"Touch a piece of black coal, and flaky soot falls off; fuse that coal with fire, and nature makes it impossible for the carbon to throw off blackness, but only light and heat. One of the biggest facts in human experience is this, that a new heart is possible for a bad men. Salvation is a gift. Once a bitter orange, growth and culture only increases the size and flavor of the bitter orange. The husbandman grafts, as a free gift, the new sweet fruit into the old root. Every tree in the modern orchard represents a twig cut from a tested apple, and grafted into the wild root. Education, the passing years, simply increase the size of the selfish man, but the new impulse is an exotic from heaven, grafted into life. Not growth, but grace saves us." by N. D. Hillis.
