“A man may work brass to great beauty and perfection, but no artificer can work it into gold. To change our natures must be the work of Omnipotence. The change required to make us fit to enjoy heaven is not like that of the snake when it has cast its skin and yet remains a reptile still; it is the change of the caterpillar when it dies, and its crawling life ceases, but from the dead body rises the butterfly – a new animal without nature.
br />To hew a block of marble from the quarry and carve it into a noble statue; to break up a waste wilderness and turn it into a garden of flowers; to melt a lump of ironstone and forge it into watchsprings, all these are mighty changes. Yet, they all come far short of the change which every child of Adam requires, for they are much the same thing in a new shape; but man needs a change as great as a resurrection from the dead. He must become a new creature.”