eir own. Upon such the shadow of the infinite seems to fall
but seldom. They succeed in so many things that they undertake, as to
escape the sense of the impassable barriers that hem in all human
existence. The very fact of living is so much to them, that they fail to
see the meaning of the limitations, the shortcomings, the
disappointments of life. They feel no abiding smart of a thorn in the
flesh, and so are never forced back upon a higher strength than their
own. And yet it is when a nature richly endowed with all the elements of
vitality, and living from the first, living to the last, devotes itself
to the highest aims and is supported by the highest helps, that we see
what I will venture to call the finest triumph of grace. Or if the word
triumph seem to imply a struggle, which is not always necessary, and
difficulties which may never have vexed the development of a vigorous
life, I will describe the result as the richest and sweetest harvest of
the Spirit's husbandry. Great things can be accomplished only by great
natures, and even then by the help and under the eye of God.

"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." Life is
the characteristic word of the great spiritual Gospel from which my text
is taken. And no word can penetrate more deeply into the secret of
Christ than this does. He was the sweetest, the most persuasive of moral
teachers; but ethical principles and precepts are the common possession
of humanity; and that in which Christ is pre-eminent over all sages is
not so much that he gives us new matter of obedience, as that he infuses
into us a fresh power to obey. I fail to see that he anywhere presents
to us a dogmatic theological system: I do not believe that his apostles
succeed in throwing his teaching into this shape. But supposing that it
were so, as so many men believe, life is still the ultimate object, the
life of God in man, the life which quickens all faculties, and casts off
all impurities, and rises into a higher stage of vitality from year to
year. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly." "The bread of God is he which
cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." "I am the bread
of life." So, too, the author of this Gospel, speaking in his own
person: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." So Paul:
"The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." "Your life is hid with
Christ in God.