; so it is when through a believer's life
"Christ is magnified" to eyes which watch that life and see the reality
of the power within.

Ah, have we not known such lives ourselves? Has not the Lord been made
very near to us, and very luminous, in the face of father, mother,
brother, sister, friend, or pastor? Have we not seen Him shining large
and near us in their holy activities, and in their blessed sufferings,
shedding His glory through all they were and all they did? He has been
magnified to us by saints in high places, whose dignity and fame have
been to them only so much occasion for the exercise of their "ruling
passion"--the glory of Christ. And He has been magnified to us also by
saints in comfortless cottages, imprisoned upon sick-beds in gloomy
attics, but finding in everything an occasion to experience and to
manifest the power of their Lord. May He make it always our ambition
to be thus His magnifiers. But may He keep it a really pure ambition.
For even this can be distorted into the misery of self-seeking; an
ambition not that Christ may be magnified, but that His magnifier may
be thought "some great one" in the spiritual life.

"In my _body_." Because through the body, and only through it,
practically, can we tell on others for the Lord. Do we speak to them?
Do we write to them? Do we make home comfortable and happy for them?
Do we "meet the glad with joyful smiles and wipe the weeping eyes"? Do
we travel to those who want us? Do we nurse them? Do we think for
them? All has its motives in the regenerate spirit, but all has its
effect through the body. Without brain, eyes, ears, lips, hands,
feet--how could we serve, how could we shine? Our life would have no
articulation to others, nor our death.

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present _your bodies_ a living sacrifice." So be it, for writer and
for reader. Then blessed will be our life, as day by day brings
ceaseless occasions for the pursuit of our dear ambition--"that Christ
may be magnified."

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*** _En holo to praitorio_ (ver. 13).--The word _praitorion_ occurs in
e.g. Matt. xxvii. 27. Acts xxiii. 35, in the sense of the residence of
a great official, regarded as _praetor_, or commander. The A.V. here
evidently reasons from such passages, and takes the word to mean the
residence at Rome of the supreme _praetor_, the Emperor; the
_Palatium_, the vast range of buildings on the Mons Pala