THE KING’S BUSINESS
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me, and I in you. A? the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fru it: for apart from me ye can do nothing.” It is not certain that when Paul wrote his Epistle' to the Galatian Christians he had heard of these words; but what they meant he had learned for himself. He said, “I live: and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in, me.” PAUL’S EXPERIENCE In various measures the experience of Paul has been the experience of Chris tian men ever since. Their relationship to Christ—their conscious relationship to Christ—has been1most mysterious, but most intimate and most certain. They have med itated on the infinite love which moved Him to descend from the heights of God and to become man, upon His graciousness and gentleness, His purity, His sponta neous goodness, His pity for suffering, His- merciful words to the sinful, His patience and His long-suffering, and His fiery indig nation against hypocrisy; they have medi tated on His teaching, on all the words of His that have been preserved concerning the love and grace of God, concerning the remission of sins, the gift of eternal life, the judgment to come, the eternal blessed ness of the righteous, and the doom of the lost; they have felt the spell and the charm of that ideal perfection to which He calls them in His precepts, and which He illus trated and transcended in His own charac ter: but they have been conscious that it was not merely by the power of the great and pathetic story of His earthly history, or by the power of His spiritual and eth ical teaching, that He gives to men the life of God, and >constantly renews, sustains, and augments it. They shared the very life of th'eir Lord. He lived in them. They lived in Him. And it was in the power of this common life that they knew God. Nor is it only the immediate knowledge of God that is rendered possible by this union with Christ. Christian men are con
scious that they do not receive strength from Christ for common duty, as they might receive strength from One who, while He conferred the grace, stood apart from them, but that in some wonderful way they are strong in the strength of Christ Himself. They are too often drawn down' into the region of baser forces, and then they fall; but their very failure veri fies the truth of their happier experiences, for it brings home to them afresh what they are apart from Christ; and when they recover their union with . Him—Which indeed had not been -lost, though for a time it was not realized—they recover their power. UNDISTURBED BY CRITICISM The man who has had, and who still has, jj such experiences as these will listen with great . tranquility to criticisms which are intended to shake the historical credit of the four Gospels,- although the story they contain may have been the original ground of his faith in Christ. The criticism may be vigorous; he may be wholly unable to answer it; but what then? Is he to cease to believe in Christ? Why should he? Let me answer these questions by an illustration. Towards the close of our Lords ministry, when He was in the neigh borhood of Jericho—just leaving the city or just entering it—Bartimeus, a blind man who was begging at the side of the road/ heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, and he appealed to the great Prophet to have mercy upon him. Jesus answered his appeal, and gave him sight. Now it is possible that Bartimeus may have been told by some passing traveler, of whom he knew nothing, the story of a simian miracle which Jesus had worked a few weeks before in Jerusalem, and this may have been the ground, and the only ground, ■of his confidence in our Lord’s super natural power. If, after he had received his sight, some sagacious friend of his had asked him how it was that he came to believe that the Nazarene Teacher could give sight to the blind; nothing would have been easier than for his friend to show that
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