Faith

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.—Hebrews 11:1.

1. This is the only place in the Bible where we have what can be called a definition of faith. The text enjoys, indeed, the unique distinction of being the only approach to definition that we find in the Bible.

In the Revised Version there are two changes made in the translation, which perhaps make the meaning more clear than it is here: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.” The word translated “substance,” which the Revisers have translated “assurance,” would be more exactly translated by a word which is rather modern and would perhaps not be considered sufficiently dignified in such a place as this, namely, the word “realization.” Faith is the realization of things hoped for; it is a conviction that those things hoped for do exist and may be obtained, may be realized, by those who have the necessary faith. The word here translated “evidence,” and translated by the Revisers “proving,” means a conviction that will stand of itself, a conviction such as proves the thing of which it is itself the evidence.

2. The text, then, seeks to explain what faith is, in order that we may know it when we see it, discover its otherwise unsuspected presence and trace its hidden working. This faith is represented as having a double object—“things hoped for” and “things not seen.” “Things hoped for” are personal and concern personal being, whether in time or in eternity, whether incorporated in the individual or distributed through collective society—man, the Church, the State, the people. What we hope for is what we expect to achieve and to win, to possess and to enjoy. It is essentially a personal good so realized that it may belong to a particular individual or to all mankind. “Things not seen” are objective and universal. They move in the region of space, they lie without and above, they dwell behind the apparent; they are what we term the causes that produce the myriad effects which we describe as nature and man, especially the Supreme Being and the supreme cause we name the invisible God. Corresponding to the double object is a twofold function. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for”; that is, it underlies them, gives them reality, brings them to realization or fulfilment. And it is “the evidence,” or proof, “of things not seen”; that is, it authenticates them to the reason, it makes them visible to the intellect, it endues them with a body which thought can handle, and feel, and perceive. If, then, we were to paraphrase this definition, it would be in language somewhat like this: Faith is the energy by which we turn into reality the things we hope for; it is the eye by which the soul sees unseen things.

A freer, but on the whole a better translation would be: “Faith is the giving of substance to things hoped for, the putting to the test of things not seen.” Probably the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews did not intend us to look upon this as a full and complete definition of what faith is, but rather as a description of some of its functions. And a very good description it is, too, as far as it goes. If you are expecting something to happen which will be for your benefit, you give substance to it, as it were, in your thoughts; you do not regard it as a mere dream, a desirable thing, perhaps, but impossible of realization; you act altogether differently from what you would if you did not believe the specified event or events would take place. And, further, if you know that there are certain sources of help of which you can avail yourself in time of need; or if you are sure you are right in following a certain course, although others may differ from you and think you wrong; and if you are sure that time will vindicate your action, you can rightly be described as putting your confidence to the test when you draw upon your resources or are willing to take risks for the sake of your convictions.1 [Note: E. J. Campbell, in The Christian Commonwealth, xxxiii. 305.]

I

The Realization op Things hoped for

1. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews has done for faith what St. Paul did for love in 1 Corinthians 13. He has not only given us a magnificent hymn in honour of faith; he has laid down for all time the essentials of Christian faith; he has shown us the roots of it and the fruits of it, how it begins and where it ends. Faith, he says, is that which gives substance to things hoped for; it makes our hopes real and actual to us. Faith is not merely assurance, as Luther taught: it is not only trust, not only moral assent, not only even the resolution to stand or fall by the noblest hypothesis. These are important, even essential, elements in faith; but behind all this activity of the will, and justifying it, there lies the profound conviction, deeply embedded in the core of personality, that the objects of faith are real, more real than the world we live in; that salvation is not a mere hope, for faith gives substance to it; that it is not a dream, for faith gives reality to it; for faith it is neither a hope nor a dream, but a present fact.

The word here rendered “substance” means properly the act of standing under something so as to support it. Thus in a philosophical sense it was applied to the essence which forms, as it were, the substratum of the attributes, the supposed absolute existence of thing or person, in which all the properties and qualities, as they say in metaphysical language, inhere, and have their consistence. In this way the word is once applied, and only once, in Holy Scripture, in the 3rd verse of the 1st chapter of this Epistle, where we read of the person, or rather the substance, of God Himself. The same word is applied to the essence of God, and the Divine Son is said to be “the express image of God’s person,” or, more exactly, the very impress of God’s essence. But there is another use of the word in which it meant the act of the mind in standing under so as to support or bear the weight of some statement or some communication making, as we say, a very heavy demand upon the faculty of believing, and thus it passed from the idea of substance into the idea of assurance or confidence. It is used by St. Paul in two passages of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he speaks of his confidence in the readiness of their almsgiving, and again of their confidence in his glorying, though in weakness, about himself. And so once again in the 3rd chapter of this Epistle to the Hebrews we find the expression—it is the same word again—“If we hold the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.”

There can be no question as to the meaning of the word in the verse now before us. Faith is the assurance of, faith is confidence in, things hoped for; faith is that principle, that exercise of mind and soul, which has for its object things not seen but hoped for, and which, instead of sinking under them as too ponderous, whether from their difficulty or their uncertainty, stands firm under them, supports their pressure; in other words, is assured of them, confides in them, relies upon them.1 [Note: C. J. Vaughan.]

2. Whatever the object in the future may be to which thought is directed, it is always faith that apprehends it. We are not speaking of Christian faith particularly; we are speaking of faith itself, the principle of faith. Now, the future in question may be a year hence, may be next week, may be to-morrow, may be one hour from this very moment; equally in all cases it is an act of faith to expect, to wait for it. We are not to suppose that it is the Christian only who lives by faith in this general sense of faith. Faith is no dreamy, imaginative, or mystical thing, which it is fanciful, if not fanatical, to talk of. The schoolboy who expects a holiday which is to be earned by his diligence, or forfeited by his misconduct, exercises faith in that expectation. The husbandman who expects the harvest, and begins long months before to make preparation for it by ploughing and sowing, is exercising that confidence in things hoped for which is faith; the parent who anticipates the manhood of his boy, and prepares for that distant maturity by the instruction and by the discipline of the nursery and the schoolroom, is an example of that walking by faith which only madmen and fools disparage or dispense with.

What is Faith? If I were to say that it is the absolute condition of all life, of all action, of all thought which goes beyond the limitations of our own minds, I should use no exaggeration. Faith is in every age, under all circumstances, that by which man lays hold on the realities which underlie the changeful appearances of things, and gives substance to hope, that by which he enters into actual communion with the powers of the unseen world and brings their manifestation to a sovereign test. It is the harmony of reason and feeling and purpose. It is, to say all briefly, thought illuminated by emotion and concentrated by will. Faith, as applied to our present life, is a principle of knowledge, a principle of power, a principle of action. It may be quickened and intensified; it may be dulled and neglected. As it is used so it will be fruitful; and we are severally responsible for the use which we make of it.1 [Note: B. F. Westcott, The Historic Faith.]

3. When Christ bids us to be men of faith, He is not contradicting nature, He is not even introducing into the world an entirely new principle of action; He is only applying a principle as old as nature herself in matters beyond and above nature, which it needed a new revelation from the God of nature to disclose and to prove to us. If this proof be given us, it becomes as reasonable, then, to anticipate and to prepare for eternity as it is reasonable to anticipate and to prepare for a holiday or a harvest, a wedding or a profession. Faith is this confidence in these things hoped for; and whether the expected future be a later day of this life or a day which shall close this life and usher in an everlasting existence, the principle which takes account of that future is one and the same, only debased or elevated, profaned or consecrated, by the nature of the vision and by the character of the object.

That all genuine Common Faith, or the common rational sense of mankind, is divinely trustworthy, because inspired by God, is a postulate on which science itself rests, in all its previsive inferences. Scientific verification is finally unconscious religious trust. It has been scientifically verified that the sun will rise to-morrow; but till the sun shall have actually risen, the assertion only expresses faith in the Divine natural order. All expectation, scientific or common, is so far a leap in the dark; it is taken without the light of sense. The expected event has not the proof afforded by felt perception till the event has happened. If sense were our only light, it would follow that we must remain in the darkness of doubt about every future event. To be practically consistent, if we insist that that only can be reasonable into which no ingredient of moral venture enters, we must cease to live; for life depends upon expectation, and expectation postulates faith in the Divine reasonableness of the universe, which implies that men will not be finally put to scientific confusion by reasonable submission to this moral faith. If they must, the universe would be undivine illusion.1 [Note: A. C. Fraser, Philosophy of Theism, 312.]

4. In the highest region of conduct faith creates its facts. Life, beforehand, presents us with a whole circle of unrealized possibilities; they surround us on all sides with their clamorous invitation; each, good or bad, cries out to us, “Realize me, turn this supposition into an act; bring down that ideal which floats before you as a vision, and transform it into a reality.” And faith is what enables us to do this. We trust that we may do, we believe that we may ourselves become, what we believe in.

wish to show what to my knowledge has never been clearly pointed out, that belief (as measured by action) not only does and must continually outstrip scientific evidence, but that there is a certain class of truths of whose reality belief is a factor as well as a confessor; and that as regards this class of truths faith is not only licit and pertinent, but essential and indispensable. The truths cannot become true till our faith has made them so.

Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the Alps, and have, had the ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate; or suppose that, having just read the Ethics of Belief, I feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption unverified by previous experience—why, then I shall hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of despair, I miss my foothold and roll into the abyss. In this case (and it is one of an immense class) the part of wisdom clearly is to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of the indispensable preliminary conditions of the realization of its object. There are then cases where faith creates its own verification. Believe, and you shall again be right, for you shall save yourself; doubt, and you shall again be right, for you shall perish. The only difference is that to believe is greatly to your advantage.2 [Note: W. James, The Will to Believe, 96.]

II

The Test of Things not seen

1. Faith is the proof or test of things not seen. Faith tries the spirits, as St. John says; that is to say, tests beliefs by living them and acting them; tries them until experiment becomes experience, proves them until faith wins its crown by passing into knowledge and into love.

Somewhere in his essays Huxley writes: “Theology claims that the just shall live by faith: science says the just shall live by verification.” Now here this acute thinker gives a clear proof that he did not in the least understand the meaning of this great New Testament word—Faith. He confounded it with credulity, that tendency by which we accept a thing on trust without making any attempt to find out if it is true. Faith, on the other hand, in the true sense, is the faculty by which we take a thing on trust in order to find out if it is true. It is the basis of all religious experiment, the background of all moral effort, the standing-place of the soul in its leap towards God.1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones, Faith and Verification, 19.]

2. By faith we are able to rest in the assurance of the hope of everlasting life and happiness through Christ; we are able to experience proof in ourselves of an unseen God, an unseen Christ, an unseen Holy Spirit, an unseen world, and an unseen life. Of these things we are assured and positive. “Whatever doubts may agitate the minds of others, however old parchments and ancient inscriptions and the study of grammar may shake the foundations of other people’s belief, and cast them into a restless sea of perplexing opinions, the true Christian rests with a fixed heart and a calm mind in the assurance and proof of the living faith which is in his soul. This is indeed—to quote the words of St. John—this is indeed “the victory that overcometh the world,” the victory that overcometh philosophic doubts and scientific perplexities, as well as the forces of evil and of worldliness—“even our faith.”

That which is common to every great act of faith is that it lays hold upon some word of God and holds it against the world; through it, it transcends or overcomes the world, and inherits a promise of something above and beyond the world. The doer of such an act makes himself greater than the world, and though he lose it, in doing so he finds, or gains, or makes himself.1 [Note: W. P. Du Bose, High Priesthood and Sacrifice.]

We may consider Christian faith as a supernatural gift of God to us, a “power of the world to come,” enabling us to live already in a higher world than that which is seen, a faculty for approaching God, touching God personally, possessing God Himself—the faculty by which every relation to God is realized and vitalized. As we begin to use this higher faculty, we find ourselves no longer imprisoned by circumstances from which there is no escape. The imprisoning circumstances remain, but there is no prisoner. Faith in Christ gave him secret access to another world, and he is free. There was no external change, nothing was seen to happen; the man prayed in secret, and the prayer of faith proved to be a working of the Holy Ghost in his mind, and heart, and will, and he became conscious of light and power within, enabling him to rise out of his own emptiness, folly, and sadness.2 [Note: George Congreve, Christian Progress.]

3. Nor is this exercise of the principle of faith in the least incompatible with the fullest use of our intellectual faculties on the subject-matter of religion. The genuine believer will not, cannot, consistently hold back the tide of criticism from searching into the very foundations of his creed. Unwillingness to join in this process argues not faith, but a subtle doubt—doubt, that is, lest the realities of faith might dissolve and vanish into nothingness in the alembic of critical thought. Those who thus defend their faith against the principle of criticism thereby prove that at heart they are not believers but sceptics. It would be well if religious thinkers were to act with the same confidence as the scientific in their special departments. No attempt is made to hinder any one from inquiring to his fullest bent into the constitution of matter. Why? Because we know that no examination into the constituents and behaviour of the material world will endanger our sense of its practical reality. On the other hand, we all feel assured that the closest scrutiny of, the most laboured inquiry into, the character and behaviour of the physical universe will end not in the dissipation of matter, but in its better comprehension and its fuller mastery. Why should it be otherwise with the deeper realities that appeal to our spiritual nature? A true-hearted inquiry into the substance and core of religion cannot possibly result in dissolving its realities into mist and nothingness; it will result in their truer understanding, and in a surer realization of the distinction between what is absolute and relative, eternal and temporal. True, there are special perils in this process, but our mind should be directed not against the process itself, but against these perils that are involved in it.

What is needed perhaps more than anything else in theology to-day is a thorough criticism of the methods of criticism, so that the mind may be properly equipped for its special task and safeguarded from the many pitfalls, ethical and intellectual, that waylay the religious as distinguished from the physical inquirer. If the energies of those who still rail against all criticism as an essentially destructive process were directed to this question instead, it would greatly further the arrival of unity and progress in religious thought. And the first condition of so doing is a thorough and whole-hearted faith in the immovable realities on which faith rests and with which it has to do. The deeper our faith in our religion, the more eager we shall be to submit its experiences to the test and experiment of both criticism and life.1 [Note: E. Griffith-Jones, Faith and Verification, 22.]

4. What is the influence of the unseen things upon us when thus verified by faith?

(1) The things unseen keep us separate from the world.—This separation is not merely a rending asunder at the outset, but a keeping asunder all the days of our life; a walk of separation from the world every day; even in those things which we have outwardly in common with the world, such as business and recreation—even in such things we walk by faith and not by sight. Our business, our amusements, our conversation, our reading, our employments, our family life, our private life, our public life—all are regulated by the things unseen. In all of these we manifest nonconformity with the world.

Spirituality, I should say, was perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of Dr. John Brown’s mental constitution. As an essence it pervaded his entire life and work. Although reserved on sacred subjects, it was frequently apparent to those most intimate with him that, even in states of sunny brightness and sparkling humour, a dark cloud of emotion overspread his countenance, revealing the workings of the inner man. In his later years he was often seen with his eyes closed, as if excluding the outer world from his thoughts, and giving himself up to devout contemplation. Divine reverence and human sympathy were as parts of himself. This was alike shown in a keen appreciation of nature—the glory of the heavens, and the grandeur and beauty of the earth; in his gentle and tender consideration for the feelings of others, and in sympathy with all sorrow and suffering. A near relative of his own [Professor Crum Brown], who knew him thoroughly, has truly said: “He was a sincere, humble, and devout Christian. His religion was not a thing that could be put off or on, or be mislaid or lost; it was in him, and he could no more leave it behind than he could leave his own body behind. It was in him a well of living water, not for himself so much as for all around him. And his purity, truth, goodness, and Christlike character were never more clearly seen than in those periods of darkness when they were hidden from his own sight. He very seldom spoke expressly of religion; he held ‘that the greater and the better, the inner-part of man is, and should be private—much of it more than private’; but he could not speak of anything without manifesting what manner of man he was.”1 [Note: A. Peddie, Recollections of Dr. John Brown, 151.]

(2) The things unseen sanctify us and lift our affections above.—We need to be drawn upward, and the things unseen are all above; so that their influence is all upward. The unseen Christ, the unseen glory, the unseen inheritance, are all above: in realizing them we are lifted upward. And as we are lifted upward, so are we sanctified by the heavenly vision. Sin is made hateful; lusts and carnal feelings are more loosened from us and fall off. We become more unlike the men of earth, more like the citizens of heaven. The clearer these heavenly objects appear, the more influential, the more sanctifying, and the more elevating they are. In beholding them we are made like them; purified, changed into the same image from glory to glory.

Cultivate the Heaven-born instinct of spiritual insight; your nature-endowment to rend for you veils of time and sense, to dispel the illusion of outward seeming and fleeting fashion of world-allurement, to give to you the underlying realities of Hope’s fair dreams of future joy, the heart’s true intuition and clear vision of things close-veiled to outward sense: so that you become enamoured of the infinite and feel upon you the spell of the Eternal. Let your horizon be constantly receding, your outlook on life be increasingly luminous, your expectation from the future well-balanced and hopeful. The glory of the Son of Man breaks in suddenly, in wondrous wise, upon the drudgery and monotony of disappointed life, and lo! the commonplace becomes a Holy Mount. Beneath some seeming failure we see capacity for higher good; and dull, grey tints of hope-deferred life become rose-hued, or crimson-lit, in the wonder-change of the After-glow in which the Incarnation suffuses life. And if the brightness thereafter fade, yet life can never take such sombre hues again: for the Christ remains in the heart He has relieved, and the soul remembers that it is when earthly lights are paling that the glory lingers brightest and longest upon the Mountains of Hope. The glory passes, but memories abide, and the After-glow returns when evening skies pale. We feel ourselves better men for having seen the beauty and having realized how quickly God can alter the appearance of life. And we pass into the coming days with a truer and nobler conception of life, because we see the Transfiguration and the Beatific Vision where some see only the fading light and the gathering shade. The glory of the Incarnation lingers to keep the miracle-touch and the beauty-sheen on life, until He comes to bring back upon human nature all it erstwhile had lost.1 [Note: A. Daintree, Studies in Hope, 6.]

(3) The things unseen strengthen us.—The feebleness, fadingness, vanity, poverty of things which we do see here are very enfeebling and disheartening; whereas the greatness, enduringness, glory, excellence of the things which we do not see strengthen, nerve, animate, invigorate us. These glorious invisibilities quicken our steps, kindle zeal and love, make us willing to endure hardness, to count labour, privation, suffering, poverty, as nothing. Thus we walk in strength, with erect heads, zealous, earnest, untiring, because of what faith shows us—the things within the veil.

One who was present in Christ Church Cathedral on New Year’s Day 1864, when Richard Chenevix Trench was consecrated Archbishop of Dublin, has vividly described the impression which the ceremony made upon him. The utter unself-consciousness, the deep humility, the intense devotion, and the almost divine spirituality of the new Archbishop was what struck this onlooker, who says, after catching a glimpse of Dr. Trench’s beautiful face lit up with a strange peace of joy, “From that one moment all things, eternal and unseen, seemed invested for me with a depth of reality they had never had before. Since then I have passed through many experiences of spirit and of heart. I have had flashes of doubt. “Who, in these days, of perhaps too great mental activity, has escaped them? I have had days and hours of sorrow and of joy. I have had hopes and fears. But I can truly say that the countenance of Archbishop Trench as I saw it during that one moment of my life, expressing, as it did, the deepest devotion and the most perfect realization of the Unseen, and rising, as it does, entirely unbidden before my mental vision, has dispelled doubts, soothed sorrows, sanctified joys, strengthened hope, and calmed fear, by leading me to realize for myself, as nothing else has ever done, the personal existence of that living God, whose power and Spirit were so vividly portrayed before me in that one moment of my life.”1 [Note: Archbishop Trench: Letters and Memorials, ii. 3.]

(4) The things unseen comfort us.—Our walk here is not all smoothness and sunshine. Tribulation, weariness, pain, sickness, bereavement, throw their thick clouds over us. We take refuge in the future from the present. Our prospects, ever bright, ever glorious, cheer, sustain, and console us. Life is so brief; its sorrows will so soon be done; Christ will so soon be here; resurrection and glory and gladness will so soon dawn on us. We need not be over-burdened or over-sorrowful because of the present. Faith shows us the light beyond the darkness, and that comforts us. The eternal kingdom will make up for all.

As years go on, and the sadness of life comes home to us, we feel that we get comfort and strength nowhere else but in the reality of God and in a simple trust in Christ’s “Hereafter.” It is like a strong hand in the dark to believe that God our Father loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace. That is the infallible way of finding comfort for our hearts and stablishing them in every good work and word. The only way to make peace secure, and to save our work from futility and our lives from vanity, is the way of faith. Without faith in God and God’s love and God’s future for us, there cannot be for us any true and permanent comfort. Without it, we are open at every turn to any shock of chance and to every alarm of fate. But with such faith we can lift up our burden with serenity, and perform our tasks with peace, and find joy in our work, looking upon it simply and sweetly as service. And if, and when, the very worst comes, when all our activities are taken from us, we are not robbed of everything; nay, we are robbed of nothing; for our life is hid with Christ in God. True faith expands for every fresh need, and when the need comes the comfort comes also, and out of weakness men are made strong. When we are oppressed by the burden and overwhelmed by the spectacle of human misery, we must learn that there is a deeper thing than happiness, and that is peace; and eternal peace is only to be had in communion with the eternal God.1 [Note: Hugh Black, Comfort, 24.]

O Love, the indwelling, by Thee are we shriven,

Ineffable Comforter, Lord of delight!

To those who are born of Thy Spirit, is given

The quickening of peace in the thick of the fight.

Thou comest, and swift, through the doorways of dulness,

Come joy and vitality, glory and grace!

Who loves Thee will serve Thee with life in its fulness,

Or die at his post with Thy joy on his face.

O Christ, the unconquered, how dimly we know Thee,

Thou Sun of the universe, Light of the world!

For all the sweet fire of our life that we owe Thee,

Thy heart took the anguish the enemy hurled!

O Thou who wast born of a brave human Mother,

Some kneel in Thy presence, some, worshipping, stand!

Life’s Symbol and Mystery! Master and Brother!

We grope in the darkness and feel for Thy hand.2 [Note: Annie Matheson, Maytime Songs, 17.]

Faith

Literature

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Calthrop (G.), The Lost Sheep Found, 197.

Collyer (R.), Nature and Life, 102.

Dawson (G.), Sermons on Daily Life and Duty, 264.

Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 88.

Doney (C. G.), The Throne-Room of the Soul, 141.

Greg (J.), The Life of Faith, 188.

Grenfell (W. T.), What Life means to Me, 35.

Griffith-Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 1.

Hare (A. W.), Sermons, i. 119.

Hopkins (E. H.), Talks with Beginners, 1.

How (W. W.), Plain Words, i. 101.

Illingworth (J. R.), Sermons Preached in a College Chapel, 116.

Jefferson (C. E.), Things Fundamental, 1.

Lilley (A. L.), in Practical Questions, 17.

Macdonell (D. J.), Life and Work, 423.

McGarvey (J. W.), Sermons, 82.

Maxson (H. D.), Sermons of Religion and Life, 150.

Mylne (R. S.), The Ground of Faith, 77.

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Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xix (1880), No. 1153; xxii. (1882), No. 1229.

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Christian World Pulpit, viii. 286 (E. W. Shalders), 296 (C. J. Vaughan); xvi. 28 (H. W. Beecher); xviii. 248 (A. Mursell); xxi. 385 (G. MacDonald); xxxii. 139 (R. Balgarnie); liii. 56 (F. Temple); lvi. 123 (E. J. Hardy); lx. 296 (A. M. Fairbairn); lxii. 56 (J. Stalker); lxxv. 313 (W. R. Inge); lxxviii. 229 (W. H. Carr); lxxxii. 337 (R. Roberts), 346 (A. Hamilton).

Church of England Pulpit, lviii. 31 (G. R. Channer); lxi. 619 (A. C. Headlam).

Homiletic Review, xxxv. 316 (F. Temple).