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The Fundamentals who was brought to Christ by the Spirit’s application of the words, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Gulliver tells of a man who had been eight years upon a process of extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers. The sun beams were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in inclement weather. This was folly indeed, but it is even more ridiculous to think of extracting righteous ness from a depraved heart. “They that are in the flesh can not please God.” That was good advice given to a seeker: “You’ll never know peace till you give up looking at self, and let all your graces go for nothing.” The black devil of un righteousness has slain its thousands, but the white devil of self-righteousness hath slain its tens of thousands. Salvation is by Grace, not by graces. Sound aloud this truth, for it is glad tidings, for all save Pharisees. They, indeed, prefer an other Gospel, which is not another, and a modern one which is as old as Cain’s offering. Their watchword is, “Believe in yourself,” but for those who have seen themselves as God sees them, for such as can by no means lift up themselves, who are shut up under sin, and condemned already, oh ! for these, this is summer news, in truth. If salvation is by Grace, the grace less may be saved, prodigals may venture home, the vilest may be cleansed. Ah ! yes, and there is a sense in which the guiltier, the better. Then is there less fear of the intrusion of other trust, and the glory gotten to God’s Grace is greater. I do per ceive that if salvation be by works, then can none be saved. Equally sure am I that if salvation be by Grace, none need be lost, for it is omnipotent, and greatly rejoiceth to be tested to the full. I read this sentence in a riveter’s shop-window the other day: “No article can be broken beyond repair —the more it is smashed the better we like it," and I said within myself: “Thus it is with the Grace of God, and long as I live I will tell poor sinners so.”
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