ly proclaimed,
and firmly apprehended by preachers and by hearers, that the object of
trust is the living Person, Jesus Christ, and that the trust which
grapples us to Him is essentially a personal relation entered into by
our wills and hearts far more than by our heads.

All that is being apprehended by the Christian Church to-day a great
deal more clearly than it used to be when some of us were young. But we
have the defects of our qualities. And this generation is accustomed far
too lightly and superficially to say 'Oh! I do not care about doctrines.
I cleave to the living Christ!' Amen! say I. But there is another
question--What Christ is it that you are cleaving to? For our only way
of knowing a person with whom we have no external acquaintance is by
what we are told about him, and believe about him. And so, while we
cannot assert too strongly that faith or trust in the living Christ, and
not in a dogma, is the basis of real Christian life, we have need to be
very definite and sure as to what Christ--which Christ--it is that we
are trusting to? And there my text comes in, and tells us that faith is
to grasp Christ as our righteousness; and another saying of the Apostle
Paul's comes in, who for once speaks of faith as being faith not only in
the Christ, but in 'His blood':--

'Jesus! Thy blood and righteousness,
My beauty are, my glorious dress.'

Brethren! you will not get beyond that. The Christ, trusting in whom we
have life and salvation, is the Christ whose blood cleanses, whose
righteousness clothes us poor, sinful men. So, while proclaiming with
all emphasis, and rejoicing to press it upon all my brethren, that
salvation comes by personal trust in the Person, I supplement and fill
out, not contradict, that proclamation, when I further say that the
Person by trusting in whom we are saved, is the Jesus whose blood
cleanses and whose righteousness becomes ours. That righteousness is, in
our text, contemplated as God's, as being embodied in Christ's, that
from Him it may be imparted to us, if we will fulfil the condition on
which alone it can be ours, viz., faith. It becomes ours, by no mere
imputation which has not a reality at the back of it, but because faith
brings us into such a vital union with Jesus Christ as that His
righteousness, or at least a spark from the central flame, becomes ours,
not only in reference to our exemption from the burden of our guilt, but
in reference to our becoming conf