The last step is that which alone deserves to be called Christian Faith--"Who is he that overcometh but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ?" The difference between the faith of the Christian and that of the man of the world, or the mere ordinary religionist, is not a difference in mental operation, but in the object of the faith--to believe that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian faith.
The anticipated heaven of the Christian differs from the anticipated heaven of any other man, not in the distinctness with which its imagery is perceived, but in the kind of objects which are hoped for. The apostle has told us the character of heaven. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him"--which glorious words are sometimes strangely misinterpreted, as if the apostle merely meant rhetorically to exalt the conception of the heavenly world, as of something beyond all power to imagine or to paint. The apostle meant something infinitely deeper: the heaven of God is not only that which "eye hath not seen," but that which eye can _never_ see; its glories are not of that kind at all which can ever stream in forms of beauty on the eye, or pour in melody upon the enraptured ear--not such joys as genius in its most gifted hour (here called "the heart of man") can invent or imagine: it is something which these sensuous organs of ours never can appreciate--bliss of another kind altogether, revealed to the spirit of man by the Spirit of God--joys such as spirit alone can receive.
Do you ask what these are? "The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." That is heaven, and therefore the Apostle tells us that he alone who "believeth that Jesus is the Christ," and only he, feels that. What is it to believe that Jesus is the Christ?--That He is the Anointed One, that His life is the anointed life, the only blessed life, the blessed life divine for thirty years?--Yes, but if so, the blessed Life still, continued throughout all eternity: unless you believe that, you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ.