ing seed. In the grasses the very root
perishes by the time the grain is yellow, and comes up whole if you
try to break the stem. They "reign in life" above through the
indwelling seed, while all that is "corruptible" goes down into dust
below. They have let all go to life--the enduring life: they are not
taken up with the dying--that is only a passing incident--everything
is wrapped up into the one aim, that the seed may triumph at any
cost. Death is wrought out almost unconsciously: the seed has done it
all.

Can we 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all that nourished that which is carnal is withdrawn, giving way to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 lif