1. “NOT long ago,” says Mr. Henry Varley, “an acquaintance of mine, a busy, hard working tradesman, almost one of the last men I should have thought of as having time to ponder the high matters of theology, Christian and church-goer though he is, told me how urgently needful he deemed it that the preachers of the present day should give their congregations plain and simple guidance on the great questions of Christian doctrine. ‘For,’ said he, ‘there are lots of us who, like myself, are now quite in a fog as to what we are warranted in believing and what we are not.’ ” [Note: H. Varley, Faith, and Form, 9.]
We propose to make an effort to meet that reasonable desire, choosing for our study the Christian doctrine of Faith. We choose the doctrine of Faith, not because it is the easiest of all doctrines to make “plain and simple,” but because it is the most fundamental. If the doctrine of Faith is well studied, all the other doctrines of Christianity will be found to group themselves round it and become more easily understood. And not only is faith fundamental in doctrine, it is fundamental also in practice. If we give ourselves sincerely to an understanding of the nature of faith, we shall not be likely to hold ourselves back from the exercise of it. And what is it but just the exercise of faith that brings us into the enjoyment of God’s favour, confers upon us the privileges of sonship, and fits us for the inheritance of the saints in light?
Faith is the discovery of an inherent sonship, which, though already sealed to it, already in action, nevertheless cannot but withhold its more rich and splendid energies until this discovery is made; and which discloses them only according to the progressive clearness and force with which the process of discovery advances. The history of faith is the history of this gradual disclosure, this growing capacity to recognise and receive, until the rudimentary omen of God’s fatherhood in the rudest savage who draws, by clumsy fetich or weird incantation, upon a power outside himself, closes its long story in the absolute recognition, the perfect and entire receptivity, of that Son of man, who can do nothing of Himself, “but what He seeth the Father do,” and, for that very reason, can do everything: for whatsoever “the Father doeth, the Son doeth also.” [Note: H. S. Holland, in Lux Mundi (ed. C. Gore), 11.]
2. In this introductory chapter we shall consider (1) the Importance of Faith, (2) its Necessity, and (3) its Heroism.
But, first of all, it may be well to give two axioms or things that must be taken for granted.
(1) The first is that neither Faith nor any other Christian doctrine can be explained in such a way as to compel one to believe it. There must always remain some margin of mystery.
And rightly. What value would doctrine have for life and conduct if it left no opportunity for choice, if there were no element of venture in it?
When we set out to make a venture of faith, we must be prepared to answer to many questions, I don’t know. And this answer is not in any way evasive or poor-spirited; it is the very ABC of common sense. Of course we don’t know. What is there that we do know? We see an inch or two in front of us, and no more— “Tis but a part we see, and not the whole” — and if any one thinks that he does know why things are what they are, the only place for him is a lunatic asylum. Across the shield of faith runs the motto Ignoramus: that is to say, We don’t know. Why do the moths fly into candle-flames? Ignoramus. Why do the shipwrecks and earthquakes and epidemic diseases afflict mankind? Ignoramus. Why was the world ever made at all? Ignoramus. We don’t know. We are not so made as to know. We are here not to know everything, but to be something. [Note: S. Paget, Essays for Boys and Girls, 20.]
(2) The second axiom is that the doctrine of Faith cannot be set forth so persuasively as to compel one to practise it. Again there must remain the liberty of choice. And this also is inevitable and right. For faith is a relation to God, and is peculiar to every individual. It is a personal intimacy with God; it is the contact of the soul with God; it is the friendship between God and man. Faith means that these two have learned somehow to know one-another, and to trust one another, and to love one another. Now what proofs and what evidences are you to give for a friendship you have formed—a friendship with another man? Can you tell the grounds why you trust him, why you have singled him out and said, “This is my friend”? Could you explain to another person perfectly what reasons you have had for holding on by that man’s word? Can you tell another why you love him? And friendship is the note of faith; faith in God is friendship with God. Faith is the meeting, -the mingling, of spirit with spirit, when the soul touches God, and, touching Him, knows Him and believes. And every soul touches God for itself, and touches God at a separate spot; forms a special intimacy of its own with God—an intimacy of friendship and love which belongs to it alone in all the world; so that it alone knows God from that place where it is, having that character which it has—knows Him individually with that peculiar intensity which it can share with no other, for with no other can it share its own personal identity. So the faith of each soul has a separate story of its own—the story of how it found its God, learned to know Him and to trust Him more and more, and at last to surrender to Him and then to love Him.
If you ask me the grounds for my faith, how can I tell it you? I should have to tell you the whole of my spiritual history, if I were to give you the story and the grounds and the evidences of my faith. How can I deliver that up to you? What words could convey it? Why, I cannot tell it myself to myself—the story of how I came to believe in God through Jesus Christ—the story of the organic growth of my life—the story, the long troubled story, of how the Holy Spirit toiled within my soul to succour it, and to recover and to cleanse it, and to warn it, and to revive it, and to quicken it, and to turn it towards my God. That long story would go far back to the earliest memories of life, of my mother—to childhood’s habits, customs, associations; to youth, with impulses, instincts, aspirations, sins, falls, temptations, recoveries, stumblings, risings—all the growth of the faculties and capacities—all the brimming tide of life coming upward, now stained and tainted, and then purified and absolved: all that is the story of my faith. Thousands and thousands of prayers, and of entreaties, and of cries—all the eucharists and absolutions—all the good instincts and impulses that are felt coming and going like the wind under the impulse of the Spirit, who is Himself the wind —imaginations, movements far out of my control, stirrings, voices, calls, friends, companions, and the Church and the Saints—they all belong to the story of how it was that I believed in Jesus Christ. How can I tell it? How say what has happened? Yet that is belief, that is faith; and the whole of that will have to be told in order to tell why I believe. [Note: H. S. Holland, in The Faith of Centuries, 62.]
