"I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." Life is the characteristic word of the great spiritual Gospel from which my text is taken. And no word can penetrate more deeply into the secret of Christ than this does. He was the sweetest, the most persuasive of moral teachers; but ethical principles and precepts are the common possession of humanity; and that in which Christ is pre-eminent over all sages is not so much that he gives us new matter of obedience, as that he infuses into us a fresh power to obey. I fail to see that he anywhere presents to us a dogmatic theological system: I do not believe that his apostles succeed in throwing his teaching into this shape. But supposing that it were so, as so many men believe, life is still the ultimate object, the life of God in man, the life which quickens all faculties, and casts off all impurities, and rises into a higher stage of vitality from year to year. "I am the way, the truth, and the life." "I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly." "The bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world." "I am the bread of life." So, too, the author of this Gospel, speaking in his own person: "In him was life, and the life was the light of men." So Paul: "The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." "Your life is hid with Christ in God." And last of all, in that antithesis so full of instruction: "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a life-giving spirit."