It is characteristic of human nature to seek to rise from the visible sphere to that invisible sphere in which it stands alone face to face with the eternal. Thus, in respect of thought, it strives to pass beyond the visible phenomena around us, to the invisible truths which underlie them, and the invisible Cause from which they all proceed. In respect of morality, the conscience bears its witness to an invisible and eternal righteousness, which is but imperfectly expressed in the laws and institutions by which the visible life is governed. In respect of beauty—whether the beauty of grandeur or the beauty of perfection—the imagination cannot be content with its visible manifestations; it must endeavour to grasp the ideal principles, which they can but imperfectly embody. In respect of affection, our higher humanity must go beyond that which is sensuous and transitory in love to the spiritual element in it, which cannot fade or pass away. In respect of what we call especially spiritual aspiration, the soul has an inexpressible yearning for the invisible perfection of goodness, which alone can satisfy a nature stamped with a Divine Image. It is therefore natural and even inevitable that, in respect of that personal relation of which faith is the vivid recognition, there should be a corresponding tendency to rise from the visible to the invisible, from the finite to some infinite personality, on which our whole being can absolutely rest.
1. The realm of the invisible into which faith brings us may be a realm of ideas and ideals. The first man in his immaturity deals with things. Man as he grows maturer deals also with ideas. The things are visible and tangible. The ideas no eye has seen, no hand has ever touched. Subtle, elusive, and yet growing to be more real to the mind of the man who truly deals with them than are the bricks of which his house is built, or the iron tool with which he does his work, the great ideas of justice, of beauty, of sublimity, become at once the witnesses and the educators of man’s deeper powers which must come out to do their work. The birth of the power of recognizing and dealing with ideas, the birth of ideality, is an epoch in the history of the world or of a man.
In a part of the battle of Neuve Chapelle where things were more than usually muddled, a British subaltern received the order to lead his men out against the trenches opposite. The barbed wire in front of them was obviously intact, and to do anything of the sort seemed to be merely useless suicide. The men, realizing the situation, refused, and were in fact justified by a counter-order a few minutes later. But their officer could not understand their refusal. Again and again he implored them to follow him, and at last, with tears in his eyes, sprang up himself, saying, “If you will not follow me, I’m going alone.” He was hardly over the parapet before he fell back, severely wounded. As they carried him off on a stretcher, he was weeping bitterly —not for his own failure or the pain of his wound, but because his men had disgraced themselves by refusing the impossible. That is the only right spirit for the Christian today —the spirit which is prepared to attempt the impossible, because the alternative is more unbearable still. But, if the faith of a Christian is not a delusion the whole way through, then for him the impossible does not exist. The Commander he serves under never blunders, and there is no such thing as going forward alone. On the contrary, the faith which is willing to face the impossible is itself the appointed means of achieving it. “This is the victory which has overcome the world, even our faith.” “Nothing shall be impossible unto you.” [Note: E. A. Burroughs, The Valley of Decision, 363.]
2. The ideal towards which faith leads us is perhaps unattainable here but attainable hereafter. The instinctive expectation of an immortal life beyond the grave, which is found in the humanity of all races and of all ages, always includes some development of this hope of future perfection. In fact, it is in relation to this ultimate expectation that hope itself, in spite of all its disappointments in this earthly sphere, lives on still, as a source of comfort and a spring of energy even to the end. If faith is perfected by love, it is also in another sense perfected by hope. It is not a little remarkable that the so-called definition of faith with which the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews opens, that it is the “assurance of things hoped for, and the discernment of things unseen,” is so large and comprehensive as to include all these aspects of that tendency of human nature, which has been described, to rise from the visible to the Invisible, and to cherish the undying hope of a future growth to perfection.
Passage, immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not grovell’d here long enough eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?
Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me, For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
O my brave soul?
O farther, farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe I are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail! [Note: Walt Whitman.]
3. The ideal of faith is finally and perfectly only God Himself. It is “seeing him who is invisible.” That is to say, it is the consciousness of a Divine Personality, the hope of the fulfilment of His promises, and the rest on communion with Him. This it is which is the essence of all vital religion; and it may be unhesitatingly affirmed that in this sense of the word, religion, in spite of many imperfections, obscurities, and perversions, is in possession of the whole world of humanity, as soon as that humanity emerges from the darkness of mere savagery.
There is a profound truth in St. Paul’s celebrated declaration at Athens, that God “made of one blood all the nations who dwell on all the face of the earth, that they should seek him if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he is not far from any one of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being.” In that great saying we have the truths which the maturest human thought acknowledges more and more—first, that there is a spiritual unity of all humanity in relation to God; next, there is in that humanity a universal consciousness, which feels after Him, and in various measures finds Him; and, lastly, that with this tendency to search after Him is associated the feeling that, in some way, our life lives, moves, and has its being in Him. [Note: A. Barry, Do We Believe? 19.]
4. But it is not enough to “feel after and find” God through faith. What is the nature of the God we find? No experience, however momentous and significant it may be for the person who has it, can settle for everybody else the question: Is there in the universe a God who is personal and all-loving? No empirical experience of any sort can ever answer that question, and to the end of the world men will be called upon to walk by faith, to make their venture in the light of what ought to be true, and in the light of what seems to them true, and to live by that faith.
Faith sees the Divine omnipresence to which materialism is blind; Christian faith further recognizes it as the presence of a Father. For the Fatherhood of God is the fundamental thought of the Sermon on the Mount. “Ye shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” “Thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.” “Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask.” “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven.” [Note: J. R. Illingworth, Christian Character, 66.]
5. Faith in God, therefore, is always a venture. We may not discover meaning in the world as we gaze upon it, or as its manifold life unrolls itself before our eyes. It may seem only a complex of blind and conflicting forces. Everything looks like the mere play of chance. Conclusive evidence that the race is growing better, or that there is a moral order of the universe, is difficult to find. But we resolve that the world shall have meaning for us, that it shall be a moral world in which our moral purposes shall be accomplished and our moral ideals realized, and we live our lives under the compulsion of this resolve. This is to have faith in God, and the only kind of faith that is real; not the faith of passive acquiescence or consent, but the creative faith of active purpose and effort.
The world is plastic in our hands. It is not offered to us ready-made and complete with the moral values all there and the spiritual purposes already realized. It is given us to make of it what we will. We may find God in it, if we live by the postulate that He is there, or we may never discover Him if we stand off and wait for Him to reveal Himself. The religious man is he who makes the postulate, who dares to venture faith in God and to live his life thereby. And he has proved his faith who finds it livable, who finds his moral purposes realizable and his reading of the world in moral terms justified. But the venture cannot wait upon the proof; we must believe ere we can know that our belief will vindicate itself as sound.
In the world of startling surprises into which a child is born, he finds little difficulty in imagining the unseen beings of whom he is told, and living in their actual society. The Santa Claus, to whom he posts a Christmas letter in the chimney, is so real that he can readily be induced to think that the wind he hears blowing over the chimney-top is the swift passing of an airy postman carrying the mail to the kindly patron of good children. The invisible God, to whom he addresses his nightly “Now I lay me down to sleep,” and says, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” is as sensibly at hand. The pictures children form of God vary with what they are taught and the impressions they receive, but the sense of His actuality they themselves supply. Mrs. Browning’s lines in which she describes a child’s thought of God put this graphically :
They say that God lives very high:
But if you look above the pines
You cannot see our God; and why?
And if you dig down. in the mines
You never see Him in the gold;
Though, from Him, all that’s glory shines.
God is so good, He wears a fold
Of heaven and earth across His face—
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.
But still I feel that His embrace
Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place :
As if my tender mother laid
On my shut lips her kisses’ pressure,
Half-waking me at night, and said,
“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?” [Note: H. S. Coffin, University Sermons, 177.]
