In Scripture two kinds of faith in the personal God are clearly
indicated. On the one side stand verses such as this: "Thou believest
that God is one; thou doest well; the demons also believe and shudder"
(James 2:19). On the other, one finds through both the Testaments
witness and appeal for a kind of faith that plainly differs from the
first: "O my God, in thee have I trusted" (Psalm 25:2). It is not
difficult to guess the terms in which many would describe this
difference. In the first, so the familiar explanation runs, we are
dealing with the _mind's_ faith in God; the man's intellect
assents to the belief that God is and that He is one. In the second we
are dealing with the _heart's_ faith in God; the whole man is
here involved in an adoring trust that finds in reliance upon God
life's stimulus and joy.
This distinction between the faith of the intellect and of the heart
is valid, but it does not go to the pith of the truth. When a
professor in the class-room, discussing conflicting theories of life's
origin, concludes that theism is the reasonable interpretation of the
universe, the listener understands that the lecturer believes in God's
existence. But if the professor could be followed home and overheard
in a private prayer, like Fénelon's: "Lord, I know not what I ought to
ask of Thee; Thou only knowest what I need; Thou lovest me better than
I know how to love myself. O Father! give to Thy child that which he
himself knows not how to ask," something incalculably more than the
classroom talk disclosed would be revealed about the meaning of the
teacher's faith. And as the classroom lecture and the private prayer
stand so contrasted, the gist of the difference is plain. In the one,
faith was directed toward a _theory_; in the other faith laid hold
upon a _Person_. That the intellect was more involved in the first and
the emotions in the second is incidental to the main matter, that _two
differing objects were in view_. Toward these two objects we
continually are exercising faith--_ideas and people, propositions and
persons_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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