llustrate the great principle of our text by considering
that when we have found our supreme object there is no inducement to
wander further in the search after delights. Desires are confessions of
discontent, and though the absolute satisfaction of all our nature is
not granted to us here, there is so much of blessedness given and so
many of our most clamant desires fully met in the gift of life in
Christ, that we may well be free from the prickings of desires which
sting men into earnest seeking after often unreal good. 'The fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace,' and surely if we have these we may well
leave the world its troubled delights and felicities. Christ's joy
remains in us and our joy is full. The world desires because it does not
possess. When a deeper well is sunk, a shallower one is pretty sure to
give out. If we walk in the Spirit we go down to the deepest
water-holding stratum, and all the surface wells will run dry.

Further, we may note, that this walking in the Spirit brings into our
lives the mightiest motives of holy living and so puts a bridle on the
necks and a bit in the mouths of our untamed desires. Holding fellowship
with the divine Indweller and giving the reins into His strong hand, we
receive from Him the spirit of adoption and learn that if we are
children then are we heirs. Is there any motive that will so surely
still the desires of the flesh and of the mind as the blessed thought
that God is ours and we His? Surely their feet should never stumble or
stray, who are aware of the Spirit of the Son bearing witness with their
spirit that they are the children of God. Surely the measure in which we
realise this will be the measure in which the desires of the flesh will
be whipped back to their kennels, and cease to disturb us with their
barks.

The whole question here as between Paul and his opponents just comes to
this; if a field is covered with filth, whether is it better to set to
work on it with wheel-barrows and shovels, or to turn a river on it
which will bear away all the foulness? The true way to change the fauna
and flora of a country is to change the level, and as the height
increases they change themselves. If we desire to have the noxious
creatures expelled from ourselves, we must not so much labour at their
expulsion as see to the elevation of our own personal being and then we
shall succeed. That is what Paul says, 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall
not fulfil the lusts of t