I 
 
 I
 
 ^
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 GIFT OF MISS PEARL CHASE
 
 IN CHRIST; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE BELIEVER'S UNION WITH 
 HIS LORD. 
 
 BY 
 
 A. J. GORDON, 
 x x 
 
 PASTOR OF THE CLARENDON STREET CHURCH, BOSTOH. 
 
 ^ " Union with Christ is the distinctive blessing of the gospel dispensa- 
 tion in which every other is comprised, justification, saiictification, 
 adoption, and the future glorifying of our bodies ; all these are but differ- 
 ent aspects of the one great truth, that the Christian is one with Christ.' 
 
 EDWARD ARTHUR LITTON, 
 
 SIXTH EDITION. 
 
 Boston: 
 
 HOWARD GANNETT, 
 TREMONT TEMPLK, 
 
 1883.
 
 Copyright by 
 HOWARD GANNETT, 
 
 1880.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 jjF this little book should be to any in 
 reading it, what it has been to the 
 author in writing it, an aid to medita- 
 tion upon one of the deepest and tenderest 
 themes of the gospel, it will have served the 
 end of its publication. 
 
 It lays no claim to originality in doctrine, 
 having sought in every line to be in humble 
 subjection to the word of God, and constantly 
 to reflect whatever lesser light might fall 
 upon it from the thought and experience of 
 good men, since as has been fitly said, " only 
 ' with all saints ' can we comprehend what is 
 the depth and length of that which is pre- 
 sented to us in Jesus Christ." 
 
 If subjects have been touched upon which 
 are still in the list of disputed doctrine, they 
 have been brought forward, it is believed, in 
 the love of the truth as it is in Jesus, and not
 
 iv PREFACE. 
 
 in the interest of any sect or party ; while to 
 controversy, " whose rough voice and unmeek 
 aspect " have perhaps oftener repelled from 
 the truth than won to it, no place has been 
 given. With the humble prayer that its pe- 
 rusal may help some to rest in Christ with a 
 deeper assurance, to abide in Him in greater 
 spiritual fruitfulness, and to wait for his ap- 
 pearing with a more devout watchfulness, this 
 book is now committed to the blessing of God 
 and the use of his Spirit. 
 
 BOSTON, April 19, 1872.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 rum 
 
 L IN CHRIST. INTRODUCTORY .... 7 
 
 II. CRUCIFIXION IN CHRIST .... 27 
 
 III. RESURRECTION IN CHRIST .... 47 
 
 IV. BAPTISM INTO CHRIST .... 67 
 V. LIFE IN CHRIST 89 
 
 VI. STANDING IN CHRIST iij 
 
 VII. PRAYER IN CHRIST ...... 133 
 
 VIII. COMMUNION IN CHRIST .... 151 
 
 IX. SANCTIFICATION IN CHRIST .... 165 
 
 X. GLORIFICATION IN CHRIST . . . . 183 
 
 NOTES .... 201
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY.
 
 Created in Cf)rit 3|eu unto good 
 
 Eph. ii. 10. 
 
 are pc n 
 
 I Cbr. i. 30. 
 
 3tfcorDm$ a^ i)c Ijatl) c hoeen u.s in 
 l)im before UK founoation of ti)c luorlo. 
 
 i. 4. 
 
 toe are in ^im tljat i^ true, eben 
 in Jtsf on 3fejefu^ Cgri^t. 
 
 i y<?A v. 20. 
 
 *
 
 I. 
 
 IN CHRIST. 
 
 f ; O words of Scripture, if we except 
 those, " God manifest in the flesh," 
 
 *^* hold within themselves a deeper mys- 
 tery than this simple formula of the Christian 
 life, " in Christ" 
 
 Indeed, God's taking upon Himself human- 
 ity, and yet remaining God, is hardly more 
 inexplicable to human thought than man's 
 becoming a " partaker of the divine nature," 
 and yet remaining man. Both are of those 
 secret things that belong wholly unto God. 
 Yet, great as is the mystery of these words, 
 they are the key to the whole system of doc- 
 trinal mysteries. Like the famous Rosetta 
 stone, itself a partial hieroglyph, and thereby 
 furnishing the long-sought clew to the Egyp- 
 tian hieroglyphics, these words, by their very 
 mystery, unlock all mysteries of the divine 
 life, letting us into secrets that were " hidden
 
 TO IN CHRIST. 
 
 from ages and from generations." True, we 
 may not find in them an answer to the ques- 
 tion, " How can these things be ? " but we 
 shall see clearly that they can be. For 
 through this " Emmanuel knot of union," as 
 one has quaintly called it, those great facts of 
 the Christian life, regeneration, justification, 
 sanctification, and redemption, are drawn 
 up from the realm of the human and the 
 impossible, and made fast to Him with whom 
 " all things are possible." So that the ques- 
 tion now becomes reversed, and we must ask, 
 " How can it be otherwise ? " If one is in 
 Christ, he must have regeneration ; for how 
 can the Head be alive, and the members dead ? 
 If one is in Christ, he must be justified ; for 
 how can God approve the Head, and condemn 
 the members ? If one is in Christ, he must 
 have sanctification ; for how can the spot- 
 lessly Holy remain in vital connection with 
 one that is unholy ? If one is in Christ, he 
 must have redemption ; for how can the Son 
 of God be in glory, while that which He has 
 made a part of his body lies abandoned in 
 the grave of eternal death ? 
 
 And thus, through these two words, we get 
 a profound insight into the divine method .of
 
 IN CHRIST. II 
 
 salvation. God does not work upon the soul 
 by itself; bringing to bear upon it, while yet 
 m its alienation and isolation from Him, such 
 discipline as shall gradually render it fit to be 
 reunited to Him. He begins rather by re- 
 uniting it to Himself, that through this union 
 He may communicate to it that divine life 
 and energy, without which all discipline were 
 utterly futile. The method of grace is pre- 
 cisely the reverse of the method of legalism. 
 The latter is holiness in order to union with 
 God ; the former, union with God in order to 
 holiness. Hence the Incarnation, as the 
 starting-point and prime condition of recon- 
 ciliation to God ; since there can be, to use 
 Hooker's admirable statement, " no union of 
 God with man, without that mean between 
 both which is both." And hence the neces- 
 sity of incorporation upon Christ, that what 
 became possible through the Incarnation, may 
 become actual and experimental in the indi- 
 vidual soul through faith. 
 
 Nothing is more striking than the breadth 
 of application which this principle of union 
 with Christ has in the gospel. Christianity 
 obliterates no natural relationships, destroys 
 no human obligations, makes void no moral
 
 12 IN CHRIST. 
 
 or spiritual laws. But it lifts all these up into 
 a new sphere, and puts upon them this seal 
 and signature of the gospel, in Christ. So 
 that while all things continue as they were 
 from the beginning, all, by their readjustment 
 to this divine character and person, become 
 virtually new. Life is still of God, but it has 
 this new dependency " in Christ." " Of Him 
 are ye in Christ Jesus? The obligation to 
 labor remains unchanged, but a new motive 
 and a new sanctity are given to it by its rela- 
 tion to Christ. " Forasmuch as ye know 
 that your labor is not in vain in the Lord? 
 The marriage relation is stamped with this 
 new signet, " Only in the Lord." Filial obe- 
 dience is exalted into direct connection with 
 the Son of God. " Children obey your par- 
 ents in the Lord" Daily life becomes "a 
 good conversation in Christ." Joy and sor- 
 row, triumph and suffering, are all in Christ. 
 Even truth, as though needing a fresh baptism, 
 is viewed henceforth "as it is in Jesus? 
 Death remains, but it is robbed of its sting and 
 crowned with a beatitude, because in Christ. 
 " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord? 
 Thus Christ, in taking man up into Him- 
 self, takes all that belongs to him. Instead
 
 IN CHRIST. 13 
 
 of rending him away from his natural con- 
 nections, He embraces all these with him 
 in Himself, that He may sanctify them all. 
 And not only is this true, but the opposite 
 and far more wondrous fact, namely, that 
 Christ, in raising man into union with Him- 
 self, raises him into all that belongs to Him, 
 into his divine life, and into partnership with 
 his divine work. So that he dies in his 
 death ; rises in his resurrection ; ascends in 
 his ascension ; is seated with Him in his 
 session at the Father's right hand ; and lives 
 in his eternal life. 
 
 So marked is this latter fact, that it has led 
 some to speak of the events of the Christian 
 life as affording " a striking parallel to those 
 of Christ's." But there is no parallel. Par- 
 allels never meet, while the very glory and 
 mystery of the believer's life is that it is one 
 with the Saviour's and inseparable from it 
 It is not a life running alongside his, and 
 taking shape and direction from it. It is his 
 life reenacted in his followers ; the reproduc- 
 tion in them of those events which are im- 
 mortal in energy and limitless in application. 
 
 Our Lord's whole earthly career is one 
 continuous and living sacrament, of which his
 
 14 AV CHRIST. 
 
 disciples partake through faith. And if their 
 eyes are not holden, they will discern, in each 
 great event of that life, not only the earnest 
 and symbol of what He works in them, but 
 they will see that only by feeding upon this 
 Bread, can they have any life dwelling in 
 them. This the blessed life and work of 
 our Lord is his " body given for us ; " a 
 "body of divinity" containing all doctrine, 
 and nourishing with all life ; and of every 
 element of it suffering, death, resurrection, 
 and glory we hear Him saying, " Take, eat." 
 
 If we reflect upon the nature of that union 
 into which these words which we are consid- 
 ering link us, we see that every possible con- 
 dition and requirement of salvation are met 
 and answered by it. 
 
 It is a union extending back of time. We 
 find it clearly recognized in God's eternal 
 predestination. " According as He hath cho- 
 sen us in Him before the foundation of the 
 world." " In Him" It would seem as though 
 this were the focal point where alone the 
 beams of the Father's electing love met to 
 bless and comfort, while all beyond it was 
 darkness and death. So vital is the atone- 
 ment, that the shadow of the cross is thrown
 
 IN CHRIST. 15 
 
 back into a past eternity, to cover and justify 
 God's choice of the sinner ; l and his very 
 purpose of grace is wrapped up in Jesus 
 Christ. 2 
 
 If doubt suggests the query, " How could 
 the believer be in Christ when he did not yet 
 exist ? " the question can only be answered 
 by another and deeper, " How could God elect 
 and love a soul which He had not yet cre- 
 ated ? " Yet that He did, is most explicitly 
 declared in Scripture. And what David as- 
 serts of his natural body, not less emphatically 
 does the Son of David assert of his mystical 
 body. " Thine eyes did see my substance 
 yet being imperfect, and in thy book all my 
 members were written, which in continuance 
 were fashioned, when as yet tJiere was none of 
 them" Is there aught more painful than the 
 searchings of the soul in the book of God's 
 foreknowledge ? its irrepressible longings to 
 know if it be written there ? If it goes alone 
 in its solemn quest it will find no answer. 
 But joining itself to Him who " was in the 
 beginning with God," it hears Him saying, 
 " Thou lovest me before the foundation of 
 the world," and reverently appropriating the 
 
 1 Rev. xiil 8.. a 2 Tim. i. 9.
 
 1 6 IN CHRIST. 
 
 words in the secret right of faith, it joyfully 
 responds, " Herein is our love made perfect . 
 because as He is so arc we in this world" 
 The Father's eternal love for the Son, is the 
 pledge and certificate of his eternal love and 
 election of those who join themselves to that 
 Son. 
 
 But if this union runs back of time, it is 
 not less really in time a practical and present 
 reality ; practical and present, because eternal. 
 For what is faith, but the suffrage of the soul 
 which ratines and appropriates that election 
 of God which was made before creation ? 
 Very literally is it 
 
 " An affirmation and an act 
 That bids eternal truth be present fact." 
 
 That which is given only in the divine intent 
 and foreordination, is not ours till we con- 
 sciously and believingly accept it. " Faith 
 cometh by hearing," and possession by faith. 
 God's choice of us lays hold of us only through 
 our choice of Him. And it is when the soul, 
 waking up to the fact of its sad alienation 
 from its Maker, and uttering its earnest " I 
 will arise and go unto my Father," joins itself 
 to that Father by a trusting faith, that the 
 Father, who in the Christ of eternity saw
 
 fN CHRIST. I/ 
 
 him " ivheis. he was yet a great way off" and 
 in the Christ of time crucified and slain came 
 out to meet him, becomes completely recon- 
 ciled to him. 
 
 The first link of religion (religo, to bind 
 back) is the Incarnation, God in Christ. The 
 last is Faith, the soul in Christ. And when 
 the last has been joined to the first, the chain 
 is perfect. " I in them, and thou Father in 
 me, that they may be made perfect in one." 
 
 Again, the union of the believer with his 
 Lord is a reciprocal union. " Ye in me, and I 
 in you." Through it Christ both gives and 
 takes, gives the Father's life and blessed- 
 ness, and takes the believer's death and 
 wretchedness. "All that Christ has," says 
 Luther, " now becomes the property of the 
 believing soul ; all that the soul has, becomes 
 the property of Christ. Christ possesses 
 every blessing and eternal salvation ; they 
 are henceforth the property of the soul. The 
 soul possesses every vice and sin ; they be- 
 come henceforth the property of Christ." 
 
 In this is most wonderfully displayed the 
 wisdom of the plan of redemption. Who that 
 has pondered the nature of sin, and thought 
 how radical, how ingrained, how thoroughly
 
 1 8 IN CHRIST. 
 
 a part of one's self it is, has not almost 
 doubted whether it could ever be taken away 
 its evil principle exterminated, and the soul 
 completely disinfected of its taint ? But when 
 we remember that Christ by his Cross deals 
 not only with sin, but with the nature in which 
 all its roots are imbedded, the way is plain ; 
 and we see with gratitude how the " body of 
 sin," that body which holds the germinant and 
 fertile principle of evil, may be destroyed, 
 and yet the sinner saved. 
 
 And who, on the other hand, that has con- 
 templated the nature of that " holiness with- 
 out which no man shall see the Lord," and 
 realized that it is no mere external morality, 
 no garment of righteousness to be assumed 
 and worn as the covering of a yet unsancti- 
 fied nature ; but a divine life penetrating, pos- 
 sessing, and informing the soul, has not asked 
 despairingly, " How then can I, a sinner, hope 
 to be holy ? " But the gospel answer is all 
 in those three words, " I in you." He who 
 is the All-righteous, " is made unto us right- 
 eousness." So that to the soul that thirsts 
 after righteousness, it need no longer be said, 
 "The well is deep, and thou hast nothing 
 with which to draw." He is within it, "a
 
 IN CHRIST. 19 
 
 well of water springing up into everlasting 
 Ufe." 
 
 Thus in Christ the twofold want of the 
 soul is met. It is emptied of self, and it is 
 filled with his fullness " who filleth all in all." 
 
 Can anything be so blessed for the believer 
 to realize, as this gracious interchange of life, 
 and character, and works, between himself 
 and his Lord ? Oh wondrous mystery ! Christ 
 became the " Son of man," that we might be- 
 come the " sons of God." He took upon 
 Himself our human nature, that we might be 
 made " partakers of the divine nature." He 
 was made sin for us, that we might be made 
 the " righteousness of God in Him." 
 
 And not less obviously do the terms of this 
 union suggest its indissolublcness. If joined 
 to the Lord by a mere external bond only, the 
 believer might well live in fear of being rent 
 from Him by the strain of fierce temptation. 
 But so transcendently intimate is this relation, 
 that the Holy Spirit even uses Christ and the 
 Church as interchangeable terms in the Scrip- 
 tures. Now" it is the human body that shad- 
 ows forth the divine mystery. "As the body 
 is one and hath many members, and all the 
 members of that one body, being many, are
 
 2O IN CHRIST. 
 
 one body ; so also is Christ." * " Now ye are 
 the body of Christ and members in particu- 
 lar." And will Christ permit this body to be 
 dismembered ? He can suffer in his mem- 
 bers ; 2 but Faith would feel herself robbed of 
 all her heritage of assurance, were it any- 
 where written, He can be cut off or perish in 
 his members. Wounds and mutilations there 
 will be ; for, in Rutherford's strong phrase, 
 " The dragon will strike at Christ so long as 
 there is one bit or portion of his mystical 
 body out of heaven." But love cannot cher- 
 ish the fear that He will heal the hurts of his 
 people slightly, much less sunder them from 
 Him by an eternal excision. For " No man 
 ever yet hated his own body, but nourisJteth 
 and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the 
 Church ; for we are members of his body, of 
 his flesh, and of his bones." 3 
 
 How clearly now this relation which we 
 bear to the Lord Jesus fixes two things, the 
 Christian experience and the Christian walk, 
 or the inner and outer life of the believer. 
 
 Christian experience is the making real in 
 ourselves, of what is already true for us in 
 Christ 4 
 
 1 Note A. 8 Eph. v. 29, 30. 
 
 2 Acts xxii. 7. * Note B
 
 IN CHRIST. 21 
 
 '-* I am the vine, ye are the brandies," says 
 Christ. But the vine furnishes the branches 
 not only with the principle of life, but with 
 the type of life. No pressure or moulding 
 from without is needed to shape them to the 
 pattern of the parent stock. Every minutest 
 peculiarity of form, and color, and taste, and 
 fragrance, is determined by the root, and 
 evolved from it. A true believer, therefore, 
 will ask no better thing of the Lord, than 
 "that the life also of Jesus may be made 
 manifest in his body." For such a manifes- 
 tation will, by a necessary law, be the unfold- 
 ing within him of every needed element of 
 joy and sorrow, of suffering and triumph. 
 
 It is not in any conventional standard of 
 frames and feelings, that the disciple is to find 
 the measure of attainment required of him. 
 It is not by any painful reproducing of 
 another's spiritual history that he is to ac- 
 quire the true comfort of spirit which he longs 
 for. Outward imitation, though it be of the 
 Perfect Example himself, has little place in 
 the order of spiritual growth \ little place 
 because little possibility. " Without me," i. *., 
 apart from me, in separation from me, " ye can 
 do nothing." To abide in Christ is the only
 
 22 . IN CHRIST. 
 
 secret of Christlikeness ; for only thus is at- 
 tained the 4ikeness of unity, which is perfect 
 and enduring, instead of the likeness of con- 
 formity, which is only partial and transient. 
 
 How we misplace our experiences when 
 we attempt, as mere copyists, to reproduce our 
 Master's life within us. We put joy where 
 the divine order would dictate sorrow, and 
 nurse our sorrow, when the Lord would have 
 us rejoice in Him. We reach after the un- 
 seasonable fruits of victory, when it is more 
 needful as yet that we should endure the dis- 
 cipline of defeat, that so divine strength may 
 be made perfect in our weakness. Our leaf 
 withers in sere and yellow melancholy, when 
 He would have it green and flourishing. 
 What we would, that we continually do not, 
 because we lack a true and steadfast hold on 
 strength. Blessed is he, who, instead of seek- 
 ing to attain the likeness of Christ as some- 
 thing only without him, realizes that he has 
 been planted in that likeness. " He shall be 
 like a tree planted by the rivers of water, 
 that bringcth forth his fruit in his season ; his 
 leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he 
 doeth shall prosper? 
 
 Never shall we attain a truly joyful Chris-
 
 IN CHRIST. 23 
 
 tian experience, therefore, till we learn that 
 holy living is neither the realization of some 
 ideal self, nor the imitation of some real saint. 
 " For me to live is Christ" Christian prog- 
 ress is a growing towards Christ, by growing 
 from Him. And the Scripture exhortations 
 to high attainment in the divine life seem to 
 be based on this order. The believer is to 
 have " the mind of Christ " within him, the 
 " spirit of Christ " animating him. His devel- 
 opment is a "growing up into Him in all 
 things who is the Head, even Christ." The 
 limit and boundary of his attainment is " the 
 perfect man," " the measure of the stature of 
 the fullness of Christ." Well may the disciple 
 set the Lord always before him as the ideal 
 of perfect attainment, if only he can have Him 
 thus always within him, as the source and 
 principle of daily growth. 
 
 We have said that our relation to Christ 
 determines alfo our Christian walk. This is 
 obvious. 
 
 A true Christian walk is a reproducing in 
 our lives of the righteousness which is already 
 ours in Christ. 
 
 Joined to the Lord by faith, we become 
 "partakers of his holiness." But not that
 
 24 IN CHRIST. 
 
 thereby we may be exempted from the neces- 
 sity of personal holiness. It is rather that 
 such personal holiness may have a new and 
 higher obligation, since it has a new possibil- 
 ity. The double purpose of our union to 
 Christ must never for a moment be forgot- 
 ten, nor its heavenward and earthward as- 
 pects for an instant separated in our appre- 
 hension. It is in order that we may be as 
 He is in the reckoning of God, and equally 
 that we may be as He is before the eyes of 
 men. " No condemnation to them that are in 
 Christ Jesus," is one phase of this blessed 
 truth. But, O believer, forget not the other, 
 lest you bring upon yourself the curse of a 
 dry and barren Antinomianism : " created in 
 Christ Jesus unto good works, which God 
 hath before ordained that we should \va^ in 
 them." l The branches are the product and 
 the measure of the roots, the one spread- 
 ing as widely as the other strikes deeply. 
 And how solemn the obligation resting upon 
 those who are truly rooted in Christ, to reach 
 forth their branches and cover that area of 
 good works which the)' have underlaid, and, 
 so to speak, preempted by their faith. Our 
 1 Eph. ii. 10
 
 IN CHRIST. 25 
 
 privileges in Jesus are glorious beyond com- 
 parison. But they are awful when we re- 
 member that they are the pledge and meas- 
 ure of our obligations. Never before on earth 
 or perhaps in heaven was one exalted to utter 
 so great a word as this, / in Christ. Yet if 
 we know its meaning, we shall pause lest we 
 speak it lightly or unadvisedly. " For he 
 that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself 
 also so to walk, even as He walked." * 
 
 Such are some of the germs of doctrine and 
 life which are hidden for us in these words, 
 and which it will be our purpose to unfold in 
 the succeeding chapters. 
 
 If now we apprehend either the privileges 
 or the duties into which this union brings us, 
 we shall not be willing to regard it as a mere 
 nominal thing, or to hold it as a cold doctrinal 
 abstraction. 
 
 Nothing could be more real and more vital 
 than this relationship. 
 
 We may speak of being regarded as in 
 Him, and so having reckoned to us the ben- 
 efits of his atonement. We may speak of 
 being clothed with his righteousness, and so 
 having his worthiness imputed to us. But 
 
 1 I John iL &
 
 26 IN CHRIST. 
 
 true as these expressions are, they do not 
 reach the inwardness of meaning contained in 
 the words, in CJirist, or furnish an adequate 
 statement of that deep interior fellowship into 
 which God has called us in his Son. 1 
 
 Truly that must be a most intimate bond 
 which, beginning in Christ and encircling the 
 disciple with its triple cords of faith, hope, and 
 charity, ends again in Christ. " From whom. " 
 and " into whom," are the words that mark at 
 once its origin and end, even that one Head 
 who is the " Alpha and Omega, the Beginning 
 and the End, the First and the Last." 
 
 " Here at length I beheld," says one, " the 
 twofold mystery of love, that the Bride is both 
 of Christ and in Christ. For as God took 
 Eve from out the side of Adam, that she 
 might be joined to him again in marriage, 
 even so He frameth his Church out of the very 
 flesh, the very wounded and bleeding side of 
 the Son of man, that so in the sweet espou- 
 sals of faith, he might 'present her as a 
 chaste virgin to Christ.' z ' And they two 
 shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, 
 but I speak concerning Christ and the 
 Church.'" 3 
 
 1 I Cor. 1.8. 2 2 Cor. xi. 2. Eph. v. 32.
 
 II. CRUCIFIXION IN CHRIST.
 
 91 am crucifieb toirt) CJri^t: netier* 
 Ji Ii\jc; pet not 3(, but Cfjri^t 
 in me. Gai. \\. 20. 
 
 Itnotuing tfji^, tfjat our olb man 
 crucifico tuitlj ^im, t^at tlje botip of 
 mig()t be oc^tropcb, tjjat fjcnccfort^ toe 
 not crtoc ^in, Rom. vi. 6. 
 
 3Cnb tftcp tjat are ljri^t'^ fjatoe 
 crucificb tfte fle^l) tDit!) tfte affection^ anb 
 
 Ca/. v. 24.
 
 II. 
 
 CRUCIFIXION IN CHRIST. 
 
 |T is one of the great principles 
 of Christianity," says Pascal, " that 
 everything which happened to Jesus 
 Christ should come to pass in the soul and 
 in the body of each Christian." 
 
 If by faith I am one with my Redeemer 
 then, that term, " Christ crucified," involves 
 another, " I, crucified with Christ." Hence 
 we by no means reach the true measure of 
 our inheritance in the Cross, when we regard 
 the death of Christ as a formal transaction, 
 by which One, eighteen hundred years ago, 
 paid a debt that belonged to us, and thus 
 secured our release from its obligation, we 
 having no other connection with the event 
 than that of recipients of its blessings. Paul 
 saw a richer heritage for the saints than this. 
 For with that key, in Christ, which opens for 
 the believer all the wards of Christian doc-
 
 3O IN CHRIST. 
 
 trine and life, he lets us into " ihe fellowship 
 of his sufferings? 
 
 The great thought which filled his mind 
 was his oneness with his Lord a oneness 
 not only of the present and the future, but 
 equally of the past. And so he utters those 
 grand but awful words, " / have been crucified 
 with Christ ; " * in which he carries himself 
 back to the cross, and conceives of himself 
 as so identified with the Redeemer, that he 
 was with Him in his passion and obedience 
 unto death, sharing, by a mysterious fellow- 
 ship, not only the virtue but the endurance 
 of the divine penalty. 
 
 And what was true for him is true for all 
 who have come into that condition expressed 
 by the words, " in Christ Jesus? 
 
 That the crucifixion took place centuries 
 ago, does not separate us from it at all. 
 While as a historical event we assign it to a 
 specific time and place, as a moral event it 
 belongs to all time, and is just as near to us 
 as it was to John or the Marys. " God mani- 
 fested in the flesh," says Coleridge, "is eter- 
 nity in the form of time." Christ crucified is 
 an eternal fact realized at a certain date, but 
 i Note C.
 
 IN CHRIST. 31 
 
 touching all time with equal closeness. He 
 is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world." In the eye of the / am, to whom all 
 time is an ever present now, this central fact 
 of the ages, the crucifixion, is an ever present 
 reality, and all souls that stand in moral re- 
 lationship to it, stand so and have stood so 
 forever. Hence it can matter little to have 
 " known Christ after the flesh." Spiritual 
 union is entirely independent of all condi- 
 tions of time and space. And in depth of 
 intimacy there can be no difference between 
 the believer of to-day and those who knew 
 our Lord on earth, since " by one Spirit we 
 are all baptized into one body" 1 and therefore 
 into one death, since " as many of us as were 
 baptized into Christ were baptized into his 
 death." 2 
 
 How deeply, through the kindredship of the 
 flesh, one could share Christ's crucifixion, we 
 know. That the mother, watching beneath 
 the cross the agonies of her suffering Son, 
 endured in her own heart all the sharpness of 
 his death ; that as the soldiers thrust the spear 
 into his side, she knew in her own experience 
 the bitter meaning of the aged Simeon'3 
 1 I Cor. xii. 13. 2 Rom. vi. 3.
 
 32 IN CHRIST. 
 
 prophecy, " Yea, a sword shall pierce through 
 thy oivn soul also" we can easily believe 
 But since we have learned how nearer akin 
 Christ now is to all his brethren by the Spirit, 
 shall there seem to be anything less real in 
 the words cf one who, by faith, clasped to his 
 heart the same cross of redemption, saying, 
 " I am crucified with Christ " ? 
 
 The mystery of that fellowship by which 
 we become sharers in Christ's death, we may 
 not presume to fathom. And yet it seems 
 clear how it must grow out of the terms of 
 the incarnation. Christ, in becoming man, 
 took our humanity into partnership in his 
 sacrificial work. Hence, his death is not 
 something merely made over to mankind as a 
 legacy of love ; it is something accruing to 
 it in this partnership of being. 1 But as 
 surely as He must be one with us by incar- 
 nation in order to give us part in his dying, 
 so surely must we be one with Him by faith, 
 that we may take part- in his dying. 
 
 There is an inner and an outer circle of 
 redemption, if we may say so, both having a 
 common centre in the cross. The larger de- 
 scribes the limits of a possible and provisional 
 salvation ; the smaller those of an actual and 
 1 Note D.
 
 IN CHRIST. 33 
 
 realized salvation. The whole world is com- 
 prehended in the one ; only those who be- 
 lieve are included in the "other: "God who 
 is the Saviour of all men, especially of those 
 who believe" 1 The relation which those in 
 the outer circle hold to Christ is that of mem- 
 bers of the human race to its second Head. 
 The relation which those in the inner circle 
 hold to Him is that of members of the body 
 of Christ to the Head of the Church. The 
 first relation renders Christ's redemption 
 provisionally the redemption of every indi- 
 vidual of the race ; the second renders it ac- 
 tually such to every true believer. So that 
 when the Apostle says, " If one died for all, 
 then all died" 2 we understand his meaning to 
 be that all mankind died potentially in their 
 representative. Such is the blessed provis- 
 ion and stipulation, if we may say so, of the 
 atonement. But while He who could set no 
 limits to his love, " tasted death for every man," 
 alas ! how many refuse to taste his death, and 
 through faith owning themselves one with 
 Him, to taste their own death to sin in his ! 
 
 As clearly now as we are forbidden by the 
 Scriptures to extend the possibility of a vital 
 
 1 I Tim. iv. i<x a 2 Cor. v. 14.* 
 
 3
 
 34 IN CHRIST. 
 
 and saving union to Christ beyond the bound- 
 aries of this inner circle of redemption, so 
 clearly should our faith in the reality of the 
 Christian's oneness with his Lord forbid us 
 to admit such words as "nominal" and "judi- 
 cial " within the limits of this inner circle. 
 Here we are beyond all legal fictions. " We 
 are in Him that is true? And as fully as we 
 believe that his death was real, and no vain 
 proffer, so must we believe that our death in 
 Him was real, since' we are members of his 
 body. The cross deals not with our sins apart 
 from ourselves. It permits us not to lay our 
 transgressions upon the Divine victim, and 
 yet stand ourselves afar off, and without per- 
 sonal communion with his sufferings. In the 
 typical sacrifice, the hands of the offerer were 
 laid upon the head of the offering, and thus 
 was declared the identity of the offerer and 
 the offering. In the antitype, faith lays its 
 hand upon the head of the Lamb of God, not 
 simply that it may thereby transfer guilt to 
 the guilt-bearer, but that it may join in sol- 
 emn unity of suffering, the sinner and the 
 sin-offering. Thus the judgment of the cross 
 is intensely personal. Not sin only, but na- 
 ture ; not nature only, but personality is there
 
 IN CHRIST. 35 
 
 brought to trial. " Knowing this, that our 
 old man was crucified with Him." J The nail 
 that pierced the handwriting of ordinances 
 that was against us to blot it out, went 
 deeper, and transfixed also the subjects of 
 those ordinances to inflict on them the pen- 
 alty it prescribed. And now henceforth we 
 behold Christ and his Church scarred with 
 the same wounds. And they who once could 
 only ask of the Redeemer, " What are these 
 wounds in thy hands ? " can now answer their 
 question by showing their own hands and 
 saying, " I bear in my body the marks of the 
 Lord Jesus." 
 
 While now some reject this heritage of the 
 cross by their denial of Christ, many also by 
 denying Adam's sin deny Christ's death, 
 and thrust it from them ! The bitterest re- 
 pining which the human heart has ever 
 known has .been against that utterance of 
 the Spirit, " By one man's disobedience many 
 were made sinners." 2 But may it not be 
 that that solemn law which makes the fall of 
 one involve the fall of many, is the only law 
 which could make the rising of one to be the 
 rising of many ? A common nature ruined 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 6.* f Rom. v. 19.
 
 36 IN CHRIST. 
 
 would seem even by its overshadowing curse 
 to proclaim the possibility of a common na- 
 ture redeemed. Who knows whether, if men 
 could only have sinned and fallen as separate 
 units, they must not have been restored by sep- 
 arate redemptions ? We will not speculate 
 on such a theme. Rather will we joyfully re- 
 turn to what God has revealed, that as in the 
 sin of one " all sinned," l so in the penal death 
 of one "all died." 2 All died! Wonderful 
 words ! Christ's death does not supersede 
 ours. It implies and recognizes it, as, in the 
 civil compact, the vote of the representative 
 implies the vote of the people. What Christ 
 did/<?r us, was done by us in the divine reck- 
 oning, because done by Him who was of us 
 as Head and Surety. 3 We say Christ died 
 that we might live. In a deeper sense it is 
 true that He died that we might die ; might 
 die a death painless to ourselves but satisfy- 
 ing to the law a death of such intensity 
 and merit that it should expiate at once the 
 penalty of our sins, instead of requiring an 
 eternity of woe. O, blessed privilege ! " Ye 
 shall indeed drink of my cup" is a promise 
 realized unto us as well as unto the two disci- 
 
 l Rom. v. 12. 2 2 Cor. v. 14. 8 Note E.
 
 IN CHRIST. 37 
 
 pies. But it is only a cup of blessing to us. 
 He drank the vinegar and gall of pain and 
 agony. He leaves us only the precious wine 
 of consolation. And thus we enter into com- 
 munion with his sufferings, and become par- 
 takers of his death. " If one died for all, then 
 all died." But how differently the One from 
 the all ! He bore the pain of death ; they 
 bear only the merit of it. He gives infinite 
 worthiness to the act by his divinity ; they 
 receive the purchase of the act in their hu- 
 manity. And yet nothing is deducted from 
 the full assurance that they have died. Such 
 u is the personal initiation into the mystery 
 of sacrifice " which we receive through faith. 
 
 We see at once where this blessed fact 
 places us even in perfect reconciliation to 
 a violated law. God has said, " The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die." The soul has sinned, 
 and it has died in Christ. The law has said, 
 " Cursed is every one that continueth not in 
 all things which are written in the book of 
 the law to do them." None have continued 
 in obedience. But Christ hath been " made 
 a curse for us ; " for it is written, "Cursed is 
 every one that hangeth on a tree." Hence, 
 crucified with Christ, we have been accursed
 
 38 IN CHRIST. 
 
 in Him. Not one jot or tittle has then 
 passed away from the law, but all has been 
 fulfilled. 1 
 
 How affecting this perfect literalness, this 
 rigid honesty, if we may call it so, in the deal- 
 ings of our Surety with the law ! And with 
 what triumphant assurance it enables us to 
 take up and repeat that verdict of our ac- 
 quittal from condemnation, " He that hath 
 died hath been jitstified from sin." 2 
 
 But, alas ! how slow is our faith to enter 
 into the fullness of this gospel ! As that 
 deep hunger for expiation which the sense of 
 sin begets, begins to gnaw the soul, many 
 seek to appease it by mere self-crucifixion. 
 If not with the scourge and sackcloth of the 
 ascetic, yet with the vinegar and gall of sharp 
 remorse ; with the compunctions of a bleed- 
 ing and unhealed heart, striving to satisfy 
 that law, which, from the soul of man as well as 
 from the statute-book of God, proclaims that 
 without the shedding of blood there is no re- 
 mission. Nothing is more painful to behold 
 than this search for the cross, which ends 
 only in a wounded self; in a conscience that 
 is laying on itself the chastisement of its 
 1 Note F. 2 Rom. vi. 7.*
 
 IN CHRIST. 39 
 
 peace, and in a broken spirit that is striving 
 to heal itself with its own stripes. The gospel 
 neither demands nor will take any such offer- 
 ing from the sinner. Reversing that well- 
 known sentiment of legalism, its emphatic 
 declaration is, 
 
 " The cross in thine own heart will never save thy soul, 
 The cross on Golgotha alone can make thee whole." 
 
 Here, as everywhere, the Master's words 
 meet us, to call us away from all self-help. 
 " Without me ye can do nothing." As high 
 as the heaven is above the earth, so far 
 is the distance from the self-crucifixion to 
 crucifixion in Christ?- To pass from the one 
 to the other requires but a single trusting 
 look of faith. But it is to cross " the whole 
 diameter of being" between the spotless 
 Lamb of God and the guilty children of men. 
 That there is a sacrificing of self that is in- 
 
 1 How vivid a reflection of his own experience do we 
 find in Luther's pithy comment on these words : " I am 
 crucified with Christ." " Paul speaketh not here of crucify- 
 ing by imitation or example ; but he speaketh of that high 
 crucifying whereby sin, the devil, and death, are crucified 
 in Christ and not in me. Here Christ Jesus doth all Him- 
 self alone. But believing in Christ, I am by faith crucified 
 also with Christ ; so that all these things are crucified and 
 dead with me." Commentary on Galatians.
 
 4O IN CHRIST. 
 
 separable from the gospel idea of discipleship 
 is unquestionable. But it is not that which 
 is wrought for obtaining peace with God, but 
 that which grows out of a peace already ob- 
 tained in the crucified Christ. The whole 
 course of the divine life is from Christ to self, 
 and not from self to Christ. To begin an ex- 
 piation in one's own sufferings, hoping that it 
 may end in fellowship and union with Christ's 
 sufferings, is not only to transpose, but com- 
 pletely to vitiate the order of grace. There 
 is nothing of ours, soul, body, or spirit, that is 
 without blemish. And when we understand 
 that our very tears need themselves to be 
 washed in the blood of the Redeemer, and 
 our very penitence to be sanctified in his ex- 
 ceeding sorrow, we shall gladly turn wholly 
 to the perfect offering. And so from that re- 
 liance on penance and mortification, which, 
 however sincere, is an obtrusion of self into 
 that realm of sacrifice which Christ alone can 
 fill ; and from that searching in a bruised and 
 excruciated conscience for peace, which, how- 
 ever honest, is but an attempt to discover in 
 self that sin-offering which can only be found 
 in the bleeding Lamb of God, how gratefully 
 we turn to Christ crucified as our only true
 
 IN CHRIST. 41 
 
 resting place for comfort ! " Let me know 
 that I have repented enough and suffered 
 enough," is the voice of a faith that is still in 
 bondage to law. The voice of a faith that is 
 free is, " Let me hear that Christ died in the 
 stead of sinners, of whom I am chief; that 
 He was forsaken of God, during these fearful 
 agonies, because He had taken my place ; 
 that on his cross I paid the penalty of my guilt. 
 Let me hear too that his blood cleanseth from 
 all sin, and that I may now appear before the 
 bar of God, not only pardoned, but innocent. 
 Let me realize the great mystery of the recip- 
 rocal substitution of Christ and the believer, 
 or rather their perfect unity, He in them and 
 they in Him, which He has expressly taught; 
 and let me believe that / was in effect cruci- 
 fied on Calvary, and He will in effect stand 
 before the throne in my person ; his the pen- 
 alty, mine the sin ; his the shame, mine the 
 glory ; his the thorns, mine the crown ; his 
 the merit, mine the reward. Verily, thou 
 shalt answer for me, O Lord, my Redeemer. 
 In Thee do I put my trust, let me never be 
 confounded." J 
 
 Do we ask then what our death in Christ 
 
 1 Bishop Le Jeune.
 
 42 IN CHRIST. 
 
 has accomplished for us ? What has it not 
 accomplished ? Like the flaming sword 
 which drove man out of Paradise, and which 
 turned every way, to keep the tree of life, this 
 weapon of redemption with which the Captain 
 of our salvation opened the kingdom of heaven 
 to all believers, presents a destroying edge to 
 every foe that stands across our track. 
 
 The world, whose friendship has been our 
 deepest enmity to God, because drawing our 
 best affections and diverting our truest life 
 from Him, is at last overcome. The cross has 
 sundered us from its enslaving bondage. "By 
 whom the world is crucified unto me, and I 
 unto the world? Allure us for a season it 
 may ; draw us to its pleasures it sometimes 
 will. But from the moment we know our- 
 selves dead with Christ, its tyranny is broken. 
 " How shall we who died to sin, live any longer 
 therein ? " * To go back to the world from 
 which we have thus been separated, we must 
 despise the cross of our redemption, tramp- 
 ling on the blood of the covenant wherewith 
 we are sanctified, and compelling our Master 
 to retrace the Via Dolorosa of his agony, that 
 we may crucify Him afresh, and put Him to 
 an open shame. 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 2.*
 
 IN CHRIST. 43 
 
 "Thefas/1, warring against the Spirit, violat- 
 ing every truce with conscience, breaking 
 every covenant which we have made with 
 God behold, this enemy from whom we 
 cannot flee, has yet received his death wound. 
 Christ put a nail through him when He gave 
 his own body to the smiters. " And they that 
 are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the 
 affections and lusts." Wounded unto death, 
 yet struggling for his lost dominion, we shall 
 never be wholly quit of him, till the grave 
 closes over him. But in God's reckoning we 
 are even now delivered. " Ye are not in the 
 flesh but in the Spirit." Upon our natural 
 and guilt-attainted man, justice has executed 
 his death-warrant, and is satisfied. In words 
 traced by the infallible spirit of truth, we have 
 the record of his decease : " Ye died, and 
 your life is hid with Christ in God." 1 
 
 When the Judge calls for us now as He did 
 of old for Adam, saying, "Where art thou?" 
 He will no longer seek the living among the 
 dead. Our life, the life of which He now 
 takes cognizance, is hid in Christ. In Him 
 will He find it, and not in the charnel-house 
 of our dead man. What are these evil habits 
 1 CoL UL 3.*
 
 44 IN CHRIST. 
 
 that are still clinging about us, but the relics 
 of that old and crucified nature ! What are 
 these sins that pain us and make us cry out 
 with sorrow, but the motions and death throes 
 of that body that has been doomed by the de- 
 cree of the cross ! Confess them sorrowfully 
 and with shame we must ; but we may tri- 
 umphantly own that " they belong to the old 
 man, and we are carrying them to the grave 
 to be buried with their owner." Even Satan, 
 the head and instigator of all other enemies, 
 has been disarmed and doomed. Christ took 
 on flesh that He might destroy him that had 
 the power of death, that is, the devil, and 
 " deliver them who, through fear of death, 
 were all their life-time subject to bondage." 
 
 Rejoice, then, O saint, in your rescue from 
 " the Terrible Captain and his standard- 
 bearer." On Calvary, Christ triumphed over 
 death by becoming the victim of death. That 
 eternal terror that was once before you, He by 
 his cross has put forever behind you. It can- 
 not cast one threatening shadow across your 
 pathway now. It cannot wring one pang of 
 foreboding agony from your soul. " Death 
 stung itself to death, when it stung Christ." J 
 
 1 Komaine.
 
 IN CHRIST. 45 
 
 Recognizing now the realness of this union 
 with Christ in his death, and the fullness of 
 blessing that grows therefrom, it only remains 
 for the believer to make the truth real to his 
 own experience. Beholding how God has set 
 Christ's death to our account, through our 
 partnership with Him, set it also yourself to 
 your account and take possession of the riches 
 of grace and mercy which are thus made 
 yours. " In that He died, He died unto sin 
 once. . . . Likewise reckon ye also yourselves 
 to be dead indeed nnto sin." 
 
 We will by no means say that this reckon- 
 ing will be painless. Adam's nature dies 
 hard within us ; and before we can own the 
 justice of its sentence, or acquiesce in its con- 
 demnation, there will doubtless be wrought 
 within us, by the Holy Spirit, some bitter ex- 
 perimental fellowship with Christ's sufferings. 
 Our sins will find us out, and the death that 
 is by sin. We shall feel the terrible dealing 
 of our Judge with our consciences. There 
 will be strong crying and tears ; perhaps the 
 darkness of desertion, the rending of the 
 rocky heart, and the sense of deserved wrath 
 piercing the soul as with a two-edged sword. 
 It may be long before we can yield up the
 
 46 IN CHRIST. 
 
 ghost of the natural man and renounce all 
 trust in him forever. But once enabled to ac- 
 count ourselves dead in Him, what a deliver- 
 ance is ours ! 
 
 Standing by the cross now, we discern in 
 the gloom and power of darkness that gather 
 round it, that "outer darkness" which had 
 been ours forever out of Christ. In that 
 plaintive " Eloi, Eloi" we hear what had been 
 our cry of despair unanswered forever, except 
 we had been found in Him. In that dread- 
 ful rending cry which delivers up the spirit, 
 we own the due reward of our deeds, while 
 confessing that this man hath done nothing 
 amiss. But now all these things are passed 
 forever both for Him and for us, as soon as 
 the " // is finished" has been spoken. And 
 lo ! the foregleams of the resurrection break 
 upon us. The light of a certain and triumph- 
 ant hope enters our heart. Remembering 
 that we are joined to Him who said, "I lay 
 down my life that I may take it again," we 
 cease from tears and follow Him, saying as 
 we hasten onward, " Now if we be dead with 
 Him, we believe that we shall also live with 
 Him."
 
 III. RESURRECTION IN 
 CHRIST.
 
 0T pe tfjcn Be risen tuirt) Cjjrist, 
 tfto.se tljingtf tof)itj) arc afiofcc, toljere 
 Cjrist itt, tf) ontjjc ng^t j)an& of <2Boti. 
 
 Cc>/. iii. I. 
 
 tuljo i^ ricfj in mcrcp, for 
 great lobe toftcrctoul) Jfe loteD 11^, ctoeu 
 tugen Uic U.ICIT oeaD in sins, l>iti) quirk? 
 cneD 110 togectjer tuitj Christ ; (Dp 0rare 
 pe are sa\3eti ;) anU Ijatl) rai^eeti ti^ tig 
 together, ano maDc u^ sit together in 
 jjea\jenlp ^larc.tf, in Christ 3esiiief. 
 
 Eph. ii. 4-6. 
 
 3Cnti pou, being oeab in pour s'ins ano 
 t^e uncircunicision of pour ffest), 
 i)c quirkeneo together Until Dun, 
 ma forgiucn pou all trespasses. 
 
 Col. U. 13.
 
 III. 
 
 RESURRECTION IN CHRIST. 
 
 |NE with Christ in his dying, we must 
 be one with Him also in his resur- 
 rection. For the bands of this mys- 
 tic union are not dissolved or weakened while 
 the Saviour lies in the tomb. Joined to his 
 people, that He might carry them with Him 
 through the pains and penalties of death, He 
 now in the same gracious partnership of be- 
 ing brings them up again from the dead. 
 And so " He spreads the mighty miracle of 
 his own regeneration from the dead, along 
 the whole line of history. He repeats it in 
 every true believer. The Church's is an ever- 
 lasting Easter." 1 
 
 There is doubtless the same theoretical 
 difficulty in conceiving of the believer as hav- 
 ing been raised in Christ's resurrection, as 
 there is in conceiving of Him as having died 
 * Archer Butler.
 
 5O IN CHRIST. 
 
 in his crucifixion. And hence, as some read 
 that very striking and explicit word of the 
 Spirit, " If then ye were raised together with 
 Christ," J they find it much easier to remand 
 the expression to the realm of metaphor, than 
 to accept it literally and without Condition. 
 
 But we are to remember that the resurrec- 
 tion is not merely a historical fact, the trans- 
 cendent miracle and mystery of the apos- 
 tolic age. Certainly it is all that. But it is 
 more. It is a moral event, a principle of 
 spiritual energy, as well as a fact of human 
 history. While to those therefore who see 
 Christ only from the outer court of knowl- 
 edge, and whose faith ends in the bare belief 
 that " He died and rose again according to 
 the Scriptures" the mystery may remain : 
 to those who press into the inner sanctuary 
 of fellowship, praying that they may " know 
 Him and the power of his resurrection" it 
 will be more and more laid open to them as 
 they advance. What the power of Christ's 
 resurrection is, we may infer from the close- 
 ness of its relation in the gospel to spiritual 
 renewal and justification, as well as to phys- 
 ical reanimation 
 
 i CoL iii. i.
 
 IN CHRIST. 51 
 
 It is a judicial power, and it is a regenera- 
 tive power. The first only as crowning and 
 sealing the judgment of the cross, so that 
 whereas Christ's death was our justification 
 procured, his rising was our justification jus- 
 tified. And the second only as related to the 
 Spirit, so that while it is the Holy Ghost that 
 renews, it is clearly only from the risen 
 Christ that the soul derives its life in renewal 
 " Because I live, ye shall live also." 
 
 Let us trace these two thoughts into their 
 details. How clearly our resurrection is 
 linked with Christ's, for the assurance of par- 
 don, in this passage : " And you, being dead 
 in your sins and the uncircumcision of your 
 flesh, hath He quickened together tvith Him, 
 having forgiven you all trespasses" 1 That 
 forgiveness was fully accomplished when He 
 had pronounced the " It is finished " on the 
 cross. For then had He blotted out the 
 dark score of disobedience that was against 
 us, having nailed it to the cross. And this 
 verily was decisive and final, "a nail fastened 
 in a sure place." But the pardon thus writ- 
 ten in his blood waited to be sealed and at- 
 tested by his resurrection. For though He 
 1 Col. il 13.
 
 52 IN CHRIST. 
 
 had spoiled principalities and powers by his 
 death, only by bursting the bars of the grave 
 could He " make a show of them, openly tri- 
 umphing over them in Himself." 
 
 And so, while in the blood of the dying 
 Christ we see the title of our pardon, we wait 
 for a luminous glance from the risen Christ 
 to bring it out into full distinctness and sig- 
 nificance. An inheritance may be ours and 
 yet not ours ; ours in effect, because the deed 
 of it has been executed ; but not ours to 
 certain knowledge and apprehension, since 
 we have not received it. The heritage of 
 peace which became ours by the death of the 
 Testator, faith cannot take while He lies in 
 the grave. We must see our Eliakim, who 
 openeth and no man shutteth, returning from 
 the tomb with the key of the House of David 
 laid upon his shoulder, 1 before we can enter 
 with Him into our purchased possession. 
 So vital is this to our assurance of faith, that 
 Paul says, " If Christ be not raised, your 
 faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins." a Ye 
 died with Christ, ye in Him and He in your 
 sins that were upon Him ; ye were buried 
 with Christ, ye in Him still, and He in your 
 
 1 Isaiah xxii. 22. 3 I Cor. xv. 17.
 
 IN CHRIST. 53 
 
 sins still. If He lies yet in that dark un- 
 opened grave, .ye lie there yet, in your sins, 
 because in Him who went down into the tomb 
 with those sins upon Him. Faith cannot 
 place the disciple above his Master. It can 
 
 > 
 
 only make him to be as his Master, a sharer 
 in his condition, a partner in his destiny. 
 Now while our Lord's sufferings in the flesh 
 were completed when He yielded up the 
 ghost, He was not disentangled from our 
 guilt so long as He lay in the tomb. How 
 then shall our faith outrun Him, and reach 
 the vantage ground of the resurrection, while 
 the grave still holds Him in its grim impris- 
 onment ? How shall we break the bands of 
 condemnation and cast away its cords from 
 us, if it be possible for Him to be " holden of 
 death ? " And yet He is so holden, if a sin- 
 gle item of the debt of sin is left uncanceled. 
 " The wages of sin is death ; " and that wages 
 must be paid to the full. " Thou shalt by no 
 means come out thence till thou hast paid 
 the uttermost farthing," says an inexorable 
 law ; and if He is holden, we are holden with 
 Him, because of that faith that has linked us 
 into indissoluble partnership with his destiny. 
 Such is the certain inference from that dreary 
 hypothesis, " If Christ be not raised."
 
 54 IK CHRIST. 
 
 " But now is Christ risen from the dead." 
 And since we are risen with Him, we are not 
 in our sins. In his renewal from the dead, 
 we were lifted forever from their dark enfold- 
 ing condemnation. They cannot bind a sin- 
 gle fetter on us now ; they cannot remand us 
 for a single instant to the prison-house of 
 despair. Because " the God of peace has 
 brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep," all 
 the flock folded in Him by faith, are safe. 
 " They shall never perish, neither shall any 
 man pluck them out of his hands." 
 
 That the remains of sin are still clinging 
 to us, we are only too painfully conscious. 
 Not like the sinless Lord have we put off all 
 the cerements of our body of death. Walk- 
 ing with Him in the same resurrection, we 
 are as yet like Lazarus bound hand and foot 
 with the grave-clothes the habits of sin 
 that still cling to us, the power of evil that 
 enthralls us ; and we wait in eager expect- 
 ancy the last resurrection word that shall 
 say, " Loose him, and let him go." But not 
 the less truly are we alive with Christ from 
 the dead, and death, the penalty of sin, can 
 have no more dominion over us.
 
 IN CHRIST. 55 
 
 This truth is most strikingly told again in 
 those words of the Apostle, " Who was deliv- 
 ered for our offenses, and raised again for our 
 justification," literally, " delivered because of 
 our offenses, and raised because of our justifi- 
 cation." * So enwrapped was He in our sins 
 that were upon Him, that he could not escape 
 from death. But when the justification of 
 us who are in Him had been accomplished, 
 He could not be detained by death. And so 
 because our justification was completed, He 
 was raised again. What an affecting empha- 
 sis is here again laid upon the doctrine of our 
 Lord's union with his. people ! Their cause 
 is so thoroughly his own that He cannot out- 
 strip them a single step in the path of re- 
 demption. Opener of the prison doors to 
 them that are bound, He yet waits till the 
 last demand of justice has been satisfied, be- 
 fore He comes through the gate of the grave 
 to lead them out. The members must be 
 with their Head. They are his fullness, and 
 without them He cannot be made perfect 
 He wails till the weary hours of their prison 
 service are completed in their Surety. He 
 cannot accept deliverance while they are un- 
 i Note G.
 
 56 IN CHRIST. 
 
 der condemnation. But when the full ac- 
 quittal has been secured, the glorious prom- 
 ise is fulfilled, " The third day I shall be per- 
 fected." Aye, thou mighty Captain of our 
 Salvation, thou first Begotten from the dead, 
 because thou wilt then have " perfected for- 
 ever them that are sanctified? 
 
 I am aware of a certain holy jealousy for 
 the honor of the cross, that restrains some 
 from ascribing justifying efficacy to the res- 
 urrection of Christ. But let it be marked 
 that it is not atoning justification which we 
 attribute to it, but " manifestive justifica- 
 tion" as Edwards so exactly names it. And 
 a guilty conscience needs this as well as the 
 other. The prisoner does not know himself 
 free, though he has served out to its last day 
 and hour his term of sentence, if the prison 
 doors still remain shut upon him. Prisoners 
 of hope, bound with Christ under the law, we 
 are not fully assured of our deliverance, when 
 we can reckon ourselves dead with Him, 
 though justice is thereby satisfied. We wait 
 for the angel to descend from heaven mes- 
 senger of peace to us because deputy of jus- 
 tice to Him to roll back the stone from the 
 door of the sepulchre. The wounded hands
 
 IN CHRIST. 57 
 
 and feet, the dying cry that yields up the 
 Spirit, and the lifeless body at last lying in 
 the tomb, are the tokens of the price paid. 
 But the empty tomb, the folded napkin, and 
 the linen clothes laid by themselves, these 
 are the tokens of the price accepted, of the 
 prisoner's discharge, and of the loosing of the 
 pains of death forever, from all who died in 
 Christ. And so to all questionings of a timid 
 or doubting conscience, the answer now is, 
 " Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ 
 that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who 
 is even at the right hand of God, who also 
 maketh intercession for us." x 
 
 But not only does our resurrection in 
 Christ raise us out of condemnation ; it also 
 lifts us into a new life in Him. In Christ 
 crucified we put off the old man, in Christ 
 risen we put on the new man. The cross 
 was for the destruction of the body of sin ; 
 -the resurrection was for imparting to us the 
 
 1 Rom. viiL 34. 
 
 " Le Chretien eclair^ sur la resurrection de notre Sau- 
 veur jouit de 1'assurance de son salut ; il en est aussi sflr, 
 qu'il est sur que Jesus Christ est ressuscite" ; et pour le 
 faire douter de son espe"rance eternelle, il faudrait com- 
 mencer par le faire douter que Jesus Christ est ressuscitd 
 des morts." Adolf he Monod.
 
 58 IN CHRIST. 
 
 principle of divine life. By his crucifixion, 
 our Redeemer accomplished a twofold death 
 for us. He condemned sin in the flesh} ex- 
 hausting at once the eternal penalties that 
 were menacing the soul of man, and inflicting 
 on the body that death sentence which will 
 be fully consummated for every believer when 
 he lies down in the grave. By his resurrec- 
 tion He makes us the subjects of a twofold 
 regeneration the regeneration of the soul 
 in this life, and that of the body in the life to 
 come ; both of which are expressly said to 
 make us sons of God, because the one only 
 completes and consummates the other ; and 
 in both of which we are " the children of God, 
 being children of the resurrection." 
 
 For the renewed body we still wait with 
 all saints in eager longing till we be clothed 
 upon at the resurrection. The renewed soul 
 we already have in Christ. " Blessed be the 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 which according to his abundant mercy, hath 
 begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." 3 
 Wonderful words ! It is not merely a poten- 
 tial renewal that is here indicated, the laying 
 1 Rom. viii. 3. a I Pet L 3.
 
 Tff CHRIST. 59 
 
 of a basis for a possible but still future regen- 
 eration. We that believe, are already " risen 
 with Him, through the faith of the operation 
 of God." The old life, with its kindredship to 
 Adam, with its heritage of his curse, with its 
 clinging incubus of his death, is put off at his 
 grave. In the second Adam we now live. 
 And " as He is, so are we in this world." He 
 is " the first fruits of them that slept." l " And 
 if the first fruits be holy, so also is the lump." 
 He is " declared to be the Son of God with 
 power by the resurrection from the dead." 
 In the same divine recognition do we likewise 
 receive the adoption of sons. Willingly as He 
 endured the cross, despising the shame, did 
 He say, " My God, my God, why hast Thou 
 forsaken me," making no mention of us for 
 whom He was forsaken. But now, as He is 
 about to sit down at the right hand of the 
 throne of God, bringing all the members of 
 his mystical body to be seated with Him in 
 the heavenly places, we hear Him saying, " I 
 ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto 
 my God and your God," thus suggesting with 
 the most exquisite tenderness their oneness 
 with Him in his now recovered fellowship. 
 
 1 I Cor. xv. 20.
 
 6o 
 
 IN CHRIST. 
 
 What a place then does the sepulchre of 
 Jesus occupy ! It is the border line and 
 meeting place of law and grace. It is the 
 solemn pause, " the divine ellipsis " in the 
 work of redemption, whence we look back 
 upon the old nature, the old sin, and the old 
 curse, and forward upon the " all things " that 
 " are become new." Standing here and look- 
 ing either way, we see how Christ's work 
 divides jtself into what he did as the Sin- 
 bearer, and what he did as the Life-giver. 
 
 In his Crucifixion, 
 He was 
 
 " Delivered for our of- 
 fenses." 
 
 " Put to death in the flesh." 
 
 " In that He died, He died 
 unto sin, once." 
 
 " He was crucified through 
 weakness." 
 
 In his Resurrection, 
 He was 
 
 " Raised again for our jus- 
 tification." (Rom. iv. 25.) 
 
 " Quickened in the Spirit " 
 (I Pet. iii. 18.) 
 
 "In that He liveth, He 
 liveth unto God." (Rom. vi. 
 10.) 
 
 " Yet He liveth by the 
 power of God." (2 Cor. 
 xiii. 4.) 
 
 By his death, He became the " end of the 
 law to every one that believeth ; " by his resur- 
 rection, He became " the beginning, the first- 
 born from the dead." There the root of the 
 first Adam was wounded unto death. Here
 
 IN CHRIST. 6l 
 
 humanity springs up anew, and from a new 
 and incorruptible seed. " I- ant tlie true Vine? 
 says Christ. All the culture and pruning of 
 Judaism had failed to bring the stock of the 
 first Adam to any satisfying fruitfulness. "I 
 had planted thee a noble vine," says Jehovah, 
 " wholly a right seed ; how art thou turned 
 into the degenerate plant of a strange vine 
 unto me " l Christ risen from the dead was 
 given to be a iuw stock, the elect and best of 
 all the vineyard of heaven. The crucifixion 
 was the uprooting of the old. the crushing of 
 its very roots as well as the clusters of its 
 grapes in the wine-press of the wrath of God. 
 The resurrection was the upspringing of the 
 new, the true vine. And all who are truly 
 renewed, are shoots and branches of that. To 
 be incorporated upon that vine, to abide in 
 it, this is the only way of life, because the 
 only way to become a partaker of the divine 
 nature. And yet how many are trying to-day 
 to revise the old, digging about that scathed 
 and unfruitful stump of Adam's nature, hoping 
 to restore it. The sacrarnentarian, sprinkling 
 it with the " baptismal dew," thinking that 
 " through the scent of water it may bud and 
 
 1 Jer. ii. 21.
 
 62 IN CHRIST. 
 
 bring forth boughs like a plant ; " not remem- 
 bering that by the death and burial of our 
 Lord, the " root thereof has waxed old in the 
 earth, and the stock thereof has died in the 
 ground" The moralist, lopping off dead 
 branches and pruning away excrescences, 
 hoping to make it nobly productive ; not re- 
 membering that by the crucifixion of Christ, 
 " the axe has been laid at the root of the 
 tree." 
 
 To be in Christ the risen man, then, is to 
 have eternal life. We no longer trace our 
 genealogy back to Adam now. That registry 
 has been annulled for those whose names are 
 written in the Lamb's Book of Life. The 
 night that covered Joseph's tomb was the last 
 of the old dispensation. The resurrection 
 light that broke at length upon that tomb 
 was the day-dawn of the new. Only from 
 that day does the Church of the redeemed 
 begin. " Date it rather from the day of Pen- 
 tecost," does some one say? But Resurrec- 
 tion, Ascension, and Pentecost would seem tc 
 be only successive stages of the same great 
 transaction, the bringing of the Church into 
 the fullness of the divine life. For Christ's 
 ascent bodily marks his descent spiritually ;
 
 m CHRIST. 63 
 
 his taking our nature up unto God the bring- 
 ing down of God's life to us, and the corn- 
 mencement of his dwelling in us by his Spirit. 
 
 And this is our risen life, however we con- 
 ceive or speak of it, that we are in Him and 
 He in us. It is a life as far removed from 
 that of Adam as the heaven from the earth, 
 the constant partaking of Christ who is the 
 Life. And this is our righteousness, not the 
 name or the credit of holiness merely, but the 
 righteousness of God perpetually upon us, 
 because of our identification with Him who 
 is made unto us righteousness. 
 
 The Resurrection of our Lord then is not 
 merely a pledge of our own ; it is our own if 
 we are his. 1 All that it did for Him, we may 
 boldly say it did for us if we are in Him. 
 True, in experience much of its blessing is 
 yet future and embryonic to us, as it is not to 
 
 1 And our unbelief is naught else than a guilty forfeiture 
 of what has been graciously bequeathed to us by Christ, a 
 refusal to be embraced in that resurrection which has al- 
 ready in the intention and provision of God embraced us. 
 George Herbert touches this thought very delicately in those 
 lines, 
 
 " Arise sad heart ; ifthou doit not withstand* 
 
 Christ's resurrection thine may be ; 
 
 Do not by hanging down break from tfu hand, 
 
 Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee."
 
 64 W CHRIST 
 
 Him. But because of our perfect identity 
 with Him, with Him to whom the possible and 
 the actual are ever the same, all is counted 
 as present to us. With Him we are " not in 
 the flesh, but in the Spirit." With Him we 
 are " seated in the heavenly places." Hence 
 that same strenuous demand which the Scrip- 
 tures lay upon us for realizing our death in 
 Christ: "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead in- 
 deed," they lay upon us for realizing our res- 
 urrection in Him : " Seek those things which 
 are above, where Christ sitteth on the right 
 hand of God." 
 
 And can we conceive of any more effective 
 motive to Christian attainment, than this ? 
 In Christ Jesus we work no longer for life, 
 but from life. Our high endeavor is not to 
 shape our actual life in the flesh into con- 
 formity to an ideal life that is set before us 
 in Him. It is rather to reduce our true life 
 now hid in Christ, to an actual life in our- 
 self. And so the summons of the gospel is, 
 not that we behold what is possible for us in 
 Christ, and reach forth to it ; but rather that 
 we behold what is accomplished for us in 
 Christ, and appropriate it and live in it 
 Risen with Christ, the first-fruits of our
 
 IN CHRIST. 65 
 
 spirits already carried up with Him into 
 glory, our life hid with Him in God, how 
 shall not our heart be where our treasure is ? 
 How shall not our love be ever kindling 
 and burning upwards, purging itself of all 
 earthly dross, till it is wholly intent on Him ? 
 Why hang the damps and corruptions of the 
 grave about us still, earthliness and sinful 
 affections, and all these clinging accompani- 
 ments of moral death, from which our Lord has 
 ransomed us ? It is ours even now to walk 
 with Him in white, and to be ever " breath- 
 ing with Him the freshness of the morn- 
 ing of the resurrection and of endless life." 
 Risen with Him, how shall we not more and 
 more recognize our life as in heaven, and be 
 waiting for Him who is our life to appear? 
 Not as the sorrowing Man of Nazareth, not 
 as the sinless sufferer of Calvary, do we wait 
 to see Him now. " The root and tJtc offspring 
 of David" for awhile " cut off, though not for 
 Himself," He comes again to sit upon the 
 throne of his father David. " The bright and 
 morning star" hidden now behind that cloud 
 that has for a little time received Him out of 
 our sight, He soon shall startle the world by 
 the "brightness of his coming." And be- 
 5
 
 66 IN CHRIST. 
 
 cause we are seated with Him now in the 
 heavenly places, we shall be seated with Him 
 in the earthly ; because our life is one with 
 his now, his manifestation shall be our mani- 
 festation. " When Christ, who is our life, shall 
 appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in 
 glory." 
 
 And so we wait patiently till the " day 
 dawn, and the day-star arise in our hearts."
 
 IV. BAPTISM INTO CHRIST.
 
 a manp of pou a jjabc been 
 ti$co into f)rit, Jafcc gut on 
 
 Gal. iii. 27. 
 
 Jtnoto pe not tljat ^o manp of u a^ 
 tocre &ajm$c& into Cljri^t, tucre ba^^ 
 ti3CD into ^i^ DcatJ) ? Cljercforc tuc are 
 fturico luitl) ^im bp ba^tiam into Dcatl), 
 ttjat lihc a # Christ Vua raiacb u^ fcom 
 tfte ocao bp tljc glocp of tf)c father, c\?cn 
 ^o tue ai^o ^tjoiild tualfe in nclunc^ of 
 
 life. Rom. vi. 3-4. 
 
 Eurico Ujitjj ^itn in baptism, tofjcrc* 
 in al^o pc arc ri#cn toit^ ^i 
 tljc faitlj of tl)c operation of ^3oo, 
 Ijatf) rai^co Ipim from tt)c ocao. 
 
 Cf/. ii. 12. 
 
 *
 
 IV. 
 BAPTISM INTO CHRIST. 
 
 (EAD with Christ, and risen with 
 Christ ! How perfectly has the Spirit 
 ^ 3- enshrined this twofold doctrine for 
 us in the initial ordinance of the gospel ! 
 Baptism is at once the rite in which the be- 
 liever gives token of his union with Jesus in 
 his death and resurrection, and in which he 
 receives in germ" all those deep kindred trtiths 
 which are to unfold with his daily growth in 
 faith and knowledge ; the sacrament which 
 the Church holds as a perpetual trust from 
 her ascended Lord, and which holds for the 
 Church in perpetual preservation this doc- 
 trine in which her life is bound up. 
 
 If we have assented then to what has been 
 said in the foregoing chapters, and if we have 
 " obeyed from the heart that fortn l of doc- 
 trine " to which we are thus committed, we 
 i Note H.
 
 7O IN CHRIST. 
 
 shall have now no hesitating answer for the 
 question of the Apostle, " Know ye not that 
 so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 
 Christ, were baptized into his death ? " Nor 
 having assented to this shall we be uncertain 
 as to his conclusion, " Therefore we were bur- 
 ied 1 with Him by baptism into death, that like 
 as CJirist was raised tip from the dead by the 
 glory of the Father, even so we also should 
 walk in newness of life." 2 
 
 And so we look back to that solemn mo- 
 ment when, in the name of the Trinity, we 
 were immersed beneath the water, and then 
 raised again from the parted wave, and we see 
 in the act the divine credential which our 
 Lord gave to our consenting faith of our 
 union with Him in his dying and rising ; or in 
 the expressive phrase of Chrysostom, " the 
 sign and pledge of our descent with Him 
 into the state of the dead, and of our return 
 thence." 
 
 How far we must ever keep from ascribing 
 any saving efficacy to the water, or to the 
 ritual act of baptism, will appear when we 
 consider how wonderfully framed the ordi- 
 nance is for disclaiming all merit for the be- 
 
 1 Note I. 2 Rom. vi. 3, 4.
 
 IN CHRIST. 71 
 
 liever's obedience, in the very act of helping 
 him to render that obedience. For not only 
 is here a sign which is empty and worthless, 
 without the accompanying faith, but one 
 which shows how empty that faith is without 
 its object, Christ crucified and risen. Re- 
 pentance, belief, obedience, what are these 
 apart from the Redeemer, and except as 
 methods of appropriating his redemption ? 
 God reads them, and will have us express 
 them in the terms of the Saviour's atone- 
 ment. And therefore side by side with the 
 requirement of faith He has placed that of 
 baptism, giving us thus the synonym of 
 death and resurrection as the language in 
 which we must utter our confession of faith, 
 that we may never forget how we were re- 
 deemed. 
 
 Thus baptism is the divinely appointed 
 method of translating our obedience and faith 
 into the phraseology of our Lord's death and 
 resurrection. By it the disciple says to God, 
 not, " I have believed and obeyed the gospel, 
 therefore accept me ; " but rather, " // is 
 Christ tJtat died, yea rather tJiat is risen 
 again" J and I hereby declare my conformity 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 34.
 
 72 IN CHRIST. 
 
 to his death, and my fellowship with his res- 
 urrection. 
 
 Noting more minutely the features of this 
 apostolic ordinance, we shall see how it an- 
 swers in every particular to the doctrine un- 
 folded in previous chapters. 
 
 Here is first the burial, which confirms and 
 seals our crucifixion in Christ. The Spirit 
 declares " TJie body is dead because of sin" * 
 and the water opens now its mystic tomb 
 to ratify that verdict. And how, as for a 
 moment the prostrate form of the disciple 
 disappears beneath the wave, is the whole 
 solemn story of our death in Christ silently 
 rehearsed ! Here is no sparing or reprieving 
 of our guilty nature. The inexorable purpose 
 for which "our old man was crucified with 
 Him" is proclaimed without equivocation, 
 " that the body of sin might be destroyed" 
 Judaism, that trial of man in the flesh, that 
 system for his cleansing in his carnal state, 
 had as its ordinance, circumcision, the typical 
 rite of the purification of the fiesh. But 
 Christianity, starting upon the axioms that 
 " The carnal mind is enmity against God," and 
 that " They that are in the flesh cannot please 
 God," z has a far different ordinance, even 
 
 1 Rom. viii. IO. 2 Rom. viii. 7, 8.
 
 IN CHRIST. 73 
 
 baptism, the typical rite of the burial of the 
 flesh, in order to a better resurrection. Cir- 
 cumcision is " the putting away of the filth of 
 the flesh ; " * baptism is " the putting off of 
 the body of the sins of the flesh." a Therefore 
 by this confession do we not only, as Edward 
 Irving expresses it, " sign the death-warrant 
 of our natural man which has been issued 
 from the court of heaven," but we sign it lit- 
 erally with the "sign of the cross;" the 
 similitude of our Lord's death being the ap- 
 pointed and permanent vehicle of this con- 
 fession, that so we may be constantly re- 
 minded not only that we must die to sin in 
 order to live to God, but except we die with 
 Him we cannot live with Him. 
 
 And can those who realize the greatness of 
 those two dangers which are always threat- 
 ening the Church, namely, a bloodless moral- 
 ism on the one hand, and a spiritless ceremo- 
 nialism on the other, be too grateful for the 
 fonn of this ordinance which the Spirit has 
 thus fixed ? Substitute, as has been done, 
 the sprinkling or pouring of water upon the 
 person, for burial in the water ; thus let 
 the cleansing only of the soul be signified 
 
 *l Pet. iii. 21. *Col. ii. II.
 
 74 IN CHRIST. 
 
 in the rite, with no symbolic designation 
 of the method of that cleansing, death in 
 Christ. It is easy for the moralist now to 
 use the ordinance without ever having his 
 mind turned to the sacrifice of Calvary. Aye, 
 desiring not to see that sacrifice which means 
 death to the carnal man, he comes readily to 
 view the rite as a kind of Christian circum- 
 cision, marking the sanctifying of human na- 
 ture, and bringing that into covenant with 
 God. And so, " as many as desire to make a 
 fair show in the flesh" will readily be con- 
 strained to adopt it, when both their heart and 
 their flesh would cry out against that baptism 
 into Christ's death which marks the cruci- 
 fying and putting off of the old man. And 
 on the other hand how easily the idea of mys- 
 tical efficacy becomes attached to the element 
 of water, unless the form of its use be such as 
 to carry the thought immediately and cer- 
 tainly to Christ crucified and dead. How 
 vitally important then that " form of doc- 
 trine " prescribed by the Scriptures, namely, 
 the sacramental burial, which, while it so dis- 
 tinctly signifies our union with Him " who 
 came by water," as distinctly adds the saving 
 clause, " not by water only, but by water and 
 Wood."
 
 IN CHRIST. 75 
 
 As we have intimated already, such a seal 
 of doom to the natural man will not be likely 
 to find much favor in this world. Why should 
 it ? It is the cross translated into symbol, 
 and the cross gets little human approbation. 
 The old offense and ignominy lurk even in its 
 shadow. Doubtless many a true believer has 
 turned back to circumcision from finding how 
 much deeper the gospel cuts than the law ; 
 and doubtless miny another, who has gone 
 down with Christ into the mystic grave, 
 would have started back affrighted had he 
 realized all that he was showing forth. 
 
 But sorrow can have no place at this tomb 
 if we stop to consider how much is put off in 
 this putting off of our old man ; how the sin 
 that roots itself in that nature, the curse that 
 clings to that nature, and the condemnation 
 that rests upon that nature, are all swallowed 
 up in the sepulchre of Jesus Christ. The 
 cross condemns and brings death indeed, but 
 just beyond is the tomb where the condem- 
 nation is buried, and the death is swallowed 
 up in victory. " So I saw in ray dream," says 
 Bunyan, " that just as Christian came up with 
 the cross, his burden loosed from off his 
 shoulders and fell from off his back, and be-
 
 76 IN CHRIST. 
 
 gan to tumble, and so continued to do till it 
 came to the mouth of the sepulchre, when it 
 fell in, and I saw it no more" And does not 
 this word, " I saw it no more," answer the. 
 deepest note in the longing and groaning of 
 our sin-burdened humanity ? That Christian 
 cry, " Who shall deliver me from the body of 
 this death ? " and that heathen cry embodied 
 in the fable of Lethe, whose waters of forget- 
 fulness the dead are ever thirsting to drink 
 that they may enter into rest, are strangely 
 akin in this, that it is the pain of an ach- 
 ing conscience, the sighing for ease from the 
 sting of sin, that is told alike in each. And 
 where have these cries been answered but in 
 those sacramental waters, which in a figure 
 are at once the grave where the body of sin is 
 buried, and the river of forgetfulness where 
 bygone guilt is overwhelmed, and its memory 
 swallowed up ? And when was ever God's 
 ancient promise, "Their sins and their iniqui- 
 ties I will remember no more," written in so 
 large letters as here ? Not surely in that law 
 that " stood in divers washings- ; " } for in that 
 there was " a remembrance again made of 
 sins every year." 2 Not in that pseudo-gos- 
 * Heb. ix. 10. 2 Heb. x. 3.
 
 IN CHRIST. 77 
 
 pel which places our hope in some cleansing 
 or betterment of human nature ; for in that, 
 hope dies, and bitter memories awake with 
 every fresh reviving of the evil principle. 
 But here is found an ordinance that says to 
 the believer " no condemnation," and " no 
 more conscience of sins." 
 
 Say not then with a Romish Father, 1 that 
 " The true penitent never forgives himself" 
 Say rather that he is one who has learned to 
 see in the grave of his Lord the burial of all 
 his sins, with their burning remembrances, 
 their bitter accusations, and their stinging re- 
 proaches, and so, entering into God's thought 
 concerning him, has learned to forgive him- 
 self in God's forgiveness of him. " Blessed 
 is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose 
 sin is covered". " Blessed is the man to whom 
 the Lord imputeth not iniquity." 
 
 And if there is a signing of the death-war- 
 rant of the natural man in this rite, there is 
 just as clearly the making over of a quit- 
 claim upon him by a satisfied law. For when 
 did the law ever pursue a culprit into his 
 grave ? To have died with Christ is to have 
 died to the law. 2 No avenger of blood can 
 
 1 J. H. Newman * Rom. viL 4
 
 78 Iff CHRIST. 
 
 pursue his victim within the guarded pre- 
 cincts of this city of refuge, the sepulchre of 
 Jesus. And to the fact of the believer's hav- 
 ing entered here, the water is a perpetual wit- 
 ness. " I buried him with Christ," it says. 
 " I rolled my wave like a stone against the 
 door of his sepulchre. I set the seal of the 
 new covenant inscribed with the triune name 
 upon his tomb." And so every taunt of a 
 suspicious conscience, and every rising terror 
 of a broken commandment, is silenced. 
 
 If now it seems to any believer that he can 
 afford to lose the letter of this commandment 
 because forsooth " the letter killeth," it may 
 appear upon deeper reflection that this is just 
 the reason why he needs it. Confidence in 
 the flesh, and bondage to the law, are enemies 
 that we may rejoice to have killed ; and if 
 the letter of baptism can show them to our 
 faith as cut off and utterly destroyed in the 
 grave of Christ, it has done a blessed work 
 for us. Oh, would that all seekers after peace 
 might discover this that there can be no 
 entrance into " the power of Christ's resur- 
 rection," except through conformity to his 
 death. Would that the tomb of Jesus might 
 be seen to be as it is, the only shelter from
 
 IN CHRIST. 79 
 
 the law, the only stronghold from the perse- 
 cutions of conscience. Then, the preciousness 
 of the doctrine being discovered, the pre- 
 ciousness of the symbol would be felt. And 
 how would they who have learned to say " I 
 am crucified with Christ," also 
 
 " Joy to undergo 
 
 This shadow of his cross sublime, 
 This remnant of his woe." 
 
 But the buried form is raised up again from 
 the water in the likeness of Christ's resurrec- 
 tion. It should remain submerged, if Christ 
 be not risen. As it is, the momentary disap- 
 pearance from sight, and the brief suspension 
 of the breath, vividly suggests that fearful 
 doom which were ours in such a case. But 
 no sooner is the " buried with Him in bap- 
 tism " spoken, than the " Now is Christ risen 
 from the dead" is answered and echoed back 
 by the joyful announcement, " wherein also 
 ye are risen with Him through the faith of 
 the operation of God which hath raised Him 
 from the dead' * Blessed is he who, now 
 looking into the grave where he was buried 
 with Christ, sees what God sees, what the 
 angels see, the winding sheet of Adam's 
 1 Col. ii. 12.
 
 8O IN CHRIST. 
 
 curse put off from him and folded up forever, 
 and the linen clothes of a legal righteousness 
 laid by themselves. And thrice blessed is he 
 who hears concerning himself the glad an- 
 nouncement, " He is not here, but is risen," 
 and so is enabled to go forth in the joy of 
 the resurrection, to " walk in newness of life." 
 And this is what the Spirit by the water as 
 well as by the word would certify to us, our 
 standing in union with our risen. Head be- 
 yond the executed sentence of an injured law, 
 our complete security in Him, and our right 
 and duty to rejoice evermore in this grace. 
 
 The value of the ordinances is in their 
 power of bringing truth within the apprehen- 
 sion of all our senses, physical and spiritual. 
 Thus do they not only intensify our experi- 
 ence of doctrine, but they serve to put it 
 beyond further question, as that " which we 
 have heard, which we have seen with our 
 eyes, which our hands have handled of the 
 Word of Life." 1 
 
 How vividly in the momentary chill and 
 darkness of the grave of baptism do we taste 
 his death who suffered for us all ! And in the 
 exultant uprising, the quick recovery of the 
 
 1 I John i. I.
 
 IN CHRIST. 8l 
 
 bated breath that follows, how fully do we 
 seem to enter into the joyful experience of 
 his quickening ! So closely does the sym- 
 bol thus press upon the reality, that Paul in 
 that bold " Know ye not," l seems to appeal 
 to the believer's baptism as the experience of 
 his Lord's death and resurrection, and as 
 making it thus a subject of memory as well 
 as of faith. 
 
 So by this memorial let the Christian know 
 and remember that he has been quickened 
 with Christ ; that henceforth his place is on 
 resurrection ground, and he can fix it nowhere 
 else without dishonoring his Lord. If, for- 
 getting that his life is hid in the risen Christ, 
 he is tempted to find it in Adam, let him hear 
 all the floods of baptism lifting up their voice 
 in rebuke, saying, " Why seek ye the living 
 among the dead ? " " Are ye so foolish, hav- 
 ing begun in the Spirit, are ye now made 
 perfect in the flesh ? " 2 If, unmindful of his 
 accomplished justification by faith, he yet 
 lingers under the law, let him hear the bridal 
 vow, which in baptism sealed him to the Lord 
 Jesus, condemning him, " Ye are become dead 
 to the law by the body of Christ, that yt 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 3. Gal. iii. 2. 
 
 6
 
 82 IN CHRIST. 
 
 should be married to another, even to Him 
 who is raised from the dead, that ye should 
 bring forth fruit unto God." Every return to 
 the law now as a ground of justification, is 
 treachery and infidelity to the Bridegroom of 
 the Church ; and any righteousness or trust 
 brought forth from it, is only the fruit of a 
 criminal and forbidden relationship. 
 
 But above all must this memory serve as a 
 most tender and pathetic plea for a holy walk. 
 Sin now takes on added guilt, that of crimi- 
 nal inconstancy. Its stain is of a darker hue, 
 falling on that resurrection mantle. Its of- 
 fense is a " crucifying of the Son of God afresh 
 and putting Him to an open shame." And 
 so no possible dissuasion from sin can be so 
 strong as this. " Neither yield ye your mem- 
 bers as instruments of unrighteousness unto 
 sin ; but yield yourselves unto God as those 
 that are alive from the dead, and your mem- 
 bers as instruments of righteousness unto 
 God." ! 
 
 If baptism is for our " assurance of faith," 
 as the sign that we are risen with Christ 
 spiritually, it is equally for our " assurance of 
 hope," as the prophecy that we shall rise 
 
 1 Rom. vi 13.
 
 IN CHRIST. 83 
 
 bodily at the last day. 1 Has not a strange 
 apathy crept over the Church respecting this 
 her most glorious hope ? From Christ, who 
 spoke that first word of comfort to the be- 
 reaved, " Thy brother shall rise again," to the 
 Apostle who consoled the Thessalonian Chris- 
 tians with that confident " If we believe that 
 Jesus died and rose again, even so them also 
 
 1 This truth is drawn out with great justness and force in 
 the following words of Dean Goulburn : " There can be no 
 doubt that baptism, when administered in the primitive and 
 most correct form, is a divinely constituted emblem of bod- 
 ily resurrection. And it is to be regretted that the form of 
 administration unavoidably (if it be unavoidably) adopted in 
 cold climates should utterly obscure the emblematic sig- 
 nificance of the rite, and render unintelligible to all but 
 the educated, the Apostle's association of burial and resur- 
 rection with the ordinance. Were immersion, which is the 
 rule of our Church in cases where it may be had without 
 hazard to the health, universally practiced, this association 
 of two at present heterogeneous ideas would become intelli- 
 gible to the humblest. The water, closing over the entire 
 person, would then preach of the grave which yawns for 
 every child of Adam, and which one day will engulf us all 
 in its drear abyss. But that abyss will be the womb and 
 seed plot of a new life. Animation having been for one in- 
 stant suspended beneath the water, a type this of the inter- 
 ruption of man's energies by death, the body is lifted up 
 ag:un into the air by way of expressing emblematically the 
 new birth of resurrection." Bampton Lectures, 1850. Ox- 
 ford edition, p. 18.
 
 84 Iff CHRIST. 
 
 which sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
 Him," 1 this was the one blessed assurance 
 with which primitive Christianity sought to 
 dissipate the gloom of death. We dwell so 
 much on the present joy of our dead who 
 have gone to Christ, that we forget the joy 
 that yet remains when God shall bring them 
 with Him. But it is then only that death 
 will be robbed of its sting and the grave of 
 its victory. It is the resurrection that gives 
 us back our beloved, looking and speaking as 
 they were wont ; that gives us back our bod- 
 ies parted from us awhile, but endeared to 
 us by the very sorrows we have borne in 
 them ; and that restores us wholly to the lost 
 image of God, in which we were crea.ted, by 
 making us to awake in the likeness of Christ, 
 new created. Hence the eagerness of that 
 waiting for the redemption of the body in 
 which the whole creation shares. 
 
 As our whole nature, body, soul, and spirit, 
 died in Adam, so must our whole nature, 
 body, soul, and spirit, be made alive in Christ 
 before our blessedness can be complete. 
 And if we are in the Lord, our physical res- 
 titution is assured to us with equal certainty 
 
 1 1 Thess. iv. 14,
 
 IN CHRIST. 85 
 
 * 
 
 with our spiritual. For not only is it true 
 that " he that is joined to the Lord is one 
 spirit" but equally that we are members of 
 his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." 
 But as the Head is, so must be the members. 
 And they who, once unclothed by sin, have 
 now put on Christ by baptism, have thereby, 
 according to St. Bernard's fine saying, " had 
 two garments bestowed upon them : the one, 
 the righteousness of Christ, with which they 
 are already clothed in the joy and peace of 
 redeemed souls ; and the other, the immor- 
 tality of Christ, with which they are yet to be 
 clad in the glory and incorruptibility of re- 
 deemed bodies." 
 
 That the hope of such a consummation 
 may not die out of the Church as, alas ! 
 what hope may not when her heart has 
 turned away from her Lord, and her eyes 
 from watching for his appearing the Spirit 
 has not only reiterated it in scores of texts, 
 but enshrined it in this rite as in "a statuary 
 of truth which may endure though the pictur- 
 ing and writing of it should be effaced." 
 
 And let it be noted that of all the types 
 that have been employed to bring this hope 
 vividly to the Christian mind, not one ex-
 
 86 IN CHRIST. 
 
 cepting baptism is adequate to the reality. 
 Of a general resurrection which the Scrip- 
 tures foretell, we see tokens and similitudes 
 all about us in nature, in the flower, spring- 
 ing up from the seed which has fallen into 
 the earth and died ; in the morning, opening 
 the vast grave of night, and summoning a 
 sleeping world to rise and meet the sun " as 
 he cometh forth as a bridegroom from his 
 chamber ; " in the springtide, calling the 
 earth from the tomb of winter, loosing her 
 shroud of snow, and clothing her with re- 
 newed life and beauty ; in all these there are 
 joyful parables and pledges of a resurrection. 
 But the flower fades and dies, the morning 
 sinks again into the embrace of night, and 
 the earth lies down once more in the sepul- 
 chre of winter ; and so, alas ! these symbols 
 only mock the hope they have kindled in the 
 soul. But while we are asking sorrowfully, 
 " Is there no resurrection that is exempt from 
 death ? " we turn to this ordinance of Chris- 
 tianity. " Risen with Christ," it says ; and 
 then adding, " knowing that Christ being 
 raised from the dead dieth no more, death 
 hath no more dominion over him" 1 bids us 
 
 1 Rom. vi. 9.
 
 IN CHRIST. 87 
 
 likewise reckon ourselves to be alive with 
 Him in the same resurrection. Thus this 
 symbcl of the gospel carries a promise and a 
 benediction which are committed to no sym- 
 bol of nature. " Blessed and holy is he that 
 hath part in the first resurrection ; on such 
 the second death Jiath no power" 1 
 
 To such salutary uses, and for the declara- 
 tion of such blessed hopes, was the ordinance 
 of baptism appointed. It holds conspicu- 
 ously before our minds the truths that are 
 most vital to our assurance and comfort in 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. To each believer, on 
 his profession of faith, and to the whole 
 church beholding, it presents a sensible im- 
 age of the dying of the Lord Jesus and his 
 rising again, and thus seeks to form the 
 Christian heart and life according to the pat- 
 tern received from God. 
 
 Were it only a form of ecclesiastical regis- 
 tration, it might perhaps be counted among 
 the non-essentials of Christianity. But as the 
 divine emblem through which faith appre- 
 hends our union with the dead and risen Re- 
 deemer, and by which the Spirit solemnly re- 
 minds us of our engagement to die daily to 
 1 Rev. xx. 6.
 
 88 IN CHRIST. 
 
 sin in the mortifying of all unholy passions 
 and desires, and to walk in newness of life by 
 abiding in Christ, how shall we not most ten- 
 derly urge it upon all who love our blessed 
 Lord ? Rather, how shall we not ourselves 
 most earnestly seek to preserve its integrity 
 and illustrate its beauty by reflecting it in a 
 consecrated and self-denying life ? For we 
 cannot forget that it is an unsanctified life 
 that constitutes the worst perversion of this 
 rite. The type may be perfect ; but if the 
 impress with which it was meant to stamp a 
 life is blurred with inconsistencies and dis- 
 torted by habitual sin, its perfection will not 
 appear. For the seal is judged by its signa- 
 ture. 
 
 " Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized 
 into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying of 
 our corrupt affections, we may be buried with 
 Him ; and that through the grave and gate of 
 death we may pass to our joyful resurrection, 
 for his merits who died and was buried and 
 rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our 
 Lord. Amen."
 
 V. LIFE IN CHRIST.
 
 tjereforc if anp man Be in Cjjritft, 
 fje itf a ncto creature. 2 GV. v. 17. 
 
 31 Me, pet not % but <f)rit i 
 in me ; ano tljc life toJuct) S! noto litie in 
 tljc flc^t) 3f li^e &p tjjc faitjj of tlje 
 of <iBob, lul)o iotocti me anfc ga\3 
 for me. Gai. \\. 20. 
 
 our life \$ Ijiti toitj C&ri^t in 
 CJri^t, tofto i# our life, 
 appear, tl)cn *iljaU pe al^o appear Uutlj 
 in glorp. coi. m. 3, 4- 
 
 *
 
 V. 
 
 LIFE IN CHRIST. 
 
 [ITH what life do they come forth 
 from baptism, who have put on 
 Christ ? Even with that twofold life 
 of which baptism is the seal and the fore- 
 shadowing, the crucified life of the first 
 Adam, and the risen life of the second Adam. 
 
 In a deeper sense than he meant it, is that 
 striking utterance of Lacordaire true, " The 
 Church is born crucified" For not only as 
 born of the Spirit has she been brought into 
 fellowship with the sufferings of Christ ; but 
 as born of water she has been stamped with 
 the cross of Christ, the birth-mark of her re- 
 demption, to be worn till death. And being 
 " begotten again unto a lively hope by the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," 
 she has also the new and glorified life of her 
 Lord. 
 
 The prescribed course of Christian growth
 
 92 IN CHRIST. 
 
 and development then is exactly according to 
 that type of doctrine to which we have been 
 committed in baptism. " Ye are dead" * is 
 the doctrinal statement of the believer's sta- 
 tus before the law. " Mortify therefore your 
 members which are upon the earth" is the 
 practical inference to be worked out in holy 
 living. " Ye are risen with Christ" 1 is the 
 other side of the same doctrinal statement. 
 " Seek those things which are above" is the 
 corresponding exhortation to practical holi- 
 ness. And so we see the truth of the axiom 
 of a former chapter, that Christian experience 
 is the making real in ourselves what is al- 
 ready true for us in Christ. 
 
 Of Jesus we might almost say that He 
 never wholly ceases to be anything that He 
 has once been ; there is such an unchanging 
 permanency and vitality in every event of his 
 redemption. Of the believer who is in Him, 
 this is certainly true. He is one that not 
 only has died with Christ, but one who in 
 that very fact is bound to " die daily " with 
 Him so long as he is in the flesh. He is one 
 who not only has been made a "new crea- 
 ture " in Christ, but one whose inward man is 
 1 Col. ill I, 6.
 
 IN CHRIST. 93 
 
 'renewed day by day." And so the cross 
 and the resurrection extend their influence 
 and exert their power over the Christian's 
 entire earthly history. 
 
 Of the twofold life in which this twofold 
 experience is carried on, let us consider a 
 moment. 
 
 We cannot regard it as a double phase of 
 one and the same life, but rather as the man- 
 ifestation of two distinct natures, one of 
 which we derive from Adam, and the other 
 from Christ : natures which mingle and in- 
 terpenetrate indeed in the same soul, as air 
 and moisture occupy the same space in the 
 sky, but between which there can be no unity 
 of life. " That which is born of tli flesh is 
 flesh." The degenerate seed can only repro- 
 duce itself. It holds no germs or possibili- 
 ties of a divine life. " Tltat which is born of 
 the Spirit is spirit" The seed of God can 
 unfold only in the life of God, and through 
 all its endless reproductions, it is still " tlu 
 incorruptible seed." So that while in the 
 Scriptures we have several distinct enumera- 
 tions of the fruits of the flesh and the fruits 
 of the Spirit, we never find the mention of 
 such an anomaly as a natural grace or a spir-
 
 94 W CHRIST. 
 
 itual imperfection, the offspring of the two in 
 their amalgamation. Aye, more. Not only 
 is there no possible community of life be- 
 tween these two, but an irreconcilable en- 
 mity. " For the flesh lusteth against the 
 spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and 
 these are contrary the one to the other." l 
 
 Here, in this awakened antagonism of 
 grace and nature, is the sword which Christ's 
 coming brings to every soul, a sword which, 
 like that of the old crusader, proves upon in- 
 spection to be only the cross changed from a 
 symbol of faith into a weapon of conquest, 
 and which we must take up daily in following 
 Christ. For the old nature, though judged 
 and condemned and deposed in the death of 
 Christ, is forever revolting against its sen- 
 tence, and struggling to regain its lost su- 
 premacy. And the new man from above, is 
 set to no less a task than his total overthrow 
 and reduction. 
 
 In the seventh of Romans we see the bat- 
 tle in progress between these two ; we watch 
 the advance and retreat of the forces of each. 
 Now we hear the groan of the wounded, " O, 
 wretched man that I am ; " and now, clear 
 
 1 GaL v. 17.
 
 IN CHRIST. 95 
 
 and strong above the conflict, we catch the 
 shout of assured victory, "I thank God 
 through Jesus Christ." But it is a victory 
 yet delayed. For the battle closes with both 
 antagonists still alive and hostile. " So with 
 my mind I myself serve the law of God, but 
 with the flesh the law of sin." 
 
 And yet, though there can be no truce to 
 this conflict this side the grave, there can 
 be no doubt as to its ultimate issue. " Old 
 Adam is too strong for young Melancthon," 
 said the Reformer. But he is not too strong 
 for Christ, and it is Christ that is in us, and 
 we in Him. The very defeats of the believer 
 therefore are victories, since, driven back 
 from the outposts of self, a retreat into Christ 
 becomes inevitable. Not as those who go to 
 this warfare at their own charges, and carry 
 it on from their own resources, does he con- 
 tend. That is but Adam against Adam ; the 
 natural man attempting to conquer himself ; 
 a conquest which must always end in failure. 
 He who is in Christ fights from victory in 
 his very attempt to fight for victory. And 
 therefore he is never so strong as when, from 
 some fierce sortie upon the flesh, he retires 
 into his fortress, confessing with renewed
 
 96 IN CHRIST. 
 
 humility that the Lord is his refuge and his 
 strength. 
 
 If the life of the believer were a unit, the 
 natural man improved merely, the old Adam 
 renewed and put in better dress, would there 
 not be something more than a paradox, 
 would there not be a hopeless contradiction 
 in those words of the Apostle Paul, " When 
 I am weak then am I strong " ? One cannot 
 even by a figure be in two opposite condi- 
 tions at the same time. And within the 
 same sphere and in the same subject it is 
 hardly possible that strength should find its 
 highest perfection in weakness. But this 
 contradiction vanishes when we read the 
 words in the light of that true expression of 
 the believer's nature, "7 live, yet not 7, but 
 Christ liveth in me" There are two Fs now, 
 if we may say so ; the positive and the nega- 
 tive, the one from earth, and the other from 
 heaven. The first has his name as well as 
 his nature, from the Head of the race, man, 
 one in Adam ; the second derives both his 
 name and his nature from the Head of the 
 Church, Christian, one in Christ. And these 
 two, at present dwelling together, are yet 
 constantly at war ; the weakness and defeat
 
 IN CHRIST. 97 
 
 of the one always equivalent to the strength 
 and conquest of the other. 
 
 Will some one take up the proverb then 
 against the doctrine : " A house divided 
 against itself shall fall " ? And so it must. 
 " We know that our earthly house of this tab- 
 ernacle shall be dissolved." And this is our 
 victory. For thus only can this troublesome 
 tenant, the carnal man, be ejected, and we, 
 ceasing our self-conflicts and mortifications, 
 enter into that "building of God, that house 
 not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 
 Meanwhile the believer's whole care and 
 striving must be directed to this end, the 
 causing of the house of Adam to wax weaker 
 and weaker day by day, and the house of 
 Christ to wax stronger and stronger. 
 
 Thus we see that the development of the 
 Christian towards perfection lies always in 
 these two opposite directions : the subjecting, 
 repressing, and mortifying of the natural man 
 on the one hand ; the nourishing, developing, 
 and renewing of the spiritual man on the 
 other. 
 
 Let us consider these two duties in detail. 
 
 The first is not, as many seem to deem it, 
 self-crucifixion, something to be begun and 
 7
 
 98 IN CHRIST. 
 
 carried on by ourselves and in ourselves. 
 Nay, it is the crucifixion which the believer 
 has undergone in Christ's person actualized, 
 prolonged, and reiterated in his own person. 
 As it is the office of faith to bring us into 
 doctrinal relationship to our Lord's dying, so 
 it is the office of love and obedience to bring 
 us into experimental relationship to it. For 
 deep as is the mystery, and as far below the 
 soundings of ordinary Christian conscious- 
 ness, there is such a thing as realizing 
 Christ's death, and making it our own. We 
 know that even two human souls may have 
 become so identified by mutual love and the 
 fellowship of common suffering, that one is 
 made a sharer in the other's death. What a 
 touching illustration of this we have in the 
 lament of Eugenie de Gue'rin over the death 
 of her idolized brother ! " My soul lives in a 
 coffin. Oh, yes, buried, interred with thee, 
 my brother. Just as I used to live in thy life, 
 I am dead in thy death, dead to all happiness, 
 all hope below." 
 
 Doubtless this is the expression of what 
 was sadly real to the heart of her who uttered 
 the words ; but not more so than that con- 
 fession of a divine kindredship in suffering
 
 IN CHRIST. 99 
 
 which Paul makes, when he declares that 
 the world is crucified unto him, and he unto 
 the world, and that he is " always bearing 
 about in his body the dying of the Lord 
 Jesus," statements so deep in their sugges- 
 tion of spiritual intimacy as to make it seem 
 almost as though his very consciousness had 
 become identified with that of His Lord. 
 
 But while there may be something in this 
 which few can hope to imitate or even com- 
 prehend, there is also that which is very plain 
 and practical. The mortifying of the flesh, 
 the daily subduing of its sinful affections and 
 lusts, the bringing of the whole body under the 
 dominion of the cross, is not this most vital 
 to the believer's growth in holiness ? For 
 our justification^ the crucifixion ended indeed 
 in Christ ; but for our sanctification, it must 
 be prolonged and perpetuated in ourselves. 
 Besides his heritage of peace in the death of 
 Jesus, every faithful disciple recognizes an- 
 other legacy, even " that which is behind in 
 the afflictions of Christ" l and which he is " to 
 fill up in his flesh for his body's sake, which 
 is the Church." And this spiritual birthright 
 he is never to part with. What a fearful 
 offense then is his who makes the cross a 
 Col. L 24.
 
 IOO IN CHRIST. 
 
 reprieve for the flesh instead of an instru- 
 ment for its subjection, who reasons that 
 because Christ has suffered in the flesh, 
 therefore he may live without suffering in 
 the flesh. Quite contrary is this to the Scrip- 
 ture doctrine. " Forasmuch, then, as Christ 
 hath suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves like- 
 wise with the same mind" J " The saint, as 
 having been judged in the person of Christ, 
 and knowing that Christ for him has borne 
 the cross, follows on by that cross, to judge 
 and mortify all that he finds in himself still 
 contrary to his Lord. The flesh is contrary 
 to that Holy One ; the flesh in him therefore 
 must die." 2 Its perverse affections must suf- 
 fer daily denial ; its cries for unholy indul- 
 gence must be answered with stern refusals ; 
 its high thoughts and proud ambitions must 
 be made to endure the cross and despise the 
 shame of constant humiliations. So that if 
 we embrace the cross only that we may be 
 borne above the reach of pain and loss, that 
 human nature may be spared instead of slain 
 by it, we have learned Christ but imperfectly. 
 Not by thrusting away the atonement alone, 
 but by " minding earthly things," living for 
 1 I Pet iv. i. 2 Andrew Jukes.
 
 IN CHRIST. IOI 
 
 them instead of being dead to them, do we 
 place ourselves among the "enemies of the 
 cross of Christ." 1 While therefore the voice 
 of the merely superficial disciple is, " Let us 
 go to Christ that we may escape suffering 
 and death," the voice of the true disciple is 
 ever that of Thomas, " Let us go that we may 
 die with Him" 
 
 Die with Him ! Both suffering and death, 
 while they are the common and inevitable 
 heritage of the race, may in the believer's 
 case be so linked into union with the cross 
 and passion of his Lord, that they shall in a 
 certain sense be transformed from inflictions 
 into sacrifices. If he joyfully puts his free- 
 will into the dispensations of God's sovereign 
 will, and thus takes up the cross instead of 
 enduring it like Simon the Cyrenean by com- 
 pulsion, he has become an offerer instead of 
 a victim, prolonging in his own body the suf- 
 ferings of his Lord whereby he is perfected. 
 He has taken chastisement out of the hand 
 of blind adversity, and made it an instrument 
 of self-discipline. So that the disciple may 
 find his needed cross without imposing self- 
 appointed austerities upon himself, even in 
 i Phil iii. i&
 
 102 IN CHRIST. 
 
 the willing acceptance of that which is against 
 the natural will, but which God sends upon 
 him in labors and in humiliations, in sickness 
 and in trials, in privations and in death. 
 
 But how hard it is for Christians to learn 
 this lesson, that salvation is not according to 
 the will of the flesh, but contrary to it ; not 
 from death, but through it. The Master's 
 word is, " He that loseth his life for my sake 
 shall find it." And yet when called to en- 
 dure this loss in giving up some dearest joy 
 or some " other self" according to the flesh, 
 we wonder and demur, perhaps count our- 
 selves forsaken of our Master, and take up 
 Martha's plaintive cry, " Lord, if thou hadst 
 been here, my brother had not died." To 
 which Jesus only answers, " I am the Res- 
 urrection and the Life." Not to give us im- 
 munity from death, but to lead us through it 
 to life ; not to save us from the cross, but to 
 bring us by way of it to a blessed crown, is 
 our Lord's purpose concerning us. 
 
 Were this crucial test of disciplcship, the 
 willing surrender of self in all its forms, its 
 will, its pleasure, its righteousness, insisted 
 on in the Church as it is in the gospel, we 
 fear it would be found that the offense of the
 
 IN CHRIST. 103 
 
 cross had not ceased. But on the other hand, 
 were all who are Christ's to show the holy 
 triumph there is in giving up all for Him, the 
 deep joy in being partakers^of his sufferings, 
 the blessed life that comes through daily death 
 in Him, how powerfully would the ancient 
 glory of the cross be vindicated. 
 
 For the love of our Lord, then, let not the 
 doctrine of the cross, and the endurance of 
 the cross be separated in our lives, that so we 
 may forsooth be saved by crucifixion and yet 
 saved from crucifixion. 
 
 Is that instrument of our Redeemer's suf- 
 fering more beautiful to Him, as when carved 
 in wood or stone it stands as a symbol of 
 faith, or as when wrought into an ordinance 
 it serves as a sacrament of allegiance, than 
 when, reproduced in a mortified life, it is 
 made the ornament of a meek and quiet 
 spirit ? To trace its outlines in a self-surren- 
 dered will ; to show its transfigured form in 
 the daily yielding of our reluctant flesh to 
 hard service for our Lord ; to exhibit its 
 marks in a wounded but unresisting pride ; 
 to show a carnal mind always delivered up to 
 death by it for Christ's sake, this will be the 
 disciple's life-long work, if he truly under- 
 stand his calling.
 
 IO4 W CHRIST. 
 
 To some this may seem a hard doctrine, 
 and to others a contemptible one. Even 
 while we write we seem to hear such words 
 as asceticism and pietism whispered against 
 it. But we can only ask, Has the old man 
 grown better during these eighteen hundred 
 years, so that, whereas the primitive saints 
 were to put him off with his deeds, we may 
 be allowed to spare him and indulge him ? 
 Has the body of the flesh become so kind 
 and so helpful to the Spirit, that we have no 
 need, like Paul, to keep it under and bring it 
 into subjection lest we be castaways ? If 
 there were no answer from revelation to this 
 question, there is one from universal human 
 experience. None has ever yet found un- 
 tempered self-gratification compatible with 
 strong spiritual growth. None has ever yet 
 discovered how to give nature all it asks, 
 without defrauding grace. Whether it be 
 the " lust of the flesh " restraining the body 
 from chastened self-control ; or the " lust of 
 the eyes" withdrawing the vision from single 
 contemplation of Jesus Christ ; or the " pride 
 of life " lifting up the heart in vain glory, the 
 testimony of experience is at one with that 
 of Scripture, that " fleshly lusts war against
 
 Iff CHRIST. IO5 
 
 the soul." Never can they be turned into 
 allies ; never will they consent to be mere 
 neutrals in the field. 
 
 Surely, therefore, the loyal believer will not 
 count it treason against human nature to 
 take up arms against himself at the call of 
 Christ, if it is by self-subjection that the 
 kingdom of God is to be set up in him. Nor 
 will suffering be deemed an anomaly after 
 the sufferings of Jesus finished for us, nor 
 death a redundancy after his dying endured 
 for us, if the life of God within the soul only 
 reaches its triumph in the casting out of the 
 life of nature. Rather will he rejoice to carry 
 on a warfare which Jesus Christ begun, not 
 ended for us ; and to bend his will to a ne- 
 cessity which He has sanctified, not abolished 
 for us. 1 
 
 But as we have intimated, there is another 
 element in the Christian life that forms the 
 exact counterpart to this which we have been 
 considering ; namely, that abiding in Christ, 
 and that growing up in all things into Him 
 
 1 "Jesus Christ has not abolished our sufferings and oui 
 mortality, but He has made them what they never could 
 have been without Him, a bitter dew which develops and 
 matures in our souls the blessed germ of faith." Vinet,
 
 IO6 IN CHRIST. 
 
 who is the Head, which is the end and ob- 
 ject of this withdrawing from self and this 
 mortifying in all things of our members which 
 are on the earth. A negative process is not 
 adequate to accomplish a positive result. 
 And no amount or kind of self-denial can 
 make one holier, unless this be the means of 
 bringing him into more intimate fellowship 
 with Christ. Every retreat from the life of 
 the flesh must be followed by a deeper enter- 
 ing into the life of the Spirit. Self-denial is, 
 according to its degree, a parting company 
 with Adam that we may not walk after the 
 flesh ; but prayer and faith and love and obe- 
 dience must accompany, as the means of 
 joining ourselves more entirely to Christ, and 
 of abiding in Him, that we may so walk even 
 as He walked. 
 
 Now is it not painfully common for Chris- 
 tians to rest satisfied with the fact that they 
 have life in the risen Jesus, without any striv- 
 ings for higher degrees in that life ? Just as 
 we are prone to end our crucifixion with 
 Christ's cross, *we are prone to end our seek- 
 ing of those things which are above, in the 
 fact that we are risen with Christ. " He that 
 hath the Son hath life " indeed. But let him
 
 IN CHRIST. 
 
 not forget that his blessing is only begun in 
 this possession, since Jesus' work is only be- 
 gun in this gift. " I am come that they 
 might have life, and that they might have it 
 more abundantly!' The seed of God must 
 not abide alone. The soil of human nature 
 has been furrowed to no purpose by chas- 
 tisement, and softened without use by morti- 
 fication, if this kernel of divine life be not 
 thereby helped to reproduce itself in more 
 abundant harvest. Life begets life contin- 
 ually. Nay more, the life of God must be 
 daily replacing within the soul what death 
 has taken away, filling each void made by 
 self-denial with some positive blessing, and 
 causing every spot from which a natural 
 affection has been uprooted, to spring up 
 with some divine affection. 
 
 Herein, if we mistake not, has been the 
 radical defect in the whole system of monas- 
 tic penance and discipline. Its destructive 
 work has far exceeded its constructive. It 
 has not builded into the rents which it has 
 made in human nature with a better material, 
 nor been careful to heal over the deep wounds 
 which it has inflicted upon the carnal man 
 with a new growth from the Spirit Hence
 
 108 IN CHRIST. 
 
 the type of life which it has generally pre- 
 sented has been that of ever increasing bro- 
 kenness rather than that of growing whole- 
 ness of being, and its ideal saints have been 
 those most thoroughly uprooted and torn 
 away from nature, rather than those most 
 truly " rooted and built up in Christ" 
 
 But what will it profit one to lose the whole 
 world, if he does not gain his own soul ? gain 
 it in that only way in which it can be gained, 
 by bringing it more and more into commun- 
 ion with the life of Christ ? As it was the 
 supreme mission of Jesus to give eternal life, 
 so it is the supreme calling of the believer to 
 appropriate that life. And for this some- 
 thing more than an empty heart is demanded. 
 There must be a hungering and a thirsting 
 heart, a believing and a praying heart a 
 heart ever longing after God, and seeking to 
 know more of God. 
 
 Self-denial is of the nature of self-discovery, 
 since it enables one to look more deeply into 
 human nature through the very void it has 
 refused to fill. But " know thyself" is not 
 the gospel precept for the attainment of eter- 
 nal life. " This is life eternal, that they might 
 know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus
 
 IN CHRIST. 109 
 
 Christ whom Thou hast sent" And how 
 " know," except by that daily acquainting 
 ourselves with Him which comes through 
 faith and prayer, through a diligent searching 
 of the Scriptures, through a constant walking 
 in the Spirit, and through a strenuous exer- 
 cise of vital godliness ? Every duty indeed 
 of the Christian has a direct relation to this 
 result. 
 
 Communion, the constant partaking of the 
 divine life through the appetites and organs 
 which that life has supplied, is the knowing 
 of God through identification with the nature 
 of God. As between man and man, thought 
 is the medium of life, and the words of inti- 
 mate conversation serve to transmit the sub- 
 tle essence of intelligence, affection, and feel- 
 ing, from one to another ; so between the 
 renewed soul and God. Spiritual converse 
 is the means to a community of spiritual life. 
 But as in the one case, so in the other, such 
 knowledge is possible only because of the 
 possession of a common spirit. " For what 
 man knoweth the things of a man, save the 
 spirit of man which is in him ? Even so the 
 things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit 
 of God." And this spirit in the believer is
 
 IIO IN CHRIST. 
 
 the interpreter to God of his longings, mak- 
 ing intercession for him with groanings that 
 cannot be uttered, and the revealer to him of 
 the things of Christ, which He taketh and 
 showeth unto him. 
 
 And meditation serves the same end ; for 
 from the devout contemplation of the charac- 
 ter of Christ, his image is insensibly repro- 
 duced in the life of the believer. And so, 
 as by communion one enters into fellowship 
 with Jesus Christ, by meditation he enters 
 into conformity to Him. And these two are 
 the principal requisites to our attainment of 
 the fullness of the stature of Christ, his life 
 constantly imparted, and his character con- 
 stantly reflected. Through the one, obedi- 
 ence tends more and more to become the 
 spontaneous law of our being, and service the 
 unconstrained fulfillment of God's word ; and 
 through the other, likeness to the Lord Jesus 
 grows more and more towards realized one- 
 ness with Him, while, "beholding as in a 
 glass the glory of the Lord, we are changed 
 into the same image from glory to glory, even 
 as by the Spirit of the Lord." * 
 
 Now while we have said elsewhere that the 
 
 2 Cor. iii. 18.
 
 IN CHRIST, III 
 
 negative process of self-mortification is not 
 adequate to the positive result of conformity 
 to Christ, the opposite is not true. Com- 
 munion with Jesus is a certain means to the 
 excommunication of sin. Growth in grace 
 can never fail to promote the subjection of 
 nature. If we have striven in vain to root 
 out the tares which the enemy has sown 
 in the heart, we may yet rejoice to know 
 that they cannot endure the burning heat of 
 Christ's unclouded presence. The offending 
 eye which we have not succeeded in pluck- 
 ing out, we may yet so dazzle by a continued 
 looking unto Jesus, that it shall be blind to 
 its former allurements. 
 
 We shall not wait then till we have per- 
 fected our self-denial before we begin our 
 growth into Christ. The two processes must 
 ever be going on together. How striking 
 the significance of that twofold exhortation 
 of Paul so constantly repeated, "Put ye off" 
 and " Put ye on." 
 
 " Seeing that ye have put off" the old man 
 with his deeds, and have put on the new 
 man." l This is the ideal saint, the man 
 in Christ whom God has fully justified. And 
 
 1 Col. iii. 9, IQ.
 
 112 IN CHRIST. 
 
 the whole course of the Christian life must 
 consist in the transferring of this ideal into 
 the actual, in progressive sanctification. So 
 must we be ever putting off all that belongs 
 to the old man, " Anger, wrath, malice, blas- 
 phemy, filthy communication out of the 
 mouth ; " and putting on all that belongs to 
 the new man, " an heart of pity, kindness, 
 lowliness of mind, meekness, long suffering, 
 and above all things love, which is the bond 
 of perfectness." l 
 
 If there is something painful in such a 
 process, this life-long clothing and uncloth- 
 ing of the soul, we know that it will have an 
 end. When death shall have disrobed us of 
 our mortality, we shall cease from our putting 
 off, and fold up and lay aside for the last time 
 that garment which we have striven in vain 
 to keep unspotted from the world. And 
 when we awake in the morning of our re- 
 demption, our putting on will be also con- 
 summated, even " when this corruptible shall 
 have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall 
 have put on immortality." 
 
 1 Col. iii. 1.*
 
 VI. STANDING IN CHRIST.
 
 ^im are pc in Cljjri^t 
 of o3ot 10 matte unto ii 
 
 c^r. i. 30 
 
 * * 
 
 Cljere i^ therefore noto no contain na 
 tion to tjjcni tl^at are in |)ri#t 
 
 Rom. viii. I. 
 
 IBJcrcin !pe JatJ mata 1136? acccnteo in 
 tljc SMotoeo. EPH. i. 6. 
 
 pe arc compete in IDim. 
 
 Cf>/. ii. 10. 
 *
 
 VI. 
 
 STANDING IN CHRIST. 
 
 [F the Christian life on earth must be 
 one of perpetual conflict, it is not 
 therefore one of perpetual uncer- 
 tainty. For though the believer's practi- 
 cal sanctification, or what he is in himself, 
 may be the subject of constant solicitude 
 and intense anxiety, yet his justification, or 
 what he is in Christ, is something entirely 
 aloof and detached from all the vicissitudes 
 and fluctuations of Christian experience. It 
 neither rises nor falls with the tide of feeling. 
 It knows nothing of degrees. Christ being 
 the standard by which it is gauged, it becomes 
 absolute and without the possibility of change, 
 since He is " the same, yesterday, to-day, and 
 forever." 
 
 Our communion may be subject to sad 
 alternations of warmth and coldness ; our 
 love may burn strongly to-day and feebly to-
 
 Il6 IN CHRIST. 
 
 morrow. But that does not change our real 
 standing before God. We cannot now be in 
 a state of justification and now out of it. 
 Doubt and unfaithfulness may throw the 
 shadow back many degrees to-day on the 
 dial-plate of hope ; but God does not look at 
 that to determine our acceptance with Him. 
 He sees us only in the light of the true Sun 
 of righteousness, and that is " without varia- 
 bleness neither shadow of turning." 
 
 Is then the wandering son just as near, and 
 the faithless one just as dear, to the Father's 
 heart, as that son to whom He saith, " Thou 
 art ever with me, and all that I have is thine " ? 
 Nay. But he is none the less a son. For 
 sonship does not depend on fellowship, but 
 fellowship on sonship. An apostle of free 
 grace 1 in degenerate times wrote, " Beloved 
 John may have more of Christ's affection than 
 Philip, and a brighter crown than Philip, but 
 he cannot have more justification than Philip. 
 Because, though there are degrees in the af- 
 fection and rewards of Christ, there can be 
 none in his justification. A man must either 
 have the whole or none at all ; must either be 
 justified from all things or be condemned." 
 
 1 John Berridge.
 
 IN CHRIST. Ii; 
 
 A strong statement, indeed, and perhaps an 
 incredible one to those who are enamored of 
 the discipline of uncertainty as the only means 
 of keeping the believer watchful. But it is 
 not stronger certainly than that word of an 
 older Apostle, " There is therefore now no 
 condemnation to them which are in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 And is it not well for us sometimes to go 
 around to the God-ward side of the covenant, 
 and from much and bitter self-condemnation, 
 enter into God's judgment of us as it is in 
 Christ ? Faith has its appointed rest as well 
 as its prescribed labor, when from the week- 
 day toil and conflict of working out our own 
 salvation, we may enter into our chamber of 
 peace in the Lord, and shutting our doors 
 about us say, " Return unto thy rest, O my 
 soul, for the Lord liath dealt bountifully with 
 thee" so bountifully, if we will remember it, 
 that in our destitution of any satisfying right- 
 eousness, Christ is of God " made unto us 
 righteousness," and in our emptiness of all 
 good, " of his fullness have all we received, 
 and grace for grace." 
 
 Many will warn us of the peril of slothful- 
 ness and vain confidence arising from such a
 
 Il8 IN CHRIST. 
 
 doctrine ; and we on our part must warn such 
 /)f the danger alike of a feeble faith and futile 
 works, arising from an unestablished assur- 
 ance. If faith has no standing ground except 
 what it wins for itself; no stronghold except 
 what it is enabled to build from time to time 
 by its own endeavors, it can have little com- 
 fort, and can make but few conquests. And 
 God has not ordained the matter thus. He 
 has put a greater attainment behind us, than 
 the most ardent disciple dares to place imme- 
 diately before himself, even completeness in 
 the Lord Jesus. 
 
 And so from every fresh manifestation of 
 our self-incompleteness, we may retreat under 
 cover to this gracious assurance, " Ye are 
 complete in Him." We may sink into Christ 
 when we cannot rise to Him. And thus we 
 shall be made strong and victorious through 
 apparent defeat, as again and again 
 
 " The steps of Faith 
 Fall on the seeming void and find 
 The Rock beneath." 
 
 If now it be asked, How can it be true of 
 imperfect, tempted, and failing believers that 
 they are complete in Christ ? we must find the 
 answer in God's gracious judgment of them
 
 IN CHRIST. 119 
 
 as revealed by the Spirit. From this it would 
 appear that so far as the question of the 
 Christian's acceptance and standing before a 
 righteous law is concerned, God sees nothing 
 from his throne but Christ Jesus alone and 
 altogether. And since the believer is in Him 
 and one with Him, he shares his place in the 
 Father's heart, and unworthy as he is in him- 
 self, yet he may know without a doubt that 
 he is " accepted in the Beloved? 
 
 And what a blessed word is this, " in the 
 Beloved? In that voice that came from 
 heaven, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I 
 am well pleased," we may now hear God's 
 approving sentence upon ourselves, as well 
 as upon our Lord. For being in Christ, the 
 beams of the eternal love falling upon Him 
 must fall upon us as included in Him, thus 
 embracing us, within the circle of the divine 
 complacency. We cannot be loved of God 
 apart from Christ. For the divine approval 
 can only go out to that which is worthy, and 
 who that ever walked the earth has been 
 worthy, save One ? Neither can we be con- 
 demned if we are in Christ. For the divine 
 disapprobation can fall only upon what is sinful. 
 And He is without sin. To be in Him, there-
 
 I2O IN CHRIST. 
 
 fore, is to be loved of the Father, because it 
 is to be in the very focus of the divine affec- 
 tion. To be in Him is also to love the Fa- 
 ther, since it is to be in union with the only 
 heart that loves supremely and perfectly. 
 
 Is not the occasion of much of our distrust 
 and darkness to be found in the fact that we 
 estimate ourselves by ourselves, " according 
 to the measure of a man," instead of accord- 
 ing to the measure of Christ ? He is the 
 true exponent of our standing before God. 
 " As He is, so are we in this world." 1 He 
 holds us in Himself, and presents us to the 
 eye of the Father, bright in the shining vest- 
 ments of his own righteousness, and rich 
 with the dowry of his blood-bought merit. 
 He is not a meditator of one but of two. He 
 not only represents God to us in his own be- 
 ing, " the brightness of his glory and the ex- 
 press image of his person," but He repre- 
 sents us to God. We see God in Christ 
 God sees us in Christ. God was in Christ 
 reconciling the world unto Himself. We in 
 Christ are reconciled unto God. Never can 
 we pray, " O Lord, look Thou upon me; 
 preserve my soul, for / am holy." More and 
 1 i John i. 1 8.
 
 IN CHRIST. 121 
 
 more shall we learn to take up and urge, with 
 all the energy of a self-ignoring faith, the cry, 
 " Behold, O God, our Shield, and look upon 
 the face of thine Anointed." And the even- 
 ness of our joy and the stability of our hope 
 depend upon our keeping our gaze fixed im- 
 movably upon that one Blessed Object upon 
 which the Father's gaze is always fixed. 
 
 If we measure our hope solely by the clear- 
 ness with which Christ's likeness is reflected 
 in our own character and experience, we can 
 find little comfort. For our life is at best but 
 a dim and distorted mirror that can neither 
 hold nor reflect any perfect image. If, for- 
 getting ourselves, we delight only in look- 
 ing unto Jesus and tracing the lineaments 
 of his divine countenance, we shall not only 
 be ever growing into the same image from 
 glcry to glory till we are sanctified ; but re- 
 membering that God contemplates us even 
 now in that image, we shall be able to rejoice 
 as those that are already justified. 
 
 Now, while such words as "justified from 
 all things," and " no condemnation," as ap- 
 plied to the believer, establish beyond a ques- 
 tion both the fullness and the fixedness of 
 his pardon, do not the great mass of Chris-
 
 122 IN CHRIST. 
 
 tians regard it practically as lying along a 
 kind of sliding scale of frames and feelings 
 where it is depressed or elevated according 
 to the feebleness or intensity of our religious 
 comfort ; capable of variation, indeed, from 
 the zero point of almost total condemnation 
 to that of full acceptance ? 
 
 But we cannot forget that as God put the 
 terms of salvation so high that we could not 
 of ourselves make them ; so He has put our 
 title-deeds to salvation so high that we may 
 not mar them, having hidden them " with 
 Christ in God." As " holy Rutherford " says, 
 " Unbelief may perhaps tear the copies of the 
 covenant which Christ hath given you ; but 
 He still keeps the original in heaven with 
 Himself. Your doubts and fears are no part 
 of the covenant, neither can they change 
 Christ." 
 
 If Christ is the complete and only reason 
 of our acceptance, must there not be some 
 greater reason for our rejection than our 
 doubts and misgivings ? If " in Christ Jesus 
 we who sometime were afar off are made 
 nigh," will it not take something more than 
 our distrust and despair to remove us far off 
 again, and set us among aliens and strangers ?
 
 IN CHRIST. 123 
 
 Let us speak with the deepest reverence 
 on so tender a theme ; and put off the shoes 
 of self-confidence from^mr feet as we tread 
 upon this holy ground, and dwell upon this 
 grace wherein we stand. And yet we may 
 well beware lest God's faithfulness find us 
 more skeptical than his severity. The deep- 
 est sense of unworthiness is nowise inconsist- 
 ent with the highest confidence in God's full 
 and perfect justification of us. And we may 
 without contradiction join the confession of a 
 weak faith and much guilty unbelief with the 
 exulting confidence, " If we believe not, yet 
 He abideth faithful ; He cannot deny Him- 
 self." l 
 
 We have already spoken of the temptation 
 to reckon our standing with God by our sense 
 of personal worthiness at any given time. 
 But we have only to know that the righteous- 
 ness of Christ is upon us by our union with 
 Him, to be assured that the approval and 
 blessedness which that righteousness can win 
 for Him, it can win for us. 
 
 True, as John Bunyan says, " The right- 
 eousness is still in Christ, and not in us, even 
 when we are made partakers of the benefit of 
 
 1 2 Tim. ii. 13.
 
 124 IN CHRIST. 
 
 it ; even as the wing and feathers still abide 
 in the hen when the chickens are covered, 
 kept, and warmed thereby." But that they 
 who have put their trust under the shadow 
 of his wing are covered and kept and warmed, 
 is just what we are urging. Aye, so com- 
 pletely covered, that the storm of a violated 
 law cannot reach them ; and so kept, that 
 that wicked one toucheth them not ; and so 
 warmed, that no death chill of the penalty of 
 sin can come to them. And it is this fact, 
 that our righteousness is not our own, that 
 makes it possible for us to glory in it, joining 
 to the confession, " / know that in me, that is 
 in my flesh, dwelleth no good tiling" 1 that 
 other, "/ knew a man in Christ, of such an 
 one will I glory'' 2 
 
 Is there any more striking illustration of 
 the total change of place and relationship 
 which the Scriptures recognize as having 
 taken place in the believer than is found in 
 Paul's bold way of dating back to the natural 
 state as " when we were in the flesh / " 3 To 
 be in Christ is to be in the true Anno Domini, 
 from whence we look back and see the whole 
 time past of our lives lived in the flesh now 
 
 1 Rom. vii. 18. 2 2 Cor. xii. I. 8 Rom. vii. 5.
 
 IN CHRIST. 125 
 
 ended at the cross ; and then in the risen 
 Christ all begun afresh in perfect blessing 
 and in the power of an endless life. 
 
 We signed for the love of God before, but 
 could find no sense or assurance of it, be- 
 cause we could find nothing in us or upon 
 us which it could approve. But now we see 
 how as risen with Christ we have been borne 
 up into the favor of the Father and into the 
 full fruition of the prayer, " that the love 
 wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them 
 and I in them? 
 
 We sighed for better desires and a true 
 " hunger and thirst after righteousness." 
 But God has done better for us than we 
 knew how to ask or think. He has given us 
 both the hunger and its satisfaction, bofh the 
 new nature from the Lord and that which 
 that nature wants, righteousness in the Lord. 
 The law of entail which made us heirs in 
 Adam of what we most longed to be free 
 from, sin, and death by sin, now holds to 
 make us heirs in Christ of what we most 
 longed to possess, holiness and everlasting 
 life. " As is the earthy, such are they also 
 that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such 
 are they also that are heavenly?
 
 126 IN CHRIST. 
 
 And what shall be the influence of these 
 truths upon our daily life ? To make us use 
 little heed, because we have such a plenitude 
 of righteousness in Christ, to fulfill righteous- 
 ness in ourselves ? Nay, but do they not 
 present us with the most powerful motive to 
 purity that one can possibly have ? In 
 Christ our righteousness, we see not what we 
 are excused from, but what we are pledged 
 to. We understand ourselves only in Him, 
 what we are in God's esteem, and not the 
 less what we must be in our personal attain- 
 ment. 
 
 In divine things as in common things we 
 say that a noble life is impossible without a 
 noble ideal. But what if that ideal be a holy 
 Person, and He not One whom we have set 
 before ourselves, but One whom we have put 
 on ? Ought we not to say that an unholy 
 life should be impossible in such a case, since 
 the ideal has become more than an incentive, 
 it has become the sacred guarantee of an 
 actual and realized perfection in ourselves ? 
 
 And this is literally the case. Justifica- 
 tion pledges a holy life on the part of him 
 who receives it, just as truly as it pledges 
 eternal life on the part of Him who gives it.
 
 IN CHRIST. 127 
 
 And much as we rejoice in that gracious de- 
 cree wherein He has made us *' accepted in 
 the Beloved," we cannot forget that wrapped 
 up in the same decree is that other purpose 
 wherein " He also did predestinate us to be 
 conformed to the image of his Son" l So 
 that it would seem that high views of saint- 
 ship must tend inevitably to make one in- 
 tensely eager for high attainments in saint- 
 ship. 
 
 But what if it be said that the dwelling by 
 faith in a position so much above our actually 
 attained one, must end in our dwelling very 
 little among the common every-day duties of 
 practical life ? No objection has been more 
 strenuously urged than this. Yet doubtless 
 the common experience of Christians is that 
 it is far more difficult to rise betimes above 
 the conflict and endeavor of hard practical 
 service, into the rest of faith and the blessed- 
 ness of assured justification in Christ, than 
 having so risen to descend again. The 
 Mount of Transfiguration is never so far re- 
 moved from the plain of daily duty, that a few 
 steps will not suffice to bring us back among 
 the " much people " and within hearing of the 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 29.
 
 128 IN CHRIST. 
 
 beseeching cry of those possessed of the evil 
 spirit. 
 
 And more than this ; so far from tending 
 to selfish isolation from the world and indif- 
 ference to its sorrows, its needs, and its sins, 
 communion with Christ ought to be and must 
 inevitably be, if real, the means of bringing 
 us into the deepest fellowship with human 
 suffering. The righteousness of Christ can 
 never be worn as a mere outer garment, which 
 while it covers the soul neither touches it nor 
 transforms it. Every putting on of the Lord 
 Jesus must result more and more in hav- 
 ing that mind in us which was also in Him ; 
 and that mind is one which leads to humilia- 
 tion, even unto death, for the sake of the lost. 
 We cannot forget that the same Apostle who 
 rested so absolutely in the righteousness of 
 Christ for his own salvation, that he said, " I 
 count all things but loss that I may win 
 Christ, and be found in Him not having mine 
 own righteousness" yet had so rpuch of the 
 mind of Christ respecting the salvation of 
 others, that he said, " God is my witness how 
 I long after you all in the tender heart of Jesus 
 Christ." * 
 
 Phil. i. 8.*
 
 IN CHRIST. 129 
 
 We must remember that to be in Christ is 
 not only to be in union with the divine nature, 
 but also, because He is the Son of man as 
 well as the Son of God, it is to be in truest 
 union with human nature. We never get so 
 near the heart of our sorrowing humanity, as 
 when we are in communion with the heart of 
 the man of sorrows. And if we have prayed 
 for a " heart baptized into a sense of all condi- 
 tions" * let us know that we shall find the 
 fullest answer to our prayer in realizing that 
 baptism into Christ which we have already 
 received, since " As many as have been bap- 
 tized into Christ, have put on Christ, in whom 
 is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male 
 nor female, but all are one in Christ jfesus" z 
 Because He is the universal man, the man 
 without a country, since belonging alike to all, 
 and the man without exclusive kindredship, 
 since finding his mother and his brethren in 
 whomsoever the will of his Father is obeyed, 
 union with Him must lift us, as nothing else 
 can, above all respect of persons and into 
 universal sympathies. Since, then, Christ is 
 
 1 " I prayed to God," says George Fox, " that He would 
 baptize my heart into a sense of all conditions, that so I 
 might be able to enter into the needs and sorrows of all." 
 
 8 GaL iii. 27, 28. 
 9
 
 130 IN CHRIST. 
 
 not divided, we, having his righteousness upon 
 us, must have his heart within us. And hav- 
 ing that heart, how shall we not follow whith- 
 ersoever it leads, even into all conditions and 
 into all needs that belong to our race ? 
 
 And if a sense of his completeness in 
 Christ does not beget indifference or selfish- 
 ness in the believer's heart, it surely cannot 
 engender pride. For is not pride always 
 some form of self-consciousness ? And it is 
 the very reverse of self-consciousness to know 
 that we are nothing in ourselves, and that all 
 our righteousness is in another Or, to look 
 at the opposite of pride, can true humility 
 flourish except under the shadow of some 
 overtowering greatness ? It is by being in 
 the all-worthy One that we discover as no- 
 where else how unworthy we are, because of 
 the contrast which we are compelled con- 
 stantly to behold. 
 
 Experiment has demonstrated that the most 
 brilliant light which human science can pro- 
 duce, when projected upon the disc of the sun, 
 is literal darkness in comparison. In Christ's 
 righteousness we discover the worthlessness 
 of our own, how it not only can add noth- 
 ing to the lustre of that which is as white as
 
 IN CHRIST. 131 
 
 the light, but would rather tarnish it if it were 
 laid upon it. And so every contemplation of 
 ourselves in the Perfect One must make self- 
 righteousness cover its face, and pride shrink 
 away abashed. 
 
 There will however be no fleeing away from 
 the presence of the Lord on this account. 
 With the deepest sense of guilt and unholi- 
 ness, there will yet be a deathless clinging 
 of the heart to Him whose moral glory has 
 so humbled us. With the profound sense of 
 unfitness to be in his righteousness, there will 
 be connected an inward consciousness that it 
 is the only shelter one can be in and live. 
 
 And if no sense of unworthiness can keep 
 us from Jesus, no sense of worthiness ever 
 can. For the Refuge of the sinner must ever 
 also be the Refuge of the saint, " the strong 
 tower into which the righteous runneth and is 
 safe." 
 
 The Lord may give us many a victory in 
 our upward strivings towards perfection ; and 
 He may add daily to our stature as we seek 
 to grow up into Him who is our Head ; but 
 when shall we get beyond the deep petition 
 of that hymn which its author so worthily
 
 132 IN CHRIST. 
 
 styled " a living and dying prayer for the 
 holiest believer in the world" 
 
 " Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
 Let me hide myself in Thee " ? 
 
 From our sin and from our righteousness 
 alike, from our evil deeds and from our good 
 deeds, from the rebukes of an upbraiding 
 conscience and from the flatteries of an easy 
 conscience, we shall ever need to fly unto that 
 name whereby we are called, " The Lord 
 our Righteousness"
 
 VII. PRAYER IN CHRIST.
 
 * 
 
 9Jf pe afcibe in me, anb mp 
 auibe in pou, pe gfjail aft tofjat 
 anb it tjall be bone unto pou. 
 
 unto pou, 
 
 goetoer pe jasfjafl a^ffe tfjc f atljcr in mp 
 name, l)c luill gilJc it pou* 
 
 John xvi. 23. 
 
 9
 
 VII. 
 
 PRAYER IN CHRIST. 
 
 |MONG the richest privileges growing 
 out of that divine union on which 
 we have been meditating is that of 
 prayer in the name of Jesus. Indeed, it is at 
 once the most precious fruit of the Believer's 
 life in Christ and the most powerful nourisher 
 of that life that by which it both holds and 
 is held. 
 
 And yet it may be questioned whether to 
 the mass of Christians the deepest thought of 
 that thrice repeated promise of our Lord, 
 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever 
 ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will 
 give it you," J is not a hidden thought 
 namely, that asking in the name of Christ is 
 asking in union with the Person of Christ? 
 
 One common apprehension of the matter is 
 certainly true, that the Christian is permitted 
 
 1 John xvi. 23. * Note J.
 
 IN CHRIST. 
 
 to use the credit of that " name which is above 
 every name " in making his request to God. 
 And this is indeed an inestimable privilege. 
 For we know even in human relations how 
 much of one's personal qualities and attri- 
 butes his name carries with it ; how that he 
 who is permitted to use his patron's name is 
 thereby to a certain extent invested with that 
 patron's character, so that whatever commer- 
 cial or moral value belongs to it is for the 
 time made over to him and becomes a per- 
 sonal possession. But another quite as com- 
 mon view of the matter is certainly not true, 
 that any request, whatever its nature, needs 
 only to have the words " for Christ's sake " 
 attached to it to ensure an answer. Nay ! 
 To pray in Christ's name is not to use his 
 name as a charm or talisman simply, as 
 though the bare repetition of it were all that 
 is required to open the treasures of infinite 
 grace. Let us not degrade this dearest 
 promise of our Lord into such a superstition 
 as that. The Jewish cabalists believed that 
 the pronunciation of certain magical words 
 engraved on the seal of Solomon would per- 
 form miracles. That was incantation. And 
 we in like manner make Christian incantation
 
 IN CHRIST. 137 
 
 of this sublimest privilege of the Gospel if 
 we put such an interpretation as this upon 
 Christ's words. 
 
 The name of Christ stands for Christ Him- 
 self. And to pray in the name of Christ is 
 to pray in Christ, in the mind and spirit and 
 will of Christ. " If ye abide in me, and my 
 ivords abide in yon, ye shall ask what ye will, 
 and it shall be done unto yon" * 
 
 To repeat a holy name is an easy thing ; 
 but to attain that holy abiding in which there 
 is such a perfect community of life with our 
 true Vine, that it is as impossible for us to 
 ask amiss as for the branch of the fig-tree to 
 put forth the buds and flowers of the thorn, 
 is, as we all confess, to reach the very highest 
 ideal of discipleship. And yet on nothing 
 short of this perfectness of union with our 
 Lord has He predicated an unrestricted ac- 
 cess to the treasuries of divine blessing. The 
 same condition is affixed to each of the high- 
 est and most longed-for attainments of the 
 Christian life sinlessness, 2 fruitfulness, 3 and 
 prevalence in prayer ; namely, " If ye abide in 
 me" Our desires, like the bud upon the tree, 
 are the most concrete and perfect expression 
 
 J John xv. 7. * I John iii. 6. John xv. 5.
 
 138 IN CHRIST. 
 
 of ourselves. Just to the degree in which we 
 are living in the flesh shall we be gendering 
 " the desires of the flesh and of the mind," 
 bringing them to God in our prayers, and ful- 
 filling them in our lives. Just to the degree 
 in which we realize that blessed state, " I live, 
 yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" will the 
 desires of the Spirit be forming within us, 
 unfolding in prayers that are " unto God a 
 sweet savor of Christ," and maturing into 
 the fruits of righteousness and true holiness. 
 No mere selfish and earth-born desire can be 
 endued with power, simply by being christened 
 with that holy name. Nor can any long- 
 ing towards God which has been truly be- 
 gotten by the Spirit fail because the formula, 
 11 for Christ's sake" may be wanting in its ut- 
 terance. The- secret of the Lord lies deeper 
 than this even in that full intimate fellow- 
 ship with Jesus wherein our wills are per- 
 fectly accordant with his will as touching the 
 thing we ask, and our desires an impulse of 
 his holy mind. 1 The circuit of grace is com- 
 plete and unobstructed between the Father, 
 the Son, and the Spirit. If we wholly abide 
 in Christ we get into its open and ever free 
 
 i Note K.
 
 IN CHRIST. 139 
 
 currents, where all things are possible to us 
 who believe, because all things are possible 
 with God, with whom we are thus brought 
 into full accord. 
 
 Has not a wide-spread skepticism grown 
 up among Christians concerning the literal- 
 ness of this great promise, " Whatsoever ye 
 shall ask " a limiting of God's faithfulness 
 in giving, through an ignoring of that constant 
 limitation to our receiving, namely, our want 
 of unbroken communion with Christ ? 
 
 It is indeed a promise wonderful in its 
 breadth : " If ye shall ask anything in my 
 name, I will do it." l But because none may 
 have ever fully measured it in human experi- 
 ence, shall it therefore be narrowed or condi- 
 tioned as a divine possibility ? " Prayer," it 
 has been said, " is so mighty an instrument 
 that no one ever yet mastered all its keys. 
 They sweep along the infinite scale of man's 
 wants and God's goodness." And yet to be 
 the perfect servant of Christ's will is to be the 
 perfect master of prayer. To the touch of 
 that will all its majestic octaves respond. " I 
 know that Thou hearest me always." 2 And 
 if we attune our wills perfectly to this divine 
 
 1 John xiv. 14. * John xi. 42.
 
 I4O IN CHRIST. 
 
 will, how shall not the Father with Him 
 freely grve us all things ! The answer to 
 prayer then is not contingent on the great- 
 ness or the smallness of the requests it con- 
 tains, but upon the impulse which prompts 
 them. If that impulse proceed from our own 
 will, the prayer is not in the name of Christ, 
 though it relate to his kingdom. For even 
 so great a request as the glory of God may 
 be made from a selfish motive. But when 
 the incitement to prayer is derived from an 
 inward divine operation, it is truly in the 
 name of the Lord, and must have its answer. 
 For it is then the effectual inwrougJit prayer 
 that availeth much. 
 
 Does this view suggest the question, What 
 need then of prayer, since its limits are so 
 circumscribed that to be genuine it must only 
 be the expression of what God worketh in us 
 to will and to desire ? A question which 
 may be answered by two others. First, Does 
 the devout mind desire any larger range for 
 its petitions than the circle of the perfectly 
 wise and perfectly beneficent will of God ? 
 To know that our Lord had put into our 
 hands a key which was entirely within the 
 control of our blind, imperfect, erring wills,
 
 IN CHRIST. 141 
 
 were to know our constant peril of opening 
 for ourselves some door of certain destruction. 
 Hence ought it not to be a ground of the 
 deepest comfort and security to the suppliant 
 praying in the spirit of adoption, that he has a 
 Father who not only will not give him a stone 
 when he asks for bread, but will not give him 
 a stone when lie asks for a stone? And, sec- 
 ondly, need it follow that the complete sub- 
 jection of our will to Christ's is also a surren- 
 der of our freedom of petition ? " Ask, and ye 
 shall receive," is no less a command than that 
 other, " Submit yourselves therefore to God." 
 Prayer is the working of a will that is free, 
 within a will that is sovereign. That the less 
 must be obedient to the greater in making its 
 requests, no more argues a yielding up its 
 freedom, than that the greater will be moved 
 by the less to answer those requests argues a 
 yielding up of its sovereignty. Not only is 
 there no infringement on the believer's spirit- 
 ual liberty in the requirement that he ask in 
 holy subjection to the will of his Lord, but on 
 the contrary there is, as one has said, no other 
 such witness to that liberty " as is wrapped up 
 in prayer, man's permitted though submitted
 
 142 IN CHRIST. 
 
 wish and will and choice" * respecting all that 
 pertains to his destiny. 
 
 But let us not forget that the necessity of a 
 submitted will in prayer rests on something 
 deeper than itself, even on the great sacrifice 
 which is the groundwork of all devotion. As in 
 justifying faith the soul is brought into union 
 with Christ crucified and risen, so in inter- 
 cessory faith it abides in this union. And 
 because our great High Priest can never for- 
 get his cross and his blood, we may not. We 
 may come with the utmost boldness to the 
 throne of grace as being in Him who " ever 
 liveth to make intercession for us," but we 
 shall come also with entire self-surrender as 
 being in Him "that liveth and zvas dead? 
 And because we are "deadw/z///: Him" we 
 shall be careful to bring that only required 
 sacrifice of the Christian covenant, a crucified 
 will. This is vital. " Good prayers never 
 come weeping home," says Bishop Hall, 
 which is certainly true of such prayers as 
 have gone to heaven " by way of weeping 
 
 1 See the thoughtful essay on Prayer considered in its 
 Relation to the Will of Man and in its Dependence on tht 
 Sacrifice of C/ir : sfs Death, by Dora Greenwell, to whom I 
 am indebted for I know not how many suggestions ol truth.
 
 rtf CHRIST. 143 
 
 cross." But are not many prayers put up in 
 which there is no tender, tearful remembrance 
 of that sacrificial woe which bought for us 
 the right to pray in Christ, and yet prayers 
 pleaded in his name " who in the days of his 
 flesh offered up prayers and supplications with 
 strong crying and tears unto Him that was 
 able to save him from death," l each time say- 
 ing the same words, " Not my will, but thine, 
 be done " ? 
 
 Because we can nowhere else deal with 
 God through the atonement without a sub- 
 mitted will, we cannot here. Saving faith is 
 at once a surrender of self, and an appropria- 
 tion of Jesus Christ. And interceding faith is 
 like it, a hearty, aye, vehement yielding up 
 of the will to God while laying hold of his 
 all perfect will. Here we touch the secret of 
 assurance. " And this is the confidence that 
 we have in Him, that, if we ask anything ac- 
 cording to his will, He heareth us." Outward 
 diversions may break the reverential intimacy 
 of our communion with Him ; the chill of 
 worldliness may cool the pulse of fervent 
 desire : but if the will yet moves needle-like 
 to the one blessed point, the holy will of Jesus, 
 Heb. v. 7.
 
 144 IN CHRIST. 
 
 and rests there, the deepest condition of pre- 
 vailing prayer is realized. 
 
 If the conditions of prayer in Christ are 
 thus profound and exacting, the blessing and 
 privilege are inexpressibly glorious. To have 
 Christ dwelling in us, his will encircling ours 
 with its holy constraints, and his heart within 
 us the fountain of all blessed desires, do we 
 count this a rich prerogative of the gospel ? 
 What shall we say then of that grace where- 
 unto we are called, of being so in Christ that 
 his influence with the Father passes over 
 upon us ; so that " wJien we offer our prayers 
 through his mediation it is He that prays, his 
 love that intercedes, his blood that pleads, it is 
 He who obtains all from his Father" 1 
 
 There is something more for us now than 
 the proxy of faith, the standing afar off with 
 no ray of divine approval falling upon us, and 
 asking blessings for Jesus' sake. Lest we 
 should think of the matter thus, our Lord de- 
 clares with exquisite grace and tenderness, " I 
 say not unto you that I will pray the Father 
 for you, for the Father Himself loveth you be- 
 cause ye have loved me, and have believed 
 that I came out from God." 2 One with Jesus 
 
 1 Bishop Wilson's Sacra Priuata. 2 John xvL 27.
 
 IN CHRIST. 145 
 
 the Mediator, and endeared to the Father's 
 heart by all that makes Him dear, we come 
 no longer to the throne as beggars asking 
 alms, but as sons seeking an inheritance. 
 We cannot be ashamed now, that wait upon 
 the Lord, for the glorified Son has said, " The 
 glory wJiich Thou gavcst me I have given 
 them" We cannot be afraid before Him now, 
 for the ever Beloved One has said, " Thou Iiast 
 loved them as Thou hast loved me" We cannot 
 doubt that we have the petitions that we ask 
 now, for being " in Christ Jesus who of God 
 is made unto us righteousness" how can we 
 fail to receive the promise, " The effectual 
 fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth 
 much " ? * Perhaps in the presence of such a 
 revelation as this, our greatest need of prayer 
 may be to ask that we may not " stagger 
 at the promise of God through unbelief." 
 One who has looked deeply into this theme 
 writes : " A poor sinner permitted to approach 
 the Father in all his troubles as though he 
 were Christ. If one were internally awake he 
 would not know how to bear himself for joy 
 and amazement at the grant of such a privi- 
 lege." 2 
 
 1 James v. 16. * Krummacher. 
 
 10
 
 146 IN CHRIST. 
 
 And yet, in the tmfoldings of Redemption 
 from Christ crucified to Christ glorified, this 
 blessing and mystery only deepens more and 
 more. The " no more conscience of sins " 
 which we get while standing before the cross, 
 is followed by the entering into the Holy 
 Place with Christ after the veil of his flesh 
 has been parted. His Priesthood consum- 
 mates what his blood has purchased. Into 
 the Holiest, 1 whither the High Priest could 
 go only once a year, and then with the deep- 
 est awe, the humblest believer may now enter 
 " boldly " by his oneness with his Lord. And 
 where Aaron never sat down, there he is 
 "made to sit in heavenly places in Christ 
 Jesus." 2 If a sense of his deep unworthiness 
 before God often leads him to take up the 
 cry, " Hide not thy face from thy servant," 
 the Spirit, by convincing of the righteous- 
 ness of Christ, immediately reassures him. 
 If there is no veil between the Father and 
 the Son in glory, how can there be any be- 
 tween the Father and those who are in the 
 Son. As He is, so are they. His righteous- 
 ness is their priestly vesture. He is the 
 " Holiness unto the Lord " inscribed upon 
 i Heb. x. 19. 2 Eph. ii. 6.
 
 IN CHRIST. 147 
 
 their frontlet. His promises are the golden 
 bells that vibrate about their garments as 
 they enter in unto God. Blessed are they 
 who know their privilege in Him. Thrice 
 blessed they who faithfully use it ; daily 
 "putting on the royal apparel and standing 
 in the inner court of the Kings house" l 
 assured of the outstretched sceptre and the 
 gracious promise, " What is thy petition ? 
 and it shall be granted thee ; and what is 
 thy request ? it shall be performed." 
 
 Thus is prayer in its deepest significance a 
 communion with the Father through commun- 
 ion with the Son. 2 Abiding in Christ we get 
 the spirit of supplication the blessing of 
 "a mind clot lied with inward prayer" His 
 words abiding in us both fix the direction of 
 our petitions and bring, how often ! that an- 
 swer which God has promised to suppliants 
 " while they are yet speaking." Abiding in 
 Him we have his mind as our guide in inter- 
 cession, so that if our desires be left uncon- 
 strained it will bend them to seek our high- 
 est blessing, as the diviner's rod, held in the 
 unresisting hand, is bent to the cool sweet 
 water-courses that flow invisibly beneath 
 1 Esther v. Note L.
 
 148 IN CHRIST 
 
 the earth. In Him, we are clothed with the 
 righteousness which constitutes in the econ- 
 omy of grace not only our right of petition but 
 our claim to be heard, so that as we appear 
 in it before the mercy-seat we may urge in 
 triumphant humility God's oath and faithful- 
 ness, " Have respect unto the Covenant" 
 
 If now our privileges are the measure of our 
 duties, can we set any bounds to our obliga- 
 tion of Christian prayer ? Where God's will 
 is clearly revealed to us, as, e. g., concerning 
 our personal holiness, " This is the will of 
 God even your sanctification," the duty can 
 be nothing less surely than to " pray without 
 ceasing." And the assurance of an answer 
 can be nothing less than to know, without 
 questioning, that what we ask we shall re- 
 ceive. 
 
 In other matters, among the obscure and 
 unrevealed decrees of Providence, if our as- 
 surance must be less specific, our supplica- 
 tion must not be less intense in searching for 
 God's will, that when we have found it we 
 may take it up and urge it with all the en- 
 ergy of a renewed and privileged soul. It is 
 in constant asking that we learn how and 
 what to ask. The soul, looking steadfastly
 
 IN CHRIST. 149 
 
 into the Father's face, comes at last to read 
 his thoughts after Him ; to catch, as by a 
 divine intuition, the indications of his will. 
 " / will guide tJiee with mine eye? 1 With his 
 word in our hands and his spirit in our hearts 
 and the light of the knowledge of his glory 
 shining upon us in the face of Jesus Christ, 
 surely we ought not to need the bit and bridle 
 of violent providences to restrain us from 
 willful and headstrong prayers, much less the 
 scourge of terrible chastisement to drive us 
 to pray at all. 
 
 So let us enter into the fullness of our 
 blessing in Christ. Knowing that praying in 
 the name of Christ is " praying in the Holy 
 Ghost," the sole and blessed medium of a 
 common life between the saint and his Sav- 
 iour, and that praying in the Holy Ghost is 
 having the Spirit to " help our infirmities," a 
 since " we know not what to pray for as we 
 ought ; " and to make intercession for us " ac- 
 cording to the will of God" how intently shall 
 we seek to learn the highest use of that di- 
 vine name by entering into the deepest com- 
 munion with that divine Person. And with 
 what earnestness and strength of desire may 
 
 * Ps. xxxiL 8, 9. * Rom. viii. 26, 27.
 
 I5O IN CHRIST. 
 
 we constantly plead that prayer of Vinet : 
 " O God, unite more and more closely, not our 
 spirit to a name but our soul to a soul ; to 
 the soul of Jesus Christ thy Son and the 
 Son of man, our God, our Brother. In this 
 intimate and living union may this soul grad- 
 ually become our soul, and may we learn of 
 Him by virtue of living with Him, to love as 
 He loved, to bless as He blessed, and to pray 
 as He prayed." Amen.
 
 VIII. COMMUNION IN CHRIST.
 
 $e ttjat eatctf) mp flc$), anti drmuetf) 
 mp blood, dtudlctl) in me, and 3( in 
 jjim* 7*// vi. 56. 
 
 t^c lining father Ijatj) cnt me, 
 anti 31 Ji^c iP tj)c father : ^o &e that 
 ratcti) me ^Ijali iifce by me. 
 
 vi. 57. 
 
 Slfcitic in me, anti 3! in jiou ; a^ tlje 
 fnrancl) cannot bear fruit of itself cx*rct 
 it abide in tjjc Vjinc ; no more ran pe 
 except pe abide in me. John xv. 4.
 
 VIII. 
 COMMUNION IN CHRIST. 
 
 be one with the Lord Jesus is to be 
 one with " Him winch is, and which 
 was, and which is to come." 1 Of that 
 threefold cord of our union with Him then, 
 Faith, Hope, and Charity, no part can be 
 spared, but in order to unbroken communion 
 each alike must be strengthened and nour- 
 ished : Faith, that links us to Him which was, 
 and Love, that links us to Him which is, and 
 Hope, that links us to Him which is to come. 
 And can we fail to note the careful em- 
 phasis which the sacraments lay upon each 
 of these relations ? Baptism, the sacrament 
 of union with Christ, declares by one com- 
 prehensive symbol our partnership in his 
 sacrificial death, and in his risen life, and 
 in his coming glory. The Supper, the sacra- 
 ment of communion with Christ, exhibits the 
 1 Rev. i. 4.
 
 154 IN CHRIST. 
 
 same truths in perpetual rfeumt. And so 
 at each communing we traverse the whole 
 extent of the redemption, and are joined 
 in equal fellowship to every part of his life 
 who, from being the / Am of Eternity, has 
 by his incarnation conjugated his existence, 
 if we may say so, to our human terms of was 
 and is and is to come. 
 
 Thus, in the breaking of the bread and 
 the pouring out of the wine, we have the suf- 
 fering Christ presented to us ; and entering 
 by a uniting faith into fellowship with his suf- 
 ferings, we can say anew, " I have been cruci- 
 fied with Christ." In the separation of the 
 elements, the blood, in which is the life, from 
 the body which it animates and vivifies, we 
 are reminded that death has taken place. 
 And thus we behold the dead Christ. But 
 an eager faith has only time to pronounce 
 its confession, " If we be dead with Him," 
 before the commemoration has become a 
 feast. The emblems of suffering and death 
 are eaten, and being assimilated with our 
 bodies become life-giving ; and now we real- 
 ize the risen Christ, and own ourselves " alive 
 with Him from the dead." But while love is 
 exulting in a present Lord, his words are heard
 
 IN CHRIST, 155 
 
 kindling hope, and leading us onward to yet 
 greater blessing. " Whoso eateth my flesh 
 and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and 
 I will raise him up at the last day" Thus by 
 a single sacrament we are carried back to the 
 cross and sepulchre ; thence onward to join 
 our risen Lord, and be quickened by the 
 mighty pulse of his glorified life, and thence 
 forward still to the redemption of our bodies 
 at his coming. The Memorial of Faith has 
 passed into a Feast of Love, and the Feast of 
 Love into a Prophecy of Hope. 
 
 It' is obvious then that the ordinance of the 
 Supper was designed to be a perpetual tie for 
 binding together the two great parts of Re- 
 demption lying respectively in the first and 
 in the second advents of our Lord. " This 
 do in remembrance of me. For as often as 
 ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do 
 show forth the Lord's death till He come" J 
 And as partaken by the believer it realizes 
 and confirms his union with his Lord alike in 
 
 1 I Cor. xi. 26. 
 
 The rite was not a memorial of death simply, but of death 
 conquered by life. The seal of the efficacy of the death of 
 Christ was given in the Resurrection ; and the limit of the 
 Commemoration of his Passion was looked for in his Re- 
 turn. Wtstiott.
 
 156 IN CHRIST. 
 
 both. The soul being nourished by spiritual 
 bread, exults anew in its redemption from 
 the curse ; and the body revived by material 
 bread, receives a sensible foretoken of its re- 
 demption from the grave. And so, as having 
 died in Christ, and as being alive in Christ, 
 and as to be raised up with Christ, the com- 
 municant holds fellowship with every element 
 of his redeeming work who saith : " I am He 
 that liveth and was dead ; and behold I am 
 alive forevermore, and have the keys of death 
 and of the grave." 1 
 
 But is it not possible now that through a 
 recoil from the Romish error of the real pres- 
 ence on the one hand, and through that slum- 
 ber respecting her blessed hope into which 
 the Church has fallen while the Bridegroom 
 has tarried, on the other, we have well-nigh 
 shut ourselves up to a single office of the Sup- 
 per, the memorial ? This were enough in- 
 deed, were there no other. To cherish a holy 
 keepsake from our ascended Lord, and to re- 
 count, if only by a " lifeless mnemonic" as the 
 Protestant communion has been disparagingly 
 called, the scenes of his bitter agony and 
 death, were a most worthy service. 
 1 Rev. i. 1 8.
 
 TN CHRIST. 157 
 
 But still we do not forget that memory is 
 but a servant of love, given to minister, and 
 not to be ministered unto ; and that in its 
 tireless excursions to the cross and garden, it 
 is only gathering food for communion with 
 the present, living Christ. In that deep abid- 
 ing in the vine on which our life depends, it is 
 given us to hold fellowship both with the root 
 that twines itself about the cross, and with the 
 tendrils that stretch upward into glory, that 
 we may draw through both the nutriment of 
 present life and growth. And the evidence 
 of area! interior union with the Lord is found 
 in the constant flowing into us of the life that 
 is in Him and the death which He died. 
 
 To this end was the Supper ordained. 
 
 The bread, in reminding us of Christ's 
 wounded body, becomes a bread of sacrifice for 
 feeding in us the spirit of self-denial. " The 
 bread which we break, is it not the commun- 
 ion of the body of Christ," even of his dying 
 body, through partaking of which we are made 
 strong to " bear about in our body the dying 
 of the Lord Jesus " ? But as a symbol of 
 present nourishment it is none the less the 
 bread of life for feeding our spiritual hunger, 
 " that the life also of Jesus might be made 
 manifest in our body."
 
 158 IN CHRIST. 
 
 And the wine, as the memorial of that blood 
 by which we are redeemed, is the cup of suf- 
 fering with Christ. "The cup of blessing 
 which we bless, is it not the communion of the 
 blood of Christ," even of that blood of sacrifice 
 which pledges us as we drink it to the martyr- 
 dom of daily dying with Christ ? But as the 
 synonym of life, this blood is not less truly 
 also the pledge of our kindredship with Jesus 
 in glory, the quickener and nourisher of that 
 divine nature which we share with Him. 
 
 And these elements, eaten and assimilated, 
 become the aliment of that twofold growth 
 in which our sanctification consists the 
 growth from life to life in the new man, and 
 the growth from death to death in the old man. 
 
 Is there then a real communication of Christ 
 to the believer through the sacrament ? Even 
 as there is through the word when appropri- 
 ated by faith. 
 
 " 1 am the Life" says Jesus. Here Christ 
 offers Himself to us in the symbols of human 
 language, in the sacrament of the inspired 
 letter. " He that believtth on me hath life" 
 The eye sees or the ear hears the word, and 
 faith that " cometh by hearing," feeds upon 
 the spirit and the life which it conveys, and
 
 IN CHRIST. 159 
 
 Christ is received into the soul. Thus through 
 the medium of faith that union is begotten 
 whereby Christ dwelleth in us and we in 
 Him. 1 
 
 But the Supper is only the same communi- 
 cation made in larger letters, embodied in a 
 vivid sign language which addresses all the 
 senses as the word addresses two. It is still 
 faith and faith alone that eats of Christ, ap- 
 prehending the invisible through the visible, 
 the spirit through the letter ; and so that 
 union is realized and confirmed, " He that 
 eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood dwell- 
 eth in me and I in him." Whether then we 
 speak of that first partaking of Christ by 
 which the divine life begins in us, or of that 
 repeated partaking by which it is perpetu- 
 ated, it is faith, the mouth of the soul 
 apprehending by some human sense or senses, 
 that receives Him ; it is the Holy Spirit 
 " the Agent of love, of union, and of life which 
 consummates itself through union" com- 
 municating through some human sign or 
 signs, that imparts Him. 
 
 If all this were real to us, would not our 
 communions be more fruitful of spiritual 
 
 1 I John iii. 24.
 
 l6o IN CHRIST. 
 
 growth and blessing than they are ? They 
 would not be solely memorial. Faith would 
 bring from the cross that uniting sorrow 
 which makes us one with a present though 
 invisible Redeemer. Hope, like the dove sent 
 forth from the Ark, would fly across the un- 
 known future, returning with its " Behold I 
 come quickly," that true olive token of the 
 " new heavens and the new earth " for which 
 we wait. And both Faith and Hope, deepening 
 our intimacy and oneness with Christ, would 
 be giving us that only preparation for his 
 coming, " And now, little children, abide in 
 Him ; that when He shall appear we may 
 have confidence and not be ashamed before 
 Him at his coming." 
 
 Perhaps there is no complaint more con- 
 stantly made among Christians than that of 
 want of enjoyment and spiritual refreshment 
 from the communion. 
 
 Is the fault generally that they eat and 
 drink unworthily, or rather that having par- 
 taken in faith, they do not imvardly digest the 
 food of God ? If prayer and watchfulness and 
 self-denial are not active to assimilate with the 
 daily life that which faith has taken into the 
 soul, there can of course be little profit in the
 
 IN CHRIST. l6l 
 
 bare sacrament. The fellowship of Christ's 
 sufferings cannot be realized through a symbol 
 received with the mouth merely, nor by a sin- 
 gle apprehension of faith. There must be the 
 prolonged exercise of the will in acts of self- 
 surrender and sacrifice. Our cup can never 
 be so bitter as our Lord's, but it must be the 
 same in kind as that which He drank in the 
 garden when in agony and bloody sweat He 
 thrice yielded up his will to his Father. To 
 take the cup from the table of the Lord and 
 drink it, is but a small thing of itself; to carry 
 out what we pledge in the act, in a continued 
 taking of our Lord's will into our daily life, 
 obeying joyfully its requirements and tasting 
 with the same alacrity its sweetness and its 
 severity, this is indeed to drink his cup. 
 
 And the bread of life is received after the 
 same manner. " My meat," said Jesus, " is to 
 do the will of Him that sent me" Can ours 
 be anything different ? Can the mere sym- 
 bol of the broken loaf nourish us, if there be 
 in us no corresponding brokenness of the 
 fleshly mind in obedience to the law of God ? 
 Nay, as Christ fed upon the Father by doing 
 his will, we must in like manner feed upon the 
 Son by doing his. "As the living Father
 
 1 62 IN CHRIST. 
 
 hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he 
 that eateth me, even he shall live by me." 
 
 So long as the emblems are looked upon as 
 literal food, as by the Romanist, the Christian 
 life will consist mostly in dead forms and cer- 
 emonies, with very little reference to the in- 
 ward consecration of the mind and will. For 
 " Man shall not live by bread alone," even 
 though it be consecrated bread, " but by every 
 word that proceedeth out of the month of God" 
 Obedience after faith, is the great principle of 
 union, of love, and of growth. In this is the 
 true community of life between the Head and 
 the members. " If ye keep my commandments 
 ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept 
 my Father's commandments and abide in his 
 love." 
 
 So long, on the other hand, as we Protest- 
 ants look upon the elements as only shad- 
 ows of Christ's sacrifice, to be contemplated 
 by faith, without also seeing in them the pledge 
 and foreshadowing of a sacrifice in us to be 
 realized by daily obedience and the continual 
 offering up of ourselves to God, we shall de- 
 rive hardly more spiritual benefit from the 
 communion than the Romanist. 
 
 In other words, just as concerning the
 
 IN CHRIST. 163 
 
 spoken word, it is not the hearers only but 
 the doers that are blessed in it ; so of the 
 sacramental word : it must not only be con- 
 templated and received, but it must abide in 
 us in order to be real food to us. All its ele- 
 ments, both those of sacrifice and those of life, 
 must be incorporated with our deepest spiritual 
 nature, and so ultimately tell upon our outward 
 activity as really and as perceptibly as the 
 food of a laborer does upon his daily toil. 
 
 If the Supper is thus exacting in its claims 
 upon our will and service, the form of its cel- 
 ebration is also beautifully suggestive of that 
 rest of faith, that peaceful abiding in the Lord 
 Jesus, which the believer enjoys. It is the 
 true Passover, 1 in which the Lamb without 
 blemish is offered in symbol as the food of his 
 people. But not like the first Passover is it 
 to be " eaten in haste" while we stand with 
 girded loins and staff in hand. We that be- 
 lieve have escaped the house of bondage. 
 The waters of our burial with Christ stand 
 between us and it to witness to our separation 
 from its curse. We now sit down with Christ, 
 in whom is no condemnation. He is our 
 peace. We eat the bitter herbs of mortifi- 
 cation and self-denial, in fellowship with his 
 
 1 Luke xxi. 13; Exodus xxii. II.
 
 1 64 IN CHRIST. 
 
 death, and the unleavened bread of sincerity 
 and truth in communion with his obedience ; 
 but we have something better for a troubled 
 conscience and a trembling faith than these. 
 " Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." His 
 blood sprinkled on the lintels of our hearts 
 answers every accusation of God, and may si- 
 lence also every doubt and dark misgiving of 
 our souls. Here faith rests on that word of 
 God, that cannot pass away. " When I see the 
 blood, I will pass over you." And one with 
 Christ in this communion, we realize our one- 
 ness with all saints, and call upon them to 
 help us comprehend " what is the breadth and 
 length and height and depth, and to know the 
 love of Christ which passeth knowledge." For 
 no one household of faith can take in the whole 
 Lamb)- Each needs his neighbor in the king- 
 dom and fellowship of Jesus Christ, to join him 
 for the perfect communion of the redeemed. 
 Only thus can we " grow up into Him in all 
 things which is the Head, even Christ ; from 
 whom the whole body fitly joined together 
 and compacted by that which every joint sup- 
 plieth, according to the effectual working in 
 the measure of every part, maketh increase of 
 the body unto the edifying of itself in love." 
 
 1 Exodus xii. 3, 4.
 
 IX. SANCTIFICATION IN 
 CHRIST.
 
 tfjcm tfjat are ganctificti in 
 
 I Cor. i. 2 
 
 23ut of ^mi arc pc in Cjjri^t 
 
 of 43oti i^ maoe unto u^ . . . . 
 ^amtification* i cor. \. 30. 
 
 no 
 abioctg in Dim g'innctlj not. 
 
 I John iii. 5, 6. 
 
 ^c tfjat abiDctfj in nit, anb 3[ in Ijim, 
 tJjc ^amc bringctl) fortlj nutcf) fruit* 
 
 xv. 5.
 
 IX. 
 
 SA-NCTIFICATION IN CHRIST. 
 
 jHE believer's sanctification is at once 
 both complete and incomplete. As 
 " sanctified in Christ Jesus" and em- 
 braced in his comprehending holiness, he 
 can no more improve this grace than he can 
 add lustre to a sunbeam. It is a work of 
 God, and " Whatsoever God doeth, it shall be 
 forever : nothing can be put to it, nor anything 
 taken from it." l As fulfilling in himself that 
 sanctification which has been wrought for 
 him in Jesus Christ, this grace is only too 
 painfully partial and incomplete. For imper- 
 fectness is as characteristic of the creature 
 as perfection is of the Creator. 
 
 We shall be little likely therefore to fall 
 into error and confusion concerning this doc- 
 trine if we keep in mind the distinction be- 
 tween what we are as " his workmanship " a 
 
 1 Eccl. iii. 14. * Eph. ii. 10.
 
 1 68 IN CHRIST. 
 
 and what we are as " zvorkers together with 
 Him" 1 As the first we are not only " cre- 
 ated in Christ Jesus," but " created in right- 
 eousness and true holiness'' 2 Christ and his 
 attributes never part company, and it is im- 
 possible to be made in Him Without being 
 made into all that belongs to Him. In the 
 same transfiguration of faith by which we put 
 on the Lord Jesus, do we put on his raiment 
 of holiness, "exceeding white as snow, so as 
 no fuller on earth can white it." 
 
 This may seem to some indeed like an as- 
 sumption perilous to our humility. But do 
 we honor God most, let it be asked, by limit- 
 ing his grace to the degree of our worthiness 
 and capacity ? Is Christ best pleased that 
 we take Him piecemeal, and according to the 
 narrow measure of our deserts, when He has 
 given Himself to us wholly and without refer- 
 ence to our deserts ? Nay, we have no more 
 right to find a partial sanctification in Christ 
 than we have to find a partial justification. 
 Both are contained in the same Legacy of 
 love, and bequeathed to us on the same con- 
 dition, simple faith. " Of Him are ye in 
 Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us 
 wisdom and righteousness and sanctification 
 1 2 Cor. vi. I. a Eph. iv. 24.
 
 Iff CHRIST. 169 
 
 and redemption," made unto us all these in 
 their fullness, and not some of them and par- 
 tially as we can receive them, unless in- 
 deed we make a distinction, which would 
 seem ,1m natural, between the manner of be- 
 stowing righteousness and sanctification, hold- 
 ing that the one is immediately imputed and 
 the other only gradually imparted. Would not 
 the truth seem to be rather, that both are im- 
 puted to faith to be wrought out by obedience 
 and holy living ? God's justifying of us in 
 Christ being more and more realized in the 
 answer of a good conscience in ourselves ; and 
 his sanctifying or setting apart of us in Jesus 
 being more and more fulfilled in our own 
 sanctification or separation from sin. 
 
 And it is because we can thus rest on 
 a completed work in Christ that we have 
 hope to go on unto completeness in our- 
 selves, " to apprehend that for "which we are 
 apprehended of Christ Jesus? Hence also 
 the harmony between texts that have seemed 
 strangely at variance, such as, " Ye are 
 washed and ye are sanctified," against, " This 
 is the will of God, even your sanctifica- 
 tion ; " and, " For by one offering He hath 
 perfected forever them that are sanctified,"
 
 I/O JN CHRIST. 
 
 against, " Let us go on unto perfection." In 
 Christ Jesus all contradictions are reconciled ; 
 the things that are incomplete, and the things 
 that are not, becoming the things that are, 
 and the things that are complete. As a gift 
 of grace, then, sanctification is conferred on 
 each Christian as soon as he believes. But 
 it is a gift yet held on deposit, if we may say 
 so, " hid with Christ in God," to be appro- 
 priated through daily communion and gradual 
 apprehension. And so, while the believer's 
 realized sanctification appears painfully mea- 
 gre, at most a thin line of light, like the cres- 
 cent of the new moon, he yet sees it ever 
 complemented by the clear outlines of that 
 rounded perfection which is his in the Lord 
 Jesus, and into which he is to be daily waxing 
 till he attains to " the measure of the stature 
 of the fullness of Christ." Is not the most 
 fruitful root of misconception on this subject 
 to be found in the idea, that while our justifi- 
 cation stands wholly in Christ, our sanctifica- 
 tion stands in ourselves ? As though it were 
 our human nature that is to be improved and 
 brought to ultimate perfection ! One surely 
 could never harbor such an error, were he 
 mindful of that form of doctrine to which he
 
 IN CHRIST. 171 
 
 was committed in baptism. That declared 
 the putting off and burial of the old man, and 
 the putting on of the new man. And it can- 
 not be that this forecast of the Christian life 
 is so reversed that we are now called to ex- 
 hume what has been buried, and to clothe our- 
 selves again in the cast-off garments which 
 we have solemnly declared to be beyond the 
 hope of renovation. No ! what has been cru- 
 cified must be mortified, what has been buried 
 must be kept down. So hopeless and irrep- 
 arable is the doom of the flesh, that we know 
 not that it is any better in the believer than 
 in the unbeliever, only that its instincts are 
 repressed, and its dominion circumscribed. 
 " In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good 
 thing." Whither, then, shall I turn in my 
 deep desire to attain a sinless life, a fruitful 
 obedience, and a holy walk? Even unto 
 Him who, having begotten holy desires within 
 me, is able " to give unto them their meat in 
 due season," and who, having clothed me with 
 salvation as with a garment, can also nour- 
 ish and build me up in inward sanctity and 
 perfectness. 
 
 Let us note then how, as every condition 
 of our accredited sanctification rests on our
 
 1/2 IN CHRIST. 
 
 being in Christ, so every condition of our 
 practical sanctification rests on our abiding 
 or continuing in Christ 
 
 In. the first place, sanctification implies holi- 
 ness. To the question, How shall I attain a 
 sinless life ? the Word has but one answer : 
 " In Him is no sin ; wliosoever abidetJt in Him 
 sinneth not 1 .' * As the soul that is in Him 
 through the union of faith, is covered with his 
 stainless righteousness, so that soul abiding 
 in Him in the unbroken fellowship of love and 
 obedience, is filled with his sinless life. It 
 sins not actively, since its activities are for the 
 time controlled by Him, and so the principle 
 of evil is inoperative and lying in abeyance. 
 Not that the root of sin has been eradicated. 
 This is entwined with every fibre of the car- 
 nal nature, "like ivy in an ancient wall," as 
 Flavel says, " which, however plucked and up- 
 rooted, can never be wholly gotten out of it 
 till the wall is taken down." But it is kept 
 for the time in blessed unfruitfulness, its leaf 
 withered by the brightness of the Saviour's 
 presence. 
 
 Doubtless many Christians have known 
 such experiences, periods of happy exemp- 
 
 1 I John iii. 5.
 
 IN CHRIST. 1 73 
 
 tion from willful transgression, because the 
 will has been given up to the guidance of the 
 Holy One ; seasons of communion with Christ 
 in which the fetters of fleshly bondage have 
 been for the while so thoroughly broken, and 
 its cords cast away, that the favored one has 
 almost questioned whether he was in the body 
 or out of the body. We may instance such 
 privileged days as those which Flavel describes, 
 when he was permitted to have such intimacy 
 with Christ, " such ravishing tastes of heavenly 
 joys, and such full assurance of his interest 
 therein, that he utterly lost sight and sense of 
 this world and all the concerns thereof ; " those 
 favored engagements with the Lord Jesus, 
 which Brainerd records when he felt within 
 himself such " lively actings of a holy temper 
 and heavenly disposition, such vigorous exer- 
 cise of that divine love which casts out fear," 
 that it was literally Christ for him to live ; that 
 deep entering into the divine life which Ed- 
 wards enjoyed, and which he describes as " a 
 calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the con- 
 cerns of this world ; and sometimes a kind of 
 vision or fixed idea of being alone in the moun- 
 tains, or some solitary wilderness far from all 
 mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and
 
 1/4 IN CHRIST. 
 
 rapt and swallowed up in God." But surely 
 never more than after such abundant manifes- 
 tations of the power of the divine grace to lift 
 one beyond the control of the flesh and into 
 uninterrupted communion with Christ, does he 
 need to be warned to take heed, lest, thinking 
 that he thereby standeth in a state of sinless 
 perfection, he suddenly fall. There is a wide 
 difference between a present attainment and a 
 permanent attainment. And who has not 
 found that it is easier to rise to lofty heights 
 than it is to maintain one's self there ? These 
 grapes of Eshcol, these "days of heaven/' 
 full of deep communion and freedom from con- 
 scious sin, remind us, by their very rarity and 
 infrequency, that we have not yet reached the 
 promised land of perfect holiness. But they 
 tell us where to find that land, not back, be- 
 yond the waters of our baptism, in the Egypt 
 of the flesh and in the bondage of th'e law, 
 but onward over that Jordan of death in which 
 we shall put off this corruptible forever ; in that 
 land which the Lord hath given to us for an 
 inheritance, where we shall abide continually 
 in Christ, because sundered forever from the 
 root of Adam. Such wild dreams as that of 
 perfection in the flesh would be little enter-
 
 IN CHRIST. 
 
 tained if men kept clearly in view the distinc- 
 tion between what we are in Christ and what 
 we are /;/ ourselves. To be in Him is to be 
 saved at once and forever from the condemna- 
 tion of sin, but as the lives of the highest and 
 the lowest saints alike testify, not immedi- 
 ately from the presence and inworking of sin. 
 Christ had sin upon Him, though He had no 
 sin in Him. He that is in Christ has no sin 
 upon him, though he still has sin in him. 
 And just in proportion to the completeness 
 of his abiding in Him by communion and 
 obedience, will he be free from sin within him 
 as he is from sin upon him. But let us not be 
 deceived. Because the Spirit addresses us as 
 those that are " sanctified in tJte name of the 
 Lord Jesus" l let us not therefore claim to 
 have reached a state of practical and realized 
 sanctification in ourselves. " We are in Him 
 that is true," and " In Him is no sin." 
 " But if we say that we have no sin, we de- 
 ceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" 
 Not yet have we reached that Paradise of holy 
 perfection for which we sigh, that sweet mil- 
 lennium of inward peace and righteousness 
 where sin can hurt and destroy no longer. 
 1 I Cor. vl 1 1.
 
 1/6 IN CHRIST. 
 
 For that we wait till the old leaven of the 
 flesh has been purged out and we have be- 
 come a new lump. And then when Christ 
 who is our life shall appear, appear " with- 
 out sin unto salvation" shall we appear also 
 with Him in glory, without sin either in us 
 or upon us forever. 
 
 Is Death then the great sanctifier ? it is im- 
 patiently asked. Is his cold hand endowed 
 with a skill and cunning to do the work for us 
 in a moment which the Spirit and the Word 
 and the ordinances have failed to perfect in a 
 lifetime ? Nay, death is but the letting go of 
 a hand that has been constantly hindering that 
 work, the final relinquishmeht of his hold on 
 the part of that carnal man who is neither 
 subject to the law of God himself, nor permits 
 the believer in whom he dwells to be subject 
 to it. 1 This much negatively ; and then it is 
 
 1 St. Francis de Sales writes to one who complains cf 
 sad heart sickness over the evil of an unsanctified will : 
 " Thank God, * this sickness is not unto death, but for the 
 glory of God.' .You are like Rebecca when two peoples 
 struggled within her womb, but the younger was destined to 
 prevail. Self-lave cmly dies with our natural death ; it has a 
 thousand wiles whereby to keep a hold within the soul, and 
 we cannot drive it forth. It is the first-born of the soul ; 
 it is upheld by a legion of auxiliaries, emotions, actions, in- 
 clinations, passions ; it is adroit, and knows how to employ
 
 IN CHRIST. 177 
 
 also the rending of the veil that keeps us from 
 full communion with the Lord. For to be with 
 Christ where He is, whether that presence be 
 gained by our going to Him or by his com- 
 ing to us, is doubtless essential to a state of 
 complete abiding in Him, and hence of full 
 conformity to Him. 
 
 Who knows what depth of meaning is hid- 
 den in that, " For we shall see Him as He is," 
 in which John finds the reason and pledge of 
 our likeness to Christ at his appearing ? All 
 our holiness is in Him and from Him, as the 
 sunbeams are in and of the sun. But how 
 is its lustre dimmed in passing through the 
 medium of our fleshly life, and how are its rays 
 broken and refracted before they fall upon 
 the retina of our inward eye. Only in the 
 open vision of his face and jn his light who 
 is " the Light," can our likeness to Him be 
 rendered perfect. For only thus can we truly 
 reflect his purity, seeing Him as He is, and 
 having the last germs of impurity in our- 
 selves consumed in that light which is above 
 
 endless subtleties. On the other hand, the love of God, 
 which is later born, has its emotions, actions, inclinations, 
 and passions. These two struggle within us, and their con- 
 vulsive movements cause us infinite trouble. But the love 
 of God must triumph." Spiritual Letters, XII.
 
 /-A 7 CHRIST. 
 
 the brightness of the sun. It is not only 
 that our Lord will give us more of Himself, 
 but will give it " directly from Himself in 
 place of its coming through an 'earthen ves- 
 sel,' which both limits the abounding flow of 
 his fullness and also gives an earthy taste to 
 the living water." 1 
 
 And what we have said of holiness applies 
 equally to another element of progressive sanc- 
 tification, its very evidence and attestation in- 
 deed, Christian fruitfulness. This is from Je- 
 sus Christ only. " He that abidcth in me and 
 I in Jam, the same bringeth forth much fruit" 2 
 In Him by faith, and hence one with Him in 
 that unchangeable justification which enwraps 
 the Head and the members together, we may 
 be very far from abiding in Him by that full 
 communion through which his life flows into 
 us without interruption, and abides in us 
 without stint. The feeble branch may be in 
 the trunk as truly as the fruitful one, knit into 
 its structure by the same compactness of 
 grain and fibre. But because it has little 
 communion with it through the vital sap, it 
 bears little fruit, and adorns its station with 
 little greenness and beauty. Christ our Vine 
 
 1 Adelaide Newton. 8 John xv. 5.
 
 IN CHRIST 
 
 is not straitened in Himself, but only in us. 
 As impossible as it is for the fruits of holi- 
 ness to grow upon the stock of human nature, 
 so impossible is it for anything else to grow 
 upon the divine. That which is born of 
 God cannot commit sin. It is only a ques- 
 tion of presenting such an open channel for 
 the inflow of the life of Jesus, that the holy 
 principle shall be transmitted to us without 
 obstruction, and reproduce itself without re- 
 straint. 
 
 Is there not a painful tendency among 
 believers to seek fruit from without instead 
 of from within, and to be satisfied with such 
 good works as are the mere extrinsic adorn- 
 ments of faith instead of its direct outgrowth ? 
 But whether we speak of fulfilling righteous- 
 ness in ourselves or towards others, the same 
 principle obtains, that " whatsoever is not of 
 faith," and hence not of Christ, " is sin." For 
 sanctification we have not to copy another's 
 holiness, however excellent, but to work out 
 our own salvation ; to unfold to its utmost 
 limit that divine life which is ours in Christ 
 And for service the law is the same. Love 
 to neighbor and self-denial for mankind are 
 to be no borrowed graces, lent us either by
 
 180 IN CHRIST. 
 
 philanthropy or the law. With the disciples, 
 who so significantly met our Lord's demand 
 for a sevenfold forgiveness of a sevenfold of- 
 fense, with the prayer, " Increase our faith" 
 we shall learn more and more that the only 
 way to augment the fruits of charity and long 
 suffering is to strike the roots of our faith more 
 deeply into Christ, and entwine them more in- 
 timately about that cross from which the first- 
 fruits of divine forgiveness were gathered, and 
 from which all subsequent fruit must also 
 spring. So directly indeed is likeness to 
 Christ dependent upon communion with 
 Christ, that John makes the two equivalent 
 terms. " He that saith he abideth in Him 
 ought himself also so to walk even as He 
 walked." Relationship to Him determines all 
 other relationships, those of conformity to God 
 and those of non-conformity to the world alike. 
 Adjust the heart therefore to Him, and the 
 world is sure to be in its proper place. Put 
 on Christ, and you are certain to put off sin. 
 "I/you are clothed with the sun, the moon (all 
 sublunary things) will be under your feet." 
 
 If from the conditions, we turn to consider 
 the means of sanctification, we see how ob- 
 viously these are such, because they are the
 
 IN CHRIST. l8l 
 
 media of communion with Christ, and of par- 
 ticipance in his life. 
 
 " Sanctify them through thy trutJi" the 
 truth not only as it is in Jesus, but as Jesus 
 is in it. For the word, it need not be said, is 
 the earthly repository of Christ, filled by his 
 informing presence, and vital with all the yet 
 undiscovered meanings of his hidden wis- 
 dom. Therefore is it able to be the daily 
 bread of the soul, and to satisfy all possible 
 cravings of its divine hunger. " Thy words 
 were found of me, and I did eat them." 
 
 " Chosen to salvation through sanctification 
 of the Spirit" the Holy One whose office it 
 is to take of the things of Christ and show 
 them unto us. For this we must always re- 
 member, that He does not speak of Himself. 
 He brings " the Life " to our life, and makes 
 the sanctified One to be more and more our 
 sanctification, until we are filled with all his 
 fullness. 
 
 Thus slowly, and as it may seem to us quite 
 imperceptibly, is God bringing this divine 
 work to completion in us. Blessed are they 
 who shrink not from the sharper but not less 
 needed means of its accomplishment, those 
 trials and chastisements, those humiliations
 
 1 82 IN CHRIST. 
 
 and self-denials, which are the pangs of trans- 
 formation through which Christ is to be fully 
 formed within us. "Though our outward 
 man perish, yet the inward man is renewed 
 day by day." " The more the marble wastes, 
 the more the statue grows," wrote Michael 
 Angelo. And impossible as it will be for 
 nature, let it not be impossible for grace to 
 cry daily, " Welcome cross, welcome trials, 
 welcome all things sweet or bitter, which shall 
 bring forth within us that perfect man, that 
 divine ideal, visible ever to the eye of God, 
 and growing more and more upon our sight 
 as we grow up into Him who is our Head."
 
 X. GLORIFICATION IN 
 CHRIST.
 
 * 
 
 for if toe bdictoe tfjat ^Tcsus bictJ 
 ro#c again, cfccn #o tljcm aljso 
 in 3cit loiH oBoti bring 
 
 i Thess. iv. 14. 
 
 Ipim arc pc in Cfjriat 
 maDc unto ii .. 
 tion. i c^r. i. 30 
 
 for tfjc Horfc fjim^df .s^aH tJcsccno 
 from fjcafccn tuitf) a jsl)out, tuitl) tf)c boicc 
 of tl)c arrljangcl, ano toitl) tljc truing of 
 anti tlje ticao in Cftri^t ^Da 
 
 i Thess, iv. 16.
 
 X. 
 
 GLORIFICATION IN CHRIST. 
 
 JJHE redemption of the body ! Not 
 only is this the event towards which 
 the universal longing of creation 1 is 
 directed, but the hope as involved in the re- 
 turn of the Lord Jesus to which all Christian 
 doctrine points, and to which each Christian 
 ordinance is divinely adjusted. The first 
 light that is reflected in the face of the new- 
 born disciple as he comes forth from the 
 waters of burial with Christ, is a foregleam of 
 this hope. " For if we have been planted to- 
 gether in the likeness of his death, we shall 
 be in the likeness of his resurrection" The 
 last sound that lingers on our ears as the 
 formula of the communion is repeated, is a 
 refrain of this blessed hope : " For as often as 
 ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do 
 show the Lord's death //// He come" Upon 
 
 1 Rom. viii. 22.
 
 1 86 IN CHRIST. 
 
 every thirtieth verse of Gospel and Epistle, a 
 ray of this hope falls either directly or ob- 
 liquely ; while throughout, duties and prom- 
 ises and beatitudes are turned to it and po- 
 larized by it as the supreme reward of faith. 
 " Behold I come quickly, and my reward is 
 with me." 
 
 And yet is there not a strange tendency in 
 the human mind to rest content with a less 
 reward than God has promised ; to satisfy 
 our hopes with the anticipation of some shad- 
 owy and undefinable state of existence be- 
 yond the grave, when He has so clearly 
 pledged the restitution of the present mode 
 of being with the single element of sin and 
 its consequences eliminated ? A longing to 
 be delivered from " the body of this death," 
 therefore, should not imply even a willingness 
 to be forever delivered from the body. For 
 as clearly as Christ is set forth as the de- 
 stroyer of the flesh, the corruptible and 
 mortal element of our nature, so clearly is 
 He revealed as the Saviour of the body. 
 
 It is this hope only that gives a homelike 
 realness to our future life ; that peoples it 
 with the same saints and the same Jesus whom 
 we have known as residents of the earth ; that
 
 Iff CHRIST. 187 
 
 makes certain to us indeed our own identity 
 in that existence. And if we may not quite 
 say that " we can conceive of nothing entered 
 upon in separation from the body that is 
 worthy to be called life," we feel at least that 
 the thought of being forever bereaved of that 
 in which we have lived and toiled and suffered 
 so much, would cast a shadow upon the soul 
 such as only the dread of annihilation could 
 render darker. For such an issue would in- 
 volve a twofold defeat : on the one hand, the 
 casting down of man's dearest hope in Christ, 
 that of his final reconciliation to himself; on 
 the other, an apparent partial triumph of evil 
 over God in the eternal putting asunder of 
 what in the beginning He so sacredly joined 
 together. 
 
 But Christianity allows us not even a 
 dreary speculation on this point. For while 
 it does not silence the groaning of the soul to 
 be free from what is now often a burden, it 
 yet modulates the groan into a confession of 
 faith, " Not for that we would be unclothed, 
 but clothed upon, that mortality might be 
 swallowed up of life." 
 
 How intimately this hope, like all others of 
 the gospel, is wrapped up in the person of
 
 1 88 IN CHRIST. 
 
 Jesus Christ ; and how the sacred bonds of 
 union that hold us to Him for every other 
 blessing, bind us to Him in spite of death for 
 the redemption of the body also, we shall see 
 as we advance. 
 
 First of all, the believer's dying is in the 
 Lord. " TJiey which are fallen asleep in 
 Christ" is Paul's exquisitely tender phrase ; 
 words suggestive not only of painless repose, 
 but of a repose which is perpetually guarded 
 and invested by his holy presence. They 
 have fainted in his arms, and He holds and 
 sustains and embraces them until the death 
 trance shall be broken. " Lord, if they sleep 
 they shall do well," our hearts instinctively 
 respond. For the very word is a prophecy 
 of a better resurrection, and the state it- 
 self the peculiar purchase of our Redeemer 
 for his own. " He giveth his beloved sleep." 
 All die. But only those who have lived in 
 Him will sleep in Him, in the cameteriiim of 
 the saints, in the true Machpelah of the re- 
 deemed which He has bought for them by his 
 blood. Hence the deep significance of those 
 words descriptive of the holy dead, as " those 
 laid to sleep through Jesus" x connecting, as 
 1 I Thess. iv. 14.
 
 IN CHRIST. 189 
 
 they do, the repose as well as the resurrection 
 of the saints' bodies directly with his medi- 
 ation. 
 
 And the terms change not. They cover 
 the entire state from the last gasp of dying 
 breath to the joyful awaking of the resurrection 
 morning. u The dead in Christ," The words 
 form a kind of epitaph in brief for the tomb 
 of all the faithful, an epitaph which, if it does 
 not answer every question of a curious mind 
 concerning the departed, tells us the one thing 
 that we long to know, that they are safe and 
 shall live again. And so we may tell the story 
 of the Christian's burial no longer in that brief 
 hollow phrase which to the ancients seemed 
 the tendcrest allusion that could be made to 
 the deceased, " Non est" he is not ; but in 
 words like those of Bunyan's, so fragrant of 
 heart's-ease and immortelle, " The pilgrim 
 they laid in a chamber whose window opetied 
 towards the sun rising ; the name of that 
 chamber was Peace, wliere Ji slept till tJie 
 break of day" 
 
 And as it is the unbroken union of the de- 
 parted saints with their Saviour that consti- 
 tutes their felicity and our warrant for sealing 
 their tombs with that beatitude, " Blessed are
 
 190 IN CHRIST. 
 
 the dead which die in the Lord," so it is 
 through this union that they will be raised up 
 at the appearing of the Lord. For the resur- 
 rection is the drawing of Christ's members 
 after Him, the prolonging and consummating 
 of his own renewal from the dead in the per- 
 sons of those who have been incorporated 
 into his body. Thus it would seem to be an 
 event not simply wrought upon them from 
 without, but fashioned also from within. 
 
 Does not St. Paul's emblem of the resur- 
 rection, the quickening of the grain that has 
 died in the earth, furnish a beautiful sug- 
 gestion of this truth ? The springing up of 
 the seed is not merely the result of a life 
 given from the sunlight and the rain, but of a 
 life evoked by these. Even so the resurrec- 
 tion of the just will be life answering to life, 
 the life of God in man, responding to the call 
 and yielding to the attraction of Him who is 
 " the Resurrection and the Life." " But if 
 the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesiis from 
 the dead divell in you, He that raised up 
 Christ from the dead shall quicken your mor- 
 tal bodies by his Spirit that dwclletli in you" J 
 This, the Spirit of life, is the vital bond that 
 
 Rom. viii. 2.
 
 IN CHRIST. 191 
 
 holds the bodies of the saints as well as their 
 souls in union with the Lord, the bond on 
 whose perpetuity every hope of restitution 
 depends. And as close as are the links of 
 logic by which the Apostle welds the believer's 
 resurrection to that of his Lord, it is after all 
 that link of life, " in Christ," on which all hangs 
 suspended. " If we believe that Jesus died 
 and rose again, even so them that sleep in Je- 
 sus will God bring with Him? How that 
 other awakening, the resurrection of the un- 
 just, is related to that of our Lord, we know 
 not. But only they that are Christ's at his 
 coming will hear the Bridegroom's voice, 
 " And the dead in Christ shall rise first" 
 From the dust and from the deeps they will 
 respond, the voice from beneath saluting the 
 voice from above, " Thou shalt call and I 
 will answer," while in " that silence that 
 terrifies thought " the others will remain, till 
 God shall bring them forth to judgment. 
 
 And going beyond the event of the be- 
 liever's resurrection to the nature of the risen 
 body, are any of those deep anxious questions 
 which we are wont to put concerning it an- 
 swered except in Christ ? To many the dec- 
 laration, " It is raised a spiritual body," seems
 
 1 92 IN CHRIST. 
 
 only to baffle the longing for knowledge that 
 it would answer. For while one, seizing upon 
 the word " spiritual," floats away immediately 
 into shapeless conceptions of an immaterial 
 existence, and another, hearing the word 
 " body," cries out, " Nay ! but flesh and blood 
 cannot inherit the kingdom of God," each 
 returns from his misleading pursuit of the 
 truth to press with redoubled eagerness 
 the question, " With what body do they 
 come ? " But in Jesus Christ the question is 
 answered. In his showing Himself alive after 
 his passion by many infallible proofs, He 
 shows us as in a living mirror our own future 
 bodies. For thus we reason. 
 
 " As He is, so are we in this world." He 
 is holy and righteous altogether. And be- 
 cause " he that is joined to the Lord is one 
 spirit," we know that holiness and righteous- 
 ness, those divine features of the soul, once 
 lost, are perfectly restored to us in Him. 
 
 " When He shall appear we shall be like 
 Him." But He will come as He went up, 
 with a body of "flesh and bones." And be- 
 cause of that divine kindredship in which 
 " we are members of his body, of his flesh, and 
 of his bones," we know without question that
 
 IN CHRIST. 193 
 
 we shall receive back our bodies perfected in 
 Him ; no lineament of their identity lost, no 
 finest tracing of their life-long discipline 
 erased, despoiled of nothing but their corrup- 
 tion and mortality, and whether " blind from 
 the prison-house, or maimed from the battle, 
 or mad from the tombs," sitting at last aston- 
 ished at his feet, with perfect sight and sound- 
 ness and beauty, because "fashioned like 
 unto his glorious body." 
 
 So then, while it is clear that the flesh in 
 its present corruptible state cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of God, it seems equally clear that 
 in a transformed and glorified state it will 
 inherit that kingdom. The translation of 
 Enoch, says Dr. Owen, " is a divine testi- 
 mony that the body itself is capable of eternal 
 life" And so vital is this witness to God's 
 Church, that like Peter's vision it has been 
 thrice repeated before human eyes in the 
 Patriarchal age by Enoch, in the Prophetic 
 age bv Elijah, and in the Gospel age by 
 Christ. And now, whatever hope concern- 
 ing our future state may be obscure or un- 
 certain, we need no longer falter in pronounc- 
 ing this glad confession, " Yet in my flesh 
 shall I see God? 
 13
 
 194 IN CHRIST. 
 
 Nor is this testimony of God general merely. 
 In the risen Christ minute particulars are 
 detailed. He ate and drank before hi-, disci- 
 ples. He revealed Himself to their sight as a 
 veritable body, and to their touch as the same 
 body with which they had been acquainted, 
 by the attesting marks of his passion. And 
 He showed also the mysterious spirituality of 
 this body in its freedom from the restraints 
 of matter, and its superiority to the ordi- 
 nary laws of gravity and motion. And an 
 eager faith easily translates these hints con- 
 cerning our glorified life. The senses that 
 have lighted up the world for us, though long 
 quenched in the grave, have leave from the 
 Son of man to rest in hope. Surely they 
 shall be quickened for nobler offices than 
 they ever yet have known, and in that resti- 
 tution of all things even the material body 
 will present its glorified members before its 
 Creator with the confession, Of all that thou 
 hast given me I have lost nothing, but Thou 
 hast raised it up at the last day. With what 
 finer vision and keener sense the eye shall 
 open at that glad awakening ; to what yet un- 
 imagined harmonies the ear shall be attuned ; 
 for what alert and tireless ministries the feet
 
 JN CHRIST. 195 
 
 shall be prepared, who can tell ? " They that 
 wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; 
 they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; 
 they shall run and not be weary ; and they 
 shall walk and not faint." 
 
 To the question of the identity of the resur- 
 rection body with that in which we now dwell, 
 do we not see the answer most delicately 
 outlined in those two phrases of Paul's illus- 
 tration of the grain, " Thou sowest not that 
 body that shall be" and, " to every seed his 
 own body " f Nowhere in nature is there such 
 an approach to literal sameness between two 
 objects as between the seed and its product 
 The same vital substance has been taken up 
 from the old kernel and curiously transmuted 
 into the new, decay and corruption only 
 being left behind. Every minutest peculiar- 
 ity of form and taste and color has been ex- 
 actly reproduced. The seed that dies is not 
 the seed that shall be, but there is such iden- 
 tity between them that the two cannot pos- 
 sibly coexist as separate units, the second 
 having its being only in the ceasing of the 
 first to be. 
 
 If then our hope of physical identity in 
 the life to come seems to be discouraged by
 
 196 IN CHRIST. 
 
 the words, " not that body that shall be," do 
 not the other words, " to every seed its own 
 body" satisfy our deepest longings ? They 
 seem to assure iis that we shall again be " at 
 home in the body" and not strangers for a 
 single moment, looking back to a tabernacle 
 which has been put off, and lost to us, and to 
 which we have said an eternal farewell ; and 
 that we shall feel ourselves possessed of the 
 same familiar self, in spite of all the mortal 
 and perishable that has fallen away in our 
 transformation. And by this inalienable per- 
 sonality we shall be known, as well as know. 
 The fashion of the countenance, on which all 
 human recognition depends, will be altered 
 indeed, but perhaps only by the unearthly 
 glory that shall transfigure it. Stephen filled 
 with the Holy Ghost was Stephen still, though 
 they that " looked steadfastly on him saw his 
 face as it had been the face of an angel" 
 
 And not alone the man whose earthly coun- 
 tenance was moulded by the impress of long 
 years of trial and discipline, but even the in- 
 fant that only looked for a troubled moment 
 upon life and then died, has an inviolable seal 
 of individuality which death cannot efface.
 
 IN CHRIST. 197 
 
 "One look sufficed to tell me they were mine, 
 My babes, my blossoms, my long parted ones ; 
 The same in feature and in form as when 
 I bent above their dying pillow last, 
 Yet beaming with the likeness of their Lord." 
 
 Does it not give a certain dignity and worth 
 to human being, that the tiniest body and the 
 briefest span of earthly life is a title-deed to 
 the resurrection ? " As we have borne the im- 
 age of the earthy, we shall bear the image of 
 the heavenly." And the seed of humanity 
 that barely broke the shell of non-existence 
 and then fell into the earth to die, because it 
 is a seed, must be quickened after Christ the 
 first-fruits. 
 
 With such hopes as these set before us, 
 what is there left for us to desire concern- 
 ing our future ? We do not say that the dread 
 /of death is taken away. He is a real enemy 
 to be met, and no mere disarmed and pow- 
 erless foe to be despised. There may be vic- 
 tory in his presence, but it is the victory of 
 hope, the triumph seen from afar, giving exul- 
 tation in present defeat, and enabling him who 
 is now overthrown to cry, " Rejoice not against 
 me, O mine enemy ; though I fall I shall arise." 
 But with the most heroic facing of his terrors, 
 and with the sturdiest endurance of his pain,
 
 198 IN CHRIST. 
 
 as he rends from us the garment of our mor- 
 tality, we are as yet victims and not victors. 
 
 But " when this mortal shall put on immor- 
 tality," then will " death be swallowed up in 
 victory." For then we shall not only have 
 broken forever from his dominion, but we 
 shall have reconquered from him the very 
 spoils of which he robbed us ; while, in a body 
 at length exalted from its sorrowful humilia- 
 tions and reconciled to itself after a life-long 
 warfare, we lead our own captivity captive. 
 " In Adam all die." Not only all persons but 
 all holy relations have felt the death shock of 
 sin ; and the sharp disuniting sentence that 
 has sundered man from God, has not less 
 truly sundered man from himself. But "in 
 Christ shall all be made alive." The bridal 
 of the Church to her Lord 'will be also the 
 bridal of the soul to her body, the redeemed 
 spirit and the redeemed flesh brought at last 
 to rejoice together in perfected harmony. It 
 is this hope that bridges the chasm of death, 
 and enables the heart to bound across it in 
 triumph 
 
 Is the timid cry of any yet in bondage to 
 the fear of death, " Who am I that I should 
 comfort myself with such a hope ? Who am
 
 IN CHRIST. 199 
 
 % 
 I that I should be counted worthy to attain 
 
 the resurrection of the dead ? " There is but 
 one answer : " /am the Resurrection and the 
 Life." 
 
 " Live in Christ" said the dying John Knox, 
 " live in Christ, and you need not fear the 
 death of the flesh." 
 
 " Help, O Lord our God, that the joyful day 
 of thy Holy Advent may come, that we may 
 be redeemed from this evil, envious world, the 
 devil's kingdom, and be set free from the 
 bitter torments that we suffer both from with- 
 out and from within ; both from wicked men 
 and from our own conscience. Destroy this 
 old Adam, that we may be clothed with 
 another body that is not disposed to evil and 
 excess as this is, but which, redeemed from 
 all infirmity, shall be made like unto thy glo- 
 rious body, our Lord Jesus Christ, so that at 
 last we may attain our full and glorious re- 
 demption." Amen.
 
 NOTES.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE A. Page 20. 
 
 "So also is the Christ" (i Cor. xii. 12.) Here the 
 whole structure of the sentence would lead us to expect the 
 words, "so olio is the Church." How striking this turn 
 in the thought by which, almost as by an inspired lapse of 
 speech, the body of believers is named " the Christ t " Lan- 
 guage can go no further in expressing the perfect oneness 
 of the Lord and his Church. 
 
 NOTE B. Page 20. 
 
 I find an almost identical definition of Christian experi- 
 ence by Mr. Jukes. 1 He says, " Christian experience is out 
 measure of apprehension of that which is already true for us 
 in Jesus." Now it is already true for us in Jesus that " by 
 Him all that believe are justified from all things." And 
 one believer is just as completely justified as another. But 
 how various the degrees of apprehension of this fact ! One 
 sees it hardly at all in such a way as to find true spiritual 
 comfort from it. Another catches glimpses of it, a little 
 while seeing it, and a little while not seeing it And a few 
 perhaps apprehend it always and in its completeness. A 
 growing experience is a going from strength to strength in 
 this truth, till every one of us in the Zion of full assurance 
 appearcth before God ! 
 
 1 Law of tkt Offtringt, p. 44.
 
 204 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE C. Page 30. 
 
 "lam crucified with Christ" (Gal. ii. 20.) It is universally 
 conceded that the verb here, as in the parallel passages in 
 which the believer is represented as dead with Christ, cruci- 
 fied with Christ, etc., should be translated by the perfect 
 tense, connecting the event directly with the crucifixion of 
 our Lord. When, for the sake of bringing out this meaning, 
 it has been necessary to vary from the common version, we 
 have, for the sake of uniformity, taken Dean Alford's trans- 
 lation as given in his English New Testament, marking the 
 passages so quoted, by a * in the margin. 
 
 NOTE D. Page 32. 
 
 1. " If Christ took our nature upon Him, as we believe, 
 by an act of love, it was not that of one but of all. He 
 was not one man only among many men, but in Him all 
 humanity was gathered up. And thus now, as at all time, 
 mankind are, so to speak, organically united with Him. 
 His acts are in a true sense our acts, so far as we realize 
 the union ; his death is our death, his resurrection our res- 
 urrection." WESTCOTT'S Gospel of the Resurrection, ch. 
 ii. 39. 
 
 2. " The Son of God took on Him human nature, not a 
 human personality. ' He took not angels, but the seed of 
 Abraham.' Therefore He becomes the Redeemer of our 
 several persons, because He is already the Redeemer of 
 this our common nature, which He has made forever his 
 own. ' As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be 
 made alive-' As human nature was present in Adam, when 
 by his representative sin he ruined his posterity ; so was 
 human nature present in Christ our Lord, when by his vol- 
 untary offering of his sinless self, He 'bare our sins in his 
 own body on the tree.' Christ is thus the second head of 
 our race. Our nature is his own. He carried it with Him
 
 NOTES. 2O5 
 
 through life to death. He made it do and bear that which 
 was utterly beyond its native strength. His eternal Person 
 gave infinite merit to its acts and its sufferings. In Him it 
 died, rose, ascended, and was perfectly well-pleasing to the 
 All-Holy. Thus by no forced or artificial transaction, but in 
 virtue of his existing representative relation to the human 
 family, He gave Himself to be a ransom for all. In inten- 
 tion and efficacy his sufferings were endured on behalf of all 
 who share his human nature. In point of fact they avail to 
 pardon those who, through faith and the sacraments, are 
 livingly one with Him, so that his personal acts have be- 
 come their own." LIDDON'S University Sermons, pp. 225, 
 226. 
 
 3. " ' He took not angels, but the seed of Abraham.' It 
 pleased not the Word or Wisdom of God to take to itself 
 some one person amongst men, for then should that one have 
 been advanced, wkic/i was assumed, and no mare ; but Wis- 
 dom, to the end she might save many, built her house of 
 that nature which is common unto all ; she made not this or 
 that man her habitation, but dwelt itt us." HOOKER'S 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, Book v. eh. 52. 
 
 NOTE E. Page 36. 
 
 "Seest thou thy Saviour, therefore, hanging upon the cross ? 
 All mankind hangs there with Him, as a knight or burgess 
 of Parliament voices his whole borough or county. What 
 speak I of this ? The members take the same lot with the 
 Head. Every believer is a limb of that Body ; how can he, 
 therefore, but die with Him, and in Him ? That real union, 
 then, which is betwixt Christ and us, makes the cross or any 
 passion of Christ ours ; so as the thorns pierced our heads, 
 the scourges blooded our backs, the nails wounded our 
 hands and feet, and the spear gored our sides and hearts ; 
 by virtue whereof we receive justification from our sins, and
 
 2d6 NOTES. 
 
 true mortification of our corruptions. Every believer, there- 
 fore, is dead already for his sins, in his Saviour ; he need 
 not fear that he shall die again. God is too just to punish 
 twice for one fault ; to recover the sum of both the surety 
 and principal. All the score of our arrearages is fully 
 struck off, by the infinite satisfaction of our blessed Re- 
 deemer. Comfort thyself, therefore, thou penitent and 
 faithful soul, in the confidence of thy safety. Thou shall 
 not die, but live, since thou art already crucified with thy 
 Saviour. He died for thee, thou diedst in Him." BISHOP 
 HALL. 
 
 NOTE F. Page 38. 
 
 If such a view of justification seems to some to tend to 
 demoralization, this easy getting rid of sin, this painless 
 mode of suffering for guilt in the person of another ; it 
 seems to us the only true safeguard against such demoral- 
 ization. A gospel that makes us to be healed of our sins 
 so easily through Christ, makes us to be hurt by our sins, 
 more easily and more deeply through Him also than we 
 could be through ourselves. "Give me an atoning dying 
 substitute, and make me so thoroughly one with Him in 
 God's esteem, and by the Spirit's work, and by my own 
 faith, as that in taking guilt to myself, I inevitably and 
 immediately lay it on Him ; so thoroughly one with Him, 
 that I cannot possibly take guilt to Him, without taking it 
 to myself, and then and not till then shall my soul return 
 unto her rest ; " J aye, and then, and not till then, shall that 
 soul be kept from entering into a guilty and self-indulgent 
 rest. For the same gospel that bids the penitent believer 
 enter into rest because he has been " crucified with Christ" 
 bids the worldly and careless believer remember that he is 
 " 'crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting Him to an 
 open shame" 
 
 1 Pev. HUGH MARTIN'S A tenement, p. 187.
 
 NOTES. 207 
 
 Note G. Page 55. 
 
 Rom. iv. 25. " Who was delivered vnptSoDrj 5i4 T& ra/air- 
 rdfiaTa. 7;ua'j/ because of our sins ; and raised riytpQri 5iA 
 rV StiraiWir ^tif because of our justification." There 
 would seem to be no question as to the correctness of 
 Bishop Horsley's view of this passage, namely, that " the 
 Apostle not only speaks of the sins of men as the cause or 
 occasion of our Lord's death, but of the justification of men 
 as equally the cause or occasion of his resurrection. Or in 
 other terms, " that our Lord's resurrection took place in 
 tonsequenoe of men's justification, in the same manner that 
 his death took place in consequtme of men's sins. See 
 Nine Sermons on our Lord's Resurrection. 
 
 NOTE H. Page 69. 
 
 41 But ye obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine 
 whereunto ye were delivered." (Rom. vi. 17.) Canon 
 Wordsworth draws out very beautifully from this passage 
 the truth that Christ's death and resurrection fix the mould 
 or pattern of Christian life into which at baptism we are 
 cast, so that if we are not rigid and obstinate, but plastic 
 and pliant, we readily take its form and wear its impress. 
 
 NOTE I. Page 70. 
 
 Since some still question the allusion in this passage to 
 immersion as the primitive form of baptism, we append 
 the following testimonies of learned and judicious men of 
 different communions : 
 
 " For the explanation of this figurative description of the 
 baptismal rite, it is necessary to call attention to the well* 
 known circumstance, that in the early days of the Church, 
 persons when baptized were first plunged below and then 
 raised above the water." THOLUCK. 
 
 " There can be no question that the original form of bap-
 
 2O8 NOTES. 
 
 tism the very meaning of the word, was complete im- 
 mersion in the deep baptismal waters ; and that at least for 
 four centuries any other form was either unknown or re- 
 garded as an exceptional, almost a monstrous case." 
 DEAN STANLEY, Eastern Chiirch, p. 44. 
 
 " This passage cannot be understood unless it be borne in 
 mind that the primitive baptism was by immersion." 
 
 CONYBEARE AND HOWSON. 
 
 " All commentators of note (except Stuart and Hodge) 
 expressly admit and take it for granted, that in this verse 
 the ancient prevailing mode of baptism by immersion and 
 emersion is implied, as giving additional force to the idea of 
 the going down of the old and the raising up of the new 
 man." DR. SCHAFF, note to Lange, p. 202. 
 
 NOTE J. Page 135. 
 
 " Name, Svopa, Btt% used in application to God and to 
 Christ as the manifestation of God, always denotes the en- 
 tity itself in the whole compass of its properties. Accord- 
 ingly prayer in the name of Christ, is such as is offered in 
 the nature, mind, and Spirit of Christ." OLSHAUSEN. 
 
 " We pray in the name, that is, actually in the person of 
 Christ, that is, as standing in his place through his prepar- 
 atory and intercessory supplication, as if he came in with 
 us and Himself prayed what we ask. Nor is this a mere 
 'as if ; " rather it is the essential truth of the matter. 
 STIER. . 
 
 NOTE K. Page 138. 
 
 " Having previously said that prayer in the name of Christ 
 U ever heard by the Father, he now adds the condition 
 that we pray according to his will. The one is involved in the 
 ether, as we have already shown. He who prays in the name of 
 Christ is moved and guided by the Spirit of Christ in prayer.
 
 NOTES. 2O9 
 
 He can ask for nothing but that which is in accordance with tht 
 will of God ; can with assurance ask only that which the Spirit 
 of Christ makes known to him in prayer as corresponding to 
 the Father's will. When this certainty is wanting, his prayer 
 will always be accompanied with the condition that the desire 
 arising in his soul and taking the form of prayer, may have 
 for its object something which the Father approves." NE- 
 ANDER on I John v. 14. 
 
 NOTE L. Page 147. 
 
 Prayer in Christ is " the Eternal Life which comes to us 
 through the Son, ascending from us through the Son, the 
 Son in us honoring the Father, the worship of Sonship as 
 such grateful to the Father, who seeketh such warship. 
 Freedom and confidence of acknowledgment are of the 
 very nature of such worship ; arising necessarily from the 
 oneness of the Spirit, causing oneness of mind and will in 
 the worshippers and in Him who is worshipped. In such 
 worship there is a continual living presentation of Christ to 
 the Father, a continual drawing upon the delight of the 
 Father in the Son, the outgoing of a confidence that, what- 
 ever is asked in Christ's name, in the light of his name, in 
 the faith of the Father's acknowledgment of that name, will 
 be received. The praises rendered, the desires cherished, 
 the prayers offered, are all within the circle of the life of 
 Christ, and ascend with the assurance of partaking in the 
 favor which pertains to that life, which rests upon Him who 
 is that life." J. McLEOD CAMPBELL, D. D., Christ the 
 R read of Lift, p. 130.
 
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