rds that declared how He had become necessary to them:
"Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." You
see the power that Jesus had acquired over these men. You see the way in
which He had taken them absolutely into His dominion, simply because of
the manifestation of character and life, simply because He had shown
them what man might be and opened the springs of the better life in
themselves by the words He had spoken to them. And then they lived on
with Him still, and by and by they had become so convinced by His truth
and wisdom, His character had so taken possession of them, that they
were ready to believe anything that He said. One day He lifted up His
voice and declared that which had gradually been dawning upon them all
the time, that He was more than they were, that He had brought in some
mysterious way a divine life into this world and had much to communicate
to them. He told them that He was the Father from whom His life and
their life had come. He told them that He and the Father were one. He
told them, not in theological statement, not as men have worked out
since in their desire to know it fully, but in the simple statement of
the truth that could be the inspiration of their life, that in His
presence there was here the very presence of God among them. It was not
strange to them, though human creatures, though men, that the highest
aspiration of their humanity had never thought God so far from this
world that it seemed to them strange that there should be in very human
presence the divine life here with them. They could not explain it and
did not try to explain it. Here it was, that which they had seen
shadowed in the divinest men whom they had known, that which they had
recognized. Here it was before them in this being who had won such a
power over them that they were ready to accept His testimony with regard
to Himself. Oh! my friends, let us not feel that the evidence of our
Christian faith fails when it is seen to rest upon the word of Christ
Himself. My neighbor knows more of himself than I know of him. I know
more of myself than any man can know of me, if only I be earnest and
sincere. And that the greatest of men who ever trod this earth should
not know more of His nature than any other man should know, and that
therefore His word should not be the richest revelation of that which is
in His life and makes His power over mankind, that is incredible.
Therefore the men were right whe