SERMON VIII.

THE HIDDEN LIFE.

COLOSSIANS iii. 3.

"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

THE familiarity with which we have been long acquainted with the expressions of Holy Scripture, sometimes has the effect of making us understand its meaning less fully than we should have done if it were now presented to us for the first time. We have heard these expressions so constantly read to us in church, and so often used by persons who speak on such subjects, that we are apt to mistake our perfect acquaintance with the sound of them in our ears, for a complete understanding of their meaning.

This is an inconvenience: not a very great one, indeed, when we are put on our guard

against it, nor one which is in any degree comparable with the great blessing of early familiarity with Holy Scripture. But still it is an inconvenience; and many of us can, probably, remember our having been sometimes actually surprised to find how much we have misunderstood, or how little we have attached any meaning at all to expressions in the Liturgy with which we have been entirely familiar all our lives. It would be very easy to quote many instances of this kind, if this were the time, or occasion, for pursuing such curious, and, in themselves, not unprofitable speculations.

But in the Bible the case is one of greater interest, and leads to greater consequences. There the meanings are so important, and the different portions of Holy Scripture so wonderfully, and yet often so secretly consistent with each other, that it often happens that when we unexpectedly discover that some expression, hitherto overlooked, has a meaning which we did not suppose, we find that we have got hold of a thread which, traced through various other parts of Holy Scripture, brings out important truths. Thus sometimes a metaphor runs up into a mystery; and we find that passages which seemed to be quite clear and simple by themselves, are connected in a direct and express way

with others of greater difficulty, and perhaps of apparently quite different meaning.

I am led to these observations from considering the passage which I have chosen for the text; the expressions of which connect themselves in a remarkable way when they are pursued with a great number of other Scripture places, and much very sacred doctrine. The third chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians begins as follows: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory."

"If ye then be risen with Christ." These words clearly refer to something which has been said before. Now, on looking into the last chapter, we find that St. Paul had been warning the Colossians against being "spoiled," stripped, that is, as of armour, and denuded of all that is valuable to them, through philosophy and vain deceit, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.

"For in Him," he continues, "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are

complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power: buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him:" that is, in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of God; in you dwelleth all the fulness of Christ. In baptism ye have been buried with Him, ye have descended into the grave with Him; and in baptism ye have risen again from the grave with Him. Your baptism has been to you not only a metaphor, a type, a likeness of death and resurrection, but it has been a true, mysterious, sacramental burial and resurrection with Christ, whereby your full participation of Christ becomes such as to be capable of some sort of parallel even with that which He hath of God"; according to the prayer of Christ Himself in the seventeenth chapter of St. John: "That they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."

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1

Wherefore," says St. Paul, a few verses on in the second chapter to the Colossians, "if ye be dead with Christ,"-and again in the opening of the third chapter, "If ye then be risen with Christ," he plainly is taking up the two parts of the former verse, and enlarging separately on

1 Πεπληρωμένοι.

2 Πλήρωμα.

the two parts of Christian Baptism, the Sacramental Death, and the Sacramental Resurrection.

We may therefore proceed, without hesitation, to interpret the passage of the third chapter as belonging to Christian Baptism, and referring to the previous verses, may paraphrase it as follows: Ye are baptized Christians, and as such, are, in a sacred and mysterious manner, one with Christ, even in some way as Christ is one with God. The holy Sacrament of Baptism made you partakers of His death and resurrection. It has joined you with Him in so wonderful and sacred a way, that He Himself and His holy Apostle have actually compared it with the mysterious union of the persons of the Holy Trinity. If then ye be thus marvellously in sacrament risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, think those things which are above. Let not your spirit, your temper, your desire, be for any earthly, low, or carnal objects: for in truth ye are dead, dead with Him, dead to all such hopes, joys, thoughts, and interests. "Ye are dead, and your life," the life you still have, the only life which has outlived that death, "is hidden with Christ in God."

Thus we see that these words are not a mere phrase, not a mere strong expression for some