---

I. THE DOMAIN OF FAITH IS TO BE DISTINGUISHED FROM THAT OF HUMAN WISDOM,

1. Men are ever confounding the two. Faith, they think, is simply the intellect in its ordinary processes dealing with religious things. The man who rejects Christianity does it on this ground. "I cannot," he says, "reason out a demonstrative proof of Christianity; therefore I refuse to believe it true." Because faith cannot stand in the wisdom of man, it cannot, he thinks, stand at all. Now, according to the apostle, faith stands in "the power of God." What is the difference?

2. How do we know things?

(1) By sensible proof. If I put my finger into the fire it burns me; if I hear music it delights me. This is the proof which my body furnishes concerning things that appeal to it. I do not reason about them; no spiritual or moral sympathies are called into exercise. I prove them exactly as a brute does.

(2) By rational proof. If a man tells me that two and two make four, that a whole is greater than its part, my senses, my religious feeling have nothing to do with the proof — it is a process of pure reason. A brute could not prove anything in this way. A rational man must believe on such evidence.

(3) Moral proof. When I see moral qualities in a man, I instinctively receive impressions concerning him. I say he is a kind man, a true man, a reverential man. If he be a hypocrite, he may deceive me; but that does not affect the validity of this method of proof. Life would be impossible if we could not trust men until we had collected evidence about them. We are always trusting men whom we know nothing about, because of the moral judgment of them which we form.

3. Now, this distinction of different kinds of proof will carry us a long way in understanding the domain of faith as distinguished from that of intellectual wisdom. When God speaks religious things to me, He does not appeal to my physical senses. He does not appeal to my reason, as the multiplication table does, as a proof in logic does; He appeals directly to my religious sense. Is not this religiously true, pure, suitable? And my religious sense responds, as the eye responds to light, understanding to intellectual truth, the heart to love. Men who are "of the truth" respond to moral truth when they see it.

4. Now, the strong tendency is to interchange these methods of proof. "I can believe nothing," says the materialist, "that I cannot prove." Quite true; neither ought you. "Aye, but I mean that I cannot prove by processes of reason," which is quite another thing. Suppose the brute should say, "I will believe nothing which I cannot prove by the senses. I will not believe in your mathematical astronomy, your subtle chemistry." And is he not as much justified in denying your rational proof as you are in denying my spiritual proof? Your rational proof belongs to a higher nature than his; my spiritual proof belongs to a higher nature than mere reason. What can reason do with moral qualities? You cannot reason out right and wrong; you cannot by reason prove love, or purity, or goodness; you can only feel them. You tell me that you have explored nature, but cannot find God; as well may the surgeon conducting a post-mortem examination tell us that he cannot find the pure patriot, the loving father. How can he detect moral qualities by physical tests?

5. We are always trying to get above the domain of mere matter into that of reason. How the painter and the poet idealise nature; change actual colour and form into glorious ideals! How the philosopher uses them for the creation of a science! How the economist uses them for an economy of social life! And so we are always trying to get above the domain of reason into the domain of faith. It is the necessity of our nature to think about good and evil, to form moral judgments about things. There is another tendency which is always dragging the spiritual down to the sensual; but all men agree to call this wrong moral feeling; Christianity calls it sin.

6. Faith, then, is that quality of our spiritual nature which, when it hears God's truth, sees God's purity, feels God's love, simply and implicitly believes it. It does not wait for processes of reason to prove it, any more than the eye waits for processes of reason to prove light, or the heart for processes of reason to prove love. But, it may be said, does not this make faith irrational? Certainly not. It simply goes farther than reason can go, sees things that reason cannot see, feels things that reason cannot feel. When a truth of God is spoken to me — first, my senses are exercised; next, my reason — it judges the meaning of the words, of the thought, then it delivers the sentiment to my spiritual faculty. Is it religiously true, suitable, and precious? Simple reason could not pronounce upon this; but my religious heart does. I am told of the existence of a God; my senses cannot recognise Him, my reason cannot demonstrate Him, but my spiritual nature confesses His existence, just as the heart confesses love. I am told of the Incarnation; neither sense nor reason can prove it; but my religious consciousness testifies that it is precisely what my condition needed. So with the atonement — the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of Christ; and the immortal life that He gives.

II. How DID PAUL SET FORTH CHRIST? (ver. 1). Not as a rhetorician, or a moral philosopher. Why not? There is no merit in abjuring reason, when it is a process of reasoning that has to be conducted. But it was not an argument that Paul had to conduct; it was a testimony of God that he had to bear. It was not a science of religion that he had to construct; it was a simple fact that he had to declare. Men knew all about sin; he did not need to prove that they were sinful. Men earnestly craved to know "what they must do to be saved." He did not need to reason about that. And he simply declared the great fact that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners"; that was all he said, but that was enough. Thus, receiving his testimony to the Divine fact, the faith of these men "stood not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." Christ, then, is to be preached, and His atonement set forth by bearing testimony. It is the cry of a herald rather than a philosophical argument. The physician does not need to prove to the sick that they need healing; he needs only say, "Wilt thou be made whole?" Preaching Christ is simply setting Him forth as the great gift of the Father's love. They who hear the testimony have only to trust in the crucified Christ for forgiveness and life. And when so believing God's testimony we receive Christ, and have experience of His redeeming grace, our "faith stands in the power of God."We have the witness in ourselves— a certainty and strength of belief which is like the consciousness of life; argument cannot disturb it. Christ is "formed in us"; we "know whom we have believed.(H. Allon, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.

WEB: I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling.