One truth, however, is so vital that it must detain us a moment, namely, the absolute necessity for the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit in the inception of spiritual life. No one who believes in an actual resurrection――that is, in one that is more than figurative and spiritual, in a resurrection which extends to man’s complete being, in a resurrection of the body, and not a mere continuance of the life of the soul――conceives that any natural agents in existence, or, at least, within our knowledge, are competent to produce it. The bodies we have here are “terrestrial,” brought into and continued in existence by the operation of natural laws. The body of the resurrection, whatever its connection and continuity with the present one, is confessedly “a spiritual body.” No forces within the realm of nature are able to create life or to restore it to that which has lost it. The experience and observation of all the centuries fully establish this truth. Whether our present bodies or souls come into existence by traduction or direct creation is another question; but all Christians are agreed that the resurrection of the body must be effected by the direct action of God. So, likewise, analogy would teach, must it be with regeneration of the soul. That change by which we are raised from the death of sin to the life of God, that transformation by which we cease to be merely citizens of earth and become citizens of heaven, can be effected only by the direct and supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit. No material, earthly, or human forces are sufficiently mighty to bring it to pass. Here God must specifically act――not as in other modes of his work, but by a distinct exercise of power. Nor are we allowed to conceive of entrance into the spiritual kingdom of God as the resultant of any process of evolution or growth; whatever preparation is made for it, the spiritual life of the soul begins in a special operation of the Holy Spirit as specific and distinct as that by which God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The closing chapters of the sacred Scriptures are in unison with the opening ones of Genesis, and from the prelude to the final “amen” there is one harmonious melody.