REAL faith is a living, active principle in the soul of the Christian. It is the result of something real within—very real, and something equally real without. It is, we might say, the combined result of a sense of real danger, real need within, and the assurance of an unfailing resource without.
Everybody knows that to be in the midst of a city shaken by a mighty earthquake is a vastly different thing from hearing and believing even an accurate account of it five hundred miles, away.
Such a thing has been known as persons sleeping all through a devastating shock, utterly insensible to any danger, though surrounded by hundreds injured or destroyed suddenly, and thousands more in dire alarm.
The genuine waking up of a soul to its true state and real peril is a different thing from hearing of and coldly discussing such things in others. We may be sure of this, that when once such an actual peril is truly realized the urgency of a way of escape has its own overpowering importance. It is all so livingly real to the one who by God’s work in the soul experiences it, though only as a passing vapor to all who realize no personal need.
Take an illustration. A large hotel was on fire. It was a terrible conflagration, and the flames had made considerable headway before some of the inmates were aware of it. One of the survivors, driven back by the flames in the hall, rushed upstairs to his bedroom in an upper story, where an escape-rope for such an emergency was fixed. He seized it, and lowered himself through clouds of smoke down to the ground. He had, no doubt, often seen this rope before, but in that perilous moment he looked upon it in an entirely new light. “I am in terrible danger; I know it! This rope is my only way of escape, and it is there for the use of any one in like danger.”
Talk about sudden conversion! Think of this man. The clutching of that rope and putting it to the test of his entire weight, as he swung out of the window trusting his life to it, was a picture to all beholders of saving faith, and the work of only a moment or two. There was no mere sentiment about it. It was all so awfully, so intensely real.
And when a conscience-smitten soul, feeling his sinful need, lets go every other reliance and lays hold of the God-provided, Love-given, sin-atoning Saviour, he is henceforward known in heaven as a believer on the Lord Jesus Christ; and all that in the mind of God belongs to every believer, belongs henceforth to him.
Have you, my reader, ever been seen by God in such a position? If not, in view of the swiftly-approaching end, we could not do less than warn you of your peril. God Himself awaken you! Perhaps you are already awakened, but not at rest. Then let me impress upon you that this short paper is not intended to occupy you with your faith, but with Him Who is the only resting place for the faith of a soul divinely awakened. God has only one answer to every cry of soul distress. It is, LOOK TO JESUS. The man in the burning building had nothing but a swinging rope to hang his bodily safety upon; yet in his opinion it was good enough, and so he found it. The Spirit of God presents to you a Living Person, all-worthy of your confidence—
“’Tis Jesus, ’tis Jesus, the Saviour from above;
’Tis Jesus, ’tis Jesus, ’tis Jesus Whom we love.”
He is the sin-purging Provision of God, the Endurer of the judgment of God, the risen Son of God. He has been seated on the righteous throne of God, the Object of the delight of God; and in His very Name is found the Salvation of God. He is the subject of the testimony of God, and that testimony brought from heaven by the Holy Spirit of God. It is all of God in Christ.
If the man alluded to, when his peril was brought home to him, could trust his bodily safety on such a thing as a rope of hemp, every sinner whose true state is brought home to him by the Spirit of God will surely find, himself able to trust his soul’s safety upon such an unfailing Person as the One Whom God has exalted. He will rest on what God thinks of what Jesus is and what Jesus has done; done for what God knows the sinner is and what the sinner has done.
Could you, remembering what you are and what God is, go to Him and ask for more than His love has found for you in the Lord Jesus Christ? Impossible! GEO. C.