Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Faith: 27. Chapter 6: The Venture Of Faith

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Doctrines of Prayer, Faith, and Peace by James Hastings: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Faith: 27. Chapter 6: The Venture Of Faith



TOPIC: Hastings, James - Doctrine of Faith (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 27. Chapter 6: The Venture Of Faith

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THE VENTURE OF FAITH.

FAITH is always a venture. The venture may be made with confidence or with doubt, but it is, and must be, a venture. There is always in it an element of the unseen and unknown. No doubt faith and sight stand in close connexion with each other, and often seem to run over, so to speak, into one another. Faith, in its true and sane sense, cannot live without some foothold on what we may call sight. But faith in itself is precisely that which ventures out beyond sight, and moves and works in the dark, in the unseen, in the unknown.

Take for illustration the case of the physician. You are ill, and you send for your doctor, and you give yourself over to his care, because you have faith in him. What does it mean? Your physician is quite visible’ to your eyes, and his treatment is felt by your body; all this falls under the heading of sight. But your faith in him is that attitude of thought and will which leaps off into what to you is the unknown region of his medical science and training. He knows what you do not know about your disease, and about the proper remedies or reliefs. You know him well enough, as a man, to trust him out of sight, so to speak, with things which you know not but which he knows. Precisely in that region, in what is a dark void to your own understanding, your faith in your physician lives, and moves, and works.

I don’t agree with you that anything so vital as Christianity ought to be indisputable—

You must mix your uncertainty

With faith, if you would have faith be.

If it is to be anything but mere intellectual consent, as if to the fact that the world is round, it must be the attitude of throwing oneself on the things that are highest and best in life; and committing oneself to the most lovable and strongest personality in all history—the attitude of saying “I will take the side of this Man, the most perfect and most heroic who has ever lived; he cannot have been mistaken.” [Note: Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 303.]

Who am I? Lord, I know not; lead me on.

The night is dark; no stars are in the skies ;

All hint, all outline of the path is gone,

And fierce and rough the sullen night winds rise.

Where only One illumes the night,

Do pilgrims question- of His right?



Dost thou believe that I am very God?

I know not, Lord, I know not; lead me on.

This much I know—that where Thy steps have trod

Some Light still shines as it has always shone.

Where only One illumes the night,

Do pilgrims question of His right?



Dost thou believe then that I died for thee?

I know not, Lord, I know not; lead me on.

This much, no more in all the world I see,

Where Thy Light falters every light is gone.

Where only One illumes the night,

Do pilgrims question of His right?



Dost thou then love Me, thou that criest so?

I know not, Lord, I know not; lead me on.

This much, no more in all the world I know—

The darkness grows and I am all alone.

Where only One illumes the night,

Do pilgrims question of His right? [Note: Edith Sichel, New and Old, 171.]