"I don't understand what you mean," said Ben Stone. "Would you put bad and good all together?"
"Perhaps I can explain myself best by referring to Noah's ark," replied Franks. "God made known that a deluge was coming on the earth, and that the only way of escaping it was by going into an ark which Noah was commanded to prepare. It is clear that those who were saved were those who believed. It was faith in God's word that made Noah and his family enter the ark; they were saved because they were in it, and not, as I tried to explain yesterday, because of their merits as sailors or swimmers. It is clear, also, that they could not be half saved by the ark, and half by their own boats or rafts. So, if we trust our souls to Christ, we must do so entirely; we must give up all notion of saving ourselves, and own that our hopes of forgiveness and heaven rest on nothing but his mercy and merits. We own ourselves, indeed, to be miserable sinners, but we are able to take our firm stand on the Gospel doctrine that Christ died for sinners,—for that is our ark."
"I'm afraid that people who make sure of being saved by faith will lead very careless lives," said the carpenter, who could not get over his repugnance to being classed with Nancy Sands.
"They can only be saved by living, true faith," replied Franks. "Merely to say that we believe is nothing; nay, a cold conviction that the Bible is true, is nothing,—the devils also believe and tremble."
"How are you to know true faith from false faith?" asked Ben, with rather a sarcastic smile, as if he thought he had driven Ned Franks into a corner.
"How do you know a real fire from a painted one?" asked Ned.
"Well, it does not need much wit to tell the one from the other, if the painting were ever so clear," replied Stone; "the real fire warms us, of course; it aint a thing only to be looked at."
"And so real faith warms the heart, fills it with a glow of grateful love towards Him who gave himself for us. And that love makes us loathe and detest sin, because it is displeasing to our Lord,—the one thing which he hates. True faith and sin are just as much opposed to each other as fire and water. You said just now that you were afraid that people would live very careless lives if they hoped to be saved by faith. Do you find it to be so in your experience of men, Ben Stone? Those who are the most active in good works, the most steady in conduct, the best husbands, parents, neighbors, are they not the very people who have no hope of heaven but in the great Sacrifice for sin?"
"I can't deny that," answered Ben Stone, who knew that Ned Franks himself had a standard of duty that made his own appear but a low one. "But I can't see how that should be."
"Because every man that hath that hope in Christ, purifieth himself even as he is pure; [J] because true faith is a gift of God's Holy Spirit, and it must be followed by two others,—the love of Christ and that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. [K] As a good man once said, 'We come to Christ just as we are, but not to remain as we have been.' When we are once in the ark, Stone, it will lift us above the waters of wilful sin, as well as the waves of destruction; none serve God like those who have received the assurance,—'Go in peace; thy sins are forgiven thee.'"