Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/44

40 "To be in Christ" is a Scriptural expression that deserves special notice. You are aware that the inspired volume in representing the wretched condition of fallen and degenerate man, sets before him as the only firm ground of hope, the vicarious atonement of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It directs us with penitent hearts and a lively faith to ground our expectation of pardoning mercy at the hand of God, solely on the all-prevailing merits of the Saviour. Now, as those only who thus rely, derive from him all the special benefits, blessings and privileges procured by his death, they are therefore represented as being in him, or united to him by the appropriating property of that "faith which works by love, purifies the heart, and overcomes the world." This spiritual union is compared by our Lord to the vital connexion that exists between the branch and the vine. "I am the vine" says he, "ye are the branches: he that