Gal. v. 5.

Eph. iii. 16.

the hope of righteousness," the glory reserved for the justified? It is "by the Spirit." Does "Christ dwell in our hearts by faith?" It is because the Spirit has "strengthened us with might in our inner man. Am I needlessly dwelling upon truths which are, thanks be to God, our most familiar friends among the treasures of the Gospel? It is not wholly for argument that I do so. To me there seems to lie in the very recitation of our creed of the Hidden Life a charm and power which the Spirit Himself can wonderfully employ to revive or to develop in the soul the realization and the use of the precious things which are in some respects so familiar.

But I come now to what was my main reason for this review of some of the blessings given us by the Lord the Life-Giver. I come to say something of the Place of Christ in the Spirit's work.

And here for the present I will speak not only briefly but in one direction alone. I will not dwell upon the all-beloved truth of the propitiating Cross, and upon the Spirit's witness to it in our awakened hearts. I will not dwel

THE SPIRIT UNITÈS US TÒ CHRIST. 39

at all indeed upon the Spirit's witness to the Lord Jesus. I look at present in the direction only of our UNION with Jesus Christ in new birth and life by the Spirit.

John xi. 25;

xiv. 6.

The Spirit, as our Communion Creed confesses, is the Life-Giver, the Maker-alive.1 But what is the LIFE which He gives, with which He works? I listen, and I hear another Voice, which is yet as if also His; and it says, "I am the Life." "The Life Eternal is in the Son;" "He that hath the Son hath the Life." I John v. 12. I read these great, these blessed words in the light of what we have recollected now of the Holy Spirit's work on and in the Holy Son of Man; and I thus see in them a remembrance that what the Spirit does in His free and allpowerful work in the soul which He quickens into second life is, above all things, to bring it into contact with the Son. He roots it, He grafts it, He embodies it, into the Son. He deals so with it that there is a continuity wholly spiritual indeed but none the less most real,

1 Τὸ Ζωοποιόν.

unfigurative, and efficacious, between the Head and the limb, between the branch and the Root. He effects an influx into the regenerate man of the blessed virtues of the nature of the Second Adam, an infusion of the exalted life of Jesus Christ, through an open duct, living, and divine, into the man who is born again into Him the incarnate and glorified Son of God. I see on the one hand the blessed Spirit poured without measure upon the Head. I see Him on the other hand, not independently of that Head but in deepest relation to Him and union with Him, pouring Himself richly into the member. I see Him the divine Factor in the becoming and being of the Manhood of the Second Adam. I see Him equally the divine Factor in the new creation of the sinner into a true child of God, a true regenerate member of the new race. And all this combines to remind me that the blessed process all the while has Jesus Christ for its inmost Secret. What does the Holy Life-Giver impart, infuse, develop? What is my Life Eternal in the last analysis? Not Himself, the blessed Worker and Conveyer, but my incarnate, sacrificed, and

CHRIST OUR LIFE, BY THE SPIRIT. 41

glorified Redeemer and Head. The Spirit pours into me HIм, to be my Eternal Life for deliverance, for victory, for peace, for service, as truly as He the same Saviour is my pardon and righteousness in His once-wrought propitiation.

The Life-Giver is the Giver of Christ who is our Life.

"Deep through the springs of mind and soul
Thee the great Comforter inspires;

Thy sovereign thoughts our thoughts control,
Thy love our love divinely fires."

We live in a time when every fundamental of the old and blessed Gospel is too often denied, or disparaged, or minimized, even by commissioned ministers of the Word, in favour of something alleged to be more large, and loving and living. Let us not be moved. Let us not "drift away" with the stream. Let us not, for lack of taking heed, for lack, above all, of taking heed in secret for ourselves, go away with the multitude. John vi. 66, 67. But meanwhile let our steadfastness and persistence manifest itself never in mere negatives

Heb. ii. 1.

of rebuke or caution, but more and more in the presentation of our glorious positive. In the tranquil power of the Giver of light and life let us evermore bring into our faith and into our teaching that blessed fulness of the truth as it is in Jesus which is nowhere found more certainly than when we view in their harmony, and use them as we view them, those twin treasures of the old unique Gospel -the saving work of Him who is the one Life, and the saving work of Him who is the one Life-Giver.