worthiness to act or speak at all in His name; and must remember that the grace which commissions and supports us in our work is the same grace which first pardoned our own offences. Our work must be done in deep abasement, since it is the work of penitents, and an outward expression of repentance.

(5) We must persevere in our prayers and spiritual exercises, even when they bring no comfort or consolation to our souls. We must recognise these times of darkness as, first, the penalty of our past sins which blind us to the things of God; and, secondly, as an opportunity for showing that we are not seeking spiritual comfort or satisfaction for ourselves, but are offering ourselves loyally and lovingly to the service of our Master. But of this we shall speak later.

(6) All these methods of combating Pride are negative in character. They consist in saying No, in various tones and degrees of emphasis, to each and every temptation to self-assertion. This procedure is most useful and quite indispensable; but it is not sufficient of itself to conquer the enemy; it may expel him for the moment, but cannot be confident of preventing his return. It must be supplemented by a positive method, whereby the soul shall be saved from Pride by being turned to worthier aims; shall be saved from the assertion of self by being made the devoted servant of Jesus Christ. We have seen that Baptism communicates to us the seed of

the risen life of Christ as well as the seed of His death. It is through the development of this Christ-life within us that the work of mortification will be fulfilled, and pride finally overcome. Mortification, with its call to repentance, is like the Baptist preparing the way of Christ, making straight a road for Him into a heart that is being cleansed from sin. This indwelling life of Christ is what we have now to consider.

D

CHAPTER VI

THE CHRIST-LIFE

ETACHMENT and mortification are a hard discipline to carry through. But we have seen that there shines therein the light of a "hope" and a "life" which shall take the place of the world from which we are to stand aloof and of the carnal nature which we are to crucify. If we detach ourselves from the world, it is in order that we may attend upon God and listen to His voice without distraction. If we mortify sinful habits, it is through the communicated power of Him who died for our sins and rose again for our justification.

Hitherto we have merely reminded ourselves from time to time of this divine life which is the goal of detachment and mortification, and which, oy the light which it casts behind it, helps us to persevere in the work of purification. But now, having treated of the processes which prepare us for it, we must consider what it is and how we appropriate it.

It is, first of all, the life of God Incarnate. We may, indeed, afterwards think, with all reverence, of the Godhead apart from the incarnation; but, in

any case, our avenue of approach to God as He is in Himself is through the life of Jesus Christ. No man cometh to the Father but by Him. And the life of Christ which we are to receive will have two characteristics—one belonging to Him as God, and the other flowing forth from Him as Incarnate. The first is Love and the second is Humility.

It is in these two qualities that the Divine life is manifested in us; in these our spiritual life consists. Without humility there can be no spiritual life at all. If we are to stand in any close relation to God at all, that relation must first and foremost be one of humility. The man who can face God in an attitude of self-complacency, self-importance, selfconceit, only shows that he knows nothing either of himself or God.

But humility has many stages. At its lowest it is an intellectual conviction of our own nothingness, and less than nothingness, in comparison with God.

If we are to think truly of the Maker and Source of all things, it can only be by recognising that we are nothing and have nothing of ourselves; that the nature in which He made us is in itself an emptiness and a hunger, which can only be filled at all by His gifts, and ultimately only by Himself.

We must remember that the spiritual life is in no sense a business partnership between ourselves and God, in which we contribute so much in the way of capital and God makes up the rest. Rather we shall confess that all which we have ever contributed of ourselves is just the perversion and ruin

of God's gifts by self-will, which is itself a distortion of God's gift of freedom.

But we may recognise these facts without being the least humble. So far we have a fact coldly conceived by the reason, and that is not enough. We only become really humble by the power of love; humility is made perfect in love. Love is, alike in things human and divine, the consummate teacher of humility. The genuine lover is humbled by the sense of his own unworthiness. If he is not thus humbled he is no true lover; his love is only self-love. And much more obviously must love produce humility when He whom we love is the Lord Jesus. Then we despise ourselves for all things that we have pursued in preference to Him; we hate ourselves for our neglect of Him; we take vengeance on ourselves for the outrages we have committed against Him. This is something of what humility means to a Christian. Thus humility may have its origin in a mere rational perception of our nothingness apart from God; then love breathes upon this perception, and lo! it becomes a passion of self-abasement and self-abhorrence.

We see now that this nothing in which we consist is a nothing which thought itself something, which claimed for itself rights and possessions, which presumed to ignore Him in whose hands our breath is and whose are all our ways, which forgot or denied the giver in the very midst of the multitude of His gifts. And we feel, too, the worthlessness of those things which we had pursued apart from God.