ant or dead capacity which nothing
but contact with God, the touch of the Holy Ghost, can vivify and bring
into actual exercise.

That there should be such a capacity, born as if dead, and needing to be
quickened by a higher power before it can live and be of use, need not
surprise us. Nature is full of examples of such capacities. All seeds
are of this nature, dead until favouring circumstances and soil quicken
them into life. In our own body there are similar capacities, capacities
which may or may not be quickened into life. In the lower
animal-creation many analogous capacities are found, which depend for
their vivification on some external agency over which they have no
control. The egg of a bird has in it the capacity to become a bird like
the parent, but it remains a dead thing and will corrupt if the parent
forsakes it. There are many of the summer insects which are twice-born,
first of their insect parents, and then of the sun: if the frost comes
in place of the sun, they die. The caterpillar has already a life of its
own, with which, no doubt, it is well content, but enclosed in its
nature as a creeping thing it has a capacity for becoming something
different and higher. It may become a moth, or a butterfly; but in most
the capacity is never developed, they die before they reach this
end--their circumstances do not favour their development. These
analogies show how common it is for capacities of life to lie dormant:
how common a thing it is for a creature in one stage of its existence to
have a capacity for passing into a higher stage, a capacity which can be
developed only by some agency peculiarly adapted to it.

It is in this condition man is born of his human parents. He is born
with a capacity for a higher life than that which he lives as an animal
in this world. There is in him a capacity for becoming something
different, better and higher than that which he actually is by his
natural birth. He has a capacity which lies dormant or dead until the
Holy Ghost comes and quickens it. There are many things, and great
things, man can do without any further Divine assistance than that which
is lodged for the whole race in the natural laws which make no
distinction between godly and ungodly; there are many and great things
man may do by virtue of his natural birth; but one thing he cannot
do--he cannot quicken within himself the capacity to love God and to
live for Him. For this there is needed an influence from