Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/156

150 is meant by being "born again," or "born from Above." The task of learning the laws of the soul's higher life, or of receiving the truths of the Word into the understanding merely, is comparatively easy. Obeying these truths—living them—practicing them, in the parlor, the kitchen, the office, the shop, the counting-house, the market-place, the school-room, on the farm, at the fire-side, and in legislative halls—everywhere and always conforming our dispositions and conduct to their requirements, and so weaving these laws into the very fabric of our spiritual being, and making them, as it were, a part of ourselves—this is the laborious and difficult part of the work.

And it needs no argument to prove that this renewal or re-creation of the inner man—this complete change of the character or ruling love, cannot be suddenly wrought. It is the work of a life-time—the Lord's own work, but one which He cannot do without our cooperation. It takes place in the degree that one regards the indulgence of any known evil as a sin against God, and shuns it because it is a sin—at the same time conforming his life to all known truth from a sense of religious obligation. So far as he does this, his evil inclinations are overcome, and the opposite good inclinations are given him in their stead. And this is no sudden, but a gradual process.