eace with God, his refuge and his rest for ever against
the accuser and the curse. That comes first, profoundly first.

But then we have also here the sequel truth, the glorious complement.
Here is Acceptance, wholly for Jesus Christ's most blessed sake. But
this is but the divine condition to another divine and transcendent
blessing; it is revealed as the way in to a knowledge of this Lord of
Peace, a deep and unspeakable knowledge of Him, such as shall infuse
into His disciple the power of His Risen Life, and the secret of an
inward assimilation of the soul to the very principle of His Death, and
shall be the path whose end shall be His glory.

St Paul here bids us never put asunder what God hath joined together.
"Never further than the Cross, never higher than Thy feet"; there may
we be "found," "in Him"; unshaken by surrounding mysteries, and meekly
resolute against fashions of opinion. Let us be recognized for those
who truly know for themselves, and truly commend to others, that
blessed "Justification by Faith" which is still, as ever, the Beautiful
Gate of the Gospel.

"'Tis joy enough, my All in All,
Before Thy feet to lie;
Thou wilt not let me lower fall,
And who can higher fly?"

But then let us be known as those who, accepting Christ Jesus as our
All for peace, (whatever we may have to "consider to be loss" that we
may do so,) have clasped Him also as our Hidden Life, our Risen Power,
our King within.

"O Jesus Christ, grow Thou in me,
And all things else recede;
My heart be daily nearer Thee,
From sin be daily freed." [17]

Always at the atoning Cross;--yes, every day and hour; "knowing no
other stand" before the face of the Holy One. Always receiving there
the Risen Life, the presence inwardly of the Risen One, the secret
power to suffer and to serve in peace;--yes, for ever yes; "to the
praise of the glory of His grace."

So, and only so, shall we live the life of real sinners really saved;
"worshipping by the Spirit of God, exulting in Christ Jesus, and
confident, but not in the flesh."

[1] The reader may be aware that Bishop Lightfoot's theory of the
connexion of thought at the beginning of ch. iii. is different from
that advocated here. He thinks that St Paul dictated on continuously
_till the close of_ iii. 1, and was interrupted there, and then began
_de novo_ with iii. 2, entirely on another line. In this view, the
words about "writing _the same t