The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 345

REGENERATION THE WORK OF GOD the sinner

is in this

respect as a stock or block.

unimpaired, his being

is

305

No; as man he is and in

intact; but his nature is corrupt,

that corrupt nature he is dead.

We

compare him to the body of a person who has died of an Such a body retains all the members of the human organism intact. There is the eye with its muscles, and the ear with its organs of hearing; in the post-mortem examination heart, spleen, liver, and kidneys appear to be perfectly normal. A dead body may sometimes appear so natural that one is tempted to say " He is not dead, but sleeping." And yet, however perfect and ordinary disease.

:

natural, its nature is corrupt with the corruption of death.

same

His

And

remains intact and whole, containing all that which constitutes a man but his nature is corrupt, yea, so corrupt that he is dead not only apparently, but actually dead dead in all the variations which can be played upon the the

is

true of the sinner.

beirig

;

;

;

term "dead." Hence without regeneration the sinner is utterly unprofitable. What is the use of an ear except it hear, or of an eye except it see? Therefore the Holy Ghost testifies " The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made even both of them." And since in the world of spiritual things deaf ears and blind eyes do not avail anything, the Church of Christ confesses that every operation of saving grace must be preceded by a quickening of the sinner, by an opening of blind eyes, an unstopping of deaf ears in short, by the implanting of the faculty of faith. :

—

And

as the

man

that sat in darkness can see as soon as his eyes

are opened, so we, without

moving a

hair's breadth, are translated

from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. " Translated" does not denote here an actual going, nor does " to be translated " denote an actual change of place, but simply life entering into the dead, so that he that was blind can now see. This wonderful act of regeneration may be examined in two and in the adult. It is the safest way to examine it in the infant: not because this

classes of persons: in the infant

work for

of grace is different in an infant from

it is

the

same

what

in all persons thus favored

;

it

is in

an adult,

but to the conscious

observation of an adult the workings of regeneration are so mingled with those of conversion that it is difficult to distinguish the two.

But

this difiiculty does not exist in the case of

20

an unconscious

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