looking at rivers as drains for the land. We know that they are arteries through which the life-blood of the seas flows upon the land by way of the skies. And suppose there were no Mississippi River. Suppose it were stopped at the gate. What a chill and death would fall upon the land! And how often that life of Christ which comes up to the gates of men's lives is stifled, the stream that would pour in kept out, the power that would control and remake blocked at the door through which it would enter. "The thief is come," He says, "and you let him in, to kill, and to steal, and to destroy; I am come, and you keep Me out. And I am come that you may have life, and that you may have it in all the abundance of God."
And we know that this life of Christ is real and abundant life because it fulfills the tests of life. It is a life of fullness in all its correspondences and relationships. It completes life to the uttermost of its possibilities, setting it in all those ties with that which is outside of it, which constitute life. For, after all, there is no separable life. All the life that we know is relationship. Our Lord defined it in such terms in His great prayer: "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Life can only be construed in terms of correspondence.
We know that the life Christ came to give,
