A SECOND WORD TO THE SEEKER.
By Cuyler
OUR former article addressed "to the seeker after Christ," has called forth many kind and frank responses from various quarters. One of our correspondents writes to us out of the very blackness of darkness. He is completely nonplused as to what he should do, or how he should do it. Evidently an honest inquirer after elementary Christian truth, he proposes some very simple questions which he says he "does not find intelligently answered" by those from whom he seeks spiritual guidance. As he insists that "thousands of others" are as much in the dark as himself, we will try to reply to him and to them through the same column. 1. His first question is, "What is it to believe in Christ? As the devils are said to believe, how am I to believe differently from them?" My friend, you want to know what faith is. It is simply taking God at his word. He offers you salvation on certain conditions. The specific condition is, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved." You have no right to dictate the terms to him; he has the right to dictate them to you, and your duty is to comply and obey. When the camp of Israel was in peril of death from the fatal bite of the fiery serpent, the command of God was to look at a brazen serpent on a pole which Moses set up in sight of all the people. That was a simple process surely—merely the looking toward an emblem of brass. The dying Israelite might sweep the horizon with his languid eye, and all to no purpose; but the moment that he fixed his eye on the serpent of brass and so obeyed God, he was cured. Now there was faith in its simplest simplicity. He took God at his word. He trusted what God said, and relied on it. The restoration of the bitten Jew was made to depend on trusting in God's appointed method of relief. And your soul's salvation will depend on your obedience to God's command to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." You will perhaps understand faith in Christ somewhat better if you separate the idea into its three component parts. In the first place it implies knowledge. You know (from the teachings of the Bible) that such a being exists as Jesus Christ. In the second place it implies assent. You acknowledge with all the heart the truth of his atonement, and the sufficiency of it; and this you do in reliance on God's veracity. But knowledge is not enough—nor is assent enough. They are both matters of the understanding. You must also trust. This is the third element of faith, and so vital is it that there can be no saving faith without trust. While assent is somewhat a speculative thing, trust is a real and a practical work of the will and of the affections too. The will makes choice of Christ as a Saviour, and the affections cling to him. He is entirely and thoroughly relied on as having taught us how to live by his own spotless example, as having provided for us a complete salvation. To him you are to submit. To him you are to give up your heart; you are to love Christ more than you love your gold and your silver, more than you love your wife or child, more than you love your own life. Whatever Christ bids you do in his word, that you are to do cheerfully. No matter how severely it may tax your selfishness, or try your patience; no matter what loss of time, or fortune, or friends it may cost you. Obedience is the test of faith. If you are not willing to take up a cross and follow in the path which Christ and your conscience direct, you cannot claim to be a Christian. You are not a true believer. For while the devils in the pit know of Christ, and assent to the claims of his divine power and majesty, they do not trust in Christ, nor do they love him. Here is the answer to the second part of your question. The devils have a speculative faith in Christ, but their wills do not submit to him, and their affections do not cling to him; instead of that, their whole souls boil with hatred and malignity toward him. And now, my good friend, I have tried to tell you, in the most transparent language of which I am possessed, just what it is to believe in Jesus Christ. Whenever you can honestly trust in Jesus, and in Jesus alone, for your salvation—whenever you can shun an attractive object simply because Jesus forbids you to touch it—whenever you can cheerfully do a disagreeable, painful duty, solely because Jesus commands the self-sacrifice—whenever your heart begins to love Christ, and to love all men around you as his children, and to love to draw men to Christ—then may you begin to hope that you are a Bible Christian. You will never reach that state until the Holy Spirit comes to help you; and you must pray most intensely for his powerful influences upon your heart. It is a stubborn, willful, wayward, selfish, wicked heart, that only a divine power can reform. But pray do not insult God by asking him to make you a better man, while you are lazily drifting along in the current of your own selfish lusts and desires, or else persistently holding to every bad practice you were ever inclined to. There is no such thing as faith without works. I have no confidence in the conversion of a tippler who occasionally seeks out his old haunts for his favorite glass. I have no confidence in the conversion of a passionate man if he is still willing to explode the wrathful oath, or to strike the revengeful blow. I have no confidence in the conversion of a miser if it does not unlock his purse, or of the slave-holder if it does not lead him at once to treat his slave as a man, and not as a chattel, and to apply at once to that slave the golden rule. I have no confidence in any "faith" that does not make its possessor a better man, a better neighbor, a better citizen, a better child of our heavenly Father. Even a man's cat and dog ought to be the better off for his being a Christian. I am not surprised to hear you say that you do not understand the nature of faith. Its very simplicity troubled you. You could not realize that the great thing, and the one thing you were to do was simply to go to Jesus Christ, and to let him do the saving work for your soul. So in my187school-boy days in the country have I often seen a frightened sheep bewildering itself as to the right fashion of escaping from the pen, although the gate stood wide open. After many frantic dashings of its foolish head against bars and rails, it got the idea at last that it would be easier to pass out through an open gate than through a chestnut fence or a stone wall; and when it had found the right place it bounded off with high leaps, perfectly overjoyed with its emancipation. 'The way of salvation is perfectly plain to me now,' remarked a person once to her pastor. 'The darkness is all gone. Everything is clear to me now. I do not know how or why it is so. But you read a hymn the other night with these words: 'A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On thy kind arms I fall;
Be thou my strength and righteousness,
My Jesus and my all.' I saw then at once that I had nothing to do but to trust in Jesus. I sat all the evening just thinking of those lines. I did not hear your prayer nor your text, nor a word of your sermon. I thought of nothing but those lines then and ever since. I am so contented and happy. Why, sir, don't you think that the reason why we do not get out of our darkness sooner is that we don't believe?' From that evening onward that person had no difficulty with the way of salvation. She found out the right road when she trusted Christ to lead her into it; and having once entered upon it she found it a path of pleasantness and of peace. My friend, Christ says to you as he did to Jairus, ONLY BELIEVE. He will help you when you honestly begin. A hearty desire to perform what is right is generally followed by a luminous discernment of what is true. Try to do as you ought, and God will give you light to see as you ought. Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. Perhaps the greatest difficulty with you after all is not so much an ignorance of the way of salvation, as a refusal to walk in it. The theory of faith may continue to be a theological puzzle to you until you earnestly and prayerfully undertake to carry it into practice. Then you will discover that the right way of learning how a thing is done is to do it. May God give you strength equal to your day! He says, "Ye shall seek me and find me when ye search for me with all the heart."