never can work well unless they are joined to the Spirit of God,
from whom they came. From whom else, I ask again, can they come?
Can they come from our bodies? Our bodies? What are they?--Flesh
and bones, made up of air and water and earth,--out of the dead
bodies of the animals, the dead roots and fruits of plants which we
eat. They are earth--matter. Can MATTER be courageous? Did you
ever hear of a good-natured plant, or an honest stone? Then this
good-nature, and honesty, and courage of ours, must belong to our
souls--our spirits. Who put them there? Did we? Does a child make
its own character? Does its body make its character first? Can its
father and mother make its character? No. Our characters must come
from some spirit above us--either from God or from the devil. And
is the devil likely to make us honest, or brave, or kindly? I leave
you to answer that. God--God alone, my friends, is the author of
good--the help that is done on earth, He doeth it all Himself:
every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from Him.

Now some of you may think this a strange sort of sermon, because I
have said little or nothing about Jesus Christ and His redemption in
it, but I say--No.

You must believe this much about yourselves before you can believe
more. You must fairly and really believe that GOD made you one
thing before you can believe that you have made yourselves another
thing. You must really believe that you are not mere machines and
animals, but immortal souls, before you can really believe that you
have sinned; for animals cannot sin--only reasonable souls can sin.
We must really believe that God made us at bottom in His likeness,
before we can begin to find out that there is another likeness in us
besides God's--a selfish, brutish, too often a devilish likeness,