^ All human religions are founded on the principle that man must do something, or feel something, or believe something, in order to make God love him and forgive him; whereas God's religion just contains a declaration that nothing of the kind is necessary on our part in order to make God forgive us, for that He hath dijdb, already, loved us and forgiven us, and given us His Son, and in Him all things. He hath declared this to the whole race without any exception, as a truth to each individual ; so that the difference between the most miserable hater of God and the happiest child of God does not consist in this, that God loves the one and does not love the other ; but in this, that the one knows God's love to himself and the other does not. It is the same difference as there is between two men standing with their faces to the sun, the one with his eyes shut and the other with his eyes open.^
(4) The promise oi_hpliness is ours in Christ. Here the promise, in many a varying form, is magnificently full. " These things write I unto you that ye sin not " ; " Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not " ; " Let not sin reign in your mortal body " ; " As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation." How can all this possibly be ? It is impossible except in Him. The secret is not it, but He. " Christ is made unto us sanctification " ; " Ye are filled full in him " ; " that Christ may dwell in your hearts, by faith " ; that ye may " know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."
^ Letters 0/ Thomas Erskine of Lvnlathen, i. 161.
2 COR. I. 20 39
*|| It is a magnificent truth that having come to Christ you are not merely near Him, but in Him ; and in Him you have at once nothing short of Christ and all His treasures. But do not make a false use of the glorious fact. Eemember that you may " have and not have." You may receive a property and not enjoy it. You may inherit wealth and not use it. To grasp the great promises of what God can do for you, as well as the mighty encouragement of what He has done for you, is the way to " possess the possessions " and to realize the wealth. You have long rested, my friend in Christ, on the facts, the certainties, of His finished work. But have you made use enough of His never finished working? Our Christ is eternally fixed and unchanging, in His atoning merit. But He, the same Christ, is prepared immortally to grow in us, in His blessed indwelling by the Holy Spirit. Yes, the " exceeding precious promises " point us to Christ dwelling in the heart by faith, to Christ our very life, to Christ in whom we are already " enriched in everything." Go on and use your riches, full of hope. For while your discourage- ments are all behind you, the great and precious promises are all in front. "Forget the things that are behind," and step forth forward upon " the things that are before " ; not upon your resolves, experiences, achievements, but on the Lord in His " precious promises." Belying upon His promises you enter into the liberty that belongs to the children of God.^
A morning-glory bud, entangled fast Amid the meshes of its winding stem.
Strove vainly with the coils about it cast, Until the gardener came and loosened them.
A suffering human life entangled lay
Among the tightening coils of its own past;
The Gardener came, the fetters fell away, The life unfolded to the sun at last.^
(5) And the_^romise of jhe future is made sure in Him. Apart from Him the future is cloud and darkness, for a verbal revelation is not enough. We have enough of arguments ; what we want is facts. We have enough of man's peradventures about a future life, enough of evidence more or less valid to show that it is "probable," or "not inconceivable," or "more likely than not," and so on and so on. What we want is that somebody shall 1 H. C. G. Moule, All in Christ, 40. « WUlia Boyd Allen.
40 THE YEA AND THE AMEN
cross the gulf and come back again. And so we get in the Resurrection of Christ the one fact on which men may safely rest their convictions of immortality.
^ Death was above all to such as St. Paul a meeting with Jesus Christ, who was the object of his ceaseless faith, the hope of his longing heart. This man did not speculate about heaven — where it was, what it was. Nor did he imagine its glory as became a mystic Uke St. John. For him heaven was another name for Christ, the sum of all goodness, the revelation of all perfection. Between him and Christ there had been a long friendship, with many love-passages, which had grown more intimate every year, but had never been completed. St. Paul had heard Christ's voice on the road to Damascus ; he had seen Him in visions; for brief moments he had visited the third heavens ; but face to face this great Christian may not have seen his Master as had St. Peter and St. John. For an unseen Lord he lived, laboured, suffered as none else has ever done. What wonder that St. Paul hungered and thirsted for the day when that dark servitor death would usher him into the unveiled Presence.