His people learn, is to know Him by His name, I AM; and he who does not believe that God Is, may profess what he pleases, but it is impossible for him to please Him. He is without faith-an INFIDEL,-a fool who says in his heart, There is no God; and if he dies in that state, he will have his portion with the unbelievers. (Heb. xi. 6.)

Now do you believe that GOD IS? For forty years I believed that I did, because for forty years I lived without putting it to the proof; but when in deep anxiety about my soul, and with an earnest desire to have a real dealing with Him, I went into my chamber, shut the door, prostrated myself before Him, and implored His pardon and His Holy Spirit, I learned that I did not. I learned I had not as much faith as enabled me to believe in Him as an actuality; a really present, though invisibly present Person. I

could believe that I was, and that I was in the room; I had no doubt about it-I KNEW IT: but there was nothing either in or out of me that enabled me to know "HE IS.” At that time I knew nothing of BELIEVING, or receiving anything on the bare testimony of God's Word, simply because He said it. I could see myself in the room, by sight and sense and feeling, but I had no faith, and so could not see the INVISIBLE ONE, or credit Him who made my eyes and ears, with being able to see and hear me.

Now have you ever gone to your room to have a real transaction with God, and been enabled when you spoke to Him to believe in Him as a great present Reality, hearing you and seeing you? If so, happy are you you are not far from the kingdom of heaven. But unless He whom you call God is more to you than the gods of whom

it is written, "eyes have they, but they see not; they have ears, but they hear not;" unless you have as much faith as enables you to believe that the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ sees you when you go to Him, and hears you when you speak to Him, you may say you believe, and believe what you say; but God says, "Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must believe that HE IS," and do you believe that HE IS? You do not; and are therefore still amongst those amongst whom you were born; amongst the blind unbelievers; amongst the fools who say in their hearts that there is no God. If this is your case do not despair. Your name is "FOOL," and I have a message from God to you.

Again, God says,

"He that trusteth in his

own heart is a fool." (Prov. xxviii. 26.) Now

though there are many different names by which they are known amongst men, there are on earth only two teachers, the heart and the Lord Jesus Christ; and by one or other of these is every man taught and guided. The proof of whom we believe is whom we follow, and he who believes in his own heart and follows it, is a fool, and on the road to hell; but he who believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ and follows Him, is a wise man, and on the road to heaven. He that trusteth in his own heart does not believe this; for, says the Word of God, “the way of a fool is right in his own eyes;" and again, "there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end of that way is death:" but believe it or not, it is as certain as the Word of God can make it, that no man from his birth to his grave ever yet followed the counsels of his own heart, and did that which

was honestly and truly right in his own eyes, who did not live the life of a fool, and die the death of the wicked. Ever since the fall of Adam, the object of the spirit in man's heart has been to destroy him; to teach him to call evil good, and good evil; darkness light, and light darkness; to lie to him in this life that he may destroy him everlastingly. How thoroughly is this borne out by the descriptions of the heart in the Bible; all true pictures written for our learning and drawn for us by God Himself. Before the flood, "God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." (Gen. vi. 5.) Yet the flood made it no better; for thus said the same God after the flood, "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." (Gen. viii. 21.) More than two thousand years