What Is Faith?

66

What is faith? In one great essential aspect of itand I grant that it is a many-sided thing, and that the atonement may have many sides, but the human side is very crisp and sharp and clear, and this thing called faith in one great essential aspect of it is-what? It is a simple, literal bowing of the soul in abject obedience. That is why you are so long in coming to it. What does faith mean? It is bowing and bending, and saying in the depth of your heart: Yes; amen." Have you said that? You are not saved until you have. You and I and every soul of us standing before the Cross of Christ and the Passover Lamb who hangs thereon must say, with our whole heart bowing in the simplicity of the meek obedience of faith: "For me--yes." And, again, it comes out, contrariwise, that the very essence of unbelief now is and the great day will bring that out in the gleaming lightnings that fly round about the judgmentseat-the essence of unbelief is not a want of understanding, but a want of obedience. There is a moral taint in unbelief. I say bluntly I believe that, at bottom. unbelief is a stupidity intellectually and a crime morally. It comes not from the bigness of intellect, but from an intellect warped and twisted and stunted and biased from the very beginning.

If you

Oh, for the obedience of faith, my brethren! are not a believer, I know that I may be rude and boisterous, and I may be setting you against me. Well, furgive me! I do not mean that; but I do want to do mv best to bring down your soul-to bring down heady and

high-minded thoughts to the obedience of Christ. Oh, that we may be brought down to simple faith and childlike trust! There is no salvation otherwise. Simply

obey.--MCNEill.

The Character of Faith.

Faith is common, natural, reasonable, sublime. You put it to its highest power, its loftiest use, when it is turned to trust God in the word that He has spoken and in the love that He has displayed on Calvary.-MCNEILL.

The Centurion's Faith.

Suddenly one day, when you are going along and feeling yourself so lonely in the midst of thousands, there falls upon your ear a voice-some broad Scotch or (what to me is both unspellable and unpronounceable) Welsh— something of home, and fatherland, and motherland. At once your whole face lights up, and bells begin to ring in your soul, and you nearly fling your arms around that man's neck, because his tones and his words brought to you thoughts and visions of home. Well, Christ knows. all that. O men and women! What a lonely world this must have been to the holy Son of God! How desolate! No wonder that sometimes, even after a hard day's work, He refused, maybe, to stay with people, and climbed away up some lonely mountain side to get as near home and God and holiness as possible, and as far out of the sin, strangeness and unfriendliness. And what happened to Him was, but in far greater measure, just what I have tried to describe as happening to yourself in this strange,

lonely and unfriendly world. When that centurion spoke those words of splendid faith it was as if the angel Gabriel stood at His side. It was as if a door opened in Heaven, and a burst of Heaven's sunlight flooded Him, and a gust of Heaven's matchless music filled His sad and lonely soul. He heard the language and tone of Heaven. Not Gabriel at the throne could have paid a more splendid tribute to the essential Godhead and divinity of that Man of Nazareth than did the centurion of Rome It was grand. And the Son of God could not keep back His glad surprise. "I tell you," said Christ, "I have not found so great faith-no, not in Israel."-McNeill.

Faith and Conceit.

If we had more faith we should have less conceit of ourselves, and we should be grander, bigger, broaderbrowed and warmer-hearted men, both for God and our fellows, than unfortunately we are. A shriveling, narrowing, withering thing is unbelief. I know that it is

mightily praised out yonder in the world. As I said here in our evangelistic meetings more than once, unbelief is mightily praised in excellent prose, and still more excellent poetry; but it never looks well in the Bible. It always looks here to be a blear-eyed, dull, stupid kind of thing; and faith in God always looks grand-something more than mortal and more than human. And it is the same still. Do not blush, dear friend, for the sixth of Joshua. If you blush be this your shame, that this faith in God, this sublime faith of these men of old, seems to be so far beyond you. Ah, those were big men. Little men could not have done this. I can imagine a small