ssed knowledge laid down in these words, 'That ye may be able to
comprehend _with all saints_.' That is to say, our knowledge of the love
of Jesus Christ depends largely on our sanctity. If we are pure we shall
know. If we were wholly devoted to Him we should wholly know His love to
us, and in the measure in which we are pure and holy we shall know it.
This heart of ours is like a reflecting telescope, the least breath upon
the mirror of which will cause all the starry sublimities that it should
shadow forth to fade and become dim. The slightest moisture in the
atmosphere, though it be quite imperceptible where we stand, will be
dense enough to shut out the fair, shining, snowy summits that girdle
the horizon and to leave nothing visible but the lowliness and
commonplaceness of the prosaic plain.

If you want to know the love of Christ, first of all, that love must
purify your souls. But then you must keep your souls pure, assured of
this, that only the single eye is full of light, and that they who are
not 'saints' grope in the dark even at midday, and whilst drenched by
the sunshine of His love, are unconscious of it altogether. And so we
get that miserable and mysterious tragedy of men and women walking
through life, as many of you are doing, in the very blaze and focus of
Christ's love, and never beholding it nor knowing anything about it.

Observe again the beginning of this path of knowledge, which we have
thus traced. There must be, says my text, an indwelling Christ, and so
an experience, deep and stable, of His love, and then we shall know the
love which we thus experience. But how comes that indwelling? That is
the question for us. The knowledge of His love is blessedness, is peace,
is love, is everything; as we shall see in considering the last stage of
this prayer. That knowledge arises from our fellowship with and our
possession of the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ. How does that
fellowship with, and possession of the love of God in Jesus Christ,
come? That is the all-important question. What is the beginning of
everything? 'That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.' There is
the gate through which you and I may come, and by which we must come if
we are to come at all into the possession and perception of Christ's
great love. Here is the path of knowledge. First of all, there must be
the simple historical knowledge of the facts of Christ's life and death
for us, with the Scripture teaching of t