'Through faith.' Now there we come across another of the words which we
know so well that we do not understand them. You all think that it is
the right thing for me to preach about 'faith.' I daresay some of you
have never tried to apprehend what it means. And I daresay there are a
great many of you to whom the utterance of the word suggests that I am
plunging into the bathos and commonplaces of the pulpit. Perhaps, if you
would try to understand it, you would find it was a bigger thing than
you fancied. What is faith? I will give you another expression that has
not so many theological accretions sticking to it, and which means
precisely the same thing--trust. And we all know that we do not trust
with our heads, but with our hearts and wills. You may believe
undoubtedly, and have no faith at all, for it is the heart and the will
that go forth, and clutch at the thing trusted; or, as I should rather
say, at the person trusted; for, at bottom, what we trust is always a
person, and even when we 'trust to nature,' it is because, more or less
clearly, we feel that somehow or other at the back of nature there is a
Will and an Intelligence that are working and trustworthy. However, that
is a subject that I do not need to touch upon here. Faith is trust,
trust in a Person, trust that, like the fabled goddess rising, radiant
and aspiring to the heavens, out of the roll of the tempestuous ocean,
springs from the depths of absolute self-distrust and diffidence. There
is a spurious kind of faith which has no good in it, just because it
did not begin with going down into the depths of one's own heart, and
finding out how rotten and hopeless everything was there. My friend, no
man has a vigorous Christian faith who has not been very near utter
despair. 'Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee.' The zenith, which
is the highest point in the sky above us, is always just as far aloft as
the nadir, which is the lowest point in the sky at the Antipodes, is
beneath us. Your faith is measured by your self-despair.
Further, why is it that I must have faith in order to get God's power at
work in me? Many people seem to think that faith is appointed by God as
the condition of salvation out of mere arbitrary selection and caprice.
Not at all. If God could save you without your faith, He would do it. He
does not, because He cannot. Why must I have faith in order that God's
power may keep me? Why must you open your window in order to let the
fresh air in? Why must you pull up the blind in order to let the light
in? Why must you take your medicine or your food if you want to be cured
or nourished? Why must you pull the trigger if your revolver is to go
off? Unless I trust God, distrusting myself, and the spark of faith is
struck out of the rock of my heart by the sharp steel in the midst of
the darkness of despair, God cannot pour out upon me His power. There is
nothing arbitrary about it. It is inseparable from the very nature of
the case. If you do not want Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not
know that you need Him, you cannot have Him. If you do not trust that He
will come to you and help you, you will not have Him.
So then, brother, your faith, my faith, anybody's faith is nothing of
itself. It is only the valve that opens and lets the steam rush in. It
is only the tap you turn to let Thirlmere come into your basins. It is
not you that saves yourself. It is not your faith that keeps you, any
more than it is the outstretched hand with which a man, ready to
stumble, grasps the hand of a stalwart, steadfast man on the pavement by
his side that keeps him up. It is the other man's hand that holds you
up, but it is your hand that lays hold of him. It is God that saves, it
is God that guards, it is God that is able to keep us from falling, and
to give us an inheritance among all them that are sanctified. He will do
it if we turn to Him, and ask and expect Him to do it. If you will
comply with the conditions and not else, He will fulfil His promise and
accomplish His purpose. But my unbelief can thwart Omnipotence, and
hinder Christ's all-loving purpose, just as on earth we read that 'He
could there do no mighty works because of their unbelief.' I am sure
that there are people here who all their lives long have been thus
hampering Omnipotence and neutralising the love of Christ, and making
His sacrifice impotent and His wish to save them vain. Stretch out your
hands as this very Peter once did, crying, 'Lord, save, or I perish';
and He will answer, not by word only, but by act: 'According to thy
faith be it unto thee.' Salvation, here and hereafter, is God's work
alone. It cannot be exercised towards a man who has not faith. It will
certainly be exercised towards any man who has.
Help us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, to live the lives which we live in the
flesh by the faith of the Son of God. And may we know what it is to be
in him, strengthened within the might of His spirit.