The Fruit of the Spirit

Handley Moule was the first Principal of Ridley Hall Theological College, Cambridge and then Bishop of Durham from 1901 to 1920.  He was closely associated with the setting up of the Keswick Convention and the author of many books.  The following is from his book Veni Creator [Come, Creator]:

". . . The word 'fruit.'  What does it tell us?  It tells us, the branches of the true Vine, that in us, yet not of us, there is a mighty fructifying PRINCIPLE. It tells us that the holy characteristics, the holy character, here painted before us must not be worked up by weary efforts out of the materials of self, somewhat re-adjusted and assisting one another's  weakness, if they could do so.

"The happy, pure phenomenon has a nobly adequate vital CAUSE behind it. It grows; it is not manufactured. It is not acquired from our surroundings, but produced amidst them. It is the result of a secret of LIFE; Life, that most wonderful of forces, while most silent; the force which in the natural world can, in the tender shoots of the young tree, lift the massive stone, and rend the joints of rock-like masonry; and which in the spiritual world can make the weak strong, and do silent miracles with what once seemed impossibilities in character within and circumstances without.

"Let the anxious, the discouraged, Christian ponder this word 'fruit,' recollecting this its special significance. Let it remind him where his 'great strength' lies. It lies in nothing that is properly and personally his. All that is his, all such that is not sin, is capable indeed of wonderful use by his 'great strength.'

"Gifts, talents, faculties of mind, or body, or estate, be they very large or very, very small, all are precious, all are usable. But none, absolutely none, is his true strength. That lies wholly in a divinely given secret, principle, force, which is in him but not of him, and whose power is not for a moment to be measured by his weakness. 'From it is his fruit found'  (see Hos. 14:8).

"Let him be at rest about the adequacy of that Cause to produce the effect of holiness. Let him in humble faith 'lay aside' all known hindrance; and then in the same humble faith, watching and praying, but not struggling to force out the mighty Life, let him yield himself unto God for a divinely natural fruitfulness.

"For this fruit is 'the fruit of THE SPIRIT.'  Here is the all-important and all-welcome fact for us, in our present enquiry. This vital secret, force, principle, of which we have spoken what is it? No abstract truth, no ideal of
duty, no awe-inspiring but never life-giving 'I ought.' It is the Holy Ghost, the Personal and Loving Paraclete. It is the Lord, the Life-Giver, whose tender and mighty working has drawn me to Christ, and knit me into Him, and imparted Him to me; blessed be His Name.

"Because of Him, by virtue of Him, thanks to Him, through Him in-dwelling, in-working, filling, welcomed in to have His way in His temple, the fruit of holiness begins to be, to grow, to come forth, to take its gracious shape, to ripen into its sweetness for the service of God and Man.

"And so our way, our indirect way, to contribute to the blessed result is clear. It is to remove in His name the obstacles, but then to remember with thankful and peaceful joy that the work of life-giving and fruit-producing is His alone. From this point of view, my part is a blessed and wakeful Quietism; a rest, that He may work. (I use the word Quietism to express one side of truth, and only so. In the history of theological language it has some associations with dangerous error.) 

"Need I at any length remind my reader that this view of the operation of the Spirit as the secret of the fruit of holiness leaves wholly inviolate the primary truth that 'Christ is our Life '? We saw early in our enquiry how clear and full is the certainty of that truth; that while the Spirit of God is the Life-Giver the Son of God is the Life. But then, the Spirit is the Life-Giver. By Him, in His infinitely gracious personal operation, you and I 'have the Son.' And His own divine vital connection with the Son is such that where He is, savingly, there Christ is, and where Christ is there He is.

"If I may quote words of my own written elsewhere: 'The Spirit is the eternal and divine personal Vehicle; Jesus Christ, who is our Life, is the Thing conveyed. . . . To borrow an imperfect analogy from physical science, Christ is as the Sun of the soul, the Spirit is as the luminiferous Ether by whose vibration we have the Sun's light and heat.'"