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beautifying and ennobling of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come.
For resurrection living
There is resurrection power, And the praise and prayer of trusting
May glorify each hour. For common days are holy,
And years an Eastertide, To those who with the living Lord
In living faith abide.
3. Death to sin precedes resurrection. — We die to sin when we sink ourselves into the death of our Lord. We identify ourselves with Him, receiving into our own life (in the contact of faith and of the Spirit) all the triumphant energies of a love, a compassion, an endurance, a meekness, a lowliness, a truthfulness, a fidelity, a righteousness, which rose to meet the last and loftiest demands of the Divine holiness. We withdraw the controlling force of our nature (let us call it our personality) from those sinful affections which reside in the flesh, and centre it on those whicli have been introduced into our life through union with Christ.
^ It seems to me that the Bible teaches us that such truths as that of the death to sin are by no means to be considered as true only under conditions and limitations, only by a tacit sup- pression of existing facts ; nay, that such truths express just the most absolutely true and fundamental facts, and that any other facts which are apparently at variance with them are themselves only conditionally and secondarily true.
St. Paul acknowledges the deflexion of men's acts from the state in which he believes them actually as a matter of fact to stand, just as much as any modern religionist could do ; but he does not make the deflexion itself to be the true characteristic of men. He says, " You are in a right and ^.rue state, I beseech you to walk accordingly." This is his standard formula. He refers men's irregular acts to their walk, not to what they are. There is, of course, a question behind, on which language must needs be contradictory — In virtue of what are men dead to sin ? and further, Who then are dead to sin ?
The first question is of course answered by St. Paul — in virtue of Christ's death on the cross. But, though this really contains the answer to the second question, it is not usually understood to do so. The answer must be, All who bear the same flesh and
484 RISEN WITH CHRIST
blood which Christ bore. It is therefore strictly true that every Jew, heathen, or outcast from the true fold of any kind is, in St. Paul's words, already "dead to sin." But it is not the less needful that this eternal and invisible truth should have a temporal and outward embodiment and attestation ; and that can be only by baptism. Therefore St, Paul connects the state with a past completed act, by which it was formally taken possession of. The outward temporal act of passing from the world into the Church was the true symbol of the transition (if so it may be called) from " nature " to " grace," from the life of sin and death of man (Rom. vii. 9, 10) to the death to sin and life of man, which in reality does not belong to time at all, at least only in so far as evil and sin themselves are only temporal.^
^ As Christ died, so must we die. Wilberforce died to fashion that he might live unto humanity ; Ruskin died to gold that he might live to beauty; Darwin died to society that he might live to science; and every man's higher life begins in a death.2
^ A beautiful treatise has come to us out of the Middle Ages. It is entitled " The Craft of Dying." Its aim is so to fortify the child of God, as he addresses himself to go down into the " ghostly battle " that marks the end of his militant course, that he may " die well." We need a similar treatise to teach us how to die with Christ. " Ye have died with him," says the Apostle, there- fore " reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus." ^
Touch the rock-door of my heart,
Christ, dead for my sin ! Say, "Come — let us rise, and depart
From the shadows within —
Out where the light of the stars
Shines clear overhead, Where the soul is free from its bars,
And Sin lies dead."
And dead the old Shadow lies.
That has chilled my breast; Say to the sleepers, "Arise!"
Lead them to rest !
* F. J. A. Hort, Life and Letters, i. 407.
* W. L. Watkinson, The Bane and the Antidote, 111. ^ D. M. Mclntyre, life in His Name, 176.
COLOSSIANS III. I 485
(1) The Apostle seems to have had in his mind the sacrament of Baptism, which was viewed as symbolic of the death and rising again of Christ, and of the Christian in mystical union with Him. The convert went solemnly down into the font, and this was expressive of his spiritual burial; then after immersing his head three times, he ascended out of the font, and this was expressive of his new and spiritual life in Christ. In the previous chapter we read, " Buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead."