ences of chief sights and feelings which perpetuate their faith as examples of all human faith-a faith not the equal companion of knowledge. The mass of their near followers, the first generation of Christians, were too evidently a parallel case to the first generations of Israel. Among those converted in mature life from heathenism, habits of seeing and feeling Christian truth constrainingly were attained slowly and with many fluctuations. The profanation of the holy table at Corinth to an occasion of excess, the toleration of an incestuous person in the communion of the church, and their strife and envy, biting and devouring one another, complained of by Paul, showed how far the assent of the intellect to the truth was from being immediately followed by life-compelling thoughtfulness and habitual emotional contemplation of that truth. Religious knowledge had not ripened into much of religious sentiment or taste. In the Jewish section of the first Christian Church the crime of Ananias and Sapphira was an equally impressive illustration of the difference between knowledge and the faith that overcomes the world. They knew the truth of the Holy Ghost's omniscience, but they acted as if they had not known anything of it. No thought of it had come to have constraining power over their minds. Their fate, like that of the Egyptian generation of the Hebrew Church, became, and perhaps was needed to be, a lesson to their successors in the Church, upon whom great fear fell in consequence of it. The great trouble of Paul's ministry among the Gentiles, in places where there were Hebrew Christians, arose from the extreme slowness of the converted Jews to quit the thoughts of Judaism, which Christian thoughts had superseded. The person whose religious character he dwells upon with most unbroken affection and happiness, while he has to complain of or mourn over so many, Timothy, was a Gentile Jew in his education, probably always hearing the Jewish peculiarities less made of; but he was also a believer whose unfeigned faith had been nurtured upon knowledge of the Holy Scriptures from a child, and that by the most leavening teaching, the emotional teaching a woman would try with a child when the woman was the child's mother, or her own more indulgent

I

Means and hindrances to knowledge becoming faith.

and more experienced mother. Does the same state of matters present itself now? Does conversion in mature life from confirmed habits of evil kind, or from carelessness to feeling of religious truth, often or ever result in the same natural-like feeling—the same inartificial, unassumed thoughtfulness of all religious things-the same easy, constraining influence of them over the life, which seems no constraint, as is seen in one who has from early years been growing into habits of spiritual life? Do the late convert's convictions blend with his moral nature like congenial elements, not joined together but become one? How much of habitual faith or spiritual "wisdom" has been produced by "revivals"?

17. If we look now at some of the representations which the Word of God gives of the means of and hindrances to sanctification, we shall see that faith, the source of all sanctification, all purifying of the heart, and all overcoming of the world, is described in accordance with the above deductions as being the accustomed thoughts, the things always before the mind— not the things learned, accepted, held as incontestably proved, undoubtedly true, but the things habitually thought of. The human means to be taken to produce all the religion of faith are so described in the beginning: "These words which I command thee shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children; thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up; and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes, and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates" (Deut. vi. 6-9); "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Prov. xxii. 6); "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life" (Prov. iv. 23). Again it is from the accustomed, the besetting, dominant thoughts that the chief hindrance to the Word of God arises. The "cares of life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things, choke" the growth of the thoughts produced by the Word (Matt. xiii. 22). The description of missed faith," By hearing ye shall hear and shall not under

stand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive " (Matt. xiii. 14), is the very description of a mind preoccupied—so full of other thoughts habitually that truths the most evident, tidings the most important, pass before it, and are seen and heard, but leave no trace behind them. And how more exactly could the same cause of loss of sanctification through the truth-thoughts habitually bound to other things-be described than thus: "They come before Thee as the people cometh, and they sit before Thee as my people, and they hear Thy words but they will not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness; and lo Thou art unto them as the very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument, for they hear Thy words but they do them not" (Ezek. xxxiii. 31, 32). In the Gospels the abiding nature of the thoughts with which faith occupies itself is set forth on another side. They are thoughts which give pleasure, the sure indication that they are habitual because cherished thoughts. "He that doeth truth"-the description of a man living by faith, by constant constraint of the truth-" cometh to the light" (John iii. 21). He seeks communion with revealed truth; he is attracted to it by the pleasure he enjoys of knowing thereby that "his deeds" of heart and life are approved by God, are such as "are wrought in God." "He that doeth evil," by the same emotional law, "hateth the light." He will not come to it; he avoids letting his thoughts have to do with it, "lest he be reproved."

operation put within tice of

18. In a treatise confined to the practice of faith, if we speak Divine coof the human origin of faith it must be of what man can do to produce faith. Primarily, that must consist of things within his man's pracown power-his own learning of revealed matters of thought faith. -his own reasoning himself into strong feeling of their truth in themselves, and their truth in relation to him-his own assimilating the thoughts and feelings so acquired into being the habit of his mind and heart. But inseparable from this purely human work in the ways of God's grace, coincident, co-operating, working in an indivisible work, is the divine origin of faith. That is God's "teaching savingly and to profit,”

-His "putting His law into the heart" and "writing His commandment on the mind," and "causing the man to walk in His statutes and keep His judgments and do them "—His "pouring out of His Spirit" upon the fleshly learner to “help his infirmities," to "teach him what to pray for as he ought,” to "raise desires" within him, to "recall to his mind the words of the Saviour," to "take of the things of the Saviour and show to him," "to enlighten the eyes of his understanding" to know, and to "strengthen the inner man with might to comprehend and go on to know the love of Christ." Is then this divine work in producing faith in any way comprehended in as well as inseparable from man's practice of faith? Is the divine as well as the human operation practically in his power? It is so. Man has to practise the seeking and obtaining of the coincident help of God toward believing. By the uniting means of prayer, every portion of the divine help is linked to man's own practice. The measure of that help is regulated by man's own practical husbanding of the portions of it dealt out to him. And, further, if we are to learn anything beyond the lesson of man's responsibility from the parable of the talents, it seems to teach that God working in us both will and ability, helps in kind. He enlightens the looking eyes to see. He opens the listening ear to hear. He gives the hungry soul more desire as well as fulfilling. He guides the actual suppliant to pray as he ought. "Thou hast heard the desire of the humble, Thou wilt prepare their heart, Thou wilt cause their ear to hear " (Ps. x. 17). "The preparation of the heart in man is from the Lord," but the man "has his senses exercised by reason of his own use of them to discern good and evil.” My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord giveth wisdom, and out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding" (Prov. ii. 1-6). The co-operation of the believer's loving thoughts and

God's help given to think is expressively set forth in Paul's prayer for the Ephesian Church, in language which commends. itself to man's conscious desires and needs. "I bow my

knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God" (Eph. iii. 14-19.)