general law, which goes to
the very depths of the Christian life.

Now, notice, we have here in three clauses three stages which we may
venture to distinguish as the fountain, the basin, the stream. 'God is
able to make all grace abound toward you';--there is the fountain. 'That
ye always, having all-sufficiency in all things';--there is the basin
that receives the gush from the fountain. 'May abound in every good
work';--there is the steam that comes from the basin. The fountain pours
into the basin, that the flow from the basin may feed the stream.

Now this thought of Paul's goes to the heart of things. So let us look
at it.

I. The Fountain.

The Christian life in all its aspects and experiences is an outflow from
the 'the Fountain of Life,' the giving God. Observe how emphatically the
Apostle, in the context, accumulates words that express universality:
'_all_ grace . . . _all_-sufficiency for _all_ things . . . _every_ good
work.' But even these expressions do not satisfy Paul, and he has to
repeat the word 'abound,' in order to give some faint idea of his
conception of the full tide which gushes from the fountain. It is 'all
grace,' and it is abounding grace.

Now what does he mean by 'grace'? That word is a kind of shorthand for
the whole sum of the unmerited blessings which come to men through Jesus
Christ. Primarily, it describes what we, for want of a better
expression, have to call a 'disposition' in the divine nature; and it
means, then, if so looked at, the unconditioned, undeserved,
spontaneous, eternal, stooping, pardoning love of God. That is grace, in
the primary New Testament use of the phrase.

But there are no idle 'dispositions' in God. They are always energising,
and so the word glides from meaning the disposition, to meaning the
manifestation and activities of it, and the 'grace' of our Lord is that
love in exercise. And then, since the divine energies are never
fruitless, the word passes over, further, to mean all the blessed and
beautiful things in a soul which are the consequences of the Promethean
truth of God's loving hand, the outcome in life of the inward bestowment
which has its cause, its sole cause, in God's ceaseless, unexhausted
love, unmerited and free.

That, very superficially and inadequately set forth, is at least a
glimpse into the fulness and greatness of meaning that lies in that
profound New Testament word, 'grace.' But the Apostle here puts
emphasis on the variety o