Awealthy and philanthropic individual visits Algiers and approaches a dungeon in which a wretched captive lies bound with chains and fetters and strongly secured within walls and doors and bars. He proclaims loud to the captive that he has brought gold sufficient for a ransom, on condition that the captive will liberate himself from his chains, burst open his prison doors and come forth. Alas! Exclaims the wretched man; your kindness does not reach my case. Unless your gold can effect my deliverance, it can be of no service to me. The offer of it on such terms can do me no good. Now, although there is a great difference between spiritual and physical inability, yet one serves to illustrate the other. Man by nature is spiritually as unable to believe in Christ, as the Algerine captive is physically unable to break his chains and the prison doors; so that all this boasted sufficiency to save is only an empty offer of salvation based on certain terms and conditions and such an offer is much too weak to meet the desperate case of a lost sinner.

But how different is the salvation of God! By the blood of Thy covenant, I have sent forth Thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water, Zechariah 9:11. Jesus, by His death, hath paid the ransom and made the captives His own. Therefore, He has a legal right to their persons and with His own right He brings them forth. It is His glory to bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house, Isaiah 42:6-7.