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 inescapable 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 human nature 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 the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. —Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV)

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. We cannot live without faith, because we deal not only with a past which we may know and with a present which we can see, but with a future in whose possibilities we must believe. A person can no more avoid looking ahead when living life than when sailing a boat, and in one case as in the other, direction is determined by thought about what lies ahead — the "substance of things hoped for." Now, this future into which we continually 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":

However much a person may plan, therefore, to live without faith, it cannot be done. When someone strips away all convictions about the future, they stop living altogether, and active, eager, vigorous living 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 afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. —Hebrews 11:13–16 (NKJV)

Almighty God, let Your Spirit breathe upon us to quicken in us all humility, all holy desire, all living faith in You. When we meditate on the Eternal, we dare not think in any form of likeness; yet You are most real to us in the worship of the heart. When in the struggle against sin we receive grace to help us in our time of need, then You are the Eternal Rock of our salvation. When amid our perplexities and searchings the way of duty is made clear, then You are our Everlasting Light. When amid the storms of life we find peace and rest through submission, then You are the assured Refuge of our souls. So reveal Yourself to us, O God!¹

Our Heavenly Father, we give You humble and heartfelt 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 people have been conscious of Your presence and assured of Your grace. But we would not content ourselves with memories. O You who are not the God of the dead, but the God of the living, reveal Yourself to us in a present communion. Show Yourself to us in the events of this passing time. Give us for ourselves to feel the authority of Your 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 one another, the divinity of the still small voice within that ever urges us in the way of righteousness. So shall our hearts be renewed by faith; so shall we ever live in God. Amen.² —John Hunter.

First Week, Second Day

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. —Hebrews 11:8–10 (NKJV)

By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. —Hebrews 11:24–27 (NKJV)

We cannot live without faith because our 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 outcome 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 pressed, 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 to deal with life that way demands faith. The more one sees what venturesome risks we take every day, what labor and sacrifice we invest in hope of a worthy outcome, with what great causes we fall in love until at our best we are willing for their sakes to hazard fortune and happiness and life itself, the more one sees that the soul of robust and serviceable character is faith.

O God, who has surrounded us with so much that is dark and perplexing, and yet has set within us light enough to walk by; enable us to trust what You have given as sufficient for us, and steadfastly refuse to follow anything 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 carry out those duties which lay their charge upon our conscience; so that we may come at length to perfect light in You, and find our wills in harmony with Yours.

Since You have planted our feet in a world so full of chance and change that we know not what a day may bring, and have curtained every day with night and surrounded 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 comes when no one can work; having our lamps ready and burning, lest the cry at midnight find us sleeping and the door shut fast.

Since we are so feeble, faint, and foolish, leave us not to our own devices, not even when we pray You to; nor allow us for any concern for You 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 You, lest we lose our way and miss the happy gate. Amen. —W. E. Orchard.

First Week, Third Day

We cannot live without faith because the prime requirement in life's adventure is courage, and the sustenance of courage is faith.

And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again. Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented — of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. —Hebrews 11:32–40 (NKJV)

When in comparison with men and women of such admirable spirit, one thinks of weak personalities that unravel at the first strain, the difference lies in courage. When a person loses heart, they lose 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,

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 one 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 has sent us to school in this strange life of ours, and has 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 from 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 Your goodness, but committing our souls to You who knows the way that we take, come forth as gold tried in the fire.

Grant by Your 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

We 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" (Hebrews 6:12), he joins two things that in experience no one can successfully separate. By as much as we need patience, we need faith.

But recall the former days in which, after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with sufferings: partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations, and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated; for you had compassion on me in my chains, and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and an enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. —Hebrews 10:32–36 (NKJV)

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" (Psalm 37:7 NKJV), is prodigiously difficult. No one can do it without some kind of faith. "In your patience possess your souls" (Luke 21:19 NKJV), said Jesus, 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; they were given us to live by."

We ask of You, O Lord our God, that You will grant to every one of us in Your presence this morning the special mercies which each needs — strength where weakness prevails, and patience where courage has failed. Grant, we pray, that those who need endurance³ may find themselves strangely upheld and sustained. Grant that those who wander in doubt and darkness may feel falling 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, those who have wandered from the path of righteousness. Give every one honesty. May all who transgress Your law return to the Shepherd and Guardian of their souls with confession of sin, and earnest and sincere repentance. Amen. —Henry Ward Beecher.

First Week, Fifth Day

We cannot live without faith because we exist in a universe, the complete explanation of which is forever beyond our grasp, so that whatever we think about the total meaning of creation is fundamentally faith.

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. —Hebrews 11:3 (NKJV)

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 our 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 leap 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 we come to the highest thought of life's meaning and believe in the Christian God, we face the fact which the writer to the Hebrews presents:

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. —Hebrews 11:6 (NKJV)

Indeed, in all firm 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 Infinite Spirit, who needs no words for us to hold our conversation with You, we would enter into Your presence, we would reverence Your power, we would worship Your wisdom, we would adore Your justice, we would be gladdened by Your love, and blessed by our communion with You. We know that You need no sacrifice at our hands, nor any offering at our lips; yet we live in Your world, we taste Your bounty, we breathe Your air, and Your power sustains us, Your justice guides, Your goodness preserves, and Your love blesses us forever and ever. O Lord, we cannot fail to praise You, though we cannot praise You as we would. We bow our faces down before You with humble hearts, and in Your presence would warm our spirits for a while, that we may be better 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 people of high degree prove false and those of low degree are a vanity, teach us, O Lord, to be true before You — not a vanity, but soberness and strength; 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 fullness of joy. Amen. —Theodore Parker.

First Week, Sixth Day

We cannot live, lacking faith, because without it life's richest experiences go unclaimed. 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 benefit from instruction by another involves teachable humility. A person without the capacity to reach out to others in friendly trust or to welcome new illumination on their 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 our relationship with one another is true of our relationship with God. So Professor 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 our claiming, only faith can claim them.

Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. —Hebrews 4:1–2 (NKJV)

O Infinite Source of life and health and joy! The very thought of You is so wonderful that in this thought we would rest and be still. You are Beauty and Grace and Truth and Power. You are the light of every heart that sees You, the life of every soul that loves You, the strength of every mind that seeks You. From our narrow and bounded world we would pass into Your greater world. From our petty and miserable selves we would escape to You, to find in You the power and the freedom of a larger life.... We recognize You 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 uplifted above time and place, and know ourselves citizens of Your everlasting Kingdom, we realize, O Lord, that these things, while they are in us, are not of us. They are Yours, the work of Your 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

We 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 pursuit of that campaign what ought to be must be believed in with passionate intensity. Faith of some sort, therefore, is necessarily the driving force 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 those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct. —Hebrews 13:7 (NKJV)

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 people 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:

How great are the mercies, O Lord our God, which You have prepared for all who put their trust in You! ... You have comfort for those who are in affliction; You have strength for those who are weak; ... You have all blessings that are needed, and stand ready to be all things to all, and in all. And yet, with bread enough and to spare, with clothing in abundance, and with all medicine, how many there are who go hungry, and naked, and sick, and destitute of all things! We desire, O Lord, that You will, to all Your other mercies, add that gift by which we shall trust in You — 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 You have provided for Your people. We ask of You, 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 one can live without vision to see as true what they cannot yet prove, or without valor to act on the basis of 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 people 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 inescapable 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 NKJV). 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 our 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 Sudan, 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 we 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 one can certainly predict an hour ahead — these are all adventures. Each new day is a previously unvisited country, which we enter, like Abraham leaving Ur for a strange land, "not knowing where he was going" (Hebrews 11:8 NKJV), and every New Year we begin a tour of exploration into a twelvemonth where no one'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 people, 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 will ever 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 youth choosing a calling takes their 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 existing but all possible knowledge, as truly as to any person who ever lived, life would be full of hazard still. They could not certainly know in advance the outcome of a single important decision of their life. They could not at any moment tell in what new, strange, challenging, or terrific situation the next hour might find them. With all their science, they must face each day, as Paul faced his journey to Rome, "not knowing the things that will happen to me there" (Acts 20:22 NKJV).

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 feelers as well with which to grope 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 connected 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 the slave trade 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 refine and discipline, to make reasonable and stable the faiths by which we live is a problem unsurpassed in importance for every person.

III

One result of special interest follows from this truth. It is commonly suspected that as humanity 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:

Accordingly by custom we call the medieval centuries the "Age of Faith." But even a cursory comparison between the medieval 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 humanity could ever master nature by invention until her mighty forces were 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 people 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 medieval 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 humanity 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 primitive people are meager compared with a modern person'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 people? 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 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 modern person and the primitive 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 taken its place — one must conceive a world where no conscious life and effort remain at all. Take trust in testimony away from courts of law, and untested experiments from the physician's practice; refuse the teacher their confidence in growing minds and the business person their right to ventures that involve uncertainty; remove 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 person 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 not 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 humanity 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, people 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 where they came from, where they are going, and who the gods are anyway. And when one turns to modern humanity in its finest exhibitions of intelligence and character, 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 we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be" (1 John 3:2 NKJV).

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 humanity as 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 skepticism: "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."

Our life, interpreted and motivated 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, the thinker loses the greatest thought. The human mind has ranged the universe, has woven atoms and stars into a texture of law; our conquering thoughts ride out into every unknown province of which they hear. But among all the ideas on which the human mind has taken hold, incomparably the greatest is the idea of God. In sheer weight and range no other thought 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, the worker loses the greatest motive. We master nature until the forces that used to scare us now obey; in society we labor tirelessly that our children may have a better world. Wars come, destroying the achievements of ages; yet when war is over, we rebuild cities, recreate commerce, dream again of human brotherhood, and toil on. Many motives, deep and shallow, fine and coarse, have sustained us in this tireless work, but when one seeks the fountain of profoundest hope in humanity's toil, it is found 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 nothing; 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 humanity's greatest work.

When faith in God goes, the sinner loses the strongest help. For we are sinners. We tear our spiritual heritage to shreds in licentiousness and drink. We wallow in vice, win by cruelty, violate love, are treacherous to trust. Our sins clothe the world in lamentation. Yet in us is a protest that we cannot stifle. We are the only creatures whom we know whose nature is divided against itself. We hate our sin even while committing it. We repent, try again, fall, rise, stumble on — and in all our best hours cry out for salvation. No message short of religion has ever met our need in this condition. That God Himself is pledged to the victory of righteousness in us and in the world, that He cares, forgives, enters into our struggle with transforming power, and crowns the long endeavor with triumphant character — such faith alone has been great enough to meet the needs of the sinner.

When faith in God goes, the sufferer loses the 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 people 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 explanation 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 people 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 we 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, the lover loses the fairest vision. When we say our worst about humanity, this redeeming truth remains, that each of us has someone for whose sake we 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 the loves of humanity radiant with an illumination which we alone cannot create, it is found in religion. Love is not a transient fragrance from matter finely organized — so people 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 who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (1 John 4:16 NKJV). The lover is bereft of their finest insight and love's inner glory has departed, when that faith has gone.

When faith in God goes, the mortal loses the only hope. Human nature, like a lighthouse, combines two elements. At the foundation of the beacon all is stone; as one lifts their 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 solid 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 we have in us a miracle which we cannot explain; we "feel that we are greater than we know"; and we have never been able to believe that the mystery of spirit was given 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 humanity why so universally it has believed in life to come, the answer leaps not superficially from the mind, but out of the basic intuitions of our 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 us must go, if faith in God departs. In a godless world we die 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 significance of their denial. They are flippant disbelievers. They toss faith facilely aside in a light mood. Such frivolous skeptics indict their own intelligence. Whoever discards religious faith should appoint a day of mourning for their soul, and put on sackcloth and ashes. They must take from their life the greatest thought that any thinker ever had, the finest faith that any worker ever leaned upon, the surest help that any sinner ever found, the strongest reliance that any sufferer ever trusted in, the loftiest vision that any lover ever saw, and the only hope that any mortal ever had. So they must deny their faith in God. Before one thus leaves oneself bereft of the faith that makes life's adventure most worthwhile, one 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 gift, 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, people 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 we 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 person can hold their judgment in entire suspense. Life does not require any action that depends on what they think of the Aurora Borealis; and whether they think one thing or another, no conceivable change would be the consequence in anything they 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 person cannot really be agnostic and neutral on a question like the moral law of sexual purity, for, by an irrevocable necessity, they have to act one way or another. They may stop thinking, but they cannot stop living. With tremendous urgency the adventure of life insistently goes on, and it never pauses for anyone to make up their mind on any question. Therefore while one may theoretically suspend judgment as to the requirements of the moral law, their life will be a loud, convincing advertisement to all who know them that they have vitally decided. We can avoid making up our minds, but we cannot avoid making up our lives.

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 people have reduced the great faiths to technicalities and some beliefs called religious a person may hold or not, with utter indifference to anything they are or do. But on the basic attitudes of religion such as we have just rehearsed, no one can be completely neutral, no matter how they try. 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 anyone trying to remain religiously neutral. For one cannot by any possibility avoid "assumptions on which they habitually act." They tend 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. They tend to follow their ideals, either as the voice of God calling them upward, or as the work of natural selection, adjusting them to a temporary environment. They tend 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. They tend to face death either as the supreme adventure, full of boundless hope, or as a final exit that leads nowhere. They may never consciously formulate their ideas on any of these matters, they may maintain an intellectual agnosticism, genuine and complete, but their 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 they are, the more they will be aware of that inescapable tendency to confess in their 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 whoever does not deliberately choose it, loses it. A person who, rowing down Niagara River, debates within themselves whether or not they will stop at Buffalo, and who cannot decide, has thereby decided. Their irresolution has not for a moment interfered with the steady flow of the river, and if they but debate long enough concerning their stop at Buffalo, they will awake to discover that they have finally decided not to stop there. Just as much beyond the control of our will is the steady flow of life. It pauses for no one's indecision, and if one is irresolute about any positive, aspiring faith in any realm, their 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 importance; and on these issues life itself continuously compels decision. Our obligation is obvious — since willingly or unwillingly the decision must be made — to make it consciously, to reach it by reason, not by chance, by thinking, not by drifting. If a person is to be irreligious, let them at least know why, and not slip into this condition, as most irreligious people do, by careless living and frivolous thought. If a person is to be religious, let them have reason for their choice; let their faith be founded not on credulity and chance, but on real experience and reasonable thought. So their faith shall be good not only for domestic consumption, but for export too — clear in their own mind and convincing to their 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: "And Elijah came to all the people, and said, 'How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him'" (1 Kings 18:21 NKJV).

Footnotes

¹ Original: "So do Thou manifest Thyself unto us, O God!" — The archaic phrasing carries a particular urgency and intimacy in the direct address to God that is worth preserving in memory. ↩

² Original: "...the divinity of the still small voice within that doth ever urge us in the way of righteousness." — The phrase "doth ever urge" carries a sense of gentle, ceaseless persistence that "ever urges" captures but with slightly less weight. ↩

³ Original: "long-suffering" — This archaic term carries a stronger sense of enduring pain and hardship over extended time than the modern "endurance" or "patience." ↩