--which follows in the next clause--but
that we learn Him as the theme of our study.

That is to say, the relation of the person of Jesus Christ to all that
He has to teach and reveal to the world is altogether different from
that of all other teachers of all sorts of truth, to the truth which
they proclaim. You can accept the truths and dismiss into oblivion the
men from whom you got them. But you cannot reject Christ and take
Christianity. The two are inseparably united. For, in regard to all
spiritual and to all moral truth--truth about conduct and
character--Jesus Christ _is_ what He teaches. So we may say, turning
well-known words of a poet in another direction: 'My lesson is in
Thee.'

But that is not all. My text goes on to speak about another thing: 'Ye
have learned Christ if so be that ye have _heard Him_ and been taught.'
Now that 'If so be' is not the 'if' of uncertainty or doubt, but it is
equivalent to 'if, as I know to be the case,' or '_since_ ye have heard
Him.' Away there in Ephesus, years and years after the crucifixion,
these people who had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor heard a word
from the lips 'into which grace was poured,' are yet addressed by the
Apostle as those who had listened to Him and heard Him speak. They had
'heard Him and been taught.' So He was Lesson and He was Teacher. And
that is as true about us as it was about them. Let me say only a word or
two about each of these two thoughts.

I have already suggested that the underlying truth which warrants the
first of them is that Jesus Christ's relation to His message and
revelation is altogether different from that of other teachers to what
they have to communicate to the world. Of course we all know that, in
regard to the wider sphere of religious and Christian truth, it is not
only what Christ said, but even more what He did and was, that makes His
revelation of the Father's heart. Precious as are the words which drop
from His lips, which are spirit and are life, His life itself is more
than all His teachings; and it is when we learn, not _from_ Him, but
when we _learn_ Him, that we see the Father. But my text has solely
reference to conduct, and in that aspect it just implies this thought,
that the sum of all duty, the height of all moral perfectness, the
realised ideal of humanity, is in Christ, and that the true way to know
what a man or a nation ought to do is to study Him.

How strange it is, when one comes to consider it,