n teaching:
'I am the Vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me. Separate from Me ye
can do nothing,' and get nothing, and are nothing.

Oh, brethren! it is well that all our treasures should be in one place.
It is better that they should all be in One Person. And if only we will
lay our poor emptiness by the side of His fulness there will pass over
from that infinite abundance and sufficiency everything that we can
require.

We abide in Him by faith, by meditation, by love, by submission, by
practical obedience, and, if we are wise, the effort of our lives will
be to keep close to that Lord. As long as we keep touch with Him we have
all and abound. Break the connection by wandering away, in thought and
desire, by indulgence in sin, by letting earthly passions surge in and
separate us from Him--break the connection by rebellion, by making
ourselves our own ends and lords, and it is like switching off the
electricity. Everything falls dead. You cannot have Christ's blessing
unless you take Christ.

And so, dear brethren, 'abide in Me and I in you.' There is nothing else
that will make us blessed; there is nothing else that will meet all the
circumference of our necessities; there is nothing else that will quiet
our hearts, will sanctify our understandings. Christ is yours if 'ye are
Christ's.' 'Of His fulness _have_ all we received,' for it all became
ours when we became His, and Christian growth on earth and heaven is but
the unfolding of the folded graces that are contained in Him. We possess
the whole Christ, but eternity is needed to disclose all the
unsearchable riches of our inheritance in Him.

'ACCORDING TO'--I.

'According to the good pleasure of His will, ... According to the
riches of His grace.'--Eph. i. 5, 7.

That phrase, 'according to,' is one of the key-words of this profound
epistle, which occurs over and over again, like a refrain. I reckon
twelve instances of it in three chapters of the letter, and they all
introduce one or other of the two thoughts which appear in the two
fragments that I have taken for my text. They either point out how the
great blessings of Christ's mission have underlying them the divine
purpose, or they point out how the process of the Christian life in the
individual has for its source and measure the abundances, the wealth of
the grace and the power of God. So in both aspects the facts of earth
are traced up to, and declared to be, the outcome of the heav