to Jesus Christ. So some of you think that
it is some kind of theological juggle which has nothing to do with, and
never can be seen in operation in, common life. Suppose, instead of the
threadbare, technical 'faith' we took to a new translation for a minute,
and said '_trust_,' do you think that would freshen up the thought to
you at all? It is the very same thing which makes the sweetness of your
relations to wife and husband and friend and parent, which, transferred
to Jesus Christ and glorified in the process, becomes the seed of
immortal life and the opener of the gate of Heaven. Trust Jesus Christ.
That is the living centre of the Christian life; that is the process by
which we draw the general blessing of the Gospel into our own hearts,
and make the world-wide truth, our truth.

I need not insist either, I suppose, on the necessity, if our Christian
life is to be modelled upon the Apostolic lines, of our faith embracing
the Christ in all these aspects in which I have been speaking about His
work. God forbid that I should seem to despise rudimentary and
incomplete feelings after Him in any heart which may be unable to say
'Amen' to Paul's statement here. I want to insist very earnestly, and
with special reference to the young, that the true Christian faith is
not merely the grasp of the person, but it is the grasp of the Person
who is 'declared to be the Son of God,' and whose death is the voluntary
self-surrender motived by His love, for the carrying away of the sins of
every single soul in the whole universe. That is the Christ, the full
Christ, cleaving to whom our faith finds somewhat to grasp worthy of
grasping. And I beseech you, be not contented with a partial grasp of a
partial Saviour; neither shut your eyes to the divinity of His nature,
nor to the efficacy of His death, but remember that the true Gospel
preaches Christ and Him crucified; and that for us, saving faith is the
faith that grasps the Son of God 'Who loved me and gave Himself for me.'

Note, further, that true faith is personal faith, which appropriates,
and, as it were, fences in as my very own, the purpose and benefit of
Christ's giving of Himself. It is always difficult for lazy people (and
most of us are lazy) to transfer into their own personal lives, and to
bring into actual contact with themselves and their own experience,
wide, general truths. To assent to them, when we keep them in their
generality, is very easy and very profitless.