nd we will very soon tell you whether it is
genuine or not. When the man you have seen every day for years, and
whose character you have looked into under the strongest lights, is
accused of dishonesty, and damaging evidence is brought against him,
does it seriously disturb your confidence in him? Not at all. No
evidence can countervail the knowledge gained by intercourse. You know
the man, directly, and you believe in him without regard to what other
persons advance in his favour or against him. Christ expects acceptance
on similar grounds. Look at Him, listen to Him, pass with Him from day
to day of His life, and say whether it is possible that He can be a
deceiver, or that He can be deceived. He Himself is confident that those
who seek the truth, and are accustomed to acknowledge and follow the
truth always, will follow Him. He is confident that they will find that
He so fits in with what they have already learnt, that naturally and
instinctively they will accept Him.

It is at the point in which all men are interested that Christ appeals
to us--at the point of life or conduct; and He says that whoever truly
desires to do God's will, will find that His teaching leads him right.
And if men would only acknowledge Christ in this respect, and begin, as
conscience bids them, by accepting His life as exhibiting the highest
rule of conduct, they would sooner or later acknowledge Him in all. A
man may not at once see all that is involved in the fact that Christ
exhibits, as no one else exhibits, the will of God; but if He will but
acknowledge Him as _the_ Teacher of God's will, not coming to Him with a
spirit of suspicion but of earnest desire to do God's will, that man
will become a convinced follower of Christ. There are, of course,
persons of a sound moral disposition who get entangled intellectually in
perplexing difficulties about the person of Christ and His relation to
God; but if such persons are humble--and humility is a virtue of
decisive consequence--they will, by virtue of their experience in moral
questions, and by their practical knowledge of the value of harmony with
God, prize the teaching of Christ, and recognise its superiority, and
submit themselves to its influence.

It was on the last day of the feast that our Lord made the most explicit
revelation of Himself to the people. For seven days the people dwelt in
their booths; on the eighth day they celebrated their entrance into the
promised land, forsook t