s. There were those who could assert that the Gospel, the Pauline
Gospel, the wonderful message of Justification by Faith only, and of a
life lived in the Spirit as its sequel, was the very truth they held
and rejoiced in; but they taught it so as to reason from it that
practical holiness did not matter; the justified, the accepted, the man
of the Spirit, lived in a transcendental religious region; he was not
to be bound in conduct by common rules. Was he not in grace? And was
not grace the antithesis of works? Was not grace, before everything
else, the condonation of sin? And the more it did that work, was it
not the more glorious? "Shall we not continue in sin then, that grace
may abound?" What does it signify, though the perishable and
burthensome body defiles itself? The emancipated spirit of the
"spiritual" man lives on another plane; the sensual and the mystical
elements may approach, may run parallel, but can never meet. The body
may sin; the spirit must be pure--if only the man is in grace.

Such assuredly were some of the conditions of error and evil to be
considered when on that far-off day, in his Roman chamber, St Paul
turned his soul again to Philippi, and asked his scribe to write.
There is a solemn comfort in the thought. In our days of trial, when
again and again it is as it "the foundations were destroyed," it is
something to remember the awful mental and moral trials of the
apostolic age. It was indeed an "age of faith"; but, as the other side
of that very fact, it was an age of clouds and darkness, from the point
not of "faith" but of "sight." It had a glorious answer to the
tremendous questions that beset it. But that answer was not human
reasoning, or material successes; it was the Lord Jesus Christ. And so
it is for us to-day.

But now St Paul is at work; let us listen, and we shall hear how
promptly he brings that answer to bear in his letter to Philippi.[1]

Ver. 1. For the rest (_to loipon_), my brethren, to turn now to
another topic, as I draw towards an end, let me give you this
comprehensive watchword +Be glad in the Lord+.[2] +To write the same
things to you+, to reiterate that one thought, that CHRIST is our glory
and our joy, "+to me not irksome, it is safe for you+."[3] Safe,
because there are spiritual dangers around you from which this will be
the best preservative; false teachings which can only be fully met with
the gladness of the truth of Christ. +Beware of+,