For most true is it that in ourselves we could not deliver ourselves either soul or body.  “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh,” might have been as cruel a mockery to us, as the similar words addressed to the man bodily sick,—­“Walk according to thy healthy nature, and thou shalt not suffer from disease.”  They might have been a mockery, but blessed be God, they are not.  They are not, because God has given us a Redeemer; they are not, because Christ has died, yea rather has risen again; and because the Spirit of Christ helpeth our infirmities, and gives us that power which by ourselves we had not.

Not by wishing then to be redeemed, but by being redeemed, shall we escape the power of death.  Not by saying, “Alas! we cannot do the things that we would!” but by becoming able to do them.  Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh; but if ye do fulfil them, ye must die.

The power to walk in the Spirit is given by the Spirit; but either all have not this power, or all do not use it.  I think rather it is that all have it not, for if they had it, a power so mighty and so beneficent, they surely could not help using it.  All have it not; but I do not say that they all might not have it; on the contrary, all might have it, but in point of fact they have it not.  They have it not because they seek it not:  for an idle wish is one thing; a steady persevering pursuit is another.  They seek not the Spirit by the appointed means, the means of prayer and attending to God’s holy word, and thinking of life and death and judgment.

Do those seek the spirit of God who never pray to God?  Clearly they do not.  For they who never pray to God never think of Him; they who never think of Him, by the very force of the terms it follows that they cannot seek his help.  And yet they say, “Oh, I wish to be good, but I cannot!” But this, in the language of the Scripture, is a lie.  If they did wish to be good they would seek the help that could make them so.  There is no boy so young as not to know that, when temptation is on him to evil, prayer to God will strengthen him for good.  As sure as we live, if he wished really to overcome the temptation, he would seek the strength.

Consider what prayer is, and see how it cannot but strengthen us.  He who stands in a sheltered place, where the wind cannot reach him, and with no branches over his head to cause a damp shade, and then holds up his face or his hands to the sun, in his strength, can he help feeling the sun’s warmth?  Now, thus it is in prayer:  we turn to God, we bring our souls, with all their thoughts and feelings, fully before Him; and by the very act of so doing, we shelter ourselves from every chill of worldly care, we clear away every intercepting screen of worldly thought and pleasure.  It is an awful thing so to submit ourselves wholly to the influence of God.  But do it; and as surely as the sun will warm us if we stand in the sun, so will the Giver of light and life to the soul pour his Spirit of life into us; even as we pray, we become changed into his image.