nourished, for each member, drawing life directly and
without the intervention of any other from Christ the Source, draws
also from his fellow-Christian some form of the common life that to
himself is unfamiliar, and needs human intervention in order to its
reception. Such dependence upon one's brethren is not inconsistent
with a primal dependence on Christ alone, and is a safeguard against
the cultivating of one's own idiosyncrasies till they become diseased
and disproportionate. The most slenderly endowed Christian soul has
the double charge of giving to, and receiving from, its brethren. We
have all something which we can contribute to the general stock. We
have all need to supplement our own peculiar gifts by brotherly
ministration. The prime condition of Christian vitality has been set
forth for ever by the gracious invitation, which is also an
imperative command, 'Abide in Me and I in you'; but they who by such
abiding are recipients of a communicated life are not thereby
isolated, but united to all who like them have received 'the
manifestation of the Spirit to do good with.'

GRACE AND GRACES

'Having then gifts, differing according to the grace that
is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according
to the proportion of faith; 7. Or ministry, let us wait on
our ministering; or he that teacheth, on teaching; 8. Or he
that exhorteth, on exhortation; he that giveth, let him do
it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that
showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.'--ROMANS xii. 6-8.

The Apostle here proceeds to build upon the great thought of the
unity of believers in the one body a series of practical
exhortations. In the first words of our text, he, with characteristic
delicacy, identifies himself with the Roman Christians as a
recipient, like them, of 'the grace that is given to us,' and as,
therefore, subject to the same precepts which he commends to them. He
does not stand isolated by the grace that is given to him; nor does
he look down as from the height of his apostleship on the multitude
below, saying to them,--Go. As one of themselves he stands amongst
them, and with brotherly exhortation says,--Come. If that had been
the spirit in which all Christian teachers had besought men, their
exhortations would less frequently have been breath spent in vain.
We may note

I. The grace that gives the gifts.

The connection between these two is more emphatically su