The Nature of Faith

Maek i. 15. “Believe the Gospel.”

There are times when it seems to the Christian preacher almost a mockery to present him self again and again before large assemblies with arguments which produce no conviction and entreaties which are gravely set aside It would be otherwise if the discourses we delivered were mere entertainments of the hour as, indeed, they have come to be considered by many. But if they convey messages from God himself, on the most important interests of the hearer, and with a design of producing immediate action, then this neglect and apathy are strange. One might wonder how men could bring themselves to hear for so long a time voices wHcli they do not mean to heed. On other subjects, he who listens to reasoning is prepared either to admit or deny; and, if the matter is one of practice, to act accordingly. Convince a man that the adventure in which he has placed his property is hazardous, and he flies to withdraw it. Show him that his house is tottering overhead, and he props it, or leaves his abode. Point out to him some angry symptom in his disease, and he repairs to regimen and physic. Make it clear that a political leader is corrupt, and he abandons him. These results follow mth unvarying certainty, wherever the conviction or persuasion is complete. We might almost say that action follows assent, in these cases, as certainly as assent follows demonstration in a geometrical theorem. If, on hearing that his mercantile enterprise is hollow, your friend adheres to it, you ascribe it to disbelief of your statement. If he still sleeps under the nodding roof, you are sure he thinks it sound. If he neglects the cough or the hectic, it is, you say, because he cannot believe it threatening. And if he remains a zealous follower of partychieftains whom you denounce, he must withhold faith from what you say. But in religion all this is reversed. He hears, and hears a thousand times, that God is angry with the wicked every day; that the soul that sinneth shall die; that he who believeth not shall be damned; that of those who are ashamed of Christ here, Christ himself will be ashamed in the Judgment; that God has sent his Son to be the Saviour of his soul; that the offer will not be made forever; that the day of grace is about to close; and that, in an hour when he thinketh not, death may transport him to eternal woe. All this he hears. It is the very habit of his life so to hear. He deliberately makes a business of coming, at least once a week, to the presence chamber of God, to hear God renew an offer of terms, which he as deliberately makes uj) his mind to postpone or reject. Great threat enings come to him on the part of God, enough to make the ears of every one that heareth them to tingle. But by a calculation of chances on which he would not stake a penny, he assures himself that he may face the risk. The voice of God, fairly expounded, as he professes to admit — for we now leave infidels out of consideration — calls loudly and peremptorily for him to leave one path of life and enter another. This voice lie lias distinctly heard uttering these things all his life. But by none of these declarations, arguments, warnings, or invitations, has he, in the slightest degree, been moved to practice. Professing to believe that which he so hears, he acts in point-blank opposition to it. Such is the paradoxical condition in which the majority of hearers, in the lands of the Gosj)el, allow themselves to remain, and it is this which is the main discourao:ement of the Christian ministry.

Can we reasonably suppose that persons who hear in this manner believe what they hear? Does that indolent assent, or rather that passive inability to disprove, or that apathy which will not wake up enough to deny, deserve the name of faith? We have seen how the question should be answered in secular and common things. The principle is the same in the things of God. That truth which has no influence is not credited; that man who is moved to no correspondent purpose or volition by what is said, has no faith. We know how common it is for men to persuade themselves of the reverse. According to their own statement, they do believe the scriptural record, sincerely and firmly. Their conviction, persuasion, belief, assent, or credence, is honest and immovable. And if you press the matter a little further and they are willing to be examined, they allege that there is no defect in their belief, but only in their feelings. They believe all that is said fi’om the Word, but their belief does not move the affections and the will. Let us illustrate by familiar example: You rush into a chamber at midnight — arouse your friend — tell him the house is in flames and the only stairway ready to sink in ruin — and assure him he has but a moment to escaj)e for his life. He replies, with a pleasing smile: Yes, I am aware of it, but somehow it makes no impression on my feelings, and affords no motive to my wilL On the presentation of such a case, you j)ronounce the man either to be mad, or to have no faith in what you say. This is just the case of men and women who sit in God’s house and hear that without being born again, they cannot see the kingdom of God, and nevertheless remain stupid and impenetrable. Why not in these instances declare that they do not believe what the preached Word conveys? Why not deny that they have faith?

As matter of fact, we must acknowledge that there is a prevalent reluctance to give this solution. There must be reasons why it is disagreeable to admit the charge of disbelieving God. And yet, if such unbelief exists, most assuredly it ought to be charged home upon the conscience, and recognized not only as a misfortune, but a sin.

Many fogs and mists have been gathered around these familiar operations of all human minds, by the ingenious speculations of philosophic theology. Angry controversies have often been maintained durins: 2:enerations about the definition of terms which express states or acts of which we are hourly and directly conscious. Simple phenomena have thus been made complicated, and humble souls have not seldom been perplexed. If faith, about which we are now speaking, were so inscrutable, un distinguishable, and complex a product of our activity as many suppose, we might have expected numerous and most guarded definitions of it in the Scriptures. As faith is the instrument of salvation, we might expect that so doubtful an act of the soul would be set forth by numerous distinctive tests. If the faith of true experience is so utterly diverse from all the believings of mankind about all other things, we might confidently look for certain marks of difference. On the contrary, often as believing, belief, and faith are mentioned in the Scriptures, they are always introduced as if with a presumption that the words are to be taken in their ordinary sense. This gives us much reason to conclude that evangelical faith is a simpler thing, and more familiar to us every day, than theologians sometimes teach. The fear of such theologians is, lest faith shall be made so easy, and so little diverse from common natural acts of men, that careless and unconverted sinners will flatter themselves that they have faith when they have none. They therefore interpose numberless cautions, to prevent mistake as to faith. They sedulously distinguish various kinds of faith. They refer faith to various so-called faculties or powers of the soul; the nomenclature of which faculties varies with every system. They dissect the act of faith into several parts, nicely following one another, and of which no one must be wanting, or the faith is spurious. And they succeed in hopelessly confounding some, and landing others on the unscriptural conclusion that faith is something different from believing, or accepting truth as true.

One singular consequence of such refinements is this: As I should be sure of my being safe if I were sure I believed, the most interesting of all questions is, Do I believe? But if faith is so recondite and difficult of discovery, then the very question which is to decide the other is the hardest of all. And multitudes ]3uzzle and distract themselves with unavailing and unanswerable inquiries as to the sorts of faith, and which sort is theirs; as to the ingredients of faith, and which ingredient is wanting, a species of mental anatomy of which we find no example in holy Scripture.

That unreconciled and irreligious persons have no faith in divine truths which concern their own state and the objects of evangelical Christianity, is sufficiently plain from their lives.

It must, however, be our present task to make evident tke very obvious and simple notion wliicli the Scripture gives of Faith. The word is perpetually and in the most childlike manner introduced, as just meaning persuasion of the truth. When a statement is true to me, when I see it, not merely as intelligible, but as true, then I have faith. In other words, I believe it. Faith is belief: belief is faith; both import accepting that which is presented as true. Truth and Faith are therefore correlative temis. The objects of faith are vastly different; and this gives origin to innumerable varieties of lelieving. That is, the mind behaves itself differently in view of one truth believed, and of another truth believed; yet the mind’s operation is the same. My hand may grasp an empty nutshell or the great diamond, but the act of gTasj)ing is the same. My believing thoughts may light on the truth that the thermometer is at G0°, or that the day of judgment has arrived. How vastly different the contingent phenomena! Yet the belief, as belief, is one and the same. This may account for the hurtful error of those who have suffused the colors which come from the object over the eye that beholds it, and thus have made as many faiths as there are orders of things believed. In every jDossible instance, when I have faith, I hold somewhat to be true; The immediate consequences may vary. The same proposition believed may carry very different emotions to different hearts. Tell one man that the post has arrived, and he is indifferent; but his next neighbor rejoices — it brings news of his long absent son; a third is speechless with horror, for it comes with tidings of his ruin. The proposition believed being the same, two men may believe it with different intensity, for faith has degrees. But still the simple essential act of faith is one with which we are perfectly familiar, and of which we are conscious every hour. Let us see this for ourselves in Scripture. “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed.” John XX. 29. Here the truth accepted is that the person before Thomas is the very Jesus who was crucified. A train of other believings followed this. God says to Abram, “Thy seed shall be as the stars in yonder heavens.” “And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for rigjbteousness.” Gen. xv. 6. “If ye believe not that I am lie [said Jesus] ye shall die in your sins.” Here the truth to be accepted is that Jesus is the Messiah, the fundamental fact of Christianity. So 1 John v. 1, “Whoso believeth that Jesus is the Messiah, is of God.” In none of these cases is there any room for the person so believing to go back into his mental operations, to examine the nature of his believing acts. A truth is presented as an object of faith, and he is persuaded of this truth, it is certain to his apprehension. He believes and knows that he believes. Or rather, he knows what he believes; for the importance of the object entirely takes away his mind from the act of believing.

But there is a variation of the phrase in such New Testament passages as speak of believing on Jesus Christ. These are numerous. In them all, a Person is the object of the believing; and in a particular aspect and relation. We believe on Christ, when we are persuaded that he is such as he claims to be, and such as the Scriptures present and offer him. We apprehend him, and recognize him as the Saviour of sinners, and as able and willino; to save ns. He who is thus persuaded concerning the Lord, need not vex himself as to the metaphysical character of his mental acts. The more he believes, the less is he likely to ask what is believino. Faith is a kind of inward seeing;. He who sees a beautiful countenance does not much pause to inquire into the process of vision. That countenance tills his eye. In like manner, he who believes on Jesus as his Redeemer, is taken up with that countenance of love. The object of faith occupies the field of vision. For the time, reflex acts, such as “Is this the right sort of faith? ‘’ are impossible; for the mind cannot look inward and outward at the same instant. And no man’s salvation depends on his believing that he believes. At Cana, the disci]3les “believed on him.” The Jews who saw Lazarus raised by Jesus “believed on him.” “He that believeth on the Son of God, has the witness in himself.”

Nothing is harder than to describe in words the simplest acts of the soul. Suppose one had never loved, how would you choose words to convey the notion? Yet you love, and know

that you love. We may try manifold phrases. Faith is the whole soul accordins; and assentins: to the truth and embracing it. Faith is admitting and receiving the revelation. Faith is apprehending the true as true, the beautiful as beautiful, the good as good. Faith in Christ is persuasion that Christ is a Saviour. The soul receives and rests upon him alone for salvation as offered in the Gospel. It is not a process, divisible into parts and stages; but an outgoing of the whole soul, to the object, at one time, and, so to speak, by one outlet. It is not wisely determined by some to be an intellectual act solely; because the simplicity of the believing subject is afl&rmed as much by true philosophy as by Scripture. When Jesus Christ, dying in love for sinners, and radiant with Gospel grace, is full before the soul, so as to appear somewhat as he is, an Almighty and infinitely willing Redeemer, true to his word, then the sinner believes, receives him, has power to be a child of God; though, at the moment, nothing is further fi’om his thoughts than any analysis of this believing. After all, nothing but experience can fully explain what faith is. Believe and Knoio.

In comparing faith with knowledge, we touch a question wliicli has agitated all the schools from Alexandria downwards. Assurance of truth, certitude, is the same, by whatever process it may be arrived at. But in some cases it comes by intuition in some cases by reasoning and in some cases by reliance on testimony. This last is more properly faith and this shows how faith is connected with persons. We may regard this explanation as two-fold: (1.) I believe the testimony of him who is true. I believe the testimony of God, who is infinitely true. A child is assured that the angle in a semicircle is a right angle, or that the surface of a sphere is equal to the convex surface of a surrounding cylinder, because his father tells him so. This is faith in its stricter sense. The child becomes a man, and is assured of the same geometrical propositions by irrefragable process of demonstration; this is hiowledge by proof though we name even this assurance belief, in common parlance. The child, from being a man on earth, becomes a higher intelligence in heaven, and sees the same relations of lines and surfaces, by insight; this is intuition. The things are so and so in Eternal Reason. God sees all things thus, and hence we never speak of God as believing or as reasoning. In his own infinite Truth he eternally, and with open face, beholds all truths. We are inquiring into the mode of arriving at assured certainty of truth. Most of our certainty, even in common life, is from testimony. IS’ot ^lq in this house have ever seen the Great Deseet. Not one in ten has ever seen the Souther]^ Cross. Few of us have ever seen the planet Mercury. None of us have ever seen the j)lanet Neptune. As to these certainties, we believe the testimony of trustworthy persons, even where sight and demonstration are ]30ssible. Such, I say, is the case in a great number of common things. But this is in the first instance the only way in which we can acquire certain assurance of what transcends human intuition and experience; such as Creation, Redemption, Future Glory. And as none but God, or, what is the same thing, God’s messenger, can command our credence on such heads, we come to our persuasion of these truths by simple faith in him who is credible. Faith, receiving such testimony, admits God as teue. Faith, receiving such testimony, admits the Lord Jesus Christ as true. Jesus Christ is pre-eminently the Word, the Revealer, the “True Witness.” We accredit him as such. Observe, here, how much faith has a personal character. You believe one thing because a man has proved it to you; this man you may despise and hate, as a liar and a blasphemer. You believe another thing, because your beloved, honoured, pure, trustworthy friend has witnessed it. Mark the difference. Here is faith. You believe on him, as well as what he utters. (2.) But we may proceed a step further. Not only do we behold Christ as a true Witness, and so believe in him, in general, but we behold him as communicating certain truths concerning Mmself and so believe on him in particular. We might believe on Gabriel in the former and minor sense, as did she who was blessed among women; or as the other Marys believed the other angel testifying of Christ. But Christ himself we believe, testifying concerning himself; and this is in the high and peculiar sense to believe on lihn and to believe in his name. He comes to us to tell us who he is, and what lie liatli wrought, and we believe it, and so believe on him. Doubly, therefore, faith becomes a personal matter, and lays bold of a personal Jesus. First, because I rely on his j)ersonal truth, and consequently believe his message; and, secondly, because the message which I believe from his blessed lips concerns his own person.

Yet, while we have made this advancement towards a more explicit understanding of our own experience, we have not, I trust, lost the clew which guided our first steps of investigation, nor added any new complexity to faith. From beginning to end, we have found it to be believing, or acceptance of truth. Oh! my beloved hearer, how sjDcedily would this matter be cleared up to you if this moment Almighty Grace were to make the Son of Righteousness arise upon your soul! Here you have been sitting in darkness, and with j)ainful effort rolling your sightless orbs towards the j)oint where light is shining. A blind man, having no more experience of daylight than you have of Grace, may learn, and reason, and talk about rays and their reflection and refraction, the humours of the eye, and the impression on the retina; lie may, like Sanderson, the friend of Newton and professor at Cambridge, invent and communicate demonstrations in Optics, but one tiling is lacking: lie lias no notion of light, lie does not see. One instant of faith would drive you away from all your disputings. One view of Jesus Christ, dying and drawing sinners to himself, would make the subject plain. And it is my inward conviction of this which leads me to draw your thoughts away so much from the manner of believing to the object believed; to induce you, if possible, to ask less How is the act of faith defined and distinguished? and more “What am I to believe? What is the plan of salvation? Who is the Son of God? In what does his righteousness consist? What is Truth? The object of faith, in its widest generality, is all revelation. “By this faith a Christian believeth to be true, whatsoever is revealed in the Word, for the authority of God himself speaking therein.” Confession of Faith, chap, xiv.’^

* As an example, Heb. xi. 3, “through Faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

But the great achievement of faith is its justifying the sinner; great because of its result, salvation; and great because of its object, the Lord Jesus. And as this is the momentous affair of life, with every man who ever has awakened to his misery in sin; all earnest and importunate inquiries concerning faith have respect to that faith which justifies. Now, we only carry out princiyles already laid down, when we say, this is no new kind of believing, so far as the mental act is regarded. All that it has of peculiarity belongs to its origin, its object, its degree, and its consequences. He who believes to the saving of his soul, accepts the truth concerning Jesus Christ. Previously “convinced of his sin and misery, and of the disability of himself and all other creatures to recover him out of his lost condition,” which conviction is belief in these truths, he receives and rests u^Don Christ and his righteousness, for pardon, acceptance, and life. This language is metaphorical and inadequate. But the soul that has been in the midnight and then all at once gains a first glimpse of Jesus, knows what

it is to receive him and rest on him.

In thus far treating of faith, we have considered it altogether in itself, as a phenomenon, state, act, or exercise; Ave have reserved for other times, its origin in divine power, its object in detail, its degrees or variations, and its fruits, first in justification, then in sanctification. These are important subjects, too important to be handled in the subdivision of a discourse. It is enough to say, that saving faith is wrought by the Holy Ghost, who endows the soul with a new and spiritual apprehension of the truth. That which regeneration interposes between the soul and the objective truth, is analogous to light in natural vision. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 2 Cor. iv. 6. Let that face, in that glory, by that light, be once beheld, and sight melts into believing, faith expands into salvation. The unwritten biographies vary; some Christian lives are stormy, and others calm. The voyage of some is driven off into vast curvatures in the course, while others seem to run straight into port. Yet there are some things in common. All who come into harbour come believing; all come renouncing self; all come as ruined sinners. The degree of conviction or sorrow for sin or fearful apprehension is not prescribed and is not uniform. But all who come to Christ, come to him in distress. And this distress, in the case of all, is removed by a distinct and open view of the Lord Jesus as freely offering himself to pardon sin and bestow righteousness and favor. Hesitation to accept the bountiful and gratuitous offer in the Gospel arises from disbelief or doubt in resard to the doctrinal truth involved. If you could be thoroughly convinced of what has just been uttered, namely, that your not acce2:>ting Christ is owing to your not crediting the Gospel truth concerning Christ, you would have made a large stej). You would then see hoAV important is Truth especially such cardinal and saving truth. You would no longer hang about the untenable position that you actually believe this truth, while you show no influence of such belief. You would learn what is the precise hindrance, to wit, your unbelief; and you would be made conscious of your principal sin, which is, refusing to credit God’s gracious declaration concerning his Son. Those who remain long convinced ^vitliout being converted, frame to themselves manifold reasons, why they do not repose their souls on the Lord Jesus, as made over to them in the offer of love. But they shrink from looking at the true reason, which is their not believing the truth comprehended in that offer. Once suppose a soul awakened and desiring salvation, and all that is wanting in order to peace, is simple faith. The pleas which are commonly urged by the inquirer, that his sin is too great to be pardoned; that his case is peculiar; that he has forfeited all possibility of grace; that his heart is hard; that he has not been humbled enough; or does not feel terror enough or grief enough; in a word, that any conditions remain unfulfilled; all these pleas spring from disbelief of the fulness and gratuity of salvation. All this lingering betrays erroneous doctrine in the mind, or denial of true doctrine. All proceeds from narrow, dishonourable, and therefore false views of Christ and his work. The moment the soul apprehends the Lord Jesus Christ as he is, no longer as a taskmaster demanding conditions, but, as a Surety, fulfilling them, it falls into his arms. You doubt him; it is the same as want of faith. You doubt him; hence your evil conscience. You doubt his power, his love, his truth, his willingness to save. He has saved others, but you doubt his readiness to

save you. The very instant that complete truth gains possession of your soul, you will surrender. It is the simplest thing in the world, but the hardest, where the truth is not believed. Even true Christians, who have some faith, are not always in the exercise of faith in high degrees. The sun is not always equally bright in the soul’s firmament. But when relief comes, it comes by seeing this truth and believing it. As this truth, which is the object of saving faith, relates to Jesus Christ, or rather as Jesus Christ is himself the Truth; the best of all directions to the inquirer, and the doubter, and the backslider, and the mourner, is contained in the trite phraseology that he should be continually “looking unto Jesu-s^ If life depended on your seeing the sun, whither, I beseech you, should you be bending your eyes, but yonder, eastward, where the reddening dawn, breaking into streaks of gold, harbingers the approaching orb of fire? Set up before your mind the one great aim of faith, Jesus Cheist the Righteous. All our exposition, argument, exhortation, and entreaty can only reiterate the cry, Behold him! behold him! Infinitely below the reality are all our representations of his graciousness and earnestness to save. Angels and sainted spirits would hardly recognize the Jesus whom we delineate. Prophecy and Gospel combine to represent him as waiting to save. This is precisely what you disbelieve. In your careless hours of open sin, you scarcely considered whether he would save or not; you entertained no genuine estimate of the Olirist that is, in beauty and glory; you believed nothing. ‘Now, though you have a partial illumination breaking through chinks of the dungeon, enough to reveal loathsome horrors, you nevertheless have not yet enough to show you the Son of God, standing in grace and beauty, yearning over you -svith compassion, and offering to make you his at once. Still we cry, Behold him! behold him! He is holy, he abhors your unholiness. But he offers you a redemption which includes your being holy. Keep your thoughts directed to the gracious form, who dignifies the Altar and the Cross. See in him your priest. See in him your sacrifice. “Behold the Lainb of God which taketh away the sin of the world!”