ich are spirit and life, though they may stand in their heavy
packing-cases in the hold, until we are driven to unpack, examine, and
use their contents. Not unseldom sorrow is sent for no other purpose
than to compel us to take cognizance of our possessions. Many a fabric
of manufacture, many an article of diet, many an ingenious process has
been suggested in days of scarcity and famine. So, old words and
truths come back in our sore need. Christ often speaks to us, as a
teacher to a nervous child, saying, "You know quite well, if you would
only think a little." More truth is stored in memory than recollection
can readily lay hands upon.

Thomas persisted in his protestations of ignorance, and so the Lord
uttered for his further information the royal sentence, which sums up
Christianity in the one simple pronoun "I." It was as if He said to
His disciples gathered there, and to His Church in all ages, "To have
Me, to know Me, to love and obey Me, this is religion; this is the
light for every dark hour, the solution for all the mysteries."
Christianity is more than a creed, a doctrinal system, a code of
rules--it is Christ.

I. CHRIST, AS THE WAY.--"I am the Way," said our Lord. The conception
of life as a pilgrimage is as old as human speech. On the third page
of our Bibles we are told that "Enoch walked with God." The path of
the Israelites through the desert was a pilgrim's progress, and the
enduring metaphor for our passage from the cross to the
Sabbath-keeping. Isaiah anticipated the rearing up of a highway which
should be called the way of holiness, which should not be trodden by
the unclean; no lion should be there, or ravenous beast go up thereon;
but the ransomed of the Lord should walk there, and go with singing to
Zion. But in the furthest flights of inspired imagination, the prophet
never dreamed that God Himself would stoop to become the trodden path
to Himself, and that the way of holiness was no other than that Divine
Servant who so often stood before Him for portrayal. "_I_ am the way,"
said Christ.

He fulfills all the conditions of Isaiah's prediction.

He saw a highway. A highway is for all: for kings and commoners; for
the nobleman daintily picking his way, and the beggar painfully
plodding with bare feet. And Jesus is for every man. "Whosoever will,
let him come"; let him step out and walk; let him commit himself to Him
who comes to our doors that He may conduct us to the pearly g