e limbs dropped as if melted; so, silently, in His meek and
merciful strength, the Christ comes to us all, and the iron gate which
leadeth out into freedom opens of its own accord at His touch, and the
fetters fall from our limbs, and we go forth free men. 'The Breaker is
gone up before us.'

II. Again, take another application of this same figure found in
Scripture, which sets forth Jesus Christ as being the Opener of the path
to God.

'I am the Way and the Truth and the Life, no man cometh to the Father
but by Me,' said He. And again, 'By a new and living way which He hath
opened for us through the veil' (that is to say, His flesh), we can have
free access 'with confidence by the faith of Him.' That is to say, if we
rightly understand our natural condition, it is not only one of bondage
to evil, but it is one of separation from God. Parts of the divine
character are always beautiful and sweet to every human heart when it
thinks about them. Parts of the divine character stand frowning before a
man who knows himself for what he is; and conscience tells us that
between God and us there is a mountain of impediment piled up by our own
evil. To us Christ comes, the Path-finder and the Path; the Pioneer who
breaks the way for us through all the hindrances, and leads us up to the
presence of God.

For we do not know God as He is except by Jesus Christ. We see
fragments, and often distorted fragments, of the divine nature and
character apart from Jesus, but the real divine nature as it is, and as
it is in its relation to me, a sinner, is only made known to me in the
face of Jesus Christ. When we see Him we see God; Christ's tears are
God's pity, Christ's gentleness is God's meekness, Christ's tender,
drawing love is not only a revelation of a most pure and sweet Brother's
heart, but a manifestation through that Brother's heart of the deepest
depths of the divine nature. Christ is the heart of God. Apart from Him,
we come to the God of our own consciences and we tremble; we come to the
God of our own fancies and we presume; we come to the God dimly guessed
at and pieced together from out of the hints and indications of His
works, and He is little more than a dead name to us. Apart from Christ
we come to a peradventure which we call a God; a shadow through which
you can see the stars shining. But we know the Father when we believe in
Christ. And so all the clouds rising from our own hearts and consciences
and fancies and misc