"For we walk by faith, not by sight." II Corinthians v. 7.
It needs only common experience, and but little of that, to convince us
that this life is full of mystery, and at every step we take demands of
us faith. For at every step we take we literally walk by faith; in every
work we do we must have confidence in something which is not by sight,
in something which is not yet demonstrated. Skepticism carried to its
ultimate consequences is the negation of everything. It closes up the
issues of all knowledge, and sunders every ligament that binds us
to practical life. We must have faith in something or we stand on
no promises; we can predicate nothing. It may be said that in the
experience of the past we have a guide for the future; but then, must we
not have faith in experience? Do we not trust something which is not
yet demonstrated when we say "This cause which produced that effect
yesterday will produce a similar effect today or tomorrow?" How do we
know--positively know, that it will produce that effect, and what are
the grounds of our knowledge? This boasted "cause and effect," this
"experience," what right have we to rely upon it for one moment of
the future? Not for that moment has it demonstrated anything;--it
demonstrated for the time being, and the time being only; and our
confidence that it will do so again is faith, not sight--faith in
cause and effect, faith in experience, but faith after all. Hume, the
philosopher, has illustrated the positions which have now been taken.
"As to past experience," says he, "it can be allowed to give direct
and certain information of those precise objects only, and that precise
period of time which fell under its cognizance; but why this experience
should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for
aught we know may be only in appearance similar; this is the main
question on which I would insist. The bread which I formerly ate
nourished me; that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that
time, endued with such secret powers; but does it follow that other
bread must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible
qualities must also be attended with like secret powers? The consequence
seems nowise necessary." And yet we eat our bread, day by day, without a
doubt or a fear. We sow the grain and we reap the wheat, but for all the
work is done in faith, and the whole process is steeped in mystery.
In that scattering of the golden seed, what confidence is expressed
in elements that we cannot see, in beneficent agencies that we cannot
control, in results that are beyond our power, and that in their growth
and development are full of wonder exceeding our wisdom. Give up faith;
say that we will act only upon that which is demonstrated and known,
say that we will walk only so far as sight reaches, and we completely
separate the present from the future, and stop all the mechanism of
practical life.
But if we take a wider view of things, and consider this material
universe in which we live, the great fact of mystery and the need of
faith will be urged upon us by a larger and more impressive teaching.
The more we learn of nature the more clearly is revealed to us this
fact--that we know less than we thought we did; positively, we know
more, but relatively we know less, because as we have advanced nature
has stretched out into wider and wider relations. The department that
was unknown to us yesterday is explored to-day. Yesterday, we thought
it was all that remained to be explored, but the torch of investigation
that guided us through it now flares out upon new regions we did not
see before. Like one who goes with a candle into some immense cavern,
presently a little circle becomes clear, the shadows vanish before him,
and undefined forms grow distinct, he thinks he is near the end, when
lo! what seemed a solid boundary of rock dissolves and floats away into
a depth of darkness, the path opens into an immense void, new shapes of
mystery start out, and he learns this much that he did not know before,
that instead of being near the end, he is only upon the threshold. We do
not mean to imply by this that we have no positive knowledge, or that
we do not increase in knowledge. With every new discovery we positively
know more and more. But the new discovery reveals the fact that more is
yet to be known; it lays open new regions, it unfolds new relations that
we had not before suspected.
We follow some tiny thread a little way, and hold it secure, but it is
connected with another ligament, and this branches out into a third; and
instead of exhausting the matter, we find ourselves at the root of an
infinite series, of an immense relationship, upon which we have only
just opened; and yet what we have is positive knowledge, is something
more added to our stock. The circle of the known has positively widened,
but the horizon of the unknown has widened also, and, instead of being
to us now, as it seemed some time ago, a solid and ultimate limit, it
is only an ethereal wall, only to us a relative boundary, and behind are
infinite depths and mystery. Our scientific knowledge at the present day
reaches this grand result--it clears up the deception that the system
of nature is mere flat, dead materiality, a few mechanical laws, a few
rigid forms. It shows that these are only the husks, the outer garments
of mighty forces of subtile, far-reaching agencies; and the most common,
every-day truths, that seemed stale and exhausted, become illuminated
with infinite meaning, and are the blossoms of an infinite life.
The wider our circle of discovery, the wider our wonder; the more
startling our conclusions, the more perplexing our questions. We have
not exhausted the universe;--we have just begun to see its harmony of
proportion and of relations, without penetrating a fathom into its
real life. How and what is that power that works in the shooting of
a crystal, and binds the obedience of a star; that shimmers in the
northern Aurora, and connects by its attraction the aggregated universe;
that by its unseen forces, its all-prevalent jurisdiction, holds the
little compass to the north, blooms in the nebula and the flower, weaves
the garment of earth and the veil of heaven, darts out in lightning,
spins the calm motion of the planets, and presides mysteriously over
all motion and all life? And what is life, and what is death, and what
a thousand things that we touch, and experience, and think we know all
about? O! as science, as nature opens upon us, we find mystery after
mystery, and the demand upon the human soul if for faith, faith in high,
yes, in spiritual realities; and this materialism that would shut us in
to death and sense, that denies all spirit and all miracle, is shattered
like a crystal sphere, and the soul rushes out into wide orbits and
infinite revolutions, into life, and light, and power, that are of
eternity,--that are of God!
Thus the scale is prepared for us to rise from things of sense to things
of spirit, to rise from faith in nature to faith in Revelation, from
the faith of LaPlace to the faith of Paul. No one who has studied nature
will reject Christianity because it reveals truths that he cannot
see with his naked eye,--because it speaks of things that he cannot
comprehend. No one who has considered the shooting of a green blade
will dogmatically deny its miracles. No one who has found in the natural
world the intelligent wisdom that pervades all things, will wonder that
he discovers a revelation of perfect love in Jesus Christ. "We walk by
faith, not by sight," said Paul. So says every Christian; and it is of
all things the most rational. Faith in something higher and greater
than we can see, faith in something above this narrow scene, faith in
something beyond this present life, faith in realities that are not of
time or sense; from all that we have now considered we claim such faith
to be most rational, most natural. God, spirit, immortality, instead
of being inconsistent with what we know, are what we most legitimately
deduce from it,--what we might expect from the light that trembles
behind the curtain of mystery which bounds all our sensuous knowledge.
We do believe, the veriest skeptic believes in something behind that
curtain of mystery; nor can he withhold his faith because it attaches to
that which is unseen and incomprehensible, without, as has already
been shown, cutting every nerve that binds us to practical life, and
smothering every suggestion that speaks from outward nature. If he do
not believe in a God, then, or in Christ, or in immortality, let him not
sneer at others because they walk by faith and not by sight; for he also
must do so, though his faith be not in such high truths, such spiritual
realities.
The Christian's faith is an Infinite Father and an immortal life, and
though he cannot see them, cannot come in material contact with them, he
believes them to be the greatest of all realities, and he sees them by
faith, a medium as legitimate as that of sight. They are mysteries,
but everything contains a mystery; they demand of him what every day's,
every hour's events demand of him--faith. Let us understand, however,
that faith is not the surrendering of our minds to that which is
irrational and inconsistent. These terms should not be confounded with
the mysterious and the incomprehensible. That the earth moves and yet
stands still is not a proposition that demands faith. It is in the
province of reason to say that it cannot move and stand still at the
same time. It is an inconsistency. But how the earth moves on its axis,
what is that law that makes it move, is an incomprehensibility. An
incomprehensibility is one thing, an inconsistency is another thing.
The one conflicts with our reason, the other is beyond it. In that which
conflicts with our reason we cannot have faith, but as to that which is
beyond it we exercise faith every day; for we literally walk by faith
and not by sight.
Who shall say, then, that God, immortality, and those high truths
revealed by Jesus, are inconsistent? Do they not conform to the highest
reason? Do not our deepest intuitions demand that these revelations
should be true? Consult your nature, examine your own heart, consider
what you are, what you want, what you feel, deeply want, keenly feel,
and then say whether the Revelation of a God, a Father, and an immortal
life, satisfies you as nothing else can. Take them away, and would there
not be a dreary and overwhelming void? And because you have not seen
God, because you have not realized immortality, because they reach
beyond your present vision, because the grave shuts you in, because they
are high and transcendent truths, will you reject them? Do so, and try
to walk by sight alone. With that nature of yours, so full of love, with
that intellect of yours so limitless in capacity, you are apparently a
child of the elements, a thing of physical nature, born of the dust,
and returning to it. With desires that reach out beyond the stars, with
faculties that in this life just begin to bud, with affections whose
bleeding tendrils cling around the departed, wrestle with death, and say
to the grave, "Give up the dead! they are not thine, but mine; I
feel they must be mine forever," with all these desires, capacities,
affections, you walk--so far as mere sight helps you--among graves and
decay, with nothing more enduring, nothing better, than three-score
years and ten, the clods of the valley, the crumbling bone, and
the dissolving dust! Because God and immortality are mysterious,
incomprehensible, reject them, and walk only by sight? The humblest
outpouring of human affection rebukes thy skepticism; the most narrow
degree of human intellect prophesies beyond all this; the darkest heart,
with that spark of eternal life, the yearning that moves beneath all
its sensualities, and speaks for better, for more enduring things,--that
rebukes thee; and in man's moral nature, in his heart and his mind,
there is that which only can be satisfied, only can be explained by
God and immortality. They alone, then, are rational, they alone have
comprehensive vision, who walk by faith, and not by sight.
Mystery and faith, then; let what we have said concerning these be not
alone for the skeptic, but for the Christian who has faith but cannot
fully justify and confirm it, or who feels it faltering under some heavy
burden, or who is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the truths to which
it attaches, or who wishes, with a kind of half-doubt, that these things
might be seen and felt. They are great, they are incomprehensibly great;
but are they therefore untrue? Does not your heart of hearts tell you
they are true? Does not that Revelation of Christ steal into your soul
and feed it, satisfy it, as nothing else can, with a warm, benignant
power, that makes you know its truth?
Mysteries are all about us, but faith sees light beyond and around them
all. Have you recently laid down the dead in their place of rest? Cold
and crushing, then, is that feeling of vacancy, that dreary sense of
loss, that rushes upon you, as you look through the desolate chambers
without,--through the desolate chambers of the heart within. But will
not He who calls out from the very dust where yon sleepers lie the
flowers of summer, and who, in the snows that enwrap their bed,
cherishes the germs of the glorious springtime, will not He who works
out this beautiful mystery in nature bring life back from the tomb,
and light out of darkness? It is truly a great mystery; but everything
within us responds to it as reasonable; and though it demands our faith,
who, who, in this limited and changing world, can walk by sight alone?