So long, therefore, as this change remains to be effected in an individual, there is and can be no holiness within him,—none of that holiness without which no man can see the Lord. There may be within him a very active and reproaching conscience; there may be intellectual orthodoxy and correctness in religious convictions; he may cherish elevated moral sentiments, and many attractive qualities springing out of a cultivated taste and a jealous self-respect may appear in his character; but unless he loves God and man out of a pure heart fervently, and unless his will is entirely and sweetly submissive to the Divine will, so that he can say: “Father not my will, but thine be done,” he is still a natural man. He is still destitute of the spiritual mind, and to him it must be said, as it was to Nicodemus: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The most important side of his being is still alienated from God. The heart with its affections; the will with its immense energies,—the entire active and emotive portions of his nature,—are still earthly, unsubmissive, selfish, and sinful.
4. In the fourth, and last place, we see from this subject the necessity of the operation of the Holy Spirit, in order to holiness in man.
There is no part of man’s complex being which is less under his own control, than his own will, and his own affections. This he discovers, as soon as he attempts to convert them; as soon as he tries to produce a radical change in them. Let a man whose will, from centre to circumference, is set upon self and the world, attempt to reverse it, and set it with the same strength and energy upon God and heaven, and he will know that his will is too strong for him, and that he cannot overcome himself. Let a man whose affections cleave like those of Dives to earthly good, and find their sole enjoyment in earthly pleasures, attempt to change them into their own contraries, so that they shall cleave to God, and take a real delight in heavenly things,—let a carnal man try to revolutionize himself into a spiritual man,—and he will discover that the affections and feelings of his heart are beyond his control. And the reason of this is plain. The affections and will of a man show what he loves, and what he is inclined to. A sinful man cannot, therefore, overcome his sinful love and inclination, because he cannot make a beginning. The instant he attempts to love God, he finds his love of himself in the way. This new love for a new object, which he proposes to originate within himself, is prevented by an old love, which already has possession. This new inclination to heaven and Divine things is precluded by an old inclination, very strong and very set, to earth and earthly things. There is therefore no starting-point, in this affair of self-conversion. He proposes, and he tries, to think a holy thought, but there is a sinful thought already in the mind.