Incompleteness Without Christ
Colossians i. 28 v.
“Perfect in Christ Jesus.”
Ciirtst is not a miracle; He is that which takes away the miracle. I am a miracle without Him. I am the only unfinished house in the city of God. There is no creature on the earth so great as I; but there is none so unfinished. I am better than the flower of the field and the bird of the air; but I am not nearly so complete. I am less perfect as a man than is the flower as a flower. The (lower has no want that is not met by nature; but I have one. If there be no Christ, I have a sense without an object; my faith is vain. I have an object for my eye; I have an object for my ear; I have an object for my hand; but I have no object for my faith. I have the belief in a perfect ideal of beauty; I have a faith that, somehow, somewhere, I shall find it. Has that faith been a dream? Is my life a sunflower without a sun? Is there nothing corresponding to the beauty which I seek? Do I ever find the form than which I can imagine no fairer? I gaze on some favoured spot, and for a moment it seems divine; I shut the eyes, and there rises in fancy a scene more beauteous still. I am unfinished — most unfinished where I am greatest. Nature has left me incomplete. I am a bee without a hive. I build, but there is no edifice; I plan, but there is no order; I paint a picture of beauty, but the original never comes.
Be still, my soul; Nature is not all — not all for thee. Thy picture has been realised. There has come to thee one exceptional hour which has filled up that which is behind. There has stood before thee a form whose beauty has surpassed thy painting. If thou shouldst close thine eyes a hundred times, thou canst imagine no fairer. He has outstripped fancy; He lias outstripped His own star. He lias made thee what the flower is, what the bird is — complete. He has given thee what thou hadst not before — a wing for thine own atmosphere. He has made thy promise a fulfilment, thine April a June. He comes not to humiliate thee, but to save thee from humiliation — to break the miracle of thine own unflnishedness. He justifies thee to thyself — justifies thy claim to high predictions, and thy right to noble aims. Nature has broken the pitcher at the fountain; but thou art perfect in Christ Jesus.