personally present always in the Church. This of course, in the power of his divine nature. But his divine nature is at the same time human, in the fullest sense; and wherever his presence is revealed in the Church in a real way, it includes his person necessarily under the one aspect as well as under the other. With all this however, which is something very different from the conception of a proper ubiquity in the case of Christ's body, we do not relinquish the thought of his separate human individuality. We distinguish, between his universal humanity in the Church, and his humanity as a particular man, whom the heavens have received till the time of the restitution of all things. His glorified body, we doubt not, is possessed of qualities, attributes and powers, that transcend immeasurably all we know or can think of a human body here. Still it is a body; a particular body; having organized parts and outward form. As such of course, it must be defined and circumscribed by local limits, and cannot be supposed to be present in different places at the same time.

15. The mystical union, holding in this form, is more intimate and real, than any union which is known in the world besides. Even in nature, the most close connection is not that which holds in the way of mere local contact or outward conjunction. There may be an actual transfusion of one substance into another, with very little union in the end. A simply mechanical unity, one thing joined to another in space, is the lowest and poorest that can be presented to our thoughts. Higher than this is the chemical combination; which however is still comparatively outward. The organic union, as it holds for instance between the root and topmost branches of the tree, is far more inward and close. Though they do not touch each other at all, they are one notwithstanding in a sense more true, than can be affirmed, either of the different parts of a crystal, or of the ele

leads to a sort of pantheism, in which no room is left for the idea of a separate individual consciousness on the part of the believer. But this objection, if it have any force, must hold not only against such a life union with Christ as is here advocated, but against any union with him whatever that may be considered real, and not simply moral. Then all the best old English divines, as Professor Lewis has well remarked, such as Howe, Baxter, Owen, &c., must fall under condemnation as teaching the Bhuddist doctrine of spiritual annihilation. "Such a philosopher," he adds, "as the author of the Blessedness of the Righteous,' would teach us that the soul's consciousness of being in Christ, and of having one life with him, might give a higher sense of a more glorious and blessed individuality, than could be derived from any other state of being.. Paul was not afraid of saying, that in God we live, and move, and are,' or of speaking of the Church as being the fulness of him that filleth all in all,' or of declaring that our life is hid with Christ in God.' Neither whilst there remained in him the individual consciousness of so blessed a state, was he afraid of the declaration, w dɛ, oux etɩ Erw, In de ev eμor XPIETOΣ,—1 live, not I, but Christ liveth in me."

ments that are married in the constitution of atmospheric air. Of vastly higher character still, is the union of head and members in the same human body. But even this is a poor image of the oneness of Christ with his people. There is nothing like this in the whole world, under any other form. It is bound by no local limitations. It goes beyond all nature, and transcends all thought.

16. The union of Christ with believers is wrought by the power of the HOLY GHOST. The new birth is from the Spirit. It is by the Spirit the divine life is sustained and advanced in us, at every point, from its commencement to its close. There is no other medium, by which it is possible for us to be in Christ, or to have Christ in ourselves. The new creation holds absolutely and entirely, in the powerful presence of the Holy Ghost. Hence it is said, "He that is joined to the Lord, is one Spirit;" and the indwelling of Christ and his Spirit in believers is spoken of as the same thing. But for this very reason, we have no right to dissolve this unity again in our thoughts, by making the presence of the Spirit a mere substitute for the presence of Christ himself. Where the one is, there the other is truly and really at the same time. The Spirit, proceeding from the Father and Son and subsisting in everlasting union with both, constitutes the form, in which and by which the new creation in Christ Jesus upholds itself, and reveals itself, in all its extent. It is not Nature, but Spirit. So in the Person of Christ himself, the root of this creation. The Spirit was never brought near to men before, as now through the incarnate Word. lt dwelt in him without measure. Humanity itself was filled completely with its presence, and appears at last translucent with the glory of heaven itself by its means. Forth from the person of Christ, thus "quickened in the Spirit," the flood of life pours itself onward continually in the Church, only of course by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost; for it holds in no other form. Not however by the presence and power of the Holy Ghost, as abstracted from the presence of Christ himself; as though he were the fountain only, and not the very life-stream too, of the new creation, or could he supposed to be in it and with it by the intervention only of a presence, not involving at the same time and to the same extent his own. "The Lord is that Spirit." He reveals himself in his people, dwells in them and makes them one with himself in a real way, by his Spirit. In this view, the new life formed in them is spiritual; not natural or physical, as belonging simply to the first creation. But this does not imply at all, that it is limited to the soul as distinguished from the body. There is no absolute opposition here between the idea of body and the idea of Spirit. Here is a spiritual body, as well

as a body natural, according to the apostle. The Spirit of Christ, in his own person at least, fills the whole man, soul and body. All is spiritual, glorious, heavenly. His whole humanity has been taken up into the sphere of the Spirit, and appears transfigured into the same life. And why then should it not extend itself, in the way of strict organic continuity, as a whole humanity also, by the active presence of Christ's Spirit, over into the persons of his people? A spiritual life no more excludes the thought of the body in the one case, than it does in

the other.

17. Christ's life is apprehended on the part of his people only by FAITH. The life itself comes to us wholly from Christ himself, by the power of his Spirit. The magnetic stream is poured upon us from abroad. If we move at all, it is only in obedience to the divine current thus brought to bear upon our souls. Το live in this at all, however, it is necessary that we should surrender ourselves spontaneously to its power. This is faith; the most comprehensive, fundamental act of which our nature is capable. The man swings himself, in the totality of his being, quite off from the centre of self, on which hitherto his consciousness has been poised, over upon Christ, now revealed to his view, as another centre altogether. The birth of a new life, in the strictest sense, as we have already seen. Faith, of course, is not the principle of this life. It is only the medium of its introduction into the soul, and the condition of its growth and development when present. But as such it is indispensable. The process of our sanctification is spiritual, and not mechanical or magical.*

18. The new life of the believer includes degrees, and will become complete only in the RESURRECTION. Only in this form could it have a true human character. All life, in the case of man, is actualized, and can be actualized, only in the way of process or gradual historical development. So in the case before us, there is the seed; and when it springs, "first the blade, then the ear; and after that, the full corn in the ear." The new life struggles with the old, like Jacob and Esau in the same womb! The Christian carries in himself two forms of existence, a "law of sin and death" on the one hand, and "the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus" on the other; and the power of the last is continually opposed and restrained by the power of the first. From its very start, however, the life of Christ in the believer is a whole life; and in all its subsequent progress it reveals its power continually, under the same character. From the first it includes in itself potentially all that it is found to become at the

"Living faith in Christ," says Schleiermacher, "is nothing but the selfconsciousness of our union with Christ."

last. The life of the tree is only the same life, that was comprehended originally in the seed from which it has sprung. So it is with all life. All that belongs, then, to the new life of the Christian, conceived as complete at the last day, must be allowed to be involved in it as principle and process from the beginning. In every stage of its progress it is a true human life, answerable to the nature of its organic root, and to the nature also of the subject in which it is lodged. It is always, as far as it prevails, the law of a new nature for the body as well as for the soul. The full and final triumph of the process, is the resurrection; which is reached in the case of the individual, only in connection with the consummation of the Church as a whole. The bodies of the saints in glory will be only the last result, in organic continuity, of the divine life of Christ, implanted in their souls at their regeneration. There is nothing abrupt in Christianity. It is a supernatural constitution indeed; but as such it is clothed in a natural form, and involves in itself as regular a law of historical development, as the old creation itself. The resurrection body will be simply the ultimate outburst of the life, that had been ripening for immortality under cover of the old Adamic nature before. The winged psyche has its elemental organization in the worm, and does not lose it in the tomb-like chrysalis. Let us not be told, that this is to suppose two bodies in the person of the believer at one time. Does the new life, abstracted from the body, involve the supposition of two souls? The cases are precisely parallel. The man is one, soul and body. But a new organic law has become lodged in the inmost centre of his personality, and is now gradually extending its force over the entire constitution of his nature as a whole. It does not lay hold of one part of his being first, and then proceed to another, in the way of outward territorial conquest; as though a hand or foot could be renovated before the head, or the understanding apart from the will, or the soul in no connection with the body. The whole man is made the subject of the new life at once. The law of revolution involved in it extends from the centre to the extreme periphery of his person. The old body becomes itself, in a mysterious way, the womb of a higher corporeity, the life-law of Christ's own glorious body; which is at last, through the process of death and the resurrection, set free from the first form of existence entirely, and made to supersede it for ever in the immortality of heaven.

19. "A sacrament is a holy ordinance instituted by CHRIST; wherein, by sensible signs, CHRIST and the benefits of the new covenant are represented, SEALED and APPLIED to believers." Thus the Westminster Shorter Catechism, echoing the voice of the whole Reformed Church, as it had sounded throughout Christendom for a century before. The signs, as such, make not the sacrament. They are only one part of it. The other part is found in the invisible grace, that is sacramentally or mystically joined with the signs. To be complete, that is to be at all a true sacrament, the ordinance must comprehend both. In other words the invisible grace enters as a necessary constituent element into the idea of the sacrament; and must be of course objectively present with it wherever it is administered under a true form. Whether it shall become available to the benefit of the participant, must depend on the presence of the conditions that are needed to give it effect. All turns here at last on the exercise of faith. But the objective presence of the grace itself, as an essential part of the sacrament, is none the less certain and sure on this account. It belongs to the ordinance in its own nature; which, in this view, is not a picture or remembrancer simply for the mind, but a true and real exhibition of that which it represents. The sign and the thing signified are, by Christ's institution, mysteriously bound together, so as to form in the sacramental transaction one and the same presence. Not as though the last were in any way included in the first, as its local or material receptacle. The conjunction is in no sense such as to change at all the nature of the sensible sign, in itself considered, or to bring it into any physical union with the grace it represents. But still the two form one presence. Along with the outward sign, is exhibited always at the same time the represented grace. The union of the one with the other is mystical, and peculiar altogether to the nature of a sacrament; but it is not for this reason less real, but only a great deal more real, than it could be possibly under any natural and local form. The invisible grace thus made present by sensible signs in the sacraments, is "Christ and the benefits of the new covenant." Not the benefits of the new covenant only; but Christ himself also, in a real way, as the only medium of a real communication with the