^ A freer, but on the whole a better translation would be : " Faith is the giving of substance to things hoped for, the putting to the test of things not seen." Probably the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews did not intend us to look upon this as a full and complete definition of what faith is, but rather as a description of some of its functions. And a very good description it is, too, as far as it goes. If you are expecting something to happen which will be for your benefit, you give substance to it, as it were, in your thoughts ; you do not regard it as a mere dream, a desirable thing, perhaps, but impossible of realization ; you act altogether differently from what you would if you did not believe the specified event or events would take place. And, further, if you know that there are certain sources of help of which you can avail yourself in time of need ; or if you are sure you are right in following a certain course, although others may differ from you and think you wrong ; and if you are sure that time will vindicate your action, you can rightly be described as putting your confidence to the test when you draw upon your resources or are willing to take risks for the sake of your convictions.^
^ R. J. Campbell, in The Christian Commonwealth, zzxiii. 306.
HEBREWS XI. I 411
I.
The Realization of Things hoped for.
1. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has done for faith what St. Paul did for love in 1 Cor. xiii. He has not only given us a magnificent hymn in honour of faith ; he has laid down for all time the essentials of Christian faith ; he has shown us the roots of it and the fruits of it, how it begins and where it ends. Faith, he says, is that which gives substance to things hoped for; iti/ makes our hopes real and actual to us. Faith is not merely assurance, as Luther taught : it is not only trust, not only moral assent, not only even the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. These are important, even essential, elements in faith ; but behind all this activity of the will, and justifying it, there lies the profound conviction, deeply embedded in the core of personality, that the objects of faith are real, more real than the world we live in; that salvation is not a mere hope, for faith gives substance to it ; that it is not a dream, for faith gives reality to it; for faith it is neither a hope nor a dream, but a present fact.
^ The word here rendered " substance " means properly the act of standing under something so as to support it. Thus in a philosophical sense it was applied to the essence which forms, as it were, the substratiim of the attributes, the supposed absolute existence of thing or person, in which all the properties and qualities, as they say in metaphysical language, inhere, and have their consistence. In this way the word^is once applied, and only once, in Holy Scripture, in the 3rd verse of the 1st chapter of this Epistle, where we read of the person, or rather the substance, of God Himself. The same word is applied to the essence of God, and the Divine Son is said to be " the express image of God's person," or, more exactly, the very impress of God's essence. But there is another use of the word in which it meant the act of the mind in standing under so as to support or bear the weight of some statement or some communication making, as we say, a very heavy demand upon the faculty of belie\'ing, and thus it passed from the idea of substance into the idea of assurance or confidence. It is used by St. Paul in two passages of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks of his confidence in the readiness of
412 FAITH
their almsgiving, and again of their confidence in his glorying, though in weakness, about himself. And so once again in the 3rd chapter of this Epistle to the Hebrews we find the expression — it is the same word again — " If we hold the beginning of our con- fidence firm unto the end."
There can be no question as to the meaning of the word in the verse now before us. Faith is the assurance of, faith is confidence in, things hoped for ; faith is that principle, that exercise of mind and soul, which has for its object things not seen but hoped for, and which, instead of sinking under them as too ponderous, whether from their difficulty or their uncertainty, stands firm under them, supports their pressure; in other words, is assured of them, confides in them, relies upon them.^
2. Whatever the object in the future may be to which thought is directed, it is always faith that apprehends it. We are not speaking of Christian faith particularly ; we are speaking of faith itself, the principle of faith. Now, the futjire in question may be a year hence, may be next week, may be to-morrow, may be one hour from this very moment ; equally in all cases it is an act of \ faith to expect, to wait for it. We are not to suppose that it is ' the Christian only who lives by faith in this general sense of faith. Eaith is no dreamy, imaginative, or mystical thing, which it is fanciful, if not fanatical, to talk of. The schoolboy who expects a holiday which is to be earned by his diligence, or forfeited by his misconduct, exercises faith in that expectation. The husbandman • who expects the harvest, and begins long months before to make preparation for it by ploughing and sowing, is exercising that confidence in things hoped for which is faith; the parent who anticipates the manhood of his boy, and prepares for that distant maturity by the instruction and by the discipline of the nursery and the schoolroom, is an example of that walking by faith which only madmen and fools disparage or dispense with.