I.
FAITH.
W. H. F.
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Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the test of
things not seen.
HEBR. xi. 1.
I
believe; help Thou mine unbelief.
MARK ix. 24.
Great
is thy faith: be it done unto thee even as thou wilt.
MATTH. xv. 28.
IN the course of the following Lectures I propose
to point out what appears to me to be the
force of the main articles of the Apostles' Creed,
the Creed of our Baptism, the one Confession of
Faith which has been the immemorial bond of
Western Christendom. But before we can
speak of a Creed, of the object of Faith, we must
speak of Faith itself, which is the life of Creeds.
The Creed is the word, but Faith is the power
which appropriates it.
What then is Faith ? If I were to say that it
is the absolute condition of all life, of all action,
of all thought which goes beyond the limitations
of our own minds, I should use no exaggera-
tion. Why do I believe and act as believing
that the sun will rise to-morrow ? that the friend
or the father will not fail me in my need ? that
wrong will not for ever go unpunished ? No ex-
perience can ever penetrate the future while it is
future; and the past in itself can give no pledge
1—2
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Faith the condition of Life:
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for that which will be. These are truths
which, as far as I can see, are wholly beyond
question. Yet we do not rest in them, as if they
expressed the whole truth. We ourselves add
from ourselves that which gives general validity
to the results of observation. We affirm, we are
so constituted as to affirm when the discipline of
life has done its work, that the phenomena of
nature are not arbitrary, disconnected events, but
the expression of one fixed will: that character
is not a transient manifestation of chance feeling,
but a solid growth bearing its proper fruit: that
good and evil are not names alterable at man's
pleasure, but signs of that which he was born to
fulfil and to abhor. By Faith, that is, in
dealing with the commonest circumstances of life,
we penetrate the future, we enter on the unseen:
we grasp it, we embody it, we try it, we commit
ourselves to it with a confidence which nothing
can shake. Belief deals with that which
has been or with that which now is. Faith
claims as its own that which is not yet brought
within the range of sense. It is clear then that
we cannot get quit of our dependence upon Faith
by doing away with Religion. We live by Faith
however we live. Perhaps, it is a sad possibility,
we can die without it.
But while Faith does thus underlie all life it
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of Religion.
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finds its most characteristic exercise in spiritual
things. Spiritual things are in a peculiar sense
unseen and eternal. Other things pass, as it were,
from earth out of sight, out of time; but these
come to us from that loftier, sightless, timeless
order to which they properly belong. None the
less they belong also to us. As we were made to
live in relation to the-visible, we were made to live
also in relation to the invisible. We were made
to seek God, made to seek the One, made to seek
unity in the many parts of our own personal nature,
unity in our relations to the great world in which
we are placed, unity in our relations to Him in
Whom we are. Religion is the striving,
however imperfectly, partially, even unconsciously,
after this unity; and it is by Faith that we .are
enabled to make the effort to gain it. In this
aspect, to borrow the image of the Patriarch's
dream. Faith is as the ladder joining earth and
heaven on which the angels of God find footing as
they fulfil their ministries of love.
But here we have great need of caution.
The very breadth and grandeur and necessity of
Faith cause it to be marred by many disguises and
simulated by many counterfeits, such as credulity
and superstition and conviction of the truth of
a thing. Credulity is not Faith. That indolent
abdication of the responsibility of judgment in
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Credulity, Superstition, Conviction.
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favour of every pretender, that superficial assent
lightly given and lightly withdrawn, is utterly at
variance with the intense clear vision and with
the resolute grasp of Faith.
Superstition is not Faith. To choose for
our-
selves idols, whatever they may be, to invest with
attributes of the unseen world fragments of this
world, to brood over shadows, is to deny Faith,
which is at every moment active, progressive, busy
with the infinite.
Conviction is not Faith. We may yield to
what we admit to be an inevitable intellectual
conclusion. Our opposition may be silenced or
vanquished. But the state of mind which is
thus produced is very often simply a state of
exhaustion and not of quickening. Till the heart
welcomes the Truth, it remains outside us. As a
mere logical result, we have no sympathy with it.
It does not in virtue of its own nature enter into
us to fill up a void in our being.
Setting aside then these and other like
counter-
feits, we ask again. What is Faith ? What especi-
ally is religious Faith ? It is an old, old question;
and yet like the oldest questions it is ever new.
For the word Faith, like the words God and Truth
and Life, does not stand for one fixed, defined,
dead idea. It sums up all the experience which
men have gained of a vital power. The
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The idea of Faith.
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parables of being on which we look change with
the widening of thought: so too do the interpret-
ations of them; and it is through these inter-
pretations that our conceptions of the greatest
objects of the mind are filled up. Each generation
therefore of necessity is able to apprehend some-
thing more of that which the word Faith represents.
But nevertheless the essential properties of Faith
always remain the same.
Faith is in every age, under all
circumstances,
that by which man lays hold on the realities which
underlie the changeful appearances of things, and
gives substance to hope, that by which he enters
into actual communion with the powers of the
unseen world and brings their manifestation to
a sovereign test. It is the harmony of reason
and feeling and purpose. It is, to say all briefly,
thought illuminated by emotion and concentrated
by will. By this energy the creature is
lilted out of the limits of self. By this ' the
person' in all his fulness reaches forth to the
completion of his individuality. By this the be-
liever strives forward to that fellowship in which
alone is rest: he is in God and God in him. So
Faith is consummated, and in the consummation
we see written large the characters which mark in
a rudimentary shape the commonest actions of our
daily lives. Faith in God illuminates that faith
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Hebr.xi.l.
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Faith a principle
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in law, in character, in right, which we have as
made in the image of God.
When we think of these things we see what
Faith is in its essence; and we ask next what is
it in its application ?
Faith—and I speak now of Faith in its com-
pletest form, of religious Faith—Faith, I answer,
as applied to our present life is a principle of
knowledge, a principle of power, a principle of
action. It may be quickened and intensified: it
may be dulled and neglected. As it is used so it
will be fruitful; and we are severally responsible
for the use which we make of it.
Faith is a principle of knowledge. Just as
thought turned inwards lays open the laws of our
own minds: just as thought turned outwards notes
the recurrences of the visible order: so revelation
tells us what we can as yet know of the invisible
and eternal world, and Faith makes the message
her own. We cannot obtain the facts of this
higher order in any other way. If we are to have
the knowledge it must be brought to us. We are
so constituted that we can recognise the validity
of a new revelation. We can welcome the message
with assurance, but we cannot draw it out of
ourselves: we cannot lift up our bodies above the
earth, much less our souls. The truth is
forced upon us at every turn. Reason is unable
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of Knowledge.
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to rise beyond the bounds of our personal powers,
Reason is baffled by the contrast, by the coexist-
ence, of God and man. Reason stands paralysed
at the grave.
In this sense it is most true that we
believe in
order that we may know: most true that Faith
goes before understanding. For Faith gives us
the facts on which we can build our conclusions
afterwards. It is as the eye of the soul which
penetrates into new regions and gathers new
treasures for the exercise of thought. There
cannot then be any rivalry, or opposition, between
Reason and religious Faith. They move in regions
which are absolutely distinct. When Faith has
done her work, the work of Reason begins;
and conversely the peculiar work of Faith be-
gins at the very point where the work of Reason
is ended. Faith carries the believer forward
where Reason acknowledges the bar to ifcs own
advance. Faith sees the assurance of the
unity of being in the gathering up of all things
in the Son of God. Faith sees the reconciliation
of the finite and the Infinite in the Incarnation of
the Word. Faith sees the certainty of a future
life in the Resurrection of Christ. Reason
it may be, accepts these facts of Faith and in
their light interprets the guesses and the as-
pirations of mankind, resolves the discords of
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Faith a principle of Power:
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our manifold existence into their primal har-
mony, traces onward the convergence of the lines
of life to their common centre. It recognises in
them the satisfaction of the aspirations and of
the constitution of man. This is its appropriate
office. But the facts themselves are gained by
Faith. Faith is a principle of knowledge.
Again: Faith is a principle of power. If we
were to listen to some we might suppose that
Faith is the portion of childhood and old age, an
infirmity of the weak and the ignorant. And yet,
if we will be honest with ourselves, we shall con-
fess that there is nothing great and noble in the
world, nothing which calls forth the admiration
and the love of men, which is not sealed with the
sign of Faith. To feel the reality of some-
thing above us, above our temporal experience,
above the limit of our single lives; of something
more enduring than the shows which we see, more
glorious than the visions which we frame; is just
so far to rise to the possibility of a more tran-
scending triumph. It cannot indeed but be so.
For Faith not only apprehends the unseen, but
enters into vital union with it, and so wields,
according to its strength, the powers of the world
to come. We all know what is the sus-
taining, inspiring, compelling force which a great
name, or a great empire, or a great cause brings
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of Action.
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with it. And God offers us all, whatever we may
seem to be, a name with which no earthly nobility
can compare, a citizenship which brings a loftier
dignity than the proudest inheritance of national
glory, a cause of which all other causes able to
move us by the claims of purity and knowledge
and freedom and justice are but fragments and
contributories. If we can by Faith welcome the
divine gift, knowledge will pass into love; and
love will nerve with might. Faith is a
principle of power.
Once again: Faith is a principle of action.
There was a time when it was usual to draw
a sharp line between religious and worldly
things. That time has happily gone by, We all
at last acknowledge more or less that all life is
one. But perhaps our temptation now is
to acquiesce in worldly motives for right-doing: to
stop short of the clear confession both to ourselves
and to others that as citizens and workers we take
our share in public business, we labour to fulfil
our appointed task, because the love of Christ
constraineth us. And yet I do not see that any
other motive has that permanence, that energy,
that universality, which can support our efforts
through failure, or make them independent of
praise, or bring them into harmony with the
countless activities of life.
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Faith the touchstone:
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If we do believe that Christ the Son of God
came down from heaven to earth and drew all
men to Him upon the Cross, then even in our
humiliations and defeats we shall be enabled to
wait and trust. If we do believe that He
is with us all the days—through the days of sun-
shine and the days of gloom—we shall need no
other voice to cheer us in sadness. If we
do believe that in Him all things in earth and in
heaven are by the divine will reconciled to GOD,
then we shall be assured that there is something
greater than our jealousies and rivalries and
divisions. And if we do believe this, if we
feel the inspiration of this knowledge, if we feel
the stirring of this power within us, we shall not
stand idle while the great stream of human affairs
rolls by us. Our indifference would be our con-
demnation. Faith—our Christian Faith—
is a principle of action.
Faith, I repeat, is in its essence the
power
by which we grasp the future, the unseen,
the infinite, the eternal; and in its application
it is a principle of knowledge, a principle
of power, a principle of action. It is then on
man's side the condition and the measure of
divine blessing. By faith we lift up the sight-
less eye and it is opened: by faith we stretch out
the withered arm and it is made whole: by faith,
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of Life.
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bound hand and foot with grave-cloths, we come
forth from the tomb of custom which lies upon us
with a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life.
For ourselves then, what is Faith to us, this
sovereign power which can see, use, dwell in the
heaven which lies about us still ? Our answer to
that question is the revelation of our life. It
cannot be lightly made, and it cannot be wisely
refused. It will shew us what we aim at doing,
and what we can do. It will find expression not
in word but in deed.
What is Faith to us ? Perhaps as we come to
feel more distinctly what it is capable of being,
we shall answer best, mindful of our selfishness,
of our triviality, of our forgetfulness of God, by
praying that whatever it is it may hereafter be
far more.
For a time, or even to the last, Faith will be
chequered, not with doubt indeed but with dark-
ness, when we look upon the great sorrows of life
and the vain efforts of good men to remove them ;
but the faith which confesses its imperfection is
not unrewarded.
If only we can repeat the apostles' petition
when our work is marred by the fault of others:
Lord, increase our faith —
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The crown of Faith.
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If only we can make our own that utterance
of love which struggled against the bitterness of
disappointment: Lord, I believe, help Thou mine
unbelief —
If only we can bear the trial of delay and
accept the judgment which lays bare our true
condition—we shall in due time hear in our souls
the voice which reveals blessings through trial
and crowns endurance with the fulness of joy:
Great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou
wilt.
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