your own act of faith, is peace to come.' Thus mistaking the
meaning of faith and the way which faith saves you, you get into
confusion, and mistake everything else connected with your peace: you
mistake the real nature of that very inability to believe of which you
complain so sadly. For that inability does not lie, as you fancy it
does, in the impossibility of your performing aright the great act of
faith, but of ceasing from all such self-righteous attempts to perform
any act, or do any work whatsoever in order to your being saved. So
that the real truth is, that you have not yet seen such a sufficiency
in the one great work of the Son of God upon the cross, as to lead you
utterly to discontinue your mistaken and aimless efforts to work out
something of your own.

"But perhaps you may object further, that you are not satisfied with
your faith. No, truly, nor are you ever likely to be. If you wait for
this before you take peace, you will wait till life is done. Not
satisfaction with your own faith, but satisfaction with Jesus and His
work, this is what God presses on you. You say, 'I am satisfied with
Christ.' Are you? What more, then, do you wish? Is not satisfaction
with Christ enough for you, or for every sinner? Nay, and is not this
the truest kind of faith? To be _satisfied with Christ_, that is faith
in Christ. To be satisfied with His blood, that is faith. What more
could you have? Can your faith give you something which Christ cannot?
Or will Christ give you nothing till you can produce faith of a
certain kind and quality, whose excellences will entitle you to
blessing? Do not bewilder yourself. Do not suppose that your faith is
a price, or a bribe, or a merit. Is not the very essence of real faith
just your being satisfied with Christ? Are you really satisfied with
Him and with what He has done? Then do not puzzle yourself about your
faith, but go on your way rejoicing, having thus been brought to be
satisfied with Him who to know is peace, and life, and salvation....
Faith, however perfect, has of itself nothing to give you either of
pardon or of life. Its finger points you to Jesus. Its voice bids you
look straight to Him. Its object is to turn away from itself and from
yourself altogether, that you may behold Him, and in beholding Him be
satisfied with Him and in being satisfied with Him have joy and
peace."

Likewise James Denny, in "The Death of Christ," teaches the same
lesson: "It is this great Gosp