To men innumerable the discovery of this ancient truth, or the fuller apprehension of it, has been indeed like a beginning of new life. They have been long and painfully aware, perhaps, that their strife with evil was a serious failure on the whole, and their deliverance from its power lamentably partial. And they could not always command as they would the emotional energies of gratitude, the warm consciousness of affection. Then it was seen, or seen more fully, that the Scriptures set forth this great mystery, this powerful fact; our union with our Head, by the Spirit, for life, for victory and deliverance, for dominion over sin, for willing service. And the hands are lifted up, and the knees confirmed, as the man uses the now open secret--Christ in him, and he in Christ--for the real walk of life. But let us listen to St Paul again. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For if we became vitally connected (σύμφυτοι),= He with us and we with Him, =by the likeness of His Death,= by the baptismal plunge, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Buried Sacrifice, =why (ἀλλὰ), we shall be= vitally connected with Him by the likeness =also of His Resurrection,= by the baptismal emergence, symbol and seal of our faith-union with the Risen Lord, and so with His risen power.[87] [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =This knowing, that our old man,= our old state, as out of Christ and under Adam's headship, under guilt and in moral bondage, =was crucified with= Christ, was as it were nailed to His atoning Cross, where He represented us. In other words, He on the Cross, our Head and Sacrifice, so dealt with our fallen state for us, =that the body of sin,= this our body viewed as sin's stronghold, medium, vehicle, =might be cancelled,= might be in abeyance, put down, deposed, so as to be no more the fatal door to admit temptation to a powerless soul within.