where He said "A spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see me have". The words must refer to the inward man as the body or nerve force which has been evolved through the natural body, and must be held to imply the ever-conscious part which survives death.

Now, in this state of existence where the individual is a believer in intellect and profession, but one whose life has not been consecrated to Christ in love, such an experience may induce suffering in the form of repentance in the state of existence between death and the resurrection.*

In applying Matt. vii. 2-“With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged" to the believer, we must understand the text to refer to the place or state in heaven he or she have fitted themselves for in their life on earth, as one of the species of which man is the genesis and belief the distinguishing quality.

CHAPTER XII.

CHRIST CONFESSED, AND THE VALUE OF LABOUR.

WE

E as Christians with all our glaring defects honour God in one way which is peculiarly our own-that is, by honouring the Son (John v. 23), and thus securing the love of the Father. (John xvi. 27.) By partaking of the holy communion, the weakest and the worst believer confesses Christ; and thus makes his own the promise made in Matt. x. 32: "Whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in Heaven."

We can have some conception of how broad Christ's church is, when we realise that His followers range from all the various grades of belief, so to speak, implied by Jesus in John xi. 25-26, where He says: "He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." To such an one as the last death is only a change of place, but no change of state; for Christ is the centre of attraction here and there.

In the experience of advanced believers Christ is realised as a state of consciousness in three ways-that is, Ist, as the Jesus of the Christian records; 2nd, as a symbol of the Jesus present in consciousness as the ideal object of love; and 3rd, as the Jesus now existing in the place He has gone to prepare for His people. Christ is thus realised in consciousness according to the first

description as the child of Mary; and the Son of God, in the second, as the ideal Christ, the elect of God; and according to the third, as the real personage with the marred visage and the pierced hands and feet, so well known to His followers when on this earth of ours as the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief". It is this Jesus whom we confess before men by our profession of faith in baptism and the Lord's Supper.

There is one relationship which we Christians seem to · overlook, and that is the fact that this Jesus came to sanctify labour. This is proved by the greater part of His life spent as one of the sons of toil, so that he was generally known as the Carpenter, the child of Mary. (Mark vi. 3.) How often do we fail to realise that the energy required of our sons and daughters of toil, in providing for their daily wants, is work done for God (1 Tim. v. 8); that is, in the case of a mistress and servant, both believers, the mistress must spend as much energy in the shape of necessary labour of one kind or another as her servant spends, before she can take her place on the same platform in God's sight; that is, before the "well done good and faithful servant" can be applied to her in the same sense as to the other.

This is a fact we all need to comprehend, and it will be well if we do so here and now, because each and all are fitting and preparing themselves for the place they are to occupy in that other world where Jesus has gone before us.

IN

CHAPTER XIII.

IN REFERENCE TO PLEASURE INCREASING THE

VITAL ACTION.

N the foregoing pages I trust I have been enabled to make it plain what we Christians mean by faith. For I have striven to show that, though this faith is so simple that a child may comprehend it, in as much as it demands nothing more than the willing mind, yet so comprehensive is it, that a Tyndall or a Herbert Spencer will find in it something too high to be accounted for without the sense of a spiritual presence, as a state of consciousness, realised as the actual spiritual presence of God, and made known as a felt power within, in the feeling of joy that follows belief. Nevertheless, the evolution theory, which claims to deal with only body and mind, explains the meaning of Jesus' interview with Nicodemus, in the course of which he referred to the new birth. In the sixth verse of the third chapter of John Jesus explains the full meaning of his teaching in these words: "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit". He thus cuts man off from a spiritual experience as a state of consciousness, in the sense that many believers enjoy it apart from union with Him. And science confirms His teaching in this respect, so that there is no need for our men of science to reject Christianity merely because they hold the evolution theory, or because most Chris

tians believe in special acts of creation. It is not how this world came to be formed (Genesis ii. 4-5), but man as an intelligent being, and Christ in man the hope of glory, represented in consciousness, that constitutes Christianity; and thus Christ becomes all in all (Col. iii. II), for we will only have one Christ given to the human

race.

There is one fact which as yet I have omitted to refer to that may help to explain much in connection with our subject. I allude to the force known as vital action. Science has proved that pleasure increases vitality, and the Bible teaches us that the action of the Spirit of God represented in consciousness involves love, joy, peace, &c., &c. (Gal. v. 22), proving that the vital action has only one meaning, however differently it may be applied.

It will thus be seen that union with Christ and increase of vitality is one and the same thing. Through Christ we comprehend and love God as a reconciled Father, and thus enjoy pleasure of the highest kind and in the highest degree. The vital action is increased to the highest degree when this union is completely realised; then life is fullest. But all this might be a delusion if we had not the resurrection as a great cardinal fact to rest upon; at least, as intelligent beings, we might be quite unable to believe in it and trust our eternal all to it.

We thus see how eternal life is fused with temporal life, and, vice versa, temporal life fused with eternal life. The words of Jesus are thus proved, when He says in John xi. 26, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?" We thus comprehend