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duties is continually implied in their enforcenient, and conies to open expression in frequent paraphrase anil .>^ynoii3'ni, and as often in its own proper t^rms OS is natural in the circumstances. Especially in the great crises of the history of redemption (Gn 15, Ex 4° 19', Is 7) is the fundamental requirement of faith rendered explicit and prominent.
On the coming of God to His people iu the per- son of His Son, the promised Messianic King bringing the salvation, the hope of which had for so many ages been their support and stay, it naturally became the primary task of the vehicles of revelation to attract and attach God's people to the person of their Kedeemer. And this task was the more pressing in proportion as the form of the fulfilment did not obviously correspond with the promise, and especially with the expectations which had grown up on the faith of the promise. This fundamental function dominates the whole NT, and accounts at once for the great prominence in its pages of the demand for faith, by \\liich a gulf seems to be opened between it and thd OT. The demand for faith in Jesus as the Redeeu'er so long hoped for, did indeed create so wide a cluft in the consciousness of the times that the term faith came rapidly to be appropriated to Christianity and 'to believe' to mean to become a Christian ; so that the old covenant and the new were dis- criminated from each other as the ages before and after the 'coming of faith ' (Gal 3'^- ^). But all < his does not imply that faith now for the first tmie became the foundation of the religion of J", but only suggests how fully, in the new circumstances induced by the coming of the promised Redeemer, the demand for faith absorbed the whole procla- mation of the gospel. In this primary concern for faith the NT books all necessarily share ; but, for the rest, they dilier among themselves in the pro- minence given to it and in the aspects in whicli it is presented, in accordance with the place of each in the historical development of the new life ; and that is as much as to say in accordance witli the historical occasion out of which each arose and the special oltject to subserve which each was written.
Indeed, the word ' to believe ' first appears on the pages of the NT in quite OT conditi<ms. We are conscious of no distinction even in atmosphere between the commendation of faith and rebuke of unbelief in Exodus or the Psalms and the same commendation and rebuke in the days just before the 'coniini' of faith' (Lk l"-"); these are but specific apidications of the thesis of prophetism, expressed positively in 2 Ch 20'* and negatively in Is 7'. Already, however, the dawn of the new day has coloured the proclamation of the Baptist, the essence of which Paul sums up for us as a demand for faith in the Coming One (Ac 19*), and which John reports to us (Jn 'i"). In the synoptic report of the teaching of Jesus, the same purpose is the dominant note. All that Jesus did and taught was directed to drawing faith to Himself. Up to the end, indeed. He repelled the unbelieving demand that He should 'declare plainly' the authority by which He acted and who He really was (Mt 21^, Lk 22") ; but this was only that He might, in His own way, the more decidedly con- found unbelief and assert His divine majesty. Even when He spoke of general faith in (Jod (Mk U"), and that confident trust whicli liecimica men approaching the Almighty in prayer (Mt 21-^1 Mk 9^, Lk 18"), He did it in a way which inevit- ably directed attention to His own person as the representative of God on earth. And this accounts for the prevalence, in the synoptic rc])(irt of His allusions to faith, of a reference to that exercise of faith which has sometimes been somewhat sharply divided from saving faith under the name of 'miracle faith' (Mt 8'"- '» II Lk 7"; Mt 9»; Mt
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9" II Mk 5", Lk 8*» ; Mt 9^-» ; Mt 15=" ; Mt 17=" || Mk &^ ; Mt Spi- *", cf. Lk l-« ; Mk 4« ; Mk 5^ |i Lk 8" ; Mk 10'^ || Lk 18« ; Lk 7"). That in these instances we liave not a generically distinct onler of faith, directed to its o\\ti peculiar end, but only a specific movement of that entire trust in Himself which Jesus would arouse in all, seems clear from the manner in which He dealt with it, — now praising its exercise as a specially great ex- hibition of faith quite generally spoken of (Lk 7'''), now pointing to it as a manifestation of that believing to which ' all things are possible ' (Mk 'J-'), now connecting with it not merely the healing of the body but tlie forgiveness of sins (Mt 9'''), and everywliere using it as a means of attaching the confidence of men to His person as tlie soiirce of all good. Having come to His own, in other words, Jesus took men upon the plane on which He found them, and sought to lead them through the needs which they felt, and the relief of which they sought in Him, up to a recognition of their greater needs and of His ability to give relief to them also. That word of power, 'Thy faith hath saved thee,' spoken indifferently of bodily wants and of the deeper needs of the soul (Lk 7°°), not only resulted, but was intended to result, in focusing all eyes on Himself as the one physician of both body and soul (Mt 8"). Explicit references to these liigher results of faith are, to be sure, not very frequent in the synoptic discourses, but there are quite enough of them to exliibit Jesus' specific claim to be the proper object of faith for these effects also (Lk 8"- '» 2232, Mt IS" II Mk 9*", Lk 7"), and to prepare the way for His rebuke, after His resurrec- Uon, of the lagging minds of His followers, tliat they did not understand all these things (Lk 24^- "), and for His great commission to Paul to go and open men's eyes that they might receive ' remis- sion of sins and an inheritance among the sanctified by faith in Him ' (Ac 26'*).