True, it is in us, but God gives us the precious privilege of viewing and treating it as dead. His word to us is, "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. vi. 11.) This is an immense relief to the heart that has struggled for years in the hopeless business of trying to improve nature. It is an immense relief, moreover, to the conscience which has been seeking a foundation for its peace in the gradual improvement of a totally unimprovable thing. Finally, it is an immense relief to any soul that may, for years, have been earnestly breathing after holiness, but has looked upon holiness as consisting in the improvement of that which hates holiness and loves sin. To each and all of such it is infinitely precious and important to understand the real nature of regeneration. No one who has not experienced it can conceive the intensity of anguish and the bitterness of the disappointment which a soul feels, who, vainly expecting some improvement in nature, finds, after years of struggling, that nature is nature still--ever the same. And just in proportion to the anguish and disappointment will be the joy of discovering that God is not looking for any improvement in nature,--that He sees _it_ as dead, and _us_ as alive in Christ,--one with Him, and accepted in Him, forever. To be led into a clear and full apprehension of this is divine emancipation to the conscience and true elevation for the whole moral being. Let us, then, see clearly what regeneration is. It is a new birth,--the imparting of a new life,--the implantation of a new nature,--the formation of a new man. The old nature remains in all its distinctness, and the new nature is introduced in all its distinctness. This new nature has its own habits, its own desires, its own tendencies, its own affections. All these are spiritual, heavenly, divine. Its aspirations are all upward. It is ever breathing after the heavenly source from which it has emanated. As in nature water always finds its own level, so in grace the new--the divine--nature always tends toward its own proper source. Thus regeneration is to the soul what the birth of Isaac was to the household of Abraham (Gen. xxi.). Ishmael remained the same Ishmael, but Isaac was introduced; so the old nature remains the same, but the new is introduced. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit": it partakes of the nature of its source. A child partakes of the nature of its parents, and the believer is made "a partaker of the divine nature." (2 Peter i. 4.) "_Of His own will_ begat He us." (James i. 18.) In a word, then, regeneration is God's own work, from first to last. God is the Operator; man is the happy, privileged subject. His co-operation is not sought in a work which must ever bear the impress of one almighty hand. God was alone in creation, alone in redemption, and He must be alone in the mysterious and glorious work of regeneration.