bitrary
theological arrangement, but it is the only means by which the life that
is the basis both of salvation and of righteousness can be implanted in
men. There is no other way by which Jesus Christ can come into our
hearts than by what the New Testament calls 'trust,' which we have
turned into the hard, theological concept which too often glides over
people's minds without leaving any dint at all--'faith.' Distrust is
united with trust. There is no trust without, complementary to it,
self-distrust. Just as the sprouting seed sends one little radicle
downwards, and that becomes the root, and at the same time sends up
another one, white till it reaches the light, and it becomes the stem,
so the underside of faith is self-distrust, and you must empty
yourselves before you can open your hearts to be filled by Jesus. That
being so, this self-distrustful trust is the beginning of everything.
That is the _alpha_ of the whole alphabet, however glorious and manifold
may be the words into which its letters are afterwards combined. Faith
is the hand that grasps. It is the means of communication, it is the
channel through which the grace which is the life, or, rather, I should
say, the life which is the grace, comes to us. It is the open door by
which the angel of God comes in with his gifts. It is like the petals of
the flowers, opening when the sunshine kisses them, and, by opening,
laying bare the depths of their calyxes to be illuminated and coloured,
and made to grow by the sunshine which itself has opened them, and
without the presence of which, within the cup, there would have been
neither life nor beauty. So faith is the basis of everything; the first
shoot from which all the others ascend. Brethren, have you that initial
grace? I leave the question with you. If you have not that, you have
nothing else.

Then again, out of faith rises love. No man can love God unless he
believes that God loves him. I, for my part, am old-fashioned and narrow
enough not to believe that there is any deep, soul-cleansing or
soul-satisfying love of God which is not the answer to the love that
died on the Cross. But you must believe that, and more than believe it;
you must have trusted and cast yourselves on it, in the utter
abandonment of self-distrust and Christ-confidence, before there will
well up in your heart the answering love to God. First faith, then love.
My love is the reverberation of the primeval voice, the echo of God's.
The a