Truth is very old. So old indeed that it always was. So vital withal, so divinely persistent, that it will always be. It is the pearl of great price for which the wise will give all that they have. Everyone searches for the truth, unconsciously much of the time perhaps, each in his own way. The youngster at his desk, the agriculturist at the experiment station, the inventor in the laboratory, the welder with his torch building ships that men may go down to the sea, the poet hidden in the light of thought, the religionist in the sanctuary—one and all are striving for a better order, are reaching for perfection, are moving, however slowly, toward reality.
Jesus confirmed this universal hope of mankind when he promised, "The truth shall make you free." The quest for truth, then, is not entirely unselfish, since the searcher envisages enlarged freedom ahead for himself. But what is truth? Pilate immortalizes the question by putting it to Truth itself, for Christ is Truth, and Jesus is Truth's highest human representative. Hence his title, Jesus the Christ.
The truth about man, the truth about himself, dawned more clearly on Jesus the day he went down to the Jordan to hear his cousin John and be baptized of him. As he came up out of the water he realized, fully, that he was the son of God in whom the Father was well pleased. This is the truth about every man. Some day, in your quest for understanding, you will emerge from the mesmerism of materiality and mortality to discover that you are the son of God, invulnerable to evil and disease and mortality. Now it is clear why men persistently seek the truth, specifically the truth about man.
