divine from the foregleams of God's presence in themselves. He was
adorable, because he was an ocean to their landlocked pools, and they
waited for his tides.
Only by some such road as these first disciples trod can men come to a
vital understanding of the Lord. Nothing but _experience_ can give us
a living estimate of anything; without that theory is vain. Let a man
live with the Master's manhood until it grows luminous and through it
he sees the character of God; let a man avail himself of the Master's
saviorhood until forgiven and empowered he finds the "life that is
life indeed"; let a man grow in the experience of God's presence until
he knows not only the God without but the God within; and then if he
rises to estimate his Lord, he will not hesitate to see in Jesus the
incarnate presence of the living God. After that, theology may help or
hinder him, according as it is wise and vital or cold and formal; but
with theology or not, he knows the heart of the New Testament's
attitude toward Jesus. He understands why the first Christians summed
up their faith as "believing in the Lord Jesus Christ."
[8] Moffatt's translation.
[9] Moffatt's translation.
CHAPTER XII
The Fellowship of Faith
DAILY READINGS
Our thought turns, in our closing week of study, from believers taken
one by one, to believers gathered in fellowship. This community of
faith has wider boundaries than the organized churches; in a real
sense it includes all servants of man's ideal aims; yet in the Church
we naturally seek the chief meanings of fellowship for faith. Why men
do not go to church, is often asked. But why men do go, so that in
spite of countless failures in the churches, attendance on public
worship and loyalty to organized religion are among mankind's most
usual habits, is an inquiry far more important. To that inquiry let us
in the daily readings turn our thought.
Twelfth Week, First Day
=But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut
the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves,
neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter.=
=Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea
and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him
twofold more a son of hell than yourselves....=
=Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint
and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of
the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have
done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that
strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!--Matt. 23:13-15; 23, 24.=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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