Faith has in it the recognition of the certainty and the justice of a judgment that is coming down crashing on every human head; and then from the mi… - Alexander Maclaren

You must cast yourself on God's gospel with all your weight, without any hanging back, without any doubt, without even the shadow of a suspicion that it will give.

And I think, dear friends, if we carried with us more distinctly than we do that one simple thought that in all human joys, in all the apparently self-forgetting tenderness, of that Lord, who had a heart for every sorrow, and an ear for every complaint, and a hand open as day and full of melting charity for every need — that in every moment of that life in the boyhood, in the dawning manhood, in the maturity of His growing power — there was always present one black shadow, toward which He ever went straight with the consent of His will and the clearest eye, we should understand something more of how the life as well as the death was a sacrifice for us sinful men.

That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support.