To be near unto God - pagina 135

when

there

is

no more fragrance

of life percept-

anywhere, the reward of this barren, dead knowledge is eternal life. All this falls away when The the saying of Jesus is taken as it reads: knowledge of God is itself eternal life. He who has it. has already, here and now. eternal life. He who dies without having found it here, will never find it in the hereafter. No eternal morning will dawn on him. And this interpretation, which seems to us the only permissible one, affects us like a power that pierces the conscience with the question: Have you this knowledge? And it urges us, now, before it is too late, to seek it with all our might, until in thrilling ecstacy of soul we feel the swell of the undulation of this eternal ible

life.

And now comes Philip with the naive request: Lord, show us the Father (John 14:8). This was childlike in its simplicity, but he chose the right starting point from which to advance. He who asks like this shows that he means it, and that he in earnest about it. He wants to know God. It shows that he does not care for book-knowledge, but for life-knowledge of God. And what is more natural than that he begins by asking: Show me is

the Father. One of the defects of the religious life, as it has come down to us from the Reformation, is that in distinction from Rome it has been developed too dogmatically. This could not be otherwise. Doctrine can not be sacrificed. But when it appears too onesidedly in the foreground, there is something wrong. The same difference presents itself between the Gospels and the Epistles; the latter 127

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