What a prospect!  To be changed into the same image.  Think of that!  That is what we are here for.  That is what we are elected for.  Not to be saved, in the common acceptation, but “whom He did foreknow He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.”  Not merely to be saved, but to be conformed to the image of His Son.  Conserve that principle.  And as we must spend time in cultivating our earthly friendships if we are to have their blessings, so we must

          SPEND TIME

in cultivating the fellowship and companionship of Christ.  And there is nothing so much worth taking into our lives as a profounder sense of what is to be had by living in communion with Christ, and by getting nearer to Him.  It will matter much if we take away with us some of the thoughts about theology, and some of the new light that has been shed upon the text of Scripture; it will matter infinitely more if our fellowship with the Lord Jesus become a little closer, and our theory of holy living a little more rational.  And then as we go forth, men will take knowledge of us, that we have been with Jesus, and as we reflect Him upon them, they will begin to be changed into the same image.

It seems to me the preaching is of infinitely smaller account than the life which mirrors Christ.  That is bound to tell; without speech or language—­like the voices of the stars.  It throws out its impressions on every side.  The one simple thing we have to do is to be there—­in the right relation; to go through life hand in hand with Him; to have Him in the room with us, and keeping us company wherever we go; to depend upon Him and lean upon Him, and so have His life reflected in the fullness of its beauty and perfection into ours.

III.  THE FIRST EXPERIMENT.

Then you reduce religion to a common Friendship?  A common Friendship—­who talks of a common Friendship?  There is no such thing in the world.

On earth no word is more sublime.  Friendship is the nearest thing we know to what religion is.  God is love.  And to make religion akin to Friendship is simply to give it the highest expression conceivable by man.  But if by demurring to “a common friendship” is meant a protest against the greatest and the holiest in religion being spoken of in intelligible terms, then I am afraid the objection is all too real.  Men always look for a mystery when one talks of sanctification, some mystery apart from that which must ever be mysterious wherever Spirit works.  It is thought some peculiar secret lies behind it, some occult experience which only the initiated know.  Thousands of persons go to church every Sunday hoping to solve this mystery.  At meetings, at conferences, many a time they have reached what they thought was the very brink of it, but somehow no further revelation came.  Poring over religious books, how often were they not within a paragraph of it; the next page, the next sentence, would discover all, and they would be borne on a flowing tide forever.  But nothing happened.  The next sentence and the next page were read, and still it eluded them; and though the promise of its coming kept faithfully up to the end, the last chapter found them still pursuing.