FAITH AND HOPE
It has been shown in the last chapter that the Ghristion life is a life of love^ and that it is produced by the power of the Spirit of God received through faith in Christ. Such is the Christian work, and such is the power that accomplishes it. But. what is the goal, what is the end for which the work is done?
That there is some goal beyond is suggested even by the very character of the means by which we accomplish even this present task. Just as the power of sin was not exhausted by the evil actions committed here and now, so the power of the Spirit is not exhausted by His present fruits. Just as sin was felt to contain infinite possibilities of evil, to be leading toward dreadful unf athomed depths, to contain a certain fearful looking for of judgment, so the Spirit is felt to be far greater than anything that He is now accomplishing. The Christian has within him a mysterious power of goodness, which is leading him by paths he knows not to an unknown and Blessed country. The "practical" man of the world sees but little of the true life of the Christian. He sees but the bare outward manifestation of the infinite power within. It is no proof of the absolute truth of Christianity that it has made the world better; for that achievement it shares perhaps with other religions, though no doubt they have it in far less degree. Other religions make men better: but Christianity alone makes them good; for Christianity alone can exhibit one absolutely good human life, and with it the promise that other lives will one day be conformed to that. The Christian alone has really close and vital contact with absolute goodness — a goodness that contains in its very nature and presence the promise that every last vestige of evil will finally be removed.
So the Christian's love for his fellow men, which is so much admired by the world, seems to the Christian himself to be in one sense but a by-product; it is but an effect of the greater love for God and but one step in its unfolding. The relation of the Christian to that force that sustains and guides him is not that of a dead instrument in the hand of the workman, but that of a free man to his loving father. The work is felt to be all the more our work because it is also God's work. That personal relation of love between the Christian and his God is not seen by the world, but to the Christian it, and it alone, contains the promise of final goodness.
The Christian, then, produces the practical life of love on the way to something greater; the Christian lives by hope. That is sometimes made a reproach. The Christian does what is right, it is said, because of the rewards of heaven. How much nobler is the man who does what is right simply because it is right, or because it will lead to the happiness of generations yet unborn, even though he believes that for himself the grave ends all! The reproach would perhaps be justi- fied if heaven involves mere selfish enjoyment. But as a matter of fact heaven involves not merely enjoyment, not merely happiness, but also goodness, and goodness realized in communion with the One who alone is good. To regard that communion as broken off forever in death does not in actual practice lead, as at first sight it might seem as though it would naturally lead, to a height of unselfish service in which without thought of individual survival a man would live for the sake of the race. For the race is worthy of a man's service, not if it is composed of mere creatures of a day, whose life is essentially like the life of the beasts, but only if it is composed of men with immortal souls, A degraded view of human life by which it is deprived of its eternal significance does not in the long run lead to unselfish service, but it leads to decadence and despair. At the very heart of the Christian religion, at any rate, despite what is being said today, is the hope of heaven. That hope is not selfish, but it is the highest and noblest thought, perhaps, that has ever been placed in the mind of man; it is the highest and noblest thought because it involves not mere selfish enjoyment but the glory of God. For the glory of God, realized through the creatures that He has made, eternity will not be too long. Man's chief end is not merely to glorify God and enjoy Him, but it is "to glorify God and to enjoy Him for evet."
This thought of heaven runs all through the New Testament; and it is particularly prominent in the teaching of Jesus. Not only is it important in itself, moreover, but it has a very important bearing upon the subject of the present little book. Faith is closely connected in the New Testament with hope; and it is contrasted in.notable passages with sight. In contrast with sight it is represented as a way by which we can learn of things that are to be ours in the future world. If, therefore, we are to understand in any adequate manner what the New Testament says about faith, we must attend very carefully to what the New Testament says about heaven.
But we cannot understand at all what the New Testament says about heaven, unless we attend also to what the New Testament says about hell; in the New Testament heaven and hell appear in contrast. That contrast is found most clearly of all, strange though it may seem to some persons, in the teaching of Jesus. Jesus speaks not only about heaven but also, with very great plainness, about hell. "Fear not them which kill the body," said our Lord (to quote a typical utterance), "but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."1
These words were not spoken by Jonathan Edwards; they were not spoken by Cotton Mather; they were not spoken by Calvin, or by Augustine, or by Paul. But they were spoken by Jesus.
And when they are put together with many other words like them in the Gospels, they demonstrate the utter falsity of the picture of Jesus which is being constructed in recent years. According to that picture, Jesus preached what was essentially a religion of this world; he advocated a filial attitude toward God and promoted a more abundant life of man, without being interested in vulgar details as to what happens beyond the grave; in the words of Professor Ell wood, he "concerned himself but little with the question of existence after death."2
In order to destroy this picture, it is necessary only to go through a Gospel harmony and note the passages where Jesus speaks of blessedness and woe in a future life. If you do that, you may be surprised at the result; certainly you will be surprised at the result if you have previously been affected in slightest degree by the misrepresentation of Jesus which dominates the religious literature of our time. You will discover that the thought not only of heaven but also the thought of hell runs all through the teaching of Jesus.
It runs through the most characteristic parables of Jesus- — the solemn parables of the rich man and Lazarus, the unrighteous steward, the pounds, the talents, the wheat and the tares, the evil servant, the marriage of the king's son, the ten virgins. It is equally prominent in -the rest of Jesus' teaching. The judgment scene of the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew is only the culmination of what is found everywhere in the Gospels: "These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."3 There is absolutely nothing peculiar about this passage amid the sayings of Jesus. If there ever was a religious teacher who could not be appealed to in support of a religion of this world, if there ever was a teacher who viewed the world under the aspect of eternity, it is Jesus of Nazareth.
These passages and a great mass of other passages like them are imbedded everywhere in the Gospel tradition. So far as I know even the most radical criticism has hardly tried to remove this element in Jesus' teaching. But it is not merely the amount of Jesus taching about the future life which is impressive; what is even more impressive is the character of it. It does not appear as an excrescence in the Gospels, as something which might be removed and yet leave the rest of the teaching intact. If this element were removed, what would be left? Certainly not the gospel itself, certainly not the good news of Jesus' saving work; for that is concerned with these high issues of eternal life and death. But not even the ethical teaching of Jesus would be left. There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that Jesus ever separated theology from ethics, or that if you remove His theology — His beliefs about God and judgment, about future woe for the wicked and future blessedness for the good — you can have His ethical teaching intact. On the contrary, the stupendous earnestness of Jesus' ethics is rooted in the constant thought of the judgment seat of God. "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire."4 These words are characteristic of all of Jesus' teaching; the stupendous earnestness of
His commands is intimately connected with the alternative of eternal weal or woe.
That alternative is used by Jesus to arouse men to fear. "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."5 Luke records a similar saying of Jesus: "And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more than they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye^hall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him."6 There are those who tell us that fear ought to be banished from religion; we ought, it is said, no longer to hold before men's eyes the fear of hell; fear, it is said, is an ignoble thing. Those who speak in this way certainly have no right to appeal to Jesus; for Jesus certainly did employ, and insistently, the motive of fear. If you eschew altogether that motive in religion, you are in striking cpntradiction to Jesus. Here, as at many other points, a choice must be made between the real Jesus and much that bears His name today. But who is right? Is Jesus right, pr are those right who put out of their minds the fear of hell? Is fear altogether an ignoble thing; is a man necessarily degraded by being afraid?
I think that it depends altogether upon that of which one is afraid. The words of the text that we have been considering, with the solemn inculcation of fear, are also a ringing denunciation of fear; the "Fear Him/' is balanced by "Fear not/' The fear of God is here made a way of overcoming the fear of man. And the heroic centuries of Christian history have provided abundant testimony to the efficaciousness of that way. With the fear of God before their eyes, the heroes of the faith have stood boldly before kings and governors and said: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me, Amen." It is certainly an ignoble thing to be afraid of bonds and death at the hands of men; it is certainly an ignoble thing to fear those who use power to suppress the right. Such fear has always been overcome by true men of faith.
Even the fear of God, indeed, might be degrading. It all depends upon what manner of being you hold God to be. If you think that God is altogether such an one as yourself, your fear of Him will be a degrading thing. If you think of Him as a capricious tyrant, envious of the creatures that He has made, you will never rise above the grovelling fears of Caliban. But it is very different when you stand in the presence of all the moral order in the universe; it is very different when God comes walking in the garden and you are without excuse; it is very different when you think of that dread day when your puny deceptions will fall off and you will stand defenceless before the righteous judgment throne. It is very different when not the sins of the other people but your own sins are being judged. Can we really come before the judgment seat of God and stand fearlessly upon our rights? Or can we really repeat with Henley the well-known words:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul,
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Is this the way to overcome fear? Surely it is not. We can repeat such words only by the disguised cowardice of ignoring facts.
As a matter of fact, our soul is not unconquerable; we are not masters of our fate or captains of our soul. Many a man has contemplated some foul deed at first with horror, and said, "Am I a dog that I should do this thing?" And then has come the easy descent into the pit, the gradual weakening of the moral fibre, so that what seemed horrible yesterday seems excusable today; until at last, at some sad hour, with the memory of the horror of sin still in the mind, a man awakes to the realization that he is already wallowing in the mire. Such is the dreadful hardening that comes from sin. Even in this life we are not masters of our fate; we are of ourselves certainly not captains of our bodies, and we are of ourselves, I fear, not even captains of our v souls.
It is pitiable cowardice to try to overcome fear by ignoring facts. We do not become masters of our fate by saying that we are. And such blatancy of pride, futile as it is, is not even noble in its futility. It would be noble to rebel against a capricious tyrant; but it is not noble to rebel against the moral law of God.
Are we, then, forever subject to fear? Is there naught, for us sinners, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation? Jesus came to tell us, No! He came to deliver us from fear. He did not do so, indeed, 'by concealing facts; He painted no false picture of the future life as a life of undifferentiated futility such as, that which the "mediums" reveal; He encouraged no false notion of a complacent God who could make a compact with sin. But he delivered men from fear by leading them to trust in Him. Terrible is the issue of eternal life and eternal death; woe to the man who approaches that issue in his own righteousness; but Christ can enable us to face even that.
Even the Christian, it is true, must fear God. But it is a new kind of fear. It is a fear, at the most, of chastisement and rebuke, not of final ruin; it is a fear, indeed, rather of what might have been than of what is; it is a fear of what would have come were we not in Christ. Without such fear there can be, for us sinners, no true love; for love of a saviour is proportioned to one's horror of that from which one has been saved. And how strong are the lives that are filled with such a love! They are lives brave not because the facts have been ignored, but because they have been faced; they are lives founded upon the solid foundation of the grace of God. If that is, the foundation of our lives, we shall not fear when we come to the hour that otherwise we should dread. It is a beautiful thing when a Christian who has received Jesus as His Saviour comes to the moment of death; it is a beautiful thing to fall asleep in Jesus, and, as one enters that dark country of which none other can tell, to trust the dear Lord and Saviour and believe that we shall there see His face.
Thus faith is not merely founded upon knowledge; but also it leads to knowledge. It provides information about a future world that otherwise would be unknown. Our discussion would be incomplete if we did not examine a little more fully this aspect of faith.
The examination may be based upon one great verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the chapter that deals expressly with faith. "Now faith/' says the author of Hebrews at the beginning of that chapter, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."7
These words are not a definition or a complete account of faith: they tell what faith is, but they do not tell all that it is, and they do not separate it from all that it is not. There are other utterances also in the New Testament, which are sometimes treated as definitions and yet are not definitions at all. Thus when James says that "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world/'8 he is not giving a definition or a complete description of religion; he is telling what religion is, but he is not telling all that it is: pure religion is to visit the fatherless and widows and to keep himself unspotted from the world, but it is far more than that. Or when it is said that "God is love,"9 that does not mean at all that God is only love. It is a very great logical error to single out such an affirmation and treat it as though it were a definition; many such affirmations would be necessary in order to obtain anything like a complete account of God; God is love, but He is many other things as well.
So when it is said that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," that does not mean that the substance of things hoped for or the evidence of things not seen is always faith, or that faith is only what it is here said to be. What we have in this verse is not all of faith, but one particular aspect of it. But since this particular aspect is an aspect which is usually being neglected today, this text may perhaps be considered just now with special profit. The aspect of faith which is here placed in the foreground is one special part of the intellectual aspect of it; faith is here regarded as contributing to the sum of human knowledge.
At the present time it is the fashion to ignore this aspect of faith: indeed faith and knowledge, as we have already observed, are often divorced; they are treated as though they belonged to two entirely different spheres, and could therefore never by any chance come either into relation or into contradiction. This separation between faith and knowledge has already been considered so far as the basis of faith is concerned;
true faith, we have observed, is always based upon knowledge. But true faith is not only based upon knowledge, but also it leads to more knowledge; and it is this aspect of faith that is presented in classic form in the great verse at the beginning of the eleventh chap* ter of Hebrews.
"Faith," the author of Hebrews says, "is the substance of things hoped for." The word here translated "substance" is translated in the American Revised Version "assurance." But the difference is not important. The point in either case is that by faith future events are made to be certain; the old translation merely puts the thing a little more strongly: future events, it means, become through faith so certain that is as though they had already taken place; the things that are promised to us become, by our faith in the promise, so certain that it is as though we had the very substance of them in our hands here and now. In either case, whether the correct translation be "substance" or "assurance," faith is here regarded as providing information about future events; it is presented as a way of predicting the future.
There are various ways of predicting the future; faith is one way, but it is not the only way. Another way is provided, for example, by astronomy. On the twenty-fourth day of January, 1925, there was visible; in the eastern part of the United States a total eclipse of the sun. Elaborate preparations were made in order to take observations; the experts were so firmly convinced that the eclipse would take place that large sums of money were invested on the basis of the conviction. In connection with another eclipse that took place a few years before, even more expensive preparations were made. On that occasion the eclipse was visible in a much less accessible region, and various expeditions had to be sent many thousands of miles in order that the observations might be made; the astronomers seemed very firmly convinced indeed that the eclipse would take place.
It is true that in some cases the labor was all wasted. In the places to which some of the expeditions went it rained or was cloudy; bad weather spoiled those elaborate scientific expeditions just as effectually as if they had been any ordinary Sunday School picnics. It may be, of course, that scientific men will learn to eliminate even this source of error; it may be that they will learn to predict with certainty, or even control, the weather. We certainly hope that it will not come in our day. For if it comes in our day, no doubt the farmers' bloc will want one kind of weather and the industrial workers another, so that what is now almost the only really safe topic of casual conversation will become a cause of civil war. But although the weather could not be predicted long enough ahead, and although it obscured the eclipse, yet no doubt the eclipse did take place on schedule time. On the last occasion, I believe, the eclipse was four seconds late: but those four seconds did not trouble me nearly so much as they troubled the astronomers; from my layman's point of view I am bound to say that I think the astronomers had succeeded fairly well in their way of predicting the future.
But although astronomy is one way of predicting the future, and a very good way too, it is not the only way. Another way is faith. And what ought to be observed with special care is that faith is just as scientific as astronomy. The future is predicted by means of faith when one depends for one's knowledge of the future on the word of a personal being. And in ordinary life that method of prediction Is constantly employed. Upon it depends, for example, the entire orderly conduct of economic, political and social life. Business is carried on by rfleans of credit, and it is perfectly scientific to carry it on so; it is perfectly scientific to hold that reputable men of business, especially when they eliminate -personal idiosyncrasies by acting collectively, will meet their obligations. Political life is possible only by faith reposed in the government, and where such faith is destroyed one has hopeless anarchy. Social life is possible only because of faith — social life in its larger aspects and also in the humblest and most individual details. It is really just as scientific to predict that a mother will give the medicine at the proper time to her sick baby as it is to predict an eclipse of the sun. No doubt there are more disturbing factors in the former case than in the latter, and no doubt those disturbing factors must be duly taken into account; but that does not affect the essentially sound scientific character of the prediction. In any ideally complete scientific mapping out of the future course of the world the probability that the mother would give the medicine to the baby would have to be taken into account just as truly as the probability of the eclipse of the sun.
Sometimes a prediction as to the future conduct of a person can be established with a certain degree of mathematical precision: it is discovered that a certain person has met his obligations in ninety-nine out of a hundred past cases; the probabilities, therefore, it will be said, are strongly in favor of his meeting his obligations in a similar case in the future. Certain forms of liability insurance, I imagine (though I know very little about it), are based upon some such calculation. But very often one's predictions as to the future conduct of a person, though attaining a very high degree of probability indeed, are not based upon any such merely mathematical reasoning: a- person sometimes inspires confidence by his entire bearing; soul speaks to soul; and even apart from long experience of that person's trustworthiness one knows that he is to be trusted. That kind of trust has a larger place, by the way, in producing Christian conviction than is sometimes supposed. Even that kind of trust is thoroughly reasonable; it adds to the sum-total of knowledge, and is in a true sense of the word "scientific." Common experience bears out the words of the text that faith is "the substance of things hoped for."
The text also says that faith is the "evidence of things not seen." That assertion includes the other. Future things — the things hoped for— are always also "things not seen." The Christian, for example, in thinking of his communion in heaven with Christ, walks by faith not by sight; because he does not now see heaven. He has not the evidence of his eyes, but needs confidence in Christ to make heaven real to him.
But this second affirmation of the text, though it includes the first, goes also beyond it; faith is sometimes needed not only to predict the future hut also to give information about hidden things that already exist. Whether the information concerns the future or the present, it is based upon faith if it depends upon the word of a personal being.
Faith, then, though it has other aspects, is always, if it be true faith, a way of obtaining knowledge; it should never be contrasted with science. Indeed, in any true universal science — a science that would obliterate the artificial 'departmental boundaries which we have erected for purposes of convenience and as a concession to human limitations — in any true universal science, confidence in personal beings would have a recognized place as a means of obtaining knowledge just as truly as chemical balances or telescopes.
It is therefore only with great caution that we can accept the distinction set up by Tennyson at the beginning of In Memoriam:,
Strong Son of God, immortal Love, Whom we, that have not seen thy face, By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.
"Believing where we cannot prove" — it all depends upon what you mean by "prove." If you mean by "prove" "obtain knowledge by your own observation without depending upon information received from other persons," then of course the distinction between belief (or faith) and proof is valid, and it may readily be admitted that in that sense the Christian religion
'depends upon faith rather than upon proof. But what ought to be insisted upon above all things is that "belief" or faith, in the Tennysonian sense, may afford just,as high a degree of scientific certitude as "proof" — in the narrower sense of the word. Indeed in countless cases it affords a much higher degree of certitude. Perhaps the reader may pardon an illustration from ordinary life. I have an account at one of the Princeton banks. It is not so large an account as I should like, but it is there. Every month the bank sends me a report as to my balance. I also obtain information as to the same thing by the calculation which I make on the stubs of my check book. The information which I obtain by my own calculation is obtained by "proof" in the Tennysonian sense (or the sense which rightly or wrongly we have attributed to Tennyson). The information which I obtain from the bank, on the other hand, is obtained by faith — it depends upon my confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the employees of the bank. I have not the slightest notion how the banks attain such a marvellous degree of accuracy. One of the first teachers of mathematics that I ever had told me, I think, something to the effect that the officials of a bank sometimes spend the entire night searching the books for one cent that is unaccounted for. Recently I think I read in the Saturday Evening Post or some such journal, to my great disappointment, that if they are only one cent off, they go to bed. It was a youthful idol shattered! At any rate I do not know how they do it; I have not at all followed the steps of their calculation of my balance: yet I take the result with perfect confidence. It is a, pure matter of faith. Now not infrequently at the end of a month differences of opinion emerge, I am sorry to say, between the bank and myself as to the amount of my balance; "faith" in the bank's report is pitted against "proof" as based on my own calculations. And the curious thing is that faith is much stronger, much more scientific, than proof. I used to think that my calculation might be right and the bank's report wrong, but now I trust the bank every time. It is true, I have the desire to make the two means of obtaining knowledge converge; I have the intellectual desire of financially unifying my world. But I do so not by correcting the bank's report but by correcting my own calculation. I correct "proof" because I have obtained better information by "faith."
That case, simple as it is, illustrates, I think, a great principle which goes to the vitals of religion. It is not true that convictions based on the word of others must necessarily be less firm and less scientific than convictions based on one's own calculation and observation. One's own calculation and observation may turn out to be wrong as well as one's confidence in the word of another person.
So it is in the case of the Christian religion. The central convictions of the Christian religion, at least so far as the gospel of salvation is concerned, are based not upon our own observation, but upon testimony; they are based, in the first place, upon the testimony of the Biblical writers as to things said and done in the first century of our era in Palestine. That testimony may conceivably be true and it may conceivably be false; but to say beforehand that it cannot be true is to fall into a very serious intellectual fault. If the testimony is true, then the rejection of it is just as unscientific and the acceptance of it just as scientific as the rejection or acceptance of assured results in the field of the laboratory sciences.
As a matter of fact, we Christians think that the testimony is true. Why do we think so? No doubt there are various reasons; we test the assertions of the Biblical writers in many different ways before we accept them finally as true. But one reason has sometimes not been given quite the degree of prominence that it deserves. One very important reason for accepting the testimony of the New Testament about Christ is that we become personally acquainted with the writers who give us the testimony and on the basis of that acquaintance come to have an overpowering impression that they are telling us the truth. If you are troubled with doubts about the truth of the New Testament, if these marvellous things seem to you too strange ever really to have happened upon this earth, I should like to commend to you an exercise that has been helpful to me; I should like to suggest to you the plan of reading rapidly great sections of the Gospel narrative as though for the first time. The Gospel of Mark, for example, lends itself readily to this purpose; perhaps that is the reason why God has given us one Gospel that is so short. Read the Gospel of Mark all through, then, in one sitting; do not study it this time (important though detailed study at other times will be found to be), but simply tead it; simply let the total impression of it be made upon your mind. If you do that you will feel that you have become well acquainted with the author; and you will have an overpowering impression that he is telling the truth. It is inconceivable, you will say, that this stupendous picture of Jesus could ever have been the product of invention or of the myth-making fancy of the Church; the author of the Gospel of Mark, if he could be placed upon the witness-stand, would make an overpoweringly good witness, and would bring conviction to the mind of any jury that was open to the facts.
The same thing may be done also in the case of a book that is so much attacked as is the Fourth Gospel. In the course of my life, if a personal allusion may be pardoned, I have read a great deal that has been written against the historical trustworthiness of that book. Some of it at times has seemed to me to be plausible; I have been troubled at times by serious doubts. But at such times I have turned away from what has been written about the book to the book itself; I have tried to read it as though for the first time. And when I have done that, the impression has sometimes been quite overpowering. Clearly the author is claiming to be an eyewitness, and clearly he lays special stress upon the plain testimony of the senses. If he was not really an eyewitness of the life of Jesus, he is engaging in a refined piece of deception, vastly more heinous than if he had merely put a false name at the beginning of his book. That he is engaging in such a piece of deception may seem plausible when one merely reads what has been written about the author by others; but it seems to be a truly monstrous hypothesis when one gets personally acquainted with the author by reading his book for one's self. When one does that, the conviction becomes overpowering that this author was actually, as he claims to be, an eyewitness of the wondrous things that he narrates, that he actually beheld the glory of the incarnate Word, and that the stupendous Person of whom he writes actually walked upon this earth.
To neglect this kind of evidence — the kind of evidence that is based upon personal testimony — is, we maintain, a thoroughly unscientific thing. There is a breadth and open-mindedness about true science of which many persons seem not to have the slightest conception. They become immersed in one kind of evidence; within one limited sphere, their observations are good: but with regard to other kinds of evidence they are totally blind. Such blindness needs to be overcome if we are to have real scientific advance; the true scientist has his mind open not merely to some, but to all, of the facts. And if he has his eye open to all of the facts, he will not neglect what is told him by credible witnesses with regard to Jesus Christ.
Still less can we neglect, if we be truly scientific men, what is told us by Jesus Himself. The New Testament writers tell us about Jesus; on the basis of their testimony we are convinced that the Jesus of the New Testament really lived in this world, that He really died for our sins, that He really rose from the dead, and is now living so that He can be our Saviour. If we have accepted that testimony about Jesus, then we have Jesus Himself; and if we have Jesus Himself, it is reasonable to trust Him not only; for this world but also for the world to come.
It is highly misleading, therefore, to say that religion and science are separate, and that the Bible is not intended to teach science. No doubt that assertion that the Bible is not intended to teach science does contain an element of truth: it is certainly true that there are many departments of science into which the Bible does not enter; and very possibly it is advantageous to isolate certain departments provisionally and pursue investigations in those departments without for the moment thinking of others. But such isolation is at the best provisional merely; and ultimately there ought to be a real synthesis of truth. On principle, it cannot be denied that the Bible does teach certain things about which science has a right to speak. The matter is particularly clear in the sphere of history. At the very centre of the Bible are assertions about events in the external world in Palestine in the first century of our era— events the narrating of which constitutes the "gospel," the piece of good news upon which our Christian faith is based. But events in Palestine in the first century of our era are just as much a proper subject for scientific history as are events in Greece or Rome. And in an ideally complete scientific account of the physical universe the emergence or non-emergence of the body of Jesus from the tomb — a question upon which the very existence of Christianity depends — would have to be recorded just as truly as the observations that are made in the laboratory.
We shall have to reject, therefore, the easy apologetic for Christianity which simply declares that religion and science belong in independent spheres and that science can never conceivably contradict religion. Of course real science can never actually contradict any religion that is true; but to say, before the question is determined whether the religion is true or false, thajt science cannot possibly contradict it, is to do despite both to religion and to science. It is a poor religion that can abandon to science the whole realm of objective truth, in order to reserve for itself merely a realm of ideals. Such a religion, at any rate, whatever estimate may be given of it, is certainly not Christianity; for Christianity is founded squarely, not merely upon ideals, but upon facts. But if Christianity is founded upon facts, then it is not entirely independent of science; for all facts must be brought into some sort of relation. When any new fact enters the human mind it must proceed to make itself at home; it must proceed to introduce itself to the previous denizens of the house. That process of introduction of new facts is called thinking. And, contrary to what seems to be quite generally supposed, thinking cannot be avoided by the Christian man. The Christian religion is not an innocent but useless epiphenomenon, without interrelation with other -spheres of knowledge, but must seek to justify its place, despite all the intellectual labor that that costs, in the realm of facts.
Let us, however, have no fear. Our religion is really founded upon words of soberness and truth; it suffers just now not from an excess of thinking, but from a woeful deficiency of it, and a true broadening of knowl- edge would lead again into faith. It is, of course, a mistake to apply to one science the methods of another; perhaps that is the reason why men who are experts in the sphere of the laboratory sciences are often so very unscientific when they come to deal, for example, with history. Moreover the evidence for the truth of Christianity is very varied, and it is not all of a kind that can easily be reduced to measurement. The Gospel witness to Jesus, for example, is wonderfully convincing when one attends to it in the way that such evidence requires; it is wonderfully convincing when one brings it into connection with the facts of the soul. The evidence in favor of that Gospel witness, moreover, is cumulative; it will not lightly be rejected by anyone who really has an open mind. And when, by accepting that witness about Jesus, we have Jesus Himself, still more clearly can we trust Him for time and for eternity. (The witness is confirmed here and now by present expecrience; the Christian knows the One in whom He has 'believed. Faith need not be too humble or too apologetic before the bar of reason; Christian faith is a thoroughly reasonable thing; it is, as the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen/*
Our treatment of faith is nearly at an end. But one very practical question remains. Faith, we have seen, is the appointed means of salvation; without it there is — at least for those who have come to years of discretion • — no saving contact with Christ. But faith is sometimes strong and sometimes weak: how strong, then, does it have to be in order that a soul may be saved?
In answer to this question, it must certainly be admitted that the New Testament does recognize varying degrees of faith; and it does seek with great earnestness to make faith strong instead of weak. According to the New Testament a strong, firm faith unmixed by doubts is something that is used by God to accomplish great things. The matter is particularly plain in the case of prayer; the efficacy of prayer, according to the New Testament, does depend to some extent upon the degree of faith that is given to the man who prays; a weak, trembling faith is not ordinarily the instrument that removes mountains and casts them into the sea. But there is another aspect of the New Testament teaching; and it should not be neglected if we are to have comfort in the Christian life. Though God can use a firm, strong faith exercised in prayer; he also often uses a faith that is very weak. It is a great mistake to think that prayer works in any mechanical way; so that while a good prayer brings a good result a poor prayer necessarily brings a poor result. On the contrary, the efficacy of prayer depends after all not upon the excellence of the prayer but upon the grace of God, and often God is pleased to honor prayers that are very faulty indeed. Thank God that it is so; thank God that though we know not what we should pray for as we ought His Spirit "maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered"; thank God that He does for us not in proportion as we ask, but "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think."
Thus it is, then, with prayer: there must be some faith if prayer is to be prayer at all and not a meaningless form of words; but even weak faith is sometimes, in God's infinite mercy, used to accomplish great things. But if it is thus with the details of the Christian life, if it is thus with prayer, how is it with salvation? Faith is necessary to salvation, hut how much faith is necessary? How does God treat the man of little faith?
In answer to this question we have in the Gospels a wonderful incident with which the present little attempt at exposition of the New Testament teaching about faith may fitly close.
The incident is the healing of the demoniac boy in the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Mark.10 It is also contained in Matthew and Luke as well as in Mark, but in very much briefer form. It is Mark alone who paints the picture in 'detail; it is Mark far more than the other two who enables us to see with the eyes of those who were present at the scene. If early Christian tradition be right, as no doubt it is right, in holding that the Second Gospel embodies the missionary preaching of Peter, then the vivid character of the narrative is explained. The evangelist enables us to see with Peter's eyes. Peter with two other disciples had been upon the Mount of Transfiguration; he had seen the Lord in glory with Moses and Elias; and now on the descent from the mountain he tells us, through the words of the second Gospel, exactly what he saw below. Mark has preserved the details; he has made no attempt at stylistic smoothness; his narrative is rough and vigorous and natural. Nowhere is Mark more characteristically Marcan than here.
As thus depicted the scene is a scene of human misery and need. A man was in distress; his son was in the grip of an evil spirit, he foamed at the mouth and gnashed his teeth and now lay wallowing on the ground. In the presence of this distress, men were powerless to help; even the disciples of Jesus, despite all the power of their Master, could do nothing. It is a picture of human need and the powerlessness of man. And the scene has not heen made antiquated today. The cause of the ill then, I helieve, was different from that which is observed at the present time; hut the resulting misery was in important respects the same. Medical science has not yet gotten rid of human misery; and it is quite inconceivable that it ever will succeed in doing so. No doubt the form of misery may be changed; it is perfectly conceivable, though perhaps highly improbable, that disease may be conquered. But death, at least, in the present order, will remain; and with death and bereavement there will be the distressed cry of the human soul.
The man in the Marcan scene was at the very extremity of distress. All resources had failed, and misery was at its height. And then Jesus came down from the mountain. In Him was a new and the very last resource. But Jesus did not help at once. The means of his helping was faith, and did the man believe? "If thou canst do anything," said the man; and it was a despairing rather than a believing "if." But Jesus did not despair. Faith was not apparent, but Jesus knew how to bring it forth; he brought to light the faith which the man possessed. "How long is it ago,** he said, "since this came into him?" And then he said, to call faith forth: "All things are possible to him that believeth."
The answer of the man is one of the unforgettable utterances of the human spirit; it will remain classic so long as the race endures. It is not merely the voice of one man, but it voices the cry of the race. Thus, I suppose, out of wild distress, do many great utterances come. Ordinary speech covers the thought in conventional trappings; but in times of overpowering emotion the form of expression is forgotten and a cry comes unbidden and unshaped from the depths of the soul.
So it was with the man of this incident. Concealment was forgotten; there was no pretence of a confidence which was not possessed; there was no attempt at logical harmony between the faith and the unbelief that struggled unreconciled in the soul. "Lord I believe," said the man; "help thou mine unbelief." That was the faith, weak faith it is true, that was born of need..,
So must all faith, I suppose, be born. I do not mean that faith in Christ cannot come without previous anguish of soul. Some children of Christian homes believe in their Saviour almost as soon as full consciousness begins; and that simple faith of childhood remains sometimes grandly unshaken through all the storms of life. But hosts of men today do not believe in Christ at all. How shall they be led to faith in Him? We have already seen what the answer is;11 they can be led only through the sense of need.