The New Life

The I,ife of Faith.
eous shall live by faith alone, that is, shall have
power to live according to the will of God. As at
his conversion he found it necessary to understand
that there was nothing good in him, and that he must
receive grace as one that was powerless and godless,
so must he as a believer just as clearly understand
that in him there is nothing good, and that he must
receive his power for good every moment from
above. 1 And his work must therefore be every
morning and every hour to look up and believe and
receive his power from above, out of his Lord in
heaven. I am not to do what I can, and hope in the
Lord to supply strength. No : as one who has been
dead, who is literally able for nothing in himself, and
whose life is in his Lord above, I am to reckon by
faith on Him who will work in me mightily.'^
Happy the Christian who understands that his
greatest danger every day is again to fall under the
law, and to be fain to serve God in the flesh with his
own strength. Happy when he discerns that he is
not under the law which just demands and yet is
powerless through the flesh, but is under grace where
we have simply to receive what has been given.
Happy when he fully appropriates for himself the
promise of the Spirit who transfers all that is in
Christ to him. Yea, happy when he understands
what it is to live by faith, and to serve, not in the
oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the Spirit.*
1 Rom. vii. i8, vim. 2, 13 ;
Heb. xi. 38.
>Rom. iv. 17 ;
2 Cor. i. 9 ;
Col. i. 29, ii. 3.
'Rom. vii. 4, 6, xii. s, 6; Gal. v. 18; PhiL iii.3.
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