that, in comparison with the
completion that is waiting the Christian soul beyond the grave, all of
the same life that is here enjoyed dwindles into nothingness. It appears
to me that these two sides of the truth, the essential identity of the
life of the Christian soul beyond and here, and the all but infinite
differences and progresses which separate the two, are both needful,
very needful, to be kept in view by us.

There is here on earth, amidst all our imperfections and weakness and
sin, a root in the heart that trusts in Christ, which only needs to be
transplanted into its congenial soil to blossom and burgeon into
undreamed of beauty, and to bear fruit the savour of which no mortal
lips can ever taste. The dwarfed rhododendrons in our shrubberies have
in them the same nature as the giants that adorn the slopes of the
Himalayas. Transplant these exotics to their native soil, and you would
see what it was in them to be. Think of the life that is now at its
best; its weakness, its blighted hopes, its thwarted aims, its foiled
endeavours; think of its partings, its losses, its conflicts. Think of
its disorders, its sins, and consequent sufferings; think of the shadow
at its close, which flings long trails of blackness over many preceding
years. Think of its swift disappearance, and then say if such a poor,
fragmentary thing is worthy of the name of life, if that were all that
the man was for.

But it is not all. There is a 'life which is life indeed,' over which
no shadow can pass, nor any sorrow darken the blessed faces or clog the
happy hearts of those who possess it. They 'have all and abound.' They
know all and are at rest. They dread nothing, and nothing do they
regret. They leave nothing behind as they advance, and of their serenity
and their growth there is no end. That is worth calling life. It lies
beyond this dim spot of earth. It is 'hid with Christ in God.'

II. Secondly, notice that conduct here determines the possession of the
true life.

Paul never cares whether he commits the rhetorical blunder of mixing up
metaphors or not. That matters very little, except to a pedant and a
rhetorician. In his impetuous way he blends three here, and has no time
to stop to disentangle them. They all mean substantially the same thing
which I have stated in the words that conduct here determines the
possession of life hereafter; but they put it in three different
figurative fashions which we may separate and look at