THE SOLID GROUND OF FAITH.
By H. A. St. John
God's immutable and unchangeable Word is the solid ground of faith. That Word retains all of its original vigor, and authority. To the believing, trusting soul, God's printed Word still thrills with all its former warm and quivering life energy. The unchangeableness of God's Word demands that if He, in Christ, once said to a poor, heart-broken, believing, pleading penitent, "Thy sins which are many are all forgiven thee," He will now and always speak in the same way to all those who put themselves in exactly the same moral relations to Him. The attributes of God's character demand that if He once said to a confessing, believing, praying, dying thief, "Verily I say unto thee to-day, Shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," He will speak in exactly the same voice to-day to any poor culprit who will put himself in the same moral relations to Him and His Law. And is it not an eternal truth that the Author and the embodiment of all true laws is bound by His own attributes to speak in Christ, to a weeping, praying, believing mother by her daughter's dying bed, to-day, as in the past, "O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt"? God's very omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and immutability are the pledges of the fact that He will forgive the sinner, cleanse the leper, heal the sick, cast out devils, etc., to-day, as in the past, if a similar set of moral circumstances are brought about in faith, penitence, humiliation, confession, restitution, earnest prayer, and an intelligent and constant purpose to do His whole will. Pseudo scientists deny the possibility of a supernatural, spiritual blessing, and a divine and supernatural healing of the body and mind; and an ignorant ministry and an unscriptural church membership endorse their fallacies, or qualify either the spiritual blessing or bodily healing practically out of existence. Yet sound science, and the very nature and being of God demand that both be definite facts to-day, as unlimited and free to penitent, intelligent faith as the natural air to the body. This view forms an inspiration to faith, and an inducement to prayer and holy living, in that it leaves no question as to God's certainty of answering, if the conditions are intelligently met. The Gospel of Jesus in its fulness embraces all we have suggested in the preceding, and that Gospel is for the church to carry to all the world in this generation. The lack of this faith and experience is the disgrace of the church to-day, and this disgrace to Christianity is the infidel-making element of the age. Failure or defeat in the work of God is a plain call of penitence, heart searching, a truer and stronger faith, a clearer perception of the divine will, and better and wiser adjustment of life generally, as the cause of the failure must be in us, and not in God. Let the messengers of the Gospel go everywhere in the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ.