no man say that it is impossible for a pure life to be
lived in any circumstances, or try to bribe his conscience by insisting
on the difficulties of his environment. It may be our duty to stand at
our post however foul may be our surroundings and however uncongenial
our company, and if we are sure that He has set us there, we may be sure
that He is with us there, and that there we can live the life and
witness to His name.

III. The Parting Benediction.

The form of the benediction seems to be more correctly given in the
Revised Version, which reads 'with your spirit' instead of 'with you
all.' That form reappears in Galatians and in Philemon. What Paul
especially desires of his favourite church is that they may possess 'the
grace.' Grace is love exercising itself to inferiors, and to those who
deserve something sadder and darker. The gifts of that one grace are
manifold. They comprise all blessings that man can need or receive. This
angel comes with her hands and her lap full of good. Her name is
shorthand for all that God can bestow or man can ask or think.

And it needs all the names by which Christ is known among men to
describe the encyclopaediacal Person who can bestow the encyclopaediacal
gift. Here we have them all gathered, as it were, into one great diadem,
set on His head where once the crown of thorns was twined. He is Lord,
the name which implies at least absolute authority, and is most probably
the New Testament translation of the Old Testament name of Jehovah. He
is our Lord as supreme over us, and wonderful as it is, as belonging to
us. He holds the keys of the storehouse of grace. The river of the water
of life flows where He turns it on. He is Jesus--the personal name which
He bore in the days of His flesh, and by which men who knew Him only as
one of themselves called Him. It is the token of His brotherhood and
the guarantee of the sympathy which will ever bestow 'grace for grace.'
He is the Christ, the Messiah, the name which points back to the Old
Testament ideas and declares His office, realising all the rapturous
anticipations of prophets, and the longings of psalmists, and more than
fulfilling them all by giving Himself to men.

That great gift is to be the companion of every spirit which looks to
that Jesus in the reality of His humanity, in the greatness of His
office, in the loftiness of His divinity, and finds in each of His names
an anchor for its faith and an authoritative claim for its