Every man in the world knows enough of duty and of right to be a far nobler man than any man in the world is.  And it is not for want of clear convictions of duty, it is not for want of recognised models and patterns of life, that men go wrong; but it is because there are these two things lacking, motives for nobler service, and power to do and be what they know they ought to be.  And precisely here Paul’s gospel comes in, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’  That grace, considered in its two sides of love and of giving, supplies all that we want.

It supplies motives.  There is nothing that will bend a man’s will like the recognition of divine love which it is blessedness to come in contact with, and to obey.  You may try to sway him by motives of advantage and self-interest, and to thunder into his ears the pealing words of duty and right and ‘ought,’ and there is no adequate response.  You cannot soften a heart by the hammers of the law.  You cannot force a man to do right by brandishing before him the whip that punishes doing wrong.  You cannot sway the will by anything but the heart; and when you can touch the deepest spring it moves the whole mass.

You have seen some ponderous piece of machinery, which resists all attempts of a puny hand laid upon it to make it revolve.  But down in one corner is a little hidden spring.  Touch that and with majestic slowness and certainty the mighty mass turns.  You know those rocking-stones down in the south of England; tons of weight poised upon a pin point, and so exquisitely balanced that a child’s finger rightly applied may move the mass.  So the whole man is made mobile only by the touch of love; and the grace that comes to us, and says, ’If ye love Me, keep My commandments’—­is, as I believe, the sole motive which will continuously and adequately sway the rebellious, self-centred wills of men, to obedience resulting in nobility of life.

The other aspect of this same great word is, in like manner, that which we need.  What men want is, first of all, the will to be noble and good; and, second, the power to carry out the will.  It is God that worketh in us both the willing and the doing.  I venture to affirm that there is no power known, either to thinkers, or philanthropists, or doctrinaires, or strivers after excellence in the world—­no power known and available which will lift a life to such heights of beauty and self-sacrificing nobility, as will the power that comes to us by communication of the grace that is in Jesus Christ.

I am perpetually trying to insist, dear brethren, upon this one thought, that the communication of actual new life is the central gift of the Gospel; and this new life it is, this nature endowed with new desires, hopes, aims, capacities, which alone will lift the whole man into unwonted heights of beauty and serenity.  It is the grace of God, the gift of His Divine Spirit who will dwell with all of us, if we will, which alone can be trusted to make men good.