This method is not erroneous, only somehow its success is poor.  You bear me witness that it fails.  And it fails generally for very matter-of-fact reasons—­most likely because one day we forget the rules.

All these methods that have been named—­the self-sufficient method, the self-crucifixion method, the mimetic method, and the diary method—­are perfectly human, perfectly natural, perfectly ignorant, and as they stand perfectly inadequate.  It is not argued, I repeat, that they must be abandoned.  Their harm is rather that they distract attention from the true working method, and secure a fair result at the expense of the perfect one.  What that perfect method is we shall now go on to ask.

I. THE FORMULA OF SANCTIFICATION.

A formula, a receipt for Sanctification—­can one seriously speak of this mighty change as if the process were as definite as for the production of so many volts of electricity?

It is impossible to doubt it.  Shall a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly, and the one vital experiment of humanity remain a chance?  Is corn to grow by method, and character by caprice?  If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain.  And if we cannot express the law of these forces in simple words, then is Christianity not the world’s religion, but the world’s conundrum.

Where, then, shall one look for such a formula?  Where one would look for any formula—­among the text-books.  And if we turn to the text-books of Christianity we shall find a formula for this problem as clear and precise as any in the mechanical sciences.  If this simple rule, moreover, be but followed fearlessly, it will yield the result of a perfect character as surely as any result that is guaranteed by the laws of nature.

The finest expression of this rule in Scripture, or indeed in any literature, is probably one drawn up and condensed into a single verse by Paul.  You will find it in a letter—­the second to the Corinthians—­written by him to some Christian people who, in a city which was a byword for depravity and licentiousness, were seeking the higher life.  To see the point of the words we must take them from the immensely improved rendering of the Revised translation, for the older Version in this case greatly obscures the sense.  They are these: 

“We all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Now observe at the outset the entire contradiction of all our previous efforts, in the simple passive:  “We are transformed.”