rren and unproductive, both in regard to the lives of others and our
own lives. Only so far as we are, in some real sense, laying down our
lives for others, denying (not that which belongs to us, but) ourselves,
for their sake, can we hope to influence other persons for good, to be
the cause of moral fruitfulness, of spiritual life in them. And for
ourselves, we only win the fulness of our own lives, so far as we lose
them in the lives of others, so far as we identify ourselves with their
joys, sufferings, interests, pursuits, well-being; for our lives are
real, and rich, and full exactly in proportion to the extent to which
they include the lives of others.

And the Death of Christ ceases to be an unintelligible mystery, when it
is regarded as the consummation of His Life of self-sacrifice. "Christ
also pleased not Himself." "He went about doing good." And at last, in
the fulfilment of a mission received of the Father for the good of men,
His brethren, He crowned the Life, in which self-pleasing was not, by His
Death, the necessary result, as we have seen, of His carrying out that
mission in a world of sinful men. For Himself, that Death was, so He
willed, the portal to the glory of the Resurrection. And the fruits of
His uttermost self-sacrifice are still, after all these centuries, being
gathered in, as in innumerable souls brought back from the darkness of
sin into the light of the Divine Life, "He sees of the travail of His
soul, and is satisfied."

2. But what answers, in the Death of Christ, to that in regard to which
the death of the victim served but as a means to an end, the sacred meal
of communion? The sacrificial principle has been laid down by the writer
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "without shedding of blood, there is no
remission." Blood to the modern mind speaks of death, and usually of a
violent and painful death. To the ancient mind, heathen or Israelite,
blood stood for and symbolised life. "The Blood makes atonement by the
Life that is in it." Man can only be made at one with God, can only have
"remission of sins"--the barrier which sin interposes to communion with
God can only be removed, he can only be restored to that Divine
fellowship for which he was made--by actual reception into himself of the
Divine life, of the life of Him Who, being God, became man, in order to
impart His own Divine Life to our humanity which He assumed. And
Christ's Life only then became available for men,