The belief is spontaneous and natural to man, that something must be done in order to salvation.  No man expects to reach heaven by inaction.  Even the indifferent and supine soul expects to rouse itself up at some future time, and work out its salvation.  The most thoughtless and inactive man, in religious respects, will acknowledge that thoughtlessness and inactivity if continued will end in perdition.  But he intends at a future day to think, and act, and be saved.  So natural is it, to every man, to believe in salvation by works; so ready is every one to concede that heaven is reached, and hell is escaped, only by an earnest effort of some kind; so natural is it to every man to ask with these Jews, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”

But mankind generally, like the Jews in the days of our Lord, are under a delusion respecting the nature of the work which must be performed in order to salvation.  And in order to understand this delusion, we must first examine the common notion upon the subject.

When a man begins to think of God, and of his own relations to Him, he finds that he owes Him service and obedience.  He has a work to perform, as a subject of the Divine government; and this work is to obey the Divine law.  He finds himself obligated to love God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself, and to discharge all the duties that spring out of his relations to God and man.  He perceives that this is the “work” given him to do by creation, and that if he does it he will attain the true end of his existence, and be happy in time and eternity.  When therefore he begins to think of a religious life, his first spontaneous impulse is to begin the performance of this work which he has hitherto neglected, and to reinstate himself in the Divine favor by the ordinary method of keeping the law of God.  He perceives that this is the mode in which the angels preserve themselves holy and happy; that this is the original mode appointed by God, when He established the covenant of works; and he does not see why it is not the method for him.  The law expressly affirms that the man that doeth these things shall live by them; he proposes to take the law just as it reads, and just as it stands,—­to do the deeds of the law, to perform the works which it enjoins, and to live by the service.  This we say, is the common notion, natural to man, of the species of work which must be performed in order to eternal life.  This was the idea which filled the mind of the Jews when they put the question of the text, and received for answer from Christ, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.”  Our Lord does not draw out the whole truth, in detail.  He gives only the positive part of the answer, leaving His hearers to infer the negative part of it.  For the whole doctrine of Christ, fully stated, would run thus:  “No work of the kind of which you are thinking can save you; no obedience of the law, ceremonial