Bible Commentaries
2 Corinthians 3

Verse 3

LIVING EPISTLES

‘Ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.’

2 Corinthians 3:3

It is impossible to study such a statement as this without grave searchings of heart. Solemn questions must arise in all thoughtful minds which require prayerful and honest answers.

I. There are, it is true, important differences between our position and that of the early Christians which make it specially difficult for the handwriting of Christ to be recognised in us. Christianity was then a new power; its characteristics were clear and distinct, and their novelty attracted attention. But now this is an old tale with which all are familiar. And just because the handwriting of Christ has been before the world all these centuries, its characteristic features do not attract the same attention. But, in spite of these difficulties, the handwriting of Christ may be seen in His true servants to-day. The need for such epistles is as great as ever. Men do not read their Bibles much, but they do read our lives. We ought to be recognised as Christ’s epistles. Open to all the world. Legible and plain so that the passer-by may read. Men ought to take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus and have learned of Him. Thank God there are such epistles to-day. Such beautiful characters can be found manifesting not merely the fruits of Christian culture or the results of careful Church training, but the marks of the touch of the Master Himself.

II. But what are these marks?—What are the special characteristics of the handwriting of Christ? I will mention four.

( a) The first is a deep sense of sin and of all that sin involves.

( b) A second mark is a sense of forgiveness and peace.

( c) A third mark is the possession of life from above.

( d) A fourth mark is the mark of the Cross.

III. But how may we become epistles of Christ?—The answer is in the text. The writing is not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. Not on tables of stone, but on hearts of flesh. The reference is to the giving of the Law. A contrast is drawn between the Old and the New Covenants. The Old Covenant was a ministration of death with a glory which vanished. The New Covenant is a ministration of righteousness and life with a glory which remains. The Commandments of Sinai had no power to lay hold of the heart. There they stood engraven in stone, revealing God’s righteous demands, but utterly unable to awaken a response of loving and loyal obedience. Christ is the Mediator of a better Covenant based upon better promises. This new Covenant is written with the Spirit of the living God.

Rev. F. S. Webster.

Illustration

‘Most men are betrayed by their handwriting. We all have a number of correspondents whose letters we can identify without opening the envelope. The very direction shows us from whom the letter has come. Now, St. Paul could say of the Christians at Corinth that they were “manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ.” None could watch their changed lives and characters without recognising the handwriting of Christ. St. Paul was the pen, but Christ Himself was the writer. The Divine Master had stamped His own image and superscription upon them. And this change was so manifest, that St. Paul could point to it with confidence and use great plainness of speech. For such manifestly Christian lives were the sufficient credentials of the Gospel, so many living proofs of its Divine power and origin.’

Verse 5

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY

‘Our sufficieney is of God.’

2 Corinthians 3:5

The subjects of this chapter are, first, the reality, and secondly, the objects and the dignity of the Christian ministry. I say Christian ministry rather than Christian priesthood, because it is not merely the particular office of the priest as distinguished from those of deacon or of bishop which is being brought before us, but rather that whole system of human agency, including all orders and degrees of service, by which God has chosen to carry out the designs of the Incarnation and the extension of His Church.

I. The reality of the Christian ministry.—Remember there is such a system of human agency ordained by God as that which we understand by the Christian ministry. The New Testament, or the New Covenant, or the Christian Church, call it which you please, is just as much an institution of God’s as the Jewish system had been, and its ministry is God’s appointment too.

II. Its objects and dignity.—These two qualities we must take together, just as St. Paul has taken them. For the dignity of the Christian ministry does not lie in the privileges of its ministers, but in their usefulness to the brethren. It is in the use that they are of, or rather in the use that God has seen fit to make of them, the uses God puts them to, that the dignity of the Christian ministry lies. And so we say that the objects of the Christian ministry are its dignity, and that we cannot take them separately, as if they were different and separate things. In the verses before us, then, St. Paul defines the objects of the Christian ministry in two distinct phrases. He calls it

( a) The ministration of the Spirit; and

( b) The ministration of righteousness.

In these phrases he teaches us that the Christian ministry exists to ‘administer the Spirit,’ and so to administer righteousness. These he states to be the objects for which the ministry of the Christian Church was instituted, and from these statements he draws the inference of the dignity of the ministry which subserves objects so important.

Illustration

‘The ministry of the Church is a ministry of righteousness, because it leads to righteousness, by bringing men under the dominating and permeating influence of that Holy Spirit Who is shed abroad in our hearts to make us righteous. It teaches righteousness; it teaches our need of righteousness; it teaches the means of righteousness; its very function and duty is so to interweave itself and its offices, and its services, and its teachings, with a man’s whole life as to keep him in the way of righteousness at every turn of his life. Its very function is to take every precaution that all Christian people shall be always acting under the influence of the Holy Spirit, so that their whole life may be not their life, but the life of the Spirit living in them and animating their life. This is the secret; this, so to speak, is the rationale of all that system of Church services by which most especially the Church’s ministry exercises its ministration.’

Verse 6

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL

‘The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.’

2 Corinthians 3:6

This short sentence is frequently misinterpreted; certainly it is frequently misapplied. Beyond doubt the imagery present to the Apostle’s mind was not the contrast between a book and its ‘spirit,’ but that between the inscribed edict of the Tablets of Mount Sinai, the awful ‘This do and live,’ ‘This do not and die,’ and the revelation in the Gospel of a Power Which can, for the justified, write the will of God on the heart and put it in the mind. It is the contrast between Sinai and the double glory of Calvary and Pentecost.

The Law killeth, with its unrelieved sentence of death upon the law-breaker who offends even ‘in one point.’ The Gospel giveth life. As the Gospel of Calvary, it is ‘the ministration of (justifying) righteousness.’ As the Gospel of Pentecost, it is the ministration of spiritual liberty and power to the believer.

I. Note the denomination of the Gospel by that glorious term ‘the Spirit’.—Can we give the fact too great a weight? We are reading St. Paul, the Apostle of Justification. And that great theme of his is close at hand; we observe it in that passing phrase ( 2 Corinthians 3:9), ‘the ministration of righteousness’—words whose reference is easy to fix when we remember that the Corinthian Epistles form one great dogmatic group with the Galatian and Roman. Yes, but in this very context, when he comes to state as it were the ultimate glory of the Message, he writes not ‘the Cross,’ but ‘the Spirit.’ Not that the Cross is not, primarily and eternally, as necessary as it is wonderful and glorious. Not that it is not the rock-foundation of the believer’s peace, from first to last. Not so; but because the Cross is in order to the Spirit. Justification is not an end in itself; it is provided in order that the justified may justly, and effectually, receive ‘the promise of the Father,’ and live by the Spirit, and walk by the Spirit, filled with Him, while He ( Ephesians 3:16) ‘strengthens them with might in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith.’

II. Surely we have here a principle to govern our faith, hope, and ‘ministration of the new Covenant.’—The whole passage is pregnant of caution in the matter, but far more of positive and animating suggestion. It spends itself upon reminding us of the eternal Spirit, with His light, His liberty, His glory.

III. Let us evermore embrace, appropriate, and preach the Gospel of the Holy Spirit.—It is not ‘another Gospel’; God forbid. It will glorify eternal foundations by showing them in their living relation to the eternal superstructure.

Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

DEATH AND LIFE

When St. Paul speaks here of ‘the letter,’ he means the words or text of the law which God had given to men. When he says, ‘the letter killeth,’ he means that the law condemns man.

I. Death.—Is it not true of you what St. Paul says of the whole human race—‘the letter killeth’—the law condemns? It is true. There is no exception in your case. ‘Oh Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers.’ That must be, and that is, the heart confession of every honest man. There will be, indeed, here and there the ignorant and carnal mind who really does not see anything much amiss with itself: there will be sometimes the Pharisee, who knows it in his heart, but will not acknowledge it; but every one who is not wilfully blind, or wilfully obstinate, must feel that of him, as of others, it is true, that the law condemns him utterly—the letter killeth—killeth for this world and for the next world—for time and for eternity.

If we had to stop there, our fate would be dark indeed, and without hope.

II. Life. But, says St. Paul, ‘the Spirit giveth life,’ and in that life is our salvation.—‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ All things must become new for the sinful soul that would be saved. The soul must be turned away from evil, and turned towards good by this work of the Holy Spirit. The Christian who has stained his soul with sin must obtain forgiveness and spiritual strength. That is conversion. The great mercy and blessing of the redeeming work of the Spirit is this—that it is free and full and without limit of time or place. However sinful, however dead in trespasses and sins a man may be, there is absolution and renewal for his need, and the Saviour will not reject his petition for pardon.

Verses 7-11

LAW AND GOSPEL COMPARED

‘But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, … much more that which remaineth is glorious.’

2 Corinthians 3:7-11

In these verses we have a comparison between the old and the new dispensations in defence of St. Paul’s ministry: a comparison from the less to the greater. The old was glorious in the circumstances of its promulgation at Sinai, but it is excelled in glory by the new.

I. Death and life.—The law was a ministration of death; the Gospel is a ministration of the Spirit, and so of life. The one works death, the other life: life is better than death. The Gospel, as the ministry of the Spirit, gives light.

II. The law was written on stones, the Gospel is written on the heart.—The law was something outward, making little appeal to the heart, nor quickening the will; mainly a letter; not a living, inward power or principle so much as an elaborate ritual. The Gospel is written, not with ink or with graving-tool on tables of stone, but on the fleshy tables of the heart by the Spirit. It is inward and spiritual, a living power and principle, God’s power unto salvation dominating a man’s inward life. The inward and spiritual more glorious than the outward and mechanical.

III. Condemnation or righteousness?—Condemnation is ministered by the law when we are brought to feel that we are under the curse of the law. Righteousness is ministered when we are brought to accept Christ’s perfect righteousness for justification.

IV. The law has lost its glory.—The law was made glorious, the Gospel is essentially glorious.

V. Law temporary, Gospel permanent.—The Mosaic economy was meant, not to abide, but to vanish away when it had served its time and purpose. The Gospel remaineth, is imperishable, is never to be superseded.

Verse 14

OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES

‘But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which vail is done away in Christ.’

2 Corinthians 3:14

The Bible is best and most reasonably regarded, according to the express statement of the English Church, as ‘containing the Word of God’; in other words, that it is a record of the inspired people of God. Priceless as the Old Testament is, as a witness to the ancient history of the world, to us it is rather available in three great and principal lights:—

I. It is the authentic history of the Covenant between God and the race to whom He had revealed Himself.

II. It is the picture of the dealings of God with men, when they were under His direct government, and personal consecration to His service.

III. It is the presentation of the expectation of the Redeemer of the world.—First, a King after the manner of David, ruling over a chosen people, ideally united under Him. Then, born in David’s city, combining the peaceful qualities of Solomon with the triumphant victories of his father. And at last there is a climax of delineation. He becomes the pure, Divine, virgin Lord, Who founds a reign of righteousness for the whole world, for Gentiles as well as Jews; and Who, though He triumphs, triumphs in the last and spiritual sense through suffering and humiliation.

Wonderfully accurate as the Old Testament is shown to be by comparison with the monuments, histories, and writings of the different nations contemporary with its various epochs, it is not of secular history that we desire to learn from it, nor geology, nor astronomy, nor botany, nor physiology, nor political economy, nor of other sciences nor branches of knowledge whatever, which merely concern this earth and our present creation. To it we look for the dealings of God with men; for instruction and warning in conduct; for the intercourse of devout minds with God; for the progressive development of the moral and religious ideas; for the gradual unfolding of the attributes and nature of the Almighty Being Who created the heavens and the earth, yet Who dwelleth with him that is of humble and contrite spirit.

Archdeacon William Sinclair.

Illustration

‘The temper which most befits Old Testament workers is that of explorers conscious of obscurities all around them which they have not penetrated, and of mysteries which they have not yet fathomed; unwilling to press even what they may think the balance of opinion at any particular moment, knowing as they must that at the very most it is—even without taking account of the medium through which it passes—it still is only a balance of opinion which fluctuates from day to day. If the balance had been struck with the New Testament thirty or forty years ago, how many positions would it have included which are now known to be impossible?’

Verse 17

CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’

2 Corinthians 3:17

If we allow our thoughts to dwell on the subject of ‘liberty,’ we find it to be indeed a subject worthy of contemplation.

I. It attracts the mind with a special fascination.

( a) There is, first, the picturesque and poetical side. We think of the boundless firmament above, and of the wonderful freedom of the smallest bird. We recall the inspiration of the mountain height, free from the sound of strife, free from the narrowness of men, where the eye roams over vast tracts of free and open country, unbroken by hedge or wall or belt of trees. We think of the wide ocean, where the winds sweep their courses as they will and each sunlit ship seems an emblem of liberty. And there is the sense of treading regions untrodden before, of seeing sights unseen by mortal eye, and of being in a land where there is no law save that of the brute creation.

( b) And then, too, there is the historical side. We go back to the childhood of the world, where it is weak and ignorant of the ways and possibilities of the future; we note the rude beginnings of primitive life, like a stream restrained by high banks and ignorant of its power to be, when it may sweep where it will on to the ocean of liberty.

( c) And there are also the political and social aspects of the subject; and we call to mind how man after man, class after class, race after race, nation after nation, have risen up to battle for liberty—‘the passion and prayer of all men’s souls’—for that which a Divine instinct tells us should be ours.

( d) And then there is the moral and spiritual freedom of which we read in the Bible—the freedom of the individual soul from the curse of the moral law, from the servitude of the ceremonial law, freedom from ignorance and spiritual blindness; freedom from the curse and slavery and misery of sin.

II. True freedom is the freedom conferred by the Christian’s God on those who obey His laws—a freedom from the slavery of sin, from wrong desires, from strife and passion, from an evil conscience, from vanity and discontent, from ambition and jealousy, from the fear of man, and from the fear of the valley of death. This is the freedom that is worth possessing—a heart at one with its Maker, set free to love the good and strengthened to resist the evil. And when once we have made clear the difference between true and spurious freedom, then may we not appeal to the sense of honour which exists somewhere in every breast? Will the son try to injure the father? Will the soldier fight against his King? Shall we neglect His orders and obey the enemy? We are placed in the garden of life; shall we trample on its purest flowers? We are royal messengers to all around; shall we neglect our message and be false?

III. And do we not need also to insist upon the dignity of life?—We are in a position of trust. We might have been treated as servants only. We are treated as friends and even heirs. It is true we have the power, the free opportunity, to neglect our duty and to do wrong. We can, if we wish, spend our time, our money, our strength, our talents exclusively on ourselves; we can neglect Divine ordinances, Sundays, sacraments, prayer, praise; we can be ungrateful, unthoughtful, untrusting, and untrue; but we will not. Reward or no reward, God is our Lord and Master; Christ is our Saviour and Friend; the Holy Spirit is our Guide and Comforter; and in that service we will live, and in that service we will work, and in that service, obedient, we will be free. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’

Rev. F. B. F Campbell.

Illustration

‘If we find national misconceptions regarding the principles of liberty, we may be sure that they start with the private individual—that is, among ourselves. Why is it that so many look askance at religion who are not really opposed to it? Why is it that it enters so little into their lives, when in reality they are longing for it? Let us try and discern at least one reason—among many—the fact that they regard religion in the wrong light in reference to the subject of liberty. And it must be confessed that the traditional up-bringing of the young conduces to this end. For is it not true that we educate our children with the idea that religion is their task-master and the world the parent of liberty? Whereas, conversely, liberty is the child of religion and the world is the real despot. In the eyes of the young religion is too much associated with the principle of aimless restraint rather than that of reasonable guidance. They are accustomed from childhood to a long series of injunctions: “You must not do this”; “You must not do that”; “You must not go there”; “You cannot have permission”; “It is not allowed”; “It is not right”; “It is wrong.” Need we wonder if, with the negative side of religion kept ever before them, our youth grows up imbued with the belief that religion is associated with a kind of dull slavery, and pleasure only with freedom—or, rather, with independence?’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE LIMITS OF LIBERTY

Christian liberty does not mean the right to do as we like. It is strictly limited. Bishop Westcott wrote, ‘True freedom is not license to do what you like, but power to do what you ought.’

I. Limited by want of power.—Our freedom is limited by want of power. Whether it be in physical or temporal or spiritual power, the extent of our freedom is limited by the extent of our power. There is no such thing as real freedom without power. There is no such thing as absolute freedom without almighty power. What is the use of my being free to do anything, if I have power to do nothing? Would it not be well for us to seek power rather than search fruitlessly for a false freedom? The power we need most is the power over our corrupt, sinful nature. ‘I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members,’ is not the experience of one man only. Where are we to seek for power? ‘Ye shall receive power from on high.’ We need the power of the Holy Ghost within us. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,’ and nowhere else in the world is there true liberty.

II. By the extent of our knowledge.—But our freedom is also limited by the extent of our knowledge. No one can be absolutely free without perfect knowledge. What is the use of having the liberty to do what you like if you do not know whether you will like it when you have done it, and have scarcely any means of knowing what to choose to do? Where are we to get this knowledge? ‘When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth … and He will show you things to come.’ You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ When a man or woman is endowed with power from on high, when a man or woman is filled with the Spirit of Truth, He will guide him or her into all truth. Then you have something like real liberty. ‘Not license to do what you like, but power to do what you ought.’

III. By the strength of our will.—There is another limitation—the strength and stability of our will. Even the powerful and the wise are limited in freedom by their wills. How many a man, for instance, has the power and the means of providing a happy home for himself, and knows full well the immense benefit of a happy home-life, and yet he does not have it because he has not control over his will. He has not the will to carry out what he has otherwise the power to do, and what he knows he would be the happier for doing. Under the same heading I may include the limitations of our desires. And a further limitation I will just mention is the limitation of our capacity for enjoyment. I have little hesitation in saying that the man or woman who is living an unspiritual life has an extremely limited capacity for enjoyment. There is no joy like his whose joy is in the Holy Ghost. As for greater stability of will and greater wisdom in desire, there again it is the Spirit which can make us free, which can give us the power to will as well as to do. ‘Not license to do what we like, but power to do what we ought,’ that is true freedom, spiritual power, knowledge of what to do, will to carry it out.

The man who has utterly consecrated his body, mind, and will to the service of God, he is the man, and the only man, who is really free. In order to do true service we need the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit; and ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’

—Rev. E. J. Watson-Williams.

(THIRD OUTLINE)

‘PERFECT FREEDOM’

‘Whose service is perfect freedom.’ The words are beautifully familiar to us all. At every Matins we repeat them in the Collect, but do we always sufficiently realise the strength and depth of their meaning? They represent the Christian position; and it is this glorious privilege of ‘perfect freedom’ which the Apostle in this chapter is seeking to bring home to the mind of the Church at Corinth. He does so by way of contrast, a contrast of man’s position under the law and under the Gospel. The law found man in bondage, and left him so, only sealing the cords of his captivity; but when the Gospel came it snapped all fetters and led man at once into perfect freedom, for where the Spirit of the Lord is—there is liberty. Freedom follows the footsteps of the Gospel.

I. Freedom in conscience.—Until we obtain freedom in conscience it is useless to think of liberty in any other respect. It is for this liberty or freedom in conscience that we pray when we say, ‘O God, Whose nature and property is ever to have mercy and to forgive, receive our humble petitions; and though we be tied and bound with the chain of our sins, yet let the pitifulness of Thy great mercy loose us.’ We need freedom from the thraldom of sin; and when we have obtained pardon through the Precious Blood our consciences are at liberty, and we learn the great truth that there is ‘now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.’

II. Liberty in life.—The next step after liberty in conscience is liberty in life. ‘Sin shall not have dominion over you’ is the promise to the Christian; and, if we will, our Christian walk, day by day, and hour by hour, may be pursued in the perfect sunshine of God’s love, without a cloud to mar its brightness and its joy. Temptations will come, but they may be bravely faced, not, however, in our own strength, but in the strength of Another, even of Him who has conquered sin and Satan. This is what we mean by liberty in life—not liberty to follow our own way, but to follow just where the Lord shall lead.

III. Liberty in service.—What is a man saved for? He is ‘saved to serve’; yet there can be no liberty, no freedom in our service until we have liberty in conscience and liberty in life and walk. The service to which Christ calls us is a service of love; love is its inspiration; love is its sustaining power. There is no bondage in Christ’s service; it is perfect freedom. And this liberty, whence comes it? It comes through perfect trust and rest in Christ Himself. ‘Your life,’ says the Apostle, ‘is hid with Christ in God.’ Oh happy they who thus trust, for surely shall they obtain rest, peace, freedom. It is impossible to truly serve God until we experience this sense of liberty and freedom; and the only way to appreciate it is by making a full surrender of ourselves unto Him. The Spirit of the Lord alone can enable us; and where He reigns there is liberty.

Verse 18

REFLECTING CHRIST

‘But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’

2 Corinthians 3:18

It is the law of human nature that whatever we habitually, intelligently, and lovingly contemplate gives a colour to our minds, and affects our character for good or evil. Here St. Paul puts it, when Christ is viewed lovingly, the viewer becomes Christlike. Therefore, our duty is plain.

I. If we would be transformed into the image of Christ we must associate with Him, must take Him as our constant companion. Just remember how often He said ‘Follow Me.’ We must not reflect Him in an occasional way, but steadily and continually. In a word, we must live with Jesus. ‘Abide in Me, and I in you,’ is the law of the Christian life, and the great means by which we become what we wish to be—Christlike.

II. Reflect Christ.—That is something we can all do for Christ. You are not all called upon to preach. You may not be able to give much money to extend His cause. But still you can reflect Him. By reflecting Him you will extend the knowledge of Him; and by knowledge of Him, as the Holy Book says, shall many be justified. We all remember the story of Moses, how, when he came down from the mount, his face shone, after having seen the glory of God, and the people saw it. Well, is not that a true parable of what you can make your own life? By reflecting the glory which you have gained from Christ you may convert sinners. You have read in the Acts how those who came against St. Peter and St. Paul ‘took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.’ And they learned their lesson. It is how the world will be converted.

III. Fall upon your knees and sometimes ask yourselves, can you see in yourself, in your character, anything of the features of Christ, any likeness to Him? Do not be afraid, from time to time, just to put that question, and see how you are getting on. If you have been living with Him, you ought to be able to find in your life some likeness to Him. You will be met sadly enough by fallings away, with doubts and fears, with evil thoughts and acts, but still the fruits of the Spirit will be manifested in your daily life and conduct in spite of your sins and falls. Have I the mind of Christ? Is the love of Christ the controlling power?

‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.’ If you think in your heart that you are Christ’s, and seek that He shall come in and abide with you, then the victory is being won, and Christ will come and claim you for His own.

—Rev. Canon Benham.

Illustrations

(1) ‘There is a Greek fable that tells us of a very remarkable temple erected to the honour of a certain idol, and it says that those wishing to enter it had first to look at themselves in a glass placed at the entrance, and that this mirror was so constructed that at first the beholder only saw his own natural visage, but that by degrees his countenance was changed into the form of the idol which he worshipped. St. Paul apparently knew of this story, and he gave it a spiritual meaning of absolute truth. He writes to the Corinthians, who knew all these stories very well. They were the learned people of the New Testament whom he wrote to, full of Greek myths, Greek history, and Greek idols till now, but they had cast them away. Well, he says, then, that the Gospel, the grace of God, is that mirror which they who desire to enter the temple of heaven must look into first. They begin well by looking into the Gospel, into the character of Christ, and then, as they continue to look into it, Christ’s image is so impressed upon them that it becomes prominent in their character and conduct. That is the idea which lie puts forward—that we all with unveiled faces reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord are transformed into the same image, “from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” ’

(2) ‘A little child was asked, “What is a Christian?” The answer was a good one, “A Christian is to live as Jesus Christ would live if He came and lived in our house.” ’