Thinking on facts.

Impression, appre

ciation, recogni

tion.

believe not;" and of the wayside hearers' failing to attain the faith that cometh by hearing (Mat. xiii. 19). In our Lord's language "little faith" meant want of observation (Mat. xvi. 9), and want of consideration (Mat. viii. 26).

13. That the intellectual process of the believer's acquiring faith is his own thinking upon facts of God's love, universal, national, or personal, appears universally in the Psalms, the fullest Scriptural collection of examples of the practice of faith, and in Paul's chosen illustrations of faith in Heb. xi. The "faith of God's elect" (Titus i. 1), the "faith delivered to the saints" (Jude 3-7), the faith preached by Stephen to the Jewish court (Acts vii.), and by Paul to the synagogues and his Greek audiences, was essentially bodies of definite facts.

14. The proper result of contemplating the things of Godviz., impression, appreciation of their character and importance, and recognition of their affinity to man's conscious condition —is the meaning of faith widely in the Scriptures, Gen. xlv. 26; Isa. liii. 1-3; 2 Kings xvii. 14; Jonah iii. 5; Luke v. 19; John ii. 11, iii. 18, iv. 50, v. 46, vii. 48, viii. 24, 32, xi. 45; 2 Tim. ii. 13. Unseeing eyes, unhearing ears, hearts that could not be impressed, was the prophesied unbelief of the Jews (Mat. xiii. 14), and that condemned in heathens (Rom. i. 20). The unbelief of Aaron and Moses at the rock (Num. xx. 12) was failure to appreciate the honour due to Jehovah in their action. The unbelief of the Lord's brethren (John vii. 5) and of the Pharisees (v. 38-47) was not recognising His divine character; the cause in the Pharisees being that their minds did not value His Father's praise, but were engrossed by desire for honour from man. Nicodemus's failure in faith was failure to recognise Jesus' description of the motions of the Spirit, which He called earthly things, rudimentary matters of spiritual perception. Extensively in John's writings faith includes recognition of the congruity of the things revealed with man's conscious condition. The Psalms largely illustrate the same condition of faith. They are rich in the language of affinity, attraction, appropriation. "My God"-"my portion "-"my soul thirsteth for Thee"-" in

the multitude of my thoughts within me Thy comforts delight my soul." The necessity of subjective preparation to recognise divine truth is systematically taught in the New Testament— by our Lord, John iii. 19, 20;-by Paul, requiring believers to be "rooted and grounded in love" in order to study successfully God's love, the subject of faith (Eph. iii. 17), and associating real “unfeigned faith" with a "pure heart and a good conscience" (1 Tim. i. 5); and assigning as the reason of the Jews' failure to "profit by hearing the word of God," that they were not "mixed with those that hear it," i.e., not in spiritual affinity with the whole body of the children of God, an exact description of the Jews' proud, conceited separatism, their national sin and stumbling-block (Heb. iv. 2);—by James (ii. 22), describing Abraham's faith as being perfected, exercised, disciplined to perfectness, by his faithfulness, "his works." Compare 2 Thess. ii. 10 and Rom. i. 17-21 for spiritual affinity associated with belief and unbelief.

with the

15. The intercourse of the heart implied in this spiritual Thinking attraction to the matters of faith's intellectual contemplation heart. -the possession of the thinker's heart by these, filling it with consciousness that comes in emotional reveries, accesses of intense thought, musings not always conscious, so making a hidden life within the life which is visible to others, a life only sometimes impressing its existence upon observers—appears very much in the Psalms; e.g., Ps. xxiii., xxiv., xxx., xlii., li., xxxiv. 8, lxxiii. 23-28, cxii. 1, 4, 7. Isaiah describes richly this life of the heart in God in his twenty-sixth chapter. In apostolic descriptions believing "fills the believer with peace and joy" (Rom. xv. 13). It is a reasoning of the heart (Rom. x. 10), an admiring contemplation (2 Thess. i. 10), making riches of inward enjoyment (2 Cor. iv. 6-15, James ii. 5), in which the heart "sings to itself of its happiness, and makes melody to the Lord" (Eph. v. 19).

an act, but

16. The idea inseparable from faith's being a thinking of Faith not the heart upon the things of God-that it is characteristically a state of not an act, but a state of the believer's spirit-is included in spirit; faith's expressions in a great mass of cases throughout the Psalms, and in the subjective notices of it in the New Testa

dealing with definite thoughts and inde

ment; e.g., 1 John iii. 24; 2 Cor. v. 5-8. The key-note of
Christian exhortation to faith is, "Abide in Me, and I in
you: "if a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch,
and is withered" (John xv. 4-6). It is called the "work" of
God (John vi. 29), the business God gives to man's life, man's
occupation in serving Him, the habit of all religious life—“we
walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor. v. 7). It is an essentially
self-developing thing, habitual thoughts going out into virtue,
and that into inquiry, &c. (2 Pet. i. 5-9). It is a "patient work
(Jas. i. 3), a process of overcoming "the world" (2 John v. 4),
an acquisition of which good men are "full," as were Stephen
and Barnabas; and men fail in from having "no root in
themselves" (Matt. xiii. 21); a thing in which they must be
“settled,” “established,” not “going back” (Heb. x. 38, 39).
The faith of the Thessalonians and the Romans, which became
famed abroad among the churches, must have been a condition
abiding enough to be well recognised.

17. That the condition of believing - the "thinking" of faith-deals with all manner of definite remembrances and anticipations, and also with an indefinite mass of thoughts finite trust. producing a state of peace properly called "trust" in God (Isa. xvi. 3), is abundantly verified in Scripture. Hebrews xi. is a catalogue of cases of faith having specific objects. This was the faith generally required by Jesus from the receivers of His miraculous healings. Christian faith has to contemplate a definite prospect of resurrection, and heavenly life, and sanctifying help from God fitted to individual needs. Indefinite trust, for felt or foreseen occasions of need, placed in a definitely realised Person, the Lord Jehovah their strength and song, and ever becoming their salvation, was the common complexion of the Old Testament saints' language of faith; Ps. xxvii. 13, xxxvii. 5, xl. 4, lxxi. 5, cxli. 8; Isa. xii. 2; Dan. vi. 23; Hab. iii. 17-19. It was such faith as Jesus, in John xiv. 1, makes faith in Him now to be-which is to be trust in a definite forgiveness (Gal. iii. 22), and trust for all special supplications (John xiv. 13), but also for all watchful care (John xiv. 18; 2 Tim. i. 12; 1 Pet. iv. 19), beyond what the truster can ask or is able to think of definitely (Eph. iii. 20).

in matter

18. Diversity in attainment, capacity, and matter of most Diversity frequent contemplation, which should appear in the thinking and manner of faith since it comprehends special trusts, and an indefinite of thought. state of peace and joy in God, nurtured by endlessly different exercises, is amply recognised in Scripture language; e. g., Paul's picture of the human and divine education of faith (Eph. iii. 16-19), his "helping" of the Corinthians' faith (2 Cor. i. 24, x. 15), his language about the "weak in faith" (Rom. xiv. 1) contrasted with those of comprehensive faith (Rom. xiv. 22 and 1 Tim. iv. 3), about the "strong in faith," the "steadfast," the "established" in faith, the "proportion of faith" possessed by prophesiers or teachers (Rom. xii. 6). Diversity of ruling thought is the connecting link of Heb. xi., and of many trusts, all called by the one name of faith, which our Lord required or recognised in the objects of His miracles. The spiritual "gift" of faith is classed among gifts whose prominent characteristic is diversity (1 Cor. xii. 9).

19. The divine operation in the production of faith is doc- Divine operation. trinally taught in, e.g., 2 Thess. i. 11 and ii. 17, contra ii. 11; in the rich description in Eph. i. 17, ii. 10; a help corresponding to man's progress of acquired capacity-“ from faith to faith" (Rom. i. 17). It is necessarily to be inferred from the universal connection of faith with the "Word of God," its coming by " hearing the Word of God (Rom. x. 17), the "word dwelling richly" in the believer (Col. iii. 16), “incorruptible seed" of which he is "born again" (1 Pet. i. 23), "working effectually in them that believe" (1 Thess. ii. 13); from the purpose of "the law" (Gal. iii. 23), and from our Lord's requirements as to His own "words" (John xv. 7, xiv. 26, xvii. 8, &c.) The Psalms largely illustrate this feature of the practice of faith, the experience of divine co-operation. The common subject of the longest of them is the believer's habit of seeking faith by the Word of God, and God teaching it to man's spirit.

connection.

20. The beginning and the end of the education of faith, Conscious what may be in general terms called a consciousness of connection with God—a connection of our being and our life of soul with God, apprehended through all kinds of welcome and

M

unwelcome consciousness-is an idea declared in much of the most authoritative-i.e., the directly divine-language of the Scriptures respecting faith, and is the element which gives a uniting meaning, a common character, to all cases of faith, whether destructive or productive of peace, as the believing of devils (James ii. 19), the terrors of guilty men (Rev. vi. 16), and the comfort of habitual trust (Ps. lxxiii. 23). The conscious connection is illustrated in all diversities up to spiritual union. In unwelcome faith, the feeling of connection with the dreaded object was exemplified by Pharaoh and the hostile nations of Canaan. A connection of direct help, or infused power for a special purpose, is the faith we must recognise Samson and Jephthah to have been conscious of. The power of working miracles (Matt. xvii. 20, xxi. 21) comprehended a similar manner of faith, sometimes but not always associated with a higher spiritual condition of heart (1 Cor. xiii. 2). Associated with a higher moral subjective, faith exhibits the consciousness of a union of sympathy in such cases as Mark v. 36, Matt. ix. 21. The fact of such a connection of sympathetic dependence on the one side and support on the other is the truth taught by the metaphors of the vine and its branches, the olive and its ingrafted bough, the body fitly framed making increase together, the living stones of the building of which Christ is the chief corner-stone. The consciousness of such a union is the lesson contained in the metaphors of human relationship, original and adopted, and especially in the metaphor of the sucking child (1 Pet. ii. 2). The believer's consciousness of such a sympathetic union with the head and the body of Christ is necessary to make intelligible our Lord's principal discourse on His people's connection with Him (John xiv.), which, however, it fills with rich and appreciated meaning. It is the interpreting idea required by John's first epistle; by all the didactic or illustrative language respecting Christ in the believer with which Paul's writings abound-e. g., 2 Cor. xiii. 5 and Col. ii. 6-10; and by all the language of reciprocity which distinguishes the Scriptures' manner of speaking of the believer's connection with God. The fact that the word for "faith" has also the import of "faithfulness," is illustrative of