It is in such a spirit of sonship that faith reveals and realises itself. Faith is that temper of sympathetic and immediate response to Another's will which belongs to a recognised relationship of vital communion. It is the spirit of confident surrender, which can only be justified by an inner identification of life. Its primary note, therefore, will be _trust_--that trust of Another, which needs no ulterior grounds on which to base itself, beyond what is involved in the inherent law of this life. Faith will ever discover, when its reason for action, or belief, are traced to their last source, that it arrives at a point where its only and all-sufficient plea will be 'God is my Father: I am His child.' That relationship is its root; on the top of that relationship faith works; as a witness to that relationship, it puts forth all the spiritual temper which, of necessity, follows on this intimacy of contact. And, here, we find ourselves in the presence of the law by which faith claims to be _universal_. Unless this inner relationship be a fact, faith could not account for itself: but if it be a fact, it must constitute a fixed and necessary demand upon all men. All are, equally, 'children of God': and the answer to the question 'Why should I believe?' must be, for ever and for all, valid; 'because you are a child of God.' Faith is nothing but the spiritual temper and attitude, which belong, inherently, to such a fact. No one can escape from such a claim: for his existence constitutes the claim. If he be a child, it must be demanded, of him, that he should display the characteristics of his childhood: the father must, of necessity, be concerned with the question of his own recognition by his son. Our manhood lies in this essential sonship: and, if so, then to be without faith, without the conscious realisation of the sonship, is to be without the fulness of a man's proper nature. It is to be inhuman: to be curtailed of the natural development: to be maimed and thwarted. It means that the vital outcome of the inner verity has been arrested; that the sensitive perceptions have been blunted and stunted; that the sonship in us has, somehow, lost touch with its true fatherhood. We learn at once, as we consider this, the interpretation of that two-sided character, which surprises us in God's dealings with men:--i.e. the imperative rigour of His stated requirements, coupled with His wide and patient tolerance, in actual fact.