Page:Sermon by the Bishop of Rochester 1901.djvu/7

 doctrine is included in that. For it says that God is, and that we can know Him, which means Christ; and that life in us has power to be like His, which means forgiveness and the Holy Spirit; and that there is natural kinship between us and Him, which means Eternal Life and the Kingdom of Our Father.

It is all there, if God helps us to see it. But, it may be said, what help in this majestic abstraction as a working standard for life? I am holy. It is a focus of burning light. But what eye can read in it that which the little lives of man copy. A Christian, of course, has the blessing of one clear, simple answer to this question. It is that through Christ God is known—'the knowledge of the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.'

But, perhaps, by the help of that light we may find some answer another way.

I am holy. What does the word mean? I turn to your great Cambridge commentator, Dr Hort. "Separated for consecration to God." It often means that; but when said of God it plainly cannot do so. 'Separate in the sense of eminence or perfection: in freedom from defect, and completeness; in purity; in personal and intrinsic perfectness.' This can be said of God, and indeed of Him only: yet there is something here to work by in imitation. To be steadily one's best and truest self not because it is oneself, but because it is the likeness of God; to separate oneself from defiling things; to live with singleness and sincerity. This is imitation of God Himself. It takes us above the aimless, shallow, shifting life that is according to the desires.

But if God's holiness means the perfectness of His Being, what, we ask, is that Being?

Surely He has given us answers not less real because partial.

For example, it is a Being of energy and order. Semper agens, semper quietus. God has turned many leaves of the book of Nature for us in the last