Development, The Theory of—A Lie – Charles Spurgeon

I HAVE heard lately, to my deep sorrow, certain preachers speaking of conversions as being developments. Is it so, then, that conversion is but the development of hidden graces within the human soul? It is not so: the theory is a lie from top to bottom. There lies within the heart of man no grain or vestige of spiritual good. He is to all good alien, insensible, dead, and he cannot be restored to God except by an agency which is altogether from without himself and from above. If you could develop what is in the heart of man, you would produce a devil, for that is the spirit which works in the children of disobedience; develop that carnal mind which is enmity against God, and cannot by any possibility be reconciled to him, and the result is Hell.