Something outside the soul of man

that produces a moral change upon him. That he must be susceptible
to that change, that he must be a party to it, goes without saying;
but that neither his aptitude nor his will can produce it, is
equally certain.

Obvious as it ought to seem, this may be to some an almost startling
revelation. The change we have been striving after is not to
be produced by any more striving. It is to be wrought upon us by
the moulding of hands beyond our own. As the branch ascends, and
the bud bursts, and the fruit reddens under the co-operation of
influences from the outside air, so man rises to the higher stature
under invisible pressures from without. the radical defect of all
our former methods of sanctification was the attempt to generate
from within that which can only be wrought upon us from without.
The radical defect of all our former methods of sanctification was
the attempt to generate from within that which can only be wrought
upon us from without. According to the first Law of Motion,
every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion
in a straight line, except in so far as it may be compelled BY
IMPRESSED FORCES to change that state. This is also a first law of
Christianity. Every man's character remains as it is, or continues
in the direction in which it is going, until it is compelled BY
IMPRESSED FORCES to change that state. Our failure has been the
failure to put ourselves in the way of the impressed forces. There
is a clay, and there is a Potter; we have tried to get the clay to
mould the clay.

Whence, then, these pressures, and where this Potter? The answer