Christ was not only revealed to those who saw him here. He did not only
go about doing his Father’s will here on earth for thirty-three years,
eighteen hundred years ago, and then leave us. Had this been so, he
would certainly in one sense have been revealed, in the only sense in
which some orthodox writers seem to teach that he has been revealed.
He would have been revealed to certain men, at a certain time, in
history, and to us in the accounts which we have of him in the Gospels,
through which accounts only we should have had to gain our knowledge
of him, judging of such accounts by our own fallible understandings.
But He said, “I will be with you always, even to the end of the world.”
“I will send my Spirit into your hearts to testify of me;” and He
has fulfilled his promise. He is revealed, not in the Bible, not in
history, not in or to some men at a certain time, or to a man here and
there, but in the heart of you, and of me, and of every man and woman
who is now, or ever has been, on this earth. His Spirit is in each of
us, striving with us, cheering us, guiding us, strengthening us. At
any moment in the lives of any one of us we may prove the fact for
ourselves; we may give ourselves up to his guidance, and He will accept
the trust, and guide us into the knowledge of God, and of all truth.
From this knowledge, (more certain to me than any other, of which I am
ten thousand times more sure than I am that Queen Victoria is reigning
in England, that I am writing with this pen at this table,) if I could
see no other manifestation of Christ in creation, I believe in the
Trinity in Unity, the name on which all things in heaven and earth
stand, which meets and satisfies the deepest needs and longings of my
soul.
The knowledge of this name, of these truths, has come to me, and to all
men, in one sense, specially and directly through the Scriptures. I
believe that God has given us these Scriptures, this Bible, to instruct
us in these the highest of all truths. Therefore I reverence this Bible
as I reverence no other book; but I reverence it because it speaks of
him, and his dealings with us. The Bible has no charm or power of its
own. It may become a chain round men’s necks, an idol in the throne
of God, to men who will worship the book, and not Him of whom the
book speaks. There are many signs that this is, or is fast becoming,
the case with us; but it is our fault, and not the Bible’s fault. We
persist in reading our own narrowness and idolatry into it, instead of
hearing what it really is saying to us.