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You are warned here to remember of the death of Christ; and you, remembering it in faith, then you may apply your hearts and your hands to it. Now, certainly, without faith it is impossible to please God. Do not deceive yourself to think that your coming here to the sacrament does your turn; no, certainly; you displease God if you come here without faith. Your offering of any of these spiritual sacrifices without faith, is like the Israelites' offering of a sacrifice without a priest; and that was a thing intolerable. And, therefore, whatever you have, strive to find this into your souls; strive to find light, knowledge, faith, and to have the sense of it, which gives peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, and that certainly is the ground of it. Your present doing it remembers you of the Lord’s death, and that he shall come again.
The apostle says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God; for those that come to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”1 Now, believing in God is to come to him, and to leave ourselves and the world; and when we go on in obedience to his commandment, we come still nearer to him. As I think these people, the oftener they compassed the walls, they came nearer to God in faith; and I think at the thirteenth time they were nearer than at any time before, for by their often exercising thereof it did grow. And, therefore, it is good for us, in the use of the means, still to be drawing nearer to God. This kirk was once running fast from the Lord; and therefore if it please the Lord to return us again, we must make faster forward than if we had not gone back. These who has faith must still be seeking, for they see themselves to be indigent. These people, they wanted power to beat down the walls themselves, therefore they must look to God for his help; so when we find great and strong corruptions in us, then there is an open door for us to come to the Lord, to seek his help. Now it is impossible for us to come to God unless we know two things of him, first, that God is; second, that he is a rewarder of them who seek him. There be many who are atheists into their life—who live as if there were not a God; and these the Lord punishes with atheism in their affections also. For when they live as if there were not a God, then they come to that—to think that there is not a God; and so they perish in blindness of mind and hardness of heart. And there be many who never considers what the Lord has prepared for them who seek him. And therefore it is good for us at all times to think that there is a God, and that this God is a liberal rewarder of them who seek him.