Touch a piece of black coal, and flaky soot falls off; fuse that
coal with fire, and nature makes it impossible for the carbon to
throw off blackness, but only light and heat. One of the biggest
facts in human experience is this, that a new heart is possible
for bad men. Salvation is a gift. Once a bitter orange, growth
and culture only increases the size and flavor of the bitter
orange. The husbandman grafts, as a free gift, the new sweet
fruit into the old root. Every tree in the modern orchard
represents a twig cut from a tested apple, and grafted into the
wild root. Education, the passing years, simply increase the
size of the selfish man, the avaricious man, the pleasure-loving
man, but the new impulse is an exotic from heaven, grafted
into life. Not growth, but grace saves us. (Text.)--N. D.
HILLIS.
(1286)