Best Preparation for the Study of the Gospel

“The best preparation for the study of [the gospel] is – neither great intellectual ability nor much scholastic learning-but a conscience impressed with a sense of our actual condition as sinners in the sight of God. A deep conviction of sin is the one thing needful in such an inquiry, - a conviction of the fact of sin, as an awful reality in our own personal experience – of the power of sin as an inveterate evil cleaving to us continually, and having its roots deep in the inner most recesses of our hearts, - and of the guilt of sin, which once committed, can never cease to be true of us and which [in itself] deserves his wrath and righteous condemnation.” (James Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification pg 236-37)