By Faith, Part 1
Abel
Enoch
A minister was one day going to preach. His attention was arrested by a woman standing at her door, who, upon seeing him, came up to him with the greatest anxiety, and said, “Oh sir, have you any keys about you? I have broken the key of my drawers, and there are some things that I must get.” He said, “I have no keys.” She was disappointed, expecting that everyone would have some keys. “But suppose,” he said, “I had some keys. They might not fit your lock, and therefore you could not get the articles you want. But,” said he, wishing to improve the occasion, “have you ever heard of the key of heaven?”
“Yes,” she said, “I have lived long enough, and I have gone to church long enough, to know that if we work hard and get our bread by the sweat of our brow, and act well toward our neighbors, and behave, as the catechism says, lowly and reverently to all our betters, and if we do our duty in that station of life in which it has pleased God to place us, and say our prayers regularly, we shall be saved.”
He said, “My good woman, that is a broken key, for you have broken the commandments, and you have not fulfilled all your duties. It is a good key, but you have broken it.” “But sir,” she said, believing that he understood the matter, and looking frightened, “What have I left out?” “Why,” said he, “the all-important thing, the blood of Jesus Christ. Don’t you know it is said, the key of heaven is at His belt; He opens and no man shuts; He shuts and no man opens?” And explaining it more fully to her, he said, “It is Christ, and Christ alone, that can open heaven to you, and not your good works.”