ut only to the Lord Jesus,
who dwells in us and who has made us willing.

The bottom of self is quite knocked out by the fifth and last
step--the admission that doing and bearing what we have in the way of
meekness and humility, we have not done one stitch more than it was
our duty to do. God made man in the first place simply that he might
be God's bond-servant. Man's sin has simply consisted in his refusal
to be God's bond-servant. His restoration can only be, then, a
restoration to the position of a bond-servant. A man, then, has not
done anything specially meritorious when he has consented to take
that position, for he was created and redeemed for that very thing.

This, then, is the Way of the Cross. It is the way that God's lowly
Bond-servant first trod for us, and should not we, the bond-servants
of that Bond-servant, tread it still? Does it seem hard and
forbidding, this way down? Be assured, it is the only way up. It was
the way by which the Lord Jesus reached the Throne, and it is the way
by which we too reach the place of spiritual power, authority and
fruitfulness. Those who tread this path are radiant, happy souls,
overflowing with the life of their Lord. They have found "he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted" to be true for them as for their
Lord. Where before humility was an unwelcome intruder to be put up
with only on occasions, she has now become the spouse of their souls,
to whom they have wedded themselves for ever. If darkness and unrest
enter their souls it is only because somewhere on some point they
have been unwilling to walk with her in the paths of meekness and
brokenness. But she is ever ready to welcome them back into her
company, as they seek her face in repentance.

That brings us to the all-important matter of repentance. We shall
not enter into more abundant life merely by resolving that we shall
be humbler in the future. There are attitudes and actions which have
already taken place and are still being persisted in (if only by our
unwillingness to apologise for them) that must first be repented of.
The Lord Jesus did not take upon Him the form of a bond-servant
merely to give us an example, but that He might die for these very
sins upon the cross, and open a fountain in His precious Blood where
they can all be washed away. But that Blood cannot be applied to the
sins of our proud heart until we have been broken in repentance as to
what has already happened and as to what we alread