." It seems strange and paradoxical to say, "_Work out your own_
salvation, _for_ it is _God that worketh in you_ both to will and to do."

But in this, as in all other paradoxes, the difficulty is in the
explanation of the theory, and not in the practical working of it. There
is in natural philosophy what is called the hydrostatic paradox, which
consists in the fact that a small quantity of any liquid--as, for example,
the coffee in the nose of the coffee-pot--will balance and sustain a very
much larger quantity--as that contained in the body of it--so as to keep
the surface of each at the same level. Young students involve themselves
sometimes in hopeless entanglements among the steps of the mathematical
demonstration showing how this can be, but no housekeeper ever meets with
any practical difficulty in making her coffee rest quietly in its place
on account of it. The Christian paradox, in the same way, gives rise to
a great deal of metaphysical floundering and bewilderment among young
theologians in their attempts to vindicate and explain it, but the
humble-minded Christian parent finds no difficulty in practice. It comes
very easy to him to do all he can, just as if every thing depended upon his
efforts, and at the same time to cast all his care upon God, just as if
there was nothing at all that he himself could do.

_Means must be Right Means_.

4. We are apt to imagine--or, at least, to act sometimes as if we
imagined--that our dependence upon the Divine aid for what our Saviour,
Jesus, designated as the new birth, makes some difference in the obligation
on our part to employ such means as are naturally adapted to the end in
view. If a gardener, for example, were to pour sand from his watering-pot
upon his flowers, in time of drought, instead of water, he might
make something like a plausible defense of his action, in reply to a
remonstrance, thus: "_I_ have no power to make the flowers grow and bloom.
The secret processes on which the successful result depends are altogether
beyond my reach, and in the hands of God, and he can just as easily bless
one kind of instrumentality as another. I am bound to do something, it is
true, for I must not be idle and inert; but God, if he chooses to do so,
can easily bring out the flowers into beauty and bloom, however imperfect
and ill-adapted the instrumentalities I use may be. He can as easily make
use, for this purpose, of sand as of water."

Now, although there may be a