“No one can but Jesus,” said Aunt Marthe with a smile.  “He does the impossible.  Take that exquisite fifteenth chapter of St. John and study it verse by verse.  ‘Abide in me, and I in you.’  There you have the two abidings.  We are in Christ when we believe in him and are accepted through the merit of his blood and brought by adoption into the family of God, but not until he abides in our hearts shall our lives become as beautiful as God means them to be.  Fruitfulness,—­that is the cry everywhere.  Men are calling for intellectual fruitfulness and mechanical fruitfulness, and are bending their energies to find the soil which will develop at once the best quality and greatest amount of fruit.  Take a tree, to make my meaning clearer.  The tree may abide in the soil and be just alive, but it is not until the essence of the soil enters into and abides in the tree, that it really grows and bears fruit.  Growers of the finest varieties will show you plums that look as if they had been frosted with silver, and peaches with cheeks like the first blush of dawn.  The ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ have a wondrous bloom and an exquisite fragrance.”

“‘Love, joy, peace,’” Evadne repeated slowly, “’long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.’  But those belong to the Spirit, Aunt Marthe.”

“Yes, dear child, the Spirit of Jesus.  The Spirit whom he sent to comfort his people when he took his bodily presence from the earth.  The holy, indwelling presence which is to reveal the Christ to us and prepare us for the abiding of the Father and the Son.  It is the beautiful mystery of the Trinity.”

“But we cannot have the Trinity abiding in our hearts!” said Evadne in an awestruck voice.

“The Bible teaches us so.”

“Not God, Aunt Marthe!”

“Jesus is God, little one.  He said to the Jews, ’I and my Father are one.’  He says plainly, ’If any man love me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him,’ and in another place we are told to be filled with the Spirit.  It is three persons but three in one.”

“I do not understand, Aunt Marthe.”

“No, dear, we never shall, down here.  Thomas wanted to do that and Christ said ‘Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.’  The Spirit is continually giving us deeper insight into the love of the Son, just as the Son came to make known to the world the wonderful love of the Father.”

“But ‘be filled,’” said Evadne.  “That looks as if we had something to do with it.”

“So we have, dear child.  Suppose a man owned one hundred acres of land and gave you the right of way through it from one public road to another,—­that would leave him many acres for his own use on which you have no right to trespass.  I think we treat Jesus so.  We are willing that he should have the right of way through our hearts, but we forget that every acre must be the King’s property.  There must be no rights reserved, no fenced corners.  Jesus must be an absolute monarch.”