1. There is always a certain abandon in faith. It is trusting ourselves to the Unseen, to One whom, though invisible and shrouded in mystery, we feel in the depth of our hearts, and apart from all arguments and reasonings, to be absolutely wise and good, with an unlimited right to our allegiance. And Christian faith is the outgoing of our heart’s affection and obedience to this invisible God, as Christ presents Him to us—that is, as our Father; it is the endeavour to give ourselves up to Him even as Christ was one in mind and will with the Father who sent Him. Now, this is a thing which concerns a deeper part of our nature than our understanding. Evidences and arguments may bring a man to the brink of faith, but they cannot launch him on its sea. Their province is the solid ground of fact; but that province, after all, is but a little island in the midst of an infinite ocean. If we would pass from its narrow limitations to the largeness of religious life, we must commit ourselves to what to the eye of ‘reason appears an uncertain element; we must trust to be upborne. There is no doubt a deeper reason than reason knows for the act, and in the end it will justify it; but the act itself, whether on the part of child or of sage, is always a step beyond knowledge: it is the committing of ourselves to the keeping and the commands of our God and Father.
The desire for exact certainty, for definite evidence in matters of our Christian creed cannot hope to attain to the blessing of willing childlike faith. For, firstly, that evidence is not given us; we cannot prove our faith by logic. The evidence vouchsafed to the doubting apostle of the sight and touch of his Lord’s risen body cannot be looked for now; and so if we refuse to believe anything that we cannot logically prove, we can never enter at all into the certainty about spiritual and Divine things which makes the Christian’s faith. And again, the very nature of faith, like that of heroism in action, implies a boldness, a venturesomeness which will sacrifice the safe certainty of logical proof, and will go forward boldly into the region of what is beyond all human demonstration, acknowledging that beyond the sphere of human knowledge there lies a world, an infinite world of truth, which we shall hereafter see and understand, but which now we can accept only by a higher method even than reason, by the power of faith, “believing where we cannot prove.”
If any one of us, as nowadays so many, goes travelling on through his years without the strength and inspiration of full Christian faith, through tardiness in making up his mind about religion because there is this and that difficulty, worrying perhaps for ever over a chapter. in Genesis which will not square with geology (as why need it?), or stumbling at a Gospel incident of which the proof is only of the historical and not the geometric character, let him remember that John believed first, and realized belief afterwards, yet he found his belief was right and had not misled him. There must in faith be a venture; there must be a spring of our nature as a whole to embrace the truth as a whole. Then we shall know in good time the parts which make the whole. But venture we must. Do not then let us go without the blessedness of faith because we are too cold-blooded to make the spring. [Note: J. H. Skrine, The Heart’s Counsel, 65.]
One result of this temperamental peculiarity was this, that during the winter of 1908-1909 there were numerous families huddled around Flaxman Island (where, as it turned out, the Rosie H. was wintering) with the idea that it was impossible for them to get caribou for food or for clothing, while we went inland to where every one said there was no game, and were able to live well. Our own small party that winter in northern Alaska killed more caribou than all the rest of the Eskimo of the country put together, because we had the faith to go and look for them where the Eskimo “knew” they no longer existed. [Note: V. Stefansson, My Life With the Eskimo, 67.]
2. How is this venture of faith related to reason? Is it reasonable to believe that there is but one God, that that God rules everywhere, and that He is good?
By “reason” is here meant, not the scientific intellect, but the rational nature of man. A thing which cannot be demonstrated may yet be reasonable. The existence of God can never be proved by a certain number of arguments; but faith in God can nevertheless be a reasonable faith. And only the faith which has the sanction of reason can be a true faith. The very ventures of faith are, as it were, directed by reason, and rooted in it.
If all creation is one, my Ruler must be the Ruler of all. This is the faith that crosses the stretches of the unknown, and this is the faith whose roots are deep down in the rational nature of man. In the region of things observed a thousand things seem to question it; but it holds me, and I cannot get away from it.
Yes, in the maddening maze of things,
When tossed by storm and flood,
To one fixed trust my spirit clings;
I know that God is good. [Note: T. R. Williams, Belief and Life, 142.]
Faith is the pioneer section of reason. It is reason without reasoning. But it does not fear reasoning. It invites it to follow, if reason recognizes that faith has its own legitimate place, and if the reasoning powers recognize that they must possess the ability to handle the problems with which they undertake to deal. For it is not brave to go into a current which is too much for one’s strength; it may be a form of suicide. [Note: J. D. Adam, Religion and the Growing Mind, 58.]
3. If action in general may be called a correspondence with an environment of facts which can be modified by the forces of our will, adventure is that kind of action in which we match ourselves against an environment of facts which are future and therefore unknowable; it is action upon res adventura, an operation upon fortune, an encounter with chance and change and danger. To match wit and nerve rightly against the force of uncertainty in human things is good adventuring. To miscalculate the odds and be destroyed or disgraced in consequence is bad adventuring; but also to decline the risks through overestimating the odds is bad. It is failure to wrap up the talent in a napkin for fear of losing it in trade; it is failure to cast oneself down, without warrant of angels, from the pinnacle. The blunderer who cannot come through, and the faint heart who fails even to begin, are ill adventurers both of them. Their response to the res adventura is an inadequate one.
Great ventures generally succeed by narrow margins and fail by broad ones. The Prussian campaign was a great one; its successors were to be of even larger dimensions as to conception. When they were successful, it was by an even narrower chance; when disastrous, it was with frightful completeness. [Note: W. M. Sloane, Napoleon Bonaparte: A History, ii. 434.]
Glory best is gained
By daring means to end, ashamed of shame,
Constant in faith that only good works good,
While evil yields no fruit but impotence! [Note: Browning, “Aristophanes’ Apology.”]
