than his own.  The apostle, like his Lord before him, employs the singular number:  “This is His commandment,”—­as if there were no other commandment upon record.  And this corresponds with the answer which Paul and Silas gave to the despairing jailor:  “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,”—­do this one single thing,—­“and thou shalt be saved.”  And all of these teachings accord with that solemn declaration of our Lord:  “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”  In the matter of salvation, where there is faith in Christ, there is everything; and where there is not faith in Christ, there is nothing.

1.  And it is with this thought that we would close this discourse, and enforce the doctrine of the text.  Do whatever else you may in the matter of religion, you have done nothing until you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God hath, sent into the world to be the propitiation for sin.  There are two reasons for this.  In the first place, it is the appointment and declaration of God, that man, if saved at all, must be saved by faith in the Person and Work of the Mediator.  “Neither is there salvation in any other:  for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts iv. 12).  It of course rests entirely with the Most High God, to determine the mode and manner in which He will enter into negotiations with His creatures, and especially with His rebellious creatures.  He must make the terms, and the creature must come to them.  Even, therefore, if we could not see the reasonableness and adaptation of the method, we should be obligated to accept it.  The creature, and particularly the guilty creature, cannot dictate to his Sovereign and Judge respecting the terms and conditions by which he is to be received into favor, and secure eternal life.  Men overlook this fact, when they presume as they do, to sit in judgment upon the method of redemption by the blood of atonement and to quarrel with it.

In the first Punic war, Hannibal laid siege to Saguntum, a rich and strongly-fortified city on the eastern coast of Spain.  It was defended with a desperate obstinacy by its inhabitants.  But the discipline, the energy, and the persistence of the Carthaginian army, were too much for them; and just as the city was about to fall, Alorcus, a Spanish chieftain, and a mutual friend of both of the contending parties, undertook to mediate between them.  He proposed to the Saguntines that they should surrender, allowing the Carthaginian general to make his own terms.  And the argument he used was this:  “Your city is captured, in any event.  Further resistance will only bring down upon you the rage of an incensed soldiery, and the horrors of a sack.  Therefore, surrender immediately, and take whatever Hannibal shall please to give.  You cannot lose anything by the procedure, and you may gain something, even