e time, a blessed assurance
that it is God who worketh in me both to will and to do the things
that are pleasing in his sight."

Brethren, this is salvation. It is the sum of "the things which many
prophets and wise men desired to see, and saw them not; and to hear,
and heard them not." But let us look at the divine forces, brother,
that have wrought in you this wonderful change from a life of
_self-love_, into which you were born by nature, to a life of divine
love, joyful, holy, heavenly love to God and your brother, into which
you have been born by the Spirit.

Peter tells us something about this in the chapter read. He here says:
"Ye were REDEEMED, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold,
from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with
the precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,
even the blood of Christ.... Ye have purified your souls in your
obedience to the truth; ... having been begotten [or born] again, ...
through the word of God, which liveth and abideth."

He now introduces the contrast between man's natural birth and his
spiritual birth: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and he says:

"All flesh is as grass,
And all the glory thereof as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower falleth."

"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," is the doom of flesh
and blood sealed to every mortal as a consequence of sin. No wonder
the grave is sad and lonely to the contemplation of those who have no
hope of aught of life or love beyond it. It is sad to think how many
have no higher claim to life and happiness than mere fleshly, bodily
existence. But our Lord hath "brought life and immortality to light,"
and

"The good Spirit of the Lord
Reveals a heaven to come;
The beams of glory in his Word
Allure and guide us home."

"Beloved, now are we the children of God, and it is not yet made
manifest what we shall be;" but we know that we have the promise of
"an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not
away."

Brethren, this inheritance which Peter talks of--what do you think
about it? Is it something extraneous to the man, something outside of
him? Or is it something intrinsic to the man in his renewed state,
something internal, something inside of him? I, for one, believe that
man's eternal and blissful inheritance, which Peter and John and Pau