It is a common notion that faith is peculiar to the New Testament. But
the Old Testament 'trust' is identical with the New Testament 'faith,'
and it is a great pity that the variation in translation has obscured
that identity. The fact of the prominence given to law in the Old
Testament does not affect this. For every effort to keep the law must
have led to consciousness of imperfection, and that consciousness must
have driven to the exercise of penitent trust. The difference of
degrees of revelation does not affect it, for faith is the same,
however various the contents of the creed.
Note further the personal object of Faith--'in ME.' The object of Faith
is not a proposition but a Person. That Person is the same in the Old
Testament and in the New. The Jehovah of the one is the God in Christ
of the other. Consequently faith must be more than intellectual assent,
it must be voluntary and emotional, the act of the whole man, 'the
synthesis of the reason and the will.'