high one of the Sabbaths. God means that we should have high days in our religious experiences and services. The world of religious feeling and activity must not be all level land, even although it could be tableland, any more than the natural world.

I. OUR PREVAILING WORLDLINESS AND UNSPIRITUALITY REQUIRES THAT WE SHOULD HAVE HIGH DAYS. For we must take this general state of things as a sad and humiliating fact. Our souls cleave to the dust. How dull, and slow, and earthly we are! God graciously accepts the fact, and in those high days makes provision for it. They are like the glowing fires within doors to which we come at times from the winter without; or like those occasional family gatherings to which men come from their selfish scrambles and money-making, and feel, under the old rooftree and in the atmosphere of love and sacred memories, that there is truer wealth than can be got at the world's marts, and go away a little less earthly than they came.

II. THE YEARNINGS OF GOD'S PEOPLE REQUIRE THAT THERE SHOULD BE HIGH DAYS. The Jew sighed for Passover-time while he lived far away from Jerusalem. God gives the high days both to draw out and satisfy those yearnings; and those who think that all days and seasons should be alike, mean in reality that they should all be low days.

III. GOD'S GENEROUS PURPOSES TOWARDS MEN LEAD HIM TO APPOINT HIGH DAYS. On these high days God says, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." They come to us when weary and ashamed of our poverty of spirit; when, after a time of base contentment, we resolve that we must arise and seek our Father. They find us in a state of expectancy. They come rich and tender in memories and associations; specially Good Friday, which tells how Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Our Saviour, rich in mercy and waiting to be gracious, scatters joyfully in such golden spring-times the good seed on the ground made soft with showers-floats in rich freights of blessing while the tide is full.

IV. IN ORDER THAT OUR COMMON DAYS MAY BE LIFTED HEAVENWARD, WE NEED TO HAVE HIGH DAYS. Those days should not be like lofty Ararats, rising sheer from a vast plain; but like higher summits in a mountain chain. As waves sweeping far up the beach predict and help on the full tide, which will fill up the farthest limit that they touch but for a moment; so by our high days we reach meanwhile, and for a little time, a higher communion, and the whole tide of our spiritual being gains somewhat in depth and progress. Our high-day experiences are the spies sent out southward to search the good land, and bring of the fruit thereof; and faith and aspiration lift their inspiring voice above the base and treacherous din of sloth and worldli

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ness and unbelief: "Let us go up at once and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it."

1. From this high day let us look backward—

(1.) The day of Christ's death was the highest of days. That was indeed "an high day," in an infinitely deeper sense than they knew; the day of Love's great sacrifice; the day to which all past Passover days were heralds, crying, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord."

(2.) This day, which brings that great event to the memory and heart of the believer, is emphatically a "high day." From the height we occupy to-day we have a straight look to the cross. That cross is on the very lip of the horizon of our Christian faith and hope; but it stands out sharp and clear to-day, all intervening sights dwarfed and dimmed. "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else."

2. From this high day look forward.

(1.) From this high day let us view the great end and purpose of our lives. Let us, in sight of the cross, endeavour to take in the scope and purpose of our lives, and that will elevate and sanctify the details. Like Christ, to serve God, crucify self, live not for ourselves, but for God and our fellow-men—that is the lesson we are to take from this high day.

(2.) From this high day let us catch a clearer and fuller view of our future home. From Pisgah view the promised land. The high days of earth are like feeble twilight ushering in the bright day of eternity. Heaven's loudest song is, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.'

(3.) From this high day let us set out with fresh courage and faithfulness on the duties and struggles of life. These may be hard and protracted, or gentle and brief; but, either way, it is for us to move loyally on. We are here to do Christ's work and fight His battles. At His bidding and in His strength, we will be faithful unto death, and He will give us the crown of life.

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Easter Day.

EPISTLE.

"RISEN WITH CHRIST"
(Col. iii. 1).

UNION with Christ is the distinguishing character and experience of the Christian. This spiritual union is so vital and so close that it makes the man a new being, because it makes him Christ's. Even in the facts of His ministry the Lord Jesus deigns to associate His people with Himself. In His incarnation and assumption of human nature we can have no share ; but we live with Him, work with Him, suffer with Him, die with Him, rise with Him, and ascend with Him.

I. THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST IS ASSUMED AS A FACT, AND AS AN ARTICLE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. Language like this is utterly inexplicable except upon the basis of the historical and actual reality of our Saviour's resurrection from the dead. Paul, not very many years after his Master's departure, took it for granted that the resurrection of that Master was so thoroughly an acknowledged and admitted fact that it was deemed by all Christians the basis of their spiritual life.

II. CHRISTIANS MUST DIE UNTO SIN IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY RISE WITH CHRIST. We need to be raised from the sepulchre of sin, and provision is made for this in our spiritual unity with our Lord Jesus. His death was a death unto sin-officially, not personally. It is thus that Christ's people rise from a merely animal, a sense existence. There are those who burrow like the mole when they should soar like the eagle. From an earthly, selfish life, from delight in sinful practices, nay, from slavish views of God and carnal views of religion, we rise through faith in the Lord of life, the first-fruits of resurrection.

III. WITH CHRIST HIS PEOPLE RISE TO HOLINESS. We are called upon not only to forsake sin and death, but to aspire to life, to God. Our feelings and purposes should resemble not the waterfall which pours its waters down, but the fountain

which flings its waters upwards towards the sun. Thus Christians risen with Christ attain to fellowship in disposition and in character with their Lord; to appreciation and love of heavenly things; to self-sacrificing discharge of human duties; to the anticipation of the vision, the joy, the victory of Christ.

DEAD AND ALIVE.

"YE DIED, AND YOUR LIFE IS HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD" (R.V.)

(Col. iii. 3).

THE Apostle's argument for heavenly-mindedness, "You died;" why then set your affection on things on the earth? "Your life is hid with Christ in God;" why not therefore instinctively seek those things which are above? The believer is both dead and alive, a paradox of which the solution is," risen with Christ," implying a dying and living again in union with Christ.

I. YE DIED. Points to the fact rather than to the state of death; to a definite experience in the past, when they believed and became one with Christ in His death. No reference to the subjection of the body to death by reason of sin, or to the death of man's soul through sin separating him from God, but (chap. ii. 20) to a participation in Christ's death in virtue of this mystical union. (Cf. Gal. ii. 20; Rom vi. 3-11.) It involves

1. Non-subjection to condemnation from the law (Gal. ii. 19; Rom. vii. 1-4). The law cannot touch them. In and with Christ they have exhausted its penalty.

2. Non subjection to the dominion of sin (Rom. vi. 2-6, 11, 12). Sin dwells in them, but does not rule. It is "condemned in the flesh" to perish.

3. Non-subjection to this world (Gal. vi. 14). They are not of the world. The world has lost its attraction. They overcome the world. They are delivered from it as the present evil world.

Realise this deadness. Ye died; be as though you had died to the law and sin and the things on earth.

II. YOUR LIFE IS HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD. There is life as well as death; life after the death and in consequence of the death. Those who die and are buried with Christ rise to walk with Him in the newness of life. Spiritual resurrection, regeneration, imparts to them His life so fully that it is called "theirs," and is spoken of as if it were the only life they had.

1. It is a hidden life. In one sense it is not and must not be hidden, but to be manifested in good works and bear witness to Christ. Yet it is hidden (1.) in comparison with its future

revelation in glory; (2.) in its origin and secret springs; (3.) in many of its principles and actings, from ourselves and from others.

2. It is a heavenly life. "Hid with Christ in God." It is not of the earth, or subject to the laws and destiny of earthly life, but is heavenly in its origin, in its support, in its exercises, aspirations, and aims. Hid with Christ, who is our life; hid as He is hid; hid where He is hid, with God. It is hid then and there (1.) for communion with God in Christ, that "where our treasure is there our heart may be also;" (2.) for unfailing maintenance, that it may draw nourishment from the fountain of life; (3.) for security. Its secrecy is its safety; it is hid as a precious thing with the precious Christ, where nothing can touch it. God keeps it as safely as He keeps Christ, for it is Christ's life.

Seek communion; draw nourishment; be sure of safety; set your affection on things above; have the life in its dignity and its heavenliness, and the hope of its manifested glory.

"IF YE THEN BE RISEN WITH CHRIST, SEEK THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE ABOVE, WHERE CHRIST SITTETH AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD"

(Col. iii. 1).

THE believer is said to die with Christ, and to rise with Him. He bore our sins in His body on the tree; and when He rose, it was with the stamp of the Father's approval of His finished work, and in the name of all who should believe in Him. He rose in our name a conqueror, and to have His and our resurrection completed in ascension and eternal glory. And as His resurrection body gradually cast out all earthly elements during the forty days, till at last it ascended out of His disciples' sight, so from the very hour of our union with Christ, from the hour of the new life being implanted in us through Christ, we are to look upward to God's right hand and prepare for taking our place with our Lord there. The text offers considerations and encouragements for progress in faith and holiness to those who have thus "risen with Christ." You are exhorted to this

I. BY THE WORK ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED FOR AND IN YOU. "Ye are risen with Christ." A good hope is yours-a new life, new aims. "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." What a work done! Now, the attainments of the past yield encouragement, and give stimulus for the future. The first and crucial step has been taken: you are to rise from it to a