Part 1 (1/2)
The Meaning of Faith.
by Harry Emerson Fosd.i.c.k.
PREFACE
A book on faith has been for years my hope and intention. And now it comes to final form during the most terrific war men ever waged, when faith is sorely tried and deeply needed. Direct discussion of the war has been purposely avoided; the issues here presented are not confined to those which the war suggests; but many streams of thought within the book flow in channels that the war has worn. Since the conflict had to come, I am glad for this book's sake that it was not written until it had Europe's holocaust for a background.
Against one misunderstanding the reader should be guarded. If anyone approaches these studies, expecting to find detailed and special views of Christian doctrine, he will be disappointed. The perplexities of mind and life and the affirmations of religious faith, with which these studies deal, lie far beneath sectarian doctrinal controversy. I have tried to make clear a foundation on which faith might build its thoughts of Christian truth. And while I have spoken freely of G.o.d and Christ and the Spirit, of the Cross and life eternal, I have not intended or endeavored a complete theology. I have had in mind that elemental matter of which Carlyle was thinking when he wrote: ”The thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain concerning his vital relations to the mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, _that_ is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. _That_ is his religion.”
As in ”The Meaning of Prayer,” the Scripture has been used for the basis and interpretation of the daily thought. The Bible is our supreme record of man's experience with faith; it recounts in terms of life faith's sources and results, its successes and failures, its servants and its foes. And because faith is not a _tour de force_ of intellect alone, but is an act of life, prayers have been used for the expression of aroused desire and resolution.
My indebtedness to many helpers is very great. But to my friend and colleague, Professor George Albert Coe, my grat.i.tude is so definitely due for his careful reading of the ma.n.u.script, that the book should not go out lacking an acknowledgment.
H. E. F.
December 15, 1917.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special acknowledgment is gladly made to the following: to E. P.
Dutton & Company for permission to use prayers from ”A Chain of Prayer Across the Ages” and from ”The Temple,” by W. E. Orchard, D.D.; to the Rev. Samuel McComb and the publishers for permission to quote from ”A Book of Prayers,” Copyright, 1912, Dodd, Mead & Company; to the American Unitarian a.s.sociation for permission to draw upon ”Prayers,”
by Theodore Parker; to the Pilgrim Press and the author for permission to use selections from ”Prayers of the Social Awakening,” by Dr.
Rauschenbusch; to the Missionary Education Movement for permission to make quotations from ”Thy Kingdom Come,” by Ralph E. Diffendorfer; to Fleming H. Revell Co., for permission to make use of ”A Book of Public Prayer,” by Henry Ward Beecher; and to the publishers of James Martineau's ”Prayers in the Congregation and in College,” Longmans, Green & Co.
None of the above material should be reprinted without securing permission.
CHAPTER I
Faith and Life's Adventure
DAILY READINGS
Discussion about faith generally starts with faith's _reasonableness_; let us begin with faith's _inevitableness_. If it were possible somehow to live without faith, the whole subject might be treated merely as an affair of curious interest. But if faith is an unescapable necessity in every human life, then we must come to terms with it, understand it, and use it as intelligently as we can. _There are certain basic elements in man which make it impossible to live without faith._ Let us consider these, as they are suggested in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, better than any other book in the Bible, presents faith as an unavoidable human att.i.tude.
First Week, First Day
=Now faith is a.s.surance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen.--Heb. 11:1.=
As Moffatt translates: ”Now faith means we are confident of what we hope for, convinced of what we do not see.” When faith is described in such general terms, its necessity in human life is evident. Man cannot live without faith, because he deals not only with a past which he may know and with a present which he can see, but with a _future in whose possibilities he must believe_. A man can no more avoid looking ahead when he lives his life than he can when he sails his boat, and in one case as in the other, his direction is determined by his thought about what lies before him, his ”a.s.surance of things hoped for.” Now, this future into which continually we press our way can never be a matter of demonstrable knowledge. We know only when we arrive, but meanwhile we believe; and our knowledge of what is and has been is not more necessary to our quest than our faith concerning what is yet to come.
As Tennyson sings of faith in ”The Ancient Sage”:
”She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, She feels the sun is hid but for a night, She spies the summer thro' the winter bud, She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls, She hears the lark within the songless egg, She finds the fountain where they wail'd 'Mirage'!”
However much a man may plan, therefore, to live without faith, he cannot do it. When one strips himself of all convictions about the future he stops living altogether, and active, eager, vigorous manhood is always proportionate to the scope and power of reasonable faith.