figures bush and tree with a beauty that the summer days never
knew.

So with us--The clear pure dawn of cleansing through the Blood--the
sunrise gladness of resurrection life; the mid-day light and warmth
of growth and service, all are good in their own order: but he who
stops short there misses the crown of glory, before which the
brightness of former days grows poor and cold. It is when the glow
and radiance of a life delivered up to death begins to gather: a life
poured forth to Jesus and for His sake to others--it is then that
even the commonest things put on a new beauty, as in the sunset, for
His life becomes "manifest in our mortal flesh;" a bloom comes on the
soul like the bloom on the fruit as its hour of sacrifice arrives.

Oh, that we may learn to die to all that is of self with this royal
joyfulness that swallows up death in victory in God's world around!
He can make every step of the path full of the triumph of gladness
that glows in the golden leaves. Glory be to His Name!

And the outcome, like the outcome of the autumn, is this: there is, a
new power set free; a power of multiplying life around. The promise
to Christ was that because He poured forth His soul unto death, He
should see His seed: and He leads His children in their little
measure by the same road. Over and over the promise of seed is linked
with sacrifice, as with Abraham and Rebekah and Ruth; those who at
His bidding have forsaken all receive an hundred-fold more now in
this time, for sacrifice is God's factor in His work of multiplying.
"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."

It is the poured-out life that God blesses--the life that heeds not
itself, if only other souls may be won. "Ask and it shall be given
unto you" is one of God's nursery lessons to His children. "Give, and
it shall be given unto you" comes further on.

The reason is this:--that into the being that is ready to let the
self-life go, God the Holy Ghost can come and dwell and work
unfettered; and by that indwelling He will manifest within us His
wonderful Divine power of communicating vitality--of reproducing the
image of Jesus in souls around.

It is true that it is a rule that sometimes has exceptions: there are
those to whom a blessed life of fruitfulness to God comes in a simple
way, with seemingly no hard process of dying involved, just as there
are plants that reproduce themselves