of their
occurrence--'For neither circumcision is anything, nor
uncircumcision, but a new creature.' That is to say, if we are ever
to keep the will of God we must be made over again. Ay! we must! Our
own consciences tell us that; the history of all the efforts that
ever we have made--and I suppose all of us have made some now and
then, more or less earnest and more or less persistent--tells us that
there needs to be a stronger hand than ours to come into the fight if
it is ever to be won by us. There is nothing more heartless and more
impotent than to preach, 'Bow your wills to God, and then you will be
happy; bow your wills to God, and then you will be good.' If that is
all the preacher has to say, his powerless words will but provoke the
answer, 'We cannot. Tell the leopard to change his spots, or the
Ethiopian his skin, as soon as tell a man to reduce this revolted
kingdom within him to obedience, and to bow his will to the will of
God. We cannot do it.' But, brethren, in that word, 'a new creature,'
lies a promise from God; for a creature implies a creator. 'It is He
that hath made us, and not we ourselves.' The very heart of what
Christ has to offer us is the gift of His own life to dwell in our
hearts, and by its mighty energy to make us free from the law of sin
and death which binds our wills. We may have our spirits moulded into
His likeness, and new tastes, and new desires, and new capacities
infused into us, so as that we shall not be left with our own poor
powers to try and force ourselves into obedience to God's will, but
that submission and holiness and love that keeps the commandments of
God, will spring up in our renewed spirits as their natural product
and growth. Oh! you men and women who have been honestly trying, half
your lifetime, to make yourselves what you know God wants you to be,
and who are obliged to confess that you have failed, hearken to the
message: 'If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things
are passed away.' The one thing needful is keeping the commandments
of God, and the only way by which we can keep the commandments of God
is that we should be formed again into the likeness of Him of whom
alone it is true that 'He did always the things that pleased' God.

And so we come to the last of these great texts: 'In Christ Jesus,
neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith
which worketh by love.' That is to say, if we are to be made over
again, we mu