The Lord our Righteousness.
A MAN who was believed to sustain a good moral character, on being questioned on the subject of religion, said, "I am doing what I can to obtain the favor of God. I am trying to prepare myself for heaven." "But you have made no public acknowledgment of your faith by any covenant with God's people on earth." "No, I am no church member; and the reason is, I see so many hypocritical professors of religion, that I prefer to remain outside the church." "It is not impossible that you may be one of Christ's true followers, although sustaining no visible relation to them. Allow me then to ask, What are the grounds of your hope? Upon what do you depend, as seeming to you to be a preparation for death and a fitness for heaven?" He replied, "So far as I am able, I always aim to do right in every thing. This is certainly all that can be required of any person. So far as I know and am able to do, I am trying to do right." But are your hopes for another world based on nothing else? Have you no other foundation on which to rest your hope? Is not yours a dependence on self, instead of a dependence on Christ? It is written in the Scriptures, 'Other foundation can no man lay than is laid, which is Jesus Christ.' How then does Christ the Friend and Saviour of sinners appear to you?" To that question the confident moralist had nothing to say. He was evidently a stranger to that way of salvation. There was no response in heart or word to the question, 'What think ye of Christ?' He who to the believer is 'altogether lovely' and 'the chief among ten thousand,' had no charms for this poor Christless sinner. Hopeful and yet without hope, sufficiently righteous in his own eyes and having saving righteousness, he manifested an uneasiness which evinced a desire to stop the conversation, and quickly turned away from a friend whose last words, in an attempt to point him to the Lamb of God, we trust will not be soon forgotten. The great truth illustrated by this incident is this: no salvation without righteousness, and no true righteousness without Christ. Christ first, then holiness, and after that eternal life. The watch word of the reformers is still and ever will be the motto of the Christian, "The Lord our righteousness."---Am. Messenger.