Doubtless it means that; but if it meant nothing
more at first, why was not the plain word Gift enough for the Apostles?
Why did they use Grace? Why did they use, too, in the sense of giving
and gifts, nouns and verbs derived from that root-word, CHARIS, grace,
which plainly signified so much to them? A word, the root-meaning of
which was neither more nor less than a certain heathen goddess, or
goddesses--the inspirer of beauty in art, the impersonation of all that
is pure, charming, winning, bountiful--in one word, of all that is
graceful and gracious in the human character. The fact is strange, but
the fact is there; and being there, we must face it and explain it. Of
course, the Apostles use the word grace in a far deeper and loftier
meaning; raise it, mathematically speaking, to a far higher power. There
is no need to remind you of that. But why did they choose and use the
word at all--a word whose old meaning every heathen knew--unless for some
innate fitness in it to express something in the character of God? To
tell men that there was in God a graciousness, as of the most gracious of
all human beings, which gave to His character a moral beauty, a charm, a
winningness, which, as even the old Jewish prophet, before the
Incarnation, could perceive and boldly declare, drew them with the cords
of a man and with the bands of love, attracting them by the very human
character of its graciousness.
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