sin.  A man must see this truth; this is the first step.  The second is—­he must accept it in faith.  And what then?  When he accepts it in faith, then there comes in him a struggle, and a painful experience, for that faith is still very feeble, and he begins to ask, “But why, if I am dead to sin, do I commit so much sin?” And the answer God’s Word gives is simply this:  You do not allow the power of that death to be applied by the Holy Spirit.  What we need is to understand that the Holy Spirit came from Heaven, from the glorified Jesus, to bring His death and His life into us.  The two are inseparably connected.  That Christ died, He died unto sin, and that He liveth, He liveth unto God.  The death and the life in Him are inseparable; and even so in us the life to God in Christ is inseparably connected with the death to sin.  And that is what the Holy Ghost will teach us and work in us.  If I have accepted Christ in faith by the Holy Ghost, and yield myself to Him, Christ every day keeps possession, and reveals the full power of my fellowship in His death and life in my heart.  To some this comes undoubtedly in one moment of supreme power and blessing; all at once they see and accept it, and enter in, and there is death to sin as a Divine experience.  It is not that the tendency to evil is rooted out.  No; but the power of Christ’s death keeps from sin, and destroys the power of sin; the power of Christ’s death can be manifested in the Holy Spirit’s unceasingly mortifying the deeds of the body.

Some one asks me if there is still growth needed.  Undoubtedly.  By the Holy Spirit a man can now begin to live and grow, deeper and deeper, into the fellowship of Christ’s death.  New things are discovered by him in spheres of which he never thought.  A man may at times be filled with the Holy Ghost, and yet there may be great imperfections in him.  Why?  For this reason:  because his heart, perhaps, had not been fully prepared by a complete discovery of sin.  There may be pride, or self-consciousness, or forwardness, or other qualities of this nature which he has never noticed.  The Holy Spirit does not always cast these out at once.  No.  There are different ways of entering into the blessed life.  One man enters into the blessed life with the idea of power for service; another with the idea of rest from worry and weariness; another with the idea of deliverance from sin.  In all these aspects there is something limited, and therefore every believer is to give himself up after he knows the power of Christ’s death, and say continually:  “Lord Jesus, let the power of Thy death work through, let it penetrate my whole being.”  As the man gives himself unreservedly up, he will begin to bear the marks of a crucified man.  The apostle says:  “I have been crucified,” and he lives like a crucified man.