culture it? No amount of the choicest culture will get an apple out of a
turnip, nor a Bartlett pear out of a potato, nor make a Chinese into an
Englishman, nor an American into a Japanese. Culture can improve the
stock, but _it can't change it_. It takes some other power than culture
to change the kind. Here we have to be made of the same kind as they are
up in the old family of God. There must be a change at the core. Then
culture of that new stock is only good and blessed.

This is John's second "not." It seems rather radical. It completely
undercuts so much of our present day notions. If John is right, some of
us are wrong, radically, dangerously wrong. Yet John had a wonderful
Teacher whom he lived with for a while. And after He had gone, John had
another Teacher, unseen but very real, who guided, especially in the
writing of the old Jesus-story. The whole presumption is in favour of
John's way of it being wholly right. And if that makes us wrong, we
would better be grateful to find it out _now_, while there's time to
change. Being saved is not a matter of what we can do, of our culture,
though this has its proper place.

And some of us put tremendous stress to-day on _influence_, what we can
command from others, in furtherance of our desires. Influence is spelled
in biggest type and printed in blackest ink. Whether in political
matters at Washington or at London; in financial, whether Lombard Street
or Wall Street; or in the all-important social matters, or even in the
educational, the university world, the chief question is, "Whose
influence can you get?" "What name can you quote?" "Whose backing have
you?" Influence and culture are the twin gods to-day. The smoke of
their incense goeth up continuously. Their places of worship are
crowded, with bent knees and prostrate forms and reverential hush.