Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation,: 10th Edition, 1890
Religion
Lux Mundi: A Series of Studies in the Religion of the Incarnation,: 10th Edition, 1890
Christianity; Incarnation
We stand, by the necessities of our existence, in the relationship of
sons to a Father, Who has poured out into us, and still pours, the
vigour of His own life. This is the one basis of all faith. Unless
this relationship actually exists, there could be no faith: if it
exists, then faith is its essential corollary: it is bound to appear.
Our faith is simply the witness to this inner bond of being. That
bond, which is the secret of our entire existence, accounting for all
that we are, or do, or feel, or think, or say, must become capable of
recognition by a being that is, in any sense, free, intelligent,
conscious: and this recognition by us of the source from whence we
derive, is what we mean by faith. Faith is the sense in us that we are
Another's creature, Another's making. Even as we not only feel, but
feel that we feel; not only think, but know that we think; not only
choose, but determine to choose: so, below and within all our willing,
and thinking, and feeling, we are conscious of Another, whose mind and
will alone make possible both the feeling that we feel, and also the
capacity to feel it; both the thought that we think, and also the
capacity to know it; both the will that we put forth, as well as the
power to determine it. Every act, every desire, every motive of ours,
is dependant on the source out of sight: we hang on Another's will; we
are alive in Another's life. All our life is a discovery, a
disclosure, of this secret. We find it out only by living. As we put
out powers that seem to be our own, still even in and by the very act
of putting them out, we reveal them to be not our own; we discover
that we are always drawing on unseen resources. We are sons: that is
the root-law of our entire self. And faith is the active instinct of
that inner sonship: it is the point at which that essential sonship
emerges into consciousness; it is the disclosure to the self of its
own vital secret; it is the thrill of our inherent childhood, as it
makes itself felt within the central recesses of the life; it is the
flame that shoots into consciousness at the recognition of the touch
of our divine fatherhood; it is the immediate response of the sonship
in us to its discovered origin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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