support of this theory of salvation.  Although it is incomprehensible how the righteousness of Christ can be applied to each individual sinner on the bare ground of his merely giving assent to the doctrine of the atonement through the merit of Christ’s death upon the cross, still it is the leading dogma of what is popularly called orthodoxy.  But I must confess before all present this day that I have “not so learned Christ,” nor Paul either.  “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom, but he that DOETH the will of my Father which is in heaven.”  At the close of his sermon on the Mount, in which is given all necessary instruction and encouragement for living a righteous life from holy love in the heart, the Lord Jesus says:  “Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and DOETH them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon a rock.”  And he said to Peter:  “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”  The rock is the great TRUTH that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  This truth involves every good affection and thought and work of man.  It takes in and requires obedience to every divine command, and compliance with every divine precept.  When any one complies with these conditions of salvation through the faith that sees and knows that God’s Word is true because it is understood and must be so, he is righteous in the sight of the Lord, and necessarily in a state of salvation.  He is then to “let his light shine before men, that others seeing his GOOD WORKS may glorify our Father in heaven.”

For want of time I must pass over the subject of temperance, to say something about “a judgment to come.”  And right here there are all sorts of ideas and conjectures.  But of all the subjects in the universe, that involving the judgment is the most momentous to man; because it is there that his eternal destiny will be disclosed to him, as to whether he shall be an angel of heaven or a demon in hell.  And we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.  It is not to be wondered at that Felix trembled under the weight of this great truth.  God’s Word will be the basis of judgment.  Says our Lord:  “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him:  the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day.”  As “man liveth by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” so does every word of his truth point to that great day for which all other days were made.  All the parables and miracles of our Lord, full of instruction as to heart and life, point, like so many guideposts, to this great central truth of man’s experience and existence.