"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen." So the Revisers translate the first verse. They place in their margin, as an alternative, a rendering which makes faith to be "the giving substance to things hoped for, the test of things not seen." I presume to think that the margin is preferable as a representation of the first clause in the Greek, and the text as a representation of the second. So I would render (with the one further variation, in view of the Greek, that I dispense with the definite article): "Now faith is a giving of substance to things hoped for, a demonstration of things not seen." And we may paraphrase this rendering somewhat thus: "Faith is that by which the hoped-for becomes to us as if visible and tangible, and by which the unseen is taken and treated as proven in its verity."[L] [L] A friend has pointed out to me that in the recently discovered papyri, which, although a relatively small part of them only has been read as yet, have thrown much deeply interesting light on the character and vocabulary of Greek as used by the New Testament writers, the word [Greek: hypostasis] is found with the meaning of "title-deeds." On the hypothesis of such a meaning here (we can only speak with reserve), we may paraphrase: "Faith enables us to treat things hoped for as a property of which we hold the deeds." In the light of what we have recalled regarding the position of the first readers of the words, we have only to render them thus to see their perfect appropriateness, their adjustment to an "exceeding need." The Gospel led its disciple supremely and ultimately always towards the hoped-for and the unseen. True, it had a reference of untold value and power to the seen and present. There was then, as there is in our day, nothing like the Gospel to transfigure character, on the spot, here and now, and thus to transfigure the scene and the persons around the man, before his eyes, within reach of his hands, in the whole intercourse of his life, by giving them all a new and wonderful yet most practical importance through the Lord's relation to them and to him. But it does this always and inevitably in the power and in the light of facts which are out of sight now, and of prospects essentially bound up with "the life of the world to come." The most diligent and sensible worker in Christian philanthropy, _if he is fully Christian_ in his idea and action, does what he does so well for the relief of the oppressed, or for the civilization of the degraded, because at the heart of his useful life he spiritually knows "Him that is invisible," and is animated by the thought that he works for beings capable, after this life's discipline, of "enjoying Him fully for ever." He labours for man, man on earth, because he loves God in heaven, and because he believes that God made man and redeemed man for an immortality to which time is only the short while all-important avenue. In the calmest and most normal