If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of man.  As nature will give no sign, so man cannot.  Let the Church do all that she may; let her keep her solemn anniversaries, and choose out for her services all such passages of Scripture as may be most fitted to impress the lesson which she would teach; still we know that these are alike powerless and unheeded; that unless there be in our own minds something beforehand disposed to profit by them, they are but the words of unavailing affection, vainly spoken to the ears of the dead.

Oh that we would remember this, all of us; that there is no voice in nature, no voice in man, that can really awaken the sleeping soul.  That is the work of a far mightier power, to be sought for with most earnest prayers for ourselves and for each other:  that the Holy Spirit of God would speak, and would dispose our hearts to hear; that so being awakened from death and our ears being truly opened, all things outward may now join in language which we can hear; and nature, and man, life and death, things present and things to come, may be but the manifold voices of the Spirit of God, all working for us together for good.  Till this be so, we speak in vain; our words neither reach our own hearts, nor the hearts of our hearers; they are but recorded in God’s book of judgment, to be brought forward hereafter for the condemnation of us both.

Yet we must still speak; for the Spirit of God, who alone works in us effectually, works also secretly; we know not when, nor how, nor where.  But we know, that as the Father worketh hitherto, and the Son worketh hitherto, so the Holy Spirit worketh hitherto, and is still working daily.  We know that, every year, he creates in thousands of God’s people that work which alone shall abide for ever.  We know that in the year that is just past he has done this; that in the year which is just beginning he will do it.  Have we not here, also, many in whom he has wrought this work? may we not hope, and surely believe, that there are many in whom he is even now preparing to work it?

We know not who these are; still less do we know, what were the occasions which the Holy Spirit so blessed as to work in them his work of life.  But this we know, that we are bound to minister all the occasions which we can; we must not spare our labour, although it is God alone who gives the increase.  We must speak of life and of death, of Christ and of judgment, not forgetting that we speak often, and shall speak, utterly in vain; yet knowing that it is by these very thoughts, though long unheeded, that God’s Spirit does in his own good time awaken the heart; he takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us; and then, what was before like a book in a strange language—­we saw the figures, but they conveyed no meaning to our minds—­becomes, on a sudden, instinct with the language of God, which we hear and understand as readily as if it were our own tongue wherein we were born.