All things that refer to the new nature—all things that refer to our new privileges and to our new actions—whatever things refer to the new nature are of God. The personal desire after Christ which is found in the sinner’s contrite heart is of God. The first new hope which gilds the darkness of the poor benighted mind is of God. The first glimpse of new faith, when that man turns his eye to the Savior, is of God. The first beginnings of Divine love in the soul are of God.

Leave men to themselves and the corruption of their nature may fester and rot and breed the fungus of a vile imagination. But the life of God never yet sprung naturally from a dead heart. Whatever thing is good in its beginning, as well as in its perfecting, “comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” Some seem to teach that man is to take the first step in salvation and God will take the rest. No, Sirs—if man can take the first—he can take the last and take the whole. If man, dead in trespasses and sins, can quicken himself, he certainly can maintain the life of which he is himself the author.

If man—corrupt, debased and cast away from God, can say, unawakened by grace, ‘‘I will repent, I will change my ways and turn to God,” and if he can carry out that resolution to himself and by his own unaided mind—then there is no room for God in salvation at all. Let man have the whole of it and let him have all the glory. But you know, my Hearers, if you have but one good thought in your heart, it is of God. If there is a something which says to you, “Arise and go to your Father,” that voice is God’s voice. If your heart begins to yearn towards the Father, whom you have angered and grieved—and if your feet desire to leave the mountains of sin and vanity and to tread the right road—it is a Father’s hand that draws you, it is a Savior’s voice that sweetly impels you to seek His face, for “all things are of God.”

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High Doctrine, A sermon delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 3rd, 1860,

by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon at Exeter Hall, Strand.

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