my Father animates me! and I am henceforth dead to Sin but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ my Lord! What God has provided for, that I may attempt: what Christ has called me to, that I must succeed in. I am God's workmanship; created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that I should walk in them. I follow after, therefore, that I may apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus; I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Him!

And what if still our sense of moral weakness interfere to damp our hopes: if the sad experience of past ill-success, and the sinking of the heart in present imbecility, would mock our hope? Here again Faith will save us from despondency, and nerve to action. Faith will carry us out of self to God; out from the melancholy view of human weakness, to the cheering hope of divine strength. It is the timely grant of help which renews the fainting mind: it is the assurance that we have a friend at hand, which rallies all our energy. And what if we be weak and helpless? God's Spirit can invigorate and strengthen.

The law of the

Spirit, of life, in Christ Jesus, makes us free from the law of sin and death. Ye, through

the Spirit, may mortify the deeds of the body. We can do all things through Christ strengthening us: Be ye strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Nay, when we are weak, then are we strong! When we most feel our own entire feebleness, then we seek most earnestly our Father's help; and when we have our Father's help put forth in us, then are we strong indeed! And hence results that most important truth, that all Energy will vary as our prayerfulness, our exercise of faith in God by flying to his presence, and petitioning for his grace and hence, therefore, in the very next verse to our text, our Lord puts the efficacy of faith to produce energy and success-not in any direct and inherent power of its own,—but in its leading us in holy confidence to God, and to dependance on his strength: "Therefore I say

unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them :" or, as it is in Matthew (xxi. 22,) "All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive!" Not your faith itself can work the miracle, nor you, alone and of yourselves, by faith: but this faith will bring you with a holy boldness up to God, in prayer, and bring you down from Him a heavenly power. Faith is the source of Energy because

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it leads us to depend upon and seek the Spirit of Energy; it makes us active and alert, because it quickens us to drink in life and vigour from the Holy Ghost :-and therefore Faith and Prayer, and the Spirit of God, and Strength, are all so closely connected in Scripture. Faith in God animates us to fly to Him incessantly, as a child to his parent's bosom-"Father! do this for me! help me!" Prayer brings down the Spirit of our God :—and from the Spirit of God there springs new energy and Power. And therefore it is said of Stephen, that he was “a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost;"-and again, immediately after, "full of faith and Power,"-full of Faith and confidence in God, and therefore full of God's Spirit, and therefore full of Power to do God's will. And " our Gospel came to you," says Paul to the Thessalonians, "not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance:" In power, because in the Holy Ghost in the Holy Ghost, because in much assurance. And therefore, also, in Ephes. iii. 16, Paul prays so earnestly, “ That God would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with Might, by his Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith :”—And Jude addresses his yet faithful people, "Ye,

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beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life."

And this, then, brings us to the last encouragement which faith affords the full assurances of final victory. Energy depends on Hope of success and the Christian's Hope of success is constantly maintained, not only by the confidence of heavenly favour; not only by the confidence of heavenly help; but by the confidence, besides, of heavenly triumph. The same paradox which we find in common life, in history, and in all experience, will be found also in spiritual life:-That the more we trust in victory, the more we shall labour to obtain it. And hence the numerous assurances in Scripture, (and the justification of those assurances against objectors, for they are given, not, as some would use them, to humour listlessness and sloth, but to arouse to hope and energy)—all directed to the raising of our Faith and Hope, and thereby of our Strength. "Being confident of this very thing," says Paul to the Philippians, "that he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jesus. Christ." And when he would have the Thessalonians "walk as children of light, and be