To be in Christ--you know what is meant by that. You are in Christ if you are living in and by His Spirit; if you are breathing it into your life; giving it forth again, if your life is engrafted on His life as a branch is engrafted upon a tree. He is the Vine; we ought to be as the branches which thus derive their vitality, their beauty, their power of bearing leaf and fruit from the tree. The same soil nourishes it; the same dews feed it; the same breezes fan it. So we ought to have our life fed through Christ from God. If we are in Christ, we shall have the same hatred of sin as He had. We shall be removing ourselves further from evil; we shall ever be getting more like Christ, ever increasing in personal holiness and helpfulness to others, ever also willing to accept whatever He sends us, subordinating our weak, wayward wills to His holy and perfect will. If we let these words of charm, "In Christ," be written over our lives, we shall feel the old fetters fall off, the old unhappiness disappear, the old insubordination cease to assert itself. [Illustration: (_Photo: J. Moffat, Edinburgh._) THE REV. W. W. TULLOCH, D.D.] We shall hardly know ourselves, the joy of the new life is so great. It is a joy, too, which we cannot keep to ourselves; we wish others to share our happy experience. We are constrained to wish this by the new and imperial impulse by which we are dominated. Because we carry heaven in our hearts we wish that others should do so, too. We look upon the sinner as upon some streamlet of water which is dwindling away day by day and will soon be dried up and the rocky channel left bare. Why? Because it is cut off from the fountain head, from the source away up in the hills near God's sky. And what we wish to do is to open the connection between the two, so that the stream may be fed and do what it is intended to do--flow along in full volume, making melody as it goes and fertilising the region through which it passes. In Christ, we are like the stream connected with its source: like it, we live melodious days and carry music to others. Or look at that branch separated from its parent stem; it is withering, it is dying. Again, a planet cut off from the central force and power--the sun--rushes through the dark night and is lost. So--if we be not in Christ, if we be separated from the true fountain, the living root, the centrifugal force--we shrivel up, we wither, we go to ruin here and hereafter, we die to all that makes existence tolerable and of value; and it might have been so different! Shall we for the future, if need be, try to make life different to ourselves and others?