notice that there is not a word in it about conduct. It goes far
deeper than action. It deals with the springs of action in the
individual life. It is the depths of spiritual experience here set
forth which will result in actions that become a Christian. And in
these days, when all around us we see a shallow conception of
Christianity, as if it were concerned principally with conduct and
men's relations with one another, it is well to go down into the
depths, and to remember that whilst 'Do, do, do!' is very important,
'Be, be, be!' is the primary commandment. Conduct is a making visible
of personality, and the Scripture teaching which says first faith and
then works is profoundly philosophical as well as Christian. So we
turn away here from externals altogether, and regard the effect of
Christianity on the inward life.

I. I wish to notice man's faith and God's filling as connected, and
as the foundation of everything.

'The God of hope fill you ...'--let us leave out the intervening
words for a moment--'in believing.' Now, you notice that Paul does
not stay to tell us what or whom we are to believe in, or on. He
takes that for granted, and his thought is fastened, for the moment,
not on the object but on the act of faith. And he wishes to drive
home to us this, that the attitude of trust is the necessary
prerequisite condition of God's being able to fill a man's soul, and
that God's being able to fill a man's soul is the necessary
consequence of a man's trust. Ah, brethren, we cannot altogether shut
God out from our spirits. There are loving and gracious gifts that,
as our Lord tells us, He makes to 'fall on the unthankful and the
evil.' His rain is not like the summer showers that we sometimes see,
that fall in one spot and leave another dry; nor like the destructive
thunderstorms, that come down bringing ruin upon one cane-brake and
leave the plants in the next standing upright. But the best, the
highest, the truly divine gifts which He is yearning to give to us
all, cannot be given except there be consent, trust, and desire for
them. You can shut your hearts or you can open them. And just as the
wind will sigh round some hermetically closed chamber in vain search
for a cranny, and the man within may be asphyxiated though the
atmosphere is surging up its waves all round his closed domicile, so
by lack of our faith, which is at once trust, consent, and desire, we
shut out the gift with which God would fain fill our