October 29

The letter killeth, but the spirit gibeth life. — 2 COR. iii. 6.

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. — JOHN vi. 63.

THIS passage suggests such important distinctions as letter and spirit, form and power, ordinance and grace conveyed. As the soul to the body of Adam, the spirit is to the letter, the power to the form, and the grace to the ordinance. Without an appropriating faith in Jesus, the bread of God, no good could come of a literal eating of his flesh or drinking of his blood. Adam's body was but fashioned clay until the Creator breathed upon it. The breathing made the moving, living soul, invested with rule among the creatures. Empty formalism receives rebuke in these words. The Church may not usurp the prerogatives of her founder and substitute connection with herself for union with her living Head. The spiritual discernment of Christ in his sacraments makes them means of replenishing to the soul. Apart from the washing of regeneration, baptism may signify, but it will not convey cleansing to the heart. Void of gracious sustenance the supper becomes, where the Lord's body is not discerned. In the knowledge of God and his Son Jesus Christ standeth our eternal life; but the condition of that saving knowledge is supplied in the Spirit's twofold work of revelation and illumination. The lack of the latter leaves the wondrous things in the law unseen, and the Bible forever a sealed book. "For we are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh" (Phil. iii. 3).

Jerry Witherspoon

God through himself we then shall know,

If thou within us shine,

And sound, with all thy saints below,

The depths of love divine.

C. WESLEY.