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Study the Lord Jesus Christ!
(from "Go and tell Jesus" by Octavius Winslow)
We know so much of divine truth, my reader, as
we have in a measure a personal experience of it
in our souls. The mere speculatist and notionalist
in religion is as unsatisfactory and unprofitable
as the mere theorist and declaimer in science.
For all practical purposes both are but ciphers.
The character and the degree of our spiritual
knowledge begins and terminates in our knowledge
of Christ. Christ is the test of its reality, the
measure of its depth, and the source of its growth.
If you are advancing in an experimental, sanctifying
acquaintance with the Lord Jesus, you are advancing
in that knowledge which Paul thus estimates,
"I count all things but loss for the excellency of
the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord."
Dear reader, let the chief object of your study be
to know the Lord Jesus. It may be in the region of
your sinfulness, emptiness, weakness, and foolishness
that you learn Him; nevertheless, however humiliating
the school, slow the progress, and limited the
attainment, count every fresh step you make in a
personal acquaintance with the Lord Jesus as a nobler
triumph, and as bringing you into the possession of
more real wealth than were the whole chests of
human knowledge and science mastered, and its
untold treasures poured at your feet.
When adversity comes; when death approaches;
when eternity unveils; oh! how indescribably valuable,
how inconceivably precious will then be one faith's
touch, one faith's glimpse of a crucified and risen Savior!
All other attainments then vanish, and the only
knowledge that abides, soothes, and comforts, is
a heartfelt acquaintance with the most sublime
fact of the Gospel, that "Christ Jesus came into
the world to save sinners."
Oh! Whatever other studies may engage your
thoughts, forget not, as you value your eternal
destiny, to study the Lord Jesus Christ!
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