t he knows also that there stretch before him the possibilities of
infinite increase.

I. His life's aim was to have the closest possession of, and
incorporation in, Christ.

His two expressions, 'that I may gain Christ and be found in Him,' are
substantially identical in meaning, though they put the same truth from
different sides, and with some variety of metaphor. We may deal with
them separately.

The 'gain' is of course the opposite of the 'loss.' His balance-sheet
has on one side 'all things lost,' on the other 'Christ gained,' and
that is profitable trading. But we have to go deeper than such a
metaphor, and to give full scope to the Scriptural truth, that Christ
really imparts Himself to the believing soul. There is a real
communication of His own life to us, and thereby we live, as He Himself
declared, 'He that hath the Son hath life.' The true deep sense in which
we possess Christ is not to be weakened down, as it, alas! so often is
in our shallow Christianity, which is but the echo of a shallow
experience, and a feeble hold of that possession of the Son to which
Jesus called us, as the condition of our possession of life. Christ is
thus Himself possessed by all our faculties, each after its kind; head
and heart, passions and desires, hopes and longings, may each have Him
abiding in them, guiding them with His strong and gentle hand, animating
them into nobler life, restraining and controlling, gradually
transforming and ultimately conforming them to His own likeness. Till
that Divine Indweller enters in, the shrine is empty, and unclean things
lurk in its hidden corners. To be a man full summed in all his powers,
each of us must 'gain Christ.'

The other expression in the text, 'be found in Him,' presents the same
truth from the completing point of view. We gain Christ in us when we
are 'found in Him.' We are to be incorporated as members are in the
body, or imbedded as a stone in the foundation, or to go back to the
sweetest words, which are the source of all these representations,
included as 'a branch in the vine.' We are to be in Him for safety and
shelter, as fugitives take refuge in a strong tower when an enemy swarms
over the land.

'And lo! from sin and grief and shame,
I hide me, Jesus, in Thy name.'

We are to be in Him that the life sap may freely flow through us. We are
to be in Him that the Divine Love may fall on us, and that in Jesus we
may receive our portion of al