Rareness

Through the inward conflicts, secret workings, mysterious changes, and ever-varying exercises of his soul, the true Christian becomes established in a deep experience of his own folly and God's wisdom, his own weakness and Christ's strength, his own sinfulness and the Lord's goodness, his own backslidings and the Spirit's recoveries, his own base ingratitude and Jehovah's patience, the aboundings of sin and the super-aboundings of grace. He thus becomes daily more and more confirmed in the vanity of the creature, the utter helplessness of man, the deceitfulness and hypocrisy of the human heart, the sovereignty of distinguishing grace, the fewness of heaven-taught ministers, the scanty number of living souls, and the great rareness of true religion. -- J.C. Philpot