A CASTLE stands on the top of a steep cliff: the owner is a kind and hospitable man; it is known he keeps open house and receives all comers. Many persons living at the foot of the hill determine some day or other to visit him and share his hospitality; they think that all they shall have to do will be to climb the ascent. True, it looks rather steep and difficult, and it is too much trouble to attempt it just at present; but they mean to attempt it some day, and doubt not that they will succeed, and that the owner, pleased with the effort they have made to reach his house, will give them a kind welcome. Now this might appear tolerably reasonable unless we knew some further particulars. But what if the hill were infinitely more difficult to climb than it looked from the bottom—what if, at the top, between the brow and the castle walls, there were a great and impassable, unbridged chasm—what if the greatest pains were taken to inform would-be visitors of these facts—what if the words, “No road,” “No thoroughfare,” were written up in conspicuous characters at the foot of the hill—and more than this, if at a great expense and ingenuity the proprietor had made a road by which an easy access was to be had to the castle—if he had a sign-post and messengers to point to this road, and yet this way was despised, and persons still persisted in attempting to reach him by the inaccessible cliff: should we then say that they were reasonable? They would be just as reasonable as men trying to climb to heaven by their own good works. The path of perfect obedience is steeper than is imagined by those who have never tried to ascend it. If any man could reach the summit of obedience, there would still be between him and heaven an impassable abyss—the chasm between the holiness of God and the nature of fallen, ruined, sinful man. The notice, “No road,” God has written in conspicuous characters in His Word, and has also pointed to the “new and living way” of access, which He in such wonderful wisdom and at such a cost has opened. “By the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified.” “If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. “I am the Way: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me,” said Christ Himself. Therefore, although it may sound reasonable that God will justify us if we endeavour to keep His laws, it has the objection that justification by the law is impossible, and is declared by God Himself to be so; and that He has made another way, which He declares is the only way: and He is the best Judge. Hence, to endeavour to earn justification by good works is itself a bad work, and defeats its own object.
— Rev. Hely H. A. Smith’s “Foundation Stones.”