Article September 28, 1907 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

Frank N. Riale

[Rev. Frank N. Riale, Ph.D., in The Christian Work and Evangelist.]

The victory that overcometh the world of sin and sickness and death in us is to believe that this sinless, sickless, deathless Christ is God's expressed purpose, drawn out in living characters, for every child of creation that is willing to believe this is God's purpose for him, and is willing to let the Father come in by His spirit of life and work out to will and to do of this purpose in us. I believe this is God's purpose for me. I believe He is willing and able to carry this purpose out. I believe that it is His supreme desire to substitute in me, by the mighty and gracious working out of His spirit, the life which was exhibited in Christ Jesus, in place of the imperfect life that is wrought out in those who do not believe this is God's most gracious purpose—His glory-goal for all the race.

If you will believe this,—quietly, simply assent to it,—you will see the glory of God in such an unspeakable way that you will know you are "born again" into a new world,—the heavenly world which the race wilfully lost, the heavenly world into which it is by its own free will to be again restored. There will be borne in upon one such a "sweet reasonableness" in this message. One will see how everything in man's history is but a finger-board pointing to this and saying, "This is the way, walk ye in it." Nature will appear one great analogy, history one mighty allegory, and the Bible one glorious unfolding of this mighty fact, that burst forth in all its fulness in Christ Jesus. It is a vision that will give one a new heart. He will see how all the race is one in the divine purpose. Christ will seem indeed "the one altogether lovely, the chiefest among ten thousand." He will know that it is not a fancy, but a mighty fact that we are truly "brides of Christ." The spirit of our Father that wrought out in him the sinless, sickless, and deathless life, is working out the same mighty purpose in us. We will love Christ for what he is; and men for what they may be. And we would die rather than they might not know this way of life.

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