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Home Preface 5 Planes of Existence Introduction Five Planes of Manifestation A to Z Contact Related Information BIBLE VERSES |
GRACE OF GODA symbol of the response of the Higher nature to the aspirations of the lower. It is through the action of the Higher nature alone that the soul is raised; the unassisted lower nature being incapable of raising itself. “We must learn to discern the true from the false, the higher from the lower, in all the relations of life, and trust to the redeeming grace of God to enable us to fulfil all righteousness.” — R. J. Campbell, Serm., *God's Life in Man*. “If there is any sufficient infallible, and always applicable distinction that separates a Christian from one who is not, it is the faith, practically held, of a supernatural grace or religion. (Faith is the sister of reason; grace is the medicine of nature.) There is no vestige of Christian life in the working-plan of nature. Christianity exists only to have a remedial action upon the contents and conditions of nature. That is development; this is regeneration. No one fatally departs from Christianity who rests the struggles of holy character on help supernatural from God. No one really is in it, however plausible the semblance of his approach to it, who rests in the terms of morality, or self-culture.” — H. Bushnell, *Nature and the Supernatural*, p. 356. “A righteous man's reward is not the result of merit. It is in the order of grace, the (super)natural consequence of well-doing. It is life becoming more life. It is the soul developing itself. It is the Holy Spirit of God in man making itself more felt, and mingling more and more with his soul, felt more consciously with an ever-increasing heaven. You reap what you sow — not something else but that. An act of love makes the soul more loving. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundred fold. You have sown a seed of life — you reap Life everlasting.” — F. W. Robertson, *Sermons*, 1st Series, p. 219. “To be saved by grace supposeth that God hath taken the salvation of our souls into his own hands. … God is not willing that men should be saved by their own natural abilities; but all the works of the law which men do to be saved by, they are the works of men's natural abilities, and therefore called the work of the flesh, but God is not willing that men should be saved by these, therefore no way but by his grace.” — John Bunyan, *Saved by Grace*. God is always the same — equally near, equally strong, equally gracious. But our possession of His grace, and the impartation of His grace through us to others, vary, because our faith, our earnestness, our desires vary. True, these no doubt are also His gifts and His working, and nothing that we say now touches in the least on the great truth that God is the sole originator of all good in man; but while believing that, as no less sure in itself than blessed in its message of confidence and consolation to us, we also have to remember, ‘If any man open the door, I will come in to him.’ An awful responsibility lies on us. We can resist and refuse, or we can open our hearts and draw into ourselves His strength.” — A. MacLaren, *Sermons*, 2nd Series, p. 35. “It is not that God is a great way off, but that we in spirit may be a great way off from the apprehension of his eternal holiness and truth. But the grace of God takes advantage of every smallest opportunity to find entrance to the soul. The faintest motion of our spirits Godward brings him to our assistance. There may be very little in us for his goodness to take hold of, but such as it is he makes use of it.” — R. J. Campbell, Serm., *God's Loving-kindness*. |
See Also
BLESSING
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