The Holiest of All By Andrew Murray

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is to come, must be held fast to the very end.
But the beginning,
as being only a commencement of something better, must be left.
It is a terrible misunderstanding of the words, Hold fast what
thou to hast," imagine that we simply need to preserve what we
already have. By no means. We must realise that the know
ledge of Christ and the measure of grace we receive at conversion
cannot suffice for our farther life. We need each day to learn
more of Christ, to make new advances in obedience, to gain larger
experience of the power of the heavenly life. There can be no
healthy life without growth and progress. We must leave the
word of the beginning of Christ.
Not laying again the foundation. A builder, when he has
laid his foundation, leaves working at it any more, and builds
upon it. There are Christians who never get beyond the
foundation, who never know what the house is for the sake of
which alone the foundation is; what it is to be an habitation of
God through the Spirit, and to dwell in the love and the power
of God. The writer mentions, in three pairs, six points which
belong to the foundation truths, in which the young beginner
has to be instructed. Repentance from dead works and faith
towards God : these are in very deed only the rudiments of the
word of Christ. Then follow two points that have reference to
the public confession of faith and the connection with the
Church : the teaching of baptism and of the laying on of
hands. And then two more, that relate to the future life :
the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. Without
these elementary truths one could hardly be a Christian : but
the man who rests content with them, and cares not to know
more, cannot be a Christian as God would have him, has
reason to doubt whether he be a Christian at all.
Wherefore, let us leave the word of the beginning of Christ,