A certain writer who advocates the repression theory of sanctification says: "But if I want a tree wholly made good I take it when young and, cutting the stem off on the ground, I graft just where it emerges from the soil; I watch over every bud which the old nature could possibly put forth until the flow of sap from the old roots into the new stem is so complete that the old life has, as it were, been entirely conquered and covered of the new. Now I have a tree entirely renewed--emblem of a Christian who has learned in entire consecration to surrender everything for Christ, and in a whole-hearted faith wholly to abide in him. If in this case the old tree were a reasonable being that could co-operate with the gardener, what would the gardener's language be to it? Would it not be this: 'Yield now thyself entirely to this new nature with which I have invested thee; repress every tendency of the old nature to give buds or sprouts; let all thy sap and all thy life-powers rise up into this graft from yonder beautiful tree which I have put on thee, so shalt thou bring forth sweet and much fruit.' And the language of the tree to the gardener would be: 'When thou graftest me, oh, spare not a single branch, let everything of the old self, even the smallest bud, be destroyed, that I may no longer live in my own, but in that other life that was cut off and brought and put upon me that I might be wholly new and good.' And once again, could you afterwards ask the renewed tree, as it was bearing abundant fruit, what it could say of itself, its answer would be this: 'In me (that is, my roots) there dwelleth no good thing; I am ever inclined to evil; the sap I collect from the soil is in its nature corrupt, and ready to show itself in bearing evil fruit. But just where the sap rises into the sunshine to ripen into fruit, the wise gardener hath clothed me with a new life through which my sap is purified and all my powers are renewed to the bringing forth of good fruit.'"