things around us; death comes when we get out of touch. Spiritual life is correspondence with Him who is a spirit ; it is trust, it is truth. Every antagonist of God — the world, the flesh, the devil — seeks to break our fellowship with God. Till Satan came, Adam walked with God ; then he hid himself. Jesus comes
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to the hidden Adam that He may restore the fellowship. " That they all may be one as we are : I in them, and thou in me." " If a man love me, he will keep my words : and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
3. The thief comes to destroy: Jesus comes to give life abundantly. Before the thief — be he world, flesh, devil — can destroy, he must get us in his grasp. This is a late stage of the process. We lose when we begin to follow the world ; then we are killed, the very conscience becoming blunt and blind; then we are utterly destroyed, generally body and soul, though the body does not always visibly show it. Before Jesus can give us life in abundance, He must give us life. We are first born again, and then we are changed into the same image from glory to glory.
I.
Life.
1. Suppose we were asked any of the following questions : — Can you tell me in a word the subject of the New Testament ? Or, can you explain, just as briefly, the object with which Christ came into the world ? Or, can you indicate the final purpose of the multitude of various religious organizations and movements which we find at work all round us, many of them tendino-, like other kinds of modern machinery, to become more and more complex ? Can you say why all the sermons are preached, why all the various services are held, why all our Communions are made ?
Will not a single word answer all these questions ? Surely
the one word "life" is a sufficient reply to them all. Is not
life the one subject of all Christian teaching and study ? Is not life the one object of every kind of Christian effort ?
2. From time to time in the course of His ministry our Lord briefly, yet quite comprehensively expressed, by means of some pregnant phrase, His whole purpose and object. For instance, in the hearing of the Pharisees, He said it was "ior judgment " that He came into this world. Then He told Pilate that He came " to bear witness of the truth." But never more fully or completely
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did our Lord express the whole purpose of His mission than in these words of the text — " I came that they may have life."
^ Sum up the gospel in a single word, and that one word is "life." Get at the heart of all Christ had to teach, and life is nestling against that heart. One thought determines every other thought ; one fact interprets and arranges everything, and that one fact, so dominant and regal, is the deep fact of life. Deeper than faith, for faith is but a name, unless it issue from a heart that lives ; deeper than love, though God Himself be love, for without life love would be impossible, life is the compendium of the gospel, the sweet epitome of all its news ; it is the word that gathers in itself the music and the ministry of Christ. " The words that I speak unto you," He said, " they are spirit, and they are life." "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." " I am the way, and the truth, and the life." " I am the resurrection and the life." All that He came to teach, all that He was, is summed and centred in that little word.^
3. There are always two ways of interpreting such a word as " life," when we find it in Holy Scripture. There is the exclusive or distinctive meaning, in which, e.g.^ life stands for the " life that is life indeed," eternal life, the highest life of the soul. And there is the inclusive or general meaning, in which the word gathers up and covers all the meanings of which it is capable, so that in this case life would mean vitality in all its forms, from physical vigour up to the highest energies of man's spirit inspired by the Spirit of God.
^ Before all things beware of narrow and unworthy conceptions of life. That which God hath joined, let not man put asunder. The animal life, the social life, and the spiritual life form one organic whole ; and though we can have the lower without the higher, we cannot have the higher without the lower. The social life is unsound if the animal life is stunted in the slums or the monasteries, and the life to God is maimed if either the social life or the animal life is counted profane. No doubt it is bettei to enter into life with one eye than to be cast into outer darkness ; but it is better still to enter having two eyes. As the plant feeds on things without life, so the animal life feeds ultimately on plant life, the social life feeds on the animal life, and the life to God feeds on the social life.^