“Oh for faith!” cries Thomas Carlyle. “Truly the greatest ‘God-announcing miracle’ always is faith, and now more than ever. I often look on my mother (nearly the only genuine Believer I know of) with a kind of sacred admiration. Know the worth of Belief. Alas! canst thou acquire none?” [Note: Thomas Carlyle: First Forty Years, ii. 330.]
Those who have acquired some are as emphatic in assigning it a momentous influence in life. Percy Ainsworth was a thinker who might have matched Carlyle had he lived longer. Yet he lived long enough to show how much fairer are the fruits of believing than of unbelieving thought. He says: “Faith is not an act, but an attitude; not an event, but a principle; not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity. It is the constant factor in life’s spiritual reckonings. It is the ever-applicable and the ever-necessary. It is always in the high and lasting fitness of things. There are words that belong to hours or even moments, words that win their meaning from the newly created situation. But faith is not such a word. It stands for something inclusive and imperial. It is one of the few timeless words in earth’s vocabulary. For the deep roots of it and the wide range of it there is nothing like unto it in the whole sweep of things spiritual.” [Note: P. C. Ainsworth, The Threshold Grace, 21.]
Among the words of wisdom of A Student in Arms, another believing thinker who was taken away in early manhood, is this sentence: “Faith is an effective force whose measure has never yet been taken.” [Note: The Spectator, Nov. 25, 1916.]
1. Faith, is the condition of life.—Bishop Westcott has rightly affirmed that faith is “the absolute condition of all life, of all action, of all thought which goes beyond the limitations of our own minds,” and has further declared that “we live by faith however we live.” We are born into a world of which, to the end of our days, we know singularly little. The more our science develops the greater becomes the mystery of our existence. As in the moral life those who have risen highest are most conscious of their weakness, so in the intellectual life those who have thought most are most impressed by the completeness of our ignorance. We cannot live at all without putting faith in something which we can never prove to be worthy of our trust. We cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow, but we confidently make plans for tomorrow and for all our future lives. We cannot prove the truth of any of our moral judgments, but we confidently approve and condemn and form our own ideals and aspirations. We cannot prove the honesty of any man, but we confidently trust people to do what they are paid to do. We cannot prove that God is loving, yet we try at least to put our lives in His hands.
Besides that it is that by which we live—as of Christ it is said, who is our life—so we may say of faith, in a different sense, it is our life. As Paul says, to me to live is Christ; so we may say, to us to live is to believe. [Note: Matthew Henry, Works, 99.]
Within the soul a faculty abides,
That with interpositions, which would hide
And darken, so can deal that they become
Contingencies of pomp; and serve to exalt
Her native brightness. As the ample moon,
In the deep stillness of a summer even
Rising behind a thick and lofty grove,
Burns, like an unconsuming fire of light,
In the green trees; and, kindling on all sides
Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil
Into a substance glorious as her own,
Yea, with her own incorporated, by power
Capacious and serene. Like power abides
In man’s celestial spirit; virtue thus
Sets forth and magnifies herself; thus feeds
A calm, a beautiful, and silent fire,
From the encumbrances of mortal life,
From error, disappointment—nay, from guilt;
And sometimes, so relenting justice wills,
From palpable oppressions of despair. [Note: Wordsworth, “The Excursion” bk. iv.]
2. Faith, is the condition of progress.—Faith is the condition of progress both in the individual life and in the life of the world. (1) In the individual life.—Faith is from the first our best
guide along all the lines of human thought; and at the same time it is itself gradually perfected as we pursue them. As the intellect seeks to advance from the things and beings that are visible to the knowledge of the great laws by which they are governed, and through these to the great ultimate cause from which they proceed, the conception of a supreme will and a supreme design and purpose inherent in that cause, and implying in it a true Personality, which is the instructive conclusion of
faith, is seen by the most advanced philosophy to be the only conception meeting all the facts and establishing itself by scientific investigation. By that philosophy some cruder aspects of faith may be corrected, and some superstitious excrescences may be removed; but the faith itself is rationalized, and so deepened. Faith, we may say, anticipates reason, and is perfected by reason.
So again it is in regard to the continual advance of the moral sense through all the laws and institutions by which our ordinary life is governed towards some ultimate and eternal basis of righteousness. That basis cannot be a merely impersonal and abstract law; for we know that, even in our lower experience, such law cannot perfectly express the righteousness which adapts itself to all conditions, and to- all characters. There is a truth in the old proverb, Summum jus summa injuria, which even in human government has to be met by the prerogative of suspension and dispensation in the work of the law-giving authority. The supreme righteousness can be conceived as a will of perfect wisdom as well as perfect righteousness — in other words, a supreme, infinite Personality. Such is the instinctive conclusion of faith, acknowledging all unchanging moral commandments to be the utterances of the Divine Voice, and expressions of the Divine Nature. Such, also, is the maturest conclusion of that which commends itself to us as a thoughtful philosophy, but which our Lord reveals to us as a witness of the Divine Spirit “to the world of sin, and righteousness, and judgment.”
So, once more, it is in regard to the profound capacity of affection, the first to awake in our nature and the last to die out, if indeed it can ever die. It draws the soul in all its faculties towards earthly objects through all the network of ties by which mankind is bound together. Yet the attachment to these, both by its reality and by its experience of their imperfection, is an education of the soul to some higher and ultimate development. What shall our supreme object be? The instinct of faith in God makes unhesitating answer, which satisfies the cravings of that earliest and most childlike simplicity which our Lord declared to be a condition of entrance into His Kingdom. But that same answer, rationalized (so to speak) to a full maturity, is the conclusion of the profoundest psychology, and the fullest spiritual experience. For there is no ultimate love, except that of the whole mind, and heart, and strength; and this can be given only to a Personality, infinite and eternal. There is a deep truth in St. Augustine’s famous saying that God has made the heart for Himself, and it is restless and disquieted till it finds Him. So “faith spiritualizes love and is perfected in love.” In all the aspects of our higher nature faith proves itself a true law of humanity in the abstract. It is no wonder that it manifests itself in many forms through the whole concrete humanity.
If we are honest with ourselves, we shall admit that something best called Faith—a prevailing conviction of our presence to God and His to us, of His gracious mind towards us, working in and with and through us, of our duty to our fellow-men as our brethren in Him—has been the source of whatever has been best in us and in our deeds. If we have enough experience and sympathy to interpret fairly the life of the world around us, we shall admit that faith of this sort is the salt of the earth. Through it, below the surface of circumstances and custom, humanity is being renewed day by day, and unless our heart is sealed by selfishness and sophistry, though we may not consciously share in the process, there will be men and times that make us reverentially feel its reality. Who can hear an argumentative and unrhetorical Christian minister appeal to his people to cleanse their hearts and to help each other as sons of God in Christ, without feeling that he touches the deepest and strongest spring of noble conduct in mankind? [Note: T. H. Green, The Witness of Godamd Faith, 64.]
Thou canst not prove the Nameless, my son,
Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in.
Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one:
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no
Nor yet that thou art mortal—nay my son,
Thou canst not prove that I, who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself.
For nothing worthy proving can be proven.
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of “Yes” and “No,”
She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro’ the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg.
She finds the fountain where they wail’d “Mirage”! [Note: Tennyson, The Ancient Sage.]
(2) In the life of the world.—Faith is also the secret of the world’s progress. He whose creation is filled with the working of a spirit of progress, and who rejoices to see His creatures at their best, gives faith the crown. One of the Greek Fathers says nobly, “When the Lord of all power, the Master of angels, the Maker of heaven itself, was asked for His name, leaving others aside He answered, ‘I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.’ ” (Exo_3:6; Mat_22:32; Mar_12:36; Act_7:32) Who are these that He should bear their name? Men who betrayed His cause, and dishonoured His name, and who blundered often; but then, they trusted Him, and there is nothing so dear or admirable in His sight as that. Through almost four thousand years it has been the will of God to be commended to the hearts of His creatures by the names of men who trusted.
All honour to those heroic souls whose fidelity never wavered, who, denying themselves, took up the Cross, and followed the gleam of the ideal they had seen, even though a Gethsemane of agony and a Calvary of suffering lay before them. Scorning all offers of compromise with wrong, exhibiting unswerving devotion to the truth, they chose the path of suffering that they might free their children from the chains with which they themselves were bound, and conferred upon them those rights and privileges which they saw only as ideals. The progress of humanity upward has rarely been a gentle gradient along which it could be borne with little effort. Deep chasms have had to be filled and huge boulders have had to be blasted ere the gentle ascent along which the main body is carried so smoothly was rendered possible. The chasm over which we pass today is filled with the bodies of those heroes of the race who laid down their lives that we might pass over. The boulders which have been blasted have exacted their toll of noble lives who sacrificed themselves that we might mount upward. [Note: B. Lucas, Christ for India, 422.]
Count me o’er earth’s chosen heroes,—they were souls that stood alone,
While the men they agonised for hurled the contumelious stone,
Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,
By one man’s plain truth to manhood and to God’s supreme design.
By the light of burning heretics Christ’s bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the Cross that turns not back,
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned? [Note: Lowell, The Present Crisis]
Belief, said one the other night, has done immense evil: witness Knipperdolling and the Anabaptists, etc. “True,” rejoined I, with vehemence, almost with fury (Proh pudor!), “true belief has done some evil in the world; but it has done all the good that was ever done in it; from the time when Moses saw the Burning Bush and believed it to be God appointing him deliverer of His people, down to the last act of belief that you and I executed. Good never came from aught else.” [Note: Thomas Carlyle: First Forty Years, ii. 331.]
3. The supreme place of faith in Christianity.—Faith occupies, in the Christian religion, not only a conspicuous but a commanding place. The great inheritance that has come down to us is largely a history of faith—its trials, its patience, its eclipses, its victories. The great epic of the religious life which is now being written in the books that shall be opened will place on record for ever the adventures of faith. The Song of Moses and the Lamb, the final oratorio of Creation, will be woven round the splendid and innumerable heroisms of faith. There is not a book in the Bible which does not, from one angle or another, contribute its own ray to the halo that gathers round the brow of faith. The truth is that in Christianity faith is so ever-present, as the living link which binds into one the ages of religious progress, that one almost seems to see it, a symbolic and gracious figure, threading its way from Genesis to Revelation. And the Bible is secure for ever of the affection of all noble souls, because it is the veritable and romantic story of this fair daughter of the King, who by His grace rises from beggary to splendour. “Without faith,” Jesus said, “it is impossible to please God.” It is also certain that without it we are bankrupt of good; we are off, the shining track of His Kingdom.
One of the first things which must needs strike every reader of the New Testament, even the most thoughtless and careless, is the perpetual mention that is made of Faith, the great and paramount importance attached to Faith. Faith is there spoken of as the foundation, the source and the principle of everything that can be excellent and praiseworthy in man—as the power by which all manner of signs and wonders are to be wrought—as the golden key by which alone the treasures of heaven are to be unlocked—as the unshakable indestructible rock on which the Christian Church is to be built. When our Lord came down from the mount, where the glory of the Godhead shone through its earthly tabernacle during the fervour of His prayer, and where His spirit was refreshed by talking with Moses and Elias on the great work He was about to accomplish—when, after this brief interval of heavenly communion, He returned to the earth, and was met by that woeful spectacle of its misery and helplessness, physical and moral, the child who was sore vexed by the evil spirit, and whom His disciples could not heal—and when, the cure having been wrought instantaneously by His omnipotent word, He was asked by His disciples why they had been unable to effect it—He replied, Because of your unbelief. And then, having thus taught them what was the cause of their weakness, He tried to revive and renew their hearts by telling them how they might gain strength, and how great strength they might gain: Verily I say to you, if ye have Faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you; thus encouraging them by declaring the infinite power that lies in the very least Faith, if it be but genuine and living (Mat_17:20). In like manner, when the wonder of the disciples is excited by the withering of the fig-tree, He calls away their thoughts from the particular outward effect, to the principle by which such effects, and far greater, may be produced: Verily I say to you, if ye have Faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also, if ye shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done (Mat_21:21). Passing on from the Gospels to the Epistles; we find the power and workings of Faith still more frequently urged, and still more emphatically dwelt on. The most inattentive reader can hardly fail to observe how the justifying character of Faith, in its absolute exclusive primacy, forms the central point of St. Paul’s preaching. And we hear the Apostle of Love joining his voice with that of him who is more especially the Apostle of Faith, and proclaiming that this, and this alone, is the victory which overcometh the world, even our Faith. [Note: J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith, iii. 3.]
(1) CHRIST.—In the Synoptic Gospels faith is the spring of discipleship and its mature confession a disciple’s supreme act; it is the condition of healing and miracle and effective prayer and salvation. Christ is constantly looking for it. The men He chose and called were singled out for their possession of it, in some cases perhaps for little else. To the centurion, concerning whom He exclaimed, “Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel,” (Mat_8:10). He says, “As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee” (Mat_8:10). To an afflicted woman He says, “Thy faith hath saved thee” (Luk_7:50). To a distracted father He says, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth,” (Mar_9:23) and receives the answer, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mar_9:24). Again, in different mood and with other outlook, He asks: “Howbeit when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luk_18:8) Such is the power of faith, in His judgment, that a single grain of it, no bigger than a mustard seed, will enable its possessor to “move mountains.” (Mat_17:20)
A striking illustration of the manner in which Christ regarded faith is afforded by those occasions on which His wonder is said to have been evoked. In Him that emotion was called forth by causes very different from those by which it is ordinarily aroused among men. That which occasioned wonder to the Jews, and to our Lord’s followers, was the exhibition of His power over nature. The disciples on one occasion marvelled, and said, “What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!” It is still this characteristic in our Lord that chiefly excites wonder, as is proved by the common use of the word “miracle.” That word is exclusively applied to deeds of physical power, as though the only thing that could affect the mass of men with astonishment were that which is visible and startling to the senses. But with our Lord it is the very reverse. He never speaks as if there were anything strange or unnatural in the miracles He performs. He refers to them, indeed, as “mighty works,” or rather as exertions of power, and as intended to impress us with a sense alike of His power and of His goodness. But to Himself they appear perfectly natural and simple. There is a conspicuous absence of all effort about them. His wonderful cures, His raising of the dead, His miraculous appearances to His disciples, all are performed with the quietness and ease which are characteristic of an irresistible force. Any display of effort is a revelation of weakness; but our Lord “speaks and it is done,” He “commands and it stands fast.” It was by the phenomena of the moral world that His astonishment was occasioned—by its vast capacities on the one hand, and its terrible incapacities on the other. On the one hand, He marvelled at the faith manifested in the appeal of the centurion, who bade Him speak the word only and his servant should be healed; and He expressed a similar admiration at a like display of faith in the Canaanitish woman. On the other hand, when, in His own country, among His own kin, and in His own house, He found Himself without honour, so that He could not do any mighty work, save that He laid His hands upon a few sick folk and healed them, we are told that He “marvelled because of their unbelief.” The faith of which men are capable on the one hand, and the unbelief of which they are capable on the other—these are the only two things that are said to have evoked the wonder of the Lord Jesus. These, to His eye, were the only two real marvels exhibited during His ministry.
Jesus’ mind was continually fixed on Faith; the word was ever on His lips. It was the recurring decimal of His thinking, the keynote of His preaching. [Note: John Watson, in The Expositor, 4th Ser., ix. 383.]
(2) THE APOSTLES.—In the Acts of the Apostles so essential a feature of Christianity is faith that it actually embodies itself as an objective reality which is called the Faith. Of St. Paul’s Epistles faith is so truly the keynote—especially of the great Epistle to the Romans—that Luther conceived himself to be right in representing the Pauline Theology as almost identifying Christianity with the doctrine of Justification by Faith. So, too, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews insists upon faith in his famous eleventh chapter (Heb_11:1) as “the substance” (or “assurance”) of “things hoped for,” the “evidence” (or “proof”) of “things not seen,” and indeed as the vital principle of the spiritual life.
