Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/149

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no labour to attain. The ample page of the book of Nature, and the Eternal Truth of the book of Revelation, speak alike to the certainty of the doctrine that there is one God, and that the Lord Jesus Christ is that one God—the true God and Eternal Life. The very "devils believe" this doctrine; and though there may be, among men, some few who deny it, and affect a sort of argument to give colour to their denial, yet there can be nothing more certain and obvious than that "there is one God, and there is none else." But this knowledge alone, this faith alone, this belief alone, never yet saved a soul. All the knowledge of those brought before the bar of the Lord was not disputed; it was the want of the good of life that condemned them; "I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat; thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; naked, and ye clothed me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited me not;" and, "Forasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me." That was the ground of rejection! The Judge did not dispute that they HAD taught in the name of the Lord, cast out devils in the name of the Lord, and performed wonderful works in the name of the Lord. They, therefore, had faith, but their faith cost them no labour, it was powerless for their own salvation, was absolutely dead; therefore the Lord knew them not, and they were accounted as workers of iniquity, and thus cast out.

Now faith, or knowledge and truth, is one of the aliments of the soul, and is by the Lord a free gift to man; it is as necessary for the soul as the aliment of air or water is for the body—neither the one nor the other could exist without them: hence we find that