Observe one consequence of this. There can be no real contradiction between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and any ascertained fact of nature, or any certain postulate or truth of thought. There may be apparent contradiction; in other words, we, with our limited faculties, or in our present circumstances, may not see how harmony is possible here or there. And there may be real and utter contradiction between the Gospel and the hypotheses, deductions, theories, which human minds have spun out from the facts of nature or from the first principles of thought. But between truth and fact, or truth and truth, there can be no real contradiction. And if we do not see how reconciliation is possible, we must believe that this does not show that reconciliation is impossible; we must be patient, and light will surely come.

"I am the Truth." In Jesus Christ we recognize not merely relative, but absolute Truth. Remark the importance of this distinction. Much of the truth which we encounter in life is relative; relative to the age we live in, relative to the country of our birth, relative to the type of society and civilization around us, relative to the history of our own minds and characters. Nations outgrow some truths which were truths to them in the early centuries of their existence; men outgrow truths which were truths to them in childhood and boyhood. Doubtless we can verify this, each for himself, in our own experience. The books we read with most enjoyment, the minds with which we most delighted to be in contact, the thoughts, the fancies, the enthusiasms of younger days, are no longer to us what they were. We linger over them, it is true, but less on account of their intrinsic worth than from delight in the associations which they recall. But some truths there are which are as true to us now as they were then. The profound distinction between right and

wrong, the sacredness of fact in small matters as in great, the power and beauty of unselfishness,-these are as true to the man at seventy as they were to the boy at seven. And to this order of truths our Lord and Saviour-all that He teaches and all that He is-claims to belong, and does belong. "He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;" a not relative to a particular state of mind, but ever and for all the same. He is the Absolute Truth.

"I am the Truth." A truth in ordinary language implies two things between which it is an exact relation.

What is a true history? A history which corresponds exactly to the facts which are described. What is a true scientific statement? A statement which exactly expresses the law which governs such and such natural occurrences. What is a political truth? A tenet or doctrine in politics which does real justice to the true needs of the greatest number of human beings. When we speak of anything as true, we think of something else with which it corresponds, whether it be a fact, or a law, or an ideal. What, then, do we mean by a true religion? We mean a religion which expresses and insists on those relations between man and God which are really perfect and harmonious. And when Jesus Christ our Lord said, "I am the Truth," He meant not only that He taught us what those relations are, but that He realized them in His own Person. He is, in His twofold Nature as God and Man, the meetingpoint between the Divine and the Human. He is the bridge between earth and Heaven.

Others before and since Jesus Christ have taught men much, with varying success, about God and about man; such lessons as might be learnt by continuous observation and reflection upon nature, upon conscience, upon wide experience and introspection of human character. But

a Heb. xiii. 8.

b

all such teaching, even at its best, differs vitally from that which was taught, or rather achieved, by Jesus Christ. He does not simply or mainly teach religion; He lives it. As He acts, as He suffers, in every movement of His earthly Life, we see man at perfect peace with God; we behold God absolutely controlling, inspiring, penetrating man. If we desire to know what God is in His Essential Attributes, we need but study Jesus Christ. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." a The knowledge of the glory of God is flashed forth from the Face of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ leaves us in no doubt as to whether God understands us, loves us, wills to save us or not. He leaves us in no doubt as to whether man may know God, love God, be one with God in the intimacy of a union which is the ideal goal of religion. It was with reference to religion that Jesus Christ said, "I am the Truth." The human soul was wearied with abstract dissertations on the awful, abstract, inaccessible Being, on the aspirations, capacities, failures of man. Jesus Christ appeared, and, for all who had eyes to see, controversy ceased. His Life proclaimed, no less clearly than His Lips, that in finding Him they had found One Who could indeed say, "I am the Truth."

III.

At last we reach the climax. Our Lord says, "I am the Life."

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We have lately had occasion to consider the nature of mystery. A mystery is a fact the existence of which is certain, but the compass of which is, at least partially, hidden from us. We saw that such facts, so far from b 2 Cor. iv. 6. c See Advent in St. Paul's, vol. ii. serm. xliii.

a St. John xiv. 9.

being distinctive characteristics of revealed religion, are abundantly discoverable in the realm of Nature. Now, of such partially hidden facts or mysteries, not the least is life. As we watch ourselves, as we look out upon nature, we know that life is there. But what in itself life is, we do not know. No combination of atoms that has yet been imagined can account for its appearance; no account of its essence or origin that will bear discussion has yet been put forward by those who would ignore the presence and action of God in this His universe. We hear, indeed, of a philosophy of the unconscious; but sonorous phrases will not surmount the difficulty of explaining how, at a certain moment, a particle of dead matter could transform itself into a living cell, or how a group of these living cells could, unaided, arrive at feeling, at consciousness, at selfcomprehending, self-analyzing, reflective thought. Life, indeed, is a hierarchy with many grades of dignity; it reaches from the humblest lichen on the stone beneath our feet up to the strongest and most beautiful of the intelligences around the Throne. But who shall say what in itself it is, or whence it is, unless it be the gift of One Who, as His Name implies, lives of Himself and eternally, and from Whom it derives that attribute of mystery which shrouds its true nature from our gaze?

Side by side with life, we see everywhere around us its rival, death; and if physical death has other aspects, it is closely connected, at any rate, with moral death. "By one man sin came into the world, and death by sin."a The world, as it exists around us, is clearly not now the best of possible worlds. It bears traces of the ravages of some destructive force; it is strewed with ruins. The agencies which are often most active, and which surround life with a thousand seductions, are really ministers of death;

a Rom. v. 12.

they carry death and decomposition in the folds of their robes as they move through the corridors of time. If they could speak with perfect unreserve and conscientiousness, they would say to mankind, one after another, "I am a minister of death." But Jesus Christ could say, "I am the Life." All derived life, the lowest and the highest, the life of the lichen and the life of the Archangel, meet in and are derived from Him-the Eternal Word, the Only Begotten Son, "by Whom all things were made,' "a and Who came among us that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly.

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For as the Father hath life in Himself, so from all eternity hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and if God has given unto us Christians eternal life, it is because that life is in His Son.d

Life manifests its presence by movement and growth; and we read one aspect of the truth of the words, "I am the Life," in the general aspect of Christendom, as compared with the non-Christian world. Making all allowance for the failure of the Christian peoples to be true to the Gospel and Spirit of Christ, and, in modern times, for efforts to "break asunder the bonds" of Christian discipline, and "cast away its cords "e from human life, it remains true that Christian civilization has in it a power and a promise undiscoverable elsewhere; that where Christ is at work in the convictions and consciences of men, there is a hopefulness, an effort after improvement, a power to resist social decomposition, and to inaugurate true social progress, which we look for in vain where He is unknown or forgotten. It is sufficient to compare those Eastern nations in which, since the fifteenth century, Christians have formed at best a small minority of the