Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/232

224 We believe that the very beginning and end of salvation, and the sum of Christianity, consists of faith in Christ, who by His blood alone, and not by any works of ours, has put away sin, and destroyed the power of death. —.

Let it be borne in mind, however, that the merit or efficiency of all this is not in us, or in faith itself. All blessing, all power, all efficiency belong to God alone. These He may communicate in manner and measure as seems best to His sovereign will; but He has constituted faith the nexus, or electric wire, by which we may be brought into connection with His inexhaustible fullness. The tree planted in rich soil, surrounded with a genial atmosphere, and basking under the light and heat of the sun, possesses an appropriating principle of life, by which it appropriates from all these surrounding elements, and assimilates to its own nature whatever is adapted to its healthy growth and fruitfulness. These things do not dwell in the tree, nor in the appropriating principle itself. They may abound in all their fullness and richness; but let the tree be without this appropriating principle, and it stands in the midst of them all, bare, barren, dead. So faith is the appropriating principle of spiritual life, by which, if properly exercised, we may appropriate to ourselves out of the Divine fullness. And, as in proportion to the healthy exercise of the appropriating principle in the tree, so will be its growth and fruitfulness, so in proportion as faith is in healthy, spiritual exercise, will be our spiritual growth, fruitfulness, and triumphs. The fullness of blessing is in God; we become partakers by faith. —.

Faith is a simple trust in a personal Redeemer. The simpler our trust in Christ for all things, the surer our peace. —.