gifts which belong to the higher forms of life, simply because
they are so made and organised as that these cannot find entrance
into their nature. They are, as it were, walled up all round; and the
only door they have to communicate with the outer world is the door
of sense. Man has higher gifts simply because he has higher
capacities. All creatures are plunged in the same boundless ocean of
divine beneficence and bestowment, and into each there flows just
that, and no more, which each, by the make and constitution that God
has given it, is capable of receiving. In the man there are more
windows and doors opened out than in the animal He is capable of
receiving intellectual impulses, spiritual emotions; he can think,
and feel, and desire, and will, and resolve: and so he stands on a
higher level than the beast below him.

Not otherwise is it in regard to God's kingdom, 'which is
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.' The gift and
blessing of salvation is primarily a spiritual gift, and only
involves outward consequences secondarily and subordinately. It
mainly consists in the heart being at peace with God, in the whole
soul being filled with divine affections, in the weight and bondage
of transgression being taken away, and substituted by the impulse and
the life of the new love. Therefore, neither God can give, nor man
can receive, that gift upon any other terms, than just this, that the
heart and nature be fitted and adapted for it. Spiritual blessings
require a spiritual capacity for the reception of them; or, as my
text says, you cannot have the inheritance unless you are sons. If
salvation consisted simply in a change of place; if it were merely
that by some expedient or arrangement, an outward penalty, which was
to fall or not to fall at the will of an arbitrary judge, were
prevented from coming down, why then, it would be open to Him who
held the power of letting the sword fall, to decide on what terms He
might choose to suspend its infliction. But inasmuch as God's
deliverance is not a deliverance from a mere arbitrary and outward
punishment: inasmuch as God's salvation, though it be deliverance
from the penalty as well as from the guilt of sin, is by no means
chiefly a deliverance from outward consequences, but mainly a
removal of the nature and disposition that makes these outward
consequences certain,--therefore a man cannot be saved, God's love
cannot save him, God's justice will not save hi