. If the amount of
energy lost in trying to grow were spent in fulfilling rather the
conditions of growth, we should have many more cubits to show for our
stature. It is with these conditions that the personal work of the
Christian is chiefly concerned. Observe for a moment what they are, and
their exact relation. For its growth the plant needs heat, light, air,
and moisture. A man, therefore, must go in search of these, or their
spiritual equivalents, and this is his work? By no means. The
Christian's work is not yet. Does the plant go in search of its
conditions? Nay, the conditions come to the plant. It no more
manufactures the heat, light, air, and moisture, than it manufactures
its own stem. It finds them all around it in Nature. It simply stands
still with its leaves spread out in unconscious prayer, and Nature
lavishes upon it these and all other bounties, bathing it in sunshine,
pouring the nourishing air over and over it, reviving it graciously with
its nightly dew. Grace, too, is as free as the air. The Lord God is a
Sun. He is as the Dew to Israel. A man has no more to manufacture these
than he has to manufacture his own soul. He stands surrounded by them,
bathed in them, beset behind and before by them. He lives and moves and
has his being in them. How then shall he go in search of them? Do not
they rather go in search of him? Does he not feel how they press
themselves upon him? Does he not know how unweariedly they appeal to
him? Has he not heard how they are sorrowful when he will not have them?
His work, therefore, is not yet. The voice still says, "Be still."

The conditions of growth, then, and the inward principle of growth being
both supplied by Nature, the thing man has to do, the little junction
left for him to complete, is to apply the one to the other. He
manufactures nothing; he earns nothing; he need be anxious for nothing;
his one duty is _to be in_ these conditions, to abide in them, to allow
grace to play over him, to be still therein and know that this is God.

The conflict begins and prevails in all its life-long agony the moment a
man forgets this. He struggles to grow himself instead of struggling to
get back again into position. He makes the church into a workshop when
God meant it to be a beautiful garden. And even in his closet, where
only should reign silence--a silence as of the mountains whereon the
lilies grow--is heard the roar and tumult of machinery. True, a man
will often have