1. We can never be absolutely certain of anything, in the sense of intellectual certainty, of which we do not fully know both the entire nature and the complete conditions.
Where is absolute certainty to be found? The answer is, Nowhere. And the answer may be given with entire lightness of heart. There is no need to make a long face over it, as though some cherished ideal were being abandoned. Absolute certainty is, for beings constituted as we are, simply a meaningless phrase, —a phrase which expresses no human ideal, which represents nothing we cherish and nothing that we suffer by giving up. A truth so certain as to stand in need of no further witness; a truth so accurately stated that a finer accuracy is unattainable; a truth so utterly proved that no ingenuity of man can raise a doubt against it; a truth so indubitable as to defeat the perverseness which is determined to question it; a truth so rich that a fuller enrichment is impossible; a truth so self-sufficient as to call for no champions, no defenders, no prophets, apostles, and martyrs, —truth absolute in that sense never has had and never can have the slightest interest for any human being. Were truth of that kind to arrive upon the earth, the mind of man would simply be put out of commission, and the curtain would fall irrevocably on the drama of human life. [Note: L. P. Jacks, in Harvard Theological Review, vi. 285.]
2. All great questions of faith, when deeply considered, resolve themselves into moral issues; and therefore the question of religious certainty can never be rightly considered as merely an intellectual one. The certainty is moral; and such a moral certainty is the faith which is the basis of life as well as of its ideal constructions in religion, science, and philosophy. Knowledge is trustworthy only as held on faith.
Moral life rests on a foundation of faith—that righteousness is best and that right is good. It assumes the supremacy and adorableness of goodness and moral excellence, and the recognition of the highest goodness as the revelation of true Reality or God. The identity of moral goodness with ultimate reality is not indeed self-evident. But the adorableness of moral worth is essentially self-evident. It is a matter of moral recognition and appreciation, a moral determination, a movement of the moral and emotional nature. It is a faith which verifies itself in a coherent experience; for the man who believes that right is best has settled the question of the worth and goodness of life. If he can do right—and he always can—life is worth living. There is in man’s moral nature that which satisfies him; and moral experience justifies an assumption of the value and significance of human life without which all argument about God is useless. It is an assumption that may still be made, a faith that may still be held, though the question of the goodness of the powers at work in nature be still unsettled.
When the anchors that faith has cast
Are dragging in the gale,
I am quietly holding fast
To the things that cannot fail.
I know that right is right,
That it is not good to lie,
That love is better than spite,
And a neighbour than a spy.
I know that passion needs
The leash of sober mind,
I know that generous deeds
Some sure reward will find ;
That the rulers must obey,
That the givers shall increase,
That beauty lights the way
For the beautiful feet of Peace;
In the darkest night of the year,
When the stars have all gone out,
That courage is better than fear,
That faith is truer than doubt.
And fierce though the fiends may fight,
And long though the angels hide,
I know that Truth and Right
Have the universe on their side.
3. Assurance therefore depends not entirely on the certainty of things to be believed but also (and perhaps fundamentally) upon the believer’s moral attitude. One cannot open the New Testament without seeing plainly on every page that both Christ and His messengers affirm on the one hand the revelation of certainty, and on the other fixed conditions of certitude in the learner; so that a man must be something, must place himself in a certain posture, before he can stand in effective rapport with the revealed certainty. And failure in these conditions will nullify for him that certainty in the proportion of his failure.
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer’d: “I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover’d the infinite in everything, and as I was then persuaded, and remain confirm’d, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote.”
Then I asked: “Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?”
He replied: “All Poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.” [Note: William Blake, “A Memorable Fancy.”]
There can be no absolute certitude about the impressions of the senses or the inferences drawn from them. There can be about moral and spiritual things. The knave may sincerely opine that it is best for his interests to lie and cheat; but the honest man knows that he is a being whose interests are above all external contingencies, and that under certain circumstances it would be madness to behave otherwise than in a way which would be directly opposed to every argument and persuasion of the senses. It is only the mind of the most highly “scientific” constitution that will have its confidence in knowledge of this kind tried by considerations of its moral and intellectual obligations to Hottentots and Australian aborigines. “We can live in houses without being architects”; and we can know, without knowing or caring to know how we came by our knowledge. The house of the gods has lasted intact since Abraham and Hesiod, and shows no sign yet of tumbling about our ears. [Note: Coventry Patmore, Principle in Art, 321.]
4. It is true that faith is a venture, but it is only the first step of faith that is a leap in the dark :
Nothing before, nothing behind;
The steps of faith
Fall on the seeming void—and find
The rock beneath.
The “whys” of logic become impertinences to him who knows. You will hold the Unseen, at times at least, more firmly than you ever held a scientific truth :
The flesh I wear,
The earth I tread, are not more clear to me
Than my belief—explained to you or no.
Patrick Walker has drawn the portrait of John Welwood in Some Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. John Welwood, and John Howie of Lochgoin has given him a place among the Scots Worthies. “I have no more doubt,” he would say, “of my interest in Christ, than if I were in heaven already. I have oftentimes endeavoured to pick a hole in my interest, but cannot get it done.” At length the end came. One sweet April morning, that time of the year when Perth is beginning to put on its loveliest robe, he said, as the joyful light of the dawning day began to flood the chamber where he lay: “Now eternal light, no more night nor darkness to me.” Before nightfall he was gone. [Note: Philip, The Evangel in Gowrie, 105, 117. ]
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven ;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given. [Note: A. Emily Dickinson.]
5. There are, then, certain conditions which must be observed if a man is to have personal assurance. They may be discovered in the New Testament.
(1) As a primary condition the writers of the New Testament insist on moral, rather than intellectual, qualifications. Every degree of mind above idiocy, they affirm, can be made to understand and enjoy something of the gospel and its certainties of truth and grace, if there be but an honest intention. It is a moral, much rather than an intellectual, revelation. Hence the first demand is that simplicity of purpose which Christ calls a “child-like” temper, truth-seeking, teachable, and honest.
(2) Another condition of reaching assurance is that the study of the New Testament should be approached without prejudice. If we approach nature with a mind sincere and teachable, but holding some one erroneous thought which we persist in forcing in amidst her facts and phenomena, we shall thereby render it impossible to receive some other great truths in nature which are inconsistent with our theory. Thus also in interpreting apostolic certainty. If we carry to the school of Christ some preformed opinion respecting humanity, or the Deity, on some question respecting which the apostles have been sent to instruct us, we shall not only fail in reaching certainty on that subject, but we shall receive their instruction on other topics under perverting conditions which will hold our faith constantly tottering on the verge of scepticism.
When the Cliffords tell us how sinful it is to be Christians on such “insufficient evidence,” insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind. For them the evidence is absolutely sufficient, only it makes the other way. They believe so completely in an anti-christian order of the universe that there is no living option: Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start. [Note: W. James, The Will to Believe, 14.]
(3) The last condition of assurance is secret and continued personal communion with God. And this means that the full assurance of faith is ours only when we are under the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. God’s presence then gives at once assurance and power.
It is by no natural faculty that man can hold communion with his Creator. His intellect may guide him to the conclusion that there is a First Cause, and his imagination may surround that First Cause with the fulness of all which is now seen in part; but in order to meet the living God in truth and reality, he must have something uncreated—he must have God’s own Spirit. And that he might be thus provided, the Word, who was God, has come into the root of man’s nature, that he might be there a fountain of the divine Spirit, from which a rill might run to every individual of the race, not compelling any one, but enabling every one, to know God and walk with him. [Note: T. Erskine, The Doctrine of Election, 112.]
I remember once seeing in the streets of London a commonplace incident that filled my heart with gladness. I was feeling very tired, and had to go across to the other side of London to preach. Somehow I thought I would rather do anything just then than go and face a church full of people, for I did not feel equal to speaking to them worthily or helpfully. My way led me up a hill—there are not many hills in London, but this was one of them—which was rather steep. Right at the foot of the hill I saw a boy on a bicycle. He was pedalling up the hill against the wind, and evidently found it tremendously hard work. I expect we all know how hard it can be to do just that thing. Well, just as he was working most strenuously and doing his best painfully, there came a trolley-car going in the same direction—up the hill. It was not going very fast, not too fast for the boy to get behind it, and with one hand to lay bold of the bar at the back. Then you know what happened. He went up the hill like a bird, and was up at the top of it long before I was, for I was on foot. Then it just flashed upon me, “Why, I am like that boy on the bicycle in my weariness and weakness. I am pedalling uphill against all kinds of opposition and am almost worn out by the task. But here at hand is a great available power—the strength of the Lord Jesus. I have only to get into touch with Him and to maintain communion with Him—though it may be as with only one little finger of faith, and that will be enough to make His power mine for the doing of this bit of service which just now seems too much for me.” [Note: J. S. Holden, The Life of Fuller Purpose, 89.]
