This doctrine is, indeed, extremely humiliating to the pride of man; it opens up appalling views of the misery of the human race under sin.  We can understand why men would want to get away from this doctrine.  But no one confers any benefit on men by minimizing the importance of the Bible-teaching, or by weakening the statements of Scripture regarding this matter.  Any teaching which admits the least good quality in man by which he can prepare or dispose himself so as to induce God to view him with favor is a contradiction of the passages of Scripture which were cited in a previous chapter, and works a delusion upon men that will prove just as fatal as when a physician withholds from his patient the full knowledge of his critical condition.  Yea, it is worse; for a physician who is not frank and sincere to his patient may deprive the latter of his physical life, but the teacher of God’s Word who instils in men false notions of their moral and spiritual power robs them of life eternal.

Luther avoided this error.  He led men to a true estimate of themselves as they are by nature.  But over and against the fell power of sin he magnified the greater power of divine grace.  “Where sin abounded, grace hath much more abounded” (Rom. 5, 20),—­along this line Luther found the solution for the awful difficulty which confronts every man when he studies the Bible-doctrine of original sin, and when he discovers, moreover, that this Bible-doctrine is borne out fully by his own experience.  Just for this reason, because man can do nothing to restore himself to the divine favor, God by His grace proposes to do all, and has sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to do all, and, last not least, publishes the fact that all has been done in the Gospel of the forgiveness of sin by grace through faith in Christ.  Luther has taught men to confess:  “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ or come to Him,” but he taught them also to follow up this true confession with the other:  “The Holy Ghost has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.”

The Gospel is called in the Scriptures “the Word of Life,” not only because it speaks of the life everlasting which God has prepared for His children, but also because it gives life.  It approaches man, dead in trespasses and sins, and quickens him into new life.  It removes from the mind of man its natural blindness and from the will of man its innate impotency.  It regenerates all the dead powers of the soul, and makes man walk in newness of life.  The difficulty which original sin has created is not greater than the means and instruments which God has provided for coping with it.  “God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy on all.” (Rom. 11, 32.)