No confession short of, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God " will do. The people may have high and honorable thoughts of Jesus, as I have just said. They may speak of Him as " a good man,"or as "a prophet," as Elias or Jeremias -but nothing of this kind will do; nothing less than the faith which apprehends and receives Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

The reason of the need of this faith is simple. Our state of ruin in this world, ruin by reason of sin and death, calls for the presence of God Himself among us, and that, too, in the character of conqueror over sin and death. And He whom God has sent is such an One. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the living God in flesh, come here for the very purpose of bringing back life into this scene of death, destroying the works of the devil, and putting away sin. This is the one whom our condition demands. Such is our ruin, that nothing less than this will do for us:and if we can, in our own thoughts, do with anything less than this, we show that, we have not yet discovered our real condition, our condition in the presence of God. All acceptance of Christ short of this is nothing. It is no acceptance of Him. He may be a Prophet, He may be a King, He may be a doer of wonders or a teacher of heavenly secrets; but if this be all our apprehension of Him, our all is nothing.

Faith has great and noble work to do in such a scene as this world, and in such circumstances as human life furnishes every day. It has to reach its own objects through many veils, and to dwell in its own world in spite of many hindrances. It is the things not seen, and the things hoped for, that it deals with; and such things lie at a distance, or under coverings; and faith has to be active and energetic in order to reach them and deal with them.

In John ii we look on a scene of death, such, as I have said, our ruined condition in this world really is. Everyone, save the Lord Himself, seems to have apprehended nothing but death. The disciples, Martha and her friends, and even Mary, talked only of death; and as far as the present moment went, have no faith in anything beyond it. Jesus, in the midst of all this, stands alone, eyeing life and talking of life. He moved onward in the consciousness of it, carrying in Himself light in this overshadowing of darkness and gloom. Bat there was no faith there, doing its duties:that is, discovering Him. Martha represents this absence of faith-just as the multitude do in Matt. 16:14. She meets the Lord, but her best thought about Him is this, that whatsoever He would ask of God, God would give it Him. But this will not do. This was not faith doing its proper work, discovering the glory that was hidden in Jesus of Nazareth.

The Son will empty Himself. He will take the form of a Servant. He will be obedient unto death. He will cover Himself as with a cloud, and lie hid under a thick veil, a veil not only of flesh, but of flesh in humiliation, and weakness, and poverty. But while He is doing all this, He cannot admit the absence of that faith which does its proper work only when it discovers Him. He will not be in company with depreciating thoughts about Him. He looks for faith's discoveries of His glory, in the saints that He walks with.

He therefore rebukes Martha. Instead of admitting that God will give to Him, as Martha had said, on His asking Him, He says to her, as on the authority of His own personal glory,'' Thy brother shall rise again." And instead of complying with her afterthought, that He should rise again in the last day, He says to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

How all this commends itself to our souls! The Lord will give no place to these imperfect apprehensions of Him. Needful it was, in the riches of His grace, that He should empty Himself; our sins could find their relief in nothing less than that. But right it is that faith should make a full discovery of Him under this veil of self-emptiness. J. G. Bellett