The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 624

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XXXII.

The Love Which Withers. " Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will

He hardeneth."

The

idea of hardening

Rotn.

ix. i8.

so awful that, with all its unsanctified

is

human heart rejects it as a horrible Natural compassion can not bear the idea that a fellow man, instigated to evil by it, should forever ruin himself. And

pity and natural religion, the

thought.

God who, instead of persuading His creature to virtue, should give him up and incite him to

natural religion can not conceive of a

sin.

This entire representation of hardening

is in

such open and

human heart that the human mind.

irreconcilable conflict with all the feelings of the it is

impossible to suppose that

When first

as children

time,

against

it.

we heard

it

originated in

of this

hardening of heart for the

we could not receive it. Our whole nature rose up And later on, when, in connection with this doctrine,

of the mysterious imprecatory

able, eternal

fearful

we heard

psalms and of an unavoiddoom, then our human nature rebelled against these

things with such

irrepressible force

that

we

preferred

temporarily to forsake our confession rather than to be forced to accept such a horrible idea.

Wherefore skeptics are right when

they say that, t prove the inconsistency of the Scripture, cles

need not be attacked, for that

its

its

mira-

doctrine of hardening and

cursing antagonizes the claims of the heart even more than the doctrine of miracles opposes the claims of the reason.

Hence the opposition against the Sacred Scripture always proceeds from two sides at once

on the one hand, from coldly intelminds that are always shocked at the Scripture's so-called absurdities and impossibilities; and on the other hand, from the emotional folk, whose feelings are ever hurt by Holy Writ. The effort to compromise can never satisfy any one. To say. " To me :

lectual

the Scripture

is

God's

own

precious

Word

;

but

when

I

come

to

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