.

"I beseech you," he began, "endeavour to make this scene real to you. A
rich man, an official, comes to Jesus, calls Him Teacher--for so the word
is in the Greek--and asks Him what is to be done to inherit eternal life.
How strange it is that such a question should be so put! how rare are the
occasions on which two people approach one another so nearly! Most of us
pass days, weeks, months, years in intercourse with one another, and
nothing which even remotely concerns the soul is ever mentioned. Is it
that we do not care? Mainly that, and partly because we foolishly hang
back from any conversation on what it is most important we should reveal,
so that others may help us. Whenever you feel any promptings to speak of
the soul or to make any inquiries on its behalf, remember it is a sacred
duty not to suppress them.

"This ruler was happy in being able to find a single authority to whom he
could appeal for an answer. If anybody wishes for such an answer now, he
can find no oracle sole and decisive. The voices of the Church, the
sects, the philosophers are clamorous but discordant, and we are
bewildered. And yet, as I have told you over and over again in this
pulpit, it is absolutely necessary that you should have one and one only
supreme guide. To say nothing of eternal salvation, we must, in the
conduct of life, shape our behaviour by some one standard, or the result
is chaos. We must have some one method or principle which is to settle
beforehand how we are to do this or that, and the method or principle
should be Christ. Leaving out of sight altogether His divinity, there is
no temper, no manner so effectual, so happy as His for handling all human
experience. Oh, what a privilege it is to meet with anybody who is
controlled into unity, whose actions are all directed by one consistent
force!

"Jesus, as if to draw from this ruler all that he himself believed, tells
him to keep the Law. The Law, however, is insufficient, and it is
noteworthy that the ruler felt it to be so. To begin with, it is largely
negative: there are three negatives in this twentieth verse for one
affirmative, and negations cannot redeem us. The law is also external.
As a proof that it is ineffectual, I ask, Have you ever _rejoiced_ in it?
Have you ever been kindled by it? Have all its precepts ever moved you
like one single item in the story of the love of Jesus? Is the man
attractive to you who has kept the law and done nothin