It is only as we thus become energetic by the yielding to God of our wills that He can go on to His desired work.  The aim of God in dealing with our lives is creative.  He wills that we bring forth fruit, and the fruit that He wills that we bring forth is the Fruit of the Spirit.  The general notion of holiness analyses into these qualities which are the evidence of God’s indwelling, of His actual possession of the soul.  When the soul yields at last to the divine will and begins to follow the divinely indicated course of action, then it loses self and finds God, then the results begin to show in the growth of the character-qualities that we call fruits or virtues.  The presence or the absence of these is infallible evidence of the Spirit’s success or failure in His work in us.  If we abide in Christ, then the natural results of such abiding must be forthcoming.  “I am the vine, ye are the branches:  He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit:  for without me ye can do nothing.”

A vine bears fruit because it assimilates the natural elements which are furnished it by the Providence of God through earth and air and water, and works them into the fruit which is the end, the meaning of its existence.  Our Lord through the constant operation within us of the Holy Spirit gives us the spiritual power to work over the endowments of nature and the opportunities of life into the spiritual product which is holiness.  We can just as well, and perhaps easier, work up the same natural elements into a quite different product.  The result of our life’s action may be that we can show the works of the flesh.  But what is the will of the Spirit, S. Paul sets before us in these words:  “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.  What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?  For the end of those things is death.  But now being made free from sin, and become the servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.  For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Any adequate self-examination, therefore, bears not only on our sins, our failures, but on our accomplishment.  A tree is known by its fruits; and fruits are things which are evident to all men.  If indeed the work of the Spirit in us is love, joy, peace and the rest of the fruits, these qualities cannot be hid.  Certainly they cannot be hid from ourselves.  They are the evidence to us of precisely where we stand in the way of spiritual accomplishment.  And we must remember that they are supernatural qualities, and not be deceived by the existence in us of a set of human counterfeits.  Love is not good-natured tolerance; joy is not superficial gaiety, peace is not clever dodging of difficulties.  The fruits of the Spirit are not of easy growth, but come only at the end of a long period of cultivation, of energetic striving.  But like all the gifts of God they