ith me, if I will let Him. Christ is my pattern, and
the measure of my own possibilities.

To be with Him, where and what He is, is the only adequate result of the
power that works in us, and of the process that is already begun in us,
if we are Christian people. You are sometimes--there is one eminent
example of it in that great Medicean Chapel at Florence--a statue
exquisitely finished in all its limbs, but one part left in the rough.
That is the best that Christian people come to here. Shall it always be
so? Do not the very imperfections prophesy completion, and is it not
certain that the half-finished torso will be carried to the upper
workshop, and be there disengaged from the dead marble and made to stand
out in perfect beauty and fullest completeness? Christ is the object of
our hopes, and no hopes of the Christian life are adequate to the power
that works in us, or to the progress already made, which do not see in
the 'energy of the might of the power' which wrought in Christ, the
example and the guarantee of the exceeding greatness of 'His power which
is to usward.'

And now, one last word. Besides all these passages which have been
occupying us, there is another use of this same phrase in this letter
which presents a very solemn and grim contrast. I can do no better with
it than simply read it: 'Ye were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein
in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according
to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now
worketh'--mark the allusion to the other words that we have been
referring to--'in the children of disobedience.' So there you have the
alternative, either 'dead in trespasses and sins,' whilst living the
physical and the intellectual life, or partaking of the life of Him 'who
was dead, and is alive for ever more'; either 'walking according to the
course of this world,' which is 'disobedience' and 'wrath,' or walking
'according to the power that worketh in us'; either 'putting on,' or
rather continuing to wear, 'the old man which is corrupt according to
the lusts which deceive,' or 'putting on the new man, which according to
God is created in righteousness and holiness and truth.' The choice is
before us. May God help us to choose aright!

GOD'S INHERITANCE AND OURS

'In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, ... the earnest of
our inheritance.'--Eph. i. 11, 14.

A dewdrop twinkles into green and gold as the sunlight f