e shall be loved of
My Father, and I will love Him, and will manifest Myself to him." It
will still be a spiritual manifestation which can be perceived only by
those whose spirits are exercised to discern such things; but it will be
absolutely satisfying. We shall find one day that Christ's work has been
successful, that He has brought men and God into a perfect harmony.
"That day" shall arrive for us also, when we shall find that Christ has
actually accomplished what He undertook, and has set our life and
ourselves on an enduring foundation--has given us eternal life in God, a
life of perfect joy. Things are under God's guidance progressive, and
Christ is the great means He uses for the progress of all that concerns
ourselves. And what Christ has done is not to be fruitless or only half
effective; He will see of the travail of His soul and be
satisfied--satisfied because in us the utmost of happiness and the
utmost of good have been attained, because greater and richer things
than man has conceived have been made ours.

These utterances are fitted to dispel a form of unbelief which seriously
hinders many sincere inquirers. It arises from the difficulty of
believing in Christ as now alive and able to afford spiritual
assistance. Many persons who enthusiastically admit the perfectness of
Christ's character and of the morality He taught, and who desire above
all else to make that morality their own, are yet unable to believe that
He can give them any real and present assistance in their efforts after
holiness. A teacher is a very different thing from a Saviour. They are
satisfied with Christ's teaching; but they need more than teaching--they
need not only to see the road, but to be enabled to follow it. Unless a
man can find some real connection between himself and God, unless he can
rely upon receiving inward support from God, he feels that there is
nothing which can truly be called salvation.

This form of unbelief assails almost every man. Very often it results
from the slow-growing conviction that the Christian religion is not
working in ourselves the definite results we expected. When we read the
New Testament, we see the reasonableness of faith, we cannot but
subscribe to the _theory_ of Christianity; but when we endeavour to
practise it we fail. We have tried it, and it does not seem to work. At
first we think this is something peculiar to ourselves, and that through
some personal carelessness or mistake we have f