For the urgency, the peril of the hour, lies, not so much in the novelty, or force, of the pressure that is brought to bear against faith, as in the behaviour of faith itself under the pressure. What has happened is, not that faith has been confounded, but that it has been challenged. It has been challenged by new social needs, by strange developments of civilisation, by hungers that it had not yet taken into account, by thirsts that it had not prepared itself to satisfy. It has been challenged by new scientific methods, wholly unlike its familiar intellectual equipment; by new worlds of facts opened to its astonishment through discoveries which have changed the entire look of the earth; by immense masses of novel material, which it has been suddenly and violently required to assimilate; by strange fashions of speech in science and history; by a babel of 'unknown tongues' in all departments of learning and literature. Faith is under the pressure of this challenge: and the primary question is, how will it behave? What is it going to say, or do, in face of this exciting transformation which has passed over the entire surface of our intellectual scenery? How will it deal with the situation? Will it prove itself adequate to the crisis? To what extent can it afford to submit to the transforming process which has already operated upon the mind and the imagination? If it submit, can it survive? And in what condition? with what loss, or damage, or change? On every side these challenges reach it; they beat at its doors; they arrive in pelting haste; they clamour for immediate solutions. Now faith, under these rapid and stormy challenges, is apt to fall into panic. For this, surely, is the very meaning of a panic--a fear that feeds upon itself. Men in a panic are frightened at finding themselves afraid. So now with faith; it is terrified at its own alarm. How is it (it asks itself) that it should find itself baffled and timorous? If faith were faith, would it ever lose its confidence? To be frightened is to confess itself false: for faith is confidence in God, Who can never fail. How can faith allow of doubt or hesitation? Surely for faith to hesitate, to be confused, is to deny its very nature. Thus many anxious and perplexed souls retreat before their own perplexities. Because their faith is troubled, they distrust and abandon their faith. The very fact that it is in distress becomes an argument against it. It is at this point, and because of this particular peril that we are urgently required to consider very seriously the nature and conditions of faith. For our panic arises from our assumption that faith is of such a nature, that the perplexity, into which, now and again, we find ourselves thrown, must be impossible to it, must be incompatible with it. Now, is this so? Ought we to expect of faith that its confidence should never fail it--that its light should be always decisive? Is faith incriminated by the mere fact that it is in difficulties?