Only in Believing by Sylvester Home

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 28, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 29.

Only in Believing

By Sylvester Home

“Not the labors of my hands, Can fulfil Thy law’s demands! Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow; All for sin could not atone, Thou must save and Thou alone.”

BELIEVE. Let yourself go. Do not quench the smoking flax or break the bruised reed. Do not stifle the cry for pity. Do not let the paralyzing doubts creep upon thee. Do not even try to repress thy trembling hopes and prayers. Let thyself go. Believe. Venture upon the pardon and power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Put Him to the test. Try what He can do. Make the venture of faith.

Humanly speaking there is nothing else to do. You can not forgive yourself: then try His offer of pardon. You can not wash out the stains of sin from your own heart, then offer yourself for His cleansing. You can not face your own accusing conscience, then present yourself to Him for His gift of peace. Become, saith God, a living soul. Love, think, aspire, believe, adore.

But, say you, you can not live like that unto God with a pure heart. You do not love with all the soul and mind and strength. You do not love your neighbor as yourself.

Then, saith Christ, I am come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly. Try Him. Put Him to the test. Believe, believe.

But He may fail me. That is not what they say who have made the great venture. But see. Was it not John Inglesant who said?—“If all the promises failed me at the last, and immortality faded like a dream, I would still choose here to live and die with Christ. A day with Him is better than immortality without Him. He does redeem, He does transfigure, He does enrich, He does enrapture and beautify the life.” Therefore, believe, and thou shalt receive. Thy soul shall spring to fulness of stature, and by His divine grace, and not by labor of thy hands, thou shalt fulfil the demands of thy God upon the soul.—Rev. Sylvester Home, M.A.