cended Christ give
us the measure of the power, but also the limited experience of the
present Christian life, the fact of the resurrection from the true
death, the death of sin, the fact of union with Jesus Christ so real and
close as that they who truly experience it do live, as far as the roots
of their lives and the scope and the aim of them are concerned, 'in the
heavens,' and 'sit with Him in heavenly places'--these things afford us
the measure of the power that worketh in us.

Then, because a Man is King of kings and Lord of lords; and because He
who is our Life 'is exalted high above all principalities and powers';
and because from His throne He has quickened us from the death of sin,
and has drawn us so near to Himself that if we are His we truly live
beside Him, even whilst we stumble here in the darkness, we may know the
exceeding greatness of His power, according to the working of the
strength of the might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from
the dead.

II. Secondly, notice the knowledge of the unknowable power.

We have already come across the same apparent paradox, covering a deep
truth, in the former sections of this series of petitions. I need only
remind you, in reference to this matter, that the knowledge which is
here in question is not the intellectual perception of a fact as
revealed in Scripture, but is that knowledge to which alone the New
Testament gives the noble name, being knowledge verified by inward
experience, and the result of one's own personal acquaintance with its
object.

How do we know a power? By thrilling beneath its force. How are we to
know the greatness of the power but because it comes surging and
rejoicing into our aching emptiness, and lifts us buoyant above our
temptations and weakness? Paul was not asking for these people
theological conceptions. He was asking that their spirits might be so
saturated with and immersed in that great ocean of force that pours from
God as that they should never, henceforth, be able to doubt the
greatness of that power which wrought in them. The knowledge that comes
from experience is the knowledge that we all ought to seek. It is not
merely to be desired that we should have right and just conceptions, but
that we should have the vital knowledge which is, and which comes from,
life eternal.

And that power, which thus we may all know by feeling it working upon
ourselves, though it be immeasurable, has its measure; though it b