Page:Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers.djvu/244

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FAITH IN CHRIST.

Oh, my soul! why art thou so often disquieted within thee? How is it that thou hast so little faith? Wilt thou never learn that Jesus has even the least of His little boats always under His watchful eye, and all the winds and the waves obey Him?


Seek for a fresh invoice of grace. Unbelief can scoff or growl; faith is the nightingale that sings in the darkest hour. Faith can draw honey out of the rock and oil out of the flint. With Christ in possession and heaven in reversion, it marches to the time of the One-hundred-and-third Psalm over the roughest road, and against the most cutting blast.


We must not think that faith itself is the soul's rest; it is only the means of it. We cannot find rest in any work or duty of our own, but we may find it in Christ, whom faith apprehends for justification and salvation.


Faith, considered as a habit, is no more precious than other gracious habits are; but considered as an instrument to receive Christ and His righteousness, it excels them all; and this instrumentality of faith is noted in the phrases, "by faith," and "through faith."


If we bear an inward enmity to all sins because they are offensive to God, if we can say that it is the desire of our souls to love Christ above all things, and to be eternal debtors to free grace, reigning through His righteousness, then we may warrantably conclude, that our faith, however weak, is yet of a saving nature.

Fisher's Catechism.