In Christ are hid 'all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.' When God
gave us Him, He gave us a storehouse in which are contained treasures of
truth which can never be fully comprehended, and which, even if
comprehended, can never be exhausted. The mystery of the Divine Name
revealed in Jesus, the mystery of His person, are themes on which the
Christian world has been nourished ever since, and which are as full of
food, not for the understanding only, but far more for the heart and the
will, to-day as ever they were. The world may think that it has left the
teaching of Jesus behind, but in reality the teaching is far ahead, and
the world's practise is but slowly creeping towards its imperfect
attainment. The Gospel is the guide of the race, and each generation
gathers something more from it, and progresses in the measure in which
it follows Christ; and as for the race, so for the individual. Each of
Christ's scholars finds his own gift, and in the measure of his
faithfulness to what he has found makes ever new discoveries in the
unsearchable riches of Christ. After all have fed full there still
remain abundant baskets full to be taken up.
He who has sounded the depths of Jesus most completely is ever the first
to acknowledge that he has been but as a child 'gathering pebbles on the
beach while the great ocean lies unsounded before him.' No single soul,
and no multitude of souls, can exhaust Jesus; neither our individual
experiences, nor the experiences of a believing world can fully realise
the endless wealth laid up in Him. He is the Alpha and the Omega of all
our speech, the first letter and the last of our alphabet, between which
lie all the rest.
The gift is completed in consequences yet unspeakable. Even the first
blessings which the humblest faith receives from the pierced hands have
more in them than words can tell. Who has ever spoken adequately and in
full correspondence with reality what it is to have God's pardoning
love flowing in upon the soul? Many singers have sung sweet psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs on which generations of devout souls have fed,
but none of them has spoken the deepest blessedness of a Christian life,
or the calm raptures of communion with God. It is easy to utter the
words 'forgiveness, reconciliation, acceptance, fellowship, eternal
life'; the syllables can be spoken, but who knows or can utter the
depths of the meanings? After all human words the half has not been told
us, and as every soul carries within itself unrevealable emotions, and
is a mystery after all revelation, so the things which God's gift brings
to a soul are after all speech unspeakable, and the words 'cannot be
uttered' which they who are caught up into the third heavens hear.
Then we may extend our thoughts to the future form of Christian
experience. 'It doth not yet appear what we should be.' All our
conceptions of a future existence must necessarily be inadequate.
Nothing but experience can reveal them to us, and our experience there
will be capable of indefinite expansion, and through eternity there will
be endless growth in the appropriation of the unspeakable gift.
For us the only recompense that we can make for the unspeakable gift is
to receive it with 'thanks unto God' and the yielding up of our hearts
to Him. God pours this love upon us freely, without stint. It is
unspeakable in the depths of its source, in the manner of its
manifestation, in the glory of its issues. It is like some great stream,
rising in the trackless mountains, broad and deep, and leading on to a
sunlit ocean. We stand on the bank; let us trust ourselves to its broad
bosom. It will bear us safe. And let us take heed that we receive not
the gift of God _in vain_.