'I Do'; Or, the Good Confession, a Manual of Confirmation

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: God as our Father in Jesus Christ. Christ said, No man cometh unto the Father but by Me: and again, He that hath seen Me Jhn iv. r.. hath seen the Father. To manifest the Father's Name, and to glorify Him as the Father, is stated to be a primary object of John i. i8. the Saviour's work. Hence we are taught V2 4 that to receive Jesus is the way to be made God's true Sons. Or, as St. Paul said, Ye John L i2 are all the Children of God by Faith in uaiatiansm. Christ Jesus. 26' 4. Belief in Jesus opens the heart to the incoming and indwelling of the Holy Ghost, John vii. 3s. to sanctify, refresh, and comfort. Thus you see that faith in Jesus Christ is inseparable from faith in the Father, and in the Holy Ghost. I want to say a little more about this belief in the Holy Ghost, in reference to the concluding paragraph of the Creed. Our belief in the holy Catholic (i.e., Universal) Church is a belief that, in spite of all appearances, God has such a Church, and that the Holy Spirit is gradually sanctifying and perfecting it, and will one day manifest its glory. And the Christian ought humbly to believe that he by grace isDO. Rom viii. made a member of that Church, and will 16?23, Kph. iv. 13. share its triumphs. So, too, you should believe that, by the grace of the same Spirit, all true saints in all ages and places, in heaven and in earth, have fellowship and communion with the Father and with His '3' Son Jesus Christ, aud therefore with one another. And it is only by the same Spirit j.jhmvi. s convincing us that we can comfortably believe in the forgiveness of our own sins, and in the glorious resurrection of our own bodies, and thus, in the assurance of the life everlasting. It accords with the supreme importance which Scripture attaches to Faith...