Parables of the Christ-life | Page 5

not trace the same dealing in our souls as, slowly, tenderly, all
that nourished that which is carnal is withdrawn, giving way to the
forming of the Christ life in its place? His thoughts and desires and
ways begin to dethrone ours as the aloe seed dethrones its leaves and
casts them to the ground. "He must increase, but I must decrease."

And the outward dealings co-operate with the inward. It is just in the
very corner of everyday life where God has put us, that this can take
place, and the surrounding influences can have their share in bringing
down to death the old nature. It is no mystical, imaginary world that
draws out the latent forms of self, but the commonplace, matter-of-fact
world about us.
It is in contact with others, for the most part, that the humbling
discoveries of the workings of the flesh come, on the one hand, and on
the other we find ourselves breaking down in one after another of our
strongest points. And all these things that seem against us are really
doing a blessed work--they are "the Wind of the Lord" coming "up
from the wilderness" to "spoil the treasure" of all that is of former days.
Everything that is "natural," good and bad alike, must go down into
death before its blast, when God takes it in hand--all that we can lean
upon in outward things, all clinging to the visible and the transitory;
and with this result, that our arms clasp closer and closer round the
Eternal Seed, Christ in us the Hope of Glory--known no longer after the
flesh, but by the mighty revelation of the Holy Ghost.
All this is shadowed forth in the story of these southern plants; one
day's sirocco in May will turn a field, bright with the last flowers, into a
brown wilderness, where the passing look sees nothing but ruin--yet in
that one day the precious seed will have taken a stride in its ripening
that it would have needed a month of ordinary weather to bring about;
it will have drawn infinite life out of the fiery breath that made havoc
with the outward and visible.
"The grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the Spirit of the Lord
bloweth upon it." But "our light affliction" (and from the context we
see that spiritual trial is included there) "which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory--while
we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which
are not seen are eternal." In all the breaking down on the human side,
the hidden treasure is left not only unhurt but enriched. Everything that
wrecks our hopes of ourselves, and our earthly props, is helping

forward infinitely God's work in us.
So "we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward
man is renewed day by day." God's purpose for us is that we should be
seed-vessels; all the rest may go down into nothingness, for it "profiteth
nothing." The plant does not faint in its inner heart. Little does it matter
what happens to the "corruptible": each fading of the outward only
marks a corresponding development of the "incorruptible" within.
"What things were gain to me" (the words seem echoed from the fading
leaves and the ripening seed), "those I counted loss for Christ. Yea,
doubtless, and I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss
of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ."
"This one thing I do." "They that are after the flesh do mind the things
of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit."
The plant has nothing to "mind" now but the treasure it bears. Its aim
has grown absolutely simple. In old days there was the complexity of
trying to carry on two lives at once, nourishing root and stem, leaf and
flower and tendril, alongside the seed-vessel and the seed. All that is
over. It withdraws itself quietly into the inner shrine where God is
working out that which is eternal. It has chosen, in figure, that good
part which shall not be taken away: it is pressing towards the mark for
the prize of its calling.
Pressing, but in perfect rest. "They toil not, neither do they spin," these
plants, in their seed-bearing any more than in their flowering. And
when we have learnt something of their surrender, we are ready for
their secret of waiting on God's inworking. How long we are in
grasping that we are His