on Himself. He has shown His {282} love by the
sending and the sacrifice of His Son and by the gift of His Spirit.
And His Spirit I have received. At a definite moment He came upon me.
He entered into my life, as into those first Christians to whom St.
Paul wrote, at baptism and by the laying-on of hands. This is the fact
then. God is on my side. He makes Himself responsible for my being.
If I will only entrust myself to Him with the cordial return of
trustful love, then all that He has ever breathed into my heart of
human possibility He will realize and bring to perfection. The
requirement of the law shall be fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh but after the Spirit.--This is a point of view upon which it is
worth while reflecting deeply, and over and over again. Unless we are
continually practising ourselves in this conception of life, we find
ourselves falling back again into the attitude of one standing over
against God with God for his taskmaster. And that is the false and
always ruinous idea.

We must also take careful note of what St. Paul means by 'spiritual'
and 'carnal.' 'Carnal' does not mean made of flesh, and 'spiritual'
does not mean immaterial. That is carnal which is ruled by the flesh,
ruled from {283} below. That life is carnal in which our spirit, meant
for God, is dragged at the chariot-wheels of our lower life; and that
is spiritual which is ruled and mastered by the Spirit. We must not
suppose that we shall make our religion spiritual by disparaging
external acts or bodily exercises of worship. No; that is spiritual
which is ruled by the Spirit. The worship in 'spirit and in truth,'
for us men who belong to the religion of the Incarnation, must be a
worship in body. But it will be spiritual if it is full of spiritual
intention. Secular business again is spiritual if it is ruled by the
divine Spirit according to the law of righteousness. Politics are
spiritual, commercial and municipal life are spiritual, art and science
are spiritual, and everything that develops our faculties is spiritual,
if we will allow the divine Spirit to rule in all according to the law
of righteousness, truth, and beauty. For the whole of our being, with
all its sum of faculties, is made by God and meant for God. What a
mistake it is then, when people speak, as they so often do, as if sin
were really natural, as if lust and worldliness were natural, and as if
spirituality were something unnatural,