and upon him, and
meant something when He did it, that he fights on with all his might to
realise Christ's purpose, and to get and keep the thing which Christ
meant him to have. There is stimulus in the thought, I was laid hold of
by Him for a purpose. There is all the difference between striving,
however eagerly, however nobly, however strenuously, however constantly,
after self-improvement, by one's own effort only, and striving after it
because one knows that he is therein fulfilling the purpose for which
Jesus Christ drew him to Himself.

And if that be so, then the nature of the thing to be laid hold of
determines what we are to do to lay hold of it. And since to know
Christ, and the power of His Resurrection, and the fellowship of His
sufferings, is the aim and end of our conversion, the way to secure it
must be keeping in continual touch with Jesus by meditating upon Him, by
holding many a moment of still, sacred, sweet communion with Him, by
carefully avoiding whatever might come between us and our knowledge of
Him, and the influx of His life into us, and by yielding ourselves, day
by day, to the continual influence of His divine grace upon us and by
the discipline which shall make our inward natures more and more capable
of receiving more and more of that dear Lord. These being the things to
do, in regard to the inward life, there must be effort too, in regard to
the outward; for we must, if we are to lay hold of that for which we are
laid hold of by Jesus Christ, bring all the outward life under the
dominion of this inward impulse, and when the flood pours into our
hearts we must, by many a sluice and trench, guide it into every corner
of the field, that all may be irrigated. The first thing they do when
they are going to sow rice in an Eastern field is to flood it, and then
they cast in the seed, and it germinates. Flood your lives with Christ,
and then sow the seed and you will get a crop.

III. Lastly, the text suggests the incompleteness of our grasp.

'I follow that,' says Paul, 'if that I may apprehend.' This letter was
written far on in his career, in the time of his imprisonment in Rome,
which all but ended his ministerial activity; and was many years after
that day on the road to Damascus. And yet, matured Christian and
exercised Apostle as he was, with all that past behind him, he says, 'I
follow after, that I may apprehend.' Ah, brother, our experience must be
incomplete, for we have an infinite a