question is, how will it behave? What is it going to say, or do, in
face of this exciting transformation which has passed over the entire
surface of our intellectual scenery? How will it deal with the
situation? Will it prove itself adequate to the crisis? To what extent
can it afford to submit to the transforming process which has already
operated upon the mind and the imagination? If it submit, can it
survive? And in what condition? with what loss, or damage, or change?
On every side these challenges reach it; they beat at its doors; they
arrive in pelting haste; they clamour for immediate solutions.
Now faith, under these rapid and stormy challenges, is apt to fall
into panic. For this, surely, is the very meaning of a panic--a fear
that feeds upon itself. Men in a panic are frightened at finding
themselves afraid. So now with faith; it is terrified at its own
alarm. How is it (it asks itself) that it should find itself baffled
and timorous? If faith were faith, would it ever lose its confidence?
To be frightened is to confess itself false: for faith is confidence
in God, Who can never fail. How can faith allow of doubt or
hesitation? Surely for faith to hesitate, to be confused, is to deny
its very nature. Thus many anxious and perplexed souls retreat before
their own perplexities. Because their faith is troubled, they distrust
and abandon their faith. The very fact that it is in distress becomes
an argument against it.
It is at this point, and because of this particular peril that we are
urgently required to consider very seriously the nature and conditions
of faith. For our panic arises from our assumption that faith is of
such a nature, that the perplexity, into which, now and again, we find
ourselves thrown, must be impossible to it, must be incompatible with
it. Now, is this so? Ought we to expect of faith that its confidence
should never fail it--that its light should be always decisive? Is
faith incriminated by the mere fact that it is in difficulties?
Let us, first, consider what has occurred. Perhaps the situation
itself, if we quietly review it, will give a reason why it is that,
just at the moment when we most need vigour and assurance, we should
find ourselves stripped of all that tends to reassure.
For the peculiarity of the disturbance which we have got to encounter
lies in this, that it has removed from us the very weapons by which we
might hope to encounter it. Faith's evidential material is all
corroborative and accumulative; it draws it from out of an external
world, which can never wholly justify, or account for the internal
reality, yet which can so group itself, that from a hundred differing
lines, it offers indirect and parenthetic and convergent witness of
that which is, itself, beyond the reach of external proof. It is this
gradual grouping of an outer life into that assorted perspective in
which it offers the most effective corroboration of the inner truth,
which faith slowly accomplishes upon the matter which human science
presents to it. When once the grouping is achieved, so that the outer
world, known under certain scientific principles, tallies harmoniously
with its inner convictions, faith feels secure. The external life
offers it pictures, analogies, metaphors--all echoing and repeating
the internal world. Faith beholds itself mirrored: and, so echoed, so
mirrored, it feels itself in possession of corroborating evidences.
But the present scientific confusion seems to have shattered the
mirror--to have broken up the perspective--to have dissolved the
well-known groupings. It is true, as some of the essays which follow
will try to show, that the convulsion of which we speak, lies,
chiefly, in a change of position, or of level; so that great masses of
the matter, now thrown into confusion, will be found to compose
themselves afresh, under the newer conditions of review, and will
appear again as part and parcel of the scientific scenery. It is a
change of perspective more than anything else. But, no doubt, such a
change is just of the character to upset us, to disturb us; for,
during the change, while shifting from the old position to the new, we
are in the very chaos of confusion; everything seems, for the moment,
to be tumbling about around us: the entire scene grows unsteady;
though, indeed, when once we have got our feet firmly placed at the
new level of vantage, much, that once was familiar, is discovered to
be back again in its place, looking much the same as of old. It is the
_first_ shock of this enforced transition which is so calculated to
terrify: as when, for instance, men see their habitual reliance on the
evidence for design in nature, which had been inherited from Paley,
yield, and vanish, under the review of the facts with which the theory
of evolution acquaints them. What they feel is, that their familiar
mode of interpreting their faith, of justifying it, of picturing it,
has abruptly been torn from them. That which once seemed to evidence
it in the outer world, has ceased to be accepted or trusted. The
habitual ways of argument, the accepted assumptions, which they had
hitherto used as their supports and their instruments--have been
withdrawn--have become obsolete. Faith is thrown back on itself, on
its own inherent, naked vitality; it is robbed for the moment of that
sense of solidity and security, which fortifies and refreshes it, when
the outer world of natural facts, and the inner world of intellect and
fancy, all corroborate its confidence in itself, by harmonious
attestations of its validity. The old world of things had been brought
into this adaptation with the principles of belief. Faith was at home
in it, and looked out over it with cheerfulness, and moved about it
with freedom. But that old world is gone; and the new still lies
untested, unsorted, unverified, unassimilated, unhandled. It looks
foreign, odd, remote. Faith finds no obvious corroborations in it:
there, where it used to feel buttressed and warm, it now feels chilly
and exposed[53].
This is the first consequence, and it is serious enough in itself to
provoke alarm. Faith cannot be at ease or confident, until the outer
world responds to its own convictions; and yet ease and confidence are
exactly what it is challenged to exhibit.
And then, when a man, under this sense of fear, deprived of external
testimonies, attempts to exhibit, to evoke, to examine, his inner
conviction, in its inherent and vital character, as it is in itself,
unsupported by adventitious aids, he is astonished at his own
difficulty in discovering or disclosing it. Where is it all fled--that
which he had called his faith? He had enjoyed it, had relied on it,
had again and again asserted it in word and deed: and now, when he
wants to look at it, when he is summoned to produce it, when he is
challenged to declare its form and fashion; he finds himself dazed,
bewildered, searching helplessly for that which ever escapes him,
grasping at a fleeting shadow, which baffles his efforts to endow it
with fixity and substance. And, so finding, he grows yet more
desperately alarmed: it seems to him that he has been self-deceived,
betrayed, abandoned. He is bitterly sensitive to the sharp contrast
between the triumphant solidity with which scientific facts bear down
upon him, certified, undeniable, substantial, and the vague, shifty,
indistinct phantom, into which his conviction vanishes as soon as he
attempts to observe it in itself, or draw it out for public
inspection.
Yet, if we consider what faith signifies, we shall see at once that
this contrast ought to carry with it no alarm. It is a contrast which
follows on the very nature of faith. If we had understood its nature,
we could never have expected it to disclose itself under the same
conditions as those which govern the observation of scientific facts.
Faith is an elemental energy of the soul, and the surprise that we are
undergoing at not being able to bring it under direct observation, is
only an echo of the familiar shock with which we learn that science
has ransacked the entire bodily fabric of man, and has nowhere come
across his soul; or has searched the heavens through and through with
its telescope, and has seen no God. We are upset for a moment when
first we hear this; and then, we recover ourselves as we recollect
that, if God be what we believe Him to be, immaterial and spiritual,
then He would cease to be Himself, if He were visible through a
telescope: and that if the spirit of man be what we believe it to be,
that is the very reason why no surgeon's knife can ever arrive at it.
And, as with the soul, so with all its inherent and essential acts.
They are what it is: they can no more be visible than it can. How can
any of the basal intuitions, on which our knowledge rests, present
themselves to our inspection in the guise of external and phenomenal
facts? That which observes can never, strictly speaking, observe
itself. It can never look on at itself from outside, or view itself as
one among the multitude of things that come under its review. How can
it? It is itself the organ of vision: and the eye cannot see its own
power of seeing. This is why natural science, which is an organised
system of observation, finds that its own observing mind is absolutely
and totally outside its ken. It can take stock of the physiological
condition of thoughts or of feelings; but they themselves, in their
actual reality, are all rigidly shut out from the entire area of
scientific research. Wherever they begin, it ends; its methods
abruptly fail. It possesses no instrument by which to make good its
advance further. For the only instrument which it knows how to use,
and by which alone it can search, and examine, is itself the object
which it desires to submit to examination. But if _it_ is to be
examined, who, and what, is to conduct the examination? The observing
mind that turns round to explore itself, carries itself round as it
turns. It can never say--'Let me look at myself, as if I were a
phenomenon, as a fact presented to my own consciousness,' for it
itself would be engaged in the act of looking: it itself is the
consciousness to which it proposes to present itself[54]. So again,
the thought itself can never hope, by rigid analysing, to arrive at
last at itself, as the final residue of the analysis, for it is
itself, all along, employed as analyst. The process of analysis is,
itself, the real disclosure of what thought is: and this disclosure is
made just as effectively even though the result of the analysis be to
declare that it can discover nothing that corresponds to thought. It
is, indeed, impossible that anything should so correspond, except the
power to analyse; but this power _is_ thought: and every act of the
analysis, which issues in the sceptical conclusion, has verified the
real existence of thought. It is the same with all profound spiritual
acts. None of them can ever be offered to public inspection: they can
never be handed across to another, for him to look at. For they are
living acts, and not external results. How can an act of will, or of
love, be submitted to observation? Its outward result is there to be
examined; but it, itself, is incapable of transportation. If anyone
were to ask 'What is it you mean by thinking, or loving, or willing?'
who could tell him? It would be obviously impossible to explain,
except to a being who could think, will, and love. You could give him
illustrations of what you mean--signs--instances--evidences; but they
can only be intelligible, as evidences, to one who already possesses
the faculties. No one can do a piece of thinking for another, and hand
it over to him in a parcel. Only by thinking, can it be known what
thought is: only by feeling can it be understood what is meant by a
feeling: only by seeing, willing, loving, can we have the least
conception of sight, or of will, or of love.
And faith stands with these primary intuitions. It is deeper and more
elemental than them all: and, therefore, still less than they can it
admit of translation into other conditions than its own;--can still
less submit itself to public observation. It can never be looked at
from without. It can be known only from within itself. Belief is only
intelligible by believing. Just as a man who is asked to say what love
is, apart from all its outward manifestations and results, must be
driven back on the iteration--'Love is--what love is: everyone who
loves, knows; no one who does not love, can ever know;' just as a man,
who is challenged to describe and define his feelings or his desires,
when stripped of all the outward evidences that they can possibly give
of themselves, is thrown into inarticulate bewilderment, and can give
no intelligible answer, and can fashion to himself no distinct feature
or character, and can only assert, confusedly, that he feels what he
feels, and that to desire is to desire;--so with faith. The scientific
convulsion has shaken and confused its normal modes of self-interpretation,
its usual evidences, signs, illustrations: these outer aids at
definition, by metaphor or by corroboration, are all brought under dim
eclipse for the moment: their relative values have been thrown into
uncertainty: they are undergoing temporary displacement, and no one is
quite sure which is being shifted, and which can be trusted to stand
firm. Faith, robbed of its habitual aids to expression, is summoned to
show itself on the field, in its own inner character. And this is just
what it never can or may do. It can only reiterate, in response to the
demand for definition, 'Faith is faith.' 'Believing is--just
believing.' Why, then, let ourselves be distressed, or bewildered, by
finding ourselves reduced to this impotence of explanation? Far from
it being an incrimination of our faith, to find ourselves caught in
such a difficulty of utterance, it is just what must happen if faith
be a profound and radical act of the inner soul. It is, essentially,
an active principle, a source of energy, a spring of movement: and, as
such, its verification can never take place through passive
introspection. It verifies itself only in actions: its reality can
only be made evident through experience of its living work.
II. We may, then, free ourselves from the sinister suspicions which
belong to panic. It is not the superficiality of our faith, which is
the secret of our bewilderment, but its depth. The deepest and most
radical elements of our being are, necessarily, the hardest to
unearth. They are, obviously, the most remote from the surface of our
lives: they are the rarest to show themselves in the open daylight:
they require the severest effort to disentangle their identity: they
lie below all ordinary methods of utterance and expression; they can
only be discovered through careful recognition of the secret
assumptions which are involved in the acts and words which they
habitually produce. By these acts and words their existence and their
force is suggested, but not exhausted--manifested, but not accounted
for. These form our only positive interpretation and evidence: and
such evidence must, therefore, always remain inadequate, imperfect; we
have always and inevitably to go behind it, and beyond it, in order to
reach and touch the motive-energy which is disclosed to us through it.
No wonder that we find this far from an easy matter. No wonder that,
under the pressure of a hostile challenge, we often lose ourselves in
a confused babble, as we struggle to make plain to others, or even to
ourselves, these innermost convictions of our souls.
Indeed, such things can never be made plain: no one ought to expect
that they should. For, if we think of it, the primary acts of spirit
must be the _last_ things that can ever be made plain; for the entire
life issuing from them is their only interpretation, so that only when
that life is closed, can their interpretation be complete. And here,
in faith, we are at the root of a life which, as we believe, it will
take eternity to fulfil. And, if so, only in and through eternity can
its full evidence for itself be produced, or its right interpretation
be yielded.
Surely, this truth clears us from many clamorous demands, which ask of
us an impossible verification. For if once we saw that we were
employed in verifying the nature of that which, if it be real, can,
confessedly, present us, on this side of the grave, only with the most
fragmentary evidence of its character, we should put lightly aside the
taunting challenge to produce such proof of our motive principle as
will stand comparison with the adequate and precise evidences of a
scientific fact, or which will submit to the rigid tests of a legal
examination. If faith be faith, it could not, for that very reason,
fulfil the conditions so proposed to it. These legal and scientific
conditions are laboriously and artificially limited to testing the
presence of a motive, or a force, which must be assumed to exist under
fixed, precise, complete conditions, here and now. They pre-suppose
that, for all practical purposes, its quantity cannot vary, or
fluctuate. If it be present at all, it is present in a distinct and
formal manner, open to definite measurement, expressing itself in
unalterable characteristics. The entire consideration of its activity
is strictly confined to the normal horizon of the actual world of
present existence. These assumptions are the first necessity of all
forms of science, without making which, it could not even begin. They
are the conditions of all its success. But they are also its
limitations: and as such, they most certainly exclude from their
survey, anything that professes to exist after the manner of faith.
For what is faith? It is no steady force, existing under certified and
unvarying conditions which receive their final determination in the
world about us. Faith is, while it is here on earth, only a tentative
probation: it is a struggling and fluctuating effort in man to win for
himself a valid hold upon things that exist under the conditions of
eternity. In faith, we watch the early and rude beginnings, amid an
environment that but faintly and doubtfully responds to it, of a power
still in the womb--still unborn into its true sphere--still enveloped
in dark wrappings which encumber and impede. We see here but its
blind, uncertain pushings, its hesitating moves, now forward, now
back, now strangely vigorous and assertive, and then again, as
strangely weak and retreating. Its significance, its interpretation,
its future possibilities, its secret of development--all these lie
elsewhere, beyond death, beyond vision: we can but dimly guess, from
its action here, what powers feed it, on what resources it can rely,
what capacity of growth is open to it, what final issue determines the
measure and value of its efforts and achievements here. Such a force
as this is bound to upset all our ablest calculations. We can never
lay down rules to govern and predict its capabilities. It will
disappoint every conceivable test that we can devise for fixing its
conditions. It will laugh at our attempts to circumscribe its action.
Where we look for it to be weak, it will suddenly show itself strong:
when we are convinced that we may expect a vigorous display of its
capacities, it will mysteriously lapse. All this may terribly
disconcert us. It may tempt us into angry declarations that such an
incalculable existence is unworthy of scientific attention--is
fanciful, is unreal. But the only lesson which we ought to learn is
that methods adapted for one state of things are bound to prove
themselves futile when applied to another. If we are employed in
observing a life, which has its ground and its end in a world beyond
the present, then all methods framed for the express and definite
purpose of examining life as it exists here and now, will necessarily
prove themselves ludicrously inapt. The futility, the barrenness, the
ineptitude of our researches, lies, not with the faith against which
we level our irritable complaints, but with the methods which, by
their very terms of definition, proclaim themselves to be misplaced.
Where, then, must we dig to unearth the roots of faith? What are the
conditions of its rise and exercise? Wherein lie its grounds, and the
justification of its claim?
Faith grounds itself, solely and wholly, on an inner and vital
relation of the soul to its source. This source is most certainly
elsewhere; it is not within the compass of the soul's own activity. In
some mode, inconceivable and mysterious, our life issues out of an
impenetrable background: and as our life includes spiritual elements,
that background has spiritual factors: and as our life is personal,
within that background exists personality. This supply of life in
which we begin, from out of which our being opens, can never cease, so
long as we exist, to sustain us by one continuous act. Ever its
resources flow in: ever its vital support is unwithdrawn. In some
fashion or other, we all know that this must be so: and the Christian
Creed only lifts into clear daylight, and endows with perfect
expression, this elementary and universal verity, when it asserts that
at the very core of each man's being lies, and lives, and moves, and
works, the creative energy of the Divine Will--'the Will of our Father
Which is in Heaven.'
We stand, by the necessities of our existence, in the relationship of
sons to a Father, Who has poured out into us, and still pours, the
vigour of His own life. This is the one basis of all faith. Unless
this relationship actually exists, there could be no faith: if it
exists, then faith is its essential corollary: it is bound to appear.
Our faith is simply the witness to this inner bond of being. That
bond, which is the secret of our entire existence, accounting for all
that we are, or do, or feel, or think, or say, must become capable of
recognition by a being that is, in any sense, free, intelligent,
conscious: and this recognition by us of the source from whence we
derive, is what we mean by faith. Faith is the sense in us that we are
Another's creature, Another's making. Even as we not only feel, but
feel that we feel; not only think, but know that we think; not only
choose, but determine to choose: so, below and within all our willing,
and thinking, and feeling, we are conscious of Another, whose mind and
will alone make possible both the feeling that we feel, and also the
capacity to feel it; both the thought that we think, and also the
capacity to know it; both the will that we put forth, as well as the
power to determine it. Every act, every desire, every motive of ours,
is dependant on the source out of sight: we hang on Another's will; we
are alive in Another's life. All our life is a discovery, a
disclosure, of this secret. We find it out only by living. As we put
out powers that seem to be our own, still even in and by the very act
of putting them out, we reveal them to be not our own; we discover
that we are always drawing on unseen resources. We are sons: that is
the root-law of our entire self. And faith is the active instinct of
that inner sonship: it is the point at which that essential sonship
emerges into consciousness; it is the disclosure to the self of its
own vital secret; it is the thrill of our inherent childhood, as it
makes itself felt within the central recesses of the life; it is the
flame that shoots into consciousness at the recognition of the touch
of our divine fatherhood; it is the immediate response of the sonship
in us to its discovered origin.