1 Samuel 10:6

"Thou... shalt be turned into another man." 1 Samuel 10:6 .

Thus God creates man after man, even in the same individual. We cannot tell how many natures there are within us, and how many capacities, how many slumbering faculties, how many high and noble possibilities. Man is as a riddle to himself, and only God has the solution. Infinite comfort arises from the thought of possible newness of personality; if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature; old things have passed away, and all things have become new: we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. Surely here is an instance of the operation of the great law of development; the man is the same, yet not the same; he has an identity which can be recognised, and a responsibility which can be called upon to answer all challenges that are addressed to it, and yet the man himself may be totally new, quite another man from what he was but yesterday. A man is turned into another personality when his convictions are changed, when the object of his worship is elevated, when his view of the universe is enlarged, when his recognition of duty is purified and refined, and when his whole sympathy creates for itself new channels. The new ness is therefore a moral re-creation. There is no physical transformation; there is no disguise of the outer man; there is no veiling that is of the nature of hypocrisy: the newness is real and vital, because it is a newness of heart, of feeling, of aspiration, of desire: when the things which satisfied a man once satisfy him no longer, when the earth is too small to give him all the gratification which he needs, when time is too shallow to enable him to develop the whole of his being, when he feels his need of larger space, longer time, added light, and multiplied facilities of education and growth, he is in very deed "another man." It is thus that the power of Christianity is socially displayed. When a man who was known as a thief becomes honest; when the ferocious man becomes gentle; when the avaricious disposition becomes liberal; when the narrow and bigoted nature expands into breadth and sympathy, then also a miracle has been wrought, the old man has been cast off with his deeds, and the new man has been established in righteousness. "Ye must be born again." Observe that a man becomes another man, in the sense of this text, not by his own effort, but by an exercise of divine energy: "And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man:" man can debase himself, can turn himself into another man in the sense of degrading his nature, so that his own parents may be ashamed of him, and his most familiar friends may cease to pronounce his name: that is not the transformation which is here spoken of; this is an elevation, an expansion of the whole nature, such an enlargement of faculty and sensibility as to bring God nearer the soul in endearing and comforting consciousness. No man can be in Christ Jesus, and yet remain as he was before; his whole house will know that he has given his loyalty to a new sceptre, and pledged his consecration to a higher altar: his enemies will know it, for he will treat them with surprising grace, and make it his business to open the way towards forgiveness and reconciliation: his workmen, his children, his companions, his associates in every grade and relation of life will know that he has cast off the former things and connected himself with a deeper philosophy and a broader, more generous philanthropy. Because Christianity can do these things its propagation should be the supreme business and highest delight of men.