Page:A Cloud of Independent Witnesses.djvu/86

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8o A CLOUD OF WITNESSES.

tends to confirm our own selfishness. The love of use, and not the love of self, should be the leading motive in all we do." (pp. 1 81-183.)

SPIRITUAL LIBERTY. "Life from God is so imparted that it seems to us as if it were independently our own. This is the case with natural life, and it is the case also with spiritual life. While in very truth 'it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do,' yet it seems to us that both the will and the power to do are our own. The Lord thereby secures to man a spiritual individuality in the good that he does; He thus preserves in him spiritual liberty at the same time that He imparts to him spiritual good. The new nature which prompts the Christian to do good, seems to him as truly his own, as did his former merely natural life. The promptings of the new heart and the right spirit seem to him as fully the spontaneous impulses of his own will, as did the prior promptings of his unregenerate mind. Thus faith in the Lord as the Source of spiritual life, does not interfere with man's liberty. The angels who realize with fullest conviction that they live only by influx of life from the Lord, are conscious of the most perfect freedom." (p. 177.)

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