the condition--it is a condition only, for
there is no virtue in the act of trust, but only in that with which we
are brought into living union when we do trust. When salvation comes,
into my heart by faith it is not my faith but God's grace that puts
salvation there.

Faith is only the condition, ay! but it is the indispensable condition.
How many ways are there of getting possession of a gift? One only, I
should suppose, and that is, to put out a hand and take it. If salvation
is _by_ grace it must be '_through_ faith.' If you will not accept you
cannot have. That is the plain meaning of what theologians call
justification by faith; that pardon is given on condition of taking it.
If you do not take it you cannot have it. And so this is the upshot of
the whole--trust, and you have.

Oh, dear friends! open your eyes to see your dangers. Let your
conscience tell you of your sickness. Do not try to deliver, or to heal
yourselves. Self-reliance and self-help are very good things, but they
leave their limitations, and they have no place here. 'Every man his own
Redeemer' will not work. You can no more extricate yourself from the
toils of sin than a man can release himself from the folds of a python.
You can no more climb to heaven by your own effort than you can build a
railway to the moon. You must sue _in forma pauperis_, and be content to
accept as a boon an unmerited place in your Father's heart, an
undeserved seat at His bountiful table, an unearned share in His wealth,
from the hands of your Elder Brother, in whom is all His grace, and who
gives salvation to every sinner if he will trust Him. 'By grace have ye
been saved through faith.'

GOD'S WORKMANSHIP AND OUR WORKS

'We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which God hath before ordained that we should walk in
them.'--Eph. ii. 10.

The metal is molten as it runs out of the blast furnace, but it soon
cools and hardens. Paul's teaching about salvation by grace and by faith
came in a hot stream from his heart, but to this generation his words
are apt to sound coldly, and hardly theological. But they only need to
be reflected upon in connection with our own experience, to become vivid
and vital again. The belief that a man may work towards salvation is a
universal heresy. And the Apostle, in the context, summons all his force
to destroy that error, and to substitute the great truth that we have to
begin with an a