might bring us to God."

Does anyone read these words who is trying to struggle from the
natural life into the spiritual, by "some other way" than this way of
the Cross? It is as impossible as it would be to pass from to-day
into to-morrow except through the night. Your battling is a battling
against God. Yield and come to His terms. Yield now.

* * * * * * * *

But blessed as it is, this passage into a life of peace with Him, woe
to the soul that stops there, thinking that the goal is reached, and
dwindles, so to speak, into a stunted bud. Holiness, not safety, is
the end of our calling.

And so it comes to pass that a fresh need for deliverance is soon
pressed upon him who is true to God's voice in his heart. The two
lives are there together, one new-born and feeble, the other strong
with an earlier growth. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the
spirit against the flesh," and the will power is distracted between
the two, like the sap that flows partly into the old condemned
leaves, partly into the fresh buds. Consequently there is the strife
of a kingdom divided against itself: sometimes the one life grows and
flourishes, sometimes the other; sometimes they struggle on side by
side, till the cry is forced out--"Oh, wretched man that I am; who
shall deliver me?"

And here again, when the point of self-despair is reached, and we
come to see that our efforts after holiness are as vain as our
efforts after acceptance with God, the door of escape opens afresh.

For there is glory be to God, a definite way out from the prison life
of sruggling and failure, sinning and repenting, wherein many a soul
beats its wings for years after the question of pardon has been
settled. And that way is again the way of death.

A stage of dying must come over the plant before the new leaves can
grow and thrive. There must be a deliberate choice between the former
growth and the new; one must give way to the other; the acorn has to
come to the point where it ceases to keep its rag of former
existence, and lets everything go to the fresh shoot: the twig must
withdraw its sap from last year's leaf, and let it flow into this
year's bud.

And before the soul can really enter upon a life of holiness, with
all its blessed endless possibilities, a like choice must be made:
all known sin must be deliberately given up, that the rising current
may have its full play.

"But," you say, "I have tried again and again to give up sin: I h