h with Him, so that in our experience
there may be a repetition in a higher form of that strange experience
alleged to be familiar in hypnotism, where the bitter in one mouth is
tasted in another.

So, what we ought to make our aim is that in our lives our growing
knowledge of Christ should lead to the two results, so inexorably
intertwined, of daily death and daily resurrection, and that we may be
kept faithful to Him so that our outward sufferings may be caused by our
union with Him, and not by our own faithlessness, and may be discerned
by us to be fellowship with His. Then we shall also feel that He bears
ours with us, and sorrow itself will be calmed and beautified into a
silent bliss, as the chill peaks when the morning strikes them glow with
tender pink, and seem soft and warm, though they are grim rock and
ice-cold snow. Then some faint echo of His history 'who was acquainted
with grief' may be audible in our outward lives and we, too, may have
our Gethsemane and our Calvary. It may not be presumption in us to say
'We are able' when He asks 'Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of'?
nor terror to hear Him prophesy 'Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I
drink of,' for we shall remember 'joint-heirs in Christ, if so be that
we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.'

IV. The end attained.

The Christian life as here manifested is even in its highest forms
manifestly incomplete. It is a reflected light, and like the reflected
light in the heavens, advances by imperceptible degrees to fill the
whole silver round. It may be 'e'en in its imperfections beautiful,' but
it assuredly has 'a ragged edge.' The hypothetical form of the last
words of our text does not so much imply a doubt of the possibility of
attaining the result as the recognition of the indispensable condition
of effort on the part of him who attains it. That effort forthcoming,
the attainment is certain.

The Revised Version makes a slight correction which involves a great
matter, in reading 'the resurrection _from_ the dead.' It is necessary
to insist on this change in rendering, not because it implies that only
saints are raised, but because Paul is thinking of that first
resurrection of which the New Testament habitually speaks. 'The dead in
Christ shall rise first' as he himself declared in his earliest epistle,
and the seer in the Apocalypse shed a benediction on 'him that hath part
in the first resurrection.' Our knowledge o