Nor must we confine it to a victory over sin. I sometimes meet with books in which this victory appears to be described as the sum and substance of holiness. Now I do not doubt for one moment that it is a part of it; but it is only a part: the negative side, and not the positive. It would not satisfy your mind to be assured there were no thorns on your roses, or no poisonous berries on your vines; you want flowers on the rose, and grapes on the vine. I do not know that there was any harm in the fig-tree that stood by the way-side from Bethany: I never read that it yielded poison; but it bore no fruit, and the Lord withered it. So it is that we stop utterly short of the true character of Christian holiness if we describe it simply as a victory over sin. Suppose that we really had overcome, and that there had been such a conquest in deed, in word, and in thought, that we should have no occasion for the confession, ‘We have done those things which we ought not to have done;’ we might still be as fruitless as the barren fig-tree, and have reason to throw ourselves, in the deepest and most profound repentance, before His feet, and cry, ‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.’ True fruit is positive service: something that pervades our life. Thus of the fruits of the Spirit, as described in Gal. v. 22,—‘Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance,’—by far the greater number relate to our practical conduct amongst our fellow-men. In the account of heavenly wisdom given by St. James they are all of the same character: ‘The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.’ And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.’ True fruit again is something yielded up to God. When a missionary gives up home, and life itself for the Gospel, that is fruit. When the Sunday-school teacher devotes the day of rest to labour for God, that is fruit. When people bring freely of their substance, and throw large gifts into the treasury of God, that is fruit. When people in family life, heads of families, servants, young people, lay themselves out to make all happy around them, and by their loving, gentle conduct, commend the Gospel to all with whom they are brought in contact, that is fruit. It may not be the fruit of the hot-house, enjoyed only by the rich; or like some of those fruits which look so beautiful aloft on our orchard trees, that all admire: for we must remember that some of our best fruits grow in the cottage gardens, close to the ground. So God is often best glorified by the holy, humble, and self-denying zeal of the humble believer, keeping alow by the ground, and there, in humble life, ‘adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.’