When one attempts to sanctify himself by effort, he is trying to
make his boat go by pushing against the mast. He is like a drowning
man trying to lift himself out of the water by pulling at the hair
of his own head.

Christ held up this method almost to ridicule when He said, "Which
of you by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature?" Put down
that method forever as being futile.

The one redeeming feature of the self-sufficient method is this--that
those who try it find out almost at once that it will not gain the
goal.

2. Another experimenter says: "But that is not my method. I have
seen the folly of a mere wild struggle in the dark. I work on a
principle. My plan is not to waste power on random effort, but to
concentrate on a single sin. By taking

One at a time

and crucifying it steadily, I hope in the end to extirpate all."

To this, unfortunately, there are four objections: For one thing,
life is too short; the name of sin is legion. For another thing,
to deal with individual sins is to leave the rest of the nature
for the time untouched. In the third place, a single combat with
a special sin does not affect the root and spring of the disease.
If you dam up a stream at one place, it will simply overflow higher
up. If only one of the channels of sin be obstructed, experience
points to an almost certain overflow through some other part of the