Just because God worketh in him, as the evidence and triumph of it, the true child of God works out his own salvation--works it out having really received it--not as a light thing, a superfluous labour, but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and indispensable service.
Salvation is a definite process. If a man refuse to submit himself to that process, clearly he cannot have the benefits of it. "As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God." He does not avail himself of this power. It may be mere carelessness or apathy. Nevertheless the neglect is fatal. He cannot escape because he will not.
Earnest souls who are attempting sanctification by struggle, instead of sanctification by faith, might be spared much humiliation by learning the botany of the Sermon on the Mount.
Topics: Sanctification Source: Natural Law, Growth, p. 127.
A religion of effortless adoration may be a religion for an angel but never for a man. Not in the contemplative, but in the active, lies true hope; not in rapture, but in reality, lies true life; not in the realm of ideals, but among tangible things, is man's sanctification wrought.
What is Science but what the Natural World has said to natural men? What is Revelation but what the Spiritual World has said to Spiritual men?
Topics: Scripture Source: Natural Law, Bio-genesis, p. 73.
If a man could make himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the quickest road to life.
Men will still experiment "by works of righteousness which they have done" to earn the Ideal life. The doctrine of Human Inability, as the Church calls it, has always been objectionable to men who do not know themselves.
The truth is there are two great classes of sins - sins of the body, and sins of the disposition. The Prodigal Son may be taken as a type of the first, the Elder Brother of the second.
If a man find the power of sin furiously at work within him, dragging his whole life downward to destruction, there is only one way to escape his fate--to take resolute hold of the upward power, and be borne by it to the opposite goal.
Topics: Sin Source: Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 108.
If sin is estrangement from God, this very estrangement is Death. It is a want of correspondence. If sin is selfishness, it is conducted at the expense of life. Its wages are Death--"he that loveth his life," said Christ, "shall lose it."
The peculiar feature of Death by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but sudden. And there are many sins which must either be dealt with suddenly or not at all.
Topics: Sin Source: Natural Law, Mortification, p. 183.
If we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them.
Topics: Success Source: Greatest Thing in the World.
Just because God worketh in him, as the evidence and triumph of it, the true child of God works out his own salvation--works it out having really received it--not as a light thing, a superfluous labour, but with fear and trembling as a reasonable and indispensable service.