Have we such a faith as this? If not how can we obtain it? This latter question will be best answered by a close adherence to the text. We must say a few words respecting the faith itself, and also respecting Christ, who is the object of it. What is faith? A common answer is that faith is an act of intellectual submission to the teachings of another--that it is in matters of the mind what blind and unquestioning obedience is in matters of practice. This account of faith was early imposed by the Papal Church, and it is not repudiated even now by some evangelical churches. The root of all doctrines of sacramental efficacy is the renunciation of private judgment in matters of faith. No wonder that with such a definition of faith Christianity should be held in derision, and regarded as the special privilege of the young, the immature, the aged, and all whose weaknesses and disappointments leave them no other consolation and no other resource! This is not the teaching of Scripture. Of course in faith there is submission, for there are many things to be believed which we cannot understand. Nevertheless, faith is much more than submission, and there is not a case of faith in the whole Word of God which presents to us the believing life as a thing of mere blind credulity. Was it so with Abraham, with Job, with David, with Paul, or with any of the others? Even in relation to the dark things, faith rests upon convictions which make submission the only rational, the only possible attitude of the mind. According to Scripture, faith is the soul laying hold of the invisible God--laying hold of Christ as His Son and our Saviour. There is no abdication of any one of the powers of the soul. In believing, the soul is entire with its reason, its thought, its love, and all its spiritual energies. Nor is there any weakness. When a man is hesitating between surrender to the voice of conscience, and surrender to the voice of passion, he performs an act of faith if he yields to the voice of conscience, for he is ruled by the invisible; yet the last thing we dare say of such a man would be that he is weak. Rightly considered, every such act is a triumph of the soul. The conscientious man is the representative of the greatest moral strength we know. Imagine a soul with all its life under the constant thought of God and of Christ. Surely such an order of life as his affords scope enough for intellectual strength and for moral heroism.