Here is St Paul’s doctrine of Assurance. It was laid down by Christ Himself when He said: “He that believeth on the Son of God hath eternal life.” This sublime confidence is the ruling note of St John’s great epistle: “We know that we are in Him.... We know that we have passed out of death into life.... This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” It was this confidence of present salvation that made the Church irresistible. With its foundation secure, the house of life can be steadily and calmly built up. Under the shelter of the full assurance of faith, in the sunshine of God’s love felt in the heart, all spiritual virtues bloom and flourish. But with a faith hesitant, distracted, that is sure of no doctrine in the creed and cannot plant a firm foot anywhere, nothing prospers in the soul or in the Church. Oh for the clear accent, the ringing, joyous note of apostolic assurance! We want a faith not loud, but deep; a faith not born of sentiment and human sympathy, but that comes from the vision of the living God; a faith whose rock and corner-stone is neither the Church nor the Bible, but Christ Jesus Himself. Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to “assure our hearts” before God. With death confronting us, with the hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless,--then is the time for the Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God. _You are saved!_ cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run (vi. 10-13). But they hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation, persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to perfect that which He has begun in His saints--“if you continue in the faith, grounded and firm” (Col. i. 23). That condition is expressed, or implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart. God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there intercedes for us. _Quis separabit?_[85] * * * * *