“Forsake me not, O LORD: O my God, be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord mysalvation” (Psalm 38:21-22).

     The fact that conversion and salvation are of God is a humbling truth. Grace puts its hand on the boasting mouth and shuts it once for all, and then it takes its hand off the mouth and that mouth praises Christ for His sovereign grace. It trembles at the thought of taking any honor and glory from God.

     The doctrine which leaves salvation to the creature and tells him that it depends upon himself is the exaltation of the flesh and dishonoring to God. On the other hand, this preaching gives a deathblow to self-sufficiency.

     Some preachers want to arouse man’s activity. What we want to do is kill it once for all, to show him that he is lost and ruined and that his activities are not able to save him. Some seek to make the man stand up; we seek to bring him down and make him feel that he is in the hands of God and that his business is to submit to God, bow to the claims of Christ, and to cry, “Lord, save me or I perish.”  We hold that a man is never so near grace as when he feels that he can do nothing at all but cry formercy. When he says, “I can pray, I can believe, I can do this or that,” the marks of self-sufficiency are on his brow.