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WHAT IS FAITH?
The world has persistently misunderstood
what faith is. Even Christians have only a hazy
conception of it and many of them speak as if
it were a faculty of the soul, or a thing that they
can look at, examine and determine whether it is
weak or strong. The truth is, that faith is not a
faculty of the soul at all, nor is it a thing
wrought into the soul when one becomes a Christian,
but faith is an act of the soul believing.
Faith is the confidence you put in a truth after
you have examined the evidence that shows it to
be true. It is thus an act of the soul resting in
the certainty that a thing is true because you have
reasons sufficient to convince your reason that it
is true. One of the best philosophical definitions
ever given is that of Dr. McCosh, once President
of Princeton University: "Faith is the consent
of the will to the assent of the understanding."
How fine that is! The understanding must see
reasons for assenting, and then the will consents
to it. There can be no faith without the faculty
of reason in action. Reason must judge of the
evidence of any proposition to be believed, and
if it pronounces the evidence as sufficient then
faith simply accepts it as true. This is historic
faith, faith in its simplest form. It is an act of
the whole soul; of the intellect in examining evidence
; of the will in thus consenting to trust that
proposition as true on the ground of that evidence
thus tested, in this will being included the
conative powers of the soul, as in Sir William
Hamilton's phraseology. Thus it is impossible
to have faith without using the reason.
Faith is opposed to credulity, but not to
reason. Credulity is belief without evidence or
against evidence. When a man believes that St.
.Januarius' blood liquifies once a year, or that
the seamless robe of Christ was found by some
saint four hundred years after the crucifixion, he
is believing without evidence. When a man believes
against his senses in transubstantiation.
that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper
are the actual body and blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ, when chemical and other tests show that
they are still bread and wine, he is believing
against evidence. This is credulity. One cannot
have faith without evidence, and one can
recognize evidence by the reason.
Thomas Paine's book, "The Age of Reason,"
had a tremendous effect over a hundred years
ago. Its very title implied that an age of faith
was an age of unreason, an age of credulity. No
wonder it appealed to young men. Paine always
contrasted the age of reason with an age of
credulity and superstition which he called faith.
If this were true, who would not prefer the age
of reason? In more recent times one will find
men like Draper, in his "Intellectual Development
of Europe," making the same mistake, representing
faith as credulity and superstition.
The same absurdity lies at the foundation of
most of the aemostic literature of tha last
century, also of the deistic literature of the
eighteenth century in England, and of the
French Encyclopedists, and the Modern Rationalists
of Germany. Let us not make the same
mistake. Credulity is not faith at all. One must
use one's reason and have evidence to have faith.
It is irrational to believe without evidence. The
act of faith is the highest act of the rational soul.
It rests alone on the act of reason pronouncing
the evidence sufficient. Nothing else is faith.
In what sense is faith under the control of the
will? The Bible commands us to believe. A
command implies that we can obey. But faith
must follow the evidence. Was the poet Shelley
1 -:J a.! ai-- r*?Li
igui. wiicii ue Bitiu nun me moie in commanding
men to believe was commanding nonsense, therefore
he threw away the Bible, sang his songs of
beauty and lived the life of a sensualist and an
unbeliever T Greater men than Shelley, even
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
Lord Brougham and Sir James Mcintosh both
lent the authority of their great names to this
error. All of these overlooked the fact that the
voluntary powers of men can prevent the man's
giving unbiased attention to the evidence, and
thus prevent that evidence from havihg its proper
effect on the mind. The commahd to believe,
means to get rid of prejudice^ prepossession and
bias, and to examine fairly the evidence. No
judge would let one sit on a jury to try one's own
father. One's affection would not let one judge
fairly the evidence. The Bible is right when it
commands belief. One has the power to give
fair alt mtion to the evidence or to refuse to do
it In tliic concn tVion faitli its vAlnntom
? I V?i*w vxAVsUy 1U1I.1I AO * Viuu lUl J
A CONTINENTAL CRUSADE.
A very interesting and inspiring plan of evangelization
is soon to be proposed to other churches
by the Evangelistic Committee of the Presbyterian
Church, U. S. A. It involves both Foreign
and Home Missions?Foreign, in that the work
is to be done in foreign lands, and Home, in
that it will be done in lauds long ago supplied
with the gospel, but in which rationalism has
benumbed the religious consciousness, or Romish
superstition and persecution have in times past
obseured the light of truth, silenced or exterminated
its adherents or driven them into exile.
The Committee, with which Dr. J. Wilbur
lllinnmsin and his jvssneintps nw nrnminentlv
identified, proposes to extend evaneglistic work
into the Protestant Churches of the principal
countries of continental Europe. The chairman
of that committee, Dr. Roberts, has recently returned
from conferences with Presbyterian
churches in Scotland, Ireland, England and
Switzerland. He announces that the English
speaking Churches are prepared to co-operate
cordially and that the continental Churches are
eager to receive the proffered aid.
As evidence of the outlook and the need, facts
presented in The Christian Intelligencer seem
in every way to justify the proposal and the
hearty co-operation of all the Reformed Churches
of Great Britain and America. The report
or estimate of the Committee after investigation
is to the effect that of the 39,000,000 people of
France not more than 8,000,000 are connected
with any Church, either Protestant or Catholic.
There are within the republic about 800,000
Presbyterian adherents, but there remains a mission
field of not less than 30,000,000 people. In
Germany and Switzerland rationalism, that is,
no religion, is on the increase. Italy, in which
the Waldensians, the Presbyterian body of that
country, are rapidly advancing, offers an inviting
field for missionary effort. It is specified that
the proposed plan is not to he identified with,
nor to supplant foreign mission work already
in progress, but it is expected to aid substantially
in the progress of that work. Even Belgium
and Spain have growing evangelistic enterprises
and Hungary and Austria number their Presbyterian
communicants by hundreds of thousands.
Advances already made to Presbyterian and
Reformed communions in this countrv. Canada.
England, Scotland, and Ireland have met with
favorable responses, and the committee have
hopes that finally the co-operation of the great
Lutheran Church may be secured. That Church
is making preparation to celebrate the four hundredth
anniversary of the German Reformation
in 1917 and it is suggested that the followers of
Luther and Calvin may well unite in a new European
Reformation.
Such a work, on a permanent and systematic
basis might well have been undertaken years ago
by the American and British descendants of
those heroic generations of the past, whe pre
U T H t January 17, 191*.
served and perpetuated religious liberty and a
pure gospel at so great a cost. Not least among
its fruits would have been a testimonial of gratitude
for the pfesent light of Christian civilization
which popes and emperors conspired by
every means whieh men and fiends could devise,
to extihguish. The one need of venerable, historic
Europe is the one religion that makes men
strong in character, noble in purpose, and brave
and resolute in execution. The need of the old
world is not fertile soil, nor populous cities; it
has these, but it needs men whose name and
activity count for truth and right, and it needs
women in whose hearts hope may live, where
virtue and intelligence may be enshrined, and
where all instinctive womanly graces may find
encouragement to abide. Insofar as pure religion
prevails these jewels of character do now
crown the manhood and womanhood of the old
world. Let us disclose to the whole populace
the secret of true, imperishable liberty, and
tell them that the day of their moral and spiritual
emancipation is drawing near, the day when
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall
make you free."
NOTES IN PASSING.
BY BEttT.
Many people go through life
Open Eyes, with their eyes closed. They become
so much engrossed with seltisli
interests that they can travel through scenes
of most exquisite beauty in utter unconsciousness.
They can sit where rich, sweet harmonies
fill aI : J ? 1 ?n.? "
mi me air anu never near a souna. ah tne nner
feelings of their natures, all their responsive
powers and capacities they have sacrificed upon
the altar of the gross and sensual, and there is
nothing left worth saving. There are several
instances in the Bible showing the advantage
gained by having the eyes opened at critical
moments. 4
Sarah had sent Hagar and her son
The Case away, and she wandered in the wildof
Hagar. erness of Beer-sheba until the water
in her bottle was spent. Then she
cast the child under a shrub to die while she
went off a great way to weep. The angel of God
spoke words of comfort to her, "And God epened
her eyes, and she saw a well of water." The
well was already there, but she had not seen it.
The reason she had not seen it is suggested to us
by the scripture, "She cast the child under one
of the shrubs." "Cast" him. She was full of
resentment for the treatment she had received.
Her mind was so engrossed with the wrongs she
was suffering that she was in danger of destroying
the life of her child through her blindness to
the existence of the water. And there have been
many like her who have been surrounded by the
abundance of God's provision but who have
failed to see them because sin had clouded their
eyes. It is easy to so completely get self before
our faces that nothing of God or God's mercies
are visible. ?j
Balaam was on his way to comply
The Case with the request, if he might be
of Balaam, permitted to do so, of Balak, to
curse Israel. Rich rewards awaited
him for this service. But an angel stands in the
way and the^ass tries to avoid him apd crushes
the foot of the prophet. Even a beast of burden
can see an angel sooner than a self-willed and
avaricious prophet. *1 Then the Lord opened the
eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the
Ijord standing in the way." There is always an
angel of the Lord standing in the way of the
man going wrong, but he is often so set in his
wrong-doing that he is blind to the angelic
presence.
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