(with 1 Timothy 6:12)
From the soul's supreme object comes her supreme inspiration.
I. We do not ask you to stand fast in anything that is partial, limited, or temporary. "Stand fast in the Lord." "Lay hold on eternal life," which is nowhere save in the eternal unity of powers, which is, and was, and for ever shall be, the Lord. As we might expect, the Gospel of the Lord and the Gospel of the sky are in perfect harmony. Astronomy is the word of God, and the New Testament is a mirror of astronomy's higher meaning. It was not only at the point of the sun's return from his deepest absence and at astronomical midnight that Jesus was born; but His birth was also the turning point of earth's moral cold and moral darkness. The sun of nature and the sun of our souls were coming anew into our world, and were coming together. Lay hold on His eternal life. His eternal life is your eternal life; His form is the ideal of your form, and capable of transmuting your form.
II. The eternal life often flashes on us, touches us to the quick, talks with us; but much more than this is necessary, if it is to create us anew. We must ourselves lay hold on it. We do our very utmost to maintain our hold on mortal life, not because it is mortal, but because it is life. The eternal life visits all men's souls, but all men's souls do not take hold, and therefore they are not changed, not glorified.
III. A word must be said to beginners, who are perhaps doubtful whether they have any hold at all on the eternal life. Persevere, and your new nature will grow, and with growth its appetite will increase. Remember, it is a form of your nature which can never undergo disintegration. You may undergo a thousand deaths before you attain to it, but when once the Lord's form of humanity is evolved about you as your own form, you can die no more.
J. Pulsford, Our Deathless Hope,p. 137.
References: Philippians 4:1. Talmage, Old Wells Dug Out,p. 340; E. Lawrence, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 395.Philippians 4:1-4. H. Quick, Ibid.,vol. ii., p. 312.Philippians 4:2. Phillips Brooks, Twenty Sermons,p. 353.Philippians 4:3. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,1st series, p. 40.