All human relationships are founded upon trust. It is the first power that helps men to rise above barbarism, and it is the basis and groundwork of the latest and most finished civilization. It is equally indispensable in all departments of life, and it is equally universal in all relations between men. The child from his earliest years trusts his father and his mother; and as soon as he can think at all, as soon as the beginnings appear of any of those powers and feelings which distinguish us from beasts, so soon does the parent also begin to trust the child. Trust is the basis of all trade, beyond the most barbarous form of barter. It is the pillar of all free government, of all law, of all liberty: for what, without the trust of the people, is the statesman, or the judge, or the representative? It is the very life of friendship; without confidence the lowest form of human love is not worthy of so sacred a name.
A child is told by his parents to be careful and tidy; he is threatened with punishment if he is not so; he is promised some little reward if he is. The parents are not present; the punishment and the reward are not actually before the eyes of the child, while the temptation is; that is to say, he feels that it is a trouble to put his things together, and that at the very moment when he sees something which he wishes to be doing immediately. Now, if he thinks more of the future reward and punishment than of the present trouble and pleasure; if he cares more for his parents, whom he may not see for an hour or two, than for the plaything which lies before his eyes; if he accordingly puts his things together, and is careful and tidy, then this child has, after his humble measure, acted by faith; he has gained some experience of that principle which, if he is a follower of Jesus, must be the guide of his life till that hour when all earthly things shall pass away. [Note: T. Arnold, Sermons, ii]
1. We all believe in the stability of the outward world, and walk by that faith. We all go to bed at night, and fall asleep—which is just like dying—believing that we shall• wake in the morning, and that there will be a morning to wake in. We expect to find our house and furniture and family tomorrow just as they were today. We shall sit down to breakfast tomorrow believing that it will feed us and not poison us. We shall go to our business expecting to find people to deal with, and work to do, as we found them yesterday. We all repose, in perfect security, on this firm faith in the stability of the universe. We walk by it, live by it, are saved by it.
What a vast interval there is between that knowledge of the laws of Nature, of their principles, connexion, and operation, towards which Science is gradually ascending, and that simple confident unquestioning faith in the laws of Nature, which is necessary to the very subsistence of man as man. Think for a moment how much faith is implied in the labours of the husbandman. How many causes must work together, in order that his desire may be accomplished! He must have an undoubting assurance that, according to the covenant made with Noah, “seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” In this assurance he plies his daily task, “plodding on cheerfully” through many difficulties and discouragements, confident that, after moons have waxed and waned, the seed he sows will spring up, and will fill the golden ear, and be reaped in the joyful harvest, and be stowed in the foodful garner, and that men and women and children will receive the sustenance of their life from it. Such power has a living practical faith in the laws of Nature. Its effect, even in this one mode of its manifestation, has been that the chief part of the earth has been constrained to bring forth food for the use of man, and that millions upon millions of human beings have been fed for hundreds of generations. And surely our faith in the certainty and stability of the laws of the spiritual world ought to be no less strong—nay, far stronger. For while Nature and her laws may be changed as a vesture—being nothing more than the vesture wherein God, in this nook of time and space, is pleased to array His will—the laws of the spiritual world can never change or fail. Heaven and earth shall pass away; but not one jot or tittle of them. On them therefore we should rely, never doubting that, when we go forth to sow our seed of whatsoever kind in God’s spiritual field, He will bless our labours with His increase, and in His own good time will make the seed spring up and will ripen it for His heavenly harvest. [Note: J.C, Hare, The Victory of Faith, 112]
There is no unbelief ;
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod
And waits to see it push away the clod,
He trusts in God.
Whoever says when clouds are in the sky,
Be patient, heart, light breaketh by and by,
Trusts the Most High.
Whoever sees, ‘neath field of winter snow,
The silent harvest of the future grow,
God’s power must know.
Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep,
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep,
Knows God will keep.
Whoever says, Tomorrow, The Unknown,
The Future, trusts that power alone,
He dares disown.
There is no unbelief ;
And day by day and night, unconsciously,
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny,
God knoweth why. [Note: Edward Bulwer Lytton]
2. As we pass from what is visible—the forces of the material world—to what is invisible—purpose and love and character—faith comes by her own, and is the indispensable guide of life. There are, no doubt, in the workings of societies, especially such workings as come into the field of political economy, some uniformities which are almost as much to be trusted as those of the physical world. Gresham’s law that, when purer and more debased coins circulate together in a country, the worse will have a tendency to drive the better out of circulation, acts almost with the regularity of a law of nature. But when it is a question of individuals and of private conduct, experience loses its cogency, since we never know with scientific certainty what course of action any man or woman will take. And then we have to trust to faith.
(1) How little of the knowledge which we possess rests on evidence which we have personally or scientifically investigated; how much depends on the testimony of others. How few (if any) of the acts which we perform do not involve dependence. Suppose I post a letter, I commit it to agencies and arrangements which are to me invisible, of many of which I know nothing, and over which I have no control. My confidence that the letter will reach its destination can be described as nothing else than an act of faith. So it is with all transactions relating to the unseen, the distant, and the future, that is, with all that lies beyond my direct and immediate experience. Yet, while thus trusting to the good faith of others, and the arrangements of society, have I not the best and most rational grounds for so acting? Here is a case of the simplest order, which shows that whatever faith is, it is -not necessarily an acting without sufficient grounds, or in opposition to reason.
After all, what do we know without trusting others? We know that we are in a certain state of health, in a certain place, have been alive for a certain number of years, have certain principles and likings, have certain persons around us, and perhaps have in our lives travelled to certain places at a distance. But what do we know more? Are there not towns (we will say) within fifty or sixty miles of us which we have never seen, and which, nevertheless, we fully believe to be as we have heard them described? To extend our view; — we know that land stretches in every direction of us, a certain number of miles, and then there is sea on all sides; that we are in an island. But who has seen the land all around, and has proved for himself that the fact is so? What, then, convinces us of it? The report of others—this trust, this faith in testimony which when religion is concerned, then, and only then, the proud and sinful would fain call irrational. [Note: J. H, Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, i. 194.]
(2) What, then, is it we do when we put faith in a fellow-creature? Is it not this—that we accept him as he offers himself to us, and act accordingly? Thus, a teacher of any science puts himself forward as an adept in his particular department; and those who wish to acquire that science, if they believe in him, wait on his prelections and accept with confidence the information he conveys.
Faith is the one thing that can establish on any firm foundation, or endow with any beauty and nobility, the close relations between the teacher and the taught. If you who learn cannot have trust in the power, or at least the sincere endeavour, of us who teach, to find out the truth and to show it you, to cherish the good and repress the bad in you, to do you instant and full justice, and to guide you right, then you know that a school is a mockery and an abomination, and all our rules will only make confusion worse confounded. And on the other hand, if we cannot put trust in you, trust that you will strive after that steady energy without which no manliness can be, trust that you will be honest in your dealings and truthful in your words, trust also that you will try to be helpful to each other, to be jealous of the ancient honour of this place, and to leave your society better than you found it; if this trust, with due allowance made, of course, for weaknesses and failing and temptation, cannot find some reality to rest upon, cannot be better than a vision or a dream, then all our traditions and pride in our school and daily boasts are all as nothing, and it were better for us that we had never been brought together here. [Note: A. Sidgwick School Homilies, i. 208.]
3. Our faith in any of our friends or colleagues is based upon our experience of his past behaviour, or on our reading of his character. It goes, however, beyond the experience, for if we trusted people only in matters in which we had known them to take the right course, we could not live an ordinary human life.
We constantly believe and act upon impressions which we could not put into words without seeming ridiculous, and which we could not ignore without being irrational. The merchant, or captain, knows well that one course is better than another, but he would often be sadly puzzled to justify his opinion by anything but the favourable result. Such action and judgment partake of the nature of instinct. They are the total outcome of our past experience; and, although the reasoning element has almost entirely disappeared, they are, in general, far more trustworthy than our laboured calculations. The reasons for trusting or distrusting persons, also, are seldom susceptible of formulation; and that, too, in cases where the greatest interests are ventured. This is especially the case with personal influence. An impression is made upon us, and we are stirred and moulded by something which we feel but cannot tell. In short, the great bulk of human belief and action rests upon grounds which admit of no satisfactory statement; yet we cannot disallow such grounds of belief and action without declaring life to be illogical and irrational.
4. But if faith rests on past experience it is also a venture into the future. Without the venture there is no faith. There is a sphere in all our lives which seems to be under our direct control, but we soon discover that its range is very limited. We wander hither and thither in the exercise of our prerogative of freedom, but on every hand we soon touch the darkness, and reach the gloomy edge of an ocean where we need a pilot. Many things are put within easy reach of our eyes and hands, more perhaps are given unsolicited and without research; but other things, often the divinest and of deepest consequence to us, are far off. They lie behind concealing veils, and the way to them is over dark, untrodden spaces, and across many a desolate bog and morass. If life were unprogressive, or limited in its scope, if it were a mere round of daily routine, a thinking of familiar thoughts, and a doing of ordinary things, this necessity for treading in the dark, and trusting where we cannot trace, would not exist. There would be no occasion for faith. But when we yield to an upward and onward impulse life becomes a good deal of a venture. When we attempt some entirely new thing, or even try to lift an old thing to a new pitch of excellence—then we walk by faith and not by sight. We enter many a struggle the issues of which are by no means obvious. We often gaze into darkness for a light that will not shine, or that comes only in fitful and transitory gleams. We strike invisible barriers which refuse to yield, and plunge into bold ventures without seeing exactly where we are to emerge.
Not only do we reckon on the stability of the world and the continuity of its laws. We tend to believe that there is a more perfect order in the universe as a whole than that which has been in the past definitely discovered. The anticipations of nature and forecasts of human history depend on this kind of faith. Having found, for instance, that there are various ways in which progress has been brought about by human effort, we have a tendency to believe that we may advance to a kind of perfection of which we have no experience, that the difficulties with which we have to contend will be finally eliminated, that
somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.
Such a view may lead us in the end to a sublime optimism such as that which was held by Browning:—
God’s in His heaven;
All’s right with the world. [Note: J.S. Mackenzie, Elements of Constructive Philosophy, 134.]
