Mere feeling and sentimentality can never rise above the source from whence they emanate; and that source is self; but faith has to do with God and his eternal word, and is a living link, connecting the heart that possesses it with God who gives it. Human feelings, however intense,--human sentiments, however refined,--could not connect the soul with God. They are neither divine nor eternal, but are human and evanescent. They are like Jonah's gourd, which sprang up in a night, and perished in a night. Not so faith. That precious principle partakes of all the value, all the power, and all the reality of the source from whence it emanates, and the object with which it has to do. It justifies the soul; (Rom. v. 1;) it purifies the heart; (Acts xv. 9;) it works by love; (Gal. v. 6;) it overcomes the world. (1 John v. 4.) Feeling and sentiment never could accomplish such results: they belong to nature and to earth,--faith belongs to God and to heaven; they are occupied with self,--faith is occupied with Christ; they look inward and downward,--faith looks outward and upward; they leave the soul in darkness and doubt,--faith leads it into light and peace; they have to do with one's own fluctuating condition,--faith has to do with God's immutable truth, and Christ's eternally-enduring sacrifice.
No doubt, faith will produce feelings and sentiments,--spiritual feelings and truthful sentiments,--but the fruits of faith must never be confounded with faith itself. I am not justified by feelings, nor yet by faith _and_ feelings, but simply by faith. And why? Because faith believes God when he speaks; it takes him at his word; it apprehends him as he has revealed himself in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is life, righteousness, and peace. To apprehend God as he is, is the sum of all present and eternal blessedness. When the soul finds out God, it has found out all it can possibly need, here or hereafter; but he can only be known by his own revelation, and by the faith which he himself imparts, and which, moreover, always seeks divine revelation as its proper object.
Thus, then, we can in some measure enter into the meaning and power of the statement, "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." Cain had no faith, and therefore he offered an unbloody sacrifice. Abel had faith, and therefore he offered both "blood and fat," which, in type, set forth the presentation of the life, and also the inherent excellency of the Person of Christ. "The blood" set forth the former; "the fat" shadowed forth the latter. Both blood and fat were forbidden to be eaten under the Mosaic economy. The blood is the life; and man, under law, had no title to life. But, in the sixth of John we are taught that unless we eat blood we have no life in us. Christ is _the_ life. There is not a spark of life outside of him. All out of Christ is death. "In him was life," and in none else.
Now, he gave up his life on the cross; and, to that life, sin was by imputation attached, when the blessed One was nailed to the cursed tree. Hence, in giving up his life, he gave up also the sin attached thereto, so that it is effectually put away, having been left in his grave from which he rose triumphant, in the power of a new life, to which righteousness as distinctly attaches itself as did sin to that life which he gave up on the cross. This will help us to an understanding of an expression used by our blessed Lord after his resurrection, "A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." He did not say, "flesh and blood;" because, in resurrection, he had not assumed into his sacred person the blood which he had shed out upon the cross as an atonement for sin. "The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood which maketh an atonement for the soul." (Lev. xvii. 11.) Close attention to this point will have the effect of deepening in our souls the sense of the completeness of the putting away of sin by the death of Christ; and we know that whatever tends to deepen our sense of that glorious reality, must necessarily tend to the fuller establishment of our peace, and to the more effectual promotion of the glory of Christ as connected with our testimony and service.
We have already referred to a point of much interest and value in the history of Cain and Abel, and that is, the entire identification of each with the offering which he presented. My reader cannot possibly bestow too much attention upon this. The question, in each case, was not as to the person of the offerer; but entirely as to the character of his offering. Hence, of Abel we read that "God testified of his _gifts_." He did not bear witness to Abel, but to Abel's sacrifice; and this fixes distinctly the proper ground of a believer's peace and acceptance before God.