th in you, except ye be rejected?' Brethren, it
seems to me to be of the very last importance, in this period of the
Church's history, that the proportion between the Church's teaching
as to the work of Christ on the Cross, and as to the consequent work
of the Spirit of Christ in our hearts and spirits, should be changed.
We must become more mystical if we are not to become less Christian.
And the fact that so many of us seem to imagine that the whole Gospel
lies in this, that 'He died for our sins according to the
Scriptures,' and have relegated the teaching that He, by His Spirit,
lives in us, if we are His disciples, to a less prominent place, has
done enormous harm, not only to the type of Christian life, but to
the conception of what Christianity is, both amongst those who
receive it, and amongst those who do not accept it, making it out to
be nothing more than a means of escape from the consequences of our
transgression, instead of recognising it for what it is, the
impartation of a new life which will flower into all beauty, and bear
fruit in all goodness.

There was a question put once to a group of disciples, in
astonishment and incredulity, by this Apostle, when he said to the
twelve disciples in Ephesus, 'Did you receive the Holy Ghost when you
believed?' The question might well be put to a multitude of
professing Christians amongst us, and I am afraid a great many of
them, if they answered truly, would answer as those disciples did,
'We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.'

And now for the second point in my text--

II. The love which is shed abroad by that Spirit.

Now, I suppose I do not need to do more than point out that 'the love
of God' here means His to us, and not ours to Him, and that the
metaphor employed is but partially represented by that rendering
'shed abroad.' 'Poured out' would better convey Paul's image, which
is that of a flood sent coursing through the heart, or, perhaps,
rather lying there, as a calm deep lake on whose unruffled surface
the heavens, with all their stars, are reflected. Of course, if God's
love to us thus suffuses a heart, then there follows the
consciousness of that love; though it is not the consciousness of the
love that the Apostle is primarily speaking of, but that which lies
behind it, the actual flowing into the human heart of that sweet and
all-satisfying Love. This Divine Spirit that dwells in us, if we are
trusting in Christ, will pou