of exercising spiritual power and carrying real blessing. Should we not
each ask, "Have I outgrown my spiritual infancy?" Some must reply, "No,
instead of having gone forward, I have gone backward, and the joy of
conversion and the first love is gone." Alas! They are babes in Christ;
they are yet carnal.

The second mark of the carnal state is this: that there is sin and failure
continually. Paul says: "Whereas there is strife and division among you,
and envying, are ye not carnal?" A man gives way to temper. He may be a
minister, or a preacher of the Gospel, or a Sunday-school teacher, most
earnest at the prayer-meeting, but yet strife or bitterness or envying is
often shown by him. Alas! Alas! In Gal. 3:5 we are told that the works of
the flesh are specially hatred and envy. How often among Christians, who
have to work together, do we see divisions and bitterness! God have mercy
upon them, that the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, is so frequently
absent from His own people. You ask, "Why is it, that for twenty years I
have been fighting with my temper, and can not conquer it?" It is because
you have been fighting with the temper, and you have not been fighting with
the root of the temper. You have not seen that it is all because you are in
the carnal state, and not properly given up to the Spirit of God. It may be
that you never were taught it; that you never saw it in God's Word;
that you never believed it. But there it is; the truth of God remains
unchangeable. Jesus Christ can give us the victory over sin, and can keep
us from actual transgression. I am not telling you that the root of sin
will be eradicated, and that you will have no longer any natural tendency
to sin; but when the Holy Spirit comes not only with His power for service
as a gift, but when He comes in Divine grace to fill the heart, there is
victory over sin; power not to fulfill the lusts of the flesh. And you see
a mark of the carnal state not only in unlovingness, self-consciousness
and bitterness, but in so many other sins. How much worldliness, how much