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p14 [To the same.] F Rowan, I do not think that any take eternal life for a new soul and I am afraid your attempt to define will only makes the matter more obscure. Existence is not life: the table exists but is not alive. "In him we live" is not we have life. But the thing I fear is the unsettling the fact of what life in Christ is. Thus "the Father hath life in Himself." Is that a mere condition of being? Again, "that eternal life which was with the Father and has been manifested to us." Your system loses, it seems to me, too much "He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." The life by which the Lord lived in this world was not in the first Adam at all, even when innocent. "Because I live," says Christ, "ye shall live also." He is a life-giving Spirit. Remark, if the tree was not eternal life, it was the tree of life, not of existence, and living for ever, not existing for ever, which is spoken of. So that your attempt to distinguish by definition breaks down the first step. So again, "all live unto him" (Luke 20) breaks down your definition, for the aim of that is to say that though the condition of existence was changed, life was still there. So when you say it is not in us as yet, you touch a vital point: we have life; Christ is our life. "This life is in His Son," and "he that hath the Son hath life." Do you mean that none of us have the Son? then the wrath of God abides on us. The ascribing to a person what is true only of a nature, runs through all John's epistle. "He cannot sin;" "the evil one toucheth him not." It is not a community of being, because He is also God; but we are all ἐξ ἑνὸς,* and because He lives we shall: He gives us eternal life, and we shall never perish. Our condition of being will change, our life not. Scripture adds the presence of the Holy Ghost for the christian condition of being. But "he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit:" what is that so far but community of being? The life of Jesus is to be manifested in our mortal flesh, and this is said if we which live are delivered to death that it may be so. You make it only born of water, but "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." Your effort at defining breaks down, and I fear its taking away the reality of a new life in Christ; quite admitting it is distinct from immortality. I have it in Him as much when mortal as when immortal: that is a change in the condition of being; the life, Luke 20 teaches us, is not touched in that change.

{*'Of one' Heb.2.}

[53014E]

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