alised in Christ Jesus. Now, this letter of the Apostle is
distinguished even amongst his letters by the extraordinary frequency
and emphasis with which he uses that expression 'in Christ Jesus.' If
you will take up the epistle, and run your eye over it at your leisure,
I think you will be surprised to find how, in all connections, and
linked with every sort of blessing and good as its condition, there
recurs that phrase. It is 'in Christ' that we obtain the inheritance; it
is 'in Christ' that we receive 'redemption, even the forgiveness of
sins'; it is in Him that we are 'builded together for a habitation of
God'; it is in Him that all fulness of divine gifts, and all blessedness
of spiritual capacities, is communicated to us; and unless, in our
perspective of the Christian life, that expression has the same
prominence as it has in this letter, we have yet to learn the sweetest
sweetness, and have yet to receive the most mighty power, of the Gospel
that we profess. 'In Christ'--a union which leaves the individuality of
the Saviour and of the saint unimpaired, because without such
individuality sweet love were slain, and there were no communion
possible, but which is so close, so real, so vital, as that only the
separating wall of personality and individual consciousness comes in
between--that is the New Testament teaching of the relation of the
Christian to Christ. Is it your experience, dear brother? Do not be
frightened by talking about mysticism. If a Christianity has no
mysticism it has no life. There is a wholesome mysticism and there is a
morbid one, and the wholesome one is the very nerve of the Gospel as it
is presented by Jesus Himself: 'I am the Vine, ye are the branches.
Abide in Me, and I in you.' If our nineteenth century busy Christianity
could only get hold of that truth as firmly as it grasps the
representative and sacrificial character of Christ's work, I believe it
would come like a breath of spring over 'the winter of our discontent,'
and would change profoundly and blessedly the whole contexture of modern
Christianity.

And now there is another step to take, and that is that this union with
Christ, which results in the communication of a new life, or, as my text
puts it, a new creation, depends upon our faith. We are not passive in
the matter. There is the condition on which the entrance of the life
into our spirits is made possible. You must open the door, you must
fling wide the casement, and the