The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-01-18
SERMON AT TRINITY CHURCH
BY THE REV. DR- FRANK WOODS
 BAKER YESTERDAY.

ed a sermon Trinity P. E. church yesterday forenoon on the sub feet The Church Year; Justification by Faith" The text was ..The promise
 was not to Abraham through the law. but through the right eousness of faith" An abstract of Dr. Bakers sermon follows:
 (A) We do not get far in the Chris tan life before we recognize the vast difference between the righteousness of our deeds, of our life and the perfection of the ideal set us both by the law and by the example of Jesus Christ.
 '. The more clearly we realize the standard set US by Jesus, the greater seems to be our distance from it.
 (A) This. is we are to be judged by God only by our works, would be ever more and more discouraging.
 (B) Yet with the real growth of holi- ness comes a quickened apprehension of the perfection of Jesus which in a sense seems to separate us more and more from the perfection which we seek.
 C) This is illustrated in the lives of all the saints, St. Paul. St. Augustine in his confessions, St. Thomas of Memphis in his imita .ion of Christ.
 co Yet this is a principle commonly known and recognized in the profess sions, namely the inability of any one man to accomplish the whole in all de- partments, even of one profession, and the subsequent devotion of all his ener- gies to one speciality.
 CD Nay, the more noted a man be- comes and the farther he advances in the speciality, the more he specializes in that speciality, that is to say, the more he knows of his speciality the more un- attainable seems to be the complete knowledge Of all it's branches.
 III. Take almost any department of study in our colleges and see how this principle has led to the division and sub division of that department in the last fifty years. The old department philosophy is now divided into political economy, psychology, ethics, philosophy, sociology, the philosophy of history and many other divisions.
 D. All this is essentially true in relig- ious life and experience. The more clearly we realize the ideal set for us by Jesus Christ the farther We seem to be from attaining it. This would be very discouraging if taken alone.
 II. But the church comes to our rescue with her great teaching of justification by faith in Jesus Christ.
 (A) Perhaps no Christian truth has been more misunderstood and abused than this.
 (B) Yet it was emphasized and put in the foreground of Christian teaching by the great apostle St. Paul.
 co In the epistles of Paul, especially to the Romans and the Galatians the word Sikatour, Ito justify occurs in a specific sense. After describing, in the Epistle to the Romansg the law and its works as incapable of justifying or making righteousness, inasmuch as the law only serves to give a knowledge of sin, the apostle takes up the righteous ness of God with which the law has nothing to do. and which is meditated by faith in Christ, and extends; to all all be- lievers."
 This is imputed righteousness. The believer is the object of justification, not on account of his own deeds, but through the infinite grace of God"
 Many philosophical systems dispaired |of salvation for ihe masses. Such were |stoicism, agnosticisnn and of course all materialistic philosophies.
 There is an all-important difference between the imputation of righteousness or the declaring a person righteous on Gods part because he earnestly desires to be so. Justification by faith looks forward to and finds it's completion only in thas active justification, perhaps nev- CT reached in this world save in the case of Jesus
 We cannot judge one another by out ward acts alone or rightly value the act except through knowledge of the mo- tive.
 Most important, we are not judged by God or condemned alone by what he has done, but by what we have earn estly tried to do. and hoped to do, by our motives, especially by out attitude of faith or lack of faith in the ideal life Jesus Christ
 But what is the great motive which by God is reckoned for righteousness in man? It is faith in Him through Jesus Christ.
 Tt is that strong buoy and confidence in God and His love which gives energy and spirit to do right without doubt or despondency.
 Where God sees that, He sees the spring and fountain out of which all good flows; He sees in short, the very life of Christ begun and He reckons that to be righteousness.
 As Robertson has beautifully put it: Just as you call the sapling an oak without the acorns which are it's works, so God reckons the trust in Him as righteousness. because 1t is the fountain and root of righteousness, being indeed the life divine in the soul. He reckons Is as such (that is, He iustifies the soul that has it) without works, that is, be- fore works are done and not because of the works. But then that faith will not be without works for the tree must grow and the life of God in the soul, sanguine trust in God, the loving and good One, must spring up with act; for to say that it does not would be to say that it was dead"
 May we all keep clearly before us the ideal life If Tas,lq Christ Nav 1wa 1o, or