XXVI.
CHRIST OUR STUDY.
You have not so learned Christ.--_Ephes._ iv. 20.
It behoves us to have right conceptions of the great spiritual realities which affect our life here and our destiny hereafter. Above all must we learn aright Him Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Gradually, from our earliest childhood, the idea of Christ has been forming, developing, taking definite shape in our minds. May-be it is stereotyped by this time. It is all-imperative for us that the Christ we have so conceived should be the true Christ--“the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. _Tout sort des idées._ Our idea of Him will not affect Himself or alter our fundamental relations with Him, but it will affect the whole moulding of our spiritual life, our whole character, our every thought, word and deed here, and our whole eternity hereafter. Surely, then, we must examine our impression of Christ, and should we find that the influence of early education, of a false creed, of unwholesome reading or association, or the trend of our character has distorted in our minds the true Christ as reflected in the Gospels, we must at all costs correct that impression. If it has become stereotyped we must break up our mould and start our work afresh.
Meditation upon the Gospels; the quiet, steady gaze of the inward eye on Christ; the study of Him day after day under all circumstances and amid ever shifting scenes, and not of His outward bearing, His words and actions only, but of the Heart from which these spring--thus it was that the saints built up His image in their souls, a true living image which transformed them into the likeness of itself, and became a power within them, drawing all things to Him Who was to them all in all.
_You have not so learned Christ._ If Christ our Lord has not as yet drawn _me_ wholly to Himself, it is because my conception of Him is faulty. Whether this is the result of simple carelessness which has allowed His image in my mind to take shape anyhow, or of Jansenistic habits of thought that have fashioned for me a Lord stern, exacting, repellent, a very caricature of the Christ of the Gospels, Christ our Lord; or whether it is my own character, timorous, suspicious, selfish, unsympathising, that has inspired my present idea of Him--from whatever source the misconception has come, it must be set right, or its results will be simply fatal--fatal to the growth of anything like personal love and familiar friendship with Him; fatal to His influence on my life, my actions, my work for Him in the souls of others.
Not any Christ, the creature of my own distorted fancy, but Him Whom the Father has sent, I am to fall down and worship. He alone has power as He alone has right to occupy and absorb my whole interest, my whole affection, my whole self. He alone can be a living influence radiating from my own life to the lives of others.
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O Christ my Lord, give me so to know You that my knowledge may be glory to You, and life to my own soul and the souls of others. “This is eternal life: that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent.”[84] Be Yourself my Master in this one thing necessary. And let me go to the source to draw--learning You from the scenes of Your life. Let me stand by the well of Samaria, and the pool of Bethsaida, and the bier at Nain--and watch and listen. Let the charm of Your divine Person subdue and win me, and the sound of Your voice be familiar to me. Let the knowledge of Your ways with the sinner, the sufferer, the little children, grave such a picture of You in my heart that not even its perversity can bring before me when I say “Jesus” any other form than that of the most beautiful, the most tender, the most compassionate of men.
Veronica wiped Your sacred suffering Face, and received as the greatest of rewards, stamped on her veil, and still more upon her heart, that _vera icon_--that true image of Christ which was thenceforth to be inseparable from her memory, the very name by which all ages were to know her.
Stamp on my heart, dear Lord, _the true likeness_ of Yourself. And as this likeness must be ever growing, let me come often to the altar rails to learn You more and more. The tabernacle is the Gospel history continued. Time has not dimmed Your fairness, O beautiful One, nor dulled the sympathy of Your human Heart. All that You were to Your own in this world, all that You are to them this hour in heaven, is here within the tabernacle, is here _for me_. Here then let me come to study You--patient, tender, obedient still, meek and humble of heart, Jesus, yesterday, to-day and for ever!
[84] John xvii.