(Originally published in The New York Sun in 1897.)
Paraphrased for today as:
Yes,Child,we are saved by grace through faith.
We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Shovel Shack.
Dear Editor-
I am 48 years old but still want to come to my heavenly Father as a simple,trusting child.My friends say it can't be that easy.That we are not saved by grace and trusting alone,but that we have to do many works also. The friends of "The Shovel" say, “If you see it at The Shack, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, Is the work of Christ actually finished at the cross,and are we therefore made righteous through faith in Him,or is there more that we need to before being acceptable in His eyes?
Signed,
A "forever young" child of God.
The Response:
Dear child,your friends are wrong. They have been bewitched by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds therefore they begin setting up their own standards in order to show they have attained favor in Gods sight.
All minds, Child, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.All have sinned and fall short of Gods glory including their good works as well as their "sin". In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about Him. The intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge of God in Christ comes only by the revelation of God Himself.Only when He reveals himself by His Spirit can we truly grasp how wide, long, deep, high is his immeasurable love for us.
Yes, Child, you are totally freely,without conditions made, sons and daughters of the Father through grace by faith.. This fact exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound because while you were yet a sinner,he sent his son to die for you.
. Alas! how dreary would be the world if we were made right by our own works.That by our own efforts,we could attain that joyful state of eternal life with Christ.We would be constantly checking ourselves by our puny man-made standard to see if perhaps today,yes, we have made the grade. Only to find ourselves having to begin anew with the next sunrise.To again get on the treadmill of perpetual doing to measure up to what we believe are Gods standards instead of resting,childlike in the arms of him and what HE has already done!
If it would be by our own labor,there would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished because we would never,ever truely be completely "saved" and would forever fall short in our minds, of standards we never quite attain.
Not believe in righteousness by faith! You might as well not believe in angels. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus anymore than religious people see Jesus in trying to observe the law.There are signs and shadows of him but no substance. But, that is not a sign that righteousness by faith does not exsist.By faith,we are believing on the substance of things hoped for,the evidence of things which we do not with our eyes see.
By faith we believe in the One who has made us righteous.By faith,a faith which he even gives us,we are made completely pure in Gods sight by His works.
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see angels dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You can physicaly tear apart a baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only Christs physical death could push aside that curtain so that we can view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond,and this we are enable to do by, faith, in Him. Is it all real? Ah, Child, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
Saved by what we do instead of what Jesus has done?Thank God! It is he who lives and lives forever and therefore we also live in Him BY FAITH. A thousand years from now, Child, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of all who come to him as a child humbly, quietly, by faith in The Son of God.
