We live Christ-like because we have the Christ-life. God is not satisfied with anything less than perfection. He required that from His Son. He requires it from us, and He does not, in the process of grace, reduce the standard, but He brings us up to it. He does not let down the righteousness of the law, but He requires of us a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, and then He imparts it to us. He counts us righteous in sanctification, and He says of the new creation, “He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous.” Lord, live out thy very life in me. AUGUST 24. “Let your moderation be known unto all men” (Phil. iv. 5). The very test of consecration is our willingness not only to surrender the things that are wrong, but to surrender our rights, to be willing to be subject. When God begins to subdue a soul, He often requires us to yield the things that are of little importance in themselves, and thus break our neck and subdue our spirit. No Christian worker can ever be used of God until the proud self-will is broken, and the heart is ready to yield to God’s every touch, no matter through whom it may come. Many people want God to lead them in their way and they will brook no authority or restraint. They will give their money, but they want to dictate how it shall be spent. They will work as long as you let them please themselves, but let any pressure come and you immediately run up against, not the grace of resignation, but a letter of resignation, withdrawing from some important trust, and arousing a whole community of criticising friends, equally disposed to have their own opinions and their own will about it. It is destructive of all real power. AUGUST 25. “And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them” (Ezek. xxxvi. 27). This is a great deal more than a new heart. This a heart filled with the Holy Ghost, the Divine Spirit, the power that causes us to walk in God’s commandments. This is the greatest crisis that comes to a Christian’s life, when into the spirit that was renewed in conversion, God Himself comes to dwell and make it His abiding place, and hold it by His mighty power in holiness and righteousness. Now, after this occurs, one would suppose that we would be lifted into a much more hopeful and exuberant spirit, but the prophet gives a very different picture. He says when this comes to pass we shall loathe ourselves in our own eyes. The revelation of God gives a profound sense of our own nothingness and worthlessness, and lays us on our face in the dust in self-abnegation. The incoming of the Holy Ghost displaces self and disgraces self forever, and the highest holiness is to walk in self-renunciation. AUGUST 26. “Thine handmaid hath not anything in the house save a pot of oil” (II. Kings iv. 2).