For faith is moved by but one solitary passion--the hope of cleaving, closer and ever closer, to the being of God. It is, itself, nothing but this act of personal adherence, of personal cohesion; and all else is, for it, material that can be subdued to this single service. Each bettering of knowledge intensifies the possibilities of this cohesion; and, for that, it is welcomed. It opens out fresh aspects of the good Father: it uncovers new treasures of His wisdom: therefore, for faith, it is an ever-mounting ladder, by which it draws nearer and nearer, spirit to spirit, heart to heart. No idle or indifferent matter this; and right knowledge, therefore, is for faith, a serious and pressing need. And, moreover, faith is pledged to use all possible guidance and direction in making its great act of self-surrender to God. And it is the peculiar office of reason, and of the rational conscience, to guard it from any distorted and unworthy venture. Faith has to make its leap; but to make it exactly in that direction, and in no other, where reason points the way. It is bound therefore to use all its intelligent resources: it may not fall below the level of its highest reason without the risk of sinking to a superstition. This is the radical difference between what we here claim, and that which a superstition demands of us. A superstition asks faith to shut its eyes. We ask it to open them as wide as it can. We demand this of it as a positive duty. It is bound, as an act of the whole man, to use every conceivable means and security which knowledge can bring it. For so alone can it secure itself against the hazards which encompass its adventure. It cannot afford to enter on that venturous committal of itself less equipped and instructed than it was open to it to be. It must put all to use that can better its offer of itself to God. It is, in this seriousness, that faith is apt to embrace so fast the dominant scientific or philosophical creed. It has found, through this creed, a new and thrilling insight into God's mind, and it fastens on this precious gift; and dwells delightedly on it, and spends itself in absorbing the peculiar truths which this particular way of thinking brings to the front. So that, at last, when the smash comes, when the floods break in, when the accumulation of new facts outside the old lines necessitates a total reconstruction of the intellectual fabric, faith seems to have gone under with the ruined scheme to which it had attached itself so firmly.