s life, be ours?--which he is, if we are
Christ's; for Christ has conquered him. If he be ours, our servant, our
minister, sent but to bring us into the presence of our Lord, then,
indeed, his terrors, his merely natural terrors, the outside roughness
of his aspect, are things which the merest child need not shrink from.
Then disease and decay, however painful to living friends to look upon,
have but little pain for him who is undergoing them. For it is not only
amidst the tortures of actual martyrdom that Christians have been more
than conquerors,--in common life, on the quiet or lonely sick bed, under
the grasp of fever or of consumption, the conquest has been witnessed as
often and as completely. It is not a little thing when the faintest
whisper of thought to which expiring nature can give utterance breathes
of nothing but of peace and of forgiveness. It is not a little thing
when the name of Christ possesses us wholly; not distinctly, it may be,
for reason may be too weak for this; but with an indescribable power of
support and comfort. Or even if there be a last conflict,--a season of
terror and of pain, a valley of the shadow of death, dark and
gloomy,--yet even there Christ is with his servants, and as their trial
is so is his love. Thus it is, if death be ours; and death is ours, if
we be Christ's. And are we not Christ's? We bear his name, we have his
outward seal of belonging to his people,--can we refuse to be his in
heart and true obedience? Would we rather steal our pleasures than enjoy
them as our own; steal life for an instant, rather than have it our sure
possession for ever? Would we rather be fugitives from death, fugitives
whom he will surely recover and hold fast, than be able to say and to
feel that death, as well as life is ours, things to come, as well as
things present, because we are truly Christ's?

LECTURE VIII.

* * * * *

GALATIANS V. 16, 17.

_Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. For
the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the
things that ye would_.

"We cannot do the things that we would." These are words of familiar and
common use; this is the language in which we are all apt to excuse,
whether to ourselves or to others, the various faults of our conduct. We
should be glad to do better, so we say and think, but the po