“The Emperor does not care for us; he knows nothing about us,” said Elsie.
“Then your faith in the Emperor is a dead faith, it has no effect on your hearts,” observed Mrs. Temple. “And this is the kind of faith which many persons, alas! have in the Lord. They believe in a careless sort of way that Christ once lived in the world, and died on the cross, but they believe only with the head, not with the heart. And this is dead faith, a kind of faith which never can save us.”
“But what is living faith, then?” asked Amy.
“When our belief makes us really love Him who first loved us,—when the thought of Christ’s dying for sin makes us hate sin, that cost Him so dear, then our faith must be living faith; and thus looking to the Lord we are saved.”
Dora sighed and drew her head back again into the shadow. Hers was not a faith that had kept her from sin—hers was not a faith that made her now obey the whisper of conscience, confess her fault to her mother, and make what amends she could for what she had done.
“Depend upon it, that when an Israelite had been cured of his wound by looking at the brazen serpent, he did not go and stroke and play with the fiery reptile that had bitten him,” observed Lucius, who had the clearest head amongst the party, and best entered into the meaning of types.
“No, he would run away from the horrid creatures, or try to kill them; he would put his foot upon the fiery serpents and crush them—crush them,” cried Elsie, stamping her little foot on the hearthrug, to add force to her words.
“So every one who has living faith dreads and hates sin, and tries to destroy it,” observed Mrs. Temple. “We will not carelessly trifle with it if we believe from our hearts that our blessed Redeemer suffered because of our sins.”
“What a very holy thing was that brazen serpent which Moses set up on a pole!” exclaimed Amy. “Did he not afterwards put it into the ark, that the Israelites might carry it about with them wherever they went, and treasure it as they did the tables of stone on which the Commandments were written?”
“We do not read of Moses putting the brazen serpent into the ark,” replied Mrs. Temple; “but the Israelites must have carried it with them in their wanderings through the desert, and have taken it into the Promised Land, for we read of the brazen serpent being greatly honored by the people more than seven hundred years after it was lifted up.” (1 Kings xviii. 4.)