1870] A THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY 159 



manent in Him. The surrender of their whole heart to 

 Christ was the condition, not the fruit, of a correct Christo- 

 logy. Even the Resurrection left much that was vague 

 in the Apostles theology, and perhaps the full develop 

 ment of the Christology of John was only attained to 

 wards the end of a long life of devoted service to a risen 

 Saviour. And yet the actual historic personality of the 

 Saviour did not vary, but was as truly divine when John 

 first saw Him as after the Ascension. Not mainly the 

 addition of new facts, of new phenomena, in the life of 

 our Lord, but a growth in the regenerated personality of 

 the disciple, explains the growth of John s theology. The 

 first effect of contact with Christ was the production of 

 faith and love, and then it required only the continued 

 presence of the same contact with the Saviour to develop 

 a true knowledge of Him with whom the life of the apostle 

 was now inseparably bound up. And so the historical 

 Christ was ever the foundation and rule of John s Christo 

 logy, though only the inner life of union with Christ 

 supplied the power to pierce through the phenomena and 

 know what this wondrous person really is. 



The growth of the Christian personality cannot be 

 essentially different for an apostle and for the Christian 

 in our own day. And this essential identity must clearly 

 extend itself to the growth of that necessary knowledge 

 whereby the new man comes to understand his own new 

 life. With us, too, the first thing must be that we are 

 brought through the word read and preached into con 

 tact with the historical realities of Christianity. We can 

 no longer see Christ with our bodily eyes, but to us, as 

 Luther delighted to say, &quot;the written word is the o-a/&amp;gt; 

 Xpio-rov, the outward vehicle which manifests the person 

 of the God-man.&quot; But this mere outer contact with the 

 phenomenal Christ has no saving power. Nor can we 

 by natural reason construe for ourselves the true living 

 person set before us in the word. Only the Spirit working 

 faith in us can carry us beyond the form and bring us 



