nov alin Uul RHUWicujo vi uvu, Nuv vus limits of our own connection with Him. If we consider how that connection is to be discovered, it is evident that it could be but very imperfectly investigated by man from observation of only his own side of the connection, and that we have to be informed of it. Any separate investigation of it we should have to attempt by a consideration of the peculiarities of our own being of which we are conscious; there being undoubtedly A 25. Peace of heart-faiths of solitaries-conventual or desolate life, 26. Value of the subjective in defence of unbelief-how far a man is not accountable for his belief, 27. Human subjective ignored by Hume and Comte, 28. The subjective plea a foretold phenomenon of religious history, 19. Agreement with preceding conclusions as to the nature of faith, 20. Spiritual death--Adam's death "in the day that he ate" of the Apparent present failure of the true faith a uniform historical phe- 299 BELIEF-WHAT IS IT? OR, THE NATURE OF FAITH. CHAPTER I. THE LIMITS OF MAN'S RELIGIOUS FAITH. LUKE iii. 38.-Adam was the son of God. relation to God. 1. MAN'S religious faith, whatever that may be found pre- The thoughts cisely to mean, is the faith belonging to his particular connec- of man's tion with God. Cicero's philosophical meaning of religion (De Nat. Deor.'), that it is man's union to God (religo) as peculiarly separatively His (relego), agrees entirely with the revealed meaning. The subject of religious faith becomes, accordingly, not all our knowledge of God, but our knowledge within the limits of our own connection with Him. If we consider how that connection is to be discovered, it is evident that it could be but very imperfectly investigated by man from observation of only his own side of the connection, and that we have to be informed of it. Any separate investigation of it we should have to attempt by a consideration of the peculiarities of our own being of which we are conscious; there being undoubtedly a consciousness common to mankind of a certain range of moral and emotional qualities-what is confidently and uni A Relation unique. versally referred to as "human nature." This consciousness becomes, according to its extent, a concomitant test of the correctness of revealed information as to the combined subject of the nature of God and the connection we can have with Him; and, as we shall afterwards see, it always co-operates in the forming of any individual man's religious faith. In the mean time we have to keep in mind that, however discovered, the particular connection limits the subject of connectional or religious faith. 2. Now our revealed information is, that man's connection with God is unique in the history of being. We are instructed that man was formed a designed exception to all other creatures. His appearance among living things was heralded by the signal announcement that the Creator had special thoughts with reference to him. "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen. i. 26). The race was thus created exceptional, ruling over all visible earthly life; and though made "a little lower than the angels," yet "crowned" -distinguished exceptionally-" with glory and honour" (Ps. viii. 5). They were to be God's children as well as His creatures, as the genealogist quoted by Luke expresses it, recording "Adam was the son of God" (Luke iii. 38). In the changed position of his self-seeking departure from God, man's connection with Him was still declared to be exceptional. God spared not the other creatures who sinned, "the angels which kept not their first estate," but He spared mankind (Jude 6). And the love which God bears to the human race is exceptional, even when compared with that shown to His sinless creatures. This truth, so strongly illustrative of man's peculiar position, appears in the revealed fact that "the angels desire to look into the things" which God's love has moved Him to do for man (1 Pet. i. 12). As if they understood not such love, they desire to comprehend it. As it "passeth the knowledge" of our race, it is exceptional even in their great knowledge of God's goodness, and in their perfectly blessed experience of it. 3. What limits, then, are set to the contemplations of man's Faith religious faith by the exceptional character of his relationship not investiinstructed, to God? Evidently if that relationship is one that needed to gated. be revealed, because it could not be investigated, his religious thoughts must be characteristically, though it may not be exclusively, instructed thoughts. He has to deal fundamentally with knowledge communicated by God, not with opinions investigated by man. The function of his reason must be, not to theorise concerning God, and so construct a system of thoughts which he will entertain of Him, but to contemplate a plainly-revealed being. But within his range of communicated knowledge man's faith is farther limited. He is not to concern himself equally with all knowledge of God that is open to him, but as his peculiar business to think upon the things which God has told him respecting his own connection with Him. And farther, his contemplation of that especially important part of communicated truth will take its form from the manner in which the truth has been communicated. finds the particular manner of revelation adopted by God to be essentially not the announcement of a systematic religion, but a historical detail of His manifestations of affection, past and future, towards man. His faith will therefore be essentially an emotional contemplation of that history. He truth. 4. Glimpses are opened in some profound passages of Paul's Glimpses writings of a wide connection of all creation with the human of outside race, in which all earthly things, because of man's present state, are "subject to vanity"—failure, inoperativeness, unsuccess—and are destined to, and are now universally yearning after and waiting for, deliverance from this "pain" when man's restitution shall be finished (Rom. viii. 20, 21); his restitution being associated in promise with a wider perfecting and restored union of all created things, expressed by the phrase that “all things, both things in heaven and things on earth," shall be "gathered together in one" in Christ when man's inheritance is attained (Eph. i. 10, 11). The light thus let in upon the universal system, of which man is represented by it much as a central part, exhibits the magnificence of that system—indefinitely, however, like the apocalyptic visions of the glorious |