bids me fight and struggle against temptation;
He tells me to press forward towards the mark--to go up higher, to seek
those things which are above, to forget those things which are behind.
He would have me labour and strive to enter in at the strait gate, and
to work out my own salvation. He commands me to take up my cross and
follow, and all this means work, struggle, _progress_. "Walk in the
Spirit." When Jesus had opened the eyes of the blind man, he did not
continue to sit by the wayside begging, he arose and followed Christ.
It is only blind folks, whose eyes Jesus has not yet opened, who are
content to sit by the roadside of life and do nothing. God says to
each one of us--"This is My way, walk ye in it." Let us see what this
walking means. First, I think it means _going forward_. There is no
standstill in God's natural world, nor is there in God's spiritual
world. If a child is healthy, he is growing: _getting on_, as the
phrase is. So a true child of God is getting on, making progress,
going forward every day. He goes on growing in grace till he comes of
age, then God takes him to His Home, and gives him his inheritance. If
you look at the tombs in a churchyard, you will see that those lying
there died at all kinds of ages. Here is the tiny grave of an infant,
snatched from its parents' arms almost as soon as the cross was written
on its brow. But in God's sight that little one had come of age, and
so was taken Home. Here is the grave of a child who had begun to do
some work for God, and was as sunshine in its home, and the joy of its
friends. When death took the child, people mourned because he died so
young; but God had said of him, and his work, "He has come of age--it
is finished." Here is the grave of an old man, a village patriarch.
It required nearly a hundred years before he came of age, and he had to
walk for many a weary day, and carry his cross, before God saw that the
time of harvest had come, and sent "the reaper, whose name is death."
And now comes the solemn question--are we making progress, going
forward; are we striving to do the work which God has given us to do?
Next, walking in the Spirit means _discipline, self-denial_. "I keep
under my body," is the motto for every Christian man. We must turn our
eyes from the sight which tempts us to leave the right path; we must
close our ears to the whisper of those who would lead us aside. We
must keep our mouth, as it were, with a bri