It will be observed that the sermons of this volume, although preached at different times and places, have been arranged so as to exhibit a certain sequence of ideas. Thus, the first deals with the general subject of holiness as the special end and aim, subjectively speaking, of our probation; the second indicates the only source of true holiness—Christ in us the hope of glory; the third presents us with the criterion of holiness—the character of God exhibited for our imitation in the human form and in the life of Christ; while the fourth sketches that process of growth and development in holiness which should characterize Christian experience. Passing, then, to the region of experience, we consider, first, the true attitude of the believer starting on his career, as illustrated by the triumphant anticipations of the Israelite on crossing the Red Sea; and next, in sad and humiliating contrast, the line of conduct too often pursued still by those who come out of the spiritual Egypt, as by their Israelitish prototypes of old; and then we go on to consider that new start which Israel made on the death of Moses, as illustrating the passage of humbled and penitent souls to a higher level of Christian experience and to the triumph of the life of faith. The next two sermons are companions, and so are those that immediately follow them. The first two deal with the subject of following Christ, as illustrated in the history of Simon Peter; and here are shown, first, the hindrances to a life of close fellowship with the Master, and then the conditions under which we may rise to such an experience. In the next two sermons we consider the spiritual life in its active and contemplative phases, as illustrated respectively by what is recorded of the two sisters, Martha and Mary. Then follow in the next three discourses words of warning against certain common forms of danger to which the spiritual life is exposed; and then the volume closes with a sermon on the Christian life, considered as a perennial feast of good things, in which special reference is made to that Holy Banquet of Love in which this aspect of our experience is so eloquently set forth, and another on the Christian armor, which in this volume, as in the epistle to the Ephesians, is our “Finally.”
