s. Our Lord was on the point of leaving the world; and He
left its future, the future of the sheep He loved so well and had spent
His all upon, in the keeping of Peter and the rest, and the one security
He demanded of them was the confession of love for Himself. He did not
draw up a creed or a series of articles binding them to this and that
duty, to special methods of governing the Church or to special truths
they were to teach it; He did not summon them into the house of Peter or
of Zebedee, and bid them affix their signatures or marks to such a
document. He rested the whole future of the work He had begun at such
cost on their love for Him. This security alone He took from them. This
was the sufficient guarantee of their fidelity and of their wisdom. It
is not great mental ability that is wanted for the furtherance of
Christ's aims in the world. It is love of what is best, devotion to
goodness. No question is made about their knowledge; they are not asked
what views they have about the death of Christ; they are not required to
analyse their feelings and say whence their love has sprung--whether
from a due sense of their indebtedness to Him for delivering them from
sin and its consequence, or from the grace and beauty of His character,
or from His tender and patient consideration of them. There is no
omission of anything vital owing to His being hurried in these morning
hours. Three times over the question comes, and the third is as the
first, a question solely and exclusively as to their love. Three times
over the question comes, and three times over, when love is
unhesitatingly confessed, comes the Apostolic commission, "Feed My
sheep." Love is enough--enough not only to save the Apostles themselves,
but enough to save the world.

The significance of this cannot be exaggerated. What is Christianity? It
is God's way of getting hold of us, of attaching us to what is good, of
making us holy, perfect men. And the method He uses is the presentation
of goodness in a personal form. He makes goodness supremely attractive
by exhibiting to us its reality and its beauty and its permanent and
multiplying power in Jesus Christ. Absolutely simple and absolutely
natural is God's method. The building up of systems of theology, the
elaborate organisation of churches, the various, expensive, and
complicated methods of men, how artificial do they seem when set
alongside of the simplicity and naturalness of God's method! Men are to
be