conformity to Christ which is the
supreme end of Christian nurture. If we conceive of the Christian life
as only a gradual growth in grace, is there not danger that we come to
regard this growth as both invisible and inevitable, and so take little
responsibility for its accomplishment? Let the believer receive the
Holy Ghost by a definite act of faith for his consecration, as he
received Christ by faith for his justification, and may he not be sure
that he is in a safe and scriptural way of acting? We know of no
plainer form of stating the matter than to speak of it as a simple
acceptance by faith, the faith which is

An affirmation and an act,
Which bids eternal truth be present fact.

{95}

It is a fact that Christ has made atonement for sin; in conversion
faith appropriates this fact in order to our justification. It is a
fact that the Holy Ghost has been given; in consecration faith
appropriates this fact for our sanctification. One who writes upon
this subject with a scholarship evidently illuminated by a deep
spiritual tuition, says: "If a reference to personal experience may be
permitted, I may indeed here 'set my seal.' Never shall I forget the
gain to conscious faith and peace which came to my own soul, not long
after a first decisive and appropriating view of the crucified Lord as
the sinner's sacrifice of peace, from a more intelligent and conscious
hold upon the living and most gracious personality of the Spirit
through whose mercy the soul had got that blessed view. It was a new
development of insight into the love of God. _It was a new contact as
it were with the inner and eternal movements of redeeming goodness and
power, a new discovery in divine resources._"[9]

Well is our doctrine described in these italicised words: "_A contact
with the inner movements of Divine power_." The energy of the Spirit
appropriated, even as with uplifted finger the electric car touches the
current which is moving just above it in the wire and is borne
irresistibly on by it.--Thus does the power which is eternally for us
become a power within us; the law of Sinai, with {96} its tables of
stone, is replaced by "the law of the Spirit of life" in the fleshly
tables of the heart; the outward commandment is exchanged for an inward
decalogue; hard duty by holy delight, that henceforth the Christian
life may be "all in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God."

[1] Rev. E. Boys, "Filled with the Sp