of thinking attempted to be described above. Its desirous thoughts are chiefly spontaneous, coming in the night-watches or day-dreams, not needing to be summoned up, coming themselves in comforting, correcting, or sustaining influence in every hour of need. One man cannot describe this merely earthly belief of the heart as another will feel it. It is indefinable. It cannot be exhaustively described. It can only be illustrated. The child who can remember having no separate life from his guiding parent-the wife who sits in the light of her husband's countenance-the brother full of his brother-the fearlessly fond and clinging sister-the assimilating disciple -the soldier become veteran under a successful leader-the friend sticking closer than a brother-the prostrate invalid growing into life upon the physician's looks and tones-the recovered prodigal having his comfort and courage suspended on every trifling word or indication of restored affection,these, themselves experienced in that life of the soul which is characteristically relative, a life in another lived by faith, can understand each a part, their own rich part, of faith's emotional thinking, but none of them can as fully understand any of the others' experience whereby human life illustrates the life divine. And all these human lives of faith combined could but show a portion, though a large one, of the positions of faith in Jesus-the life lived in the Son of God by the sheep that know His voice, the sick whom He healeth, the returning ungodly for whom, when they were without strength, He came to die, the wearied and heavy-laden drawn to His rest, the poor in spirit rich in Him, the pure in heart seeing Him, the hungering after righteousness fed in Him, the suffering for His sake, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers—who all live their peculiar allotted lives by the faith of Him who loved them and gave Himself for them. "believed in." 14. If we seek for a general type of faith—a human experi- First use of ence that comprehends feelings like the essential feeling of religious faith, which is "peace with God"—we have appropriately enough to go back to the earliest description God's Word gives of religious faith-that of Abraham, the "friend of God," "the father of all them that believe." That type is a hu Fundamental idea of Conscious ness of union. man faith, the practice of which all may observe. Of Abrahamn the phrase is first used, he "believed in the Lord" (Gen. xv. 6). The Hebrew word translated "believed in," constructed then to express for the first time, for man's understanding, that state of the heart's life called faith, means that the patriarch was "supported," "sustained as a child is in conscious repose, felt safety, in its mother's arms." It is this peace that they who are justified by faith now have with God (Rom. v. 1). 15. Ideas akin to that original first-chosen representation faith- of the condition of faith-thoughts of secure, happy, upholding union—are what gather about our notion of faith as we try to realise it in the states of mind of many of the recorded saints. Trust, accordingly, represents approximately many of the comforts of faith; but the feeling of union is the essential idea-union with a person, like the unions faith makes in the families of men, spoken of as making one flesh or one heart. It is union of the human being to God; varying from such as that of Samson or Jephthah, which suggests something little above mere covenant union, formal and unassimilating, up through every capable extent of affectional connection whose right progress is unto oneness of nature, a becoming "one spirit with the Lord"-one in clinging, growing into one in kind. It is this kind of union, required and promised by the Lord in the last teaching of His bodily ministry (John xiv.-xvii.),· that we realise in the histories of riper faith. Its employments and affections are exactly those of faith's wholly human personal unions. We see human beings with conscious personal needs unknown to any other "resting in the Lord, waiting patiently for Him," "thirsting for Him," "desiring the light of His countenance," their "heart in perfect peace stayed on Him," "looking unto Him, their only portion on earth, all their desire in heaven," "continually with Him, held by His hand," "abiding in Him, and His words abiding in them," "living not themselves, but Christ living in them.' Reverie istic of 16. The form of their thinking of faith is, that they live in character- reveries of sweet or bitter thoughts upon the things of Christ, -cherished memories of timeous comforts,-fond forelookings, -hiding at times from all eyes, because none could perfectly faith's thinking. sympatise with it, their own peculiar gladness or gratefulness or comforted repentance-" a life" of their own "hidden with Him," of which "they speak to themselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in their hearts unto Him" (Ephes. v. 19). The musical expression of faith's thoughts, recognised in these words of Paul, is one of the expansions of Scriptural wisdom beyond mankind's systematic logical wisdom. Human nature also is, in this matter, much wiser than human reasoning. The belief of the heart, belonging to all the dearest human affections, is far oftener sung than said—sung by the heart to itself in the busy solitary times of the day, in many sweet musings and soliloquies — and in the night - watches, when awaking, it delights itself with its cherished thoughts, "filled with them as with marrow and with fatness." The songs of faith of the Hebrew Church were, by their poetical structure, a natural instrument for this recognised propensity of the human heart towards reverie in its indulgence of faith. In their repeating manner the psalmists and those whom they guided in faith seemed to dwell on the cherished thought, as if their heart were singing the glad truth again to itself, loving to taste anew the good word of faith, rolling it as a sweet morsel under its tongue; and the reverie-like chant gave congruous expression to their musing gladness. The prophets-from instruction or their own feeling, it matters not which to our present view-set their richest revealings before the onward-looking Church in this same peculiar poetry of the human heart.* and occa states of 17. The thinking which makes up the heart-life of a believer Normal * The term "faith," applied to the confidence manifested by persons antici- sional pating certain discoveries in earthly knowledge, or the coming of particular faith's social or political changes, comes quite within the natural description now thinking. given of religious faith. It is a faith that arises in the same way, by rational conviction being dwelt upon until it comes to possess the mind as a life-ruling thought. The confidence which sustained Columbus on his voyage of discovery, and the forecast, call it sagacity or otherwise, with which anticipators of important changes in society of a different kind have prepared for them, have both arisen from prolonged contemplation of their reasons for the anticipation, as religious faith arises from the same rational contemplation of the different kinds of grounds it has for its realising of things only equally unseen. It is in its characteristic element of spiritual and eternal union with the personal kindred object of its regard that religious faith differs from the other. A believer's knowledge of his own believing. in God is this mass of emotional feelings of nearness to Him and richness in Him, this mass of diversified unarranged emotions, unarranged as is the happiness of a life of human union of affection. Such is the normal state of faith's thinking. Other moved or moving thinking, producing occasional effort, and temporary, though for the time ruling, interest, when faith arises to some special working of love, or purifying of the heart, or overcoming of the world, marks to observation the passing of time in the believer's life; and such single thoughts, having each an individuality of greater or less excitement, impress themselves upon overly observers as if they were all the materials of his life of faith. These, however, in a ripe faith are but like casually awakened strings in a harp, occasional outcomings of one or another part of the large full harmony that lies therein. All the harp's tones also wake up, like those of the heart, to sweet living sound, though quiet and much unnoticed, when the strong touch has made one pronounce itself aloud. 18. The fact that two conditions belong to religious faithone normal, in which a multitude of thoughts are harmoniously bringing the comforts of God to the soul; the other occasional, when the spirit is turned to some special emotionis of consequence in the question of a believer's knowledge of the history of his own believing. A man may be able to assign dates to his strongly-interested, excited, intellectual dealing with particular doctrines, particular facts of faith, or moral efforts of faith; but it is only such strongly individualised thinkings that he can thus set in chronological order. Much less able, if able at all, a ripe believer may be to set before himself what time he came habitually to have fond musings on the things of Christ, sweet thoughts coming of themselves at any and all times into his mind concerning the things that have come round about his heart and possessed it -he can only tell that the habit has come. It is a thing of growth almost wholly, this life-filling part of faith. Wiseness unto everlasting life implies not merely knowledge of the holy Scriptures, but a past process of assimilation of that knowledge, through familiarity of the heart and mind, intercourse of all the soul's sensibilities, with the innumerable thoughts of our religious condition therein taught us. That familiar feeling, recognising, recalling, and applying of revealed truth, comes by degrees, as different parts of revealed truth come here a little and there a little to possess the soul after its possessing them, become subjective as well as objective. New converts, who have been turned from conscious, stubborn, or violent departure from God to deep impressions, have chiefly some few strong feelings as their religious experience. They are seldom, like older believers, "wise" in the sense of having easy command, natural hold, of the many-formed truths of religion, bringing out of its treasures, to guide every hour of changing circumstances, things new and old. of faith to its manner of 19. The peculiar nature and form of the subject given to The subject religious faith was pointed out in Chapter II.; that it is not suited all theological truth, systematically arranged in doctrines, but the history of divine love which surrounds the existence of thinking. man-the truth "that God so loved the world," as it is presented to us in countless forms of facts and promises and suggestive names, all giving assurance of His love, but taking all manner of ways of manifesting it. This matter and form of what faith is to think upon is fitted most entirely to the character of human faith, as we have now tried to describe it from the experience of human relationships and the language of recorded believers in God's love-that is, a habitual emotional thinking on the things and persons believed in. The mass of proof which God gives us of His love is altogether beyond our power to exhaust by classifying into propositions. It is indescribable. We are to go on to know its breadth and length, and depth and height, feeling it a thing which passeth knowledge. It is fitted only for our rejoicing thoughts to dwell in as in a habitation, to enjoy as a portion such as the world cannot give nor take away—to be a fulness of joy in which every endlessly differing need and wish can find its own, and all can be perfected in happiness, while none knows the things that another's spirit is fulfilled with. The believer in all which God has told and shown us of His saving love from the beginning, realising things and beings and events unseen, lives and moves and has his being in an atmosphere of important |