Luke 1:45

And blessed is she that believeth,--

Blessedness of firmly believing

Doubting nothing! That is the secret of liberty, of efficiency, of success in every work which is undertaken by men: a confidence in the practicability, in the value of the work, in the Divine authority which imposes it upon us as an obligatory work, and in the Divine providence and power which will bring it to a successful performance.

It is the secret of success, of enthusiasm in any secular enterprise. You see it in the inventor who is perfectly certain of the combination of instruments by which he is to accomplish a certain result--a result which is of value and importance to mankind. Nothing can hinder his endeavour, nothing can obscure or damp his enthusiasm, because he is certain of ultimate success. You see it in the teacher who knows that he has a truth to communicate to men, a truth which it is of importance to them to apprehend and to understand, who is not groping among uncertainties as he speaks it, who is not vaguely feeling after conjectures while he utters it, who is able to affirm it to others, because he has it affirmed in his own intelligent and intuitive spirit--the principle which he is declaring to the world. Kepler said: “God has waited so many centuries for an observer of the heavens, I can wait for years for an interpreter of those observations.” And every man who as certainly knew that he had apprehended truth and had it conveyed to others has been reinforced, inspired by this confidence, and gone to his work doubting nothing. See it in the soldier who knows, because he knows the commander, that the order which has been given is wise, practicable, needful; that no life will be wasted which can be saved, and no endeavour commanded which is not indispensable to the great result. See it in the sailor who trusts his clock and his compass, and is absolutely certain that the sun, of which he takes the meridian observation, will not tell him a lie, but will point out exactly the point on the ocean where the ship at that moment is; and he goes on his course, after his observation, doubting nothing, knowing where he is as exactly as if the commerce of nations had built at that very spot a beacon and had labelled it in immense letters of light in all the languages of the world: “This is at such a point on such a meridian.” He knows as certainly as he could know then, when he has caught the ray of the sun upon his instrument, where he is on the ocean, which to others seems pathless and intricate. Everywhere, then, this confidence is the condition of enthusiasm and of success, and in Christian enterprises, precisely as in secular enterprises, it is a confidence not merely in the usefulness of the work, but in the Divine authority which connects itself with that work, and the Divine care and the Divine affection, the Divine impulse which attend us in our endeavours to perform it. (R. Storrs.)

Saving faith

I. IN THE SIMPLICITY OF ITS NATURE.

II. IN THE IMPORTANCE OF ITS OBJECTS.

III. IN THE SUFFICIENCY OF ITS GROUNDS.

IV. IN THE PROPRIETY OF ITS ACTS.

V. IN THE BENEFITS OF ITS EXERCISE. “Blessed is she that believeth; for there shall be a performance,” and only a performance when we believe. (William Dawson.)

Trust in God

Mary’s faith, astounding in itself, the most supreme example probably of perfect trust in God and absolute self-devotion to Him that human flesh has ever given, was all the more striking to Elisabeth on account of its contrast with the unbelief of her own husband under a far less severe trial. No wonder that when Mary appeared before her spirit-illuminated eyes, she seemed the embodiment of Faith--that modest virgin, with clasped hands, whom Hermas saw in vision, though whom the elect of God are saved, and from whom spring all the Christian graces as fair daughters of a fair mother. Mary is thus, in Elisabeth’s eyes, the most blessed of women, because the most faithful; and it suits well that the first psalm of the New Testament should take the form of a praise of the fundamental evangelical virtue. (Professor Warfield.)