that is in harmony with the will of God, that delights to do the
things that please Him. (Like Jesus we say, "My meat is to do the will of
Him that sent Me, and to finish His work." John iv. 34; cf. John vi. 38;
Gal i. 10.) It is the Holy Spirit who creates in us this new nature, or
imparts this new nature to us. No amount of preaching, no matter how
orthodox it may be, no amount of mere study of the Word will regenerate
unless the Holy Spirit works. It is He and He alone who makes a man a new
creature.

The new birth is compared in the Bible to growth from a seed. The human
heart is the soil, the Word of God is the seed (Luke viii. 11; cf. 1 Pet.
i. 23; Jas. i. 18; 1 Cor. iv. 15), every preacher or teacher of the Word
is a sower, but the Spirit of God is the One who quickens the seed that is
thus sown and the Divine nature springs up as the result. There is
abundant soil everywhere in which to sow the seed, in the human hearts
that are around about us upon every hand. There is abundant seed to be
sown, any of us can find it in the granary of God's Word; and there are
to-day many sowers: but there may be soil and seed and sowers, but unless
as we sow the seed, the Spirit of God quickens it and the heart of the
hearer closes around it by faith, there will be no harvest. Every sower
needs to see to it that he realizes his dependence upon the Holy Spirit to
quicken the seed he sows and he needs to see to it also that he is in such
relation to God that the Holy Spirit may work through him and quicken the
seed he sows.

The Holy Spirit does regenerate men. He has power to raise the dead. He
has power to impart life to those who are morally both dead and
putrefying. He has power to impart an entirely new nature to those whose
nature now is so corrupt that to men they appear to be beyond hope. How
often I have seen it proven. How often I have seen men and women utterly
lost and ruined and vile come into a meeting scarcely knowing why they
came, and as they have sat there the Word was spoken, the Spirit of God
has quickened the Word thus sown in their hearts and in a moment that man
or woman, by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, has become a new
creation. I know a man who seemed as completely abandoned and hopeless as
men ever become. He was about forty-five years of age. He had gone off in
evil courses in early boyhood. He had run away from home, had joined the
navy and afterwards the army, and learned all the vices of both