The vital spark!

The following is from Spurgeon’s sermon, "Light, Natural and Spiritual" No. 660.  "You must be born again." Do not think Christians are made by education; they are made by creation. You may wash a corpse as long as you please, and that corpse could be clean, but you cannot wash life into it! You may deck it in flowers, and robe it in scarlet and fine linen, but you cannot make it live! The vital spark must come from above!  Regeneration is not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, but by the power and energy of the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God alone! See then, the ruin of nature and the freeness of grace! Void and dark, a chaos given up to be covered with blackness and darkness forever, and, while as yet it is unseeking God, the light arises, and the promise is fulfilled, "I am found of them that sought me not; I said, behold me! behold me! to a people that were not a people." While we were lying in our blood, filthily polluted, defiled, he passed by, and he said in the sovereignty of his love, "Live!" and we do live. The whole must be traced to sovereign grace! From this sacred well of discriminating distinguishing grace we must draw water this morning, and we must pour it out, saying, "Oh Lord, I will praise your name, for the first origin of my light was your sovereign purpose, and nothing in me."