EASTER iv
WHO has not sometimes thought: If I could see Jesus Christ
as he was on this earth; if I could talk with him, if I could have certainty
from those divine lips, and read assurance in those steady eyes, then I
should lay hold of God. So we think, but not so he teaches.
He is in the Supper Room, desiring in that last opportunity to enlighten
his disciples' minds and to assure their faith. But beyond a point
he cannot. He cannot teach them as fully, he says, as the Holy Ghost
will teach them hereafter. It is not so much the word of Jesus knocking
at the mind's door that secures his admittance; it is the God within drawing
the bolts with invisible fingers. When your pride, he says, when
your self-sufficiency has been shattered by the experience of my death,
the Spirit will secure the admittance of all the truth you need to know.
And so it is: after half an hour's repentance before the cross of Christ,
the Spirit shows us what years of study cannot discover, and what Christ
present in the flesh might not avail to make us see.
