How to become like Christ | Page 5

exhibit Christ, the whole thing set a-going for this purpose of exhibiting Christ,
we so little see Him. How is it that two men can sit at a Communion table together, and
the one be lifted to the seventh heaven and see the King in His beauty, while the other
only envies his neighbour his vision? Why is it that in the same household two persons
will pass through identically the same domestic circumstances, the same events, from
year to year, and the one see Christ everywhere, while the other grows sullen, sour,
indifferent? Why is it? Because the one wears a veil that prevents him from seeing Christ;
the other lives with unveiled face. How was it that the Psalmist, in the changes of the
seasons even, in the mountain, in the sea, in everything that he had to do, found God?
How was it that he knew that even though he made his bed in hell he would find God?
Because he had an unveiled face; he was prepared to find God. How is it that many of us
can come into church and be much more taken up with the presence of some friend than

with the presence of Christ? The same reason still: we wear a veil; we do not come with
unveiled face prepared to see Him.
And When we ask ourselves, "What, in point of fact, is the veil that I wear? What is it
that has kept me from responding to the perfect beauty of Christ's character? I know that
that character is perfect; I know that I ought to respond to it; I know that I ought to go out
eagerly towards Christ and strive to become like Him; why do I not do it?" we find that
the veil that keeps us from responding thus to Christ and reflecting Him is not like the
mere dimness on a mirror which the bright and warm presence of Christ Himself would
dry off; it is like an incrustation that has been growing out from our hearts all our life
long, and that now is impervious, so far as we can see, to the image of Christ. How can
hearts steeped in worldliness reflect this absolutely unworldly, this heavenly Person?
When we look into our hearts, what do we find in point of fact? We find a
thousand ,things that we know have no right there; that we know to be wrong. How can
such hearts reflect this perfect purity of Christ? Well, we must see to it that these hearts
be cleansed; we must hold ourselves before Christ until from very shame these passions
of ours are subdued, until His purity works its way into our hearts through all
obstructions; and we must keep our hearts, we must keep the mirror free from dust, free
from incrustations, once we have cleansed it.
In some circumstances you might be tempted to say that really it is not so much that there
is a veil on the mirror as that there is no quicksilver at all behind. You meet in life
characters so thin, so shallow, that every good thought seems to go through and out of
them at the other side; they hear with one ear, and it goes out at the other. You can make
no impression upon them. There is nothing to impress, no character there to work upon.
They are utterly indifferent to spiritual things, and never give a thought to their own
character. What is to be done with such persons? God is the great Teacher of us all; God,
in His providence, has made many a man who has begun life as shallow and superficial
as man can be, deep enough before He has done with him.
Two particulars in which the perfectness of this method appears may be pointed out. First
of all, it is perfect in this: that anyone who begins it is bound to go on to the end. The
very nature of the case leads him to go on and on from glory to glory, back and back to
Christ, until the process is, actually completed, and he is like Christ. The reason is this:
that the Christian conscience is never much taken up with attainment made, but always
with attainment that is yet to be made. It is the difference not the likeness that touches the
conscience. A friend has been away in Australia for ten years, and he sends you his
likeness, and you take it out eagerly, and you say, "Yes, the eyes are the very eyes; the
brow, the hair are exactly like," but there is something about the mouth that you do not
like, and you thrust it away in a drawer and never look at it again. Why? Because the