eption of knowledge. It is co-extensive with life, and is built upon
inward experience. In a word, it is one aspect of winning Jesus. It is
consciousness contemplating its riches, counting its gains. As a man
knows the bliss of parental or wedded love only by having it, or as he
knows the taste of wine only by drinking it, or the glory of music only
by hearing it, and the brightness of the day only by seeing it, so we
know Christ only by winning Him. There must first be the perception and
possession by sense or emotion, and then the reflection on the
possession by understanding. This applies to all religious truth. It
must be possessed ere it be fully known. Like the new name written upon
the Apocalyptic stone, 'No one knoweth but he that receiveth it.'

The knowledge which was Paul's life's aim was knowledge of a Person:
the object determines the nature of the knowledge. The mental act of
knowing a proposition or a science or even of knowing about a person by
hearing of him is different from that of knowing people when we have
lived beside them. We need not be afraid of attaching too familiar a
meaning to this word of our text, if we say that it implies personal
acquaintance with the Christ whom we know. Of course we come to know Him
in the first instance through the medium of statements about Him, and we
cannot too strongly insist, in these days of destructive criticism, on
the absolute necessity of accepting the Gospel statements as to the life
of Jesus as the only possible method of knowing Him. But then, beyond
that acceptance of the record must come the application and
appropriation of it, and the transmutation of a historical fact into a
personal experience. We may take an illustration from any of the
Scriptural truths about Jesus:--For instance, Scripture declares Him to
be our Redeemer. One man believes Him to be so, welcomes Him into his
life as such, and finds Him to be such. Another man believes Him to be
so, but never puts His redeeming power to the proof. Is the knowledge of
these two rightly called by the same name? That which comes after
experience is surely not rightly designated by the same title as that
which has no vivification nor verification of such a sort to build on,
and is the mere product of the understanding. There is nothing which the
great mass of so-called Christians need more than to have forced into
their thoughts the difference between these two kinds of knowledge of
Christ. There are th