the hope of glory." He whom the Holy
Spirit has first led to the knowledge of sin, and has then led to the
acceptance of Christ, is prepared to enter into the meaning of
Scripture, and no other man can understand it.

This was the way in which Paul came to understand Scripture. It was not
by criticism of the documents, but by receiving Christ, that "the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ"
entered into his soul. He knew himself to be the chief of sinners. He
knew Christ as his manifested God and Saviour. He applied to Christ all
that the Old Testament had revealed with regard to the dealings of God
with his chosen people. The light that shone upon him on the way to
Damascus was the Shekinah that led Israel in the pillar of cloud by day
and of fire by night, that dwelt over the mercy-seat in the tabernacle
and in the temple, and that thundered and lightened from Sinai in the
giving of the Law. "The Rock that followed them" in the wilderness, and
gave water to the thirsty, "that Rock was Christ." And so Paul came to
know Jesus Christ as preexistent and omnipresent, as Redeemer of the
whole world, Gentile as well as Jew; and Christ's Cross became the
embodiment and symbol of God's amazing sorrow for human sin, and of his
sacrifice for its cure. All Paul's later conclusions were developments
and expressions of his initial knowledge of Christ. It was a deductive
and not an inductive process, by which he arrived at his theology.

Lest any Christian should say that the deductive method is impracticable
to him, for the reason that he has had no such revelation of Christ to
start from as that which was given to Paul, Scripture reports to us the
very different experience of another apostle. I refer to Peter. Peter
shows us how, by this same deductive method, an experience which at its
beginning is very small, may in the end become very great. Peter goes to
the banks of Jordan, a sinner, seeking pardon for his sin. John the
Baptist points him to Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away
the sin of the world." Peter knows nothing of Jesus' deity, nor of his
atonement. But, by an instinct which is the best of logic, he is drawn
to Jesus, as the one who can satisfy his needs. He becomes a Christian,
that is, a follower of Jesus. His experience is a sort of caterpillar;
it can creep, but it cannot soar. Yet all the elements of growth are in
it. Peter begins to analyze it. What right has he to s