[“FAITH COMES BY HEARING.”]
HOW remarkable the difference between the apostles’ method of producing faith, and that pursued by some modern preachers. The latter class frequently theorize on faith, and the method through which it comes, but the former, understanding his mission more perfectly, first, set forth the things to be believed, and secondly, the witnesses by which God intended to prove them to the world. An august phalanx they are too! consisting of all the prophets and apostles. “They all bear witness of him.” Suppose we could see them standing in a long rank, and among the most distinguished we could see Enoch, Elijah and the venerable Abraham. We could place our eyes upon the great commander of the hosts of the Israel of God, and the mighty law-giver, who feared and trembled, in the midst of thunderings and smoke at Mount Sinai, viz. Moses.—We look again and behold Samuel, Isaiah, Daniel and Ezekiel. Passing the lesser prophets, we behold the commanding face and hear the voice of John the Baptist. Still gazing we behold Peter, James and Paul and last of all the eye rests upon the venerable John. We then pause, and reflect upon the tears, the poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, stripes, imprisonments and deaths through which these men passed and inquire what was all this suffering for? The fact re-echoes back upon us in the awful and sublime sentence: “For the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Did they thus suffer on this account? They did. Could they have been anything else but faithful men? Surely not. They must have been the most sincere and solemn men the world ever produced: Well could they have been mistaken. Impossible. The things concerning which they bore witness they SAW and HEARD. “We were with him in Jerusalem, in the land of the Jews, and saw him after he rose from the dead.” We say then emphatically that they could not have been insincere nor mistaken, and what they said must have been infallibly true.
[WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?]
AWAKENED sinners feel that they must do something, but they see, or think they see, some “lion in the street”—some difficulty in the path which they have marked out to Christ, which prevents them from finding the Savior in the pardon of their sins. The chief reason, perhaps, why every inquirer does not rejoice in a felt sense of God’s pardoning love, is, that they seek in their own way. They endeavor to arise and “go to Jesus,” in their own strength. No sinner ever did find Christ, seeking thus. He must first arrive at the point where he can feel his own helplessness, before Christ will help him. When he does realize this helplessness, then God will meet him and give him the new heart.
Would you know, then, what you must do to be saved? The essence of the whole matter, we think, is this:
1. You must resolve that you will put off the interest of your soul no longer, but that you will go earnestly about the matter, and seek and persist in seeking, until your sins are pardoned. 2. You must see your own helplessness and feel it. 3. Having arrived at this point, humbly submit to Christ. With the prodigal, let the feelings of the heart be, “I will arise and go to my Father”—He can help me—I can not help myself—if he save, well—if not, “I can but perish if I go.”