were fusion, of souls. We have the truth which they
convey prominent already in the Philippian Letter. It is addressed
(ver. 1) to "the holy ones in Christ Jesus." That is to say, it comes
to men and women who, taken on their profession, assumed to be in fact
what they were denoted to be in baptism, were separated from self and
sin to God by their union in covenant and life with their Redeemer. It
regards them as personalities so truly annexed by Jesus Christ, in the
miracle of converting grace, so articulated spiritually into Him, that
no language short of this wonderful "in Him" will worthily express
their relation to Him. Later (ver. 11), they are regarded as so united
to Him that "the fruit of righteousness" which they are to bear in rich
abundance is to be borne only "_through_ Him"; He, the Vine, is the one
possible secret by which they, the branches, can possibly be productive
of the sweet cluster of "the fruit of the Spirit." And between those
two places comes a sentence (ver. 8) where, just in passing, in a mere
allusion to his own experience, the Apostle takes for granted this
profound "continuity with Christ" in a peculiarly impressive way:

"I long after you all in the heart of Jesus Christ." As we have seen
above, he regards himself (not as an Apostle but simply as a believer)
as so "joined unto the Lord" that, if I may dare so to expand the
phrase, the heart of Jesus Christ is the true organ and vehicle of his
own regenerate emotions. The whole Scripture, and particularly the
whole Pauline Scripture, assures us what this does _not_ mean. It does
not mean the least suspension or distortion of the humanity or of the
personality of Paul. It means no absorption of his _ego_, and nothing
whatever _un_-natural in either the nature or the exercise of his
affections. His "homesick longing" to see the dear Philippian people
again is quite as simple, natural, personal, as any longing he ever
felt in his boyhood for his home at Tarsus when he was absent from it.
Yes, but this personality, working so freely and truly in its every
faculty, is now, by the Holy Ghost, so put into spiritual contact with
the will and heart of Jesus Christ, who now "dwells in it by faith,"
that the whole action moves, so to speak, in the sphere, in the
atmosphere, of HIM. The love which passes so freely through and out of
the believer to his brethren would not be what it is if the believer
were not "in Christ." He is still all h