While with them we cannot think mean thoughts or speak ungenerous
words. Their mere presence is elevation, purification, sanctity. All
the best stops in our nature are drawn out by their intercourse, and
we find a music in our souls that was never there before. Suppose even
_that_ influence prolonged through a month, a year, a lifetime, and
what could not life become? Here, even on the common plane of life,
talking our language, walking our streets, working side by side, are
sanctifiers of souls; here, breathing through common clay, is Heaven;
here, energies charged even through a temporal medium with the virtue
of regeneration. If to live with men, diluted to the millionth degree
with the virtue of the Highest, can exalt and purify the nature, what
bounds can be set to the influence of Christ? To live with
Socrates--with unveiled face--must have made one wise; with Aristides,
just. Francis Assisi must have made one gentle; Savonarola, strong.
But to have lived with Christ must have made one like Christ: that is
to say, _A Christian_.
As a matter of fact, to live with Christ did produce this effect. It
produced it in the case of Paul. And during Christ's lifetime the
experiment was tried in an even more startling form. A few raw,
unspiritual, uninspiring men, were admitted to the inner circle of His
friendship. The change began at once. Day by day we can almost see the
first disciple grow. First there steals over them the faintest
possible adumbration of His character, and occasionally, very
occasionally, they do a thing or say a thing that they could not have
done or said had they not been living there. Slowly the spell of His
Life deepens. Reach after reach of their nature is overtaken, thawed,
subjugated, sanctified. Their manner softens, their words become more
gentle, their conduct more unselfish. As swallows who have found a
summer, as frozen buds the spring, their starved humanity bursts into
a fuller life. They do not know how it is, but they are different men.
One day they find themselves like their Master, going about and doing
good. To themselves it is unaccountable, but they cannot do otherwise.
They were not told to do it, it came to them to do it. But the people
who watch them know well how to account for it--"They have been," they
whisper, "with Jesus." Already even, the mark and seal of His
character is upon them--"They have been with Jesus." Unparalleled
phenomenon, that these poor fishermen should remind other men of
Christ! Stupendous victory and mystery of