dwell for more than a moment upon the lamentable contrast
which is presented between this certitude, which is our only fitting
attitude, and the hesitating assent and half belief in which so many
professing Christians pass their lives. The reasons for that are
partly moral, partly intellectual. This is not a day which is
favourable to the unhesitating avowal of convictions in reference to
an unseen world, and many of us are afraid of being called narrow, or
dogmatisers, and think it looks like breadth, and liberality, and
culture, and I know not what, to say 'Well! perhaps it is, but I am
not quite sure; I think it is, but I will not commit myself.' All the
promises of God, which in Him are yea, ought through Him to get from
us an 'Amen.'

There is a great deal that will always be uncertain. The firmer our
convictions, the fewer will be the things that they grasp; but, if
they be few, they will be large, and enough for us. These truths
certified in Christ concerning the heart of God, the message of
pardon, the law for life, the gifts of guidance, defence, and
sanctifying, the sure and certain hope of immortality--these things
we ought to be sure about, whatever borderland of uncertainty may lie
beyond them. The Christian verb is 'we _know_,' not 'we hope, we
calculate, we infer, we think,' but 'we _know_.' And it becomes
us to apprehend for ourselves the full blessedness and power of the
certitude which Christ has given to us by the certainties which he
has brought us.

I need not speak about the blessedness of such a calm assurance,
about the need of it for power, for peace, for effort, for fixedness
in the midst of a world and age of change. But I must, before I
close, point you to the only path by which that certitude is
attainable. '_Through_ Him is the amen.' He is the Door. The truths
which He confirms are so inextricably intertwined with Himself that
you cannot get them and put away Him. Christ's relation to Christ's
Gospel is not the relation of other teachers to their words. You may
accept the words of a Plato, whatever you think of the Plato who
spoke the words. But you cannot separate Christ and His teaching in
that fashion, and you must have _Him_ if you are to get _it_. So,
faith in Him, the intellectual acceptance of Him, as the
authoritative and infallible Revealer, the bowing down of heart and
will to Him as our Commander and our Lord, the absolute trust in Him
as the foundation of all our hope and t