Teacher, your Lord. Pledge yourself to trust Him for forgiveness of your sins, and to learn of Him your daily duty, and steadfastly to obey Him. This is all. This is enough. You do not have to know everthing, you do not have to dissolve every doubt, before you can love and serve Christ. This good confession of heart and mouth is simple enough for a child understandingly to believe it and to speak it. But it means enough to engage the faith and devout study of a lifelong believer. Here is a capital note of its goodness. The light that catches the baby's eye, and leads him to see all his wonderful little world, is the same light that shines on the grown man; but how much more now does he see, and how his sight of things sweeps the very heavens! Christ is the Sun of righteousness, rising upon you with healing in His wings. The boy and the girl here may by faith behold this light of life, and they may begin to live in its brightness, and to see all the knowledge wherever it is shining. This is the beautiful simplicity of the good confession. It is simple as the sunlight is simple-clear, splendid, transcending human gaze, inexhaustible. It is simple for the little child that has faith. It is simple for some of you in those doubts and obstinate questionings that you would give the world to be able to settle. It is simple still for the long-tried believer, who has felt much and learnt much, and yet who, gray-haired and trembling, confesses from the depths of his heart, in a clear-eyed faith, "I know him whom I have believed." We confess Christ as the light of all truth, and the light of all duty, the light that shows us God, and the light that shows us man as well, and the light that reveals the glory of eternal life. We must begin with this faith, it we are

to confess the Christ of Peter, Paul, and John. But this is all that the Gospel requires us to begin with, the beginning of faith in its soundness and its simplicity -simpler than the Nicene Creed, simpler than the so-called Apostles' Creed-this good confession confessed by Timothy in his boyhood, there in Lystra, as Paul held his hand in the sight of many witnesses.

Definite the good confession is, distinct, a very form of sound words, a rigid landmark against any heresy of unbelief; and yet a confession to see more and more in the revelation of God in Christ. We may be ever learning, and coming to a knowledge of its truth. It is sublime to stand before our fellow-men, and under the eyes of angels, and to confess, "I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God," and then to go on keeping such a pledge of faith, and seeing larger and larger meanings of Christ's Sonship to God. We study Him in history, but we study Him. also in the universe. He is ever for us the Babe in His mother's arms, and the Boy in the Temple, and the Man on the Cross; but He is also the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation, in whom and unto whom all things were created, who is before all things, and in whom all things hold together. We believe that He taught on the Mount, and healed the sick, and raised the dead; but we believe that in the beginning He was with God, and was God, the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance, upholding all things by the word of His power. We confess that He is come in the flesh; but as we see His Gospel redeeming men, regenerating society, transforming institutions and customs, comforting the broken-hearted, scattering the darkness of the grave,

we confess, too, words of deep conviction whose meaning, making so much plain, is yet a mystery of light that shines elsewhere than we are now able to see"We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."

heart.

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I think that we are going to prove, more and more, the wisdom and timeliness of this good confession in modern, world-wide evangelism. We see how simpleit is; we see how all inclusive it is. It shows how real the Gospel is, in its purpose and power on the Say not in thy heart, who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down:) or, who shall descend into the abyss (that is to bring Christ up from the dead)." Are you seeking salvation? Have you sought for it, and yet have not found it? Does conversion seem to you a very mysterious affair? Have you been taught that you must wait for some sudden and strange feeling as the sign of pardon from God? Have you prayed a great deal, and requested others to pray for you, that you might be saved, and still is the way dark, and do you begin to think of giving up in doubt and despair? Oh! it is unspeakably sad that ever such uncertainty should have been thrown. upon the Gospel of Christ. There is nothing like it in the preaching of the Apostles. They did not go about teaching the people that salvation is to be assured in some definite and peculiar sensation, which is to be prayed for and waited for till it comes, though it be for weeks and months. No; hear how real and simple and powerful the Gospel is. "The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is the word of

faith which we preach." Do not be trusting to your feelings by themselves. Do not be watching moods and frames of mind. Look into your heart, and see if the Word of the truth of the Gospel is there. Why, it is there, and in the hearts of hundreds like you who are sorry for your sins and willing to be saved if, as you say, you only could see how. This is the way-this word of faith become your faith, first in the heart and straightway in the mouth. "Because if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Salvation is just this simple, and oh! just this real. Such a simple faith, your eye not on your poor guilty heart, but upon Jesus as your Saviour and Lord. It is thus simple, if the preachers, in Paul's style, will show it to be so. The Gospel preached, the Spirit of truth in all His power producing faith in the heart, and this faith promptly, definitely, gladly confessed -ah! how our modern religious revivals need this good confession in all its scriptural distinctness and timeliness.

Shall we hear it to-night? Is there faith in your heart? Do you believe in the crucified and risen Lord? Then confess it with your mouth. Do you hesitate in fear? Are you holding back because you are ashamed? There is your trial. Your faith must come to the test, whether it be real and living. "In the sight of many witnesses "-here they are, your fellow-men, your own loved ones, beholding you, the angels of God looking down, the Lord Jesus waiting for you to confess His name. "The good confession," so simple, so beautiful, will you stand forth and courageously confess it, and begin the good fight of the faith, as God calls you to eternal life?