Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Faith: 21. Chaper 5: Faith In God

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Faith: 21. Chaper 5: Faith In God



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Faith (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 21. Chaper 5: Faith In God

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FAITH IN GOD.

1. THE faith which Jesus said men must have before they could do apparently impossible things was faith in God (Mar_11:22-23). He had been speaking to His discouraged disciples about faith and what faith can do in the way of overcoming and removing hindrances. To add emphasis to what He had been saying He pointed perhaps to the hill on which the Temple stood, and assured them that if only they had faith enough they could remove that mountain. Let them have faith in God, let them summon up all their spiritual forces, and any mountain of wrong thoughts and ways which obstructed and resisted their progress would disappear and their path would become straight and plain before them. It was a work which must have appeared impossible, beyond all human ingenuity and power; and with man unrelated and alone it was impossible, but not with God—for all things are possible with God; that is, to man with God, working in the line of the will of God and strengthened by His Spirit.

2. What, then, is it to have faith in God? How would this faith affect our way of thinking and acting? By what change in our life can it lead us to the marvellous strength and fruitfulness which is promised by Christ?

That is the question which we are now to attempt to answer.

But let us notice, first of all, the word in. Though very small, it is an emphatic word. We speak of -believing in God—not merely believing certain truths about Him, not merely believing that there is such a Being, but something much deeper and more important than this; to believe in God is so to believe in Him as to make the belief the ground of all we do, the measure of all we think and say. I may easily believe a fact which is told me, and yet the belief may have no influence upon my conduct; there may be facts in science which are of this kind, there may be abundance of facts in newspapers or in books of the same kind, facts which are asserted on good authority, which therefore I admit to be true and probably never think about again. And this is just the kind of belief concerning God, which we ought not to have; it is perhaps worse than that belief which is spoken of as pertaining to devils, for their belief at least makes them tremble.

How often we say, “I believe in God” How easily the sentence falls from the lips But it is one thing to say it, and another thing to live as one who feels God to be the Alone and Everlasting Reality of human life. “I believe in God.”Yes, but with what sort of a belief? “Thou believest there is one God,” writes St. James with solemn sarcasm; “thou doest well; the devils also believe.” Mr. Froude says of Sir Robert Cecil that he believed in God in “a commonplace kind of way.” When a man. says, “I believe in God,” the question is, What is the quality of his belief, and what its influence? Does he hold the belief, or does the belief also hold him? The selfish man who has lost all sense of the eternal necessity for truth and righteousness of life, says, “I believe in God,” but his belief is not worth anything. In his business and intercourse with men he lives “without God”; he is ruled and guided, not by the Divine will, but by passion, pride, pleasure, self-interest.

There is a section of Miss Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought called “Cassandra.” It is the story of a girl’s imprisoned life; it is in part autobiographical, and I have quoted from it several times in the course of this work. It ends with the death of the heroine. “Let neither name nor date be placed on her grave, still less the expression of regret or of admiration; but simply the words, I believe in God.” [Note: Sir E. T. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 490.]