here are pitfalls lying in the
path of every man who, like me, has for his profession to preach the
Gospel, which, if they are fallen into, the inward life is utterly
wrecked.

The two sides of Christ's purpose have, in our practice, to be held
together, but for the present I only wish to say a word or two about
that which, as I have indicated, is but one hemisphere of the completed
orb, and that is our personal culture and growth in the divine life.
What did Christ lay hold of me for? Paul answers the question very
strikingly and beautifully in a previous verse. Here is his conception
of the purpose, 'that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection,
and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His
death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the
dead.' That is what you were forgiven for; that is what you have 'passed
from death unto life' for; that is what you have come into the sweet
fellowship of God, and can think of Him as your Friend and Helper for.

Let us take the clauses _seriatim_, and say a word about each of them.
'That I may know Him.' Ah! there is a great deal more in Jesus Christ
than a man sees when he first sees Him through his tears and his fears,
and apprehends Him as the Saviour of his soul, and the sacrifice on whom
the burden and the guilt of his sins were laid. We must begin there, as
I believe. But woe to us if we stop there. There is far more in Christ
than that; although all that is in Him is included in that, yet you have
to dig deep before you find all that is included in it. You have to live
with Him day by day, and year by year, and to learn to know Him as we
learn to know husbands and wives, by continual intercourse, by continual
experience of a sweet and unfailing love, by many a sacred hour of
interchange of affection and reception of gifts and counsels. It is only
thus that we learn to know what Jesus Christ is. When He lays hold of
us, He comes like the angel that came to Peter in the prison in the dark
and awoke him out of his sleep and said 'Rise! and follow me.' It is
only when we get out into the street, and have been with Him for awhile,
and the daylight begins to stream in, that we see clearly the face of
our Deliverer, and know Him for all that He is. This knowledge is not
the sort of knowledge that you can get by thinking, or out of a book.
It is the knowledge of experience. It is the knowledge of love, it is
the knowledge of union