However you define faith, you find it abundantly exercised by us on the
low plane of earthly relations. Is it belief in testimony? You men of
business regulate your course by reports of markets on the other side
of the world, and in a hundred ways extend your credence to common
report, with but little, and often with no examination of the evidence.
'If we believe the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.' And
how do we treat it? We are ready to accept and to act on men's
testimony; we are slow to believe God's, and still slower to act on it,
and to let it mould our lives.
Is faith the realising of the unseen? We exercise it in reference to
the earthly unseen; we are slow to do so in reference to the heavenly
things which are invisible.
Is faith the act of trust? Life is impossible without it. Not only is
commerce a great system of credit, but no relations of life could last
for a day without mutual confidence. We depend on one another, like a
row of slightly built houses that help to hold each other up. These
earthly exercises of trust should make it easier for us to rise to
trusting God as much as we do each other. They ought to reveal to us
the heavenly things. For indeed our human trust in one another should
be a sample and shadow of our wise trust in the adequate Object of
trust.
III. Men's obedience to human authority condemns their rebellion
against God.
Jonadab's commandment evoked implicit obedience from his descendants
for generations. Side by side in man's strange nature, with his
self-will and love of independence, lies an equally strong tendency to
obey and follow any masterful voice that speaks loudly and with an
assumption of authority. The opinions of a clique, the dogmas of a
sect, the habits of a set, the sayings of a favourite author, the
fashions of our class--all these rule men with a sway far more absolute
than is exercised on them by the known will of God. The same man is a
slave to usurped authority and a rebel against rightful and divine
dominion.
Whether we consider the law of God in its claims or its contents, or
its ultimate object, it is worthy of entire obedience. And what does it
receive?
God asks from us only what we willingly give to men. Even the qualities
and acts, such as love, trust, obedience, which as exercised towards
men give dignity and beauty and strength, rise up in judgment to
condemn us. There is a sense in which Augustine's often-denounced
saying that they are 'splendid vices' is true, for they are turned in
the wrong direction, and very often their being directed so completely
towards men and women is the reason why they are not directed towards
God, who alone deserves and alone can satisfy and reward them. Then
they become sins and condemn us.