of God who comes down to earth that we in Him might find the immortal life which He is ready to give? If you do, then, dear brethren! the end that God has in view in all His revelation, that Christ had in view in His bitter Passion, has been accomplished for you. If you do not it has not. You may admire Him, you may think loftily of Him, you may be ready to call Him by many great and appreciative names, but Oh! unless you have learned to see in Him the divine Saviour of your souls, you have not seen what God means you to see.
But if you have, then all other questions about this Book, important as they are in their places, may settle themselves as they will; you have got the kernel, the thing that it was meant to bring you. Many an erudite scholar, who has studied the Bible all his life, has missed the purpose for which it was given; and many a poor old woman in her garret has found it. It is not meant to wrangle over, it is not meant to be read as an interesting product of the religious consciousness, it is not to be admired as all that remains of the literature of a nation that had a genius for religion; but it is to be taken as being God's great Word to the world, the record of the revelation that He has given us in His Son. The Eternal Word is the theme of all the written word. Have you made the jewel which is brought us in that casket your own? Is Jesus to you the Son of the living God, believing on whom you share His life, and become sons of God' by Him? Can you take on to your thankful lips that triumphant and rapturous confession of the doubting Thomas,--the flag flying on the completed roof-tree of this Gospel--My Lord and my God'? If you can, you will receive the blessing which Christ then promised to all of us standing beyond the limits of that little group, who have not seen and yet have believed '--even that eternal life which flows into our dead spirits from the Christ, the Son of God, who is the Light of the world, and the Life of men.
