Now, how has such an eminence of character been attained?  Not altogether by individual evolution.  Ancestral tendencies, parental example, the great force of strong, eternal principles, the moral muscle acquired in the gymnasium of temptation, and confessedly and especially a spiritual force vouchsafed from without, have wrought out this greatest result of heaven and earth.  Of some men you expect nothing but goodness and greatness.  They would belie all the tendencies of their blood to be otherwise than good.  Some are constantly trained under the mighty influences of great principles that sway men as much as gravitation sways the worlds.  What could be expected of the men of ’76 when the air was electric with patriotism?  What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty?  What could be expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves exiled for liberty to worship God?  What can be expected of men who have been tried in the furnace of temptation till they are pure gold?  Nay, more, what can be expected of men who have in these temptations been strengthened out of God?  Besides the strength of development by the resistance of evil, they have found that God made a way of escape, that he strengthened, them and that they were thus by supernal power able to bear it.  Nay, rather, what may not be expected of such men?

But we will not forget that this great outcome is precisely the plan of God for every man’s life, and that when man works he finds that there are forces outside of him thoroughly cooperative with him.  He starts a rock down the mountain side, but gravitation reaches out ready fingers and hurls it a thousand times faster and faster.  He launches his ship on the sea and the wind and steam carry it thousands of miles.  He speaks his quiet breath into the ear of the phone and electricity carries it in every tone and inflection of personal quality a thousand miles.  He vows, and works for purity and greatness of personal character, and a thousand gravitations of love, a thousand great winds of Pentecost, a thousand vital principles on which all greatness hangs, a thousand influences of other men, and especially a thousand personal aids of a present God, cooperate with his plans and works.

Of course every man who believes in a new type so high that good birth, wealth, culture, education, and broad opportunity cannot attain it believes in the divine co-operation to that end.  It must be born of the Spirit.  God sends forth his Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba, Father!  It pleases the Father himself to reveal his Son in us.

Not only is this cooperation true in regard to the beginning of this higher life, but especially so in regard to the development and perfection of that life into the stature of perfect manhood in Christ Jesus.  By continuous effort to lead into all truth, by intensity of endeavor that can only be represented by groanings that cannot be worded in human speech, the perfection of saints is sought.