grace. The sight of Him-looking back on His human manifestation, looking up to His fellow-feeling, looking forward to His prepared places in the "Father's house "-the vivid sight evermore of Him in the facts of His life and the words of His grace they make so credible, that sight which yields an alladapted help suited to every work, race, fight, patience, obedience, &c., of faith-is evermore the gift bestowed by God, as it is the use sought by man, in the means of grace. "To know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom He hath sent, is man's eternal life" (John xvii. 3).

15. Living by faith comprehends, besides the distinct open Spiritual discipline. training of the means of grace, an inscrutable spiritual discipline, which also the believer has to "occupy till He come," of whose grace this is a part more than of man's practice. The prayer, "Lord, increase our faith," has had, and will continue to have, a comprehensive answer; every part of which he is to school and chasten his soul by as occasion may arise. Sometimes strong trial, as in the case of the Canaanite mother, is needed to draw out and fix in consciousness a deep belief in Jesus, which does not yet know itself. Persistence in faith was one of the most prominent lessons taught by Him directly, and by such examples as that woman's, and Abraham's, and Jacob's. A sense of utter helplessness, bordering on hopelessness, may be a needed experience. "Be not afraid, only believe," was an exhortation He needed to address in another illustrative case. The experience of exceptional trouble, suggesting exceptional diffidence, may be needed to open the eyes to the real extent of His grace; as the leper, greatly daring to break all bounds of religious rule to come to His presence, yet needed to be taught that he was welcome, and had his hesitating words, "Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean," answered on the moment, "I will; be thou clean." Reproof may be needed for a half-unconscious seeking the help of some sight to believe in Him: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Entire help to speak the words of prayer may be needed, as when He drew out supplicating but silent desire to an expression which would strengthen desire and faith both: "" What will ye that I should do unto you?" And

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suspense may be needed, sending His suppliants away without a distinct promise, to exercise their faith in Him in absence, and find the answer of peace they know not when nor how, but to recognise it and Him when it comes (John iv. 52, Luke xvii. 14). Such discipline, when it comes "food convenient" for the living soul, must be used as the means of grace are, to help it to abide in Him, and keep His words abiding in it; and the records of such training passed through by believers who have passed within the veil are to be anchors of the soul's peace to yet-enduring believers in their living the life of faith, helping them amidst the needful discipline to "occupy till He come."

16. The review now taken of the trial-helps of man's living by faith of the Son of God prepares us to ask, with some guidance to a comprehensive answer, What is the life of man's spirit that is nurtured and exercised by this living? These ways in which believers in Jesus "occupy till He come" are ways in which He is coming to them continually now," that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly." Peter tells us that living this (temporal) life in Him, "whom having not seen we love, in whom, though now we see Him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, we receive the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls" (1 Pet. i. 8, 9). What is that purpose of our faith, the salvation of our souls which we "receive "—¿.e., are receiving now? Evidently what believers do receive in the various exercises of living by faith of the Son of God is that which in a previous chapter was collected from a comparison of Scriptural examples as the essential feature of faith's experience, -a consciousness of union with Him. That union is logically the essential feature of a life which is described as lived "in Him," "by Him," "unto Him," "abiding in Him,” and "He abiding in us"-a conscious union, containing reciprocal action, the disruption of which was Adam's immediate death, and in all Adam's race is the condition of the evil heart of unbelief, "departing from the living God." Thus clearly described, both in the practice required of believers and in

God's gift, is Christ Jesus himself "all in all things." 'He is
our life;" "because He lives, we shall live also;" "when He
shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory." And He
himself is "the way, and the truth, and the life" of that
present new life, revealed to us as a life of union in kindred
and nature, a life of sonship, in which "man cometh to the
Father." Believers are not pupils, servants of a law, but
children, brothers and sisters of an individual. And they are
living, not in a state of self-regulating trial—not separate and
independent even in the sense of guiding themselves by prin-
ciples which they are to work out into practice-but are living
in the habitual consciousness that they are left by Him, the
Object of their faith and love, and repentance and obedience, at
a defined task-in a home, or place of work, or of trial, chosen for
them by Him-with selected talents He has committed to their
husbandry, to “occupy till He come." They are left in a state
of bodily separation from Him, which is to constrain them to
seek constantly a union in spirit with Him, in which they look
forward to His coming, not as to a state of indefinite happi-
ness or holiness, but to be "absent from the body and present
with the Lord," "to be with Him," and "to become like Him,
seeing Him as He is." The spiritual life whose present con-
sciousness is described in the phrases, "Occupy till I come;"
"I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me;" "to me to live is
Christ," &c., is the same life which when perfected is spoken
of in these terms of the Son's own life: "As Thou, Father,
art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us
(John xvii.)

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union with

17. "Till I come;' "I am the way, and the truth, and the Conscious life: no man cometh to the Father" (to the life of sonship) Christ. "but by me;" "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me;" "Abide in me, and I in you." This "I"-the sole subjective Ego, the "I AM" of revelation, "the life," in which human time is an episode, the single origin of all distributed life, "of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things"-must be contemplated in religious thought as the end, good, object, design, and desire of moral life, even as He is of all natural life; its source also from which, and to which, all

its thoughts and their works radiate and converge. Consciousness of self and of Him is to be the unifying practice and experience of the soul, the life it lives, having been dead and living now "not itself, but He living in it." To bring on this consciousness of union, the discipline of the walk and fight and patience and obedience of faith, the doctrine and reproof and correction of the Word, and the whole troubles and comforts, exercise and guidance, of providence and grace, are needed and are fitted. They educate the soul in the sense of helplessness looking unto Him, of difficulty absolutely needing Him, of comfort, health, and necessary enjoyment of which He is felt to be the source and treasure; that sense which the fruitful branch might be supposed to have of its need and its possession of the richness of the vine, or the members of their need and possession of the whole life of the being to whom they belong; that uniting sense of dependence and assurance first chosen to explain "believing in "-the infant's life in its nursing mother's arms.

The conscious union of helplessness to all-sufficing help, of emptiness made full, weakness made perfect of strength in His strength, is the life that living by faith gives even now; and how thoroughly does it gather home to itself all the metaphors of the life of salvation!-the recovered prodigal's life in his father, the brother born for adversity, the friend closer than a brother, the refuge, the shield, the sure portion, the habitation, rock, and fortress, the sheltering wings, the one lost sheep brought back to the broken flock, the little child's life in its mother, the wife's in her husband.

Union making oneness is the essential existence, the eternal life, which the present exercising living by faith is to lead up to, and accustom, and feed to more abundance. The oneness of that perfected life is expressively represented by two metaphors of the Christian Scriptures "the living stones built together in Him a spiritual house," "a habitation of God;" and "the members of Christ" growing together connected by joints and bands, making increase of the body growing up into Him "in all things, who is the Head" (1 Pet. ii. 4, 5; Eph. ii. 20, iv. 15, 16). And the consciousness of that eternal union

takes into clearest unifying connection the metaphors used of
heaven-the "rest" of home, which is reunited love; the ser-
vants' entering into the joy of their Lord; the life freed from
all separating influences of night or hunger or tears; the per-
fection of human life's essential happiness-that of living in
the light of some
'believed-in" one's countenance—when
there shall be no need of the sun, for the Lamb shall be the
light of the city of the Father's house of many mansions.

universe.

18. Some passages of Scripture open up to faith a glimpse of The healed the union of salvation wider than perfected human nature's consciousness, one extending beyond and around the healed life of the original lord of earthly creation—a foresight comforting much, and congruous to the thoughts now dwelt upon. It is of a universe of healed life, which is to be the home of that perfected life of man. Human restoration is to behold the union, into harmony and health and joy, of all nature's living elements which were made discordant and "subject to vanity," in connection with, perhaps because of and in curative anticipation of, man's fall into discordance of being. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now," "waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God" (Rom. viii.), "when He shall gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him in whom we have obtained an inheritance" (Eph. i.)

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19. The different features of the practice of faith dwelt Agreement upon in the preceding chapters are evidently necessary to ceding and accordant with our understanding faith as pervading and statements. making all this life of union. This unifying living by faith must be the habitual contemplation of a personal Object of love, thinking of Him not by the medium of a philosophical system or theory, but through the boundlesslydiversified facts of a rich history of love; in which feeble babes in Christ may have their powers of contemplation filled with but one or two things of Christ, and be perfectly blessed therein; and those of full growth may revel in a world of knowledge, yet only learning still the one joy of faith-His all-filling love. This unifying living by faith in the Son of