Scripture: "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness."--Romans 8:9-10
"Your coming calls me to the most delightful subject in the world, to help both you and myself to rejoice in that adorable Deity whose infinite Being is an infinity of mere love, an unbeginning, never-ceasing, and for ever-flowing Ocean of Meekness, Sweetness, Delight, Blessing, Goodness, Patience and Mercy; and all this as so many streams breaking out of the Abyss of the universal Love, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, a triune Infinity of Love and Goodness, for ever and ever giving forth nothing but the same gifts of Light and Love, of Blessing and Joy, whether before or after the Fall, either of angels or of men.
"Hold it therefore for a certain truth that you can have no good come into your soul, but only by the one way of a birth from above, from the Entrance of the Deity into the properties of your own soulish life. Nature must be set right; its properties must enter into the process of a new birth, it must work to the production of life before the Spirit of Love can have a birth in it. For Love is Delight, and Delight cannot arise in any creature until its nature is in a delightful state, or is possessed of that in which it must rejoice. And this is the reason why God must become man; it is because a birth of the Deity must be found in the soul, giving to nature all that it wants, or the soul can never find itself in a delightful state, and only working with the Spirit of Love.
"And now you also see the absolute necessity of the Gospel doctrine of the cross, viz. of dying to self as the only way to life in God. This Cross, or Dying to self, is the one morality that does man any good. The one work therefore of morality is the one doctrine of the cross, viz., to resist and deny nature, that a supernatural power or Divine goodness may take possession of it and bring a new life into it. Goodness is only a sound, and virtue a mere strife of natural passions, till the Spirit of Love is the breath of everything that lives and moves in the heart. For Love is the one only blessing, and goodness, and God of nature; and you have no true religion, or no worship of the one true God, but in and by that Spirit of Love which is God Himself living and working in you.
Let us bow in deep humility to adore God for this wonderful love, and ask for grace in very deed to yield ourselves to the denial and the death of self.
