Page:The Parable of Creation.djvu/132

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128
The Parable of Creation.

may walk in his light, we may accept the influences of his Spirit, we may act as his stewards in dispensing to others the bounties which are by Him so plentifully prepared; but the light is his, the Spirit is his, the bounties are of his supplying. Therefore, true regeneration makes us sweet and gentle clothes us with genuine humility, strips us of all pride of holiness, expels every vestige of assumed sanctity. It draws no long faces; it makes no large pretences. Genuine regeneration never dwells, even secretly or in the lightest thought, on its own merit, on how good it has become, or compares itself in respect to righteousness in any way with its fellow man. It knows that "there is none good but one, God."

The doctrine of sanctification, as it is usually held, dwells much upon one's feelings, upon his states of ecstasy, upon his exuberant exaltations above the things of the world. Its essential theory is not so much outward use as inward transport. True regeneration throws its energies into uses and lets feelings take care of thtmselves. Or, more properly, its thoughts are directed to doing, and doing under the right spirit, and it leaves all other things with God. Happiness comes it is true. But it is not the selfish happiness of a contemplation of one's own blessedness, but that which exists in making others happy. It is not a feeling of inward bliss indulged for the sake of the bliss, but it is the