"He believed also in God;--in God as the supreme good. He believed in him as sovereign,--not simply as a candidate for sovereignty, but as already sovereign; nor alone as sovereign to create, to uphold, to rule, to condemn, and to chasten or destroy. So far had the _world's_ faith gone. He regarded him as sovereign, not to do evil, but to do good, and to do good only. He believed God limited by his very nature to the doing of good,--that he is no more able to do evil than he is to be untrue. And, since it is admitted, on all hands, that there are moral influences by which some will be saved in perfect harmony with the exercise of their own voluntary powers, he believed that a God who is really sovereign in his moral domain can accomplish in all souls whatever is possible to be accomplished in any. Thus, from the character of God he saw freely flowing the blessed promises of his word. "His faith, too, in Christ stood related to the affectionate Father as the sovereign cause. Christ was God's messenger to man. He came not to procure the Father's love for the world, but as a testimony of that love. He came not to open to man the door of mercy, but to strengthen man to walk in the already open door. His mission was not simply to explore the wide-spread moral waste, but to possess and cultivate it; not to make salvation possible, but actual; for God 'hath appointed him _heir_ of all things,'--'hath given all things into his hands, that he should give eternal life to as many as God had given him.' Thus it was his mission to _accomplish_ a work, rather than to _offer_ to accomplish it; and, by his ever-memorable prayer on the cross, he perfected the power by which the world will be saved; as he said, 'And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, _will draw all men unto me_.'"