I might say much more on the point; how He showed these by His truth; how
He proved that He, and therefore His Father and your Father, was not that
Deus quidam deceptor, whom some suppose Him, mocking the intellect of His
creatures by the FACTS of nature which He has created, tempting the souls
of His creatures by the very faculties and desires which He Himself has
given them.
But I wish now to draw your minds rather to that one word GRACE--Grace,
what it means, and how it is a manifestation of glory. Few Scriptural
expressions have suffered more that this word Grace from the storms of
theological controversy. Springing flesh in the minds of Apostles, as
did many other noble words in that heaven-enriched soil, the only
adequate expressions of an idea which till then had never fully possessed
the mind of man, it meant more than we can now imagine; perhaps more that
we shall ever imagine again. We, alas! only know the word with its
fragrance battered out, its hues rubbed off, its very life anatomized out
of it by the battles of rival divines, till its mere skeleton is left,
and all that grace means to most of us is simply and dryly a certain
spiritual gift of God.
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