away; a new
security--guarded by the power of God through faith unto salvation.'
These things belong, _ipso facto_, and in the measure of his faith, to
every Christian man, a new life, a new hope, a new wealth, and a new
security; and in their conjoint action, all four of them brought to bear
upon a man's temper and spirit, will, if he is realising them, make him
glad.

Then, on the other hand, we have other fountains pouring their streams
into the same reservoir. And just as the deep fountains which are open
to us by faith will, if we continue to exercise that faith, flood our
spirits with sweet waters, so these other fountains will pour their
bitter floods over every heart more or less abundantly and continually.
'Now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
temptations.' There are confluent streams that one has sometimes seen,
where a clear river joins, and flows in the same bed with, one all foul
with half-melted ice, and the two run side by side for a space, scarcely
mingling their waters. Thus the paradox of the Christian life is that
within the same narrow banks may flow the sunny and the turbid, the
clear and the dark, the sorrow that springs from earthly fountains, the
joy that pours from the heavenly heights.

Now notice that this is only one case of the paradox of the whole
Christian life. For the peculiarity of it is that it owns two;--it
belongs to, and is exposed to, all the influences of the forces and
things of time, whilst in regard to its depths, it belongs to, and is
under the influence of, 'the things that are unseen and eternal'; so
that you have the external life common to the Christian and to all
other people, and then you have the life 'hid with Christ in God,' the
roots of it going down through all the superficial soil, and grappling
the central rock of all things. Thus a series of paradoxes and perennial
contradictions describes the twofold life that every believing spirit
lives, 'as unknown and yet well known, as dying and, behold we live, as
sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making rich, as having
nothing and yet possessing all things.'

Remember, too, that according to Peter's conception neither of these two
sources pours out a flood which obliterates or dams back the other. They
are to co-exist. The joy is not to deprive the heaviness of its weight,
nor the sorrow of its sting. There is no artificial stoicism about
Christianity, no attempt to sophisticate