meet His glance--which is _not_ strange to them, nor met
for the first time--with open-hearted and open-countenanced 'boldness.'
But 'love' and 'abiding' are the source of confidence in the Day of
Judgment, because love and abiding are the source of assimilation to
Christ's life. We have boldness, 'because as He is, so are we in this
world'; and we are as He is, because we love and abide in Him. So here
are three thoughts, the assimilation of the Christian man to Christ; the
frank confidence which it begets; and the process by which it is
secured.

I. A Christian is Christ's living likeness.

That is a startling thing to say, and all the more startling if you
notice that John does not say 'As He _was_,' in this earthly life of
humiliation and filial obedience, but 'as He _is_,' in His heavenly life
and reign and glory. That might well repel us from all thought of
possible resemblance, but the light, however brilliant it may be, is not
blinding, and it is the Christ as He _is_, and not only--true as that
is--the Christ as He _was_, who is the original of which Christian men
are copies.

Now _there_ is the difference between the teaching of such classes of
religionists as represent Christ's humanity as all in all, and preach to
us that He, in His earthly life is the pattern to whom we are to seek to
conform our lives, and the true evangelical teaching. That dead Man is
living, and His present life has in it elements which we can grasp, and
to which every Christian life is to be conformed.

Is there anything, then, within the glory to which I, in my poor,
struggling, hampered, imperfect life here on earth, can feel that my
character is being shaped? Yes, surely there is. I have no doubt that,
in the words of my text, the Apostle is remembering the solemn ones of
our Lord's high-priestly prayer as recorded in the seventeenth chapter
of his gospel, where the same antithesis of our being in the world, and
His not being there, recurs; and where the analogy and resemblance are
distinctly stated--'I in Thee, and Thou in Me, that they also may be in
us.'

So, then, when we stand with our letter-writer in his Patmos island, and
see the countenance 'as the sun shining in his strength, and the eyes as
a flame of fire,' and the many crowns upon the head, and the many stars
in the hand, though we may feel as if all resemblance was at an end, and
aspiration after likeness could only fall at His feet and cover its
face, yet there