*The above article, as well as the following:"I acknowledged, Thou forgavest," Your Own Salvation, In Secret, The Gum Trees and the Storm, and God Giveth us the Victory, which have appeared or will appear in this magazine, are to be had separately in booklet form, with attractive covers, at 5 cents each.*

I am sitting in a garden of roses, which are silently yet luxuriantly yielding their response to the glorious shining of the sun, and to the labors and care .of their cultivator. But not far away, just over the road in fact, is some rough land in which briars and other wild things are growing rankly. These surroundings make me ponder, and that right deeply. What a contrast between this fragrant garden and that tangle of useless growth! The first is a thing of beauty and a joy to every eye, the latter is a pernicious plot and a pest. Yes, here is a lesson, here is truth to be learned.

I and every other Christian once grew and found our whole life and pleasure in "this .present evil world," we had our part in the pestilential growth of "ungodliness and worldly lusts," wild things were we, untrained, and refusing all training, doing our own wills; fulfilling the desires of the flesh and the mind; by nature the children of wrath. And over the way was the garden where the Master trained His roses, where His will was supreme, "that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." I remember the time when I, a wild briar, looked over the fence across the way and saw the beauty of the Lord's tillage, and realized the uselessness of my life, and its hopelessness. I knew what the end must be to all the wild growth in which I had my part, for I had read in Holy Scripture that "that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned" (Heb. 6:8). Yes, this present evil world must come under the judgment of God. "Behold the Lord cometh…. to execute judgment," and every wild briar must be burned.

I remember how dissatisfied I was with my life long ago, how disappointed I was when in spite of all my sighs and struggles I could not produce roses such as grew in the Master's garden, and my disappointment deepened into disgust as I learnt that it was my very nature that was at fault, so that I often addressed myself in those lines by a great poet that I heard a servant of the Lord quote with considerable force at that time, and apply to the flesh-the unregenerate self.

"Who knows thee well will treat thee with disgust:Degraded mass of animated dust."

I learnt afterwards that all this exercise of heart was the result of the Master's interest in me. He had purposes of grace in regard to me, and these exercises were preparing me for a wonderful event that was to take place in my life, which was nothing less than being transplanted by grace to His own kingdom of grace.

How it melts the heart and moistens the eye to consider the long-suffering of God with this world of iniquity, which still pleads with men in it who have no desire for anything but their own sinful wills, as it did with us who are now saved, as it did with me. He still holds back the well-deserved wrath, and continues to call out of the world a people for His Name by His gospel. He is still choosing those who by nature are briars and transplanting them to His own plot that He may there fulfil His own purpose in and through them. Apart from this sovereign mercy, neither I nor any other Christian would ever have desired to have any place or portion outside the world.
"By grace we are saved," and of all such the Word says, "Ye are God's husbandry." What a joy it was to be transplanted to God's garden, to find oneself standing in the "true grace of God," there to "grow in grace"; no longer under condemnation, but in Christ. The knowledge of that made me sing "Happy day!" But God's plan was to do more than transplant us to His own plot. More was necessary than that; the briar growth had to give place to the true rose graft; room had to be made for Christ, the plant of renown. CHRIST must be written in our hearts, in yours and mine, and that was done in my case when I learnt that He had loved me and given Himself for me, that my salvation from a life of slavery and an eternity of woe had been secured for me by His suffering on the cross; the price was His precious blood, for the forgiveness of sins and redemption from the bondage of sin could be secured at no lesser cost.

I remember when first I had a garden, and knew nothing of rose culture, how delighted I was when I noticed a most vigorous growth on a beautiful rose-tree. I looked for many fragrant blossoms on that branch that seemed to lengthen by inches every day, but no roses appeared and those shoots which were bearing roses began to languish and cease to flower. Then I realized that this, to me, most promising growth was the product of the briar root, .and because it had not been cut away ruthlessly, the tree had lamentably suffered, and not again that season did it put forth its former beauty. The flesh in us abides the same and will to the end, and if the life of Jesus is to be made manifest in our mortal bodies, there must be the mortification of our members which are upon the earth. We must be those who have no confidence in the flesh. Self-judgment must be our rule. Many of those bitter experiences in life when things that we cherished, and in which we could boast, those things that made something of us, were taken from us, were simply the Master's wise cutting down of the self-growth that Christ might be magnified in us. How often under that culture has our pride been checked and our vanity wounded, and this must continue to the end; the experience is not joyous while it lasts, the sharp pruning-knife seems to cut into the very core of our being, but it was all meant to yield afterwards those peaceable fruits of righteousness, the fragrant roses that delight the Master's eye. m So these three things have been and are taking place:(1) We were transplanted from the wild briar waste to the Master's garden when we were saved by grace; that was done once for all. (2) Christ was grafted into our very hearts, that the beautiful graces that were ever perfect in Him might be reproduced in us. (3) There must be a constant cutting back, a crucifixion of that which is only of self, for as self flourishes what is of Christ in us must languish and decline.

Hear what Paul says, " I am crucified with Christ." He had seen the righteous judgment of what he was as a wild briar at the cross of Christ, "Nevertheless I live." Grace had given him a place in God's tillage, the only place of true life. "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." The life of the heavenly scion was seen in him and not the energy of the old briar. "And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." He brought forth the heavenly flowers in the joy of what he had learnt Christ to be; he responded to the bright shining of that love that had become wholly his life, glad to be nothing himself and less than nothing that Christ might be everything:that Christ might be magnified in him whether by life or by death. (See Gal. 2:20; Philip. 1:20, 21). J. T. Mawson