g.

There is a condition possible where the life shall flow with God as
fully and freely as it ordinarily flows with self, where the greater
volume it acquires, it only bears the more of Him; where every joy
delights in Him, and every power depends on Him, and the whole man
lives in Him and knows it. It is not a constant effort. It is the
spontaneous direction of the whole nature. It is the new condition
of the Christian who has been exalted from the human pride into the
divine humility of life, out of self to God.

But I suggested at the outset that the word life was used in various
meanings, and in connection with one or two of them I should like to
develop a little what is meant by this phrase the "pride of
life." Life sometimes familiarly signifies what we otherwise call
circumstances. A man is said to "get on in life," not with reference
to his growing older or growing healthier, but as he grows more rich,
more prosperous. The pride of life in this sense would be the pride
of success, which we see wherever men are struggling in this world of
competition. Look at the young merchant who is making a living. Things
go well with him. He rises from stratum to stratum of that commercial
system whose geology is the ever-eluding study of the toilers of the
street. He grows rich. His store begins to spread with the pressure of
new enterprises. His house begins to blossom into the rich bloom
of luxury. He is greeted with a new respect. He is courted with an
eagerness he never knew before. Friends gather about him. His word has
weight. His name means money. He is successful. What is the result?
Those facts in themselves signify nothing, let us remember, but
material capable of being made into one thing or another wholly its
opposite. These are the gift of the Father, every one of them, all
that profusion of life. But there is a possible effect of them all in
character, a pride, which is not of the Father, but of the world. With
a morbid sympathy the man assimilates all that is poor and mean and
worldly out of his prosperity, and rejects, because he has no affinity
for it, all that is good and sweet and heavenly. He is chilled and
narrowed and embittered. All the old sweetness and humility fade out
of his nature. Need I tell you of it? Our streets are full of the
pride of life. Its types only, its outer types flash in the splendid
carriages and blaze in the fronts of gaudy houses and sweep the floors
of drawing-rooms and the