Then some of you may have been saying, "I wish Mr. Moody would tell us
how we are to become Christians, for he says that we cannot be
Christians by trying to do good and by making new resolutions." Many a
time you have been at a meeting like this, and have resolved to turn
over a new leaf, and you may now form another good resolution. If you
do, you will break it. What are you going to do? If it is a new birth
you are to have, you cannot create life. Can you bring life to the
dead? All the wise men in London cannot do it. God alone is the author
of life; and if you have the new birth, it must be God's work. When
the Jubilee Singers were in the North of England my family went to see
them, and my little boy asked why they didn't wash the black off their
faces. I told him it was because they were born black. The Ethiopian
cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots. You cannot save
yourself. There is a man dying--can you put new life into him? Or can
you raise up a dead body by saying, "Young man, arise"? That is the
work of God. Your souls are dead in trespasses and sins, and only the
Lord Jesus Christ can speak life.