threshold of the palace, and lead him through all the glittering
series of unfamiliar splendour, and present him at last in the
central ring around the king. The reality that underlies the metaphor
is plain. We sinners can never pass into that central glory, nor ever
possess those gifts of grace, unless the barrier that stands between
us and God, between us and His highest gifts of love, is swept away.

I recall an old legend where two knights are represented as seeking
to enter a palace, where there is a mysterious fire burning in the
middle of the portal. One of them tries to pass through, and recoils
scorched; but when the other essays an entrance the fierce fire
sinks, and the path is cleared. Jesus Christ has died, and I say it
with all reverence, as His blood touches the fire it flickers down
and the way is opened 'into the holiest of all, whither the
Forerunner is for us entered.' He both brings the grace and makes it
possible that we should go in where the grace is.

But Jesus Christ's work is nothing to you unless your personal faith
comes in, and so that is pointed to in the second of the clauses
here: '_By faith_ we have access.' That is no arbitrary appointment.
It lies in the very nature of the gift and of the recipient. How can
God give access into that grace to a man who shrinks from being near
Him; who does not want 'access,' and who could not use the grace if
he had it? How can God bestow inward and spiritual gifts upon any man
who closes his heart against them, and will not have them? My faith
is the condition; Christ is the Giver. If I ally myself to Him by my
faith, He gives to me. If I do not, with all the will to do it, He
cannot bestow His best gifts any more than a man who stretches out
his hand to another sinking in the flood can lift him out, and set
him on the safe shore, if the drowning man's hand is not stretched