new and higher
aspiration. Old things have not passed away; nothing has become new.

But the grace of God in Christ claims to work an entire change in the
desires and aspirations of the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Paul found the men of Ephesus highly civilized in a sense, but "dead in
trespasses and sins," "walking according to the course of this world,
and having their conversation in the lusts of the flesh." But God by His
Spirit so "quickened" them that they were able to understand and
appreciate one of the most spiritual of all his Epistles. He addressed
them as "new creatures," as God's "workmanship," "_created in Christ
Jesus unto good works_."

As has already been noticed, all theories of moral transformation found
in heathen systems require time. The process is carried on by intensive
and long-continued thought, or by gradual accumulations of merit. Only
the Buddha was enlightened _per sallum_,[209] so to speak. And quite in
accord with this view are those modern forms of materialism which
maintain that mental and moral habits consist in gradual impressions
made in the molecules of the nerve-tissues--that these impressions come
at length to determine our acts without the necessity of either purpose
or conscious recognition, and that only when right action becomes thus
involuntary can character strictly be said to exist.[210] But such
theories certainly do not harmonize with the known facts of Christian
conversion already alluded to. We do not refuse to recognize a certain
degree of truth hidden in these speculations. We are aware that
continued thought or emotion promotes a certain habit, and that in the
Christian life such habit becomes an element of strength. We also admit
that high and pure thought and emotion stamp themselves at length upon
our physical nature, and appear in the very expression of the
countenance, but when we look for the transforming impulse that can
begin and sustain such habitual exercises in spite of the natural
sinfulness and corruption which all systems admit, we find it only in
the Christian doctrine of the new birth by the power of the Holy Ghost.

On these two doctrines of a Divine Vicarious Sacrifice and of the
transforming power of a Divine Spirit we might rest our case. It should
be sufficient to show, first, that Christianity alone provides a divine
salvation in which God is made sin for us; and second, that its power
alone, though objective, works in us the only eff