The Candle in Oxygen: How Grace Ignites Human Gifts

Maclaren seizes upon the Greek connection between charis (grace) and charismata (gifts)—a verbal kinship nearly lost in English translation. The gifts are not separate from grace; they are its direct offspring, its cognates. He illuminates this with a striking image: "As a candle plunged in a vase of oxygen leaps up into more brilliant flame, so all the faculties of the human soul are made a hundred times themselves when the quickening power of the life of Christ enters into them."…