any part of the body, and the perception of what is touched, and even the consciousness of that particular contact, will not continue for any time individualised, even though the mind feel after it seeking to regain the perception, and the quiescence will have to be broken by some motion of the body altering the pressure of the touch. Yet doubtless that particular touch becomes unfelt merely through its becoming a normal condition -part of what makes the body's general rest at the time. And the breaking of that particular unconsciousness of contact will bring out into felt life not that touch alone, but general bodily consciousness. faith pro emotional. So far as to the relatively unconscious condition of faith. 8. When the thinking of faith becomes distinctly, promi- Conscious nently conscious, not quiescent but active-when it individu- minently alises any particular subject of religious thought—the characteristic attribute of all faith, quiescent or active, becomes also prominent viz., emotion. For the thinking of faith is a thinking of facts which make human happiness, and the contemplation of which excites the pleasures or the pains of that peculiar happiness. Its subject is the facts and assurances which show to mankind generally, or to any individual child of God, that "God so loved the world." Man's thoughts thereon, besides, turned to whatever points of our revealed knowledge of God, must have that particular character which belongs to the thoughts of family relationship; and these are never purely intellectual, but the feeling of the family love, or its memories, accompanies all their thinking, and directs the lines it takes. Indeed, no real thinking upon the moral things of God can be without emotion. The apostle James adduces a terrible illustration of this "The devils believe and tremble." Even the contemplation of God's almighty power and Godhead manifested in creation, mankind should not find to be a purely intellectual process. Emotion should arise in it (Rom. i. 21), compelling the thinker to give Him honour and gratefulness. And right emotion is missed by mankind in the intellectual contemplation of nature, as Paul further teaches (ver. 28), simply because wrong emotion shuts God out of their thoughts in connection with the outer world-the thinkers "not liking to Belief heart." retain Him in their knowledge." The thought of faith bestowed or restored by revealed religion, which brings intellectual study of the great things of nature in among the things which produce moral emotions, is that expressed by the Christian poet— "My Father made them all." To mankind who believe the Word, the whole world is their Father's house, prepared for their dwelling with Him in blessedness when they were innocent-preserved and again fitted for them to dwell with Him under discipline when they fell-made sacred to them by marvellous transactions of His redeeming love culminating in the coming of His only-begotten Son to die for them—and filled by these thoughts with memories all-powerful to lead and help them to learn again to believe in His love, and give themselves to Him. All their thoughts of Him in it, all their thinking of His deeds or words of love, which its history has witnessed and recorded, is to be emotional, as a human family's thoughts of the affections and actions of its various relationships are emotional always, and never by possibility purely intellectual. 9. In speaking of the emotional element of faith, illustra"with the tion is better than description. The one will show more clearly than the other what that "belief of the heart" is which is one of the Bible's expressions of man's believing in God. As an instructive introductory example may be taken faith in God's Word. The authoritative analogy of family relationships bids us understand that by the similitude of a child's belief in his father's word as to any history or expectation of family love. Intellectual thought of the historical facts of God's love to mankind, and of the declarations He has made of man's condition and of His own purposes of grace, will not come up to that model. The intellectual labour and fidelity to truth may be great through which the mind has worked its way to believing these against all opposing reasoning, overcoming strongly all opposing influences. There must, besides, be attained the child's thought of his father as the surety for the truth of all, and the source of the value of all. The things he believes he believes most consciously for one reason that they were told him by his father-his father, who could not come short in knowledge of what is past, nor mistake or fail in his assurance of what is to come. The things of a father's love which a child believes are not true only but precious. He rejoices to think of them. They bring his father nearer to his heart evermore. So reason's strong service of honouring study is given to God, but it is not given alone. Emotion accompanies it. The high thoughts of the most gifted believer's conscious intellectual power, the imaginations which are apt to exalt themselves, become captive not to logical argument only; they are "captive to the obedience of Christ"-" constrained by the love of Christ." He thinks with the heart as well as with the understanding. Of two children of God, the less informed may be capable only of thinking of some few facts of redeeming love-not able, like his brother, to generalise much knowledge into high imaginations of God's great attributes of unchangeable love and all-comprehending care. The essential feature of the thoughts of both is, that their thoughts of God's love are thoughts of joy, and their thoughts of man's declared unworthiness are thoughts not of knowledge only, but of fear and oppressive sadness. intellectual In fullest accordance with this analogical teaching, we find Meaning of the emotional character of the thinking of faith forced upon terms in us by the evident meaning of the language of faith in the Scripture. Scriptures. The words which we use in a purely intellectual sense on subjects of human knowledge, we find, when employed in the Bible respecting the knowledge belonging to revealed religion, must be read so as to include emotion as well. The knowledge which the Scripture characters have of religious facts is more than knowledge. It is exultation-the delight or security or other prized good of the soul that comes with some blessedness attained or assured, and so already possessed by faith. The man of intellect knows that there is a God. How did Job in early and Paul in later times express their knowledge? "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another" (Job xix. 25-27); “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day" (2 Tim. i. 12). Believers do not think of the facts and truths revealed as things which they only know. The Gospel is "good news," "glad tidings of great joy" to them. The testimonies of God are "a delight;" not known by them as things of this world's knowledge are known, but thought of with a joy which takes the thinker out of this world's life. They are his "songs songs in the house of his pilgrimage"-a stranger traveller's songs of home. Again, when a good man is said to believe a truth in religion, the word evidently is not used of the simple credence we give to a statement upon sufficient evidence. It is the sweet persuasion of one who "rejoices to believe." If he is said to contemplate God or meditate on His works, his thinking the thinking of faith-is evidently not an unmoved passionless contemplation. It is something much more akin to the luxurious musing of a warm heart upon things that lie near to it. A philosopher may think of God; he may fix his mind upon the divine character and attributes, and study them as he would any other subject of grandeur or difficulty. A religious man dwelling on His revelations of Himself does not so much think of Him as he, as it were, thinks to Him. He holds communion with Him when he thinks of Him, as with one who is necessary to his happiness. The cool speculations of heathen philosophers on the nature of imagined Godhead, compared with the warm and teeming language of Jewish or Christian believers in the revealed God, the Father of man, illustrate effectively the difference between intellectual and religious belief. The comparison shows forth, by the appropriate foil, the essentially emotional character of the thinking of true faith. What a contrast to anything we expect to read in the thoughts even of Cicero on the nature of God are the thinkings of the Scripture characters-" As the hart panteth after the brooks of water, so longeth my soul for Thee, O God: "Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee:" " 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?" "Thy lovingkindness is better than life, therefore my lips shall praise thee." What a contrast to the emptiness of any derived satisfaction, or strength to resist evil or bear trial, manifest in the meditations of the Greek theosophists, the utter coldness, comfortlessness, hopelessness, with which they turned back from their "vain imaginations" (empty disquisitions) (Rom. i. 21) to grapple with the difficulties of life, is the rest and strength in which the prophets and apostles enwrap their souls, thinking upon the personal historical God of the Bible. "I know that my Redeemer liveth;" "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee" (Isa. xxvi. 3); "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus" (Philip. iv. 7). This is a foreign language entirely to the intellectual phraseology which speaks of "the deity," "the supreme being," "the unseen power," "the intelligence of the universe." The essentially emotional character of the thinking of faith, which was to be looked for under the guidance of the family analogy, is thus evidently its character as seen in practice in the case which is in one sense the fundamental, introductory, but never absent, exercise of faith-faith in the words of revealed grace, the testimonies of God. 10. Particular inquiry remains to be made into what the What are emotions are which belong to the thinking of faith. Conventionally, Christians are apt to confine both the emotions and the thoughts of faith to that fact which is but the mighty corner-stone of the faith they are invited to-the death accomplished at Jerusalem; and, keeping by that subject of contemplation alone, speak of faith as trust in the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ. This conventional thought is due perhaps to the habit of learning religious truth in logical systems, the central propositions of which are apt to exclude the rest of their truths from usual contemplation. Its confined view, however, of John iii. 16, impoverishes the emotions of faith; if indeed logical thought be not more present in it than emotion. Our faith is in the love of God to man; of which the cross of Calvary was the completed, "finished" the emotions of faith? |