[Footnote 1:  “Concerning the object of felicity in heaven, we are agreed that it can be no other than the blessed God himself, the all-comprehending good, fully adequate to the highest and most enlarged reasonable desires.  But the contemperation of our faculties to the holy, blissful object, is so necessary to our satisfying fruition, that without this we are no more capable thereof, than a brute of the festivities of a quaint oration, or a stone of the relishes of the most pleasant meats and drinks.”  HOWE:  Heaven a State of Perfection.]

[Footnote 2:  GOETHE:  Wilhelm Meister, Book VII., ch. iii.]

[Footnote 3:  Compare Isaiah lxi. 1.]

[Footnote 4:  ULLMANN:  Sinlessness of Jesus, Pt.  I., Ch. iii., Sec. 2.]

FAITH THE SOLE SAVING ACT.

JOHN vi. 28, 29.—­“Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?  Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”

In asking their question, the Jews intended to inquire of Christ what particular things they must do, before all others, in order to please God.  The “works of God,” as they denominate them, were not any and every duty, but those more special and important acts, by which the creature might secure the Divine approval and favor.  Our Lord understood their question in this sense, and in His reply tells them, that the great and only work for them to do was to exercise faith in Him.  They had employed the plural number in their question; but in His answer He employs the singular.  They had asked, What shall we do that we might work the works of God,—­as if there were several of them.  His reply is, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.”  He narrows down the terms of salvation to a single one; and makes the destiny of the soul to depend upon the performance of a particular individual act.  In this, as in many other incidental ways, our Lord teaches His own divinity.  If He were a mere creature; if He were only an inspired teacher like David or Paul; how would He dare, when asked to give in a single word the condition and means of human salvation, to say that they consist in resting the soul upon Him?  Would David have dared to say:  “This is the work of God,—­this is the saving act,—­that ye believe in me?” Would Paul have presumed to say to the anxious inquirer:  “Your soul is safe, if you trust in me?” But Christ makes this declaration, without any qualification.  Yet He was meek and lowly of heart, and never assumed an honor or a prerogative that did not belong to Him.  It is only upon the supposition that He was “very God of very God,” the Divine Redeemer of the children of men, that we can justify such an answer to such a question.