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FAITH consists of two parts belief, which accepts
certain declarations as true; and trust in the person about whom these
declarations are made. Neither will do without the other. On the one hand,
we cannot trust a person without knowing something about him; on the other
hand, our knowledge will not help us unless it leads to trust, any more
than it avails the shivering wretch outside the Bank of England to know
that the vaults are stored with gold. A mere intellectual faith is not
enough. The holding of a creed will not save. We must pass from a belief
in words to trust in the Word. By faith we know that Jesus lives, and by
faith we also appropriate that life. By faith we know that Jesus made on
the cross a propitiation for sin; and by faith we lay our hand reverently
on his dear head and confess our sin. Faith is the open hand receiving
Christ. Faith is the golden pipe through which his fullness comes to us.
Faith is the narrow channel by which the life that pulses in the Redeemer's
heart enters our souls. Faith is the attitude we assume when we turn aside
from the human to the divine.
We ought not to be content with anything less than
the full assurance of faith. The prime method of increasing it is in drawing
near to God. In olden days the bodies of the priests were bathed in water
and sprinkled with blood ere they entered the presence of God. Let us seek
the spiritual counterpart of this. Relieved from the pressure of conscious
guilt, with hearts as sincere and guileless as the flesh is clean when
washed with pure water, let us draw near to God and keel) in fellowship
with him; and in that attitude faith will grow exceedingly. It will no
longer sit in the dust, but clothe itself in beautiful garments. It will
wax from a thread to become a cable. No longer the trembling touch of a
woman's hand, it will grasp the pillars of the Temple with a Samson's embrace.
HOPE is more than faith, and has special reference to the unknown future which it realizes, and brings to bear on our daily life. The veil that hides the future parts only as smitten by the prow of our advancing boat; it is natural, therefore, that we should often ask what lies beyond.
Foreboding is the prophet of ill; Hope
of good. Foreboding cries, "We shall certainly fall by the
hand of; Hope replies, "No weapon that is formed against
us shall prosper." Foreboding cries, "Who shall roll away
the stone? " Hope sings merrily, "The Lord shall go before
us, and make the crooked places straight." Foreboding, born of unbelief,
cries, "The people are great and tall, and the cities walled up to heaven";
Hope already portions out the land and chooses its inheritance.
But Christian hope is infinitely better and more reliable than that of
the worldling. In ordinary hope there is always the element of uncertainty;
it may be doomed to disillusion and disappointment; things may not turn
out as we expect: and so, being the characteristic of youth, it dies down
as the years advance. But Christian hope is based on the promise of God,
and therefore it cannot disappoint; nay, it is the anchor of the aged soul,
becoming brighter and more enduring as the years pass by, because "he is
faithful that promised."
But how may we increase our hope, so as never to
let it slip, but to hold it fast with unwavering firmness? There is nothing
which will sooner strengthen it than to consider his faithfulness whose
promises are hope's anchorage. Has he ever failed to fulfill his engagements?
Do not the stars return to their appointed place to a hairbreadth of their
time? Have not good men given a unanimous testimony to the fidelity of
the covenant-keeping God? He has never suffered his faithfulness to fail-and
never will. Our hope, therefore, need not falter, but be strong and very
courageous.
LOVE comes last. She is queen of all the graces of
the inner life. Love is the passion of self-giving. It never stays to ask
what it can afford, or what it may expect to receive; but it is ever shedding
forth its perfume, breaking its alabaster boxes, and shedding its heart's
blood. It will pine to death if it cannot give. It must share its possessions.
It is prodigal of costliest service. Such love is in the heart of God,
and should also be in us; and we may increase it materially by considering
one another, and associating with our fellow-believers. Distance begets
coldness and indifference. When we forsake the assembly of our fellow-
Christians we are apt to wrap ourselves in the chill mantle of indifference.
But when we see others in need, and help them; when we are willing to succor
and save; when we discover that there is something attractive in the least
lovable; when we feel the glowing sympathy of others-our own love grows
by the demands made on it, and by the opportunities of manifestation.
Let us seek earnestly these best gifts; and that
we may have them and abound, let us invoke the blessed indwelling of the
Lord Jesus, whose entrance brings with it the whole train of sweet Christian
graces.
THE THREEFOLD REMONSTRANCE. Go forward! otherwise
penally (ver. 26). If a man unwittingly broke Moses' law, he was
forgiven; but if he willfully despised it, he died without mercy. What
then can be expected by those who sin willfully, not against the iron obligations
of Sinai, but against the gracious words which distill from the lips of
the dying Saviour! The heart that can turn from the love and blood-shedding
of Calvary, and ignore them, and trample them ruthlessly under foot, is
so hard, so hopeless, so defiant of the Holy Spirit as to expose itself
to the gravest displeasure of God, and can expect no further offering for
its sins. There is no sacrifice for the atonement of the sin of rejecting
Calvary.
Go forward! otherwise past efforts nullified
(ver. 32). These Hebrew Christians had suffered keenly on their first entrance
into the Christian life. The martyrdom of the saintly Stephen; the great
havoc wrought in the Church by Saul of Tarsus; the terrible famines that
visited Jerusalem, causing widespread destitution. They had become even
a gazing-stock by reproaches and afflictions. But they had taken joyfully
the spoiling of their goods, not shrinking from the ordeal. To go back
to Judaism now would annul the advantages which otherwise might have accrued
from their bitter experience; would miss the harvest of their tears; would
counterwork the respect with which they were being regarded; and would
rob them of the reward which the Lord might give to them, if they only
endured to the end. "Cast not away your boldness, which hath great recompense
of reward."
Go forward! the Lord is at hand (ver.
36). Jesus was about to come in the fall of Jerusalem, as lie will come
ere long to close the present age; and every sign pointed to the speedy
destruction of the Jewish polity by the all-conquering might of Rome. How
foolish then would it be to return to that which was on the eve of dissolution:
to the Temple that would burn to the ground; to sacrifices soon to cease;
to a priesthood to be speedily scattered to the winds!
There was only one alternative: not to go back to
certain perdition, to the ruin of all the nobler attributes of the soul,
to disgrace and disappointment and endless regret; but to go on through
evil and good report, through sorrow and anxiety and blood, until the faithful
servant should be vindicated by the Lord's approval, and welcomed into
the realms of endless blessedness.
Are we amongst those who go on to the saving of
the soul? Here, as so often, the salvation of the soul is viewed as a process.
True, we are in a sense saved when first we turn to the cross and trust
the Crucified. But it is only as we keep in the current that streams from
the cross, only as we remain in abiding fellowship with the Saviour, only
as we submit ourselves habitually to the gracious influences of the divine
Spirit, that salvation pervades and heals our whole being. Then the soul
may be said to be gained (R.V., marg.), i.e., restored to its original
type as conceived in the mind of God before he built the dust of the earth
into man, and breathed into him the breath of life, and he became a living
soul.