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Bible, this very style of faith that we have thought to be too confident, shall prove to be the very faith which Jesus Christ has commanded, and which his doctrine tends to produce in the soul. It may be that our feelings have had in them too much of the spirit of bondage to fear, and too little of the spirit of adoption, to be promotive of true filial obedience. It may be, that in refusing to allow ourselves or others to rejoice in actual forgiveness through the finished righteousness of Christ-in our fear to trust a simple, confiding spirit, we have unconsciously obscured the precious doctrine of justification by faith in the Son of God. Here, if any where, we should speak clearly and confidently. If we are not sure that it is a good and safe doctrine-if we utter it mincingly, and with many qualifications, as if its influence upon morals or practical religion were to be feared, we shall go halting through the whole system of Christian doctrine. Here neither our heart nor our lips must falter. It must be true, or not true, that there is full, complete, and eternal justification for every soul, in simply receiving and resting upon the perfect righteousness of Christ, and that every soul has in the Gospel a warrant to take and enjoy this righteousness as its own inalienable gift, which cannot become more thoroughly its own by any subsequent obedience. If this is the true foundation, we must not be afraid to trust it, nor to exhibit it to any

and every man, warning him against building his hopes on any other foundation, or against waiting for comfort, until he has received it from some other source than from Christ. But if it is not true—if it has a tendency to create false confidence, and to make us indifferent to the claims of God upon our obedience; if it is not scriptural that I am to build solely upon Christ, looking directly to him, and only to him, for peace, for pardon, for instruction, for sanctification, for eternal life, then let us not go halfway in this matter; if false, it is the most impudent and pernicious falsehood that was ever devised. If it is not every thing, it is nothing, and down with it! With a few striking sentences, to the same effect, from the pen of another,* we close the present chapter:

"It seems reasonable to affirm, that if the apostolic doctrine of justification by faith be clearly held and cordially admitted, it will occupy the foremost place in our regards; for it is the ground of all our hopes and the relief of every fear; it is the luminous centre of all religious truth. It is the sun in our heavens, it is the source of light and the source of vital warmth. We do not therefore hesitate to affirm, that it is scripturally held only by those who do assign to it this prominent position; who recur to it ever and again with delight, who never feel it to be an ex* Isaac Taylor.

hausted theme; who build their own hopes upon it firmly; who invite others to do the same with confidence; who neither distrust it in theory, nor dishonor it in practice; who enounce it freely and boldly; and of whose piety it is the spring and

reason.

"On the contrary, we cannot but impute a want of apostolic feeling, as well as a dimness of religious perception, to those who, whatever articles may be expressed in their creed, speak reluctantly on this great theme, or ambiguously, or in a tone of evasion; who now confess it, now deny it, and whose writings or discourses on the subject, baffle the endeavors of the most candid to ascertain what it is they really believe."

CHAPTER X.

The Nature of Faith-Knowledge.

As already intimated, we shall consider faith as consisting in three principal acts-knowing, receiving, and resting on Christ. Regarding it as a condition or habit of the soul, faith is knowledge, possession, and rest.

It is well to remember, however, that the things which we separate, for the sake of more exact comprehension, are not always separate in fact. In what seem to be the simplest and most rapid actings of the soul, there is often an intimate blending of various motives, desires, and affections, all lovely and harmonious, yet each having a character of its own. After having shown the distinction between these, we may take any single gracious affection, and show that it consists of several distinct qualities of action or

being, all of which are essential to its perfectness. Yet we are by no means to suppose that there is necessarily a difference in time between the emo`tions of which it is composed; they will often be united in one complex, yet apparently simple act or state of the soul.

What substance in nature would seem to be simpler and less capable of division, in its perfect purity and transparency, than light? Yet a common prism shall separate it into seven colors upon the wall, which you shall distinguish, count, and name. The drops of rain in a falling shower thus throw the rays of the sun upon the opposite sky in the various tints of the rainbow's arch. Let the prism be withdrawn, or the clouds scattered, and they are immediately blended into one clear, colorless, and beautiful effect of a single creating word. "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light."

So is it, in a remarkable degree, with faith as it exists in the soul of man. We may say it consists of a certain perception of truth by the understanding, and of several emotions of the heart and will, and we may show that the word of God, like a prism, has thus analyzed and separated it, part from part, and that our own consciousness confirms the distinction. But we by no means intend to say that these various effects of truth are thus separate in any given case, nor that there are several actual compartments in

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