put themselves off with learning more about
salvation before they accept it. An eagerness in acquiring knowledge
_about_ Christ may as effectually as any other pursuit retard us in
making acquaintance with Him. It is mere trifling to be always enquiring
about One who is Himself with us; the way to secure that we shall have
Him when we need Him is to go with Him now. How can we expect our
difficulties to be removed while we do not adopt the one method God
recognises as effectual for this purpose, fellowship with Christ? Why
enquire longer about the way of salvation, and where we may find it at a
future time? Christ offers His friendship now, "Come with Me, now," He
says, "and for yourself enter My dwelling as a welcome friend." Can the
friendship of Christ do us harm, or retard us in any good thing? May we
not most reasonably fear that hesitation now may put Christ beyond our
reach? We cannot tell what new influences may enter our life and set an
impassable gulf between us and religion.

Sixty years after, when one of these men wrote this Gospel, he
remembered as if it had been yesterday the very hour of the day when he
followed Jesus into His house. His whole life seemed to date from that
hour; as well it might, for what could mark a human life more deeply and
lift it more surely to permanent altitude than an evening with Jesus?
They felt that at last they had found a Friend with human sympathies and
Divine intelligence. How eagerly must these men who had of late been
thinking much of new problems, have laid all their difficulties before
this master-mind, that seemed at once to comprehend all truth, and to
appreciate the little obstacles that staggered them. What boundless
regions of thought would His questions open up, and how entirely new an
aspect would life assume under the light He shed upon it.

The astonished satisfaction they found in their first intercourse with
Christ is shown in the bursting enthusiasm with which Andrew sought out
his brother Simon, and summarily announced, "We have found the Christ."
That is how the Gospel is propagated. The closer the tie, the more
emphatic the testimony. It is what brother says to brother, husband to
wife, parent to child, friend to friend, far more than what preacher
says to hearer, that carries in it irresistible persuasive power. When
the truth of the utterance is vouched for by the obvious gladness and
purity of the life; when the finding of the Christ is obviously as