I. Lilias Trotter

“ A dying must come upon all that would hinder God's working through us--all interests, all impulses, all energies that are "born of the flesh"--all that is merely human and apart from His Spirit. Only thus can the Life of Jesus, in its intensity of love for sinners, have its way in our souls.
Death to Self is the Way Out into a Life of Sacrifice.
This dandelion has long ago surrendered its golden petals, and has reached its crowning stage of dying--the delicate seed-globe must break up now--it gives and gives till it has nothing left. ”

“ Stress had to be laid in these pages on the death gateway, but a gateway is never a dwelling-place; the death-stage is never meant for our souls to stay and brood over, but to pass through with a will into the light beyond. We may and must, like the plants, bear its marks, but they should be visible to God rather than to man, for above all and through all is the inflowing, overflowing life of Jesus: oh let us not dim it by a shadow of morbidness or of gloom: He is not a God of the dead, but a God of the living, and He would have us let the glory of His gladness shine out. ”

“ Think of the wonder of it--the Fountain of Life Himself wells up within us, taking the place of all that we have delivered, bit by bit, into His grave. "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Little have we proved, any of us, the resources that lie in that mighty indwelling, little have we learnt what it is to have all our soul-fibres penetrated by its power. May God lead us, no matter what the cost, into all that can be known of it, here on earth. ”

“ Death is the Gate of Life
There was deep insight in those old words. For man's natural thought of death is that of a dreary ending in decay and dissolution. And from his standpoint he is right: death as the punishment of sin is an ending.
But far other is God's thought in the redemption of the world. He takes the very thing that came in with the curse, and makes it the path of glory. Death becomes a beginning instead of an ending, for it becomes the means of liberating a fresh life. ”

“ And that way is again the way of death.
A stage of dying must come over the plant before the new leaves can grow and thrive. There must be a deliberate choice between the former growth and the new; one must give way to the other; the acorn has to come to the point where it ceases to keep its rag of former existence, and lets everything go to the fresh shoot: the twig must withdraw its sap from last year's leaf, and let it flow into this year's bud. ”

“ The hour of this new dying is clearly defined to the dandelion globe: it is marked by detachment. There is no sense of wrenching: it stands ready, holding up its little life, not knowing when or where or how the wind that bloweth where it listeth may carry it away. It holds itself no longer for its own keeping, only as something to be given: a breath does the rest, turning the "readiness to will" into the "performance." ”

“ For here again death is the gate of life: it is an entering in, not a going forth only; it means a liberating of new powers as the former treasures float away like the dying petals.
We cannot feel a consciousness of death: the words are a contradiction in terms. If we had literally passed out of this world into the next we should not feel dead, we should only be conscious of a new wonderful life beating within us. Our consciousness of death would be an entirely negative matter--the old pains would be unable to touch us, the old bonds would be unable to fetter us. ”

“ Death means a loosened grasp--loosened beyond all power of grasping again.
And it is no strange thing that happens to us, if God takes us at our word, and strips us for a while of all that made life beautiful. It may be outward things--bodily comfort, leisure, culture, reputation, friendships--that have to drift away as our hands refuse to clasp on anything but God's will for us. ”

“ This bit of sphagnum shows the process in miniature: stage after stage of dying has been gone through, and each has been all the while crowned with life. Each time that the crown has sunk down again into death, that death has again been crowned in the act of dying: and the life all the time is the apparent thing: the daily dying that underlies it is out of sight to the passing glance.
Yes, life is the uppermost, resurrection life, radiant and joyful and strong, for we represent down here Him who liveth and was dead and is alive for evermore. ”

“ No matter if we feel utterly helpless before that lovely life of His. Given the conditions--the hidden power within, and the old outlets of growth shut off--the sun will do the rest; out of the midst of apparent lifelessness, of barrenness, of difficulty, the blossoms will be drawn forth. ”

“ Separation from all known sin is the starting-point for santification, not the goal: it is only the negative side of holiness; it is only reaching the place where God can develop His ideal in us unhindered. It is when the death of winter has done its work that the sun can draw out in each plant its own individuality, and make its existence full and fragrant. Holiness means something more than the sweeping away of the old leaves of sin: it means the life of Jesus developed in us. ”

“ For the blessedness of receiving is not all that God has for us: a new world lies beyond--a world of giving: a giving first to God in surrender, then to man in sacrifice.
A flower that stops short at its flowering misses its purpose. We were created for more than our own spiritual development; reproduction, not mere development, is the goal of matured being--reproduction in other lives. There is a tendency in some characters, running parallel to the high cultivation that spends its whole energy on the production of bloom at the expense of seed. ”

“ Never mind if the trouble shews no sign of giving way: it is just when it seems most hopelessly unyielding, holding on through the spring days, alive and strong, it is then that the tiny buds appear that soon will clothe it with glory. Take the very hardest thing in your life--the place of difficulty, outward or inward, and expect God to triumph gloriously in that very spot. ”

“ It is when we come to self-despair, when we feel ourselves locked in, waiting our doom, that the glory and the beauty of God's way of escape dawns upon us, and we submit ourselves to Him in it. All resistance breaks down as faith closes on the fact: "He loved me and gave Himself for me." We receive the atonement so hardly won, and we go out into life not only pardoned, but cleared and justified.
Death to Sin's Penalty is the Way Out into a Life of Justification. ”

“ The first hour that the sap begins to withdraw, and the leaf-stalk begins to silt up, the leaf's fate is sealed: there is never a moment's reversal of the decision. Each day that follows is a steady carrying out of the plant's purpose: "this old leaf shall die, and the new leaf shall live." So with your soul. Come to the decision once for all: "every known sin shall go--if there is a deliverance to be had, I will have it." ”

“ It may co-exist with much that looks like sacrifice; there may be much of usefulness and of outward self-denial, and yet below the surface may remain a clinging to our own judgment, a confidence in our own resources, an unconscious taking of our own way, even in God's service. And these things hold down, hold in our souls, and frustrate the Spirit in His working. The latent self-life needs to be brought down into the place of death before His breath can carry us hither and thither as the wind wafts the seeds. Are we ready for this last surrender? ”

“ And then reckon into life the new-born growth of faith in your soul, and put all your force into believing: lift up your eyes to the God in Whom you believe: believe in the teeth of everything, as if the cause for doubt were not there. Then the sap, ceasing from feeding the old shoot, will flow into the new. ”

“ There is no further progress possible to you, till you make up your mind to part company with every sin in which you know you are indulging--every sin of thought, word, or deed, every link with the world, the flesh, or the devil, everything on which the shadow of a question falls, as God's light shines in: to part company, not by a series of gradual struggles, but by an honest act of renouncing, maintained by faith and obedience. ”

“ Should Jesus tarry our works will follow us. The closing in of the signs around us make it seem as if we should not taste of death, and as if the time left us to work and suffer for Him were growing very short; but if that last gate has to be passed before our spirits are sent free into the land of perfect life, God may use, by reason of the wonderful solidarity of His Church, the things that He has wrought in us, for the blessing of souls unknown to us: as these twigs and leaves of bygone years, whose individuality is forgotten, pass on vitality still to the new-born wood-sorrel. ”

“ It is true that it is a rule that sometimes has exceptions: there are those to whom a blessed life of fruitfulness to God comes in a simple way, with seemingly no hard process of dying involved, just as there are plants that reproduce themselves by bulb and tuber, sucker and shoot, without going through the stripping and scattering that we have been watching. But the law of creation is "the herb yielding seed and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself." ”

“ It does not follow that every seed will spring up: it is not so in the natural world. The plant's business is to scatter it, not withholding, not knowing which shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good; once scattered, the responsibility is transferred to the ground that receives it. But the aim of the plant--the goal of all the budding and blossoming and ripening--is that every seed should carry potential life. ”

“ The flowers that are bent on perfecting themselves, by becoming double, end in barrenness, and a like barrenness comes to the soul whose interests are all concentrated upon its own spiritual well-being, heedless of the needs around. The true, ideal flower is the one that uses its gifts as means to an end; the brightness and sweetness are not for its own glory ”

“ But even when the plant's goal is reached, it is not a finality. "There is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning. Every ultimate fact is only the beginning of a new series." [2] "While the earth remaineth seed-time and harvest . . . shall not cease." Life leads on to new death, and new death back to life again. Over and over when we think we know our lesson, we find ourselves beginning another round of God's Divine spiral: "in deaths oft" is the measure of our growth, "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." ”

“ Or it may be on our inner life that the stripping falls, and we have to leave the sunny lands of spiritual enjoyment for one after another of temptation's battlefields, where every inch of our foothold has to be tested, where even, it may seem to give way--till no experience, no resting-place remains to us in heaven or earth but God Himself--till we are "wrecked upon God." ”

“ And a like independence is the characteristic of the new flood of resurrection life that comes to our souls as we learn this fresh lesson of dying--a grand independence of any earthly thing to satisfy our soul, the liberty of those who have nothing to lose, because they have nothing to keep. ”

“ And before the soul can really enter upon a life of holiness, with all its blessed endless possibilities, a like choice must be made: all known sin must be deliberately given up, that the rising current may have its full play. ”

“ The two lives are there together, one new-born and feeble, the other strong with an earlier growth. "The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh," and the will power is distracted between the two, like the sap that flows partly into the old condemned leaves, partly into the fresh buds. Consequently there is the strife of a kingdom divided against itself: sometimes the one life grows and flourishes, sometimes the other; sometimes they struggle on side by side, till the cry is forced out--"Oh, wretched man that I am ”

“ Yes, there lies before us a beautiful possible life--one that shall have a passion for giving: that shall be poured forth to God--spent out for man: that shall be consecrated "for the hardest work and the darkest sinners." ”

“ And as we go out free, we find that on the other side of the Cross a new existence has really begun: that the love of the Crucified has touched the springs of our being--we are in another world, under an open heaven. ”

“ See in these wild iris-pods how the last tiny threads must be broken, and with that loosing, all that they have is free for God's use in His world around. All reluctance, all calculating, all holding in is gone; the husks are opened wide, the seeds can shed themselves unhindered. ”

“ Shall we not ask God to convict us, as to where lies the hindrance to this self-emptying? It is not alone mere selfishness, in its ordinary sense, that prevents it; long after this has been cleansed away by the Precious Blood there may remain, unrecognised, the self-life in more subtle forms. ”

“ And we ourselves are "saved to save"--we are made to give--to let everything go if only we may have more to give. The pebble takes in all the rays of light that fall on it, but the diamond flashes them out again: every little facet is a means, not simply of drinking more in, but of giving more out. ”