There should be some kind of correspondence between the firmness with which we grasp, the tenacity with which we hold, the assurance with which we believe, these great truths, and the rock-like firmness and immovableness of the evidence upon which they rest.  It is a poor compliment to God to come to His most veracious affirmations, sealed with the broad seal of His Son’s life and death, and to answer with a hesitating ‘Amen,’ that falters and almost sticks in our throat.  Build rock upon rock.  Be sure of the certain things.  Grasp with a firm hand the firm stay.  Immovably cling to the immovable foundation; and though you be but like the limpet on the rock hold fast by the Rock, as the limpet does; for it is an insult to the certainty of the revelation, when there is hesitation in the believer.

I need not dwell for more than a moment upon the lamentable contrast which is presented between this certitude, which is our only fitting attitude, and the hesitating assent and half belief in which so many professing Christians pass their lives.  The reasons for that are partly moral, partly intellectual.  This is not a day which is favourable to the unhesitating avowal of convictions in reference to an unseen world, and many of us are afraid of being called narrow, or dogmatisers, and think it looks like breadth, and liberality, and culture, and I know not what, to say ’Well! perhaps it is, but I am not quite sure; I think it is, but I will not commit myself.’  All the promises of God, which in Him are yea, ought through Him to get from us an ‘Amen.’

There is a great deal that will always be uncertain.  The firmer our convictions, the fewer will be the things that they grasp; but, if they be few, they will be large, and enough for us.  These truths certified in Christ concerning the heart of God, the message of pardon, the law for life, the gifts of guidance, defence, and sanctifying, the sure and certain hope of immortality—­these things we ought to be sure about, whatever borderland of uncertainty may lie beyond them.  The Christian verb is ‘we know,’ not ’we hope, we calculate, we infer, we think,’ but ‘we know.’  And it becomes us to apprehend for ourselves the full blessedness and power of the certitude which Christ has given to us by the certainties which he has brought us.

I need not speak about the blessedness of such a calm assurance, about the need of it for power, for peace, for effort, for fixedness in the midst of a world and age of change.  But I must, before I close, point you to the only path by which that certitude is attainable. ‘Through Him is the amen.’  He is the Door.  The truths which He confirms are so inextricably intertwined with Himself that you cannot get them and put away Him.  Christ’s relation to Christ’s Gospel is not the relation of other teachers to their words.  You may accept the words of a Plato, whatever you think of the Plato who spoke the words.  But you cannot separate