t--the ever-living, ever-present, personal Self-Revelation
of God. He says, in his "Seven-Sealed Book," "I esteem Christ the Word
of God above all else, for without Him there is no salvation, and without
Him no one can enjoy God."[37] "Christ," he says in the _Paradoxa_, "has
been called the Image, the Character, the Expression of God, yes, the
Glory and Effulgence of His Splendour, the very Impression of His
Substance, so that in Him God Himself is seen and heard and known. For
it is God Himself whom we see and hear and perceive in Christ. In Him
God becomes visible and His nature is revealed. Everything that God is,
or knows, or wills, or possesses, or can do, is incarnated in Christ and
put before our eyes. Everything that can be said of God can as truly be
said of Christ."[38]

But this Christ, who is the very Nature and Character of God made visible
and vocal, is, as we have seen, not limited to the historical Person who
lived in Galilee and Judea. He is an eternal Logos, a living Word,
coming to expression, in some degree, in all times and lands, revealing
His Light through the dim lantern of many human lives--a Christ reborn in
many souls, raised again in many victorious lives, and endlessly
spreading His Kingdom through the ever-widening membership of the
invisible Church.[39] Without this eternal revelation of Himself in a
spiritual Fellowship of many members, God would not be God, as a Vine
would not be a Vine without branches; and contrariwise there could be no
spiritual humanity without the inward immanent {62} presence of this
Self-Revealing God in Christ.[40] As in Palestine, so everywhere,
Christ--not only Christ after the flesh, but after the Spirit--is a
crucified Christ. Only those can open the Sealed Book--can penetrate the
divine Revelation--who bear the mark of the Cross on their forehead, who
have eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the suffering and crucified
Christ, who have discovered that the Word of God is eternally a Word of
the Cross.[41] God is nearest to us when He seems farthest away. He was
nearest to Christ when He was crying: "My God, why hast Thou forsaken
me?" So, too, now he who is nearest to the cross is nearest to God, and
where the flesh is being crucified and the end of all outward things is
reached, _there God is found_.[42]

Sin means, for Franck as for all mystics of his type, the _free choice_
of something for one's private and particular self in place of lif