It is of the greatest practical moment to grasp that, to St. Paul, the change in human life which comes about through our conversion and new birth is a change in order. What was managed from below is now controlled from above. That is the point on which we need to examine ourselves. Where do we begin from? Are we in the position of men struggling to manage their own lives, and commend themselves according to some standard more or less right, which either their personal pride or their social circle or the divine law has set up? If so, God is over against us, our taskmaster, our adversary, our stern judge, and our life is 'according to the flesh.' It is managed from below. It is ruled on its own level, and it fails. But there is another life which begins at once from the thought of God. God has made us, and therefore He is responsible for us. He has made me because He loves me. Therefore He is bound to make the best of me. If I will only put myself into His hands He is pledged, simply because He created me, therefore to redeem me, to save me, to glorify me. He takes that responsibility upon Himself. He has shown His {282} love by the sending and the sacrifice of His Son and by the gift of His Spirit. And His Spirit I have received. At a definite moment He came upon me. He entered into my life, as into those first Christians to whom St. Paul wrote, at baptism and by the laying-on of hands. This is the fact then. God is on my side. He makes Himself responsible for my being. If I will only entrust myself to Him with the cordial return of trustful love, then all that He has ever breathed into my heart of human possibility He will realize and bring to perfection. The requirement of the law shall be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.--This is a point of view upon which it is worth while reflecting deeply, and over and over again. Unless we are continually practising ourselves in this conception of life, we find ourselves falling back again into the attitude of one standing over against God with God for his taskmaster. And that is the false and always ruinous idea.