more gather up and re-issue the past life.  The sin remains, the guilt remains.  The inevitable law of God will go on its crashing way in spite of all penitence, in spite of all reformation, in spite of all desires after newness of life.  There is but one Being who can make a change in our position in regard to God, and there is but one Being who can make the change by which man shall become a ‘new creature.’  The Creative Spirit that shaped the earth must shape its new being in my soul; and the Father against whose law I have offended, whose love I have slighted, from whom I have turned away, must effect the alteration that I can never effect—­the alteration in my position to His judgments and justice, and to the whole sweep of His government.  No new birth without Christ; no escape from the old standing-place, of being ’enemies to God by wicked works,’ by anything that we can do:  no hope of the inheritance unless the Lord and the Man, the ‘second Adam from heaven,’ have come!  He has come, and He has ‘dwelt with us,’ and He has worn this life of ours, and He has walked in the midst of this world, and He knows all about our human condition, and He has effected an actual change in the possible aspect of the divine justice and government to us; and He has carried in the golden urn of His humanity a new spirit and a new life which He has set down in the midst of the race; and the urn was broken on the cross of Calvary, and the water flowed out, and whithersoever that water comes there is life, and whithersoever it comes not there is death!

IV.  Last of all, no Christ without faith.

It is not enough, brethren, that we should go through all these previous steps, if we then go utterly astray at the end, by forgetting that there is only one way by which we become partakers of any of the benefits and blessings that Christ has wrought out.  It is much to say that for inheritance there must be sonship.  It is much to say that for sonship there must be a divine regeneration.  It is much to say that the power of this regeneration is all gathered together in Christ Jesus.  But there are plenty of people that would agree to all that, who go off at that point, and content themselves with this kind of thinking—­that in some vague mysterious way, they know not how, in a sort of half-magical manner, the benefit of Christ’s death and work comes to all in Christian lands, whether there be an act of faith or not!  Now I am not going to talk theology at present, at this stage of my sermon; but what I want to leave upon all your hearts is this profound conviction,—­Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us.  Do not let us, my friends, blink that deciding test of the whole matter.  We may talk about Christ for ever; we may set forth aspects of His work, great and glorious.  He may be to us much that is very precious; but the one question, the question of questions,