---

We find Christ so differently because we seek Him in such very different ways. We cannot have a uniform Christ any more than we can have a uniform experience. In essence, in character, in love, in pity, Jesus Christ will ever be the same to every sinner who comes to Him, but as we come to Him we shall seem to have a very different Christ, because we use our own glasses, and, therefore, see Him from different points of view, and have different convictions about Him. Here is a person who comes to Jesus Christ, who has been educated and brought up in a manner of refinement and beauty, whose home has been the centre of everything that was charming; his mother was gentle, and sweet as an angel, his education from boarding-school days until he settled himself in life was all that could be desired to train the taste, to balance the judgment, and to make the character round, unique, and beautiful. By-and-by he comes to Jesus Christ, and he comes along such a different path to that man over there, for he was born down a back street, where hardly a gleam of sunshine ever burst through his mother's window, and he hardly ever saw a beautiful flower; certainly his boyish feet never tripped along a green field; he never heard the birds sing in the wood, nor saw the light and charm of nature as others have seen it; rough, rude, uneducated, unable to read one word of the .New Testament. By-and-by that man comes to Christ, and he sits in the church at the Lord's table by the side of that other educated and refined Christian. If they compare notes they will seem to have a very different Christ, because they came along such very different roads up to the cross. I believe, brethren, that that first view of Jesus in the soul's experience makes a vast deal of difference to his whole thinking and to his whole life about the Saviour whom he first saw. Oh, what passion burns in one man, and what calm, strong, intellectual, and dignified faith wrestles and grapples in the other, as he comes up first to look at Jesus Christ. John Newton saw Him like this: —

"I saw One hanging on a tree

In agonies and blood,

Who fixed His languid eyes on me,

As near His cross I stood;

And never till my latest breath

Shall I forget that look,

It seemed to charge me with His death,

Though not a word He spoke."James Allen saw Him like this: —

"Sweet the moments, rich in blessing,

Which before the cross I spend,

Love and health and peace possessing,

From the sinner's dying friend.

Here it is I find my heaven

While upon His cross I gaze,

Love I much? I've more forgiven,

I am a miracle of grace."So the poets and hymn-writers came to Him differently, and seemed to take a different view of Him.

(W. Cuff.)

---

---

KJV: When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?

WEB: Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"