“You have just given again the answer I wanted,” said her grandmother. “I want you to see it is the same with the sinner. God the King has pardoned the sinner‐rebel. God the Father has adopted the sinner‐prodigal; but He never could receive him into His glorious palace of heaven, unless what?”
|Change of Heart in Regeneration needed for Heaven.| “Oh, unless his heart is changed,” exclaimed Emma. “I understand it now. He must have a holy heart,—a heart to love God and hate sin. I see quite well he could not get into heaven with an unchanged heart!”
“Yes, my dear child,” said the other (happy that her little grand‐daughter was now able to see the meaning of Regeneration); “and even if the sinner could get into heaven with his sinful, unchanged, unconverted heart, could he be happy?”
|Heaven a place for holy Hearts.| “I don’t think,” said Emma, “he could; he would be miserable in that holy place, amid holy angels and a holy God. I see quite well now the truth of what Jesus says, ‘Except ye be converted, ye cannot enter in the kingdom of heaven.’
“But,” continued little Emma, getting more interested in the subject, “I should like much to know how, and when, and where we are regenerated, and get this new mind.”
|The Agent in Regeneration.| “Like every other thing in salvation,” replied the old lady, “this great change of heart and life is the work of God; and though all the glorious Trinity are engaged in producing it, it is more especially brought about by the agency of the third person in the blessed Godhead—the Holy Ghost.”
“But how do you know when it takes place?” continued Emma. “Are we aware of the time when the Holy Spirit works this great change?”
|The Method of Regeneration.| “No,” replied her grandmother. “You remember how simply and beautifully Jesus speaks of this to one who was asking about it, and wondering about it, like you. That, just as you cannot tell where the wind comes from—you hear it blowing, but cannot tell from where—‘so is every one that is born of the Spirit.’ That new birth, or change, is wrought silently in the soul. It is like the little dew‐drops that sparkle in the morning sun, which gather unseen and unnoticed during the night; or like the Temple of Jerusalem of old, which was built without any noise of ‘hammer, or axe, or any tool of iron;’—it rose without din or observation; and this is the case with every renewed heart when it becomes a ‘temple of the Holy Ghost.’”
“Then it takes a long time, grandmamma, before a sinner’s heart can be changed?”
|Various Modes of Operation.| “The Spirit of God, my child, acts how, and where, and when He pleases. He sometimes converts and renews, in a moment, as He did the thief on the cross and the jailer of Philippi, or the thousands at Pentecost. Sometimes He does it gradually (or by degrees), as in the case of Nicodemus; and sometimes, as I trust, my dear Emma, is the case with you, He sanctifies from infancy, changes the young heart, as He did in the case of Timothy, and Samuel, and Jeremiah.”