WHO AM I?

“WHO AM I?”

And yet the disciples knew. Those words of death were not the first they had heard from Jesus' lips. They should have remembered that day, not long before, when on a soli­tary road near Caesarea Philippi, Jesus had asked what people said of Him. (Matt. 16:15) They should have remembered the answer which flashed out like sudden flame, the impetuous outcry of belief from Peter's heart; and the splendor which had shone on three of them on the summit of the mountain; and the exact prophecies of Christ as to the manner of His death.

They had heard and they had seen, and still they hoped on,—all but one. The truth shone out in them at moments like lightning-flashes in the dark. Then the night fell blacker than ever. The new man in their hearts who recognized Jesus as the Christ, the man born for the second time, the Chris­tian, disappeared to give way to the Jew, deaf and blind, who saw nothing beyond the Jerusalem of bricks and stone.

The question which Jesus had put to the Twelve on the road in Caesarea Philippi must have been the beginning of their com­plete conversion to the new truth. What need did Jesus have to know what others thought of Him? Such a curiosity springs up only in doubtful souls, in those who do not know themselves, in the weak who cannot read in their own hearts, in the blind who are not sure of the ground on which they stand. For any one of us such a question is legitimate, but not for Jesus. No one of us knows really who He is, no one knows with any certainty what is His real nature, His mission, and the name which He has a right to call His own, the eternal name which fits our destiny. The name which was given to us in infancy, together with the salt and water of baptism, the name set down on the municipal register, and written in the records of birth and of death, the name which the mother calls with so much gentleness in the morning, which the sweetheart murmurs with so much desire at night, the name which is cut for the last time on the rectangle of the tomb, that is not our real name. Every one of us has a secret name which ex­presses our invisible and authentic essence, and which we our­selves will never know until the day of the New Birth, until the full light of the resurrection.

Few of us dare to ask ourselves, "Who am I?" and there are still fewer who can answer. The question "Who art thou?" is the most tremendous, the most weighty which man can put to man. Other human beings are for each of us a sealed mys­tery even in the moments of highest passion, when two souls desperately attempt to become one. We are all of us a mystery even to ourselves. Unknown to others, we live among others unknown to us. Much of our wretchedness comes from this universal ignorance. Here is a man who acts like a king and believes himself a king and in the absolute he is really only a poor servant, predestined from the beginning of time to de­pendent mediocrity. Here is another dressed and acting like a judge; look at him well; be is born a dry-goods dealer, his real place is in the country fair. That man there who writes poetry has not understood his inner voice; he should be a goldsmith, because gold which can be turned into coin suits his taste, and he is attracted by fancy ornamentation, mosaics, and chasing, imitation jewels. This other man who is at the head of an army ought to be teaching school. What an expert and elo­quent professor he might have become! And that fellow there, shouting in the public places, heading a revolution, calling on the people to revolt, is a gardener who has mistaken his call­ing; the red of tomatoes, long lines of onions, garlic, and cabbages would be the fit reward of his true mission. This other man here, on the contrary, who, cursing his fate, prunes his grape-vines and spreads the manure on the cultivated earth, should have studied in law-books the art of quibbling: no one can invent clever arguments and verbal tricks as he can, and even now, how much eloquence he pours out in humble duels about money matters, this poor "leading lawyer" exiled to barns and furrows.

These errors concern us because we do not know, because we have not spiritual eyes strong enough to read in the heart which beats inside our own breasts, and the hearts which beat under the flesh of our neighbors, so irrevocably remote from us. Everything is in confusion because of those Names which we do not know, illegible for us, known to genius alone.