transforms is not what the Apostle calls 'knowing Christ after the
flesh,' but inward communion with Him, the companionship and
familiarity which are as possible for us as for any Peter or John of
them all, and without which our Christianity is nothing but sounding
brass and tinkling cymbal.

They were 'with Jesus,' as each of us may be. Their communion was in
no respect different from the communion that is open and
indispensable to any real Christian. To be with Him is possible for
us all. When we go to our daily work, when we are compassed about by
distracting and trivial cares, when men come buzzing round us, and
the ordinary secularities of life seem to close in upon us like the
walls of a prison, and to shut out the blue and the light--oh! it is
hard, but it _is_ possible, for every one of us to think these all
away, and to carry with us into everything that blessed thought of a
Presence that is not to be put aside, that sits beside me at my study
table, that stands beside you at your tasks, that goes with you in
shop and mart, that is always near, with its tender encircling, with
its mighty protection, with its all-sufficing sweetness and power. To
be with Christ is no prerogative, either of Apostles and teachers of
the primitive age, or of saints that have passed into the higher
vision; but it is possible for us all. No doubt there are as yet
unknown forms and degrees of companionship with Christ in the future
state, in comparison with which to be 'present in the body is to be
absent from the Lord'; but in the inmost depth of reality, the soul
that loves is where it loves, and has whom it loves ever with it.
'Where the treasure is, there will the heart be also,' and we may be
with Christ if only we will honestly try hour by hour to keep
ourselves in touch with Him, and to make Him the motive as well as
the end of the work that other men do along with us, and do from