alone effect the exclusion of
sin. This will appear if we consider what has been called "the
expulsive power of a new affection." "Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world," says the Scripture. But all experience
proves that loving not is only possible through loving, the worldly
affection being overcome by the heavenly.

And we find this method clearly exhibited in the word. "The love of
the Spirit" (Rom. 15: 30) is given us for overcoming the world. The
divine life is the source of the divine love. Therefore "the love of
God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto
us." Because we are by nature so wholly without heavenly affection,
God, through the indwelling Spirit, gives us his own love with which to
love himself. Herein {113} is the highest credential of discipleship:
"By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love
one to another" (John 13: 35). As Christ manifested to the world the
love of the Father, so are we to manifest the love of Christ--a
manifestation, however, which is only possible because of our
possessorship of a common life. As one has truly said concerning our
Saviour's command to his disciples to love one another: "It is a
command which would be utterly idle and futile were it not that he, the
ever-loving One, is willing to put his own love within me. The command
is really no more than to be a branch of the true vine. I am to cease
from my own living and loving, and yield myself to the expression of
Christ's love."

And what is true of the love of Christ is true of the likeness of
Christ. How is the likeness acquired? Through contemplation and
imitation? So some have taught. And it is true, if only the
indwelling Spirit is behind all, beneath all, and effectually operative
in all. As it is written: "But we all with unveiled face, reflecting
as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3: 18,
R. V.). It is only the Spirit of the Lord dwelling within us that can
fashion us to the image of the Lord set before us. Who is sufficient
by external imitation of Christ to become {114} conformed to the
likeness of Christ? Imagine one without genius and devoid of the
artist's training sitting down before Raphael's famous picture of the
Transfiguration and attempting to reproduce it. How crude and
mechanical and lifeless his work woul