November 24

"Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?"—John 4:29.

So souls, newborn into the kingdom of God, are always disposed to argue; and theirs is the right instinct—they lay the emphasis where it ought to be. I trust that what I accentuate is the lurid and yet transforming light Jesus has thrown over my past, and the dawn that has come to me in His company.

Theology is not the paramount matter in the hour of conversion. Christ's truths about God the Father and God the Spirit—they are vast and royal; by and by they will merit all my thought and study. But just now, when "day's at the morn," I am unable to occupy myself with them.

And far less is ecclesiasticism the question of most vital concern. Once I was keenly interested in the controversy between Jew and Samaritan. Once I loved nothing more than a discussion on church government and polity. It may be right that I should not cease to care about these things. But to-day, when "He drew me and I followed on," they dwindle into nothingness.

No, no; there is nothing I can think of in this revealing and humbling and transfiguring season, but the truth which has found me out, and the Saviour who has been reading me like the page of an open book. My conscience is roused into a strange alertness. My sin is confronting me. My heart bleeds and yet rejoices—bleeds of its wound, rejoices for its cure. And Jesus, for the first time, has shown His melting, conquering, filling, reviving grace to me.

It is little wonder that He absorbs my thought. Christ is the Beginning, and the End is Christ.