selves into a matter of personal self-knowledge as to one's own spiritual experience. "Who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God" (1 Cor. ii, 11, 12).

4. Boldness, Confidence, and Full Assurance. This concurrent witness of God's Spirit and man's spirit, testifying to the believer the fact of his adoption, is a conception peculiar to Paul; but the doctrine of a personal experience which it involves is common to Paul and other writers. It is implied in the steadfast boldness (Taррnoia) with which the child of God "approaches the throne of grace," and enters into the holy places (Heb. iv, 16; x, 19). In the first epistle of John this boldness is spoken of not only as a present and abiding fearlessness toward God but a like feeling of confidence in view of the day of judgment (ii, 28; iii, 21; iv, 17; v, 14). Paul also writes of our boldness in Christ and "access in confidence through our faith in him" (Eph. iii, 12). The faithful minister gains "great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. iii, 13). Still more emphatic is the expression of "all riches of the full assurance of understanding" in the mystery of God, in Col. ii, 2, and the "full assurance (λnpopopía) of hope and of faith” in Heb. vi, 11; x, 22. Such assurance is begotten in the heart by the personal fellowship with God which his true children enjoy. They have the confidence of little children, and every faculty of the feeling, the understanding, and the will attests the heavenly union.' Here also belong those confirmations of personal experience of which John speaks: "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren" (1 John iii, 14). "Hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before him" (ver. 19; comp. ver. 24, and iv, 13, 17). Such assurance is no vain boast of self-delusion, but the simple acknowledgment of an inward trust, a confidence in God whose saving power has been realized in the soul. And this confidence is strengthened by the continuous and unwavering "testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, we have behaved ourselves in the world" (2 Cor. i, 12). There are

It is the

1 The witness of the Spirit is sacred to the person who enjoys it. most precious jewel of the heart. It is the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price. It is the secret of the Lord, committed to the believer in trust, not to be despised, nor to be treated as a common thing. It is, therefore, to be spoken of with carefulness in the presence of those who appreciate it, and not boastfully before the multitude.-Merrill, Aspects of Christian Experience, p. 179.

mysteries of the invisible about these things, but the facts of personal feeling and intelligent conviction bear their own witness to the conscious soul. We may not tell whence the wind comes, nor whither it goes (John iii, 8), but at the same time we may have the most unquestionable evidences of its actual movement and effect; and "so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

5. Christian Freedom. Along with the boldness and assurance which come to the soul in the blessed experiences of pardon, regeneration, and adoption, we must notice also that "liberty in Christ" which Paul and others magnify as a glory of the true Christian life. In Gal. v, 1, it is written, "For freedom did Christ set us free"1; and in verse 13, "Ye, brethren, were called for freedom.” Also in the allegory of Gal. iv, 24-26, where the two covenants are contrasted, those who are in Christ Jesus and walk after the Spirit are conceived as children of the free and heavenly mother Jerusalem, and not to be "entangled again in a yoke of bondage." They are free citizens of a spiritual and heavenly commonwealth, and not to be thought of as bound fast in any system of servitude other than that of voluntary and most honorable loyalty to Jesus Christ. And so we further read, in 2 Cor. iii, 17, that the Lord Jesus is the living Spirit and power by which the entire work of redemption and of revelation is accomplished, "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." This ideal of spiritual freedom is still further brought out in the epistle to the Romans, vi-viii. We are admonished that one may be a bondservant either of sin or of obedience to God in Christ. If one obeys sin, he is the slave of sin; if he obeys God, he is the servant of righteousness. "Thanks be to God," says the apostle, "that whereas ye were bondservants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered; and being made free from sin, ye became bondservants of righteousness" (Rom. vi, 17, 18). Further on he adds (ver. 22), "Now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life." And after depicting the mighty struggle for deliverance from "captivity under the law of sin," which is so vividly set forth in Rom. vii, he declares in viii, 2, that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death." This is the liberty of a free human spirit, that has broken with sin, and laid hold on Christ, and passed into the new life of conscious peace and fellowship with God. "The liberty of the glory of the children of God,"

1 Some render, "With freedom did Christ set us free," on which Alford comments: "That is, free men is your rightful name and ought to be your estimation of yourselves, seeing that freedom is your inheritance by virtue of Christ's redemption of you."-Greek Testament, in loco.

referred to in Rom. viii, 21, is the same royal estate of Christian freedom, only conceived, perhaps, in a later stage of glorious revelation. This same idea of liberty as realized in a blessed service of God appears in the language of 1 Pet. ii, 16, where those who are notable for well-doing are spoken of as "free, and not using their freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God." James also speaks of the gospel as "the word of truth," and calls it "the perfect law, the law of liberty" (i, 18, 25). He who looks into this law with a steady, continuous, loving devotion, "being not a hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing." This spiritual freedom, then, is in its inmost nature the realization of a fast fellowship with God and a loving obedience. It brings the soul aloft out of all sense of groveling bondage to sin, and breaks away from mere forms and ceremonies, as from a bondage of the letter that killeth (comp. 2 Cor. iii, 6). Rites, ritual services, fasts, pilgrimages, all such merely outward forms and a mechanical "observance of days, and months, and seasons and years" (Gal. iv, 10), are comparatively like "weak and beggarly rudiments," and one who is dependent on them or unable to rise above them into a pure personal communion with the living God, is entangled in a yoke of bondage. He knows not the light and the liberty of the sons of God. With him rites are an end rather than a means to an end. Such outward forms are utterly insufficient to release a human soul from the bondservice of sin. He only is the true Christian freeman whom the truth of Christ makes free, and he abides, not as a servant, but as a son in the house of his heavenly Father. He walks and talks familiarly with God. Hence the saying of Jesus in John viii, 36: "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed." Compare also the whole context in verses 31-38.1

1According to Ritschl, "Melanchthon enumerates four grades of freedomfreedom from sin and the wrath of God, the freedom of the new life inspired by the Holy Ghost, freedom from the Mosaic law, and freedom from the yoke of human ordinances in the worship of the Church. Calvin omits the first and the third of these, and puts in the forefront another aspect of freedom, to which he was necessarily led from regard to the true nature of justification. It is just the other side of justification by faith, that nothing of law or legal works should play a part in it. To this fundamental principle we must reduce the last of the aspects of Christian freedom, the right, namely, to regard human ordinances in the Church as indifferent."-Justification and Reconciliation, p. 115. Edinburgh, 1900.

CHAPTER VI

PROGRESS IN SPIRITUAL LIFE

1. New Life Involves Growth. Having attained the adoption of sons of God we are at the first only as little children, "babes in Christ," and we have seen that the new birth from above does not produce another personality. The subject of the marvelous change from death unto life is still the same in all the elements of natural constitution. The personal identity attaching to body, soul, intellect, and power of volition remains unchanged; but "the new (véo5) man, who is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. iii, 10), henceforth "walks in newness of life" and "serves in newness of spirit" (Rom. vi, 4; vii, 6). By the regeneration of the Spirit he becomes a "new kind of man" (kaivòs аvvошñо5, Еph. iv, 24), a new creature, or a "new kind of creation" (Kaivǹ Kriois, Gal. vi, 15; 2 Cor. v, 17). In the early period of this new kind of spiritual life he is without mature knowledge of the things of God, and of course needs instruction in "heavenly things" (John iii, 12). Hence we find in many a scripture exhortations to "go on unto full growth” (reλecórns, Heb. vi, 1), to "grow up into Christ in all things" (Eph. iv, 15), to "increase with the increase of God" (Col. i, 10; ii, 19), that is, with such increase in all spiritual attainments as God in his own ways confers. In 1 Pet. ii, 1, 2, it is written: "Putting away all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, long for the spiritual guileless milk, that ye may grow thereby into salvation." In 2 Pet. iii, 18, it is also urged, "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." The faith of the Thessalonians is spoken of as "growing exceedingly," and their love toward one another as "abounding" (2 Thess. i, 3). In the Old Testament we meet the familiar figure of the righteous man, who is "like a tree planted by streams of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, and its leaf withers not" (Psa. i, 3). "The righteous shall

1The distinction between the two Greek synonyms for new is interesting and suggestive. The word véo5 is used, to designate what is new in time, recent, young, fresh. The véo man is one who has been recently converted and is fresh and young in Christian experience; the kawór man is new in quality and character, and enjoys a newness (kaιvórns) of life unknown to him before. See Biblical Hermeneutics, p. 96.

flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon" (Psa. xcii, 12). And so of every one who passes out of the death of sin into the life of righteousness it may be said, in the beautiful words of Hosea (xiv, 5, 6) concerning restored Israel: "He shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree, and his smell as Lebanon." Such ideals of a vigorous life and a healthy growth and fruitage naturally associate themselves together in the scriptural presentation of Christian character.

2. Elements in Spiritual Growth. The divers elements involved in spiritual growth appear in the New Testament teaching as we cannot expect to find them in the Old. For though the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms contain expressions and suggestions of the most blessed fellowship with God and of the most profound spiritual struggles, these heavenly truths have a much clearer and richer setting forth in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hence Paulcould speak confidently of this latter as a ministration of the spirit and of righteousness which far surpassed in glory and excellence the older Mosaic ministration which was "written and engraven on stones," and was relatively a ministration of condemnation and of death (2 Cor. iii, 6-11). One of the first things to be realized in the personal growth of the newly adopted child of God is a sloughing off, so to speak, of the tissues of the old sensual "body of sin" (Rom. vi, 6). As the living germ in the grain of seed-corn throws off its outer husk and hull, and as the kernel of the acorn casts off its shell when the new plant shoots forth, so is the putting off of the old man essential to the putting on and development of the new man in Christ. While the new life may be imparted in a moment of time, the getting clear from the old body of sin and of death may not be the work of an hour or a day. In many cases it is the work of years. Along with this breaking away from the old conditions there must be a vigorous putting forth of the new life of righteousness, and this will speedily show its independence of external ritual and superiority to all such "bondage of the letter." There must follow instruction in the way of righteousness, and increase of knowledge and wisdom. The passion of holy love will manifest itself from the first and intensify the hunger and thirst after righteousness and true holiness. Personal sanctity and holiness of heart and life must needs accompany and further this life of God in the soul, and hallow all its stages of advance. The continual working and illumination of the Holy Spirit must needs enhance all possible spiritual attainments in such "children of light," and the activities, discipline, and matured experiences of advancing age work together unto the perfection or practicable