e Divine Spirit, if I
might use such a metaphor, sets a man on an insulating stool, and all
the currents that move round about him are powerless to reach him. If
we have that Divine Spirit within us, it will give us an experience
of the preciousness and the truth, the certitude and the sweetness,
of Christ's Gospel, which will make it impossible that we should ever
cast away the confidence which has such 'recompense of reward.' No
man will be surely bound to the truth and person of Christ with bonds
that cannot be snapped, except he who in his heart has the knowledge
of Him which is possession, and by the gift of the Divine Spirit is
knit to Jesus Christ.

So, dear friends, whilst the world is full of wise words about
steadfastness, and exalts determination of character and fixity of
purpose, rightly, as the basis of much good, our Gospel comes to us
poor, light, thistledown creatures, and lets us see how we can be
steadfast and settled by being fastened to a steadfast and settled
Christ. When storms are raging they lash light articles on deck to
holdfasts. Let us lash ourselves to the abiding Christ, and we, too,
shall abide.

II. In the next place, notice the aim or purpose of this Christian
steadfastness.

'He stablisheth us with you in Christ,' or as the original has it
even more significantly, _into_ or '_unto_ Christ.' Now that seems to
me to imply two things--first, that our steadfastness, made possible
by our possession of that Divine Spirit, is steadfastness in our
relations to Jesus Christ. We are established in reference or in
regard to Him. In other words, what Paul here means is, first, a
fixed conviction of the truth that He is the Christ, the Son of God,
the Saviour of the world, and my Saviour. That is the first step. Men
who are steadfast without their intellect guiding and settling the
steadfastness are not steadfast, but obstinate and pigheaded. We are
meant to be guided by our understandings, and no fixity is anything
better than the immobility of a stone, unless it be based upon a
distinct and whole-brained intellectual acceptance of Jesus Christ as
the All-in-all for us, for life and death, for inward and outward
being.

Paul means, next, a steadfastness in regard to Christ in our trust
and love. Surely if from Him there is for ever streaming out an
unbroken flow of tenderness, there should be ever on our sides an
equally unbroken opening of our hearts for the reception of His love,
and an e