without, the
efficient touch of the Holy Spirit, the impartation of His life. The
capacity to be a child of God is man's, but the development of this lies
with God. Without the capacity a man is not a man, has not that which is
most distinctive of human nature. Every man is born with that in him
which the Spirit of God may quicken into Divine life. This is human
nature; but when this capacity is so quickened, when the man has begun
to live as a child of God, he has not lost his human nature, but has
over and above become a partaker of the Divine nature. When the image of
God, as well as of his earthly parents, becomes manifest in a man, then
his human nature has received its utmost development,--he is born again.

Of the Agent who accomplishes this great transformation there is need
only to say that He is free in His operation and also inscrutable. He is
like the wind, our Lord tells us, that blows where it lists. We cannot
bring the Spirit at will; we cannot use Him as if He were some
unintelligent passive instrument; neither can we subject all His
operations to our control. The grub must wait for those natural
influences which are to transform it; it cannot command them. We cannot
command the Spirit; but we, being free agents also, can do more than
wait,--we can pray, and we can strive to put ourselves in line with the
Spirit's operation. Seamen cannot raise the wind nor direct its course,
but they can put themselves in the way of the great regular winds. We
can do the same: we can slowly, by mechanical helps, creep into the way
of the Spirit; we can set our sails, doing all we think likely to catch
and utilize His influences--believing always that the Spirit is more
desirous than we are to bring us all to good. Why He breathes in one
place while all around lies in a dead calm we do not know; but as for
the wind's variations so for His, there are doubtless sufficient
reasons. We need not expect to see the Spirit's working separate from
the working of our own minds; we cannot see the Spirit in Himself--we
cannot see the wind that moves the ships, but we can see the ships
moving, and we know that without the wind they could not move.

If this, then, be the line on which our human nature can alone be
developed, if a profound harmony with God be that which can alone give
permanence and completeness to our nature, if in accordance with all
that we see in the world around us some men fail of attaining the end of
their cre