The soul's natural element

Back to Man's religion & God's religion

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Before the soul can know anything about salvation, it must learn deeply and experimentally the nature of sin, and of itself, as stained and polluted by sin. It is proud—and needs to be humbled. It is careless—and needs to be awakened. It is alive—and needs to be killed. It is full—and requires to be emptied. It is whole—and needs to be wounded. It is clothed—and requires to be stripped. The soul is, by nature, self-righteous, self-seeking, buried deep in worldliness and carnality, utterly blind and ignorant, filled with presumption, arrogance, conceit and enmity—hateful to all that is heavenly and spiritual.

Sin, in all its various forms, is the soul's natural element. Some of the features of the unregenerate nature of man are—covetousness, lust, worldly pleasure, desire of the praise of men, an insatiable thirst after self-advancement, a complete abandonment to all that can please and gratify every new desire of the heart, an utter contempt and abhorrence of everything that restrains or defeats its mad pursuit of what it loves. Education, moral restraints, or the force of habit, may restrain the out-breaking of inward corruption, and dam back the mighty stream of indwelling sin, so that it shall not burst all its bounds, and desolate the land.

But no moral check can alter human nature. A chained tiger is a tiger still. "The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots." To make man the direct contrary of what he originally is—to make him love God instead of hating Him—fear God, instead of mocking Him—obey God, instead of rebelling against Him—to do this mighty work, and to effect this wonderful change—requires the implantation of a new nature by the immediate hand of God Himself. Natural light, natural love, natural faith, natural obedience—in a word, all natural religion—is here useless and ineffectual.