the Lord Jesus a quickening, or life-giving, spirit. "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit:"... and "as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly." The first Adam, the federal head of the race, communicated sin and death to his posterity: the second Adam, the living head of his body, imparts spiritual life and holiness to all who receive him, and become one with him. And for this reason it is written, "If Christ be in you, the Spirit is LIFE because of righteousness. The mortal body still retains the principle of death, though it is redeemed and dwelt in by the Holy Ghost, and sin is the cause of that mortality. But, on account of the believer being made righteous before God in the righteousness of Jesus, the Spirit has been renewed by the life of Jesus, and hence "the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Yet, in the renewed branch, there still lingers the wild sap of the old tree, the principle of sin, ever contending against the good sap, the new and holy life of Christ; and it demands the skilful and gracious hand of the heavenly husbandman to keep in check and subdue the evil, while it strengthens and leads forth the good. But the hour is at hand when the new life shall not only be predominant, but all-pervading; when God's Spirit shall renew the body with its immortal power, and the whole man-body, soul, and spirit-shall bear the image of the heavenly. Thanks, ten thousand thousand thanks, be unto God, that the conflict shall not last for ever. Yet a little while, and the evil flesh, the wild sap, shall be destroyed; the great enemy who generated it be trodden under foot; and the victorious

saint be presented, in the light of God's countenance, a pure, spotless, perfect child of light; so beautiful, so blessed, so holy, so good, that the great loving heart of God will having nothing left to desire on behalf of his chosen sons, whom he has loved from eternal ages.

4. The inner life of the saint can never be severed from its source in Jesus. The life in the members is inseparably connected with the life in the head. The one is sustained by virtue of its living union with the other. The life in the personal Christ at God's right hand cannot be disunited from the life of the mystic Christ in the saint on earth. In conveying the life eternal from Christ to us, the Holy Ghost has not done it as one would take an acorn from the oak, and plant it in the soil, to become a living sapling apart from the parent tree. The life of the oak will still be in the acorn, but it will no longer be nourished by the parent root. The Holy Spirit has rather given us spiritual life from Christ, after the manner of our natural life. As the blood, which is the life, goes forth from the heart to the extremities of the body, renewing its vitality everywhere in its course, and returns to the heart to be replenished with vital energy; so the life of our spirit, which flows from Christ, is maintained in union with Christ, returning (as it were) to him in desire and faith, to be continually replenished with fresh strength. Hence it is written, "The life that I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God," and, "I in you, and ye in me." Our text is the strongest possible asseveration of the truth of our vital and eternal oneness with Jesus-"Christ liveth

in me." Christ's own risen life has its deep root in the eternal Godhead. His glorified human nature cannot be severed from his divine nature; hence, the might of Godhead is pledged to hold the renewed spirit of man in union with the head Christ Jesus. I know not where else, or how else, to apply the wondrous words of Jesus, "that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us... That they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." Truly, "Our life is hid with Christ in God." Our life-the life in us-is united with its source which is in the glorified head Jesus, who is in God. Well, therefore, hath Jesus said, "Because I live, ye shall live also."

We owe this ineffably blessed truth to the infinite love and wondrous wisdom of God our Father, which prompted him thus to secure his many sons to himself. He once had a son and daughter whom he loved. They were beautiful and innocent, and his own moral likeness was impressed upon their spirits. They had hearts to love and to confide in him, and to obey his will. He looked upon them with eyes of affection, and expressed his delight in them; for concerning this work of his hands the Lord declared, "It is very good." But the life of these children of God was in their own keeping: it was connected with no living root or strength that would inevitably hold it in being. In an evil hour the tempter came; they listened to his voice, and he breathed into their spirits the poison of sin and spiritual death. He destroyed in them the image of their maker; they became alienated from the divine life; and God lost

his children. Now he well knew that, if he placed the new and eternal life in the fallen children of Adam, and left it with them to keep or to lose, to hold or to forfeit, by their own faithfulness or disobedience, the result must have been loss, separation, and eternal death. Our covenant God, therefore, determined to place the fountain of the new-creature life in the risen manhood of his own blessed Son, and to unite with its eternal source in him all those who should become partakers of its quickening power. Embracing the whole chosen seed, in and with Christ, in the affections of his infinite heart, he bound up their everlasting destiny with that of their exalted head. Wherefore we have such inspired words as these: "As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son (the risen Son) to have life in himself;" again, "the Son quickeneth whom he will;" and again, “God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son-life hid with Christ in God." There can be but one inference from these divine testimonies, and that is, that till Satan and the powers of darkness can penetrate the attributes of Godhead, which encompass the life hidden with Christ therein, vain will be his endeavour to destroy the life of Christ in his members. The mystic Christ in the spirit of the believer is as indestructible, is as safe, as the personal Christ at God's right hand. Again we repeat the infallible word of Jesus, "Because I live, ye shall live also."

5. We proceed to inquire what position or rank the true inner life takes amongst the various orders of life which God has called into being. The universe teems with life-from its lowest forms in the

vegetable kingdom, to its highest conditions in the animal creation. Above the range of material life, there is the mental life of mankind: and so far upward as our minds can reach, we perceive the life of these holy intelligences, the elect angels; while eternally before, and infinitely above, all these is the life of him whose dwelling-place is immensity, whose life-time is eternity, and who proclaimeth himself to be the "I am that I am.'

In what rank, then, has the sovereign Creator placed the life whereof we speak? Not in the sphere of material or animal life; for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Not in the range of the mere intellectual life of man; for the natural man discerneth not the things that be of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Has he then placed us side by side with the angels of his might, those first-born sons of light? The eternal life of the believer is, indeed, comparable with that of the heavenly host; for Jesus says of risen men, "Neither can they die any more, but are equal to the angels." Still our search ends not here. If we would find the position and rank of the God-born life of new-created men, we must pass beyond the circle of the "many angels round about the throne," whose number is "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands." In vain should we search amid the ranks of these the elder spirits of creation though they be— for the life of which we speak. It is a life that burns and throbs in no angel-breast; it is a life that breathes and glows in no seraphic spirit: for to which of the angels said Jesus at any time, "I in