Our sinning is the result of our having such a nature. A mistaken idea in our public school system of today is that our boys and girls should simply be trained along the line of their natural inclinations, thus bringing out the best that is in them. They are not to be diverted from their natural tendencies, by restraint or coercion or even discipline if these should run counter to inherent tendencies. Instead of what this false and fatal theory in teaching is supposed to produce in the lives of our boys and girls, and in our young men and young women, we have the very opposite. We have all about us in society today the very things we would logically expect to find with such natures as the Bible says we have, when left to develop without restraint.
Man can do nothing to remedy the situation.
A dozen different kinds of plants grow together in the same plot of ground, but each produces according to its nature. All life grows from the inside outward, and the only way to change the outside is to change first the inside. What we are at heart, what we are by nature, determines our thoughts, our actions, our character, our life. Unregenerate man is wrong at heart. He has a sinful nature, and he cannot change it and live righteously any more than the leopard can change his nature and get rid of his spots.