^ What is Faith ? If I were to say that it is the absolute condition of all life, of all action, of all thought which goes beyond the limitations of our own minds, I should use no exaggeration. Faith is in every age, under all circumstances, that by which man lays hold on the realities which underlie the changeful appear- ances of things, and gives substance to hope, that by which he enters into actual communion with the powers of the unseen
* C. J. Vaughan.
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world and brings their manifestation to a sovereign test. It is the harmony of reason and feeling and purpose. It is, to say all briefly, thought illuminated by emotion and concentrated by will. Faith, as applied to our present life, is a principle of knowledge, a principle of power, a principle of action. It may be quickened and intensified ; it may be dulled and neglected. As it is used so it will be fruitful ; and we are severally responsible for the use which we make of it.^
3. When Christ bids us to be men of faith. He is not contra- dicting nature, He is not even introducing into the world an entirely new principle of action ; He is only applying a principle as old as nature herself in matters beyond and above nature, which it needed a new revelation from the God of nature to disclose and to prove to us. If this proof be given us, it becomes as reasonable, then, to anticipate and to prepare for eternity as it is reasonable to anticipate and to prepare for a holiday or a harvest, a wedding or a profession. Faith is this confidence in these things hoped for; and whether the expected future be a later day of this life or a day which shall close this life and usher in an everlasting existence, the principle which takes account of that future is one and the same, only debased or elevated, profaned or consecrated, by the nature of the vision and by the character of the object.
^ That all genuine Common Faith, or the common rational sense of mankind, is divinely trustworthy, because inspired by God, is a postulate on which science itself rests, in all its previsive inferences. Scientific verification is finally unconscious religious trust. It has been scientifically verified that the sun will rise to-morrow ; but till the sun shall have actually risen, the assertion only expresses /mY/fc in the Divine natural order. All expectation, scientific or common, is so far a leap in the dark; it is taken without the light of sense. The expected event has not the proof afforded by felt perception till the event has happened. If sense were our only light, it would follow that we must remain in the darkness of doubt about every future event. To be practically consistent, if we insist that that only can be reasonable into which no ingredient of moral venture enters, we must cease to live ; for life depends upon expectation, and expectation postulates faith in the Divine reasonableness of the universe, which implies that men will not be finally put to scientific confusion by reasonable sub-
^ B. F. Westcott, The Histwic Faith.
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mission to this moral faith. If they must, the universe would be undivine illusion.^
4. In the highest region of conduct faith creates its facts. Life, beforehand, presents us with a whole circle of unrealized possibilities ; they surround us on all sides with their clamorous invitation ; each, good or bad, cries out to us, " Eealize me, turn this supposition into an act ; bring down that ideal which floats before you as a vision, and transform it into a reality." And faith is what enables us to do this. We trust that we may do, we believe that we may ourselves become, what we believe in,
^ I wish to show what to my knowledge has never been clearly pointed out, that belief (as measured by action) not only does and must continually outstrip scientific evidence, but that there is a certain class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as well as a confessor ; and that as regards this class of truths faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable. The truths cannot become true till our faith has made them so.
Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the Alps, and have had the ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully ; but hope and confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate ; or suppose that, having just read the Ethics of Belief, I feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption unverified by previous experience — why, then I shall hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case (and it is one of an immense class) the part of wisdom clearly is to believe what one desires ; for the belief is one of the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its object. There are theii cases where faith creates its own verification. Believe, and you shall again be right, for you shall save yourself ; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall perish. The only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage.^