ts. We hear a great deal about 'culture,' as if all that
were needed were the training and strengthening of the nature, as if
what was mainly needed was the development of the understanding. We hear
about 'reformation' from some who look rather deeper than the
superficial apostles of culture. And how singularly the very word
proclaims the insufficiency of the remedy which it suggests!
'Re-formation' affects form and not substance. It puts the old materials
into a new shape. Exactly so--and much good may be expected from that!
They are the old materials still, and it matters comparatively little
how they are arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to
go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but
a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself,
but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure
that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I
say unto you, ye must be born again.'

All slighter notions of the need and more superficial diagnoses of the
disease lead to a treatment with palliatives which never touch the true
seat of the mischief, The poison flowers may be plucked, but the roots
live on. It is useless to build dykes to keep out the wild waters.
Somewhere or other they will find a way through. The only real cure is
that which only the Creating hand can effect, who, by slow operation of
some inward agency, can raise the level of the low lands, and lift them
above the threatening waves. What is needed is a radical transformation,
going down to the very roots of the being; and that necessity is clearly
implied in the language of this text, which declares that a nature
possessing righteousness and holiness is 'a new man' to be 'put on' as
from without, not to be evolved as from within.

It is to be further noticed what the Apostle specifies as the elements,
or characteristics of this new nature--righteousness and holiness.

The proclamation of a new nature in Christ Jesus, great and precious
truth as it is, has often been connected with teaching which has been
mystical in the bad sense of that word, and has been made the stalking
horse of practical immorality. But here we have it distinctly defined in
what that new nature consists. There is no vague mystery about it, no
tampering with the idea of personality. The people who put on the new
man are the same people after as before. The newness consists in moral
and