at you can ever attain to
anything really morally beautiful in your own strength and let the Holy
Spirit, who already dwells in you (if you are a child of God) take full
control and bear His own glorious fruit in your daily life.

We get very much the same thought from a different point of view in the
second chapter and twentieth verse, A. R. V., "I have been crucified with
Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that
life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

We hear a great deal in these days about "Ethical Culture," which usually
means the cultivation of the flesh until it bears the fruit of the Spirit.
It cannot be done; no more than thorns can be made to bear figs and the
bramble bush grapes (Luke vi. 44; Matt. xii. 33). We hear also a great
deal about "character building." That may be all very well if you bear
constantly in mind that the Holy Spirit must do the building, and even
then it is not so much building as fruit bearing. (See, however, 2 Pet. i.
5-7.) We hear also a great deal about "cultivating graces of character,"
but we must always bear it clearly in mind that the way to cultivate true
graces of character is by submitting ourselves utterly to the Spirit to do
His work and bear His fruit. This is "sanctification _of the Spirit_" (1
Pet. i. 2; 2 Thess. ii. 13). There is a sense, however, in which
cultivating graces of character is right: viz., we look at Jesus Christ to
see what He is and what we therefore ought to be; then we look to the Holy
Spirit to make us this that we ought to be and thus, "reflecting as a
mirror the glory of the Lord, we are transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18, R. V.).
Settle it, however, clearly and forever that the flesh can never bear this
fruit, that you can never attain to these things by your own effort that
they are "_the fruit of the Spirit_."

CHAPTER XIV. THE HOLY SPIRIT GUIDING THE BELIEVER INTO A LIFE AS A SON.

The Apostle Paul writes in Rom. viii. 14, R. V., "For as many as are _led
by the Spirit of God_, these are the sons of God." In this passage we see
the Holy Spirit taking the conduct of the believer's life. A true
Christian life is a personally conducted life, conducted at every turn by
a Divine Person. It is the believer's privilege to be absolutely set free
from a