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"in order that we may not sin." St Paul is intent on showing the believer how, 1 John ii. I. although "the flesh" is always present, carrying with it always the ingredients, so to speak, of the experience analysed in detail in Rom. vii. 7-24, there yet is something else always present also, and present in force. It is "the Holy Ghost given unto us." It is the living and personal Comforter, dwelling in our body, and making present in us "the life of 2 Cor. iv. 10, 11. Jesus." It is the Spirit "lusting against the flesh"-a force, a tendency, a personal Power, on the side of our deliverance and victory, gloriously competent to overcome its antagonist, and to make us, the subjects of it, as we yield to it and welcome it, mercifully "unable to do the things we would" in the life of the flesh, in the life of self.

So there is liberty where the Spirit of the Lord is ; a blessed liberty, 2 Cor. iii. 17. meek and lowly, but strong and thankful too. We find an emancipation from "old sins," and a wonderful precaution 2 Pet. i. 9. and prophylactic against new ones, in the secret of an indwelling strength, or rather

Strengthener, who is not ourselves yet is as near to us as ourselves. He is at the same time our always enlightening Convincer, as He unfolds to us the divine Holiness and our "exceeding need." But also, blessed be God, we shall find in Him, as we welcome Him, our internal Liberator, present always, not sometimes only; our "victory and triumph" in a way which forebodes no exhaustion by its own efforts, for it is the Almighty One working in us. We come very quickly, in the interior conflict, to the edge of our own strength. But to rest upon the presence of "the Spirit lusting against the flesh" is to repose upon a Power which has no edge, and no bottom. And conscious weakness is that which reposes most simply and most effectually upon it.

Let me close this brief general view with the remark that no call is louder to the Church, and to the Christian, of the present day than that we hasten to discover (if we still have that to do), and then always watchfully to use, our great strength" in the Spirit of God for deliverance from "serving sin," that so we may be filled with His "calm excess," and may

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overflow for blessing in the world around. The call, for one and for another, may not be to a life of any extraordinary apparent sacrifice, or external exhaustion or hardship; though who may say that it shall not be so? But most assuredly, for all who would be on the Lord's side in these days of ours, it is a call to a life of just such "coming out and being separate" from the world externally (while yet we are ready every hour lovingly to serve that world for our Lord) as arises from a true separation from the life of self and of sinning internally. How shall it be? How shall we indeed be sanctified, sinners that we are, in order to this witness and service of word and work? There is only one way. It is "in 1 Cor. vi. II. the name of the Lord Jesus, and by THE SPIRIT of our God."

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CHAPTER X.

GENERAL view of the revelation through

St Paul of the Holy Spirit and His work lies now before us. We proceed in the chapters which remain to a more detailed study of some leading Pauline passages, in which the Spirit's blessed operation and its results stand out manifested with peculiar glory.

May our "meditation of Him," by His great Ps. civ. 34. grace, "be sweet." May thought

and word be in some true sense His, and may the whole result be for Him.

I take up in the present chapter the great passage about the FRUIT of the Spirit, generated and produced in "the spiritual man." The

Gal. v. 22, 23. words thus specially before us are part of a context, and indeed of an Epistle, full to overflow of the truth of the Holy Ghost. What we observed in the last chapter

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regarding the doctrine of St Paul in general is seen in the Galatian Epistle, and in this section of it, eminently.

The Epistle is an urgent protest against a false doctrine of Justification. It states with strong and jealous firmness and precision the truth of the finished work of the atoning Cross, and the absolute necessity and simplicity of the function of faith, faith only, in order to the sinner's entrance into the merits of the Crucified, into acceptance in Him who "bought us out from the curse, being made a curse Gal. iii. 13. for us." It protests that a Gospel which leaves this out, which has not this for its message, is not a Gospel but a fatal perversion of the Gospel. But does the Epistle stand still there? Is Justification its whole message? No; it conveys quite as much a warning, a testimony, an affirmation, about the work and power of the Holy Ghost. The all-importance, for St Paul, of the truth of Justification resides after all in this, that for the justified, and for them only, lies open the life, and walk, and victory, and fruitbearing, which is by the Holy Ghost alone. As guilty sinners they take refuge by faith in