e,
contemplation of the Cross as the sacrifice for sin, has far too much
forgotten. 'Ye are risen with Christ.'

Let me remind you that this veritable death and rising again, which
marks the Christian life, is set forth before us in the initial rite of
the Christian Church. Some of you do not agree with me in my view,
either of what is the mode or of who are the subjects of that ordinance,
but if you know anything about the question, you know that everybody
that has a right to give a judgment agrees with us Baptists in
saying--although they may not think that it carries anything obligatory
upon the practice of to-day--that the primitive Church baptized by
immersion. Now, the meaning of baptism is to symbolise these two
inseparable moments, dying to sin, to self, to the world, to the old
past, and rising again to newness of life. Our sacramentarian friends
say that, in my text, it was in baptism that these Colossian Christians
rose again with Christ. I, for my part, do not believe that, but that
baptism was the speaking sign of what lies at the gate of a true
Christian life I have no manner of doubt.

So the first thought of our text is not only taught us in words, but it
stands manifest in the ritual of the Church as it was from the
beginning. We die, and we rise again, through faith and by union through
faith, with Christ 'that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is
even at the right hand of God.'

Let me turn, secondly, to

II. The consequent aims of the Christian life.

'If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above.'
'To seek' implies the direction of the external life toward certain
objects. It is not to seek as if perhaps we might not find; it is not
even to seek in the sense of searching for, but it is to seek in the
sense of aiming at. And now do you not think that if we had burning in
our hearts, and conscious to our experiences, the sense of union with
Jesus Christ the risen Saviour, that would shape the direction and
dictate the aims of our earthly life? As surely as the elevation of the
rocket tube determines the flight of the projectile that comes from it,
so surely would the inward consciousness, if it were vivid as it ought
to be in all Christian people, of that risen life throbbing within the
heart, shape all the external conduct. It would give us wings and make
us soar. It would make us buoyant, and lift us above the creeping aims
that constitute the objects of life for