e to your separation for God's service, and to the purity
which comes from it. Be true to the life which God has implanted in you.
That life may be very feeble and covered by a great deal of rubbish, but
it is divine. Let it work, let it out. Do not disgrace your name.

These are the phases of the law of Christian conduct. They reach far,
they fit close, they penetrate deeper than the needle points of minute
regulations. If you will live in a manner corresponding to the
character, and worthy of the love of God, as revealed in Christ, and in
conformity with the principles that are enthroned upon His Cross, and in
obedience to the destiny held forth in your high calling, and in
faithfulness to the name that He Himself has impressed upon you, then
your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the painful and
punctilious pharisaical obedience to outward commands, and all things
lovely and of good report will spring to life in your hearts and bear
fruit in your lives.

One last word--all these exhortations go on the understanding that you
are a Christian, that you have taken Christ for your Saviour, and are
resting upon Him, and recognising in Him the revelation of God, and in
His Cross the foundation of your hope; that you have listened to, and
yielded to, the divine summons, and that you have a right to be called a
saint. Is that presumption true about you, my friend? If it is not,
Christianity thinks that it is of no use wasting time talking to you
about conduct.

It has another word to speak to you first, and after you have heard and
accepted it, there will be time enough to talk to you about rules for
living. The first message which Christ sends to you by my lips is, Trust
your sinful selves to Him as your only all-sufficient Saviour. When you
have accepted Him, and are leaning on Him with all your weight of sin
and suffering, and loving Him with your ransomed heart, then, and not
till then, will you be in a position to hear His law for your life, and
to obey it. Then, and not till then, will you appreciate the divine
simplicity and breadth of the great command to walk worthy of God, and
the divine tenderness and power of the motive which enforces it, and
prints it on yielding and obedient hearts, even the dying love and Cross
of His Son. Then, and not till then, will you know how the voice from
heaven that calls you to His kingdom stirs the heart like the sound of a
trumpet, and how the name which you bear is