That name begins to appear almost immediately after Pentecost, and
continues throughout. It comes in two forms, one which is in my text,
'the faithful,' meaning thereby not the reliable, but the people that
are full of faith; the other, meaning the same thing, they who believe,
the 'believers.' The Church found that 'disciple' was not enough. It
went deeper; and, with a true instinct, laid hold of the unique bond
which knits men to their Lord and Saviour. That name indicates that
Jesus Christ appears to the man who has faith in a new character. He is
not any longer the Teacher who is to be listened to, but He is the
Object of trust. And that implies the recognition, first, of His
Divinity, which alone is strong enough to bear up the weight of millions
of souls leaning hard upon it; and, second, of what He has done and not
merely of what He has said. We accept the Teacher's word; we trust the
Saviour's Cross. And in the measure in which men learned that the centre
of the work of the Rabbi Jesus was the death of the Incarnate Son of
God, their docility was sublimed into faith.
That faith is the real bond that knits men to Jesus Christ. We are
united to Him, and become recipient of the gifts that He has to bestow,
by no sacraments, by no externals, by no reverential admiration of His
supreme wisdom and perfect beauty of character, not by assuming the
attitude of the disciple, but by flinging our whole selves upon Him,
because He is our Saviour. That unites us to Jesus Christ; nothing else
does. Faith is the opening of the heart, by which all His power can be
poured into us. It is the grasping of His hand, by which, even though
the cold waters be above our knees and be rising to our hearts, we are
lifted above them and they are made a solid pavement for our feet. Faith
is the door opened by ourselves, and through which will come all the
Glory that dwelt between the cherubim, and will fill the secret place in
our hearts. To be the disciple of a Rabbi is something; to be the
'faithful' dependent on the Saviour is to be His indeed.
And then there is to be remembered, further, that this bond, which is
the only vital link between a man and Christ, is therefore the basis of
all virtue, of all nobility, of all beauty of conduct, and that
'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report' are its natural
efflorescence and fruit. And so that leads us to the third point--