Why did nothing happen?  Because there was nothing to happen—­nothing of the kind they were looking for.  Why did it elude them?  Because there was no “it.”  When shall we learn that the pursuit of holiness is simply

          THE PURSUIT OF CHRIST?

When shall we substitute for the “it” of a fictitious aspiration, the approach to a Living Friend?  Sanctity is in character and not in moods; Divinity in our own plain calm humanity, and in no mystic rapture of the soul.

And yet there are others who, for exactly a contrary reason, will find scant satisfaction here.  Their complaint is not that a religion expressed in terms of Friendship is too homely, but that it is still too mystical.  To “abide” in Christ, to “make Christ our most constant companion,” is to them the purest mysticism.  They want something absolutely tangible and absolutely direct.  These are not the poetical souls who seek a sign, a mysticism in excess, but the prosaic natures whose want is mathematical definition in details.  Yet it is perhaps not possible to reduce this problem to much more rigid elements.  The beauty of Friendship is its infinity.  One can never evacuate life of mysticism.  Home is full of it, love is full of it, religion is full of it.  Why stumble at that in the relation of man to Christ which is natural in the relation of man to man?

If any one cannot conceive or realize a mystical relation with Christ, perhaps all that can be done is to help him to step on to it by still plainer analogies from common life.  How do I know Shakspere or Dante?  By communing with their words and thoughts.  Many men know Dante better than their own fathers.  He influences them more.  As a spiritual presence he is more near to them, as a spiritual force more real.  Is there any reason why a greater than Shakspere or Dante, who also walked this earth, who left great words behind Him, who has greater works everywhere in the world now, should not also instruct, inspire and mould the characters of men?  I do not limit Christ’s influence to this:  it is this, and it is more.  But Christ, so far from resenting or discouraging this relation of Friendship, Himself proposed it.  “Abide in me” was almost His last word to the world.  And He partly met the difficulty of those who feel its intangibleness by adding the practical clause, “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you.”

Begin with His words.  Words can scarcely ever be long impersonal.  Christ himself was a Word, a word made Flesh.  Make His words flesh; do them, live them, and you must live Christ. “He that keepeth My Commandments, he it is that loveth Me.”  Obey Him and you must love Him.  Abide in Him, and you must obey Him. Cultivate His Friendship.  Live after Christ, in His Spirit, as in His Presence, and it is difficult to think what more you can do.  Take this at least as a first lesson, as introduction.