standard may
sound abstract, cloudy, hard to connect with any definite anticipations;
and so this form of it is concrete, historical, and gives human features
to the fair ideal. His Resurrection is the high-water mark of the divine
power, and to the same level it will rise again in regard to every
Christian. The Lord, in the glory of His risen life, and in the riches
of the gifts which He received when He ascended up on high, is the
pattern for us, and the power which fulfils its own pattern. In Him we
see what man may become, and what His followers must become. The limits
of that power will not be reached until every Christian soul is
perfectly assimilated to that likeness, and bears all its beauty in its
face, nor till every Christian soul is raised to participation in
Christ's dignity and sits on His throne. Then, and not till then, shall
the purpose of God be fulfilled and the gift which is measured by the
riches of the Father's glory, and the fulness of the Son's grace, be
possessed or conceived in its measureless measure.

But there is a third form in which this same standard is represented.
That is the form which is found in our text, and in other places of the
epistle: 'According to the power that worketh in us.'

What power is that but the power of the Spirit of God dwelling in us?
And thus we have the measure, or standard, set forth in terms
respectively applying to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. For
the first, the riches of His glory; for the second, His Resurrection and
Ascension; for the third, His energy working in Christian souls. The
first carries us up into the mysteries of God, where the air is almost
too subtle for our gross lungs; the second draws nearer to earth and
points us to an historical fact that happened in this everyday world;
the third comes still nearer to us, and bids us look within, and see
whether what we are conscious of there, if we interpret it by the light
of these other measures, will not yield results as great as theirs, and
open before us the same fair prospect of perfect holiness and conformity
to the divine nature.

There is already a Power at work within us, if we be Christians, of
whose workings we may be aware, and from them forecast the measure of
the gifts which it can bestow upon us. We may estimate what will be by
what we know has been, and by what we feel is. That is to say, in other
words, the effects already produced, and the experiences we have already
h