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
The entire human nature,--imagination, reason, feeling,
desire,--becomes to faith a vehicle of intercourse, a mediating aid in
its friendship with God. But faith itself lies deeper than all the
capacities of which it makes use: it is, itself, the primal act of the
elemental self, there at the root of life, where the being is yet
whole and entire, a single personal individuality, unbroken and
undivided. Faith, which is the germinal act of our love for God, is an
act of the whole self, there where it is one, before it has parted off
into what we can roughly describe as separate and distinguishable
faculties. It therefore uses, not one or other of the faculties, but
all; and in a sense it uses them all at once, just as any complete
motion of will, or of love, acts with all the united force of many
combined faculties. A perfect act of love would combine, into a single
movement, the entire sum of faculties, just because it proceeds from
that basal self, which is the substance and unity of them all. So with
faith. Faith, the act of a willing adhesion to God the Father,
proceeds from a source deeper than the point at which faculties
divide.
And this has a most vital bearing on the question of faith's
evidences. It is here we touch on the crucial characteristic which
determines all our logical and argumentative position.
For, if a movement of faith springs from a source anterior to the
distinct division of faculties, then no one faculty can adequately
account for the resultant action. Each faculty, in its separate stage,
can account for _one_ element, for _one_ factor, which contributed to
the result: and that element, that factor, may be of greater or less
importance, according to the rank of the faculty in the entire self.
But, if the movement of faith has also included and involved many
other elements which appear, when analysed out, in the domains of the
other faculties; then the account which each separate faculty can give
of the whole act, can never be more than partial. Its evidence must be
incomplete. If the central self has gathered its momentum from many
channels, it is obvious that the amount contributed by any one channel
will be unable to justify the force exerted, or to explain the event
that followed. If we track home each faculty employed to this central
spring of energy, we shall see that each points to the result,
contributes to it, suggests it; but the result will always be more
than the evidence, so collected, can warrant.
This limitation, which we may allow about other faculties, is apt to
become a stumbling-block when we apply it to the high gift of reason.
Reason, somehow, seems to us to rise into some supreme and independent
throne; it reviews the other faculties; and is, therefore, free from
their limitations. We fear to hint that it has any lord over it. How
can we assume such a lordship without dubbing ourselves irrational
obscurantists, who in folly try to stamp out the light?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account