Besides those who are thus hereditarily wanting in the qualities
necessary to enable them to hold their own, there are the weak, the
disabled, the aged, and the unskilled; worse than all, there is the
want of character. Those who have the best of reputation, if they lose
their foothold on the ladder, find it difficult enough to regain their
place. What, then, can men and women who have no character do? When a
master has the choice of a hundred honest men, is it reasonable to
expect that he will select a poor fellow with tarnished reputation?
All this is true, and it is one of the things that makes the problem
almost insoluble. And insoluble it is, I am absolutely convinced
unless it is possible to bring new moral life into the soul of these
people. This should be the first object of every social reformer,
whose work will only last if it is built on the solid foundation of a
new birth, to cry "You must be born again."

To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new
breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University
education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside
remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or
other graft upon the man's nature a new nature, which has in it the
element of the Divine. All that I propose in this book is governed by
that principle.

The difference between the method which seeks to regenerate the man by
ameliorating his circumstances and that which ameliorates his
circumstances in order to get at the regeneration of his heart, is the
difference between the method of the gardener who grafts a Ribstone
Pippin on a crab-apple tree and one who merely ties apples with string
upon the branches of the crab. To change the nature of the individual,
to get at the heart, to save his soul is the only real, lasting method