fact, that the lower creature does not of its own lower nature expand
into the higher, but that life is lifted up and grows by the infusion of
something higher than itself. So, too, we believe that the Spirit of God
touches with its mysterious power the dead souls of men; it transforms
them, it uplifts them, they are born again. They are roused and stirred
to new capacity by the touch and inspiration of this Divine life. This
is what is meant when it is said that if any man be in Christ he is a new
creature. He has received into his nature this mysterious gift, or
rather this seed of the new life.

Such is the Christian doctrine of the new birth, or of the life-giving
breath of the Spirit, or of the sowing the seed of Divine life in us. You
may describe it how you please, if only you take due note of this, that
in proportion as you realise or accept this truth as in any way
intimately connected with your own personal life and conduct, all the
common things around you acquire a new importance, and I might even say
some touch of sacredness, because they are felt to be strewn with these
seeds of influence which God is sowing around us, with a hand that never
rests, through all our years, in uncounted ways.

This seed of new life which is to save you from the power of sin and the
flesh and give you new aspirations, purer tastes, stronger purposes, need
I remind you how it is sown, in what manifold and various ways? It must
be within the personal experience of some of you to testify how your
meetings in this chapel every morning may sow it. One day it falls on
your heart in some word of some hymn or prayer, or in some thought or
feeling which flashes through you, or some pricking of conscience for no
other knows what sin or fault, or in some new resolve.

Sometimes it is found that a passing word of a preacher sows it (it is