Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/75

 to Christ's formula! This is precisely what His formula involves, for when a man wills to do God's will, he takes the first step in faith.

Then when a man comes into this attitude toward God's will, he will next inquire where he is to commence in the doing of that will, what the first step is in the will of God.

The Textbook tells us that the first step is to "repent and believe the Gospel." That this is the first step is self-evident, because the heart must be opened to Him who alone can give the knowledge of spiritual truth before that knowledge is possible, and repentance and faith are the opening of the heart to Him. For repentance is a coming into that attitude of heart toward God in which the whole life is laid bare before Him exactly as it is, thereby opening the way for faith; and believing the Gospel is an entering upon that faith which accepts the Gospel—the Good News—of Christ's finished work of atonement for sin through His shed blood on the cross, and reckons pardon for sin and new life in Christ to be now ours according to the Word of God. For faith, you remember, is both an attitude and an act; an attitude of surrender to God, and an act of receiving what God has for us; and this is precisely what it means to repent and believe the Gospel.

This means that the man of genuine scientific spirit will begin his pursuit of spiritual truth by sincere "repentance toward God" and "faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ" for salvation through His shed blood, which, according to the Textbook, are the first steps in willing to do the will of God, followed by a moment-by-moment dependence on Christ, Who is now