that heart is blessed in its
own settled love, abounding joy and untroubled peace, faithfulness and
submission will both be possible and self-control will not be hard.

III. The culture of the tree which secures the fruit.

Can we suppose that the Apostle here is going back in thought to our
Lord's profound teaching that every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,
but the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit? The obvious felicity of
that metaphor often conceals for us the drastic force of its teaching,
it regards all a man's conduct as but the outcome of his character, and
brushes aside as trifling all attempts at altering products, whilst the
producer remains unaltered. Whether Paul was here alluding to a known
saying of Jesus or no, he was insisting upon the very centre of
Christian ethics, that a man must first be good in order to do good. Our
Lord's words seemed to make an impossible demand--'Make the tree
good'--as the only way of securing good fruit, and it was in accordance
with the whole cast of the Sermon on the Mount that the means of
realising that demand was left unexpressed. But Paul stood on this side
of Pentecost, and what was necessarily veiled in Christ's earlier
utterances stood forth a revealed and blessed certainty to him. He had
not to say 'Make the tree good' and be silent as to how that process was
to be effected; to him the message had been committed, 'The Spirit also
helpeth our infirmity.' There is but one way by which a corrupt tree can
be made good, and that is by grafting into the wild briar stock a
'layer' from the rose. The Apostle had a double message to proclaim, and
the one part was built upon the other. He had first to preach--and this
day has first to believe that God has sent His own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin--and then he had to proclaim
that, through that mission, it became possible that the ordinance of the
law might be fulfilled in us who 'walk not after the flesh but after the
spirit.' The beginning, then, of all true goodness is to be sought in
receiving into our corrupt natures the uncorrupted germs of the higher
life, and it is only in the measure in which that Spirit of God moves in
our spirits and, like the sap in the vine, permeates every branch and
tendril, that fruit to eternal life will grow. Christian graces are the
products of the indwelling divine life, and nothing else will succeed in
producing them. All the preachings of moralis