In this surrender of the soul to Christ's governance we have the guarantee that the gospel salvation is not an unmoral trust which permits continuance in sin. Aside from the fact that saving faith is only the obverse side of true repentance, the very nature of faith, as submission to Christ, the embodied law of God and source of spiritual life, makes a life of obedience and virtue to be its natural and necessary result. Faith is not only a declaration of dependence, it is also a vow of allegiance. The sick man's faith in his physician is shown not simply by trusting him, but by obeying him. Doing what the doctor says is the very proof of trust. No physician will long care for a patient who refuses to obey his orders. Faith is self-surrender to the great Physician, and a leaving of our case in his hands. But it is also the taking of his prescriptions, and the active following of his directions.
We need to emphasize this active element in saving faith, lest men get the notion that mere indolent acquiescence in Christ's plan will save them. Faith is not simple receptiveness. It gives itself, as well as receives Christ. It is not mere passivity,--it is also self-committal. As all reception of knowledge is active, and there must be attention if we would learn, so all reception of Christ is active, and there must be intelligent giving as well as taking. The Watchman, April 30, 1896--"Faith is more than belief and trust. It is the action of the soul going out toward its object. It is the exercise of a spiritual faculty akin to that of sight; it establishes a personal relation between the one who exercises faith and the one who is its object. When the intellectual feature predominates, we call it belief; when the emotional element predominates, we call it trust. This faith is at once 'An affirmation and an act Which bids eternal truth be present fact.' "
There are great things received in faith, but nothing is received by the man who does not first give himself to Christ. A conquered general came into the presence of his conqueror and held out to him his hand: "Your sword first, sir!" was the response. But when General Lee _offered_ his sword to General Grant at Appomattox, the latter returned it, saying: "No, keep your sword, and go to your home." Jacobi said that "Faith is the reflection of the divine knowing and willing in the finite spirit of man." G. B. Foster, in Indiana Baptist Outlook, June 19, 1902--"Catholic orthodoxy is wrong in holding that the authority for faith is the church; for that would be an external authority. Protestant orthodoxy is wrong in holding that the authority for faith is the book; for that would be an external authority. Liberalism is wrong in holding that the reason is the authority for faith. The authority for faith is the revelation of God." Faith in this revelation is faith in Christ the Revealer. It puts the soul in connection with the source of all knowledge and power. As the connection of a wire with the reservoir of electric force makes it the channel of vast energies, so the smallest measure of faith, any real connection of the soul with Christ, makes it the recipient of divine resources.