No human lips can tell the love of Christ to the heart until Jesus himself speaks within. Descriptions all fall flat and tame unless the Holy Spirit fills them with life and power. Until our Immanuel reveals himself within, the soul cannot see him.

Think about it—if you wanted to see the sun, would you gather candles and lanterns and flashlights, hoping their combined light would somehow show you the sun itself? No! Any wise person knows the sun must reveal itself. Only by its own blaze can that mighty lamp be seen.

It's exactly the same with Christ. "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah," Jesus said to Peter, "for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you." You can purify human nature through any educational process you choose. You can elevate the mind to the highest peak of intellectual power. Yet none of these can reveal Christ! The Spirit of God must come with power, overshadowing us with his wings. And then, in that mystic holy of holies, the Lord Jesus displays himself to the sanctified eye—as he does not to the spiritually blind sons of men.

Christ must be his own mirror. The great mass of this dim-eyed world sees nothing of the ineffable glories of Immanuel. He stands right before them without form or beauty, a root from dry ground—rejected by the vain, despised by the proud.

But where the Spirit has touched the eyes with healing salve, where he has quickened the heart with divine life and educated the soul to a heavenly taste—only there is he understood. "To you who believe, he is precious!" To you, he is the chief cornerstone, the Rock of your salvation, your all in all. But to others? He remains "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense."

Happy are those to whom our Lord manifests himself, for his promise to such is that he will make his abode with them.

O Jesus, our Lord, our heart is open—come in, and go out no more forever! Show yourself to us now! Favor us with a glimpse of your all-conquering charms!