pose of our calling, by oppressing in us this new life from God which can vivify us in body as well as soul, and which certainly should overcome that heaviness which so clogs the spiritual life, and makes so many Christians dead lumber in the house of God where they ought to be "living stones."

And this leads us to speak further of the duty of standing guard at all the inlets and outlets of our life in the body against the invisible enemies of our salvation. Man's physical nature has long been a tramping-ground for these enemies. Satan and evil spirits enter into men now as truly as in the days of Judas and Ananias. The prince of the power of the air is still the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience. (Ephes. ii. 2.) Our bodily appetites, our mental cravings and emotions, are all inlets at which these enemies may enter. Around all the weak points of the fortress the enemy prowls. We have seen that our conflict is essentially a fight for the prize of inheritance and dominion in this vast system of God's works. Our success involves the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, and the advancement of a new race of kings and priests in embodied immortality on to the throne of power. It is a life-struggle, therefore, which provokes Satan to great rage, for his time is short. And God's word is forever settled in heaven that the seed of the woman shall

bruise the serpent's head. This offering of our bodies, then, upon God's altar enters into the very heart of that conflict against principalities and powers about which Paul writes, and during which he exhorts us so earnestly to stand fast, girt with the whole armor of God.

And let us never forget that, great as is this conflict, they that be for us are more than they that be against us. Jesus is our Forerunner in it all. In a body like ours, He offered unto the Father the sacrifice of a perfect human life. He, through fierce temptations, in which He agonized unto blood, subdued and held captive all these warring elements of which man's nature is the seat and bound them forever to His throne. And, through death, He gave the death-wound to him who hath power over them all. He rescued our nature, body and spirit, from his fatal dominion and raised it to the right hand of power in the heavens. And now He is the Friend and Brother, the sympathetic High-Priest to every man who desires a like deliverance and trusts Him for it.

And let no man imagine that because this is the path of restraint and self-denial, it may be of harsh discipline, that it is therefore a way of sorrow and gloom. Rough though this path may be, it opens out, even in this world, into new and glad regions of life. For it is the carnal mind

which is death. While to be spiritually-minded is even now life and peace. And beyond, this path opens out into regions of unclouded light, of everlasting dominion and fulness of joy.

XI.

PHYSICAL SALVATION.

Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.-ACTS iv. 12.

UPON the day of Pentecost the apostles had been endowed with power from on high. They immediately began to testify to the fact that God had raised from the dead the crucified Jesus, and to press home upon the consciences of the Jewish leaders their guilt in putting Him to death, and their responsibility now to repent and to submit to the risen Messiah.

This bold testimony was confirmed by signs from God, one of the most notable of which was the healing of an impotent man, lame from his birth. In response to the word of life spoken by Peter, he received the touch of life from the risen Jesus and was healed.

Let us now inquire into the meaning and scope of that salvation of which this impotent man was the subject. The bodily condition of this man illustrates the spiritual condition of all men. He was lame from his birth. "Behold," says the

Psalmist, "I was conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity." Men are morally lame from their birth. And as to the spiritual side of their nature, Scripture pronounces them "dead in trespasses and sins." They are out of right relation to God. And as He is the source of all life and blessedness, the life of men, under these conditions, must be disordered and diseased. There must be spiritual imbecility and diseased mortal bodies. This man's malady was the result of sin; if not his own sin, then that of his ancestors, for the defect was congenital. And the healing which came to him was of both soul and body. He walked and leaped and praised God.

It is plain that many of the instances of spiritual blessing mentioned in the New Testament were accompanied by physical healing. The word of healing was sometimes, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." Peter, before Cornelius, described the saving ministry of Jesus in this way, "He went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil." Paul, when about to heal an impotent man at Lystra, perceived that "he had faith to be saved." (Acts xiv. 9, R. V. margin.)

Without doubt the apostles regarded the risen Jesus, and presented Him to their hearers, as the source of a new life-power to men, a regenerating, healing power, reaching not only to the springs of spiritual but of physical life. And for aught we