us with the utmost plainness what is destructive of the Life of Christ within us.

"If

ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth, things on the earth, for ye have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Worldly affections, then, a heart that lays itself out to make this world its home, is incompatible with Christ being our Life. Equally destructive of Christ's Life within us is a life of sin, for in the same place we read, "Your life is hid with Christ; mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affections, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience."

Now I cannot but hold it somewhat unfortunate that the epistle stops short here, after the enunciation of these grosser sins and their deadly nature, for the Apostle adds other words of solemn warning, all depending upon Christ being our Life: "But now put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communications out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man."

Observe, then, that no matter how mysterious this truth of the Life of Christ in us is, yet it is most intensely practical, if it be a part of practical Christianity to mortify uncleanness

and covetousness, and to put off anger, wrath, malice, and blasphemy..

Observe too here, I beseech you, how the deepest mysteries of the faith have, in the mind of the Holy Spirit Himself, to do with the daily life, daily walk, and daily conflict of the Christian; and not the advanced Christian -not the Christian in whom sin is completely mortified-but the Christian in whom it requires to be mortified.

Strange, passing strange, but is it not truelook and see for yourselves-that men are told that because Christ is their Life they are to shun these deadly things? Observe how he takes at once the highest ground. He says not, it is disgraceful to your profession that you should be unclean or covetous, but he says, Christ is your life, therefore mortify, i. e., put to death, uncleanness and covetousness.

But the fact, the mystery rather, that Christ is our life, and that we are saved by His Life, is not revealed merely that we should avoid as deadly poison the things that separate us from Him, and so from His life, but that we should faithfully, prayerfully, and intelligently use every means whereby we may grow in His life.

Now Christ has particularly, and with extraordinary emphasis, connected the communication of His Life to us with the believing eating of His Flesh, and the believing drinking of His Blood.

Hear His words:

"He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven." "The bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." 66 Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." "He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him."

It is impossible to dissociate these words from the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.

The Church connects them when she invites us to come, "because the benefit is great if, with a true penitent heart and lively faith, we receive that Holy Sacrament, for then we spiritually eat the flesh of Christ and drink His blood; then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ, and Christ with us."

She connects these words of Christ with Holy Communion too, when she bids the minister give to her children the elements in pledge of the Resurrection of their bodies.

"The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy BODY and soul unto everlasting life." "The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy BODY and soul unto everlasting life." Avoiding all disputes about this Holy mystery, two things, I think, are abundantly plain.

1st. That the only eating of any avail is a believing eating-an eating with the mouth of faith contemporaneously with the mouth of the body-which faith we cannot attain to except by setting before ourselves our sins, and the salvation from them, wrought out by the Incarnation, Life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, of the Son of God.

Another thing, too, is clear, viz., that God the Father must hold at His own disposal the bestowal of this Life from His Son Christ: we have it not by nature, we have it through grace at His will, and when He wills; and He is not likely to will that they should partake of the Life of His Son who go on from year to year withdrawing themselves from the Communion which His own Son instituted on the night before He humbled Himself to death for our salvation.

If, then, we are saved by His Life, it does seem that we have but one thing to do, and that is, to see to it that we have His Life abiding in us. We have not two tasks laid upon us, but one.

If we were unreconciled; if

we had to seek reconciliation; if, in the words of the Apostle, we had to "bring Christ down from above," we should have two burdens laid upon us to seek both Reconciliation and Salvation but the one we are already in possession of; we were reconciled: the other, we have to secure.

Is it a difficult thing then to secure? The Apostle seems to imply that the Reconciliation accomplished makes the attainment of eternal life all but certain; "much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved;" and yet if we look at this matter in the light of at least one solemn assertion from the lips of Christ Himself we shall none of us say that we have as yet attained to it. For Christ tells us whilst He is laying upon us that we are to abide in Him, that the man who abides in Him, the man in whom He dwells, "the same bringeth forth much fruit." Now who amongst us dare say that he brings forth much fruit? Some of us perhaps have a little to show-a few prayers, a few attempts at self-denial, a few sick men or women visited, a few children instructed, a portion of our income spent in charity-but dare we call this much? and they in whom His Life abides bring forth much fruit. John xv. 5.

We have in Scripture the example of one. who brought forth much fruit, one who approved himself as "the minister of Christ, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in