But if people really mean to tell us that here in this world a believer can attain to entire freedom from sin, live for years in unbroken and uninterrupted communion with God, and for months at a time not even have one sinful thought, I must honestly say that such an opinion appears to me very unscriptural.

Be very sure of this--people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment. They try to believe it is false and useless, because they don't like to believe it is true. An evil lifestyle must always raise an objection to this book. Men question the truth of Christianity because they hate the practice of it.

There are imperfections in our best works: we do not love God so much as we are bound to do, with all our hearts, mind, and power; we do not fear God so much as we ought to do; we do not pray to God but with many and great imperfections. We give, forgive, believe, live, and hope imperfectly; we speak, think, and do imperfectly; we fight against the devil, the world, and the flesh imperfectly. Let us, therefore, not be ashamed to confess plainly our state of imperfections.

The Bible alone gives a true and faithful account of man. It does not flatter him as novels and romances do; it does not conceal his faults and exaggerate his goodness, it paints him just as he is.

It describes him as a fallen creature, of his own nature inclined to evil, a creature needing not only a pardon, but a new heart, to make him fit for heaven. It shows him to be a corrupt being under every circumstance, when left to himself, corrupt after the loss of paradise, corrupt after the flood, corrupt when fenced in by divine laws and commandments, corrupt when the Son of God came down and visited him in the flesh, corrupt in the face of warnings, promises. miracles, judgments, mercies.

The mother cannot tell what her tender infant may grow up to be — tall or short, weak or strong, wise or foolish; he may be any of these things or not; it is all uncertain. But one thing the mother can say with certainty: he will have a corrupt and sinful heart.

let us not expect too much from our own hearts here below. At our best we shall find in ourselves daily cause for humiliation, and discover that we are needy debtors to mercy and grace every hour.

men try to cheat themselves into the belief that sin is not quite so sinful as God says it is, and that they are not so bad as they really are.

Let us, then, have it settled in our minds that the sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within. It is not the result of bad training in early years. It is not picked up from bad companions and bad examples, as some weak Christians are too fond of saying. No! It is a family disease that we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and with which we are born.

How true it is that the holiest saint in his humanness is a miserable sinner and a debtor to mercy and grace to the last moment of his existence

Be very sure of this--people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment.

Never does a person see any beauty in Christ as a Savior, until they discover that they are a lost and ruined sinner.