From the soft south the constant bird comes back, Faith-led, to find the welcome of the Spring In the old boughs whereto she used to cling.
Before she sought the unknown southward track:
Above the Winter and the storm-cloud's wrack She hears the prophecy of days that bring The Summer's pride, and plumes her homeward wing
To seek again the joys that exiles lack.
Shall I of little faith, less brave than she, Set forth unwillingly my goal to find. Go home from exile with reluctant mind,
Distrust the steadfast stars I cannot see.
And doubt the heavens because my eyes are blind ?
Nay ! Give me faith, like wings, to soar to Thee ! ^ * M. Fuller, 7?i Tcrrd Pax, 94. • Louise Chandler Aloulton.
ST. JOHN XX. 29 381
II.
Faith in the Unseen.
Faith in the uuseen is not an abrupt experience, unconnected with the experience of the senses. It is true that morality and religion cannot be treated in the same way as the physical sciences. They have their own data, which are not material but spiritual. If they are realities, however, they must be intelligible ; they must follow similar laws to those which reign in the material realm, or at any rate they must follow law, and not be the result of chance. In the sphere of morals the good must be the reasonable ; actions must be justifiable. In the sphere of religion, beliefs must be reasonable ; the data upon which they are founded must be con- sistent with the working of the Divine mind, as that is already known to us in other spheres.
1. Faith in the unseen is helief in more than we can see. — It is quite true that " faith cometh by hearing." Faith, that is to say, is the proper correlative of testimony. But the evidence of testimony is not sufficient to command assent, even in the affairs of this world, unless the mind brings something of its own to co-operate with it. In belief it is at least approximately true, that "we receive but what we give." The element which the mind contributes to the formation of religious belief must be sought for in the depths of our moral being. Faith, then, may be described as the product of the outward evidence on which it rests, and the inward conditions which dispose us to admit it. It follows that if the product be constant, the two factors will vary in an inverse ratio ; or, in other words, that the moral element requisite to produce religious conviction must be at least strong enough to supply the deficiencies in the external evidence.
"Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed." So spake our Lord. What, then, did Thomas believe? He believed much more than he saw. Had he merely believed in the resurrection, there would have been no blessing attachino- to such faith, " Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." It is the vision whereby faith contemplates the unseen that is the real source of blessing. When St. Thomas heard the
382 BELIEVING WITHOUT SEEING
words which showed how Jesus had all along been reading his heart, he at once accepted the fulness of the Divine truth. He exclaimed, " My Lord and my God ! "
St. John illustrates this higher condition of mind that believes without seeing. When he came to the grave of Jesus, whither Mary Magdalene had summoned him and Peter, "he saw and believed." Apparently all that he saw was the empty sepulchre, and the place where the dead body had lain, n No vision of angels greeted him, nor did the Lord of death appear. A form rose up before him, as he looked, but it was the Lord of life with the light around Him of the days that had gone. The empty sepulchre could have told him little, but Jesus coming thither through the years told him much. Words that had bewildered found their explanation now. The enigma of the life and death found their solution at last. Not thus could he have seen, had not the habits of his mind prepared him. Candid, gracious, pure, truth-loving, sympathetic with the Divine purpose, free from prejudices and open-minded, the perceptive capacity was able to take the place of sight. And so thought, reflection, reasoning, imagination, all blended in a process at once mental and spiritual, by which, as by a higher vision, he saw what the eye could not see, yet not less clearly and distinctly.
•[[ His work [The Grammar of Assent] included an analysis of the mind of believer and unbeliever and of the differences between them. He drew attention to the subtle personal apjDreciation, on the part of the religious mind, which made it find so much more evidence for Christianity in the acknowledged facts of its history than the irreligious mind could see. The general outcome of this portion of the book was to show the important place held by antecedent conditions among the reasons convincing the believer. And among these conditions were the experiences and action of the individual mind. The religious mind instinctively and by degrees accumulated evidences of which the irreligious mind — reasoning on different principles — remained wholly or partially unaware. The action of the wUl and of moral dispositions was gradual. Moral defect must in the long run lead the mind to miss the deepest grounds of belief. But this was something very different from insincerity. To quote a sentence written by Newman on the subject to the present writer, " The religious mind sees much which is invisible to the irreligious mind. They have not the same evidence before them."