3. Faith

No testimony, no faith: because faith is only the belief in testimony, or confidence that testimony is true. To believe without testimony is just as impossible as to see without light. The measure, quality, and power of faith are always found in the testimony believed.

Where testimony begins, faith begins; and where testimony ends, faith ends. We believe Moses only as far as Moses speaks or writes: and when Moses has recorded his last fact, or testified his last truth, our faith in Moses ends. His five books are, therefore, the length and breadth, the height and depth, or, in other words, the measure of our faith in Moses. The quality or value of faith is found in the quality or value of the testimony. If the testimony is valid and authoritative, our faith is strong and active. 'If,' says John, 'we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater,' stronger, and more worthy of trust. The value of a banknote is the amount of precious metals it represents, and the unquestionable evidence of its authenticity; so the value of faith is the importance of the facts the testimony presents, and the assurance given that the testimony is true. True, or genuine faith, may be contrasted with feigned faith; but true faith is the belief in truth: for he who believes a lie, believes in vain.

The power of faith is also the power, or moral significance of the testimony, or of the facts the testimony represents. If by faith I am filled with joy, or overwhelmed with sorrow, that joy or sorrow is in the facts contained in the testimony, or in the nature and relation of those facts to me. If faith purifies the heart, works through love, and overcomes the world, this power is in the facts believed. If a father has more joy in believing that a lost son has been found than in believing that a lost sheep has been brought home to his fold, the reason for this greater joy is not in the nature of his believing, but in the nature of the facts believed.

Here I am led to expand on a very popular and harmful error of modern times. The error is that the nature, or power and saving effect of faith, is not in the truth believed, but in the nature of our faith, or in the manner of believing the truth. Hence all that meaningless jargon about the nature of faith, and all those disdainful sneers at what is called "historic faith," — as if there could be any faith without history, written or spoken. Who ever believed in Jesus Christ without hearing the history of him? 'How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?' Faith can never be more than receiving testimony as true, or the belief of testimony; and if that testimony is written, it is called history — though it is just as much history when flowing from the tongue as when flowing from the pen.

Let it be repeated and remembered again, that there is no other way of believing a fact than by accepting it as true. If it is not accepted as true, it is not believed; and when it is believed, it is no more than regarded as true. This being granted, then it follows that the effectiveness of faith is always in the fact believed, or the object received, and not in the nature or manner of believing.

"Faith was confused much by men who meant
To make it clear, so simple in itself.

A thought so basic and so plain,
That none by comment could make it clearer.

All faith was one. In object, not in kind,
The difference lay. The faith that saved a soul,
And that which in the common truth believed,
In essence, were the same. Hear, then, what faith,
True Christian faith, which brought salvation, was:
Belief in all that God revealed to men;
Observe, in all that God revealed to men,
In all he promised, threatened, commanded, said,
Without exception, and without a doubt."²

This applies universally in all the sensitive, intellectual, and moral powers of man. All our pleasures and pains, all our joys and sorrows, are the effects of the objects of sensation, reflection, faith, etc. apprehended or received, and not in the nature of the exercise of any power or capacity with which we are endowed. We will illustrate and confirm this assertion by appealing to the experience of all.

Let us glance at all our sensitive powers. If, on surveying with the eye a beautiful landscape, I am pleased, and on surveying a battlefield strewn with the spoils of death, I am pained, — is it accurate to say that the pleasure or pain received was caused by the nature of vision, or the mode of seeing? Was it not the sight, the thing seen, the object of vision, which produced the pleasure and the pain? The action of looking, or the mode of seeing, was the same in both cases; but the things seen, or the objects of vision, were different; — consequently, the effects produced were different.

If on hearing the melody of the grove I am delighted, and on hearing the peals of thunder breaking apart the cloud, dark with horror, hanging over my head, I am terrified, — is the delight or the terror to be ascribed to the manner or nature of hearing, or to the thing heard? Is it not the thing heard that produces the delight or the terror?

If I am refreshed by the balmy fragrance of the opening bloom of spring, or sickened by the foul smell of decaying carcasses, — are these effects to be ascribed to the peculiar nature or mode of smelling, or to the thing smelled? Or when the honey and the gall come in contact with my taste, — is the sweet or the bitter to be regarded as the effect of my manner of tasting, or the object tasted? And when I touch the ice, or the blazing torch, — is the effect or feeling produced to be attributed to the manner of feeling them, or to the thing felt? May we not, then, affirm that all the pleasures and pains of sense; all the effects of sensation; are the results, not of the manner in which our five senses are exercised, but of the objects on which they are exercised? It may be said, without invalidating this conclusion, that the more intimate the exercise of our senses is with the things on which they are exercised, the stronger and more forceful the impressions made will be: but still it is the object seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or felt, which affects us.

Moving from the outward to the inward man, and examining the powers of intellect one by one, we will find no exception to the law that pervades all our sensitive powers. It is neither the faculty of perception, nor the manner of perception, but the thing perceived, that excites us to action: it is not the exercise of reflection, but the thing reflected upon: it is not memory, nor the exercise of recollection, but the thing remembered: it is not imagination, but the thing imagined: it is not reason itself, nor the exercise of reason, but the thing reasoned upon, which brings pleasure or pain — which excites to action — which cheers, attracts, consoles — which grieves, disturbs, or troubles us.

Going up to our volitions and our affections, we find the same universality. In a word, it is not choosing, nor refusing; it is not loving, hating, fearing, desiring, nor hoping; it is not the nature of any power, faculty, or capacity of our nature, nor the simple exercise of them, but the objects or things upon which they are exercised, which give us pleasure or pain; which induce us to action, or influence our behavior. Faith, then, or the power of believing, must be an unusual thing; a power sui generis; an exception to the laws under which every power, faculty, or capacity of man is placed, unless its measure, quality, power, and effectiveness are in the facts which are testified, in the objects on which it rests.

There is no connection of cause and effect more intimate; there is no system of dependencies more closely linked; there is no arrangement of things more natural or necessary, than the ideas represented by the terms fact, testimony, faith, and feeling. The first is for the last, and the two intermediates are made necessary by the force of circumstances, as the means for the end. The fact, or the thing said to be done, produces the change in the state of mind. The testimony, or the report of the thing said or done, is essential to belief; and belief in it is necessary to bring the thing said or done to the heart. The change of heart is the goal proposed in this part of the process of regeneration; and we may see that the process on the part of Heaven is, thus far, natural and rational; or, in other words, consistent with the constitution of our nature.³