Is not this, in fact, the meaning of the apostle, when he says that
faith is reckoned to us for righteousness? In the fullest sense, of
course, we know that to each believer in Jesus there is reckoned the
entire benefit of his glorious person and work, so that we are accepted
in the Beloved, and He is "made unto us ... Righteousness." But there
is another sense in which faith is reckoned to us for righteousness,
because it contains within itself the power and potency of the perfect
life. It is the seed-germ from which is developed in due course the
plant, the flower, the bud, the seed, and the reproduction of the plant
in unending succession. God reckoned to Abraham all that his faith was
capable of producing, which it did produce, and which it would have
produced had he possessed all the advantages which pertain to our own
happy lot. There is thus the objective and the subjective: in virtue
of the first, through faith in Jesus, all his righteousness is
accounted to us; in virtue of the second, God reckons to us all that
blessed flowering and fruitage of which our faith will be capable, when
patience has had its perfect work and we are perfect and entire,
wanting nothing.

II. THE OUTSTANDING FEATURES OF JOHN'S CHARACTER AND MINISTRY TO WHICH
OUR LORD DREW ATTENTION.--(1) _His Independence_. "What went ye out
into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken with the wind?" The
language of the Bible is so picturesque, so full of natural imagery,
that it appeals to every age, and speaks in every language of the
world. If its descriptions of character had been given in the language
of the philosopher or academist, what was intelligible to one age would
have been perplexing or meaningless to the next. Remember that the
long gallery in the Pyramids, which was directed to the pole-star when
they were constructed, is now hopelessly out of course, because the
position of the pole-star, in relation to the earth, has so entirely
altered; and what is true among the spheres is true in the use of
terms. But the Word of God employs natural figures and parables, which
the wayfaring man, though a fool, comprehends at a glance.

Who, for instance, on a gusty March day, has not watched the wind
blowing lustily across a marsh or the reedy margin of a lake,
compelling all the reeds to stoop in the same direction? Has one
resisted the current or stood stoutly forth in protesting
non-compliance? Has one dared to adopt an unbend