GAL. V. 22, 23 401
^ Sometimes, when I read books in which perfection is put before us with the goal obstructed by a thousand obstacles, my poor little head is quickly fatigued. I close the learned treatise, which tires my brain and dries up my heart, and I turn to the Sacred Scriptures. Then all becomes clear and lightsome — a single word opens out infinite vistas, perfection appears easy, and I see that it is enough to acknowledge our nothingness, and like children surrender ourselves into the Arms of the Good God. Leaving to great and lofty minds the beautiful books which I cannot understand, still less put in practice, I rejoice in my little- ness because " only little children and those who are like them shall be admitted to the Heavenly Banquet." Fortunately — " there are many mansions in my Father's house " ; if there were only those — to me — incomprehensible mansions with their baffling roads, I should certainly never enter there.^
3. Yet there is a sequence in the order of these fruits. The list begins with " love " and ends with " temperance." We should have expected the reverse of the order, but in the realm of the Spirit we begin with the best and ripest and juiciest, and then pass to the plainer and more severe. The fact of the matter is, the one is assured by the other, and this is the order of the assurance : create love, and you have the conditions of a fine self-control ; obtain the juiciness of the first, and the seeming harshness of the last is never known. We may take them in three triads. The first three express our possible relationship to God — "love, joy, peace." The next three express our possible relationship to our fellows — " longsuffering, gentleness, goodness." The last three express our possible relationship to ourselves — "faithfulness, meekness, temperance."
4, The first of these triads is " love, ■jojl 'peac^." We cannot call them duties or virtues ; they are simply the results of communion with God — the certain manifestations of the better life of the Spirit. Love, of course, heads the list, as the founda- tion and moving principle of all the rest. It is the instinctive act of the higher life and is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit. It is the life sap which rises through the tree and gives form to all the clusters. The remaining two members of this triad are plainly consequences of the first. Joy is not so much
^ Soeur Th£Hse of Lisieux, 305. 2 COR. & GAL. — 26
402 THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
an act or a grace of character as an emotion poured into men's lives, because in their hearts abides love to God. Jesus Christ pledged Himself to impart His joy, so that it should remain in us and our joy should be full. There is only one source of per- manent joy which takes possession of and fills all the corners and crannies of the heart, and that is love towards God equally abiding and all-pervasive. Peace will be built on love and joy, if our hearts are ever turning to God and ever blessed with the inter-communion of love between Him and us. True peace comes not from the absence of trouble but from the presence of God, and will be deep and passing all understanding in the exact measure in which we live in, and partake of, the love of God.
^ " Caritas," which is in fact nothing else but " the energy and representative of the Spirit in our hearts," expands and asserts itself, and makes its power to be known by its fruits of love, joy, peace and pity in the character of man. Mark, then, how joy springs out at once as the unfailing token of the Holy Spirit's presence, the first sign that He is having His own way with a man's heart.^
^ These two words, joy and peace, furnish the colour of the Christian life. The prevailing hue of most lives — it cannot be called colour — is grey if it be not drab. The clear skies out of which a wreath of light is continually transfiguring the whole landscape belong to more favourable climates than that of Great Britain. The deep glow of sunset, rich in purple, orange, crimson, and amethystine hues that have no names, appears but seldom and is soon gone. In a sense this is to be expected of spiritual life in a naughty world. The moods of the soul are sure to change, and nothing is more monotonous or exhausting than the uninterrupted glare of a pitiless Eastern sun. But religious life that has no colour has lost the secret of beauty and charm, and perhaps there is no feature in the Christian religion that would do more to convince a weary, cynical, Uasi generation of the supernatural power of the grace of God than the fadeless colour it can infuse into a Christian life by the joy and peace which are the fruit of the Divine Spirit.^
5. The second triad is " longsuffering, kindness, goodness." All these three obviously refer to the spiritual life in its mani- festations to men.
' Bishop Francis Paget.
» W. T. Davison, Th.c Indwelling Spirit, 112.