the Christ, "and
ye shall know." And if we are really seeking a basis of assurance in
His saving power, we ought surely to take Him at His word, when He
tells us how to find it. It is not first through assured belief that
we become sure of Christ, it is by doing Christ's will that we become
sure of our belief. Have we to explain to a child the mechanism of its
limbs before it can attempt to walk? The impulse comes, and the child
walks, that is all. But the child has to walk to know that it can walk.

But what, you ask me, are we to say about sudden conversions, of which
we once heard so much, and which we are still taught to seek and
expect? What, I ask you, about those sudden flashes of insight which
at times seem to reveal in a moment a way out of difficulties which for
years we have sought in vain? A man told me lately about a period in
his life when through drink and betting he was reduced from a
prosperous man to a wreck in body and means. "I was down," he said,
"low as a human creature could get in this world." He was converted to
God, and from the very hour his change came, he declared that his
craving for drink, and mania for gambling, dropped out of his being, as
a piece of dead matter falls away from a living organism. And there
are such cases, thank God, but we must not make our teaching about them
misleading by making it despotic. As in the instances of sudden
insight, we do not because we dare not say they are general, deny that
they occur. The soul-development on its immortal side is, for the most
part, gradual and slow. The life-faculty is there, but it often means
hard work, patient waiting, and great faith, to realize its presence
and bring out its power.

[2] It has been said that modern psychology confirms scientifically
this method of seeking and finding the truth. It teaches that action
has often to precede thought and feeling. If this is the word of
psychology, it is really in accord with the method of Jesus.
Practically all His teaching is addressed, not so much to the intellect
or to the emotions, but to the will. He does not put doing and
believing in opposition; in actual life they are really
indistinguishable parts of a healthy spiritual growth. But our Lord
does put doing before knowing, as He puts religion before theology, and
life before the understanding of life. His unmistakable object is to
constrain men to take action, rather than to wait for emotion, or even
for int