Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/106

 —resisting and overcoming, through his ever-present divine aid, the evil inclinations of our hereditary nature, as He resisted and overcame the evils in his assumed humanity—this is the sure and the only sure way to heaven. And this requires faith, courage, sacrifice, endurance, spiritual conflict and a willingness to give up our own selfish life for the Lord's sake—for the sake, that is, of that higher, purer, diviner life which He is at all times ready and longing to give, and which is Himself. A man's life is his love; and our life is the life we receive by natural inheritance—the life of self-love and love of the world. But this is not our true life. It is not properly human life. True human or spiritual life is the Lord's own life in the soul of man. It is the life of genuine charity—the living and active operation of a love that is quite the opposite of the love of self. This latter love must be denied and overcome before we can receive such love as the angels feel, and which is the Lord's own. Thus we must lose our life for the Lord's sake, else we cannot find that which is our true and heavenly life. Therefore He says that a man must hate his own life, else "he cannot be my disciple." (Luke xiv. 26.)

The apostle Paul also says: "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." And he exhorts us to "fight the good fight of faith"—pointing, plainly, to that spiritual warfare to be carried on within our own breasts by means of the truths of faith from the Word—a warfare against our natural proprium, or the ruling loves of the natural man. And these truths which are the weapons of our warfare—the weapons