said, it is a kind of 'aside,' in which John adds the
Amen for himself and for his poor brothers and sisters toiling and
moiling obscure among the crowds of Ephesus, to the great truth. He
asserts his and their glad consciousness of the reality of the fact of
their sonship, which they know to be no empty title. He asserts, too,
the present possession of that sonship, realising it as a fact, amid all
the commonplace vulgarities and carking cares and petty aims of life's
little day. 'Such we are' is the 'Here am I, Father,' of the child
answering the Father's call, 'My Son.'

He turns doctrine into experience. He is not content with merely having
the thought in his creed, but his heart clasps it, and his whole nature
responds to the great truth. I ask you, do you do that? Do not be
content with hearing the truth, or even with assenting to it, and
believing it in your understandings. The truth is nothing to you, unless
you have made it your very own by faith. Do not be satisfied with the
orthodox confession. Unless it has touched your heart and made your
whole soul thrill with thankful gladness and quiet triumph, it is
nothing to you. The mere belief of thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand
Articles is nothing; but when a man has a true heart-faith in Him, whom
all articles are meant to make us know and love, then dogma becomes
life, and the doctrine feeds the soul. Does it do so with you, my
brother? Can _you_ say, 'And such we are?'

Take another lesson. The Apostle was not afraid to say 'I know that I am
a child of God.' There are many very good people, whose tremulous,
timorous lips have never ventured to say 'I know.' They will say, 'Well,
I hope,' or sometimes, as if that was not uncertain enough, they will
put in an adverb or two, and say, 'I humbly hope that I am.' It is a far
robuster kind of Christianity, a far truer one, ay, and a humbler one
too, that throws all considerations of my own character and merits, and
all the rest of that rubbish, clean behind me, and when God says, 'My
son!' says 'My Father;' and when God calls us His children, leaps up and
gladly answers, 'And we are!' Do not be afraid of being too confident,
if your confidence is built on God, and not on yourselves; but be afraid
of being too diffident, and be afraid of having a great deal of
self-righteousness masquerading under the guise of such a profound
consciousness of your own unworthiness that you dare not call yourself a
child of God. It