a regenerate child of God, and gives him an inalienable title to citizenship in heaven.  But I have not so learned Christ, nor do I understand Paul to teach anything like this.  I do not deny that a sincere and heart confession of Christ is a step, the first step, to these heavenly blessings; but I do deny that Christian perfection rests upon a naked confession of him by the mouth.  The thoughtless sinner does not know Christ.  He has never in heart so much as asked the question:  “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him?” God has never been in all his thoughts.  “The world knew him not,” and the world knows him not now.  When one, then, is suddenly wrought upon by some influence as was the Philippian jailer, by which, in his distress, he cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” the answer that Paul gave is exactly the right answer.  “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”  And this leads to my second and last question: 

What is faith? I will here give Paul’s definition.  We come to God by faith.  “And he that cometh unto God”—­or to Christ the same—­“must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”  Faith must, then, be the very first step in the direction of receiving good from the Lord.  We see striking examples of this in the life of Jesus on earth.  What brought the throng from all directions that attended and even pressed him?  It was faith, the belief that he could do them good.  But it was not spiritual or heavenly good they sought so much as bodily good.  Jesus reminded them of this in the words:  “Ye seek me, not because of the miracles,—­” not because you desire proofs of my divine power to save your souls from eternal death,—­“but because ye ate of the loaves, and were filled.”  But true faith, the faith that saves the soul, the faith by which the just shall live, is a loving acceptance of the Word of God; every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; for by this doth man live.  And how does man live by it?  By obeying it, by making its precepts the rule and guide of his life.  By faith the Word becomes “a lamp unto his path.”  “It is as the light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”  All who believe the Lord’s words, as contained in our New Testament, because they love their truth, and from the heart desire to live,—­this means, order their lives and conduct by them,—­believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And these have the promise of eternal life:  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

These were the leading thoughts in Brother Quinter’s discourse to-day.  We stay all night in Jonesborough with Dr. Alpheus Dove.

WEDNESDAY, May 30.  Go back to the meetinghouse where the Annual Meeting was held; arrange some matters left back in our hands; then go together to Brother Jacob Nead’s, where we stay all night.