walk quietly out
against the wish of those highest in authority.

Influence has its proper place. It's good, _if_ it is. But we are not
saved by it. We are not saved by what some one else can do for us; "not
of the will of man." Your mother's prayers and your wife's, and the
influence of their godly lives will have great weight. It's a great
blessing to have them. They help enormously. But the thing itself that
takes a man into the presence of God, saved and redeemed, is something
immensely more than this, some action of his own that goes to the roots
as none of these other things do.

One time a deputation waited on Lincoln to press a matter of public
concern. But his keenly logical mind discerned flaws in their
impassioned and carefully worked out arguments. He waited patiently till
their case was complete. And then in that quiet way for which he was
famous, he said, "How many legs would a sheep have if you called its
tail a leg?" As he expected, they promptly answered "Five." "No," he
said, "it wouldn't; it would have only four. _Calling_ a tail a leg does
not make it one." So a simple bit of his homely sense and accurate logic
scattered their finely spun argument.

Calling either family or culture or influence the chief thing doesn't
make it so. These are John's three tremendous "nots." They rather cut
straight across the common current of thought and belief and conduct
to-day. We may indeed be grateful if a single homely drop of black ink
from John's pen put into the beautifully cloudy-grey solution of modern
thought clears the liquid and makes a precipitate of sharply defined
truth that any eye can plainly see.

This is how we _won't_ be saved. This is how we _don't_ get into the
family of God. It is "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man"; not through family connection, nor by what we can do
of ourselves simply, nor by what we can get some of our fellows to do
for us, simply.

"_But of God_," John says. It is by Someone else, outside of us, above
us, reaching down from a higher level, and putting the germ of a new
life within us, and lifting us up to His own level. He puts His hand
_through_ the open door of our will, what we do in opening up to Him,
_through_ "the will of the flesh." He walks along the pathway of the
earnest desire of those who would help us up, "the will of man." But it
is what _He_ does that does the one thing that all depends upon. His is
the decisive actio