From without, from within

Have you ever taken a rose petal into your fingers and pressed and squeezed it? Did you notice whether you could ever restore its tint? You could not. Lift a dewdrop from a leaf; you can never replace it. Evil in like manner is just too deep seated to be righted by a little bit of kindness and a little reason and a little tolerance. You might just as well tell a man who is suffering from consumption that all he need do is play six sets of tennis. The clock with a broken mainspring cannot repair itself. Salvation, therefore, has to come from without. Our human will is too weak to conquer its own evil.  Just as the sick need medicine outside of themselves, we need a teacher for our minds, a physician for our bodies, and a redeemer for our souls. We need a redeemer from outside humanity, with all its weakness, its sin, and its rebellion. Now let’s take the other side. We said that if the mainspring is broken, a new mainspring has to be supplied from without, but it must be put inside of the clock. So too, salvation must come from without humanity, but it has to be done in some way within humanity. So God had to become man in order that man would be redeemed from within.