The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 325

WHAT sel the

IS

IT

?

285

work must be traced which God has wrought

for

him long

before his conversion.

The confession of election and foreordination is essentially the recognition of a grace active long before the hour of conversion. The idea that from eternity God had recorded a mere arbitrary

name

or figure, to quicken

it only after many centuries, is truly unNay. God's elect never stood before His eternal vision as mere names or figures; but every soul elect is also foreordained to stand before Him in his complete development, the object in Christ of God's eternal pleasure.

godly.

Christ's sacrifice on Calvary, which satisfies for the elect, justifying them by His Resurrection, was not accomplished independ-

ently of the elect, but included them all. The resurrection is a work of the divine Omnipotence, in which God brings back from the dead not only Christ without His own, but Christ with His own. Hence every saint with clear spiritual vision confesses that his

heavenly Father performs in him an eternal work, not begun only in his conversion, but wrought in the eternal counsel through the periods of old and new covenants; in his person all the days of his life, and which will work in him throughout eternity.

Even

this general sense the

Church may not neglect

in

to confess prepara-

tory grace.

However, the question is narrowed when, excluding what precedes our birth, we consider only our sinful life before conversion, or the years intervening between the age of discretion and the hour when the scales fell from our eyes. During those years we departed from God, instead of

coming Him. Sin broke out more violently in one than in another, but there was iniquity in us all. As often as the plummet was let down beside our souls, they appeared out of the more

ular.

closely to

And during

this sijifid period,

many

perpendichold that preparatory

grace is out of the question. They say, " Where sin is, there can be no grace"; hence during those years the Lord leaves the sinner to himself, to return to him when sin's bitter fruit shall be ripe to move him to faith and repentance.

enough

They deny not God's

gracious election and foreordination, neither His care for His elect in their birth

but they do deny His preparatory grace during the years and believe that His grace begins to operate only breaks forth in their conversion. ;

of alienation,

when

it

Of course there

is

some truth

in this; there is

such a thing as

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