The faith which God requires will include within it the exercise of all
man's capacities and powers; there will be in the end no part of his
personality and no department of his life which is not contributary to,
or influenced by, his faith; for faith will be the means for the
rounding out and the perfecting of the character. It will include the
directing of the will, it will find scope for the emotions, it will
receive the sanction of the intellect--it will be the movement of the
entire man Godwards.
How very necessary it is for people to do some thinking regarding their
religion, and how very little is done. Many people think that what is
good enough for their parents, is good enough for them in religion.
But this is the only department of life to which this idea is attached.
These people make no enquiries, they conform to certain formularies and
rules of conduct, they have prejudices and great limitations. The
fruit of this is an extraordinary haziness existing in men's minds
regarding religion. Here a purely moral life is deemed the same thing
as a life built upon faith in Christ. Or compare the emphasis put upon
ethical duties directed towards one's neighbour (e.g. he is a good
husband and pays his debts); when little or no account is taken of the
obligations due to God (such as Christian worship or the sinfulness of
profanity). Or again, people put their trust in the reception of the
sacraments without clear ideas as to the "necessary dispositions" for
the proper receiving of the sacraments, a tendency to treat them as
charms.
There are difficulties connected with our faith, such as the problems
of pain and suffering, or inequality of opportunity, the prosperity of
the ungodly, which require much thought. Besides all this the trust
which men repose in God, not only in their everyday affairs, but also
in those crises that happen from time to time, is strengthened
immensely when the intellect contributes its support, when man knows he
is passing through a desolating experience, but knows also that many
others have passed through the like upheld in the darkness by faith.
Every Churchman should make an effort to bring his intellect by reading
and study to the support of his faith.
And the emotions, too, have their right place in the development of
faith. Have we not been somewhat suspicious of the emotional element
in religion, due perhaps to a disproportionate and exaggerated use of
it by some religious bodies? Has there not been a tendency to suppress
the emotions because there are emotional religious cults almost
divorced from morality and the intellect? Perhaps, too, it has
something to do with temperament? British people used to be little
moved by feelings; lately they have changed somewhat. We need the
vision of Jesus Christ, Who is the revelation of God the Father, as One
to be supremely loved above all others--as Mary Magdalene, as St. Peter
and St. John, loved Him. It would help us in worship if we used fewer
subjective hymns and more hymns of the type of S. Bernard's, "Jesu the
very thought of Thee," or "O Love, how deep! how broad, how high!" if
we could have some simple litanies of devotion bringing to the mind of
the worshipper the purity, gentleness, tenderness, patience, sympathy
and meekness of Jesus Christ; our faith in him would become more
tender, warmer, more personal, and without this our faith cannot be
complete.