r law than the law of gravitation--my own life and
will. And so through the operation of this higher law--the law of
vitality--I defy the law of gravitation, and lift my hand and hold it above
its former resting-place, and move it at my will. The law of vitality has
made me free from the law of gravitation.

Precisely so the indwelling life of Christ Jesus, operating with the power
of a law, lifts me above, and counteracts the power of sin in my fallen
nature.

OCTOBER 13.

"The carnal mind is enmity against God" (Rom. viii. 7).

The flesh is incurably bad. "It is not subject to the law of God, neither,
indeed, can be." It never can be any better. It is no use trying to
improve the flesh. You may educate it all you please. You may train it by
the most approved methods, you may set before it the brightest examples,
you may pipe to it or mourn to it, treat it with encouragement or
severity; its nature will always be incorrigibly the same.

Like the wild hawk which the little child captures in its infancy and
tries to train in the habits of the dove, before you are aware it will
fasten its cruel beak upon the gentle fingers that would caress it, and
show the old wild spirit of fear and ferocity. It is a hawk by nature, and
it can never be made a dove. "For the carnal mind is enmity against God.
It is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be."

The only remedy for human nature is to destroy it, and receive instead the
divine nature. God does not improve man. He crucifies the natural life
with Christ, and creates the new man in Christ Jesus.

OCTOBER 14.

"Get thee, behind me, Satan" (Matt. xvi. 23).

When your old self comes back, if you listen to it, fear it, believe it,
it will have the same influence upon you as if it were not dead; it will
control you and destroy you. But if you will ignore it and say: "You are
not I, but Satan trying to make me believe that the old self is not dead;
I refuse you, I treat you as a demon power outside of me, I detach myself
from you"; if you treat it as a wife would her divorced husband, saying:
"You are nothing to me, you have no power over me, I have renounced you,
in the name of Jesus I bid you hence,"--lo! the evil thing will disappear,
the shadow will vanish, the wand of faith will lay the troubled spirit,
and send it back to the abyss, and you will find that Christ is there
instead, with His risen life, to back up your confidence and seal