My second text tells us what that is--the common faith.' That is another of the words which is so familiar that it is unintelligible, which has been dinned into your ears ever since you were little children, and in the case of many of you excites no definite idea, and is supposed to be an obscure kind of thing that belongs to theologians and preachers, but has little to do with your daily lives. There is only one way by which this healing and safety that I have been speaking about can possibly find its way into a man's heart. You have all been trained from childhood to believe that men are saved by faith, and a great many of you, I dare say, think that men might have been saved by some other way, if God had chosen to appoint it so. But that is a clear mistake. If it is true that salvation is a gift from God, then it is quite plain that the only thing that we require is an outstretched hand. If it is true that Jesus Christ's death on the Cross has brought salvation to all the world, then it is quite plain that, His work being finished, we have no need to come in pottering with any works of ours, and that the only thing we have to do is to accept it. If it is true that Jesus Christ will enter men's hearts, and there give a new spirit and a new life, which will save them from their sins and make them free from the law of sin and death, then it is plain that the one thing that we have to do is to open our hearts and say Come in, Thou King of Glory, come in!' Because salvation is a gift; because it is the result of a finished work; because it is imparted to men by the impartation of Christ's own life to them: for all these reasons it is plain that the only way by which God can save a man is by that man's putting his trust in Jesus Christ. It is no arbitrary appointment. The only possible way of possessing the common salvation is by the exercise of the common faith.'
So we are all put upon one level, no matter how different we may be in attainments, in mental capacity --geniuses and blockheads, scholars and ignoramuses, millionaires and paupers, students and savages, we are all on the one level. There is no carriage road into heaven. We have all to go in at the strait gate, and there is no special entry for people that come with their own horses; and so some people do not like to have to descend to that level, and to go with the ruck and the undistinguished crowd, and to be saved just in the same fashion as Tom, Dick, and Harry, and they turn away.
Plenty of people believe in a common salvation,' meaning thereby a vague, indiscriminate gift that is flung broadcast over the mass. Plenty of people believe in a common faith.' We hear, for instance, about a national Christianity,' and a national recognition of religion,' and Christian nations,' and the like. There are no Christian nations except nations of which the individuals are Christians, and there is no common faith' except the faith exercised in common by all the units that make up a community.
So do not suppose that anything short of your own personal act brings you into possession of the common salvation.' The table is spread, but you must take the bread into your own hands, and you must masticate it with your own teeth, and you must assimilate it in your own body, or it is no bread for you. The salvation is a common,' like one of the great prairies, but each separate settler has to peg off his own claim, and fence it in, and take possession of it, or he has no share in the broad land. So remember that the common salvation' must be made the individual salvation by the individual exercise of' the common faith.' Cry, Lord! £ believe!' and then you will have the right to say, The Lord is my strength; He also is become my salvation.'
