Scripture: "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:"--John 15:26 "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."--Philippians 4:7
"Until this birth of the Spirit of Divine Love is found in you, you cannot know what Divine Love is in itself. For Divine Love is perfect Peace and Joy, it is a Freedom from all disquiet, it is all Content and mere Happiness, and makes everything to rejoice in itself. Love is the Christ of God; wherever it comes, it comes as the Blessing and Happiness of every natural life, as the Restorer of every lost perfection, a Fulfiller of all righteousness, and a Peace of God which passes all understanding.
"When the intelligent creature turns from God to self, he finds nature only as it is in himself and without God. Nothing is to be had from it, or found in it, but the working of every kind of evil. Covetousness, envy, pride and wrath are the four elements of self, or nature, all of them inseparable from it. Were we truly affected with things as they are our real Good, or real Evil, we should be much more afraid of having the serpents of Covetousness, Envy, Pride and Wrath, well nourished and kept alive in us, than of being shut up in a Pest-house, or cast into a Dun¬geon of venomous beasts. This monster of self can hide him¬self under all forms of goodness, can watch and fast, pray much and preach long, and yet often gets more life and strength, and more immovable abode in these forms of virtue than he has in publicans and sinners.
"To die to self, or to come from under its power, cannot be done by any act of resistance we can make to it by the powers of nature. The one only way of dying to self is most simple and plain; it is equally practicable by everybody; it is always at hand; it meets you in everything, and is never without success.
"If you ask what is this one true simple, plain, immediate and unerring way, it is the way of Patience, Meekness, Humility and Resignation to God. This is the truth and perfection of dying to self."
There is not a more difficult lesson in the Christian life than to attain a true knowledge of what self is. Its terrible power, its secret and universal rule, and the blinding influence it exerts in keeping us from the .knowledge of what it is, are the cause of all our sin and evil. Hence it comes that so few really believe in their absolute impotence to obey God or to believe in His love. And there is nothing that can deliver us from it but that entire willingness to die to self, which comes zvhen by faith we understand that we died in Christ Jesus. It is that alone that can make us partakers, through faith and the Holy Spirit, of that meekness1 and gentleness and humility and surrender to God which gave Christ's death its worth and its beauty in the sight of the Father.
