That is a natural metaphor to use, but it is not quite correct, for
these three--faith, love, hope--are not to be conceived of as lying side
by side. Rather than three foundations we have three courses of the
building here; the lowest one, faith; the next one, love; and the top
one, hope. The order in 1 Corinthians is different, 'faith, hope,
charity,' and the alteration in the sequence is suggested by the
difference of purpose. The Apostle intended in 1 Corinthians to dwell at
some length thereafter on 'charity,' or 'love.' So he puts it last to
make the link of connection with what he is going to say. But here he is
dealing with the order of production, the natural order in which these
three evolve themselves. And his thought is that they are like the
shoots that successive springs bring upon the bough of a tree, where
each year has its own growth, and the summit of last year's becomes the
basis of next. Thus we have, first, faith; then, shooting from that,
love; and then, sustained by both, hope. Now let us look at that order.
It is a well-worn commonplace, which you may think it not needful for me
to dwell upon here, that in the Christian theory, both of salvation and
of morals, the basis of everything is trust. And that is no arbitrary
theological arrangement, but it is the only means by which the life that
is the basis both of salvation and of righteousness can be implanted in
men. There is no other way by which Jesus Christ can come into our
hearts than by what the New Testament calls 'trust,' which we have
turned into the hard, theological concept which too often glides over
people's minds without leaving any dint at all--'faith.' Distrust is
united with trust. There is no trust without, complementary to it,
self-distrust. Just as the sprouting seed sends one little radicle
downwards, and that becomes the root, and at the same time sends up
another one, white till it reaches the light, and it becomes the stem,
so the underside of faith is self-distrust, and you must empty
yourselves before you can open your hearts to be filled by Jesus. That
being so, this self-distrustful trust is the beginning of everything.
That is the _alpha_ of the whole alphabet, however glorious and manifold
may be the words into which its letters are afterwards combined. Faith
is the hand that grasps. It is the means of communication, it is the
channel through which the grace which is the life, or, rather, I should
say, the life which is the grace, comes to us. It is the open door by
which the angel of God comes in with his gifts. It is like the petals of
the flowers, opening when the sunshine kisses them, and, by opening,
laying bare the depths of their calyxes to be illuminated and coloured,
and made to grow by the sunshine which itself has opened them, and
without the presence of which, within the cup, there would have been
neither life nor beauty. So faith is the basis of everything; the first
shoot from which all the others ascend. Brethren, have you that initial
grace? I leave the question with you. If you have not that, you have
nothing else.
Then again, out of faith rises love. No man can love God unless he
believes that God loves him. I, for my part, am old-fashioned and narrow
enough not to believe that there is any deep, soul-cleansing or
soul-satisfying love of God which is not the answer to the love that
died on the Cross. But you must believe that, and more than believe it;
you must have trusted and cast yourselves on it, in the utter
abandonment of self-distrust and Christ-confidence, before there will
well up in your heart the answering love to God. First faith, then love.
My love is the reverberation of the primeval voice, the echo of God's.
The angle at which the light falls on the mirror is the same as the
angle at which it is reflected from it. And though my love at its
highest is low, at its strongest is weak: yet, like the echo that is
faint and far, feeble though it be, it is pitched on the same key, and
is the prolongation of the same note as the mother-sound. So my love
answers God's love, and it will never answer it unless faith has brought
me within the auditorium, the circle wherein the voice that proclaims 'I
love thee, my child,' can be heard.
Now, we do not need to ask ourselves whether Paul is here speaking of
love to God or love to man. He is speaking of both, because the New
Testament deals with the latter as being a part of the former, and sure
to accompany it. But there is one lesson that I wish to draw. If it be
true that love in us is thus the result of faith in the love of God, let
us learn how we grow in love. You cannot say, 'Now I will make an effort
to love.' The circulation of the blood, the pulsations of the heart, are
not within the power of the will. But you can say, 'Now I will make an
effort to trust.' For faith is in the power of the will, and when the
Master said, 'Ye will not come unto me,' He taught us that unbelief is
not a mere intellectual deficiency or perversity, but that it is the
result, in the majority of cases--I might almost say in all-of an
alienated will. Therefore, if you wish to love, do not try to work
yourself into a hysteria of affection, but take into your hearts and
minds the Christian facts, and mainly the fact of the Cross, which will
set free the frozen and imprisoned fountains of your affections, and
cause them to flow out abundantly in sweet water. First faith, then
love; and get at love through faith. That is a piece of practical wisdom
that it will do us all good to keep in mind.
Then the third of the three, the topmost shoot, is hope. Hope is faith
directed to the future. So it is clear enough that, unless I have that
trust of which I have been speaking, I have none of the hope which the
Apostle regards as flowing from it. But love has to do with hope quite
as much, though in a different way, as faith has to do with it. For in
the direct proportion in which we are taking into our hearts Christ and
His truth, and letting our hearts go out in love towards Him and
communion with Him, will the glories beyond brighten and consolidate and
magnify themselves in our eyes. The hope of the Christian man is but the
inference from his present faith, and the joy and sweetness of his
present love. For surely when we rise to the heights which are possible
to us all, and on which I suppose most Christian people have been
sometimes, though for far too brief seasons; when we rise to the heights
of communion with God, anything seems more possible to us than that
death, or anything that lies in the future, should have power over a tie
so sweet, so strong, so independent of externals, and so all-sufficing
in its sweetness. Thus we shall be sure that God is our portion for
ever, in the precise degree in which, by faith and love, we feel that
'He is the strength of our hearts,' to-day and now. So, then, we have
the three foundation-stones.