in connection with the graces.  And yet these are always more important than the gifts of power—­the holiness, the humility, the meekness, the gentleness, and the lovingness; these are the true marks of the Kingdom.  We speak rightly of the Holy Spirit as the only one who can breathe all this into us.  But I think there is a third thing almost more important, that we forget, and that is:  in the Spirit, the Father and the Son themselves come.  When Christ first promised the Holy Spirit, and spoke about His approaching coming, He said:  “In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.  He that loveth me keepeth my commandments; and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him.”  Brother, would you have the Kingdom of God first in your life, you must have the Kingdom in your hearts.  If my heart be set upon a thing I may be bound with chains, but the moment the chains are loosened I fly towards the object of my affection and desire.  And just so the Kingdom must be within us, and then it is easy to say:  “The Kingdom first.”  But to have the Kingdom within us in truth, we must have God the Father, and Christ the Son, by the Holy Ghost within us too.  No Kingdom without the King.

You are called to likeness with Christ.  Oh, how many Christians strive after this part and that part of the likeness of Christ, and forget the root of the whole!  What is the root of all?  That Christ gave Himself up utterly to God, and His Kingdom and glory.  He gave His life, that God’s Kingdom might be established.  Do you the same to-day and give your life to God to be every moment a living sacrifice, and the Kingdom will come with power into your heart.  Give yourself up to Christ.  Let Christ the King reign in your heart, and the heavenly Kingdom will come there and the Presence and the Rule of God be known in power.  Oh, think of that wonderful thing that is going to happen in the great eternity.  We read of it in 1st Corinthians:  God has entrusted Christ with the Kingdom, but there is coming a day when Christ shall come Himself again to be subjected unto the Father, and He shall give up the Kingdom to the Father, that God may be all, and in that day Christ shall say before the universe:  “This is my glory, I give back the Kingdom to the Father!” Christians, if your Christ finds His glory here on earth in dying and sacrificing Himself for the Kingdom and then in eternity again in giving the Kingdom to God, shall not you and I come to God to do the same and count anything we have as loss, that the Kingdom of God may be made manifest, and that God may be glorified.

CHRIST OUR LIFE.

VI.

Colossians 3:  4.—­Christ who is our life.