For this faith has two great features: one is represented
by the capacity for assimilating fact which is spiritual or
transcendental, and therefore not within the reach of finite intellect;
the other is represented by the capacity for reliance on, and trust in,
the God whose infinite perfections we cannot as finite creatures grasp
or follow.
In the difficult scheme of the world's governance, in the storms,
earthquakes, pestilences, sufferings of all kinds--signs of failure,
sickness, and decay, and death, signs of the victory of evil and the
failure of good--we can only _believe_ in God, and that all will issue
in righteous ends. And our belief proceeds, as just stated, on two
lines: one being our spiritual capacity for knowing that GOD IS, and
that we, His creatures, are the objects of His love; the other being the
fact that we only see a very little end of the thread, or perhaps only a
little of one thread out of a vast mass of complicated threads, in the
great web of design and governance, and that therefore there is wide
ground for confidence that the end will be success. We rely confidently
on God. If it is asked, Why is it a part of faith to have a childlike
confidence in an unseen God?--we reply, that the main origin of such
confidence is to be found in the wonderful condescension of God
exhibited in the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Resurrection.
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