.

"If any man will do his will, he shall know."--St. John vii. 17.

IX

'WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?'

"When I was well into my teens," said a very intelligent woman to me
some time ago, "and for long after I had left them, I listened to
preachers and preaching; and such powers as I had I put into my
listening, for I wanted to get at something I could hold for sure and
real in the promises of religion. I was told Sunday by Sunday to
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust in Him, and commit to His
keeping my soul's welfare. And as far as I knew what belief meant I
believed; and tried to persuade myself that I was trusting Christ. But
I was not conscious that it made any real difference in my life; that
it gave me anything I had not before. Hence I gradually came to the
conclusion that either the preachers could not tell me what it was on
which I had specifically to lay hold, or it was useless for me to
prosecute my attempt to grasp it."

This woman said what many think, who are as yet within listening
distance of our pulpits. They want to understand what they must do and
believe, to lay hold of that which can make a difference in their life;
which can find in it, or bring into it, something that answers in very
truth to what the Bible calls "the power of God unto salvation."

It is, surely, a reasonable thing to ask. As religious teachers we can
have no right to plead with people to believe what we are not prepared
to help them to understand. Some of you may have reason, as you think,
to endorse this woman's testimony as a fair statement of your own
experience. Can I help you? Most gladly will I do so if I can.

One thing should be said, as I come closer to the attempt. If you are
really anxious to find help, guard against mistaken impressions of what
that help should be, or can be. In religion, as in all the deeper
places of human life, one great teacher is experience; and you can
neither anticipate nor rush experience. A mother says in answer to
certain questions of her child: "Wait until you are older and you will
find out." That, to the child, is no answer at all; but, while the
child is a child, it is the only answer there is.

Divine truth is infallible; but, as it has often been pointed out,
there is no human infallible apprehension of divine truth. We have to
admit that there may be, and indeed must be, many phases and aspects of
saving truth which we cannot comprehend. There are othe