I suppose that if all the time that I have prayed for Faith was put together, it would be months. I used to say when I was President of the Young Men’s Christian Association in Chicago, “What we want is faith; if we only have faith, we can turn Chicago upside down”—or rather, right side up. I thought that some day faith was going to come down, and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, “Now faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” I had closed my Bible, and prayed for faith. I now opened my Bible, and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since.
Take the doctrine that made Martin Luther such a power, Justification—“The just shall live by faith.” When that thought flashed through Martin Luther’s mind as he was ascending the Scala Santa on his knees (although some people deny the truth of this statement), he rose and went forth to be a power among the nations of the earth. Justification puts a man before God as if he had never sinned; he stands before God like Jesus Christ. Thank God, in Jesus Christ we can be perfect, but there is no perfection out of Him. God looks in His ledger, and says, “Moody, your debts have all been paid by Another; there is nothing against you.”
In New England there is perhaps no doctrine assailed so much as the Atonement. The Atonement is foreshadowed in the garden of Eden; there is the innocent suffering for the guilty, the animals slain for Adam’s sin. We find it in Abraham’s day, in Moses’ day; all through the books of Moses and the prophets. Look at the fifty-third of Isaiah, and at the prophecy of Daniel. Then we come into the Gospels, and Christ says, “I lay down My life that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself.”
CONVERSION.
People talk about Conversion—what is conversion? The best way to find out is from the Bible. A good many don’t believe in sudden conversions. You can die in a moment. Can’t you receive life in a moment?
When Mr. Sankey and myself were in one place in Europe a man preached a sermon against the pernicious doctrines that we were going to preach, one of which was sudden conversion. He said conversion was a matter of time and growth. Do you know what I do when any man preaches against the doctrines I preach? I go to the Bible and find out what it says, and if I am right I give them more of the same kind. I preached more on sudden conversion in that town than in any town I was in in my life. I would like to know how long it took the Lord to convert Zaccheus? How long did it take the Lord to convert that woman whom He met at the well of Sychar? How long to convert that adulterous woman in the temple, who was caught in the very act of adultery? How long to convert that woman who anointed His feet and wiped them with the hairs of her head? Didn’t she go with the word of God ringing in her ears, “Go in peace”?
There was no sign of Zaccheus being converted when he went up that sycamore tree, and he was converted when he came down, so he must have been converted between the branch and the ground. Pretty sudden work, wasn’t it? But you say, “That is because Christ was there.” Friends, they were converted a good deal faster after He went away than when He was here. Peter preached, and three thousand were converted in one day. Another time, after three o’clock in the afternoon, Peter and John healed a man at the gate of the Temple, and then went in and preached, and five thousand were added to the church before night, and Jews at that. That was rather sudden work. Professor Drummond describes a man going into one of our after-meetings and saying he wants to become a Christian. “Well, my friend, what is the trouble?” He doesn’t like to tell. He is greatly agitated. Finally he says, “The fact is, I have overdrawn my account”—a polite way of saying he has been stealing. “Did you take your employer’s money?” “Yes.” “How much?” “I don’t know. I never kept account of it.” “Well, you have an idea you stole $1,500 last year?” “I am afraid it is that much.” “Now, look here, sir, I don’t believe in sudden work; don’t you steal more than a thousand dollars this next year, and the next year not more than five hundred, and in the course of the next few years you will get so that you won’t steal any. If your employer catches you, tell him you are being converted; and you will get so that you won’t steal any by and by.” My friends, the thing is a perfect farce. “Let him that stole, steal no more,” that is what the Bible says. It is right about face.
Take another illustration. Here comes a man and he admits that he gets drunk every week. That man comes to a meeting and he wants to be converted. I say, “Don’t you be in a hurry. I believe in doing the work gradually. Don’t you get drunk and knock your wife down more than once a month.” Wouldn’t it be refreshing to your wife to go a whole month without being knocked down? Once a month, only twelve times in a year! Wouldn’t she be glad to have you converted in this new way! Only get drunk after a few years on the anniversary of your wedding, and at Christmas; and then it will be effective because it is gradual. Oh! I detest, all that kind of teaching. Let us go to the Bible and see what that old Book teaches. Let us believe it, and go and act as if we believed it, too. Salvation is instantaneous. I admit that a man may be converted so that he can not tell when he crossed the line between death and life, but I also believe a man may be a thief one moment and a saint the next. I believe a man may be as vile as hell itself one moment, and be saved the next.
Christian growth is gradual, just as physical growth is; but a man passes from death unto everlasting life quick as an act of the mind—“He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.”
People say they want to become heavenly-minded. Well, read about heaven and talk about it. I once preached on “Heaven,” and after the meeting a lady came to me and said, “Why, Mr. Moody, I didn’t know there were so many verses in the Bible about heaven.” And I hadn’t taken one out of a hundred. She was amazed that there was so much in the Bible about heaven.