d our repose. Sometimes it takes the form
of our supposed usefulness and diligence; sometimes of our strict and
exemplary observances; sometimes, putting on a disguise still more
subtle, it sets before the Christian the depth, or the length, of his
spiritual experience. Or it grows bolder, and is content with coarser
masks; it tempts us to a miserable reliance on some imagined betterness
when we compare ourselves, forsooth, with some one else. I knew long
ago an old shepherd, in my father's parish, who based a hope for
eternity on the fact (if such it was) that he was never tipsy on a
Sunday. We are amused, or we are shocked. But this was only an
extreme type of a vast phenomenon, to be found lurking in countless
hearts, when God lets in the light; the "reliance" on our being
somehow, so we think, "not as other men are." And from this whole
world of delusion, in all its continents and islands, the Lord calls us
away here by His Apostle. He bids us migrate as it were to another
planet, laying our _whole_ confidence, not part of it, on HIM; let that
other world, our old world, roll along without us.

Christ presents to us Himself (as we follow out this rich Philippian
passage) as _all_ our Righteousness, in His precious justifying Merit,
offered for the acceptance of the very simplest faith. And He presents
Himself as _all_ our Power, for deliverance and for service, in His
resurrection Life; coming to reveal Himself to us in the divine beauty
of His sufferings, His death, through which he has passed for us into
"indissoluble life" (Heb. vii. 16). Our Righteousness--it is HE, "the
propitiation for our sins." Our Sanctification--it is still HE, in
"the power of His resurrection, and fellowship with His sufferings, and
assimilation to His death." Our Redemption, from the power of the
grave--it is still "this same Jesus," in union with whom alone we
"attain unto the resurrection which is out from the dead."

Even so, Lord Jesus Christ; let us thus be "found in Thee";
worshipping, exulting, confiding; resting on Thee, abiding in Thee,
with an accepting faith which only grows more simple and single as the
years move on and gather "since we believed."

"Help us, O Christ, to grasp each truth
With hand as firm and true
As when we clasp'd it first to heart
A treasure fresh and new;

"To name Thy name, Thyself to own,
With voice unfaltering,
And faces bold and unashamed
As in our Christian