IF the wearing of crimson and ermine renders a man a peer of England,—he was one. If the possession of documents of official appearance creates a peer,—he was one. If claiming a seat gives right and title to it,—he had it. Yet the man who, possessing all these qualifications, swept up the House of Lords on January 29th, 1908, looking like a peer and asserting that he was one, was rejected and turned ignominiously out as a stranger and intruder, ere, in solemn state, His Majesty King Edward VII took his seat among the Peers of his realm. You read, no doubt, the incident in the daily papers, and you pitied the man for his foolishness in thus attempting to enter such a place with no valid title there; but, my friend, are you sure that you have a title to be found among a mightier, brighter throng, when in far more solemn state the King of kings and Lord of lords ascends His throne amid His holy myriads? "He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believe." Are you a peer in that realm? Claim you to be a "saint," and a "believer"? Perhaps you shrink from the former name, and the latter conveys little to you; but you say, "We are all Christians in this country, and, anyhow, I am as good as my neighbors,-as good as you any day." Perhaps so, dear reader, and better too. Your outward life may be blameless; you may be admired and held up as an example to many. Your robe may be as gorgeous and as correctly made as that of him of whom we have spoken; it may have cost you much—effort, time, prayers, money; but "the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (1 Sam. 16:77But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)). An outside profession of Christianity is no title to heaven.
But, perhaps you urge, I can produce my certificate of church membership—christened, confirmed; I have been regular in my attendance at the means of grace. Church membership on earth is no guarantee of membership of “the church of the first bourn ones which are enrolled in heaven.” Then what is an unimpeachable title to stand in the presence of God? What is the only title that gives entrance there? It is the person, the work, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the title, the only title whereby any sinner can approach a holy God. He has taken the sinner's place—He has borne and exhausted the wrath of God against sin. He has said, "It is finished," and in answer to that work God has raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His own right hand, and in Him, in His perfection, His beauty, His holiness, God beholds the vilest sinner who trusts in Christ.
It is not any work of yours that gives the smallest title. But faith in His once finished work gives a perfect title, and the only one. It gives a birthright title, for "as many as received Him to them gave He power to become children of God, even to them that believe on His name" (John 1:1212But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: (John 1:12)), and it gives a conferred title, conferred by God Himself, for He has " predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace wherein He hath made us accepted in the Beloved”
T.