The other requisite, in order that fallen man may become perfect again, is a holy heart and will.  Can the moral law originate this?  That we may rightly answer the question, let us remember that a holy will is one that keeps the law of God spontaneously and that a perfect heart is one that sends forth holy affections and pure thoughts as naturally as the sinful heart sends forth unholy affections and impure thoughts.  A holy will, like an evil will, is a wonderful and wonderfully fertile power.  It does not consist in an ability to make a few or many separate resolutions of obedience to the divine law, but in being itself one great inclination and determination continually and mightily going forth.  A holy will, therefore, is one that from its very nature and spontaneity seeks God, and the glory of God.  It does not even need to make a specific resolution to obey; any more than an affectionate child needs to resolve to obey its father.

In like manner, a perfect and holy heart is a far more profound and capacious thing than men who have never seriously tried to obtain it deem it to foe.  It does not consist in the possession of a few or many holy thoughts mixed with some sinful ones, or in having a few or many holy desires together with some corrupt ones.  A perfect heart is one undivided agency, and does not produce, as the imperfectly sanctified heart of the Christian does, fruits of holiness and fruits of sin, holy thoughts and unholy thoughts.  It is itself a root and centre of holiness, and nothing but goodness springs up from it.  The angels of God are totally holy.  Their wills are unceasingly going forth towards Him with ease and delight; their hearts are unintermittently gushing out emotions of love, and feelings of adoration, and thoughts of reverence, and therefore the song that they sing is unceasing, and the smoke of their incense ascendeth forever and ever.

Such is the holy will, and the perfect heart, which fallen man must obtain in order to be fit for heaven.  To this complexion must he come at last.  And now we ask:  Can the law generate all this excellence within the human soul?  In order to answer this question, we must consider the nature of law, and the manner of its operation.  The law, as antithetic to the gospel, and as the word is employed in the text, is in its nature mandatory and minatory.  It commands, and it threatens.  This is the style of its operation.  Can a perfect heart be originated in a sinner by these two methods?  Does the stern behest, “Do this or die,” secure his willing and joyful obedience?  On the contrary, the very fact that the law of God comes up before him coupled thus with a threatening evinces that his aversion and hostility are most intense.  As the Apostle says, “The law is not made for a righteous man; but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners.”  Were man, like the angels on high, sweetly obedient to the Divine will, there