Our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He re-makes the whole man on the inside. "Put on the new man," i.e., see that your natural human life puts on the garb that is in keeping with the new life. The life God plants in us develops its own virtues, not the virtues of Adam but of Jesus Christ.

Watch how God will wither up your confidence in natural virtues after sanctification, and in any power you have, until you learn to draw your life from the reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience!

The sign that God is at work in us is that He corrupts confidence in the natural virtues, because they are not promises of what we are going to be, but remnants of what God created man to be.

We will cling to the natural virtues, while all the time God is trying to get us into contact with the life of Jesus Christ which can never be described in terms of the natural virtues.

It is the saddest thing to see people in the service of God depending on that which the grace of God never gave them, depending on what they have by the accident of heredity.

God does not build up our natural virtues and transfigure them, because our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants.

No natural love, no natural patience, no natural purity can ever come up to His demands.

But as we bring every bit of our bodily life into harmony with the new life which God has put in us, He will exhibit in us the virtues that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus.

"And every virtue we possess Is His alone."

It was when Job’s glory was fresh in him that his “bow was renewed” in his hand. Freshness and glory! And yet the brilliant music of these words is brought down to a minor strain by the little touch “it was”—not it is.

“All my [fresh] springs are in thee” (Psalm 87:7 KJV).

If our glory is to be fresh in us, it all depends upon what the glory in us is! There is only one unfailing source— Christ Himself! He is “in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) if you have admitted Him; and He is your glory. Then you may sing, “My glory is fresh in me.”

Jesus Christ is always fresh!

And so is the oil with which He anoints us. “I shall be anointed with fresh oil” (Psalm 92:10 KJV). Fresh oil of joy! Fresh oil of consecration! Fresh oil upon the sacrifice as we offer to God continually “the fruit of lips that openly profess his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

My heart is parched by unbelief,

My spirit sere from inward strife;

The heavens above are turned to brass,

Arid and fruitless is my life.

Then falls Thy rain, O Holy One;

Fresh is the earth, and young once more;

Then falls Thy Spirit on my heart;

My life is green; the drought is o’er!

“DROUGHT” BY BETTY BRUECHER T

A desert road? when the Christian has ever at his command Fresh springs! Fresh oil! Fresh glory!

There are both “upper and lower springs” in life, and they are springs, not stagnant pools. They are the joys and blessings that flow from heaven above, through the hottest summer and through the most barren desert of sorrow and trials. The land belonging to Acsah was in the Negev under the scorching sun and was often parched from the burning heat. But from the hills came the inexhaustible springs that cooled, refreshed, and fertilized all the land.

These springs flow through the low places, the difficult places, the desert places, the lonely places, and even the ordinary places of life. And no matter what our situation may be, these springs can always be found.

Abraham found them amid the hills of Canaan. Moses found them among the rocks of Midian. David found them among the ashes of Ziklag, when his property was gone and his family had been taken captive. And although his “men were talking of stoning him . . . David found strength in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6).

Isaiah found them in the terrible days when King Sennacherib of Assyria invaded Judah, when the mountains themselves seemed to be thrown into the midst of the sea. Yet his faith could still sing: “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall” (Psalm 46:4–5).

The Christian martyrs found them amid the flames, the church reformers amid their enemies and struggles, and we can find them each day of the year if we have the Comforter in our hearts and have learned to say with David, “All my springs of joy are in you” (Psalm 87:7 NASB).

How plentiful and how precious these springs are, and how much more there is to be possessed of God’s own fullness! A. B. SIMPSON

I said, “The desert is so wide!”

I said, “The desert is so bare! What springs to quench my thirst are there? Where will I from the tempest hide?”

I said, “The desert is so lone! No gentle voice, nor loving face To brighten any smallest space.”

I paused before my cry was done! I heard the flow of hidden springs; Before me palms rose green and fair; The birds were singing; all the air Was filled and stirred with angels’ wings!

And One asked softly, “Why, indeed, Take overanxious thought for what Tomorrow brings you? See you not The Father knows just what you need?”

What a contrast there is between a barren desert and the luxuriant oasis with its waving palms and its glorious verdure! Between gaunt and hungry flocks and the herds that lie down in green pastures and beside the still waters; between the viewless plain and the mountain height with its “land of far distances.”

What a difference there is between the aridity of an artificial, irrigated, stinted existence—a desert existence—and a life of abundant rains, crowding vegetation, and harvests that come almost of themselves— the abundant life!

The former is like the shallow stream where your boat every moment touches bottom or strikes some hidden rock; the latter is where your deep keel never touches ground, and you ride the ocean’ s wildest swells!

There are some Christians who always seem to be kept on scant measure. Their spiritual garment s are threadbare, their whole bearing that of people who are poverty-stricken and kept on short allowance—h ard up, and on the ragged edge of want and bankruptcy . They come through “by the skin of their teeth” and are “saved so as by fire.”

There are other souls who “have life . . . to the full.” Their love “alw ays protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres” and “never fails” (1 Corin thians 13:7, 8). Their patience has “longsuf fering with joyfulness” (Colossians 1:11 KJV). Their peace “transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Their joy is “inexpressible and glorious” (1 Peter 1:8). Their service is so free and glad that duty is a delight. In a word, this life reaches out into the infinite as well as the eternal, sailing on the shoreless and fathomless seas of God and His infinite grace.

Oh, wher e is such a life to be found? How can the desert place be made to bring forth life to the full?

“Oh, wher e is the sea?” the fishes cried, As they swam the crystal waters thr ough “We have hear d from of old of the ocean tide, And we long to look on the waters blue. The wise ones speak of the infinite sea— Oh, who can tell us if such ther e be?”

Are we who live in the sea of the infinite to imitate those silly fishes, and ask, “Wher e is the God who is ‘not far from every one of us,’ who may be in our inmost hearts by faith, and in whom ‘we live, and move, and have our being’?” (Acts 17:27–28 KJV). D EAN FARRAR

“Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea?” (Job 38:16).

The psalmist said: “With you is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:9). “All my fountains are in you” (Psalm 87:7).

Gushing Fountains!