no real love to Him--have, as the underlying motive of their conduct
and their feelings, a real ignorance of God, 'They know not Him that
sent Me.'

Our Lord assumes that He is so completely the Copy and Revealer of
the divine nature as that any man that looks upon Him has had the
opportunity of becoming acquainted with God, and that any man who
turns away from Him has lost that opportunity. The God that the men
who do not love Jesus Christ believe in, is not the Father that sent
Him. It is a fragment, a distorted image tinted by the lens. The
world has its conception of God; but outside of Jesus Christ and His
manifestation of the whole divine nature, the world's God is but a
syllable, a fragment, a broken part of the perfect completeness. 'The
Father of an infinite majesty,' and of as infinite a tenderness, the
stooping God, the pitying God, the forgiving God, the loving God is
known only where Christ is accepted. In other hearts He may be dimly
hoped for, in other hearts He may be half believed in, in other
hearts He may be thought possible; but hopes and anticipations and
fears and doubts are not knowledge, and they who see not the light in
Christ see but the darkness. Out of Him God is not known, and they
that turn away from His beneficent manifestation turn their faces to
the black north, from which no sun can shine. Brother, do you know
God in Christ? Unless you do, you do not know the God who is.

But there is a deeper meaning in that word than simply the possession
of true thoughts concerning the divine nature. We know God as we know
one another; because God is a Person, as we are persons, and the only
way to know persons is through familiar acquaintance and sympathy. So
the world which turns away from Christ has no acquaintance with God.