s, I read my Bible, I have been baptized, I have
united with the church, I partake of the Lord's supper, I attend
prayer-meeting, and I am trying to live as near right as I know how." If
these things are what you are resting upon as the ground of your
acceptance before God, then you are not saved, for all these things are
your own works (all proper in their places but still your own works) and
we are distinctly told in Rom. iii. 20, R. V., that "By the works of the
law shall no flesh be justified in His sight." But if you go to others and
ask them if they are saved, they will reply "Yes." And then if you ask
them upon what they are resting as the ground of their acceptance before
God, they will reply something to this effect, "I am not resting upon
anything I ever did, or upon anything I am ever going to do; I am resting
upon what Jesus Christ did for me when He bore my sins in His own body on
the cross. I am resting in His finished work of atonement." If this is
what you are really resting upon, then you are saved, you have accepted
Jesus Christ as your Saviour and you have taken the first step towards the
baptism with the Holy Spirit.

The same thought is taught elsewhere in the Bible, for example in Gal.
iii. 2. Here Paul asks of the believers in Galatia, "Received ye the Holy
Spirit by the works of the law, or _by the hearing of faith_?" Just what
did he mean? On one occasion when Paul was passing through Galatia, he was
detained there by some physical infirmity. We are not told what it was,
but at all events, he was not so ill but that he could preach to the
Galatians the Gospel, or glad tidings, that Jesus Christ had redeemed them
from the curse of the law by becoming a curse in their place, by dying on
the cross of Calvary. These Galatians believed this testimony; this was
the hearing of faith, and God set the stamp of His endorsement upon their
faith by giving them as a personal experience the Holy Spirit. But after
Paul had left Galatia, certain Judaizers came down from Jerusalem, men who
were substituting the law of Moses for the Gospel and taught them that it
was not enough that they simply believe on Jesus Christ but in addition to
this they must keep the law of Moses, especially the law of Moses
regarding circumcision, and that without circumcision they could not be
saved--_i. e._, they could not be saved by simple faith in Jesus (cf. Acts
xv. 1). These young converts in Galatia became all upset. They did not