ly a preliminary to sowing the seed. My friend! If Jesus
Christ has laid hold of you, and you have let Him keep hold of you, it
is not only that you may be forgiven, not only that you may sun yourself
in the light of God's countenance, and feel that a new blessed relation
is set up between you and Him, but there are great purposes lying at the
back of that, of which all that is only the preliminary and the
preparation.

Conversion. Yes; but what is the good of turning a man round unless he
goes in the direction in which his face is turned? And so here the
Apostle having for years lived in the light of that great thought, that
God was reconciled in Jesus Christ, and that he was God's friend,
discerns far beyond that, in dim perspective, towering high above the
land in the front, the snowy sunlit summits of a great range to which he
has yet to climb, and says, 'I press on to lay hold of that for which I
was laid hold of by Jesus Christ.'

And what was that? On the road to Damascus Paul was only told one thing,
that Christ had grasped him and drawn him to Himself in order that He
might make him a chosen vessel to bear the Word far hence amongst the
Gentiles. The bearing of His conversion upon Paul himself was never
mentioned. The bearing of His conversion on the world was the only
subject that Jesus spoke of at first. But here Paul has nothing to say
about his world-wide mission. He does not think of himself as being
called to be an Apostle, but as being summoned to be a Christian. And
so, forgetting for the time all the glorious and yet burdensome
obligations which were laid upon him, and the discharge of which was the
very life of his life, he thinks only of what affects his own character,
the perfecting of which he regards as being the one thing for which he
was 'laid hold of by Christ Jesus.' The purpose is twofold. No Christian
man is made a Christian only in order that he may secure his own
salvation; there is the world to think of. No Christian man is made a
Christian only in order that he may be Christ's instrument for carrying
the Word to other people; there is himself to think of. And these two
phases of the purpose for which Jesus Christ lays hold upon us are very
hard to unite in practice, giving to each its due place and prominence,
and they are often separated, to the detriment of both the one that is
attended to, and the one that is neglected. The monastic life has not
produced the noblest Christians; and t