FROM GRACE TO GLORY BORN AGAIN by Octavius Winslow

great prize acknowledging, just as he was about to finish his career and
reach the goal, the decay of spiritual vitality and power, is a spectacle
startling and painful in the extreme. And yet how frequent its
occurrence! There is nothing in the renewed nature to exempt it from
spiritual fluctuation. It is a divine, but not a deified, nature; it is of God,
but it is not God. It dwells in a body of sin and of death, and is exposed
to all those hostile influences which spring from the fallen and corrupt
nature in the midst of which it dwells. Just as the barometer is
depressed or elevated by atmospheric influences, or just as the compass
is disturbed by the proximity of objects naturally affecting its
regularity, so the new man is constantly exposed to deterioration from
the opposite and baneful influences springing from our fallen and
corrupt nature. The depressions, therefore, of the new nature arise not
from any essential defect in that nature--for it is incorruptible--but
from the sin that dwells in us. Thus it is that the believer loses strength.
"That I may recover strength." The strongest may become weak, yes, weak
as the weakest, when sin is allowed for a moment the ascendancy. But
when conscious of the feebleness of our own native strength, of the
fallibility of our own wisdom, of our soul's emptiness, poverty, and
nothingness; when thus acquainted with, and so weaned from our own
selves, then are we strong--strong in the Lord, and in the power of His
might--strong and mighty in Jehovah. This was the testimony of
Paul--"When I am weak, then am I strong."
But let us consider--In what is this loss of spiritual strength the most
visible? Where is the child of God the most sensible, especially when he
takes a close view of death and eternity, of soul-weakness?
With regard to the principle and action of FAITH, this decay of vigor
may be visible. As faith is the 'parent grace' of all the Christian graces,
the root of all the fruits of the Spirit, the mainspring of all the holy
140 of 174