Each individual has been called into
membership in the Body, in order that he might reflect some one of the
scattered rays of that glory; might embody in himself one aspect of the
infinite perfection of the Son of man. So would each of us truly "come
to himself," realise all that he is capable of becoming.

That progress of the Body of Christ towards its goal is described by St.
Paul as being a growth of the Christ Himself. He is "at all points in
all men being fulfilled." There is a true and important sense in which
the Incarnation is as yet incomplete, in which the life-history of the
Church is its growing completeness. Our individual task is the
realisation in ourselves of that part of the Christ life which we,
individually, have been created to embody.

3. It will be useful to sum up the Character, the Mind and Will of
Christ, in a single phrase. Consider how He impressed His
contemporaries. What was it which they saw in Him, who knew Him best,
and had been united to Him by close ties of comradeship and discipleship?
In one word, what they saw was Sonship. "We beheld His glory, as of an
Only-Begotten from a Father." The Mind and Will of Christ are the
perfect realisation of the Divine Sonship in our humanity.

But what is the meaning of God's Fatherhood and man's sonship? The
ultimate truth of the relationship, the truth which underlies all such
conceptions as care, love, obedience, is community of nature. Our human
nature is really akin to the Divine. We are sons of God because our
spiritual life is of one piece with His as derived from it. Baptism
introduces no new element into our nature. By sacramental union with the
Only Begotten, the Ground and Archetype of all sonship, it enables us to
realise that which is in us, to actually become that which, potentially,
we are. It gives us "power to become children of God," to attain the
meaning of our manhood, to regain our true selves.

4. Baptism gives power, all sacraments give power, but in such wise that
that power is useless, even, _in a sense_, non-existent, till we make it
ours by deliberate exertion, by co-operation of mind and heart and will
with the Divine in us.

The end of our living, to become truly and completely the sons of God, is
to be attained by the joint action of two factors--

(1) The Spirit of Christ conforming our minds and wills more and more to
the likeness of Christ.

(2) The co-operation of our whole personality with