The Revelation of Christ as the Life-Power

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me—John 15:4.

External Learning

The revelation of the external relations in which Christ stands to us will necessarily precede the revelation of those relations which are internal. We have been considering in the preceding addresses Christ revealed to our souls as a Savior, Christ revealed as the King, and Christ revealed as our Teacher. It will be obvious that such revelations, which are external or objective, must necessarily come first in order of events; that is to say, they must come before those revelations which are internal or subjective. Before I can know what it is to have the Christ within, I must apprehend the Christ without.

This point is illustrated in what we are continually seeing in the case of anxious awakened souls, who are earnestly seeking after Christ as their Savior. I observe that the mistake which such souls most frequently make is this, that they persist in looking within for a Christ that they do not possess, instead of looking without themselves unto a Christ revealed objectively as the one true foundation for their faith. Hence, as they naturally find themselves incapable of discovering what does not exist, or, at any rate, does not exist where they look for it, they either endeavor to simulate the discovery by working themselves up into a hysterical condition, or they grow discouraged and give up the search, relapsing into their former attitude of indifference. The error in such cases lies not in the belief that Christ can and does make His presence felt within the hearts of men, but in the reversal of the divine order—in the determination to find Him within before we have contemplated Him without, and learned to rest our hearts in full confidence upon Him, as thus revealed.

And this divine order is here as elsewhere reasonable as well as uniform. The apprehension and contemplation of the object produces naturally enough certain subjective effects upon our nature, while it demands the assumption of a certain