The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke
Sermons
The heroism that is in our conclusions is something tremendous, and
we talk about all these matters as tho we were perfectly at home
with and had intellectually penetrated to the heart of them. It is
interesting, and not only interesting but quite suggestive, the
very slight degree to which ordinarily our confidence is discouraged
by the small amount of distinct fact that we are able to adduce in
justification of our confidence; how brave the steps are that we
take upon ground that has never been accurately explored and of
which, therefore, only the roughest outline map has been prepared.
But at the same time how likely we are to find our way through and
arrive safely at the terminal.
Such illustrations are sufficient to indicate that this faculty
that we have of believing where we are not able perfectly to see
is a respectable faculty, a faculty that we are all showing our
respect for by the constancy with which we make use of it in all our
ordinary modes of thought and usual methods of action.
So that when we talk about religious faith--faith in religious
things, and in events of Christian history, we are dealing with an
inner impulse that we depend upon every day, the only difference
being a difference as to the field in which that impulse works; even
as celestial gravity is the same as terrestrial gravity, only in the
one case working among the stars, and in the other operating down
here on the ground.
Now this faculty that in common affairs we call belief and in
religious ones faith, is quite a distinct thing from a disposition
to walk in the dark when there is no light. Faith is not credulity.
A fool can be credulous and certainly will be, but faith requires
for its rooting and growth soil that is deep and strong. The men
large enough to be great thinkers and immense workers were they whom
the writer of the Hebrew letter describes as prophets of faith.
There is a dignity and authority about the faith faculty poorly
appreciated by people who give it a degraded position in the scale
of human powers: the faculty of finding light enough to walk by when
the light is only a twilight with no distinct sunbeams in reach to
make the path brilliant.
If faith were simply a process of assumption, a matter of easily
and perhaps shiftlessly taking things for granted, then the smaller
a man's soul the greater would be the likelihood of the abundance
of his faith. But that is not the case. The men of which Scripture
history especially predicates faith are the intellectual and moral
giants of history, the men who were virile and strongly chivalrous
enough to make long excursions into the region of truth and to
move out in a large and telling way upon the field of action.
Credulousness will grow and blossom with its roots hidden only
in dry sand, but it takes something quite different from a human
sand-lot to propagate the sort of quality and the modes of thought
and activity celebrated in the eleventh of Hebrews.
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