II

The second essential of the untroubled heart is Christlike sonship. For the only way to faith in a Christlike God is faith in Christ. "Believe in God, believe also in me." Here is our Lord's unique sonship, together with the sonship He imparts.

There is a twofold witness to Christ's solitary relation to God-the New Testament and the history of two thousand years. In the greatest of all books we come upon such expressions as these: "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him;" "Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying, All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world;" "That ye may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (he saith unto the sick of the palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house; ""Behold, I send forth the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city, until ye be clothed with power from

on high;" "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him; "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me." Reading such words, with such a Being behind them, one is not profoundly impressed with the statement that "the Church of the future will reverence more and more the personality of Jesus." Of course, it will do that; but my point is: If Jesus was no more than the supreme religious teacher, and the introducer of the highest ethical principles, then, in the light of His claims, He is frankly and emphatically not entitled to reverence at all. For His teaching and ethical principles, compared with His office of Saviour, Revealer of God, Conqueror of the Grave, and Guide of the Race, would stamp Him the arch-imposter of history, were He simply a teacher and not the Redeemer of the world. The Christ of God is not Another, if you please, He is the Only; not just timely, but timeless; not merely the high-water mark of ethics, but the veritable water of life to souls thirsty enough to drink; not simply a unique religious genius, but the only Saviour in time and eternity from the guilt and power of sin.

Unique in Himself, Christ imparts His sonship to others. “He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become

children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The witness which the human consciousness bears to Christ is a fact of the utmost spiritual grandeur. Since Pentecost, there have been multitudes in every age and clime who have known Christ better than they knew father, mother, brother, sister, or friend. It is even so today. Millions upon millions can say with the apostle: "I know Him; and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." He is the living bread upon which they feed. He is the true vine of which they are unwithering branches. He is the well of water springing up unto eternal life in their spirits. He is the Good Shepherd who leads them into green pastures of love and by tuneful streams of quietness. He is the door, and those who enter in say: "Nothing seems closed to me, because I, too, have become the door of everything.' He is the Ancient of Days, the I am that I am, who forgives, who heals, who redeems, who crowns, who satisfies. He brings a sense of "stilled singing" into hearts that trust Him, while He wakens unutterable silences in souls that love Him. Goethe spoke of the beginning of his friendship with Schiller as a "new life," a "second youth." "He saved me from the charnel-house of science," he says, "and gave me back to poetry and life." But if one human can touch another in such a grandly vitaliz

ing way, how much more does the Christ of God release men and women from the charnel-house of existence into spaciousness of life and reality! With His great, tender hand of Hope He wipes away all tears, even as He thrills the soul with incommunicable news from eternity, giving such lofty perspective that one is constrained to say:

"When I consider life and its few years-
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;

A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street-
I wonder at the idleness of tears.

Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight,
Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,
By every cup of sorrow that you had,

Loose me from tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep:
Homer his sight, David his little lad.”

III

Fatherhood and sonship presuppose the third essential of the untroubled heart-the Christlike home. "In my Father's house are many mansions." Men live greatly just so far as they do the business of life upon capital borrowed from Heaven. Otherwise, they lead a piecemeal existence. Indeed, the one-world-at-a-time character properly has no world at all. For him the higher unity of being drops to the level of dead uniformity. Thus he ultimately

finds this world a bore, while the world invisible is no more substantial than a fog-bank. Both worlds elude the man who insists upon having only one world, because both are required to give unity, richness, and meaning to either. At least three ideas are prominent in the Master's discourse upon humanity's celestial gathering-place.

There is, first of all, the note of lofty assurance. "If it were not so, I would have told you." It is well enough for philosophers to give us their speculations; that is their high calling. Yet a raft of reason a boat whose bottom is wrought of intuition, whose prow is alight with instinct, whose rudder is the plaything of shifting winds of temperament, whose pilot is not sure of the unknown deeps ahead-such a craft is not altogether inviting when the importance of the journey is duly considered. On the contrary, men go aboard the White Ship of Revelation with buoyant stride and steadfast confidence. Athens and Jerusalem beheld the universe out of strikingly different eyes. "To affirm positively," said Socrates, "that these things are exactly as I have described them, does not become a man of discernment." No; not a man of discernment only; not a mere philosopher, however noble. But in old Jerusalem, in a little upper room, was One wiser than all academies, gentler than all mothering breasts, kindlier than the velvet touch of all skilled hands, stronger than the combined strength of sin, death, and the grave. He spoke