^ The play of chances which brings up a ternion or a qua- ternion is nothing compared to what has been required to prevent the combination of which I am reaping the fruits from being dis- turbed. If my origin had been less lowly in the eyes of the world, I should not have entered or persevered upon that royal road of the intellectual life to which my early training for the priesthood attached me. The displacement of a single atom would have broken the chain of fortuitous facts which, in the remote district of Brittany, was preparing me for a privileged life ; which brought me from Brittany to Paris ; which, when I was in Paris, took me to the establishment of all others where the best and most solid education was to be had ; which, when I left the seminary, saved me from two or three mistakes which would have been the ruin of me; which, when I was on my travels, extricated me from certain dangers that, according to the doctrine of chances, would have been fatal to me ; which, to cite one special instance, brought Dr. Suquet over from America to rescue me from the jaws of death which were yawning to swallow me up. The only con- clusion I would fain draw from all this is that the unconscious effort towards what is good and true in the universe has its throw of the dice through the intermediary of each one of us. There is no combination but what comes up, quaternions like any other. We may disarrange the designs of Providence in respect to our- selves ; but we have next to no influence upon their accompKsh- ment. Quid habes quod non accepisti ? The dogma of grace is the truest of all the Christian dogmas.^
III.
The Channel of Salvation.
" Through faith."
1. Faith is the condition of salvation on man's side. The Christian requirement of the condition of salvation is expressed
' Newman, Difficulties felt by Anglicans, 70. * E. Reiian, Beeollections of My Yovih, 326.
V in
EPHESIANS II. 8 27
in the word " faith." " Ye have been saved ly grace " — there is the source ; " ye have been saved by grace, through faith " — there is the condition, the medium, the instrument, the channel. I It is a thousand pities, one sometimes thinks, that the word was not translated " trust " instead of " faith," and then we should have understood that it is not a theological virtue at all, but just the common thing that we all know so well, which is the cement of human society and the blessedness of human afifection, and which only needs to be lifted, as a plant that had been running along the ground, and had its tendrils bruised and its fruit marred, might be lifted and twined round the pillar of God's throne, in order to grow up and bear fruit that shaU be found after many days unto praise, and honour and glory.
*[j There is something on our side, by means of which we are to accept 'the salvation, and if that something be not exercised salvation may be brought to our doors but it will not do us any good. You may bring the biggest nugget of gold in the world to my door ; there it may be outside on a wheelbarrow, and I may be inside dying of starvation ; the nugget will do me no good if I do not take it in. If I do not turn it into money, and apply it to the satisfaction of my wants, I shall be as badly ofif as if the nugget had never been presented to me at all. The glorious gift of salvation is brought to our doors, and the question is, Have we taken it into our hearts ? ^
^ Faith is as distinctive of man as grace is distinctive of God, for this reason — while grace describes, God's attitude to man, faith describes man's attitude to God. While grace speaks of the relation of the ideal to man, faith speaks of the relation of man to the ideal. Hence all faith speaks of man in relation to God. Where His grace works our good, our faith responds to His grace. The one is the answer to the other — the response of earth to the voice that speaks from heaven.^
^ We got, I forget how, to the subject of the Divine permis- sion of Evil, which Wordsworth said he had always felt the hardest problem of man's being. When four years old, he had quaked on his bed in sharp conflict of spirit on this subject. " Nothing," he said, " but Faith can keep you quiet and at peace with such awful problems pressing on you — Faith that what you know not now, you will know in God's good time. It is curious, in that verse of St. Paul's about Faith, Hope, and Charity or
^ W. H. M. H. Aitken, Mission Sermons, 119. ' A. M. Fairbairn.
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28 SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD
Love, that Charity should be placed the highest of the three ; it must be because it is so universal and limitless in its operations : but Faith is the highest individual experience, because it conquers the pride of the understanding — man's greatest foe.^