January 30

"We believe that, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved."—Acts 15:11.

HOW does salvation come to me? How shall I secure the good gift and the perfect boon?

Not through ceremony and ritual. The man who insists on the importance of rites and institutions and traditions is a great figure in the modern Church as in the ancient. But his medicine will not heal my deep-rooted and malignant disease. It is sadly superficial and insufficient.

Not through activity and service. Diligence and laboriousness are good and necessary in the kingdom of our God and His Christ. But they will not gain for me the favour and friendship of the King Himself. They are the consequence of His kindness to me, not the prelude and purchase of it.

Not through emotion and feeling. My tears, my prayers, my ecstasies, my raptures—they are all fitting and right. But it is not through these that the pathway runs, straight and sure, to the heart and the home of God. Sentiment and sorrow will never make me a child in the blameless family of heaven.

No, but through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ I shall be saved. All to Him I owe. His obedience, His death, His glorious righteousness, His precious promises, His abiding love, His omnipotent Holy Spirit: there, there only, is my hope and my boast.

Not I, but Thou: that is the first and important pronoun in the Christian's grammar. None of self, and all of Thee. When I can do nothing, God does everything; and I live in triumph, because He makes His triumphs mine.