Christ and His teaching in that fashion, and you must have Him if you are to get it.  So, faith in Him, the intellectual acceptance of Him, as the authoritative and infallible Revealer, the bowing down of heart and will to Him as our Commander and our Lord, the absolute trust in Him as the foundation of all our hope and the source of all our blessedness—­that is the way to certitude, and there is no other road that we can take.

If thus we keep near Him, our faith will bring us the present experience and fulfilment of the promises, and we shall be sure of them, because we have them already.  And whilst men are asking, ’Do we know anything about God?  Is there a God at all?  Is there such a thing as forgiveness?  Can anybody find anywhere absolute rules for his life?  Is there anything beyond the grave but mist and darkness?’ we can say, ’One thing I know, Jesus Christ is my Saviour, and in Him I know God, and pardon, and duty, and sanctifying, and safety, and immortality; and whatever is dark, this, at least, is sun-clear.’  Get high enough up and you will be above the fog; and while the men down in it are squabbling as to whether there is anything outside the mist, you, from your sunny station, will see the far-off coasts, and haply catch some whiff of perfume from their shore, and see some glinting of a glory upon the shining turrets of ’the city that hath foundations.’  We have a present possession of all the promises of God; and whoever doubts their certitude, the man who knows himself a son of God by faith, and has experience of forgiveness and guidance and answered prayer and hopes whose ’sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality,’ knows the things which others question and doubt.

So live near Jesus Christ, and, holding fast by His hand, you may lift up your joyful ‘Amen’ to every one of God’s ‘Yeas.’  For in Him we know the Father, in Him we know that we have the forgiveness of sins, in Him we know that God is near to bless and succour and guide, and in Him ’we know that, though our earthly house were dissolved, we have a building of God.’  Wherefore we are always confident; and when the Voice from Heaven says ‘Yea!’ our choral shout may go up ’Amen!  Thou art the faithful and true witness.’

ANOINTED AND STABLISHED

   ’Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ,
   and hath anointed us, is God.’—­2 COR. i. 21.

The connection in which these words occur is a remarkable illustration of the Apostle’s habit of looking at the most trivial things in the light of the highest truths.  He had been obliged, as the context informs us, to abandon an intended visit to Corinth.  The miserable crew of antagonists, who yelped at his heels all his life, seized this change of purpose as the occasion for a double-barrelled charge.  They said he was either fickle and infirm of purpose, or insincere, and saying ‘Yea’ with one side