What, then, does this word
mean? Some of you will answer that grace means God's Holy Spirit, or
that it means what God gives to our souls by His Spirit. But what does
that mean? What does God's Spirit give us? What is the grace of Jesus
Christ like, and how is it the same as the grace of God's Spirit?
Now, to know what grace means, we must know what St John and St Paul
meant by it, and what the word meant in their time, and what the
Ephesians, and Corinthians, and Romans, to whom they wrote, would have
understood by this word grace.
Now these heathens, to whom the apostles preached, before they heard the
gospel, knew that word grace very well indeed, often used it; and saw it
written up in their heathen temples all about them. And they meant by it
just what we mean, when we talk of a graceful person, or a graceful tree
or flower; and what we mean, too, when we say that any one is gracious;
that they do things gracefully, and have a great deal of grace in their
way of speaking and behaving. We mean by that that they are handsome,
agreeable, amiable, pleasant to look at, and talk to, and deal with.
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