e capacity--all this, only very much more, is the
"magnification of Christ in his body" to the prisoner who sits, never
alone, in the Roman lodging. It is this which effectually forbids him
ever to find the days dull. Its light falls upon everything; comforts,
trials, days of toil, hours of comparative repose, prospects of life,
prospects of death. It quickens and concentrates all his faculties, as
a great and animating interest always tends to do; it is always present
to his mind as light and heat, to his will as rest and power. It
secures for him the quiet of a great disengagement and liberty from
selfish motives; it continually drives him on, with a force which does
not exhaust him (for it is from above) in the ambition and enterprise
which is for Christ; giving him at once an impulse toward great and
arduous labours, and a patience and loving tact which continually
adjusts itself to the smallest occasions of love and service.

Reader, this is admirable in St Paul. But after all, the ultimate
secret of the noble phenomenon resides not in St Paul but in Jesus
Christ. "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. i. 15, 16).
The man had seen his Saviour with his whole soul. And because of--not
the man who saw but--the Saviour who was seen, behold, the life is
lifted off the pivot of self-will and transferred to that of "the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ." The same "revealing" grace can
lift us also. We are not St Pauls; but the Jesus Christ of St Paul is
absolutely the same, in Himself, for us. We will, in His name, place
ourselves in the way of His working, that He may so shew us His fair
countenance that we may _not be able not_ to live, quite really, for
Him as the enthralling Interest of life.

Let us look at the words again: "That Christ may be _magnified_," may
be made great. In what respect? Not in Himself; for He is already
"all in all"; "filling all things"; "higher than the heavens." Such is
He that "no man knoweth the Son but the Father"; the mind of Deity is
alone adequate to comprehend His glory. But He may be
magnified--relatively to those who see Him, or may see Him. To eyes
which find in Christ only a distant and obscure Object, however sacred,
He may be made to occupy the whole field of the soul with His love and
glory. As when the telescope is directed upon the heavens, and some
"cloudy spot" becomes, magnified, a mighty planet perhaps, or perhaps a
universe of starry suns