ennobling and enriching of human nature is produced by that good news
about the grace and glory of God and of Christ, if we will only listen
to it, and let it work its work on our souls.

Substantially the same set of facts is included under that other
expression, 'the gospel of peace.' The Hebrew use of the word 'peace'
as a kind of shorthand for all good is probably to be remembered. But
even in the narrower sense of the word, how great are the blessings
set forth by it! All inward serenity and outward calm, the
tranquillity of a soul free from the agitations of emotion and the
storms of passions and the tumults of desire, as well as the security
of a life guarded from the assaults of foes and girded about with an
impregnable barrier which nothing can destroy and no enemy overleap,
are ours, if we take the good news about God to our heart. They are
ours in the measure in which we take it. Clearly such truths as those
which the gospel brings have a plain tendency to give peace. They give
peace with God, with the world, and with ourselves. They lead to
trust, and trust is peace. They lead to union with God, and that is
peace. They lead to submission, and that is peace. They lead to
consecration, and that is peace. They lead to indifference to fleeting
joys and treasures, and that is peace. They give to heart and mind and
will an all-sufficient and infinite object, and that is peace. They
deliver us from ourselves, and that is peace. They fill the past, the
present, and the future with the loving Father's presence, and
brighten life and death with the Saviour's footsteps--and so to live
is calm, and to die is to lay ourselves down in peace and sleep, quiet
by His side, like a child by its mother. The good news about God and
Christ is the good news of our salvation and of our peace.

IV. The good news about Christ and God is _the_ gospel.