HOW CHRIST IS SET FORTH ON EARTH

HOW CHRIST IS SET FORTH ON EARTH

What a magnificent being on the earth is a member of the heavenly Man in heaven! What an exotic; and what a joy to one’s own heart to be united in heaven to the Object of the heart! As one is near Him, and really enters into this, there is, like the queen of Sheba, no more spirit left in one. How Paul walked about here, diminished and reduced in his old self, but with the deep, everlasting satisfaction in his heart, in the crippled vessel, of what was his as a man in Christ! If you could get all the christians in the universe together as units, but with one purpose, you could not thereby effect the great desire of the true-hearted,

^[p. 330] namely, to set forth Christ here. The great object of the Holy Spirit is to reproduce Christ, the heavenly Man, on the earth. But no combination, or united purpose, with all christians to effect this, could effect it, unless they were members of Christ’s body. It is not the number of believers, but it is the relationship which each believer has to Christ, which constitutes or qualifies each to be an effectual atom in setting forth Christ, because really part of Himself, in the closest union to Him. The work of all saints fails in reaching the real end and aim of their service here, if they are ignorant, or not aiming at what is incumbent on them as members of His body. How could any one be personated, or presented, or demonstrated, without his body?

I hope that, in the long leisure hours which you are given, you find great profit in dwelling on what you have in heaven, though so much is not revealed to you as to Paul. He enjoyed it himself more than he could speak of it; and this sisters can do.