Transcriber's Note:
Italics are indicated by _underscores_. Daily quotations from
published prayers, which are italicised here and in the original, have
been indented.
Bolding is indicated by =equal signs=. Daily quotations from
Scripture, which are bolded here and in the original, have also been
indented.
Small capitals have been rendered in upper case.
Inconsistencies in spelling (e.g. "Savior" and "Saviour") and in
hyphenation have been retained.
In the two chemical formulae in Chapter 4 "^" is followed by a
superscript and "_" by a subscript.
Minor changes have been made to the format of biblical references; and
corrections made to apparent punctuation errors elsewhere in the text.
The Meaning of Faith
HARRY EMERSON FOSDICK
AUTHOR OF "THE MANHOOD OF THE MASTER," "THE MEANING OF PRAYER,"
"THE CHALLENGE OF THE PRESENT CRISIS," ETC.
ASSOCIATION PRESS
NEW YORK: 347 MADISON AVENUE
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF
YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS
Printed in the United States of America
The Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons,
and is used by permission.
TO
MY MOTHER
IN MEMORIAM
"_'Tis human fortune's happiest height to be
A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;
Second in order of felicity
To walk with such a soul._"
PREFACE
A book on faith has been for years my hope and intention. And now it
comes to final form during the most terrific war men ever waged, when
faith is sorely tried and deeply needed. Direct discussion of the war
has been purposely avoided; the issues here presented are not confined
to those which the war suggests; but many streams of thought within
the book flow in channels that the war has worn. Since the conflict
had to come, I am glad for this book's sake that it was not written
until it had Europe's holocaust for a background.
Against one misunderstanding the reader should be guarded. If anyone
approaches these studies, expecting to find detailed and special views
of Christian doctrine, he will be disappointed. The perplexities of
mind and life and the affirmations of religious faith, with which
these studies deal, lie far beneath sectarian doctrinal controversy. I
have tried to make clear a foundation on which faith might build its
thoughts of Christian truth. And while I have spoken freely of God and
Christ and the Spirit, of the Cross and life eternal, I have not
intended or endeavored a complete theology. I have had in mind that
elemental matter of which Carlyle was thinking when he wrote: "The
thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain
concerning his vital relations to the mysterious Universe, and his
duty and destiny there, _that_ is in all cases the primary thing
for him, and creatively determines all the rest. _That_ is his
religion."
As in "The Meaning of Prayer," the Scripture has been used for the
basis and interpretation of the daily thought. The Bible is our
supreme record of man's experience with faith; it recounts in terms of
life faith's sources and results, its successes and failures, its
servants and its foes. And because faith is not a _tour de force_
of intellect alone, but is an act of life, prayers have been used for
the expression of aroused desire and resolution.
My indebtedness to many helpers is very great. But to my friend and
colleague, Professor George Albert Coe, my gratitude is so definitely
due for his careful reading of the manuscript, that the book should
not go out lacking an acknowledgment.
H. E. F.
December 15, 1917.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special acknowledgment is gladly made to the following: to E. P.
Dutton & Company for permission to use prayers from "A Chain of Prayer
Across the Ages" and from "The Temple," by W. E. Orchard, D.D.; to the
Rev. Samuel McComb and the publishers for permission to quote from "A
Book of Prayers," Copyright, 1912, Dodd, Mead & Company; to the
American Unitarian Association for permission to draw upon "Prayers,"
by Theodore Parker; to the Pilgrim Press and the author for permission
to use selections from "Prayers of the Social Awakening," by Dr.
Rauschenbusch; to the Missionary Education Movement for permission to
make quotations from "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E. Diffendorfer; to
Fleming H. Revell Co., for permission to make use of "A Book of Public
Prayer," by Henry Ward Beecher; and to the publishers of James
Martineau's "Prayers in the Congregation and in College," Longmans,
Green & Co.
None of the above material should be reprinted without securing
permission.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE vii
I. FAITH AND LIFE'S ADVENTURE 1
II. FAITH A ROAD TO TRUTH 26
III. FAITH IN THE PERSONAL GOD 51
IV. BELIEF AND TRUST 77
V. FAITH'S INTELLECTUAL DIFFICULTIES 103
VI. FAITH'S GREATEST OBSTACLE 129
VII. FAITH AND SCIENCE 158
VIII. FAITH AND MOODS 184
IX. FAITH IN THE EARNEST GOD 210
X. FAITH IN CHRIST THE SAVIOR: FORGIVENESS 237
XI. FAITH IN CHRIST THE SAVIOR: POWER 263
XII. THE FELLOWSHIP OF FAITH 289
SCRIPTURE PASSAGES USED IN THE DAILY READINGS 316
SOURCES OF PRAYERS USED IN THE DAILY READINGS 317
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The complex subject of Faith has required an extended treatment, which
has made the present volume much longer than the author's previous
works. Every item of expense connected with publishing has greatly
increased even within the past few months, and, to the regret, alike
of publisher and author, it has been found necessary to charge more
for this volume than for "The Meaning of Prayer" and "The Manhood of
the Master."
CHAPTER I
Faith and Life's Adventure
DAILY READINGS
Discussion about faith generally starts with faith's _reasonableness_;
let us begin with faith's _inevitableness_. If it were possible
somehow to live without faith, the whole subject might be treated
merely as an affair of curious interest. But if faith is an
unescapable necessity in every human life, then we must come to terms
with it, understand it, and use it as intelligently as we can. _There
are certain basic elements in man which make it impossible to live
without faith._ Let us consider these, as they are suggested in the
Epistle to the Hebrews, which, better than any other book in the
Bible, presents faith as an unavoidable human attitude.
First Week, First Day
=Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things
not seen.--Heb. 11:1.=
As Moffatt translates: "Now faith means we are confident of what we
hope for, convinced of what we do not see." When faith is described in
such general terms, its necessity in human life is evident. Man cannot
live without faith, because he deals not only with a past which he may
know and with a present which he can see, but with a _future in whose
possibilities he must believe_. A man can no more avoid looking ahead
when he lives his life than he can when he sails his boat, and in one
case as in the other, his direction is determined by his thought about
what lies before him, his "assurance of things hoped for." Now, this
future into which continually we press our way can never be a matter
of demonstrable knowledge. We know only when we arrive, but meanwhile
we believe; and our knowledge of what is and has been is not more
necessary to our quest than our faith concerning what is yet to come.
As Tennyson sings of faith in "The Ancient Sage":
"She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst,
She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer thro' the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'!"
However much a man may plan, therefore, to live without faith, he
cannot do it. When one strips himself of all convictions about the
future he stops living altogether, and active, eager, vigorous manhood
is always proportionate to the scope and power of reasonable faith.
The great spirits of the race have had the aspiring, progressive
quality which the Scripture celebrates:
=These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but
having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say
such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of
their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from
which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But
now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God
is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he hath prepared
for them a city.--Heb. 11:13-16.=
_Almighty God, let Thy Spirit breathe upon us to quicken in us all
humility, all holy desire, all living faith in Thee. When we meditate
on the Eternal, we dare not think any manner of similitude; yet Thou
art most real to us in the worship of the heart. When in the strife
against sin we receive grace to help us in our time of need, then art
Thou the Eternal Rock of our salvation. When amid our perplexities
and searchings, the way of duty is made clear, then art Thou our
Everlasting Light. When amid the storms of life we find peace and
rest through submission, then art Thou the assured Refuge of our
souls. So do Thou manifest Thyself unto us, O God!_
_Our Heavenly Father, we give Thee humble and hearty thanks for all
the sacred traditions which have come down to us from the past--for
the glorious memories of ancient days, concerning that Divine light
in which men have been conscious of Thy presence and assured of Thy
grace. But we would not content ourselves with memories. O Thou who
art not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, manifest
Thyself unto us in a present communion. Reveal Thyself unto us in the
tokens of this passing time. Give us for ourselves to feel the
authority of Thy law: give us for ourselves to realize the exceeding
sinfulness of sin: give us for ourselves to understand the way of
salvation through sacrifice. Teach us, by the Spirit of Christ, the
sacredness of common duties, the holiness of the ties that bind us to
our kind, the divinity of the still small voice within that doth ever
urge us in the way of righteousness. So shall our hearts be renewed
by faith; so shall we ever live in God. Amen._--John Hunter.
First Week, Second Day
=By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place
which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not
knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land
of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac
and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for
the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is
God.--Heb. 11:8-10.=
=By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son
of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with
the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season;
accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures
of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he
forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as
seeing him who is invisible.--Heb. 11:24-27.=
Man cannot live without faith because his relationship with the future
is an affair not alone of thought but also of action; _life is a
continuous adventure into the unknown_. Abraham and Moses pushing out
into experiences whose issue they could not foresee are typical of all
great lives that have adventured for God. "By faith" is the first word
necessary in every life like Luther's and Wesley's and Carey's. By
faith John Bright, when his reforms were hard bestead, said: "If we
can't win as fast as we wish, we know that our opponents can't in the
long run win at all." By faith Gladstone, when the Liberal cause was
defeated, rose undaunted in Parliament, and said, "I appeal to time!"
and by faith every one of us must undertake each plain day's work, if
we are to do it well. Robert Louis Stevenson said that life is "an
affair of cavalry," "a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully
hazarded." But so to deal with life demands faith. The more one sees
what venturesome risks he takes every day, what labor and sacrifice he
invests in hope of a worthy outcome, with what great causes he falls
in love until at his best he is willing for their sakes to hazard
fortune and happiness and life itself, the more he sees that the soul
of robust and serviceable character is faith.
_O God, who hast encompassed us with so much that is dark and
perplexing, and yet hast set within us light enough to walk by;
enable us to trust what Thou hast given as sufficient for us, and
steadfastly refuse to follow aught else; lest the light that is in us
become as darkness and we wander from the way. May we be loyal to all
the truth we know, and seek to discharge those duties which lay their
commission on our conscience; so that we may come at length to
perfect light in Thee, and find our wills in harmony with Thine._
_Since Thou hast planted our feet in a world so full of chance and
change that we know not what a day may bring forth, and hast
curtained every day with night and rounded our little lives with
sleep; grant that we may use with diligence our appointed span of
time, working while it is called today, since the night cometh when
no man can work; having our loins girt and our lamps alight, lest the
cry at midnight find us sleeping and the door fast shut._
_Since we are so feeble, faint, and foolish, leave us not to our own
devices, not even when we pray Thee to; nor suffer us for any care to
Thee or for any pain to us to walk our own unheeding way. Plant
thorns about our feet, touch our hearts with fear, give us no rest
apart from Thee, lest we lose our way and miss the happy gate.
Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
First Week, Third Day
Man cannot live without faith because the prime requisite in life's
adventure is _courage_, and the sustenance of courage is faith.
=And what shall I more say? for the time will fail me if I tell of
Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the
prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness,
obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of
fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong,
waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens. Women
received their dead by a resurrection: and others were tortured, not
accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better
resurrection: and others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea,
moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went
about in sheep-skins, in goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted,
ill-treated (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts
and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth. And these all,
having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not
the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us,
that apart from us they should not be made perfect.--Heb. 11:32-40.=
When in comparison with men and women of such admirable spirit, one
thinks of weak personalities, that ravel out at the first strain, he
sees that the difference lies in courage. _When a man loses heart he
loses everything._ Now to keep one's heart in the midst of life's
stress and to maintain an undiscourageable front in the face of its
difficulties is not an achievement which springs from anything that a
laboratory can demonstrate or that logic can confirm. It is an
achievement of faith,
"The virtue to exist by faith
As soldiers live by courage."
Consider this account of Havelock, the great English general: "As he
sat at dinner with his son on the evening of the 17th, his mind
appeared for the first and last time to be affected with gloomy
forebodings, as it dwelt on the probable annihilation of his brave men
in a fruitless attempt to accomplish what was beyond their strength.
After musing long in deep thought, his strong sense of duty and his
confidence in the justice of his cause restored the buoyancy of his
spirit; and he exclaimed, 'If the worst comes to the worst, we can but
die with our swords in our hands!'" No man altogether escapes the
need for such a spirit, and, as with Havelock and the Hebrew heroes,
confidence in someone, faith in something, is that spirit's source.
_O God, who hast sent us to school in this strange life of ours, and
hast set us tasks which test all our courage, trust, and fidelity;
may we not spend our days complaining at circumstance or fretting at
discipline, but give ourselves to learn of life and to profit by
every experience. Make us strong to endure._
_We pray that when trials come upon us we may not shirk the issue or
lose our faith in Thy goodness, but committing our souls unto Thee
who knowest the way that we take, come forth as gold tried in the
fire._
_Grant by Thy grace that we may not be found wanting in the hour of
crisis. When the battle is set, may we know on which side we ought to
be, and when the day goes hard, cowards steal from the field, and
heroes fall around the standard, may our place be found where the
fight is fiercest. If we faint, may we not be faithless; if we fall,
may it be while facing the foe. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
First Week, Fourth Day
Man cannot live without faith, because the adventure of life demands
not only courage to achieve but _patience to endure and wait_,
and all untroubled patience is founded on faith. When the writer to
the Hebrews speaks of those who "through faith and patience inherit
the promises" (Heb. 6:12), he joins two things that in experience no
man successfully can separate. By as much as we need patience, we need
faith.
=But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were
enlightened, ye endured a great conflict of sufferings; partly, being
made a gazingstock both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly,
becoming partakers with them that were so used. For ye both had
compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling
of your possessions, knowing that ye have for yourselves a better
possession and an abiding one. Cast not away therefore your boldness,
which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience,
that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.--Heb.
10:32-36.=
The most difficult business in the world is _waiting_. There are
times in every life when action, however laborious and sacrificial,
would be an unspeakable relief; but to sit still because necessity
constrains us, endeavoring to live out the admonition of the psalmist,
"Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him," is prodigiously
difficult. _No one can do it without some kind of faith._ "In
your patience," said Jesus, "ye shall win your souls" (Luke 21:19),
but such an achievement is no affair of logic or scientific
demonstration; it is a venture of triumphant faith. The great
believers have been the unwearied waiters; faith meant to them not
controversial opinion, but sustaining power. As another has phrased
it, "Our faculties of belief were not primarily given to us to make
orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were given us to _live_ by."
_We beseech of Thee, O Lord our God, that Thou wilt grant to every
one of us in Thy presence, this morning, the special mercies which he
needs--strength where weakness prevails, and patience where courage
has failed. Grant, we pray Thee, that those who need long-suffering
may find themselves strangely upborne and sustained. Grant that those
who wander in doubt and darkness may feel distilling upon their soul
the sweet influence of faith. Grant that those who are heart-weary,
and sick from hope deferred, may find the God of all salvation.
Confirm goodness in those that are seeking it. Restore, we pray Thee,
those who have wandered from the path of rectitude. Give every one
honesty. May all transgressors of Thy law return to the Shepherd and
Bishop of their souls with confession of sin, and earnest and sincere
repentance. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.
First Week, Fifth Day
Man cannot live without faith because he exists in a universe, the
complete explanation of which is forever beyond his grasp, so that
_whatever he thinks about the total meaning of creation is
fundamentally faith_.
=By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word
of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which
appear.--Heb. 11:3.=
Not only is this true, but if we think that there is _no_ God,
that also is faith; and if we hold that the basic reality is physical
atoms, that is faith; and whatever anybody believes about the origin
and destiny of life is faith. When Haeckel says that the creator is
"Cosmic Ether," and when John says that "God is love," they both are
making a leap of faith. This does not mean that faith can dispense
with reason. In these studies we shall set ourselves to marshal the
ample arguments that support man's faith in God. But when the utmost
that argument can do has been achieved, the finite mind, dealing with
the infinite reality, is forced to a sally of faith, a venture of
confidence in Goodness at the heart of the world, not opposed to
reason but surpassing reason. _Faith always sees more with her eye
than logic can reach with her hand._ And especially when men come
to the highest thought of life's meaning and believe in the Christian
God, they face the fact which the writer to the Hebrews presents:
=And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him; for
he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that seek after him.--Heb. 11:6.=
Indeed, in all stout conviction about the meaning of life there is a
certain defiant note, refusing to surrender to small objections. Cried
Stevenson, "I believe in an ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I
woke in hell, should still believe it!"
_O Thou Infinite Spirit, who needest no words for man to hold his
converse with Thee, we would enter into Thy presence, we would
reverence Thy power, we would worship Thy wisdom, we would adore Thy
justice, we would be gladdened by Thy love, and blessed by our
communion with Thee. We know that Thou needest no sacrifice at our
hands, nor any offering at our lips; yet we live in Thy world, we
taste Thy bounty, we breathe Thine air, and Thy power sustains us,
Thy justice guides, Thy goodness preserves, and Thy love blesses us
forever and ever. O Lord, we cannot fail to praise Thee, though we
cannot praise Thee as we would. We bow our faces down before Thee
with humble hearts, and in Thy presence would warm our spirits for a
while, that the better we may be prepared for the duties of life, to
endure its trials, to bear its crosses, and to triumph in its lasting
joys...._
_In times of darkness, when men fail before Thee, in days when men of
high degree are a lie, and those of low degree are a vanity, teach
us, O Lord, to be true before Thee, not a vanity, but soberness and
manliness; and may we keep still our faith shining in the midst of
darkness, the beacon-light to guide us over stormy seas to a home and
haven at last. Father, give us strength for our daily duty, patience
for our constant or unaccustomed cross, and in every time of trial
give us the hope that sustains, the faith that wins the victory and
obtains satisfaction and fulness of joy. Amen._--Theodore Parker.
First Week, Sixth Day
Man cannot live, lacking faith, because _without it life's richest
experiences go unappropriated_. Opportunities for friendship lie
all about us, but only by trustful self-giving can they be enjoyed;
chances to serve good causes continually beckon us, but one must have
faith to try; superior minds offer us their treasures, but to avail
oneself of instruction from another involves teachable humility. A man
without capacity to let himself go out to other men in friendly trust
or to welcome new illumination on his thought with grateful faith
would be shut out from the priceless treasures of humanity. A certain
trustful openheartedness, a willingness to venture in personal
relationship and in attempts at service is essential to a rich and
fruitful life. And what is true of man's relationship with man is true
of man's relationship with God. So Prof. William James, of Harvard,
states the case: "Just as a man who in a company of gentlemen made no
advances, asked a warrant for every concession, and believed no one's
word without proof, would cut himself off by such churlishness from
all the social rewards that a more trusting spirit would earn--so
here, one who should shut himself up in snarling logicality and try to
make the gods extort his recognition willy-nilly, or not get it at
all, might cut himself off forever from his only opportunity of making
the gods' acquaintance." _Wherever in life great spiritual values
await man's appropriation, only faith can appropriate them._
=Let us fear therefore, lest haply, a promise being left of entering
into his rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it.
For indeed we have had good tidings preached unto us, even as also
they: but the word of hearing did not profit them, because it was not
united by faith with them that heard!--Heb. 4:1, 2.=
_O Infinite Source of life and health and joy! the very thought of
Thee is so wonderful that in this thought we would rest and be still.
Thou art Beauty and Grace and Truth and Power. Thou art the light of
every heart that sees Thee, the life of every soul that loves Thee,
the strength of every mind that seeks Thee. From our narrow and
bounded world we would pass into Thy greater world. From our petty
and miserable selves we would escape to Thee, to find in Thee the
power and the freedom of a larger life.... We recognize Thee in all
the deeper experiences of the soul. When the conscience utters its
warning voice, when the heart is tender and we forgive those who have
wronged us in word or deed, when we feel ourselves upborne above time
and place, and know ourselves citizens of Thy everlasting Kingdom, we
realize, O Lord, that these things, while they are in us, are not of
us. They are Thine, the work of Thy Spirit brooding upon our souls._
_Spirit of Holiness and Peace! Search all our motives; try the secret
places of our souls; set in the light any evil that may lurk within,
and lead us in the way everlasting. Amen._--Samuel McComb.
First Week, Seventh Day
Man cannot live without faith, because in life's adventure the central
problem is _building character_. Now, character is not a product of
logic, but of faith in ideals and of sacrificial devotion to them.
What is becomes only the starting point of a campaign for what _ought
to be_, and in the prosecution of that campaign what ought to be must
be believed in with passionate intensity. Faith of some sort,
therefore, is necessarily the dynamic of character; only limp and
ragged living is possible without faith; and the greatest characters
are girded by the most ample faith in God and goodness. The writer to
the Hebrews saw this intimate relationship between quality of faith
and quality of life, and challenged his readers to judge the
Christian faith by its consequence in character.
=Remember them that had the rule over you, men that spake unto you
the word of God; and considering the issue of their life, imitate
their faith.--Heb. 13:7.=
Such are the basic elements in human experience that make faith
necessary: we deal with a future, about which we must think, with
reference to which we must act, and adventuring into which we need
courage and patience; this venture of life takes place in a world the
meaning of which can be grasped only by a leap of faith; and in this
venture the best treasures of the spirit are obtainable only through
openheartedness, and character is possible only to men of resolute
conviction. Plainly the subject to whose study we are setting
ourselves is no affair of theoretical interest alone; it affects the
deepest issues of life. No words could better summarize this vital
idea of faith which the Epistle to the Hebrews presents than Hartley
Coleridge's:
"Think not the faith by which the just shall live
Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven,
Far less a feeling, fond and fugitive,
A thoughtless gift, withdrawn as soon as given.
It is an affirmation and an act
That bids eternal truth be present fact."
_How great are the mercies, O Lord our God, which Thou hast prepared
for all that put their trust in Thee!... Thou hast comfort for those
that are in affliction; Thou hast strength for those that are weak;
... Thou hast all blessings that are needed, and standest ready to be
all things to all, and in all. And yet, with bread enough and to
spare, with raiment abundant, and with all medicine, how many are
there that go hungry, and naked, and sick, and destitute of all
things! We desire, O Lord, that Thou wilt, to all Thine other
mercies, add that gift by which we shall trust in Thee--faith that
works by love; faith that abides with us; faith that transforms
material things, and gives them to us in their spiritual meanings;
faith that illumines the world by a light that never sets, that
shines brighter than the day, and that clears the night quite out of
our experience. This is the portion that Thou hast provided for thy
people. We beseech of Thee, grant us this faith, that shall give us
victory over the world and over ourselves; that shall make us valiant
in all temptation and bring us off conquerors and more than
conquerors through Him that loved us. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I
When Donald Hankey, who died in the trenches in the Great War, said
that "True religion is betting one's life that there is a God," he not
only gave expression to his own virile Christianity, but he gave a
good description of all effective faith whatsoever. Faith is holding
reasonable convictions, in realms beyond the reach of final
demonstration, and, as well, it is thrusting out one's life upon those
convictions as though they were surely true. _Faith is vision plus
valor._
Our study may well begin by recognizing that, as it is exercised in
the religious life, such faith is the supreme use of an attitude which
we are employing in every other realm. No man can live without vision
to see as true what as yet he cannot prove, or without valor to act on
the basis of his insight. Our vocabulary in ordinary relationships,
quite as much as in religion, is full of words involving faith. I
believe, I feel sure, I am confident, I venture--such phrases express
our common attitudes in work and thought. Each day we act on
reasonable probabilities, hold convictions not yet verified, take
risks whose outcome we cannot know, and trust people whom we have
barely met. We may pride ourselves that our twentieth century's life
is being built on scientifically demonstrable knowledge, but a swift
review of any day's experience shows how indispensable is another
attitude, without which our verifiable knowledge would be an unused
instrument. In order to _live_ we must have insight and daring.
It is not alone the just who live by faith; lacking it, there is no
real life anywhere.
To be sure, we may not leap from this general necessity of faith to
the conclusion that therefore our religious beliefs are justified.
Many men use faith in business and in social life who cannot find
their way to convictions about God. But our desire to understand
faith's meaning is quickened when we see how indispensable a place it
holds, how tremendous an influence it wields, whether it be
religiously applied or not. All sorts of human enterprise bear witness
to its unescapable necessity. Haeckel, the biologist, describing
science's method, says: "Scientific faith fills the gaps in our
knowledge of natural laws with temporary hypotheses." Lincoln, the
statesman, entreating the people, cries: "Let us have faith that right
makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty."
Stevenson, the invalid, trying with fortitude to bear his trial,
writes: "Whether on the first of January or the thirty-first of
December, faith is a good word to end on." And the Master states the
substance of religion in a single phrase: "Have faith in God" (Mark
11:22). Scientific procedure, social welfare, personal quality,
religion--the applications of our subject are as wide as life. Vision
and valor are the dynamic forces in all achievement, intellectual as
well as moral, and as for man's spiritual values and satisfactions,
"It is faith in something," as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "which
makes life worth living."
II
One major reason for this necessary place of faith in our experience
is clear. _Life is an adventure and adventure always demands insight
and daring._ That "Chinese" Gordon, on his hazardous expedition into
the Soudan, should be thrown back on undiscourageable faith in
himself, in the justice of his cause, in the bravery of his men, and
in God; that he should even speak of praying his boats up the Nile,
seems to us natural; for some kind of faith is obviously necessary to
any great adventure. But men often forget that all ordinary living is
essentially adventurous and that by this fact the need of faith is
woven into the texture of every human life. It is an amazing adventure
to be born upon this wandering island in the sky and it is an
adventure to leave it when death calls. To go to school, to make
friends, to marry, to rear children, to face through life the swift
changes of circumstance that no man can certainly predict an hour
ahead, these are all adventures. Each new day is an hitherto unvisited
country, which we enter, like Abraham leaving Ur for a strange land,
"not knowing whither he went" (Heb. 11:8), and every New Year we begin
a tour of exploration into a twelvemonth where no man's foot has ever
walked before. If we all love tales of pioneers, it is because from
the time we are weaned to the time we die, life is pioneering. Of
course we cannot live by verifiable knowledge only. Imagine men,
equipped with nothing but powers of logical demonstration, starting on
such an enterprise as the title of Sebastian Cabot's joint stock
company suggests: "Merchants Adventurers of England for the discovery
of lands, territories, isles and seignories, unknown."
Indeed no knowledge of the sort that our scientific inductions can
achieve ever will take from life this adventurous element. Scientific
knowledge in these latter decades has grown incalculably; yet for all
that, every child's life is a hazardous experiment, every boy choosing
a calling takes his chances, every friendship is a risky exploration
in the province of personality, and all devotion to moral causes is
just as much a venturesome staking of life on insight and hope as it
was when Garrison attacked slavery or Livingstone landed in Africa. To
one who had acquired not only all extant but all possible knowledge,
as truly as to any man who ever lived, life would be full of hazard
still. He could not certainly know in advance the outcome of a single
important decision of his life. He could not at any moment tell in
what new, strange, challenging, or terrific situation the next hour
might find him. With all his science, he must face each day, as Paul
faced his journey to Rome, "not knowing the things that shall befall
me there" (Acts 20:22).
The reason for this is obvious. Our systematized knowledge is the
arrangement under laws of the experiences which we have already had.
It furnishes invaluable aid in guiding the experiments and
explorations which life continuously forces on us. In every
enterprise, however, we must use not only legs to stand on, but
tentacles as well with which to feel our way forward--intuitions,
insights, hopes, unverified convictions, faith. We project our life
forward as we build a cantilever bridge. Part of the structure is
solidly bolted and thoroughly articulated in a system; but ever beyond
this established portion we audaciously thrust out new beginnings in
eager expectation that from the other side something will come to meet
them. Without this no progress ever would be possible.
Every province of life illustrates this necessity of adventure. In
_science_, the established body of facts and laws is only the
civilized community of knowledge from whose frontiers new guesses and
intuitions start. Says Sir Oliver Lodge about the great Newton: "He
had an extraordinary faculty for guessing correctly, sometimes with no
apparent data--as for instance, his intuition that the mean density of
the earth was probably between five and six times that of water, while
we now know it is really about five and one half." In _personal
character_, our habits are basic, but our ideals in which, despite
ourselves, we must believe, are pioneers that push out into new
territory and call our habits after them to conquer the promised land.
In _social advance_, some Edmund Burke, statesman of the first
magnitude, basing his judgment on the established experience of the
race, can call slavery an incurable evil and say that there is not the
slightest hope that trade in slaves can be stopped; and yet within
eighty-two years the race can feel its way forward to Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation. As for _daily business_, adventurous daring
is there the very nerve of enterprise. Says a modern newspaper man:
"There are plenty of people to do the possible; you can hire them at
forty dollars a month. The prizes are for those who perform the
impossible. If a thing can be done, experience and skill can do it; if
a thing cannot be done, only faith can do it." Great in human life is
this adventurous element, and, therefore, great in human life is the
necessity of faith. To chasten and discipline, to make reasonable and
stable the faiths by which we live is a problem unsurpassed in
importance for every man.
III
One result of special interest follows from this truth. It is commonly
suspected that as mankind advances, the function of faith proportionately
shrinks. It is even supposed that the place of faith in human life has
sensibly diminished with our growing knowledge, and that Matthew
Arnold told the truth:
"The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world."
Accordingly by custom we call the mediæval centuries the "Age of
Faith." But even a cursory comparison between the mediæval people and
ourselves reveals that among the many differences that distinguish us
from them, none is more marked than the diversity and range of our
faiths. One considers in surprise the things which they did not
believe. That the world would ever grow much better, that social
abuses like political tyranny and slavery could be radically changed,
that man could ever master nature by his inventions until her mighty
forces were his servants, that the whole race could be reached for
Christ, that war could be abolished and human brotherhood in some fair
degree established, that common men could be trusted with responsibility
for their own government or with freedom to worship God according to
the dictates of their own consciences--none of these things did the
mediæval folk believe. One of the most distinguishing characteristics
of the so-called "Age of Faith" was its lack of faith. It lived in a
static world; it was poor in possibilities except in heaven; it
pitiably lacked those most certain signs of vital faith, the open mind
eager for new truth and the ardent, vigorous life seeking new
conquests. In comparison with such an age our generation's faiths are
rich and manifold. To call our time an "Age of Doubt" because of its
free spirit of critical inquiry, is seriously to misunderstand its
major drift. Bunyan's Pilgrim found Doubting Castle kept by Giant
Despair and his wife Diffidence and in any Doubting Castle these two
always dwell. But who, considering our generation's life as a whole,
would call it diffident or desperate? It is rather robust and
confident; its social faiths, at least, are unprecedented in their
sweep and certainty. Even the Great War is the occasion of such
organized faith in a federated and fraternal world as mankind has
never entertained before.
The truth is that with the progress of the race the adventure of life
is elevated and enlarged, and in consequence faith grows not less but
more necessary. _The faiths of a savage are meager compared with a
modern man's._ The Australian bushman never dreams of laboring for
social ideals even a few years ahead. What can he know of those superb
faiths in economic justice and international brotherhood, which even
in the face of overwhelming difficulty, master the best of modern men?
The primitive mind was not curious enough to wonder whether the sun
that rises in the morning was the same that set the night before. What
could such a mind understand of modern science's faith in the
universal regularity of law? Put a Moro head hunter beside Mr. Edison,
and see how incalculable the difference between them, not simply in
their knowledge, but in their faith as to what it is possible for
humanity to do with nature! Or put a fetish worshipper from Africa
beside Phillips Brooks and compare the faith of the one in his idol
with the faith of the other in God. Faith does not dwindle as wisdom
grows; vision and valor are not less important. _The difference
between the twentieth century man and the savage is quite as much in
the scope and quality of their faith as in the range and certainty of
their knowledge._
Faith, therefore is not a transient element in human life, to be
evicted by growing science. For whatever life may _know_, life
_is_ adventure; and as the adventure widens its horizons, the
demand for faith is correspondingly increased. If one tries to imagine
the world with all faith gone--knowledge supposedly having usurped its
place--he must conceive a world where no conscious life and effort
remain at all. Take trust in testimony away from courts of law, and
unsure experiments from the physician's practice; refuse the teacher
his confidence in growing minds and the business man his right to
ventures that involve uncertainty; abstract from civic reforms all
faith in a better future, from science all unproved postulates, from
society all mutual trust and from religion all belief in the Unseen,
and life would become an "inane sand heap." A man who tries to live
without faith will die of inertia. A society that makes the attempt
will be paralyzed within an hour. The question is not whether or no we
shall live by faith. The question is rather--By what faiths shall we
live? What range and depth and quality shall they have? How reasonable
and how assured shall they be?
IV
Among all the faiths which mankind has cherished and by which it has
been helped in life's adventure, none have been more universally and
more passionately held than those associated with religion. In the
daring experiment of living, men naturally have sought by faith
interpretation not only of life's details but of life itself--its
origin, its meaning, and its destiny. Australian bushmen, unable to
count above four on their fingers, have been heard discussing in their
huts at night whence they came, whither they go, and who the gods are
anyway. And when one turns to modern manhood in its finest exhibitions
of intelligence and character, he sees that Professor Ladd, of Yale,
speaks truly: "The call of the world of men today, which is most
insistent and most intense, if not most loud and clamorous, is the
call for a rehabilitation of religious faith."
For it does make a prodigious difference to the spirit of our
adventure in this world, whether we think that God is good or on the
other hand see the universe as Carlyle's terrific figure pictures
it--"one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its
dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb." It does make a
difference of quite incalculable magnitude whether we think that our
minds and characters are an evanescent product of finely wrought
matter which alone is real and permanent, or on the contrary with John
believe that "Now are we children of God and it is not yet made
manifest what we shall be" (I John 3:2).
How great a difference in life's adventure religious faith does make
is better set forth by concrete example than by abstract argument. On
the one side, how radiant the spirit of the venture as the New
Testament depicts it! The stern, appealing love of God behind life,
his good purpose through it, his victory ahead of it, and man a fellow
worker, called into an unfinished world to bear a hand with God in its
completion--here is a game that indeed is worth the candle. On the
other side is Bertrand Russell's candid disclosure of the consequences
of his own scepticism: "Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and
all his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good
and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its
relentless way; for Man condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow
himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to
cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his
little day--proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate
for a moment his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a
weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have
fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power."
Man's life, interpreted and motived by religious faith, is glorious,
but shorn of faith's interpretations life loses its highest meaning
and its noblest hopes. Let us make this statement's truth convincing
in detail.
_When faith in God goes, man the thinker loses his greatest
thought._ Man's mind has ranged the universe, has woven atoms and
stars into a texture of law; his conquering thoughts ride out into
every unknown province of which they hear. But among all the ideas on
which the mind of man has taken hold, incomparably the greatest is the
idea of God. In sheer weight and range no other thought of man
compares with that. Amid the crash of stars, the reign of law, the
vicissitudes of human history, and the griefs that drive their
ploughshares into human hearts, to gather up all existence into
spiritual unity and to believe in God, is the sublimest venture of the
human mind.
_When faith in God goes, man the worker loses his greatest
motive._ Man masters nature until the forces that used to scare him
now obey; in society he labors tirelessly that his children may have a
better world. Wars come, destroying the achievements of ages; yet when
war is over, man rebuilds his cities, recreates his commerce, dreams
again his human brotherhoods, and toils on. Many motives, deep and
shallow, fine and coarse, have sustained him in this tireless work,
but when one seeks the fountain of profoundest hope in mankind's toil
he finds it in religious faith. To believe that we do not stand alone,
hopelessly pitted against the dead apathy of cosmic forces which in
the end will crush us in some solar wreck and bring our work to
naught; to believe that we are fellow-laborers with God, our human
purposes comprehended in a Purpose, God behind us, within us, ahead of
us--this incomparably has been the master-faith in man's greatest work.
_When faith in God goes, man the sinner loses his strongest help._ For
man is a sinner. He tears his spiritual heritage to shreds in
licentiousness and drink. He wallows in vice, wins by cruelty,
violates love, is treacherous to trust. His sins clothe the world in
lamentation. Yet in him is a protest that he cannot stifle. He is the
only creature whom we know whose nature is divided against itself. He
hates his sin even while he commits it. He repents, tries again,
falls, rises, stumbles on--and in all his best hours cries out for
saviorhood. No message short of religion has ever met man's need in
this estate. That God himself is pledged to the victory of
righteousness in men and in the world, that he cares, forgives, enters
into man's struggle with transforming power, and crowns the long
endeavor with triumphant character--such faith alone has been great
enough to meet the needs of man the sinner.
_When faith in God goes, man the sufferer loses his securest
refuge._ One who has walked with families through long illnesses
where desperate prayers rise like a fountain day and night, who has
seen strong men break down in health or lose the fortune of a
lifetime, who has stood at children's graves and heard mothers cry,
"How empty are my arms!" does not need long explication of life's
tragic suffering. The staggering blows shatter the hopes of good and
bad alike. Whether one's house be built on rock or sand, on both, as
Jesus said, the rains descend and the floods come and the winds blow.
In this experience of crushing trouble nothing but religious faith has
been able to save men from despair or from stoical endurance of their
fate. To face the loom of life and hopefully to lay oneself upon it,
as though the dark threads were as necessary in the pattern as the
light ones are, we must believe that there is a purpose running
through the stern, forbidding process. What men have needed most of
all in suffering, is not to know the explanation, but _to know that
there is an explanation_. And religious faith alone gives confidence
that human tragedy is not the meaningless sport of physical forces,
making our life what Voltaire called it, "a bad joke," but is rather a
school of discipline, the explanation of whose mysteries is in the
heart of God. No one who has lived deeply can ever call such faith a
"matter of words and names." To multitudes it is a matter of life and
death.
_When faith in God goes, man the lover loses his fairest vision._ When
we say our worst about mankind, this redeeming truth remains, that
each of us has some one for whose sake he willingly would die. The
very love lyrics of the race are proof of this human quality, from
homely folk songs like "John Anderson, My Jo, John" to great poetry
like Mrs. Browning's sonnets. We call them secular, but they are
ineffably sacred. And when one seeks the faith that has made these
loves of men radiant with an illumination which man alone cannot
create, he finds it in religion. Love is not a transient fragrance
from matter finely organized--so men have dared believe; love is of
kin with the Eternal, has there its source and ground and destiny;
love is the very substance of reality. "God is love, and he that
abideth in love, abideth in God, and God abideth in him" (I John
4:16). Man the lover is bereft of his finest insight and love's inner
glory has departed, when that faith has gone.
_When faith in God goes, man the mortal loses his only hope._
Man's nature, like a lighthouse, combines two elements. At the
foundation of the beacon all is stone; as one lifts his eyes, all is
stone still; but at the top is something new and wonderful. It is the
thing for which the rock was piled. Its laws are not the laws of stone
nor are its ways the same. For while the stolid rock stands fast, this
miracle of light with speed incredible hurls itself out across the
sea. Two worlds are here, the one cold and stationary, the other full
of the marvel and mystery of fire. So man has in him a miracle which
he cannot explain; he "feels that he is greater than he knows"; and he
never has been able to believe that the mystery of spirit was given
him in vain, had no reality from which it came, and no future beyond
death. The finest thing ever said of Columbus is a remark of his own
countryman, "The instinct of an unknown continent burned in him." That
is the secret of Columbus' greatness. All the arguments by which he
attempted to convince the doubters were but afterthoughts of this; all
the labors by which he endeavored to make good his hopes were but its
consequence. And if we ask of man why so universally he has believed
in life to come, the answer leaps not superficially from the mind, but
out of the basic intuitions of man's life. We know that something is
now ours which ought not to die; the instinct of an unknown continent
burns in us. But all the hopes, the motives, the horizons that
immortality has given man must go, if faith in God departs. In a
godless world man dies forever.
One, therefore, who is facing loss of faith may not regard it as a
light affair. To be sure, some denials of religion, even a Christian
must respect. Huxley, for example, at the death of his little boy,
wanting to believe in immortality as only a father can whose son lies
dead, yet, for all that, disbelieving, wrote to Charles Kingsley, "I
have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and
name and fame were all to be lost to me one after another as the
penalty, still I will not lie." One respects _that_. When George John
Romanes turned his back for a while on the Christian faith, he wrote
out of his agnosticism, "When at times I think, as think at times I
must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that
creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now
I find it--at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the
sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible." One respects _that_.
But some discard religion from their life's adventure with no such
serious understanding of the import of their denial. They are pert
disbelievers. They toss faith facilely aside in a light mood. Such
frivolous sceptics indict their own intelligence. Whoever discards
religious faith should appoint a day of mourning for his soul, and put
on sackcloth and ashes. He must take from his life the greatest
thought that man the thinker ever had, the finest faith that man the
worker ever leaned upon, the surest help that man the sinner ever
found, the strongest reliance that man the sufferer ever trusted in,
the loftiest vision that man the lover ever saw, and the only hope
that man the mortal ever had. So he must deny his faith in God. Before
one thus leaves himself bereft of the faith that makes life's
adventure most worth while he well may do what Carlyle, under the
figure of Teufelsdröckh, says that he did in his time of doubt: "In
the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over sky and
earth, he has cast himself before the All-seeing, and with audible
prayers cried vehemently for Light."
V
If minimizing the importance of religious faith is unintelligent, so
is avoiding some sort of decision about religious faith impossible.
Most of those into whose hands these studies fall will grant readily
faith's incalculable importance. Some, however, will be not helped but
plunged into deeper trouble by their consent. For they feel themselves
unable to decide about a matter which they acknowledge to be the most
important in the world. Asked whether they believe in God, they would
reply with one of Victor Hugo's characters, "Yes--No--Sometimes." They
grant that to be steadily assured of God would be an invaluable boon,
but for themselves, how can they balance the opposing arguments and
find their way to confidence? All our studies are intended for the
help of such, but at the beginning one urgent truth may well be
plainly put. However undecided they may appear, men cannot altogether
avoid decision on the main matters of religion. Life will not let
them. For while the mind may hold itself suspended between
alternatives, the adventure of life goes on, and men inevitably tend
to live either as though the Christian God were real or as though he
were not.
Some questions allow a complete postponement of decision. As to which
of several theories about the Northern Lights may be true, a man can
hold his judgment in entire suspense. Life does not require from him
any action that depends on what he thinks of the Aurora Borealis; and
whether a man think one thing or another, no conceivable change would
be the consequence in anything he said or did. But there is another
kind of question, where, however much the mind may waver between
opinions and may resolve on indecision, life itself compels decision.
A man cannot really be agnostic and neutral on a question like the
moral law of sexual purity, for, by an irrevocable necessity, he has
to act one way or another. He may stop thinking, but he cannot stop
living. With tremendous urgency the adventure of life insistently goes
on, and it never pauses for any man to make up his mind on any
question. Therefore while a man may theoretically suspend his judgment
as to the requirements of the moral law, his life will be a loud,
convincing advertisement to all who know him that he has vitally
decided. _A man can avoid making up his mind, but he cannot avoid
making up his life._
Quite as truly, though, it may be, not quite as obviously, religious
questions belong to this second class. Not all questions that are
called religious belong there. With fatal pettiness religious men have
reduced the great faiths to technicalities and some beliefs called
religious a man may hold or not, with utter indifference to anything
he is or does. But on the basic attitudes of religion such as we have
just rehearsed, a man cannot be completely neutral, no matter how he
tries. Bernard Shaw's remark, "What a man believes may be ascertained
not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually
acts," should be taken to heart by any one trying to remain
religiously neutral. For one cannot by any possibility avoid
"assumptions on which he habitually acts." He tends to undertake
social service either as confident cooperation with God's purpose or
as an endeavor to make one corner of an unpurposed world as decent as
possible. He tends to follow his ideals, either as the voice of God
calling him upward, or as the work of natural selection, adjusting him
to a temporary environment. He tends to face suffering either
hopefully as a school of moral discipline, in a world presided over by
a Father, or grimly as a hardship in which there is no meaning. He
tends to face death either as the supreme adventure, full of boundless
hope, or as a final exit that leads nowhere. He may never consciously
formulate his ideas on any of these matters, he may maintain an
intellectual agnosticism, genuine and complete, but his living subtly
involves the confession of some faith. "A man's action," said Emerson,
"is only the picture-book of his creed." And the more thoughtful he
is, the more he will be aware of that unescapable tendency to confess
in his living an inward faith about life.
One practical result of this urgent truth is too frequently seen to be
doubtful. _Those who in religion do not decide, thereby decide
against religion._ Religious faith is a positive achievement, and
he who does not deliberately choose it, loses it. A man who, rowing
down Niagara River, debates within himself whether or not he will stop
at Buffalo, and who cannot decide, thereby has decided. His
irresolution has not for a moment interfered with the steady flow of
the river, and if he but debate long enough concerning his stop at
Buffalo, he will awake to discover that he has finally decided not to
stop there. As much beyond the control of man's volition is the steady
flow of life. It pauses for no man's indecision, and if one is
irresolute about any positive, aspiring faith in any realm, his
indecisiveness is decision of a most final sort.
This, then, is the summary of the matter. Life is a great adventure in
which faith is indispensable; in this adventure faith in God presents
the issues of transcendent import; and on these issues life itself
continuously compels decision. Our obligation is obvious--since
willy-nilly the decision must be made--to make it consciously, to
reach it by reason, not by chance, by thinking, not by drifting. If a
man is to be irreligious, let him at least know why, and not slip into
this estate, as most irreligious men do, by careless living and
frivolous thought. If a man is to be religious, let him have reason
for his choice; let his faith be founded not on credulity and chance,
but on real experience and reasonable thought. So his faith shall be
good not only for domestic consumption, but for export too--clear in
his own mind and convincing to his friends. The forms of thought shift
with the centuries and old situations cannot be repeated in detail,
but one crisis in its essential meaning is perennial: "Elijah came
near unto all the people, and said, How long go ye limping between the
two sides? if Jehovah be God follow him; but if Baal then follow him"
(I Kings 18:21).