Parables of the Christ-life | Page 2

to him."
It is utterly, unbelievably simple. Receive Jesus with a heart-grasp, and you will find, like the flower, a spring of eternal life, entirely distinct from your own, that is perishing, set working deep down in your inmost being.
And all that is needed, for the fulfilment of God's uttermost purpose for you, is that this "new man" should be formed and that the old should pass away.
From the very outset of its new birth we see this double process going on in the plant. Within a few hours the throb of new life has spread through the flower, with this first result, that the petals begin to wither. Fertilisation marks the striking of the death-blow to all that went before. Look at a clover head; do you know why some of the spikes are upright and others turned downwards and fading? It is because these last have received the new tide, and the old is ebbing out already. The birth-peal and the death-knell rang together. Fertilisation marks the death of the flower and the death of the flower the death of the annual, though the carrying out of its doom comes gradually.
And in like manner the sentence of death passes, in the Cross, on the old nature in its entirety, as the new comes into being. This is the one only basis and groundwork for all carrying out in our practical experience of what that death means. Once for all let this be clear. Apart from the work done on Calvary, all working out of a death process in our own souls is only a false and dangerous mysticism... . "I have been crucified with Christ." (R. V.)--Yes, long before ever I asked to be--glory be to God! and yet as freshly as if it were yesterday, for time is nowhere with Him.
And simultaneously, in figure, in the little flower-heart, while "that which is natural" begins to fade, "that which is spiritual" dawns. The seed-vessel with its hidden treasure--the ultimate object of this miracle of quickening--begins immediately to form. It was within three days of "the heavenly vision" when the once rejected Jesus was received by St. Paul, that the commission came--"he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My Name." A chosen vessel unto Him. The seed-vessel belongs to the seed, only and for ever: it is formed for itself and has no purpose apart. Separation has nothing austere and narrow in it when it is unto Him.
Chosen vessels to bear His Name--His personality; with all that is wrapped up in that Name of fragrance and healing, authority and power; chosen to go about this weary sinful world with the living Christ folded in our hearts, ready and able as of old to meet the need around. Is not this a calling for which it is worth counting, as St. Paul did, all things but loss?
Chosen vessels--there is the vessel and there is the treasure in it, for ever distinct, though in wonderful union, like the seed-vessel and the seed: the one enshrines the other.
God builds up a shrine within us of His workmanship, from the day in which Jesus was received. The seed-vessel is its picture. With the old nature He can have nothing to do except to deliver it to death: no improving can fit it for His purpose, any more than the leaf or tendril, however beautiful, can be the receptacle of the seed. There must be "a new creation" (R.V., margin), "the new man," to be the temple of the Divine Life.
And as the petals drop off, and the growing seed-vessel comes into view, we see a fresh individuality developed. Compare in these four pages some of the seed-vessels of a single family--vetch and clover: we found over thirty species of it in that one field of the frontispiece. These will show something of their extraordinary variety--we have bunches of horns great and small, and bunches of imitation centipedes, and bunches of mock holly leaves, prickly coils and velvety balls; mimic concertinas, and bits of quaint embroidery; imitation snail-shells, croziers, pods with frills at the seams, spiked caskets with curious indentations, clusters of stars, bladders like soft paper, and plaited spirals wound into a tiny cocoanut, that, untwisted, becomes a minature crown of thorns--are they not all a visible expression of the thoughts that are more than can be numbered? And the greater part spring from little unnoticeable flowers, so alike in their yellow or pink that you have to look closely in order to find out any difference! It is the seed-bearing that gives them their individual character.
And the same God has manifold plans for our development too, as vessels for His Christ-life. It is by the Divine indwelling that our true, eternal personality dawns, and for the expression of the special manifestation