The Meaning of Faith Part 1

The Meaning of Faith.

by Harry Emerson Fosd.i.c.k.

PREFACE

A book on faith has been for years my hope and intention. And now it comes to final form during the most terrific war men ever waged, when faith is sorely tried and deeply needed. Direct discussion of the war has been purposely avoided; the issues here presented are not confined to those which the war suggests; but many streams of thought within the book flow in channels that the war has worn. Since the conflict had to come, I am glad for this book's sake that it was not written until it had Europe's holocaust for a background.

Against one misunderstanding the reader should be guarded. If anyone approaches these studies, expecting to find detailed and special views of Christian doctrine, he will be disappointed. The perplexities of mind and life and the affirmations of religious faith, with which these studies deal, lie far beneath sectarian doctrinal controversy. I have tried to make clear a foundation on which faith might build its thoughts of Christian truth. And while I have spoken freely of G.o.d and Christ and the Spirit, of the Cross and life eternal, I have not intended or endeavored a complete theology. I have had in mind that elemental matter of which Carlyle was thinking when he wrote: "The thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain concerning his vital relations to the mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, _that_ is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. _That_ is his religion."

As in "The Meaning of Prayer," the Scripture has been used for the basis and interpretation of the daily thought. The Bible is our supreme record of man's experience with faith; it recounts in terms of life faith's sources and results, its successes and failures, its servants and its foes. And because faith is not a _tour de force_ of intellect alone, but is an act of life, prayers have been used for the expression of aroused desire and resolution.

My indebtedness to many helpers is very great. But to my friend and colleague, Professor George Albert Coe, my grat.i.tude is so definitely due for his careful reading of the ma.n.u.script, that the book should not go out lacking an acknowledgment.

H. E. F.

December 15, 1917.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special acknowledgment is gladly made to the following: to E. P.

Dutton & Company for permission to use prayers from "A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages" and from "The Temple," by W. E. Orchard, D.D.; to the Rev. Samuel McComb and the publishers for permission to quote from "A Book of Prayers," Copyright, 1912, Dodd, Mead & Company; to the American Unitarian a.s.sociation for permission to draw upon "Prayers,"

by Theodore Parker; to the Pilgrim Press and the author for permission to use selections from "Prayers of the Social Awakening," by Dr.

Rauschenbusch; to the Missionary Education Movement for permission to make quotations from "Thy Kingdom Come," by Ralph E. Diffendorfer; to Fleming H. Revell Co., for permission to make use of "A Book of Public Prayer," by Henry Ward Beecher; and to the publishers of James Martineau's "Prayers in the Congregation and in College," Longmans, Green & Co.

None of the above material should be reprinted without securing permission.

CHAPTER I

Faith and Life's Adventure

DAILY READINGS

Discussion about faith generally starts with faith's _reasonableness_; let us begin with faith's _inevitableness_. If it were possible somehow to live without faith, the whole subject might be treated merely as an affair of curious interest. But if faith is an unescapable necessity in every human life, then we must come to terms with it, understand it, and use it as intelligently as we can. _There are certain basic elements in man which make it impossible to live without faith._ Let us consider these, as they are suggested in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, better than any other book in the Bible, presents faith as an unavoidable human att.i.tude.

First Week, First Day

=Now faith is a.s.surance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.--Heb. 11:1.=

As Moffatt translates: "Now faith means we are confident of what we hope for, convinced of what we do not see." When faith is described in such general terms, its necessity in human life is evident. Man cannot live without faith, because he deals not only with a past which he may know and with a present which he can see, but with a _future in whose possibilities he must believe_. A man can no more avoid looking ahead when he lives his life than he can when he sails his boat, and in one case as in the other, his direction is determined by his thought about what lies before him, his "a.s.surance of things hoped for." Now, this future into which continually we press our way can never be a matter of demonstrable knowledge. We know only when we arrive, but meanwhile we believe; and our knowledge of what is and has been is not more necessary to our quest than our faith concerning what is yet to come.

As Tennyson sings of faith in "The Ancient Sage":

"She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'!"

However much a man may plan, therefore, to live without faith, he cannot do it. When one strips himself of all convictions about the future he stops living altogether, and active, eager, vigorous manhood is always proportionate to the scope and power of reasonable faith.

The great spirits of the race have had the aspiring, progressive quality which the Scripture celebrates:

=These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore G.o.d is not ashamed of them, to be called their G.o.d; for he hath prepared for them a city.--Heb. 11:13-16.=

_Almighty G.o.d, let Thy Spirit breathe upon us to quicken in us all humility, all holy desire, all living faith in Thee. When we meditate on the Eternal, we dare not think any manner of similitude; yet Thou art most real to us in the worship of the heart. When in the strife against sin we receive grace to help us in our time of need, then art Thou the Eternal Rock of our salvation. When amid our perplexities and searchings, the way of duty is made clear, then art Thou our Everlasting Light. When amid the storms of life we find peace and rest through submission, then art Thou the a.s.sured Refuge of our souls. So do Thou manifest Thyself unto us, O G.o.d!_

_Our Heavenly Father, we give Thee humble and hearty thanks for all the sacred traditions which have come down to us from the past--for the glorious memories of ancient days, concerning that Divine light in which men have been conscious of Thy presence and a.s.sured of Thy grace. But we would not content ourselves with memories. O Thou who art not the G.o.d of the dead, but the G.o.d of the living, manifest Thyself unto us in a present communion. Reveal Thyself unto us in the tokens of this pa.s.sing time. Give us for ourselves to feel the authority of Thy law: give us for ourselves to realize the exceeding sinfulness of sin: give us for ourselves to understand the way of salvation through sacrifice. Teach us, by the Spirit of Christ, the sacredness of common duties, the holiness of the ties that bind us to our kind, the divinity of the still small voice within that doth ever urge us in the way of righteousness. So shall our hearts be renewed by faith; so shall we ever live in G.o.d. Amen._--John Hunter.

First Week, Second Day

=By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed to go out unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he became a sojourner in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents, with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: for he looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is G.o.d.--Heb. 11:8-10.=

=By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to share ill treatment with the people of G.o.d, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.--Heb. 11:24-27.=

Man cannot live without faith because his relationship with the future is an affair not alone of thought but also of action; _life is a continuous adventure into the unknown_. Abraham and Moses pushing out into experiences whose issue they could not foresee are typical of all great lives that have adventured for G.o.d. "By faith" is the first word necessary in every life like Luther's and Wesley's and Carey's. By faith John Bright, when his reforms were hard bestead, said: "If we can't win as fast as we wish, we know that our opponents can't in the long run win at all." By faith Gladstone, when the Liberal cause was defeated, rose undaunted in Parliament, and said, "I appeal to time!"

and by faith every one of us must undertake each plain day's work, if we are to do it well. Robert Louis Stevenson said that life is "an affair of cavalry," "a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded." But so to deal with life demands faith. The more one sees what venturesome risks he takes every day, what labor and sacrifice he invests in hope of a worthy outcome, with what great causes he falls in love until at his best he is willing for their sakes to hazard fortune and happiness and life itself, the more he sees that the soul of robust and serviceable character is faith.

_O G.o.d, who hast encompa.s.sed us with so much that is dark and perplexing, and yet hast set within us light enough to walk by; enable us to trust what Thou hast given as sufficient for us, and steadfastly refuse to follow aught else; lest the light that is in us become as darkness and we wander from the way. May we be loyal to all the truth we know, and seek to discharge those duties which lay their commission on our conscience; so that we may come at length to perfect light in Thee, and find our wills in harmony with Thine._

_Since Thou hast planted our feet in a world so full of chance and change that we know not what a day may bring forth, and hast curtained every day with night and rounded our little lives with sleep; grant that we may use with diligence our appointed span of time, working while it is called today, since the night cometh when no man can work; having our loins girt and our lamps alight, lest the cry at midnight find us sleeping and the door fast shut._

_Since we are so feeble, faint, and foolish, leave us not to our own devices, not even when we pray Thee to; nor suffer us for any care to Thee or for any pain to us to walk our own unheeding way. Plant thorns about our feet, touch our hearts with fear, give us no rest apart from Thee, lest we lose our way and miss the happy gate.

Amen._--W. E. Orchard.

First Week, Third Day

Man cannot live without faith because the prime requisite in life's adventure is _courage_, and the sustenance of courage is faith.

=And what shall I more say? for the time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah; of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies of aliens. Women received their dead by a resurrection: and others were tortured, not accepting their deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword: they went about in sheep-skins, in goat-skins; being dest.i.tute, afflicted, ill-treated (of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves, and the holes of the earth. And these all, having had witness borne to them through their faith, received not the promise, G.o.d having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.--Heb. 11:32-40.=

When in comparison with men and women of such admirable spirit, one thinks of weak personalities, that ravel out at the first strain, he sees that the difference lies in courage. _When a man loses heart he loses everything._ Now to keep one's heart in the midst of life's stress and to maintain an undiscourageable front in the face of its difficulties is not an achievement which springs from anything that a laboratory can demonstrate or that logic can confirm. It is an achievement of faith,

"The virtue to exist by faith As soldiers live by courage."

Consider this account of Havelock, the great English general: "As he sat at dinner with his son on the evening of the 17th, his mind appeared for the first and last time to be affected with gloomy forebodings, as it dwelt on the probable annihilation of his brave men in a fruitless attempt to accomplish what was beyond their strength.

After musing long in deep thought, his strong sense of duty and his confidence in the justice of his cause restored the buoyancy of his spirit; and he exclaimed, 'If the worst comes to the worst, we can but die with our swords in our hands!'" No man altogether escapes the need for such a spirit, and, as with Havelock and the Hebrew heroes, confidence in someone, faith in something, is that spirit's source.

_O G.o.d, who hast sent us to school in this strange life of ours, and hast set us tasks which test all our courage, trust, and fidelity; may we not spend our days complaining at circ.u.mstance or fretting at discipline, but give ourselves to learn of life and to profit by every experience. Make us strong to endure._

_We pray that when trials come upon us we may not shirk the issue or lose our faith in Thy goodness, but committing our souls unto Thee who knowest the way that we take, come forth as gold tried in the fire._

_Grant by Thy grace that we may not be found wanting in the hour of crisis. When the battle is set, may we know on which side we ought to be, and when the day goes hard, cowards steal from the field, and heroes fall around the standard, may our place be found where the fight is fiercest. If we faint, may we not be faithless; if we fall, may it be while facing the foe. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.