dience that forbid a personal conscious appropriation of Christ. The faith we are describing makes that a fact which was not before, by appropriating and using this salvation for all the purposes for which God intended it. In the first instance, the understanding apprehends the graciousness of the offer, and then, the approving and admiring heart seizes it as a gift. We have no sympathy with any view of faith that keeps us at a distance from Christ and his salvation, until we have worked our way to his feet— that will not let us cast away our fears and doubtings at his simple bidding-that will not let us take him immediately and confidently to our heart, as our Lord and our God.

CHAPTER XII.

The Nature of Faith-Assurance.

WE are now ready to pass on to the final act of Faith-resting in Christ, or assurance.

We cannot give a better definition of this, than Dr. John Owen gives of justifying faith; by which, as he tells us in an explanatory note, he means only that action of the heart and will with which justification is more immediately connected. "A gracious resting on the free promises of God in Christ Jesus for mercy, with a firm persuasion that God is a reconciled Father to us in the Son of his love." Is it not a beautiful definition? Who is not ready to cry, "Lord, work such a faith in me?" It is such a personal confidence of the heart in Christ, as is accompanied by an assurance that whatever he is in his essential or mediatorial nature, he is to us individually; and an affectionate, filial, confiding

expectation of receiving all good from his

grace.

power and

If any one staggers at the use of the words, firm persuasion, assurance, confidence—let it be remembered, that they describe faith as it is in its own nature, and not as it is in the individual believer, often obscured by darkness and many infirmities of our sinful nature. They represent faith in that perfection and fullness which God requires of us in the Gospel, and which a soul properly enlightened and exercised will put forth. It would be utterly as improper for us to present you with an infirm or an imperfect faith, as it would be if a philosopher, who was about to give an account of the human mind, should define and describe a weak or a deranged mind. Let it be understood distinctly, that saving faith varies in different subjects, not only as to the degree of its strength, but as to the clearness of its evidence. Our object is not to consider the faith of a mind under the influence of ignorance, nor fear, nor doubt, but that faith which is sound, healthy, and vigorous, and the attainment of which should be our constant aim and prayer.

Before proceeding to the direct proof that assurance is an essential element in all true faith, we wish it to be distinctly understood, that the assurance of which we are speaking is variable in degree.

We cannot indeed be so forgetful of the experience

of the children of God, as to say that one cannot believe in Christ, and yet be disturbed by doubts and fears. We do not despise the day of small things, nor reject even the feeble beginnings of faith. We do not deny that there may be a weak faith, as well as a strong; and if any one asks whether in claiming that assurance is essential to the nature of faith, we mean such a perfection of assurance as excludes all questioning and fears, we answer that absolute perfection is essential only to the nature of God. While the experience of some is from the first, clear, joyful, and decided, there is in most cases a constant alternation of light and darkness. "A ray of Gospel comfort is darted into the soul, and it joyfully believes for a little season, which is succeeded again by clouds, unbelieving fears, and questionings as to whether the experience of which it has been conscious, has not been altogether delusive; and in a series of conflicts, a soul whose experience is thus characterized, gradually increases in its knowledge of Christ's suitableness and fullness, amiableness and glory, and becomes proportionally established in its hopes and comforts, and its views of the Divine life." Far be it from us to forget that we are followers of him of whom it was said, "he shall not break the bruised seed, neither shall he quench the smoking flax."

We know not indeed how much of doubt, of fear,