Means to Faith the Scriptures and Prayer
I. It is not enough to love the character of Christ; who can help loving it? It must be something of a closer and more personal feeling, if I may so speak, that will make Him become to us the bread of life; and this feeling will only be gained by prayer. The knowledge of the Scriptures brings rapidly before our minds all the promises we most need. It reminds us that we must be earnest in prayer, and not faint; that the kingdom of God is like the seed which grew up in its season, though it showed no signs of life at once; that he who shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.
II. Amidst our prayers, thus repeated, a wonderful change is effected within us; our dispositions are greatly softened and sweetened, our views of life and death become different, our interest in earthly things less engrossing; our selfishness generally less intense. And that this change, so real and so visible, is the work of the Holy Spirit of God of the manner of which we can see and know nothing, but whose effects both we and all the world can witness this we learn from the Scriptures; and it forms one of the great and most consoling truths of the revelation of Jesus Christ. Unquestionably, where this change is wrought, faith overcometh the world. The good things which God has prepared for them that love Him, His love to us in Christ Jesus, the abiding influence of His spirit, all these are things which our prayers have made quite familiar, not to our ears only, but also to our hearts; they are things which have become the great interest of our lives, and we live in the daily consciousness of their reality.
T. Arnold, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 16.
References: John 6:62. F. D. Maurice, The Gospel of St. John,p. 186. John 6:63. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xi., No. 653; T. Lloyd, Christian World Pulpit,vol. iii., p. 69; D. Rhys Jenkins, The Eternal Life,p. 221; Bishop Simpson, Sermons,p. 115; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1870, p. 544.