To some Christ is a creed and a pattern of life, but not a personal friend. There are many who know well the “historic Christ,” but to whom he is only a person who lived nearly two thousand years ago. They read his biography as they read that of St. Paul or St John, admiring and wondering, and ofttimes saying, in the lines of the children's hymn,—
“I wish that His hands had been placed on my
head,
That his arms had been thrown around me,
And that I might have seen his kind look when he said,
‘Let the little ones come unto me.’”
They think of his sweet life as but a vanished dream; or, if they realize his resurrection, he is to them an absent friend, like a dear one journeying in another land — real, loving, true, trusted, but far away. But all such miss the sweetest blessedness of knowing Christ. He does not belong to the past nor to the far away, but is a friend who would come into the actual daily life of each of his believing ones. No mother was ever so much to her child as Jesus would be to us if we would let him into our life. How can we get this blessing of personal knowledge of Christ and conscious personal friendship with him I Trust him and obey him, and you will learn to know him and love him.