ROBERT BROWNING once wrote to a friend, “I want you to give my conviction a clinch.” The two words, conviction and clinch, suggest the philosophy of certainty in belief. First there is a personal element, the person himself gets a conviction; then there is a social element, the personal conviction is clinched, or confirmed, by other men. You believe in your country, in her history, in her constitution, in her institutions, in her people, in her significance among the nations. Your belief amounts to such a conviction that you could gladly die to express it; and yet every other patriot makes you a little more certain that your country is worth dying for.
But faith is confirmed in many ways. The chief means of confirmation are (1) the testimony of others, (2) its own fruits, and (3) the witness of the Spirit.
