, may help us to supply the missing words. He speaks of the
'love of Christ which passeth knowledge,' and of God being 'able to do
exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.' The power
which is really at work in Christian men to-day is in its nature
properly transcendent and immeasurable, and passes thought and desire
and knowledge.

And yet it has a measure. 'According to the working of the strength of
the might which He wrought in Christ.' Is that heaping together of
synonyms or all but synonyms, mere tautology? Surely not. Commentators
tell us that they can distinguish differences of meaning between the
words, in that the first of them is the more active and outward, and the
last of them is the more inward. And so they liken them to fruit and
branch and root; but we need simply say that the gathering together of
words so nearly co-extensive in their meaning is witness to the effort
to condense the infinite within the bounds of human tongue, to speak the
unspeakable; and that these reiterated expressions, like the blows of
the billows that succeed one another on the beach, are hints of the
force of the infinite ocean that lies behind.

And then the Apostle, when he has once come in sight of his risen Lord,
as is his wont, is swept away by the ardour of his faith and the
clearness of his vision, and breaks from his purpose in order to dilate
on the glories of his King. We do not need to follow him into that. I
limit myself now to the words which I have read as my text, with only
such reference to the magnificent passage which succeeds as may be
necessary for the exposition of this.

I. So, then, I ask you to look, first, at the measure and example of the
immeasurable power that works in Christian men.

'According to the working of the strength of the might which He wrought
in Christ'--the Resurrection, the Ascension, the session at the right
hand of God, the rule over all creatures, and the exaltation above all
things on earth or in the heavens--these are the facts which the Apostle
brings before us as the pattern-works, the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of the
power that is operating in all Christians. The present glories of the
ascended Christ are glories possessed by a Man, and, that being so, they
are available as evidences and measures of the power which works in
believing souls. In them we see the possibilities of humanity, the ideal
for man which God had when He created and breathed His blessing upon
him. I