Article December 4, 1902 Issue

The Quality of Faith

with contributions from Hamilton W. Mabie

The Outlook

To have faith in immortality is not merely to be of the opinion that men will live after death. It is to be possessed by the conviction of immortality; it is to live as an immortal; it is to measure all successes and all defeats, all joys and sorrows, all past disappointments, present duties, and future achievements, by their relation to an eternal life. It is never to grow old, because an immortal cannot age; it is never to be in despair. It is to see an awakening in every sleep and a spring in every winter. To have faith in God is not to entertain the opinion that there is a God. It is to be possessed by the conviction of His reality and of His personal relation to His children; it is to take guidance, counsel, courage, hope—in a word, life—from Him. It is to be full of God; it is to be able to say, as the Master said: "The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." To have faith in the Bible and in Christ is not to have an opinion as to the nature of inspiration or as to whether the unity of Christ with the Father is a metaphysical unity or a moral unity; it is to be inspired, directed, dominated, by the conviction that God is in His world; that He was in the lives and experiences of those whose story is told in the Bible; that He was reflected, as in a mirror, in the life of Jesus Christ; and it is to find in this revealing, that is, unveiling, of God, in the book and in the person, a way to a like communion with God through the book and through the person.—The Outlook.

The highest things are credible to those only whose lives respond to and fulfil them.—Hamilton W. Mabie.

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