mental assent to facts, it is primarily
surrendering to a Person. This is what it means to believe on Christ, and
anything short of this will neither give us knowledge of the truth nor make
us free.

Then following this attitude toward Christ, the believer evidences his
faith by continuing in His Word, by which he comes into experiential
knowledge of its truth and its meaning.

Then coming to know the truth by experiencing it through faith, he is where
the Son of God Himself becomes his freedom. And there is no other freedom.
It is in the experience of =Himself=, not in an intellectual assent to
facts about Him, that He makes us free by becoming the =way= to God for us,
the =truth= about God to us, and the =life= of God in us.

It is therefore only he whom the Son sets free who is free indeed, for
freedom from the curse of sin by the experience of Christ as Saviour, and
freedom from the blindness of error by the experience of Christ as Truth
incarnate, is the only freedom there is.

When the Word says, therefore, "Whatsoever is not of =faith= is =sin=," it
contemplates both the object of faith and the cause of forfeited freedom.
For the Holy Spirit came to convict men of =sin= because they =believe not
on Christ=. Unfaith in Christ is therefore the essence of sin. And sin is
bondage, not freedom. Scripture describes the unbeliever in Christ as the
bondslave of sin, held in chains of darkness and error. This is why it is
impossible either to know even natural truth in any adequate way, or to be
able to untangle it from error, without becoming a believer on Christ as
the first step. So let no one who has not surrendered his heart to Christ
in faith boast that he either knows the truth or is free.

But suppose a man should seek to know spiritual truth and yet refuse to
surrender his heart to Christ in faith, then what? It could only be because
he was so devoid of the scientific spirit that he did not want to =know the
truth= at =any cost=. And no man who is in this frame of mind can ever come
to know the truth. Haeckel defines the scientific attitude of mind when he
says of the scientific inquirer that his

sole and only task is to seek to know the truth, and to teach
what he has discovered to be the truth, indifferent as
to ... consequences.

This means, in the terms of our present discussion, that in order to know
spiritual truth, the man of scientific mind will be willing to work by
Christ's formula