It is not a question of feeling, as so many would make it. It is entirely a question of faith in an accomplished fact,--faith wrought in the soul of a sinner, by the power of the Holy Ghost. This faith is something quite different from a mere feeling of the heart, or an assent of the intellect. Feeling is not faith. Intellectual assent is not faith. Some would make faith to be the mere assent of the intellect to a certain proposition. This is fearfully false. It makes the question of faith human, whereas it is really divine. It reduces it to the level of man, whereas it really comes from God. Faith is not a thing of to-day or to-morrow. It is an imperishable principle, emanating from an eternal source, even God himself: it lays hold of God's truth, and sets the soul in God's presence. Mere feeling and sentimentality can never rise above the source from whence they emanate; and that source is self; but faith has to do with God and his eternal word, and is a living link, connecting the heart that possesses it with God who gives it. Human feelings, however intense,--human sentiments, however refined,--could not connect the soul with God. They are neither divine nor eternal, but are human and evanescent. They are like Jonah's gourd, which sprang up in a night, and perished in a night. Not so faith. That precious principle partakes of all the value, all the power, and all the reality of the source from whence it emanates, and the object with which it has to do. It justifies the soul; (Rom. v. 1;) it purifies the heart; (Acts xv. 9;) it works by love; (Gal. v. 6;) it overcomes the world. (1 John v. 4.) Feeling and sentiment never could accomplish such results: they belong to nature and to earth,--faith belongs to God and to heaven; they are occupied with self,--faith is occupied with Christ; they look inward and downward,--faith looks outward and upward; they leave the soul in darkness and doubt,--faith leads it into light and peace; they have to do with one's own fluctuating condition,--faith has to do with God's immutable truth, and Christ's eternally-enduring sacrifice. No doubt, faith will produce feelings and sentiments,--spiritual feelings and truthful sentiments,--but the fruits of faith must never be confounded with faith itself. I am not justified by feelings, nor yet by faith _and_ feelings, but simply by faith. And why? Because faith believes God when he speaks; it takes him at his word; it apprehends him as he has revealed himself in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is life, righteousness, and peace. To apprehend God as he is, is the sum of all present and eternal blessedness. When the soul finds out God, it has found out all it can possibly need, here or hereafter; but he can only be known by his own revelation, and by the faith which he himself imparts, and which, moreover, always seeks divine revelation as its proper object.