This goodness, then, affords a presumption that he will make us good. That is a profound word of the Psalmist’s “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way.” The more clearly we see the perfect purity and goodness of God, the more conscious shall we certainly be of our own unlikeness to him. But in that discernment of his lustrous perfectness, and penitent recognition of our own sinfulness, there lies hope, not despair. We may be sure that he loves us too well to keep such sovereign completeness to himself and leave his poor children stumbling here in the mud and mire. What he is, he assuredly will desire to make us, so far as it may be. He is the “giving God” and the poorest and most impure of men may be sure that God does desire to give him purity of heart and life, and may lift up the hopeful and bold prayer, “Thy spirit is good, lead me into the land of uprightness.” Surely, too, it needs but little experience of life to feel that, if we are ever to be made good, a divine power is needed to do it. A very small amount of honest attempt to mend our own characters might teach each of us that the viper has got far too tight a hold on us for us to shake it into the fire, and that its poison is in our blood. If you have ever tried to cure a bad habit, you know how hard it is; and some of us could tell how the sins that we loathe most hold us in a grip none the looser because of our disgust at them and ourselves, and, like a reefer’s knot, their cords are tied the tighter by the pressure of our resistance against them. It is as impossible for a man to make himself good, in the deepest sense of the word, as it is for him to lift himself by his own hand laid on his own collar. There must be some power outside him to raise. God only can strengthen us to cast out sin. God only can enlighten our eyes to see lurking evil; he only can give energy to our wills to root it up, though we drag bleeding fragments of our hearts with it; he only can give the positive goodness which is more than mere freedom from evil, and fill the empty chamber with a guest strong enough to keep out the returning demon and all his crew.