organism, like the human body. Every book in the Bible has a specific place and service like the members of the body; the life in that marvellous divinely constructed organism of the revelation of God is the Son of God. Apart from Him there is no revelation from God and no manifestation of God. He reveals God throughout the Bible, in every part, He holds the pre-eminence. Greater still is His pre-eminence in redemption. Redemption would be an eternal impossibility without Him. He came from the Father’s bosom to redeem us. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father but by Him. He gives eternal life. Furthermore as the first born from the dead He is the head of the body. That body is the church and every believing sinner is a member in that body. Each is united to Him and possesses His life. This body with its many members He keeps, nourishes, builds up, sanctifies and ultimately glorifies. In all the great and glorious redemptive work He has the pre-eminence.

As the glorified Man He is the Heir of God and as such He holds the pre-eminence in heaven. He has been made so much better than the angels, as He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. Far above all the angelic beings, higher than the archangel is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Man in Glory.

There is a future pre-eminence for Him. The day of His visible Glory and power is approaching. Now He is rejected, then He will be enthroned. Upon the holy hill of Zion He will be the King of Glory. His Glory will cover the heavens and His Majesty the earth. He will be King of kings and Lord of lords. He will rule as the only potentate and every knee must bow before Him. The song must at last rise in heaven and on earth “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory and blessing.” Such is, briefly sketched, the pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yea, in all things He hath the pre-eminence.

Can we do anything less than to give Him the first place in all things? He is worthy of it. He died for us. He drank the cup of wrath in our stead. His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree. How great has been and still is His love for us, the love, which passeth knowledge. He is worthy of the first place every moment of our lives. He is worthy to possess all we have and are. We are bought with a price, we are not our own. We belong to Him.

What unspeakable grace from God the Father, that He has brought us into fellowship with Him to whom He has given the pre-eminence. We please the Father as we delight ourselves in the Son and walk in that blessed fellowship. We must honor Him whom the Father has honored, and as we serve the Lord Jesus Christ and accord Him the first place, the Father will honor us (John xii:26). Our hearts too can never fully know the blessed peace of God and rest of faith till we give our Lord the first place. Anything less than that will mean dishonor to Him. “Not I—but Christ” must be the constant cry of our hearts. Not I—but Christ in our daily walk; Not I—but Christ in our service. Oh! that we might realize our great and holy calling, our wonderful privilege, a privilege which is ours for but a little while longer to live Him, live for Him, who has in all things the pre-eminence.

“Ye are Christ’s—Christ is God’s.”

ONLY a few words, yet how blessedly full of peace and joy! How precious they are to faith! If we, to whom they apply, would remember them daily, how happy in Him we would be. In all our ways, in good and evil days, yea, every moment the truth contained in these words ought to be real to the true believer. Is not all our failure due to the fact that we live not sufficiently in the consciousness and reality of this wonderful fact, that we belong to Christ, that we are one with Him? Before these words in the third chapter of First Corinthians we find the statement “all things are yours.” And after these words it is written “Christ is God’s.” We are Christ’s and Christ is God’s; all things are ours because Grace has brought us into this marvelous relationship. “Christ is God’s” gives us once more the whole story of God’s Love and Grace. As the Only Begotten He ever subsisted in the form of God, the Image of God, one with Him, absolutely God. But He came down, took upon Him the form of a servant, taking His place in the likeness of man. In the form of man He wrought the great work of redemption on the cross and now after His resurrection, by which He is proven Son of God and His presence as the glorified Man in the highest heaven, He is the one in whom and through whom, God the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ gives all blessing. “Christ is God’s,” then, means what we learn from the following scriptures: “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands” (John iii:35). “Whom He hath appointed heir of all things” (Heb. i:2). “Christ is God’s” is a word which tells us that He who is the Creator of all things, the visible and the invisible, came in incarnation, redeemed us and is now, the beginning, the first-begotten from the dead and the Head of His Body, which is the Church. This is how God has brought us to Himself in the person of His own Son by whom he has redeemed us, in whom He has exalted us and with whom He has given us all things.

To that wonderful person, Christ, the Christ of God, we belong. We are His, who is One with God, by whom and for whom all things were created. The Son of God for such as we are, became poor, even to the poverty of the cross. There He took our place and in His own body He bore our sins and died for us. He saw us then the travail of His soul. We can look back to the cross and say, as His Apostle said: “Who love me and gave Himself for me.” We belong to Him, who has all power in heaven and will have all power before long, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords on earth. We are Christ’s, whom God has appointed as the second Man, the head of the new creation as Heir of all things. We are Christ’s, who is the Head of the Body, to which we belong. In Him and with Him we are the Heirs of God. God and Christ are inseparable and so are Christ and we who have trusted in Him and have His life. All Christ has belongs to us; all Christ is we shall be; where Christ is there we shall be in all eternity. Reader! Child of God, pause! Does your faith lay hold of this? Do you read it only and enjoy it just for a moment or is this great fact of your union with Christ and God becoming daily a greater reality in your life? Is it really so that you enter deeper and deeper into that love which passeth knowledge? Oh! that it may be so with the writer and each believer who reads these feeble words on so great a theme.

“Ye are Christ’s.” Then we are not our own. That is exactly what is elsewhere stated in First Corinthians. “Ye are not your own; we are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Cor. vi:20). Our hearts occupied with Himself, increasingly attracted by the glorious Person of our adorable Lord, realising by the power of His Spirit our glory and destiny with the Lord of Glory, we shall act and walk as such, who are Christ’s. Every step of the way it will resound in our hearts “ye are Christ’s.” In all we do we shall always remember we are Christ’s. Cares, anxieties, worldly ambitions, all manner of temptations, will fall before the fact grasped in faith “I am Christ’s.”

We are convinced that only the Person of Christ put before the heart of the believer through the Word of God and the power of