earning and knowledge in the schools of human thought. "I have
more understanding than all my teachers; for Thy testimonies are my
meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have kept Thy
precepts." To know and to possess Christ, is to have the Word, that is
the Wisdom of God, enshrined as a most sacred possession in the heart.

III. CHRIST AS THE LIFE.--It is not enough to know; we need life. Life
is, indeed, the gate to knowledge. "This is life eternal _that_ they
should know Thee." It was imperative, therefore, that Jesus should
become a source of life to men, that they might know the Truth, and be
able to walk in the Way, and more especially since death had infected
and exhausted all the springs of the world's vitality.

It was into a world of death that the Son of God came. The spring of
life in our first parents had become tainted at its source. At the
best Adam was only a living soul. Dead--dead--dead in trespasses and
sins; such was the Divine verdict, such the course of this world.
Earth resembled the valley in the prophet's vision, full of bones, very
many and very dry. All the reservoirs of life were spent; its
fountains had died away in wastes of sand.

Then the Son of God brought life from the eternal throne, from God
Himself; and became a Life-giving Spirit. His words were spirit and
life: He was Himself the Resurrection and the Life: those that believed
in Him became partakers of the Divine Nature. The tree of life was
again planted on the earth's soil, when Jesus became incarnate. "I
give eternal life unto My sheep," He said, "and they shall never
perish." "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life."

If, then, you are wanting life, and life more abundantly, you must have
Christ. Do not seek _it_, but _Him_: not the stream but the fountain;
not the word, but the speaker; not the fruit, but the tree. He is the
Life and Light of men.

And if you have Christ you have life. You may not be competent to
define or analyze it; you may not be able to specify the place or time,
when it first broke into your soul; you may hardly be able to
distinguish it from the workings of your own life: but if you have
Christ, trust Christ, desire Christ above all, you have the Life. "He
that hath the Son hath the Life; he that hath not the Son of God hath
not the Life." "We know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is
true . . . this is eternal life." "I," said Jesus, "am the Way,