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Are we seeking to gratify its desires with the bread of life? to nourish it with the truth and grace, the love and joys, which the Spirit, the great life-giver and life-sustainer, would give to it from the Father's heart and hand? Or, when the living, throbbing, longing, yearning, mystic Christ within our breasts asks bread, do we give it a stone? When it cries for the living Christ above, do we torture it with the scorpion sting of some vile lust? When it seeks fellowship with God, and with his Son Jesus Christ in the light, do we outrage its holy instincts, and mar its joys, by plunging it into darkness through our pursuit of the pleasures of sin? When it thirsts. for the living water, from its own sweet fountain in the heart of Jesus, do we thrill it with anguish by giving it the poison of the serpent? Brethren, is it not solemnly true, that no child of wrath on earth or in hell, and that no fallen spirit, can be guilty of sin so black, so base, so hateful, as this? Might not angels weep, might not devils laugh, might not wicked men scoff, at conduct like this? Oh! let us not grieve the Holy Spirit of Christ, that dwelleth with the precious life within us, by neglecting its claims; but let us suffer him to feed and nourish it out of the fulness of grace and truth in Jesus, for which it ever longs, and without which it can never be satisfied.

FAITHFUL WORDS.

BY

JOHN OFFORD,

OF PALACE GARDENS CHAPEL, KENSINGTON.

THE INNER LIFE DEVELOPED.

"My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.”—GAL. iv. 19.

How beautiful in the sight of God is the child of faith, as he stands in his presence in the peerless perfectness of his own spotless Son. Instead of the pollution, the deformity, and the vileness of the flesh, the eye of God rests upon the purity, the comeliness, and the preciousness of Jesus. With what ineffable delight does the Father look upon that matchless robe, in which he clothes every returning wanderer; for it is the one righteousness of his well-beloved Son, the one obedience, in life and in death, of the God-man, Christ Jesus. And how beautiful in the sight of God is the newborn saint, in whom his holy eye beholds the perfect image of his own holy Christ. Turning from the sin, the enmity, and the death inherent in the evil flesh, his loving eye discovers, and his loving heart rejoices to behold, the holiness, the love, and the life inherent in the renewed spirit. We can imagine the emotions which steal through the breast of a human father, as he traces in the features of his firstborn the image of its beloved mother; but who can conceive the mysterious joy of

the Divine Father, as he beholdeth the likeness of his well-pleasing Son in each newborn offspring of his love?

In our recent discourse on the inner life with which God renews the spirits of men, we treated mainly of its nature, its source, and its rank. Now, looking for the aid of the Holy Spirit, we essay to speak of its development in the saint. The essence of the life is distinguishable from its form, as the life of a tree is distinguishable from its branches. The life of the root may exist in the branches, while some deadly blight may impede the flow of the life, and prevent their full formation. The child may possess the nature and likeness of the parent, while weakness and disease may so check its growth as to render it sadly unlike the parent in health and vigour of mind and body. In like manner, we may possess the life and image of Christ, as the essence of the new man, and yet, through the power of inbred sin, we may fail to grow up into Christ our living head in all things. The features of the new man may be but faintly seen in us, though the life of the new man cannot be destroyed. To make this distinction plain, we will turn to a few Scripture examples of the use of the word translated "form,” and of its cognate or kindred terms. Paul says to the Jew, "Thou hast the form of knowledge and of truth in the law;" implying that he had only the form, that though knowledge and truth lay hid in the law, the Jew had not discovered them there, but had contented himself with the mere form. Also implying that the principle of truth, and the form or letter thereof, were different things. Again, concern

ing the false professor of the last days, Paul says to Timothy, "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof;" clearly showing that the one may exist apart from the other-that they cannot therefore be the same thing, and that the real form of godliness can only be derived from its living power. Again, to the Christians at Rome, he says, "Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds." Here we have the inward renewing as the life or principle, and the outward transformation as the form taken by the life. These uses of the word, by the Holy Spirit, suffice to mark and to prove the difference between the life of Christ in the believer, and the development of that life in accordance with the truth taught in our text. Let us proceed to note:

I. The great importance of the subject, as seen in the earnest language of the apostle. The essential necessity of the new birth by the Spirit none will deny. Our Lord's words have abidingly impressed this necessity on our minds; but we are wont to overlook the importance of the growth of the life through which we are born from above. Paul's words are pregnant with the vital moment of this great matter: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again." They were then already children. The apostle had agonized in spirit for them before God, when he had "preached the gospel unto them at the first," and they had been born of the incorruptible seed, by the Word, through the Spirit. To them he could say, "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." But when he looked for vigour,

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for progress, for fruit, he beheld them as the undeveloped members of a feeble and diseased body. They had turned from the proper food of the inner life, "to the weak and beggarly elements.... to the observance of days, and months, and times, and years." They were feeding on ritualism, on forms, and ordinances, and traditions, instead of feeding on Christ. False teachers had diffused amongst them false principles, and their growth toward the vigour of manhood-life had been stayed. Christ was in them, but he was not being formed in them. The Spirit-life was overlaid and encumbered by the dead weight of a fleshly religion. Hence we marvel not at our apostle's intense solicitude, as we hear him exclaim, "I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." We marvel not that, as the Holy Ghost diffused through his breast the constraining love, and the deep concern and compassion, of Christ for his failing saints, his inmost spirit should be agonized for them; that he should "travail in birth AGAIN until Christ [should] be FORMED in them." Measuring his feelings by our own, we might marvel; for where, in ministers or in people, is the yearning, agonizing, God-wrought solicitude that we ought to cherish for each other's spiritual growth and power? Who travails in birth in earnest longing to behold in God's saints the blessed features of the likeness of Jesus? As we address these words unto you, the pangs of penitential sorrow might pierce our heart, and shame might cover our face, and bid our tongue be still, while we call to mind the cold and lifeless nature of our pleadings in secret with God for the expansion of the holy life of Christ in his members.

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