Some may think lightly of baptism, but if it “became” the King of glory to be baptized in water to fulfill all righteousness, how can any one esteem it lightly, who has any regard for his soul?  Since he himself is the way, can we rationally conclude that he would do anything for a guide to us that is unimportant?  He had no sins to confess, it is true; but still he must be baptized to fulfill all righteousness.  How important, then, must it be for us to submit to this ordinance, who are all defiled with sin!

  “Ashamed of Jesus! yes I may
  When I’ve no sins to wash away: 
  No guilt to shun, no good to crave;
  No love to give, no soul to save.”

But now I must call your attention to his Sermon on the Mount.  This is the most instructive, truth-abounding and love-abounding sermon the world has ever heard.  It is a summary of the love, the truth, the purity of heart, the humility of soul, the poverty of spirit, the hungering and thirsting for righteousness, the forgiveness, the charity, the meekness of the true child of God.  Hence our blessed Lord says right at the close:  “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:  and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not:  for it was founded upon a rock.”  I want to tell you right here that Jesus fulfilled every jot and tittle of its truth in all its varied and minute applications, in the pure and holy life he lived on earth.  He thus became the way.

I have sometimes been accosted by others on this wise:  “You teach a doctrine of works!  You teach that people must do so and so to be saved.  I understand the Word to teach that Christians are saved by faith without works.”  I have occasionally answered such accusations, I fear, perhaps, in not the true spirit of meekness, by retorting that if some professing Christians are ever saved at all it will surely be without any works on their part.  But usually, when I am rightly at myself, or better, when my heart is with the Lord, both in answering and preaching, I say, We as Brethren believe and teach that “faith without works is dead.”  All good works are done in faith.  And no man can believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with his heart, without loving him; because faith is a loving acceptance of all the truth revealed by the Lord to man.  Our heartfelt reception of that truth leads to obedience, and obedience is good works.  For “by works faith is made perfect.”  When he says:  “This DO, and thou shalt live,” he does not lose sight of the loving faith in which it is to be done.  When he says:  “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your GOOD WORKS, and glorify”—­YOU?  No!—­“your Father, which is in heaven.”  It is by good works, then, that we are to glorify our Father which is in heaven.