! With the cleansing of forgiveness and justification comes,
wherever they come, the gift of the Holy Spirit--a new life springing up
within the old life, and untouched by any contact with its evils. These
gifts belong universally to the initial stage of the Christian life and
require for their possession only the receptiveness of faith. They
admit of no co-operation of human effort, and to possess them men have
only to 'take the things that are freely given to them of God.' But of
the subsequent stages of the Christian life, the laborious and constant
effort to develop and apply that free gift is as essential as, in the
earliest stage, it is worse than useless. The gift received has to be
wrought into the very substance of the soul, and to be wrought out in
all the endless varieties of life and conduct. Christians are cleansed
to begin with, but they have still daily to cleanse themselves: the
leaven is hid in the three measures of meal, but ''tis a life-long task
till the lump be leavened,' and no man, even though he has the life that
was in Jesus within him, will grow up 'into the measure of the stature
of the fulness of Christ' unless, by patient and persistent effort, he
is ever pressing on to 'the things that are before' and daily striving
to draw nearer to the prize of his high calling. We are cleansed, but we
have still to cleanse ourselves.

Yet another paradox attaches to the Christian life, inasmuch as God
cleanses us, but we have to cleanse ourselves. The great truth that the
spirit of God in a man is the fontal source of all his goodness, and
that Christ's righteousness is given to us, is no pillow on which to
rest an idle head, but should rather be a trumpet-call to effort which
is thereby made certain of success. If we were left to the task of
self-purifying by our own efforts we might well fling it up as
impossible. It is as easy for a man to lift himself from the ground by
gripping his own shoulders as it is for us to rise to greater heights of
moral conduct by our own efforts; but if we can believe that God gives
the impulse after purity, and the vision of what purity is, and imparts
the power of attaining it, strengthening at once our dim sight and
stirring our feeble desires and energising our crippled limbs, then we
can 'run with patience the race that is set before us.'

We must note the thoroughness of the cleansing which the Apostle here
enjoins. What is to be got rid of is not this or that defec