1. If the heart were now in its primeval state of rectitude and purity, the requisitions of its attachment and obedience would be superfluous. But as it is very far gone from original righteousness, and estranged from its great original of blessedness and perfection; the effaced characters of holiness and purity must be restored by the agency of the Holy Ghost; and the foul stain of sin expunged by the blood of Jesus. Hence, the scriptures so strongly insist upon the necessity of “a _new_ heart and a right spirit,” Psal. li. because the natural heart is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Jer. xvii. 9. And, as the same infallible authority declares, that “except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven,” John, iii. 3, see the important necessity of that great change, and of the act of voluntary surrender, by which it takes place. If you wish that obduracy, which steels them both against threatenings and promises, softened; and that corruption, which makes your hearts naturally the sink of sin, pardoned and subdued, you must give them to Jesus, for these great purposes. Fancy not that any power of the creature is sufficient to accomplish this. Sad experience may teach you the contrary. Therefore, until your heart be given to God, the fountain being evil, the streams must be so of course. So that, all your thoughts, words, and actions, like the foul exhalations that ascend from a stagnated and putrid lake, must partake of the polluted source, from whence they rise, and be infinitely odious in the sight of the Lord. And sooner shall God cease to be, or his word fail in its accomplishment, than any sinner, with an unchanged heart, shall enter his kingdom.