Christ--uncleansed--unwashed? No! They were
clean through the word spoken unto them. They were converted--pardoned.
Will you enter Christ, or wait to be put into Christ? Why is it that all
men are not put into Christ? I answer, men are not put into Christ, they
enter in--they come to Christ--they come to God--God is in Christ. The
spirit and the bride say, come! And let him that heareth say, Come! And
let him that is athirst come! And whosoever will let him take the water
of life freely."

"Many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized." "When the
Samaritans believed, they were baptized, both men and women." This is
our entrance into the door. We have now just entered into the church of
Christ--into the family of God--it is God's house--we are at home in the
Father's house, and naught will harm us if we live at home, if we are
"obedient children not fashioning ourselves after our former lusts." The
injunction comes to us here: "Add to your faith virtue, to virtue
knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, to patience
brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness godliness, and to godliness
charity, and if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye
shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and can
not see afar off, and had forgotten that he was purged from his old
sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your
calling and election sure, for if ye do these things ye shall never
fall. For _so_ an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into
the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." "Blessed
are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree
of life and enter through the gates into the city." Men in disobedience
to the gospel feel, when they approach the cold Jordan of death, that
every thing upon which they built their hopes is being swept away. Their
thoughts, their treasures, their grandeur, their honors, their little
world, their all, fails them here. They have lived at a distance from
God, and now they tremble at the thought of approaching before him whose
great mercy they have rejected. Death is a terror to sinful man--his
afflictions are his darkest hours. It is not so with the Christian. To
him death has no sting; over him the grave has no victory to boast, nor
has the second death any power. He has unshaken confidenc