that mortal men should suggest God to the world!

There is something almost melting in the way His contemporaries, and John especially, speak of the influence of Christ.  John lived himself in daily wonder at Him; he was overpowered, over-awed, entranced, transfigured.  To his mind it was impossible for any one to come under this influence and ever be the same again.  “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not,” he said.  It was inconceivable that he should sin, as inconceivable as that ice should live in a burning sun, or darkness coexist with noon.  If any one did sin, it was to John the simple proof that he could never have met Christ.  “Whosoever sinneth,” he exclaims, “hath not seen Him, neither known Him.”  Sin was abashed in this Presence.  Its roots withered.  Its sway and victory were forever at an end.

But these were His contemporaries.  It was easy for them to be influenced by Him, for they were every day and all the day together.  But how can we mirror that which we have never seen?  How can all this stupendous result be produced by a Memory, by the scantiest of all Biographies, by One who lived and left this earth eighteen hundred years ago?  How can modern men to-day make Christ, the absent Christ, their most constant companion still?

The answer is that

          FRIENDSHIP IS A SPIRITUAL THING.

It is independent of Matter, or Space, or Time.  That which I love in my friend is not that which I see.  What influences me in my friend is not his body but his spirit.  He influences me about as much in his absence as in his presence.  It would have been an ineffable experience truly to have lived at that time—­

    “I think when I read the sweet story of old,
      How when Jesus was here among men,
    He took little children like lambs to His fold,
      I should like to have been with Him then.

    “I wish that His hand had been laid on my head,
      That His arms had been thrown around me,
    And that I had seen His kind look when he said,
      ‘Let the little ones come unto me.’”

And yet, if Christ were to come into the world again, few of us probably would ever have a chance of seeing Him.  Millions of her subjects in the little country of England have never seen their own Queen.  And there would be millions of the subjects of Christ who could never get within speaking distance of Him if He were here.  We remember He said:  “It is expedient for you (not for Me) that I go away”; because by going away He could really be nearer to us than He would have been if He had stayed here.  It would be geographically and physically impossible for most of us to be influenced by His person had He remained.  And so our communion with Him is a spiritual companionship; but not different from most companionships, which, when you press them down to the roots, you will find to be essentially spiritual.