THE gospel is still the power of God unto salvation. The same power which raised Christ from the dead brings sinners to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation. It gives spiritual life to the dead, imparts peace to the tormented conscience, delivers from the love, of sin and unholy associations, and makes the soul happy and at rest in the presence of God. Thus a vast change is produced.
You may, perhaps, have seen a drowning man just taken out of the water in a state of senselessness and in animation. The anxious standers feel for the pulse in vain; they place their ears to the mouth, and watch and listen with breathless silence for that bosom once more to heave a sigh; they move the eyelids, but all sense of light seems extinguished; they call aloud, yet not a single feature moves in response.
But powerful remedies are used, and in a little while the apparently lifeless form moves, the features beam with happy intelligence, and fully manifest every faculty of vigor and animation. How great the change! How powerful the remedies! What a vast alteration in the person! Yet this is but a feeble illustration of the power of the gospel of God in those who pass from death unto life.
Those who preach should look for decided effects, and those who hear would do well to consider whether the gospel has wrought a mighty change in them. Why has it not? Because they have not believed. They have heard that Christ shed His blood for the remission of sins, but they have not believed on Him; for the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that beliveth." "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God"; but it is not hearing about Christ only, but believing on Christ, that is the way of salvation; not merely knowing, as some say, "the plan of salvation," hut coming to Christ to be saved, that makes the power of the blessed gospel to he experienced in the soul.
H. H. S.
We are to accept salvation from God, because He has accepted satisfaction from Christ.